Why does battle high exist?

The mechanic seems to serve almost strictly to benefit the teams that are already performing well and in a typical match for me it ends up just snowballing to a point where they become nigh-unstoppable and the game may as well be won already. It also makes playing with people who don't know when to fold and back out of a bad situation to avoid feeding the opposing teams kills all the more punishing.

Your only hope of actually fighting back against it is to viciously focus fire them down (With LBs if necessary) but in a group of randoms people are generally too disorganized to do this, especially if there are multiple players with battle high present.

Gameplay mechanics tend to benefit the underdogs if anything so the inclusion of this is honestly a little baffling to me and it's probably my biggest frustration with frontlines in general. Though there are a lot of other things that are keeping me from finding PvP very enjoyable; the second probably being the tug of war scoring system that both deducts and adds points for kills which makes bad/dumb players and bots an even bigger liability to have on your team and also drags out games.

I cannot fathom why you would want to remove incentives for ... PvP'ing. Not only do you have a problem with High and Fever, but you want the points earned and lost for killing gone? What?

There's nothing wrong with a mechanic that rewards teams that are better than you...

You realize you can use it too, right? If your team is pepega you can get high yourself and start to get kills.

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Originally Posted by Nova_Rox

you can get high yourself and start to get kills.

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Bruh, way ahead of you o7.

But yeah it's a mechanic that can be used by everyone and rewards good play. If you're smart with picking your targets/battles you can easily get battle highs.

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Originally Posted by Nova_Rox

There's nothing wrong with a mechanic that rewards teams that are better than you...

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sure, but a mechanic too prone to get abused is actually wrong.

bb

Be MCH, Rampage+watch those KO's stack up, swap pvp music with Ravana's theme on loop.

Though 1v1v1 needs some fine tuning, I agree. The long, drawn out matches are not fun. Something I've liked in other games with PVP is how *snap snap* fast matches are. You get in, win/fail, dust yourself off and run right back in.

The downside of having fever/battle high is, that you lose way more points when you die. And you give the team who killed you more points too. It's a doubledged sword.

I would keep the incentive with fever to actually PvP, but I would reduce the general melee buff in frontline, especially the 30% mitigation effect for tanks, and I would half the damage bonus from fever and 2nd better fever atm. You can solo healer with a 8killstreak pretty easy as melee, I don't think that is completely counterable.

With that said though, 5.1 is in a month or two, maybe they already are preparing to change it in something even different who knows..

Losing teams generate Adrenaline faster. Killing players with battle high rewards more points. I usually stick to the shadows (Ranged) but when I get Battle High, I'm targeted more. Nothing is going to stop bad players from losing matches as that is normal although at least some balance is achieved.

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Originally Posted by Atreus

I cannot fathom why you would want to remove incentives for ... PvP'ing. Not only do you have a problem with High and Fever, but you want the points earned and lost for killing gone? What?

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No. I think it would be better to just award points for getting kills instead of also deducting points for being killed. Being removed from the battlefield temporarily is punishment enough as is.

If all the PvP modes were just 1v1, I wouldn't mind the potentially huge momentum shifts from the tug of war scoring style, but losing hundreds of points in an instant just because the two other teams decided to gang up on you on a whim is just infuriating to me; moreso when you aren't even the team in first place and the third place team decides it's a better idea to kill you instead of the team with a huge point lead.

The three-way PvP format is also a huge flaw in general and why I tend to find Rival Wings more enjoyable.

High and fever are fine as is, it encourages PvP and rewards players for playing good.

Also, teams should lose points when they die, to not encourage yolo play AND make comebacks possible.

The 1v1v1 is fine, it's just that there are too many pugs who don't know/don't care to work with it. There are more strategic choices than in 1v1. Well, I guess that depends on how it's implemented, but as is now 1v1v1 requires more "smart" play to win. However, the practical reality of pugs on NA/EU servers makes this a somewhat moot point.

The point of the op's post was that it snowballs and unbalances things. If you're good enough to build high/fever in the first place, why do you need a dmg assist buff to make you stronger. It makes it harder for the other team to make a comeback when the winners are running around with highs, you aren't on equal footing now. Rewards for being good are fine, it feels good to earn a high, idk if damage boost is the right way to go with it though.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

I would keep the incentive with fever to actually PvP, but I would reduce the general melee buff in frontline, especially the 30% mitigation effect for tanks, and I would half the damage bonus from fever and 2nd better fever atm. You can solo healer with a 8killstreak pretty easy as melee, I don't think that is completely counterable.

With that said though, 5.1 is in a month or two, maybe they already are preparing to change it in something even different who knows..

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If they remove the buffs to Melee and Tanks in Frontline/Rival Wings, everybody will just go back to only playing ranged and casters, like how it was before 4.5.

With 5.1, they will increase the number of actions in PvP to 16. A new Frontline map is being added. Seal Rock 2 they are calling it internally. The damage boost and reductions in non-Feast PvP for Melee and Tanks is most likely staying.

It's there to reward those that play well.

You normally get/lose +5/-5 points for killing someone/dying. The trade off for Battle High/Fever is that if you die with the buff, there is a bigger exchange of points. If you kill a Battle High player, you gain 10 points, they lose 10. For Battle Fever, it's +15/-15.

Battle high and fever is a good thing, rewards players who are killing / contributing a lot to become more powerful and a bigger threat to the opposing teams. (and a more desirable target to focus since a BH/BF death rewards more points -/+). Yes it can feel like a uphill battle especially if you go up against a premade who know how to actually play pvp however thats where you want teamwork; to focus those high prio targets and healers to get rid of their buff.

Despite the adrenaline and damage buff they get theyre still the same hp wise and can be focused as such. The better team should always win anyway so if one team has multiple BH and BF then it is what it is your team sucking or the other is feeding. I'd also like to add that if you know how to burst and use your awareness you can get battle high / fever yourself even without a healer backing you, its open to everyone who can last hit.

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Originally Posted by OskarXCI

If they remove the buffs to Melee and Tanks in Frontline/Rival Wings, everybody will just go back to only playing ranged and casters, like how it was before 4.5.

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I didn't want them removed, I said reduce, they are just overpowered atm. I know melees have it more difficult than range, but 30% mitigation stacked with other effects is too strong. Same with fever combined with 15% more attack, doing rotation does more damage than the limit break at that point. And the way some skills work, reset on kill like on ninja with assassinate- gives a lot of stomp material than intended.
Melees dps should maybe keep a higher defense than tanks as they are already tanky with 20k HP and mitigation skills...

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Originally Posted by OskarXCI

If they remove the buffs to Melee and Tanks in Frontline/Rival Wings, everybody will just go back to only playing ranged and casters, like how it was before 4.5.

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there never was a lack of tank, and it wasnt uncommon to see a melee on top of kills and dmg output.

we can argue about the dmg reduction but not the dmg buff and even less giving tanks the same treatment, that was completly uncalled.

Battle high works like the general playground rule of "make it, take it" usually seen in basketball. The player or team that makes a shot starts with the ball on the next possession. As opposed to either taking turns or the loser starting with the ball.

The idea is to either force the opposition to play better, or end the game/match/etc more quickly. It works best when the game is competitive to begin with.

They could make games end more quickly without battle high by just removing the point loss from deaths and making it a straight climb instead of tug of war.

I'm not convinced the mechanic is necessary in any form or fashion because it just tends to make the dominant team even more awful to deal then they already are. Even bots can become a problem as they're frighteningly efficient at focusing people down if there's multiple on the same team.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

They could make games end more quickly without battle high by just removing the point loss from deaths and making it a straight climb instead of tug of war.

I'm not convinced the mechanic is necessary in any form or fashion because it just tends to make the dominant team even more awful to deal then they already are. Even bots can become a problem as they're frighteningly efficient at focusing people down if there's multiple on the same team.

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But why would you remove something from the game that encourages PvP? FL IS a PvP mode despite how many folks try to play it.

High is good. Reward the good players for being skilled (something this game NEEDS) and it doubles as a mercy for the losing team by causing them to lose faster AND it's also a comeback mechanic since it shows them on the map and punishes the team for letting their highs/fevers die.

Fever/High is a mechanic that literally helps on all fronts. Why do people want it removed? Just stop complaining and get better. So many people are jumping into PvP without any knowledge of how PvP works then they complain about how unfair it is.

Uh. Yeah. It's unfair because you aren't putting in the same effort as those folks getting high/fever. It's PvP. Get competitive. You got your ass kicked? Come back stronger and kick their ass back. Simple

You can be attacking things constantly and never get battle high/fever because you need to actually get the killing blow, not just an assist so by no means is it necessarily going to be benefiting the better players of a team on a consistent basis. Don't assume I only hate the mechanic because I'm slacking.

In the odd event I do get it, the healers generally don't seem to anticipate that people are going to try to burn me down so it oft ends up serving as little more then a big "Kill me" sign. You still need a good team to fully benefit from it because a team with tanks and healers failing to support their DPS and keep them alive is just going to keep losing their highs shortly after they get them, so it really doesn't work well as a comeback mechanic.

A competent team with battle highs on the other hand, feels nigh-unstoppable unless you're running a premade that knows how to coordinate LBs and properly burn them down in order to sway things back in their favor. I regularly see people in alliance chat yelling to just avoid the team with highs like the plague and focus on objectives (Which sadly enough actually worked on one occasion because they were too busy farming the other team for kills to get to the objectives before us).

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

You can be attacking things constantly and never get battle high/fever because you need to actually get the killing blow, not just an assist so by no means is it necessarily going to be benefiting the better players of a team on a consistent basis. Don't assume I only hate the mechanic because I'm slacking.

In the odd event I do get it, the healers generally don't seem to anticipate that people are going to try to burn me down so it oft ends up serving as little more then a big "Kill me" sign. You still need a good team to fully benefit from it because a team with tanks and healers failing to support their DPS and keep them alive is just going to keep losing their highs shortly after they get them, so it really doesn't work well as a comeback mechanic.

A competent team with battle highs on the other hand, feels nigh-unstoppable unless you're running a premade that knows how to coordinate LBs and properly burn them down in order to sway things back in their favor. I regularly see people in alliance chat yelling to just avoid the team with highs like the plague and focus on objectives (Which sadly enough actually worked on one occasion because they were too busy farming the other team for kills to get to the objectives before us).

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So you're saying the issue is with the community and the fact that they, for some reason, don't want to improve and are "just here for the tomes lol" so they have zero competitive spirit therefore they don't want to / don't care to improve.

Because I agree.

There are some issues with PvP, just like any PvP mode in any game, but the biggest issue is the community and its lack of want to improve. How do we fix that? Outside of heavy SE interference or another meteor destroying Eorzea and it being reborn with a heavier focus on PvP content...I honestly don't know.

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Originally Posted by Nova_Rox

So you're saying the issue is with the community and the fact that they, for some reason, don't want to improve and are "just here for the tomes lol" so they have zero competitive spirit therefore they don't want to / don't care to improve.

Because I agree.

There are some issues with PvP, just like any PvP mode in any game, but the biggest issue is the community and its lack of want to improve. How do we fix that? Outside of heavy SE interference or another meteor destroying Eorzea and it being reborn with a heavier focus on PvP content...I honestly don't know.

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If people dont like the content there is no incentive to improve no matter what exclusive glamours you bait them with.

Nothing makes me more proud than seeing my entire team with battle high, because I have made sure they didn't die as a healer. Don't take that last bit of joy I have as a healer away from me T^T

I guess the core issue really is that the mechanic is only going to make a difference if your team knows how to properly abuse it by supporting the people who get highs and the people who have highs playing smart and not putting themselves into situations where they can be easily picked off.

It's rare to end up in a situation where all three teams both know how to abuse battle high and how to fight back against it, which is why it tends to just create a snowball effect with one team (Usually a premade) utterly dominating the map while the others flounder around and try to hold out as long as they can.

Considering you can no longer hide on the map makes it not the best buff to have.
If anything, it's pretty balanced.

The whole "can see on the radar" thing did actually make a big difference in letting my team win my most recent game as they were able to simply track the dominating team's movements and focus on being where they weren't when going for objectives, which worked out because they were too busy fighting with the other team and let us get an entire set of nodes unopposed.

I feel like one of the worst plays you can make is trying to go head-to-head with a team that has battle high because they're mostly likely going to win if they aren't stupid. Flanking them while they're attempting to take down another team is a good way to shift things back in your favor, though.

It's also there to "supposedly" encourage the 2nd and 3rd place teams to gang up on the 1st. The 1st place will most likely have the battle high so unless both other teams gang up, they will lose. It's competitive that way but too many non-strategy gamers don't really think.

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Originally Posted by Aiph

It's also there to "supposedly" encourage the 2nd and 3rd place teams to gang up on the 1st. The 1st place will most likely have the battle high so unless both other teams gang up, they will lose. It's competitive that way but too many non-strategy gamers don't really think.

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This right here. People lacking competitive spirit and not wanting to think is what's holding this game back - in PvE and PvP.

Why does battle high exist?

It's PvP. Person VS Person. What is the point to not reward the players who kill the enemies ?

Do you really want to players to only focus destroying nodes/crystals and GC camp at flags ?????? That's boring, looks like PvE.

Everytime I saw someone writing on Alliance chat "Crystals are more important than kills". Something I'm sure about these kind of players, they NEVER had Battle High and Battle Fevers. These players, they only feed the good players.

Today, I killed 11 enemies, no death as DRK on Bordeland Ruins. 11 enemies, it's 55 points for my team, however it means also -55 points for the enemies. Only by myself, I brought a difference of points of 110 points between my team and the other teams. It's huge.

Besides, it's much harder to kill a tank with a Battle Fever (+50% of def). So, I can protect my healers without being worried to get killed.
I play PvP, it's for killing people. If I want ONLY to destroy nodes/crystals, better play PvE.

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Originally Posted by JimBond007

Why does battle high exist?

It's PvP. Person VS Person. What is the point to not reward the players who kill the enemies ?

Do you really want to players to only focus destroying nodes/crystals and GC camp at flags ?????? That's boring, looks like PvE.

Everytime I saw someone writing on Alliance chat "Crystals are more important than kills". Something I'm sure about these kind of players, they NEVER had Battle High and Battle Fevers. These players, they only feed the good players.

Today, I killed 11 enemies, no death as DRK on Bordeland Ruins. 11 enemies, it's 55 points for my team, however it means also -55 points for the enemies. Only by myself, I brought a difference of points of 110 points between my team and the other teams. It's huge.

Besides, it's much harder to kill a tank with a Battle Fever (+50% of def). So, I can protect my healers without being worried to get killed.
I play PvP, it's for killing people. If I want ONLY to destroy nodes/crystals, better play PvE.

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I think people would still fight each other regardless of whether or not it existed.

My main gripe is that it only feels balanced if every team knows how to actually deal with it and keep it from snowballing out of control.

Once a team is packing tons of highs, the only way you're likely going to be able to tear the lead away from them is by ganging up on them with the other team, but that almost never happens.

I don't really get PvP in Duty Finder or Roulette. Usually there is no communication, coordination, or strategy of any kind. Everyone usually just splits up quickly and then runs around randomly, ignoring the objectives, fighting pointlessly, and dying. On our data center, Maelstrom seems slightly more coordinated, but I don't really know why that should be. Flames seem to avoid any strategy and ignore objectives usually, but I don't really know why that should be either.

The random selection of jobs doesn't seem to help; I've seen games where there is a single healer for the entire alliance.

Battle high may make things worse; it seems to make it easier for one team to steamroll another. But the root problem seems to be that PvP is usually just stupid and pointless, and there doesn't seem to be any system to help teams work together effectively, or to help players who want to learn how to play PvP learn to do so, or to help people improve, etc..

It's annoying and frustrating and really not much fun. I don't really see it improving either, as it was just as bad in ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by Avenger

I don't really get PvP in Duty Finder or Roulette. Usually there is no communication, coordination, or strategy of any kind. Everyone usually just splits up quickly and then runs around randomly, ignoring the objectives, fighting pointlessly, and dying. On our data center, Maelstrom seems slightly more coordinated, but I don't really know why that should be. Flames seem to avoid any strategy and ignore objectives usually, but I don't really know why that should be either.

The random selection of jobs doesn't seem to help; I've seen games where there is a single healer for the entire alliance.

Battle high may make things worse; it seems to make it easier for one team to steamroll another. But the root problem seems to be that PvP is usually just stupid and pointless, and there doesn't seem to be any system to help teams work together effectively, or to help players who want to learn how to play PvP learn to do so, or to help people improve, etc..

It's annoying and frustrating and really not much fun. I don't really see it improving either, as it was just as bad in ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood.

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So, yet again, the biggest issue with PvP is the community...

I feel like they also need to adjust the match making to make it prioritize matching premades against each other too, because that's where battle high is most prone to making an already superior team turn into an insurmountable menace.

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Originally Posted by JimBond007

Why does battle high exist?

It's PvP. Person VS Person. What is the point to not reward the players who kill the enemies ?

Do you really want to players to only focus destroying nodes/crystals and GC camp at flags ?????? That's boring, looks like PvE.

Everytime I saw someone writing on Alliance chat "Crystals are more important than kills". Something I'm sure about these kind of players, they NEVER had Battle High and Battle Fevers. These players, they only feed the good players.

Today, I killed 11 enemies, no death as DRK on Bordeland Ruins. 11 enemies, it's 55 points for my team, however it means also -55 points for the enemies. Only by myself, I brought a difference of points of 110 points between my team and the other teams. It's huge.

Besides, it's much harder to kill a tank with a Battle Fever (+50% of def). So, I can protect my healers without being worried to get killed.
I play PvP, it's for killing people. If I want ONLY to destroy nodes/crystals, better play PvE.

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To be fair, Frontlines is an objective based PvP.
If you want to purely kill without reserve, play The Feast.

I find that the flow of a typical frontlines match is that two of the three teams get into a big scuffle shortly after the game starts, one of them comes out on top, then the winning team just leverages the momentum they've gained from their battle highs and generally doesn't lose it.

If they do lose, it's either because they get too distracted with fighting one of the teams and let the remaining one have the objectives to themselves or they get ganged up on and lose their highs and a ton of points (Which doesn't happen often because people tend to start avoiding them like the plague once they see multiple players with battle high among their ranks).

If the team is stomping you enough to get battle high/fever, chances are they'd beat you comfortably without it anyway. I concede it's too strong because of how quickly adrenaline fills up, but it doesn't make a difference - a pasting is a pasting. If anything it just ends your suffering faster.

Wins should be decided by a team's overall performance throughout a game and the snowballing momentum from battle high really does not encourage that to happen because it becomes a crutch with how much easier it makes it kill enemies/keep your team alive.

Losing more points from dying with it scarcely counts as a disadvantage with how easy it is to just hang back and avoid making yourself an easy target.

I think it would be more balanced if you needed to keep getting kills/assists periodically to maintain the buff instead of it lasting until death or toning down the buff somehow. In its current state I don't feel like it accomplishes anything other then making games end faster but I'd rather have a longer game where making a comeback is actually a realistic prospect. Few things are more frustrating then the battle high team basically trolling by letting you get a lead while they farm the other team, then deciding to just steamroll you in the last moments. Heck, even when my team is the one with the highs I don't feel like it's making things more enjoyable (Outside of the inherent joy of winning the match, of course).

Battle High/Fever system is fine. It's meant to reward you for 'PvP'ing' smartly and having the sense to be escorted/being near healers (or having healers at all). If your team possesses multiple Battle Highs and even Fevers, that is an indication of your team's overall performance throughout a game. The increasing momentum and ease of killing targets is your reward for not having a team full of over-extending people that aren't moving with the group and end up being picked-off as easy targets. It's not a crutch, it's an indication that some/most of the people on your team are doing something right.

I don't think both bonuses are meant to be a disadvantage. They are an incentive for the other teams to get rid of players with this bonus, but at that point those players likely have 25% extra or more of their healers' attention.

The fact that Frontlines is a 3-way team conflict is the comeback mechanic. You always have the means of shutting-down any one team (in the lead) if both tactically sandwich them. The problem is this comeback mechanic is largely designed like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Do you work with the other team to take down the team in first place/ with a lot of Battle Highs & Fevers? Do you sit back and watch one completely trash the other and get Battle Highs & Fevers on the basis of controlling objectives (which might not even be enough)? Will the other team instantly turn on your team instead of continuing the double-team? Many times I have seen people wrongfully call-out "Let them fight" in situations where it was in our best interest to pincer the dominating team- only to be overwhelmed later when they finally turn their crosshairs on us.

If any one team starts getting a ridiculous amount of Battle Highs & Fevers, chances are the fault lies with the two losing teams due to at least one sitting-by and allowing it to escalate or by not creating a temporary truce to put pressure on them and 2 v 1 them.

My other problem is that it's theoretically balanced for the reasons you stated, but outside of premades people are extremely unlikely to actually behave in a manner that prevents it from getting out of control.

Case in point, in my previous game the team with highs was in the lead and all three teams were about equal distances from one another, but the third place team decided to attack us instead of them for whatever reason. I assume their base logic just told them we'd be easier kills and they decided that was more important then stoppng the lead team's momentum.

I wouldn't have a problem with it people always knew what they should be doing, but they don't and that's honestly something they need account for with balancing, especially when PvP attracts a lot of people who don't take it super seriously due to the rewards like glam and hairstyles. Alliance raids are already balanced around casual players by predominantly having mechanics that punish individual mistakes instead of the party and also generally lacking meaningful DPS checks.

With no battle high, the better team would still win, they just wouldn't totally steamroll people to the point of it feeling frustrating and hopeless. I actually got a very negative first impression of Frontlines that largely turned me away from wanting to do the full Garo grind after getting totally stomped about a dozen games in a row because of battle high.

It's gotten a bit better now that I actually understand can potentially be done to fight back against it, but the mechanic still feels unneeded, especially when there's already a reward/punishment for KOing/being KO'd by other players and that's the point increase/decrease, increasing respawn timer, and being booted back to base camp. It's those penalties that are a part of what makes people reluctant to engage a team with battle high in the first place; though that's kind of silly when it often comes down to a "Wipe their team or you lose" situation where worst case scenario they win faster and your suffering ends quicker and best case you make a comeback and win instead.

But then you're essentially asking them to balance it around bad players. If you're asking them to remove Battle High in some misguided attempt to safeguard one team when the other non-winning team decides to not even attempt to win and 'fight for second,' then at that point you might as well put a buff on all players not on the winning team that prohibits the other team in 3rd/2nd from attacking them.

If the people on a team can't or don't want to enact basic strategy (or common sense for that matter), that's their problem. Finding fault in the team(s) that take advantage of that seems more like a sour grapes solution to bring them down to bad players' level instead of improve themselves. The Battle High incentivizes good players PvP'ing. It's what keeps matches being more than blindly worrying about objectives and avoiding conflict.

The crux of your problem with it seems to be:

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I wouldn't have a problem with it people always knew what they should be doing

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Which isn't entirely the game mode's problem. It's a "the other team is better than yours" problem. That's just how it is. You can try to lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Comparing Frontlines to Alliance Raids are apples to oranges; it's fighting against a scripted AI versus having to use your brain more and deal with other thinking, strategizing opponents.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

With no battle high, the better team would still win, they just wouldn't totally steamroll people to the point of it feeling frustrating and hopeless.

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This is mostly true in theory, but Battle High also has a few other purposes that I think the devs felt they wanted to include. It's a killstreak bonus, it penalizes teams from zerging and dying repeatedly without consequence (the raise timer contributes), and it should be a deterrent from simply avoiding conflict when two teams are engaged.