What is it with Immortal Flames and being terrible at PvP?

I've played Frontlines a bit lately, and every single game, us Flames got dead last by a wide margin. I'm not mad or anything(kinda find it funny tbh), I still get stuff, it's just weird. How can a huge GC, with different world's players always fail so badly?

I just hope I'm not the common denominator, I hope one person isn't enough to cause a 1000 point fail in Frontlines LOL.

People say the same thing about every Alliance. Yesterday someone was noting how the Twin Adders always find a way to lose in /a chat.

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Originally Posted by tinythinker

People say the same thing about every Alliance. Yesterday someone was noting how the Twin Adders always find a way to lose in /a chat.

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Hmm I guess I just haven't been lucky enough to win then! I'll just have to keep trying.

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

Hmm I guess I just haven't been lucky enough to win then! I'll just have to keep trying.

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Do you know about Freelancer? It allows you to join any of the 3 GCs during a PVP match (While still earning achievement contribution for your actual GC). You're never truly on an 'Immortal Flames' team, it's a mix of all 3. The people that beat you last match may now all be on your team. It could just be bad luck that you're losing - or more likely that you're holding onto the bad things more than the good.

I still remember when it was Maelstrom who sucked and the Flames were.. "Immortal" :p

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

I still remember when it was Maelstrom who sucked and the Flames were.. "Immortal" :p

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And I remember when Maelstrom was OP on Aether and Immortal was a DRG. :P

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

I still remember when it was Maelstrom who sucked and the Flames were.. "Immortal" :p

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Before freelancing I only ever remember Maelstrom being dominant.

Almost everyone is playing as merc so this is possibly just coincidence.

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Originally Posted by Pence

Do you know about Freelancer? It allows you to join any of the 3 GCs during a PVP match (While still earning achievement contribution for your actual GC). You're never truly on an 'Immortal Flames' team, it's a mix of all 3. The people that beat you last match may now all be on your team. It could just be bad luck that you're losing - or more likely that you're holding onto the bad things more than the good.

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Oh awesome! I had no idea about that feature, thank you!

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Before freelancing I only ever remember Maelstrom being dominant.

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Adders for me. It was terrifying queuing for Secure especially because of this one group of Adders who queued together and would just FACE ROLL you for days on end.

Adder fo life

Adder number 1!!

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Originally Posted by tinythinker

People say the same thing about every Alliance. Yesterday someone was noting how the Twin Adders always find a way to lose in /a chat.

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Yeah I've saw this said about every alliance. Actually saw it said about every alliance in one day on my server lol

All 3 GC's are equally bad/good at least on chaos even before this freelancer thing, GC with active premade is usually one that starts to dominate.

Near the end of Heavensward I did some PvP for the Garo gear. In most battles we Adders ended up first or second by a small margin. Then, in one battle, we got THAT guy who whined how Adders were crap, "Immortal Flames 4 lyfe" and so on. I suppose, just to prove his point, he did all he could to make us lose, that is he spammed the chat with his whining and entered verbal duels with some members of the team, so we had a hard time organizing. It's really all about being lucky enough to get at least 1-3 people who know the drill and have good organization skills to direct the rest.

I would go out on a limb and say I don't think freelancer changed the winrates of the GCs by much. At least not on Primal datacenter that I've noticed. But I have to concede that Flames do seem to be the GC that has the most consistent losses (as in not 1st place, 2nd place don't get you any achievements).

Prior to SB it just seemed to be the team without much of a plan and really only capitalized on when Adders and Maelstrom foolishly ignores them for whatever reason. I honestly feel like Adders have the most tactically smart players and love playing off of the other teams' short-sightedness and predictability, but they do questionable things sometimes that ultimately forfeit the game for them like try to take a base/push to spawn-camp a team (even if they were in 1st) while the third team runs away with the lead. Maelstrom is a weird inconsistent mixed-bag because when everyone there knows what's going on, stuff gets steamrolled, but are equally prone to failing spectacularly when nobody actually realizes what's going on on the map and leave themselves open to being double-teamed (as in, it would be dumb not to double team) over no particular objective. Mael also seems to be the most likely team to ignore who's in 1st-place/ biggest point threat and instead play footsies with/ push the team in last place, just because they're there.

Flames just seem to take the downsides of the other 2 GCs as a normal part of their behavior. And now with SB's exp in frontlines, I've seen the most bots and afk'rs in their GC compared to any other (Mael's not far behind though). But-

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Originally Posted by Synestra

GC with active premade is usually one that starts to dominate.

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This is the biggest factor.

Your GC means as much now in PvP as it does in PvE. Who's on your team and how good they are is what makes all the difference now, thanks to Frontline Freelancer.

I've seen this myself honestly. When I que solo I get into mael, and I'd say I have a very good winrate when I get on mael, 60-70%, but every single time I que with a friend and we get tossed to immortal flames, they're just the worst players I've ever seen, don't follow instructions, don't know when they're going too deep and are often too afraid to fight more than 1-2 seconds. I believe I've been matched with them about 10 times in the past week or two and won one match and got third in the rest of them. Which really shouldn't matter a lot due to freelancer, though if most are solo ques that can make some sense.

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

I've played Frontlines a bit lately, and every single game, us Flames got dead last by a wide margin. I'm not mad or anything(kinda find it funny tbh), I still get stuff, it's just weird. How can a huge GC, with different world's players always fail so badly?

I just hope I'm not the common denominator, I hope one person isn't enough to cause a 1000 point fail in Frontlines LOL.

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Im on the flames and I have to agree they suck, its an option to do frontlines as a freelancer I just started doing that you should give it a go

Depends on server and also lately lots of bots. Hopefully SE can get to the bottom of things.

If you're responding to today, there seems to be some Maelstrom people who are friends who are actually coordinating.

Well on Aether I've been winning ALOT more when I'm with flames. After stormblood where just before it I felt like flames gave me a really long losing streak

History lesson time:

Before 3.5, you chose a GC, and all your PvP points and level were tied to it. There were optional but very useful PVP skills that you added to your hotbar along with all the other PvE skills, and they could be upgraded with the points you gained. If you transferred, say from the Flames to the Adders but only ever PvPed on the Flames, you could still equip the skills, but without the points and level from the Flames, you couldn't upgrade them. Some achievements like the Black ADS mount were erroneously listed as requiring 200 wins with any GC, but it did not explain that progress is not totaled among them. Simply put: you could get 199/200 wins with the Flames, then switch to Adders, and your next win was 1/200, and the counter wouldn't go up til you matched that same number from before.

Anyways, if all your friends were in a different GC (thanks to the choice they originally made in the story, or a transfer), your choices were to either transfer and join them, or be stuck on opposite teams all the time. If you transferred, you could not transfer back for 15 real world days. Many people would follow their friends, or groups of players that played well together would transfer together, often creating imbalances between the GCs. THIS is what largely slowed down queues. If everyone's predominantly an Adder or Flame, matches are hard to build a Maelstrom team for, thus the long long waits.

Come 3.5, and the Frontline Freelancer option - a major change the PvP community asked and begged for for 2 years. 2 years. Now it didn't matter if your buddy is in Maelstrom and you're a Flame. Select Freelancer, and queue together, and maybe you'll be on the same team. Cross-world party finder? Hey! That guy from [Server] was really good, but he was on the other team, let's invite him to our party! Queue up and get a match; hey look, those other guys who were really good on the other team are in alliance B this time! Alright! We've got a strong team!


. . .GCs Do. Not. Matter. Now. It's all about how good you and your teammates are. They could add the Temple Knights, Garlean Legions and the Ala Mihgan Resistance tomorrow and if all the really good or bad players of one GC went to one of those, it still wouldn't make a difference. Please stop thinking that it does.

What is it with people thinking that their personal experiences on one data centre make some kind of correlation? ThirdChild has the right of it. I've been mown down by teams from all three GCs and I've been in the position of dominating a match on all three GCs. For all of my loyalty to Maelstrom, freelancer has revolutionised PVP for me as I can actually play more than two matches a week now. I don't give a fig which team I'm on and if Flames/Adders/Maelstrom have a few good games in a row I don't draw any particular conclusions from that, because anyone who actually wants to get short queues is going freelancer. The main things I see in winning teams are having a certain concentration of veterans (premade or just solo) and actually bothering to communicate. As I say to my friends when they're on a losing streak and blaming random circumstances, are you sure you're doing everything you can to help your team win? Or are you just refusing to lead or pick a logical job and contributing to the team's disorganisation yourself?

Of course, if everyone is going in with assumptions like 'Aether Adders suck, it's not my fault' then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy after a while.