Dear SE, please never again put irregular tomestones into Frontline

I have been doing Frontline for quite a bit now on various chars in hope to still get the GARO mounts...

... and of course anyone who isn't Mael (where all the good PvPers are on Crystal, see previous posts done by several people on the issue) will always end up in Flames or Adders, which makes the endeavor on any char who isn't red pretty bad to begin with...

... but what I see A LOT now, since irregular tomestones entered in the picture?

At least one of not both non-mael teams (blue and yellow) have a good chunk of players, if not nearly entire teams throwing the match on purpose. They run to Mael, get themselves slaughtered to feed Reds kill points, to make the match end in sometimes under 10 minutes.

That is a fast way to farm irregular tomestones, but makes already bad PvP thanks to imbalances in design EVEN worse. It gives people an incentive to LOSE on purpose, while in a dungeon if you want to farm irregular tomestones you have an incentive to play well = make the dungeon finish faster.

Yes, of course some Mael players can now say with glee "good, even more meat for my kill count" (and yes, I am quoting two different Mael players here who said such), but that's not what good PvP should look like imo.

So please SE, never again put something into PvP that gives people an incentive to lose on purpose by throwing matches to make them end faster, like right now. It makes already flawed designs even worse...

Having played quite a bit of both FL and RW, I haven't seen mass lemmings like you mention. Sure I see inexperienced people jump into a mob and melt, but that always happens.

I personally enjoy the amount of people queuing, pops are faster, matches are fuller, I say more of this in the future.

I have seen this only a few times. Mostly I've seen PvP played competitively between the three GC alliances. Also I've seen a lot of new pvp players who have not tried Pvp before try it and fall in love with it. Adding this incentive has been more of a blessing than a curse. Getting new players into pvp is always good.

Oh and I've seen Adders and Flames win their fair share of matches since the irregular tomes have been included to PvP.

Tomestones in pvp are fine.

It's just that losing offers no reprocussion to your gain.

if there's a 33% chance of winning, winning shoulder offer like, 8, second should be 4 and losing should be 2.

Other regulars to the mode shouldn't have to suffer because people don't take it serious and want to lose as soon as possible.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinklet

Tomestones in pvp are fine.

It's just that losing offers no reprocussion to your gain.

if there's a 33% chance of winning, winning shoulder offer like, 8, second should be 4 and losing should be 2.

Other regulars to the mode shouldn't have to suffer because people don't take it serious and want to lose as soon as possible.

---

I could get behind that. It might be fine on Aether with little to no lemmings (where the previous two other posters are from), but right now on Crystal Datacenter I have been observing obscene things in some matches, and some people even admitted to throwing matches. Losing on purpose should NOT be rewarded by faster farm time for irregular tomestones.

btw, while I am glad this problem does not or not as badly exist on Aether, going by what two people here posted...

... but on Crystal the combination of Mael being where people who care about winning go (and don't go freelancer, see several other posts here mentioning this problem) as long as they don't have other reasons to stay with other GCs...

... and now people throwing matches on purpose because hey, you get your rewards anyway...

...the result can look like this. Just fresh out of a match as an Adder, Alliance chat (names removed due to privacy issues):

[1:05]((Player A)) Flames is throwing the match for Mael by camping us.
[1:05]((Player A)) Might as well give this one up.
[1:05]((Player B)) how bout no
(as more people indeed start giving up and throwing the match)
[1:08]((Player B)) how bout people dont throw
[1:08]((Player B)) and actually try and not give up?
[1:09]((Me)) for that losing would have to have consequences, rather than being rewarded
[1:09]((Player B)) if youre gonna give up after 1 death then dont play this

Mind you, on my char who is Mael I managed a win streak of over 50%, and I've watch people throw themselves at us Reds at times like lemmings. On my chars who are not Mael my win chances hovers between 15 and 20% ... and I watch teammates say in chat "lets throw this" and "I get wolfmarks/mythology anyway" in a variety of ways way too often.

Another suggestion, based something I learned was recently implemented in Warthunder, where similar problems cropped up:

- The top 3 players (by whatever metrics would make sense for their job) of the losing team get the same rewards as if their team had won. That way effort is rewarded, even if you are cursed with team mates who throw the match or otherwise hope to get carried while afking and the like.

- The bottom 3 players of all teams get nothing. That way "lol I get wolfmarks/mythology anyway" by throwing matches, or getting carried is prevented.

Anyone who needs GUARANTEED rewards for throwing matches / not doing a thing in hopes to get carried has no place in PvP. Frontline is better off without them.

I feel you op, I really do. But I think instead of removing them completely, a happy medium could be reached.
Here's what I propose: 5 tomes for 1st place, 3 tomes for 2nd place, 1 tome for last place.

I have trouble telling whether people are trying to throw or if their situational awareness is just that bad.

One of my many Rival Wings games today just had me take a tower from 100% to 0% all by myself...and I wasn't hit even once for that entire period of time despite being a huge mob of players from the opposing team lingering by the tower and almost nobody from my team was around to defend me.

I know there are bots in the mode who focus on killing mammets over any other activity but I can't imagine all of them having been bots.

i think its fine how it is
but they should have put feast instead of rival wings for those who are still missing that last mount

but after this moogle event garo is gone too
so no real reason to change it unless another pvp event comes in like garo

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chiami

I have been doing Frontline for quite a bit now on various chars in hope to still get the GARO mounts...

... and of course anyone who isn't Mael (where all the good PvPers are on Crystal, see previous posts done by several people on the issue) will always end up in Flames or Adders, which makes the endeavor on any char who isn't red pretty bad to begin with...

... but what I see A LOT now, since irregular tomestones entered in the picture?

At least one of not both non-mael teams (blue and yellow) have a good chunk of players, if not nearly entire teams throwing the match on purpose. They run to Mael, get themselves slaughtered to feed Reds kill points, to make the match end in sometimes under 10 minutes.

That is a fast way to farm irregular tomestones, but makes already bad PvP thanks to imbalances in design EVEN worse. It gives people an incentive to LOSE on purpose, while in a dungeon if you want to farm irregular tomestones you have an incentive to play well = make the dungeon finish faster.

Yes, of course some Mael players can now say with glee "good, even more meat for my kill count" (and yes, I am quoting two different Mael players here who said such), but that's not what good PvP should look like imo.

So please SE, never again put something into PvP that gives people an incentive to lose on purpose by throwing matches to make them end faster, like right now. It makes already flawed designs even worse...

---

Heh, I was put into a match a few days ago. It was actually a 24 man secure and it was pretty early in the morning. A few people openly decided that before the match started that they were going to feed mael and a few people said " Yeah, I don't care to win "since maelstrom does win a lot according to them so when the match started half the team would always hit maels base just to feed. Three of us tried objectives but not much we could do because more than half the team decided to feed for their easy moogle tomes.

don't know what data center u play on but ever since the event my good old maelstrom suddenly loses half its matches because noobs come in trying to farm ach and tomestones. meanwhile it seems like every single bloody match the other 2 GCs are ganging up on mael. i used to have like >50% winrate for a few weeks now I am >50% 3rd for this week.

Yeah, because a lot of people are under the impression that Maelstrom wins most of the time many people have transferred over thinking they can get easy wins. They don't seem to realize that they were contributing to their previous GCs losses and are just dragging Mael down as well. Since the Garo event and now the moogle event Mael has been inundated with tome raiders and transfers from other GCs and doesn't win as often as before. (This is primarily what I've experienced with FL on crystal.)

What I noticed is Flames and Adders get into "pissing contests" with each other and get so caught up with that, that Mael just sits back and takes all that spawns on the field, while the other two go at each other throats.

New player's perception of what pvp is and what it really entails is different. They think "pvp" is all about the killing of other players and pay no mind to the strategy part of the match.

I think you are overthinking it a little. The games are almost the same before the tomestones were added. Flames were bad before and people complained and said they were going to do nothing and they say same thing now. We have a thread from someone complaining people don't do enough PvP in frontlines. It is pretty clear that flames team should not do any more pvp then absolutely necessary. Players don't focus targets, almost no one marks targets, tanks don't try to control off target healers, lack of healers, or healers that have only about 100k in healing but oh two kills. Don't heal if you are going to heal the team would be better of knowing they have no heals. Or healers that know they are hard to kill and just wander around the map. How does that help the dragoon trying to kill the enemy healer. So any full engagement on the map ends up in a wipe, not lemmings just can't and shouldn't engage.



Also zero understanding of the map, objectives and score. Rotating maps do not help people get better. I had a couple maelstrom freelancer and no one was calling out people just knew where to go. On flames I scream at the screen what are you people doing all the time. They don't know when new tomeliths or ice are going to spawn or where the third team is. Which way they should be going on the map so they don't antagonize the other team.

Aether, Maelstrom. I swear the adders and flames coordinate against us.

I haven't seen lemmings, just newbies. I have seen AFK idlers. I have macros for newbies.

For shatter:

/alliance You can't win here by PvPing. You can only win shatter by killing ICE. <wait.2>
/alliance You can, however, loose by PvPing.

You most certainly can win in Shatter with PvPing. But it usually involves a premade with healers that know what they're doing and the rest of the team not being cannon fodder.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ryphen

You most certainly can win in Shatter with PvPing. But it usually involves a premade with healers that know what they're doing and the rest of the team not being cannon fodder.

---

So you agree with me.

A premade party with voice chat almost guarantees a frontline win.

tfw people on my team are bitching about mael/premades etc

mael: fighting flames around the sw ice entrance
me: -links location behind mael- ok then pince them?
them: nah let them duke it out

it is so old

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say you need voice chat. A few macros and target marking are usually sufficient.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shadygrove

Aether, Maelstrom. I swear the adders and flames coordinate against us.

I haven't seen lemmings, just newbies. I have seen AFK idlers. I have macros for newbies.

For shatter:

/alliance You can't win here by PvPing. You can only win shatter by killing ICE. <wait.2>
/alliance You can, however, loose by PvPing.

---

You are giving bad advice to your alliance, you don't want to ignore ice, but winning fights makes a very big difference. You can often make up the point deficit if your alliance gets cut off from a big ice by wiping out the other teams as they try to retreat after it is gone, or give your alliance an even larger lead if you get to the ice at the same time for example. Passive play is not a good strategy.

Also it's lose, you lose matches. Loose is the opposite of tight.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Moonlite

I think you are overthinking it a little..

---

When people SAY in chat they are throwing a match... I am not overthinking their behavior. They admitted it themselves. Just as someone else here also already reported the same being witnessed, with people discussing and admitting they are throwing the match.

If you (or anyone else) haven't seen it happening yet, good for you. If it doesn't happen as often on other datacenters, also good. But after hours and entire evenings in Frontline on Crystal I have seen behavior like that way too much since the event started, besides just the ongoing general problem of too many people not caring about wins at all since they get their roulette wolfmarks anyway, simply being bad at PvP, most good PvPers on Crystal having switched to Maelstrom, whatever.

I'm finally able to reasonably get the furniture and items I'd been lusting for since they released. I'll take my slew of 2nd places thank you because I can be back in in less than 5 minutes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rhais

You are giving bad advice to your alliance, you don't want to ignore ice, but winning fights makes a very big difference. You can often make up the point deficit if your alliance gets cut off from a big ice by wiping out the other teams as they try to retreat after it is gone, or give your alliance an even larger lead if you get to the ice at the same time for example. Passive play is not a good strategy.

---

I learned how painfully true this is when Flames won today with basically nothing but straight kills due to seemingly having multiple premades on their team for today's game. The game was over before a second large ice could even spawn because of how badly that were dominating everyone (They had a 1000 point lead over both Adders and Maelstrom at the end...).

I honestly think player kills are weighted a bit too heavily for a mode that's supposed to be placing an emphasis on objectives.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KageTokage

I learned how painfully true this is when Flames won today with basically nothing but straight kills due to seemingly having multiple premades on their team for today's game. The game was over before a second large ice could even spawn because of how badly that were dominating everyone (They had a 1000 point lead over both Adders and Maelstrom at the end...).

I honestly think player kills are weighted a bit too heavily for a mode that's supposed to be placing an emphasis on objectives.

---

And in another thread within this same week someone said how meaningless kills are in all modes and how objectives are always more important


You nerds need to make up your minds or realize that everything is dependent on what the team working as a unit aims to achieve

No need to second guess the value of kills over objectives, the team is just mechanically better, probably full of feasters or FL heroes, don't question the system and its mechanics, fight the premades back and outplay them, simple as that

Well before this event my immortals showed some flash of their former glory ,we are already back to the usual clueless mob.
At least i hope some will stick around enough to learn how fl works but it didnt happen before ,and i dont see any reasons to believe otherwise.

bb

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Crit

No need to second guess the value of kills over objectives, the team is just mechanically better, probably full of feasters or FL heroes, don't question the system and its mechanics, fight the premades back and outplay them, simple as that

---

I tried to tell my team that they needed to pinch the Flames while they were going after adders...but they just opted to just try to wait for ice to spawn which inevitably led to the Flames coming over and steamrolling them even harder due to the battle highs they had accumulated.

There's really not much you can do to prevent eight actually organized players from melting anything they target within a GCD or two, so you're basically just left to pray your own party is smart enough to do the same...though the inconsistent party composition of randoms doesn't really help with that, either, as these gank squad premades tend to be made mostly of ranged DPS.

I suppose the ideal "solution" is to just find a premade of my own somewhere.

I've been running with Mael specifically because the only other people who would listen to callouts (and offer within reason) I've been with are Adders, and even then there's always those people who just want to give up and throw theirselves at Mael just because.

Let me tell you on Mael's end, the situations that can happen are FAR more annoying because it's full of people who do nothing and expect to be carried. I had a Seize match earlier before the reset yesterday and there was a healer in my party standing on their mount in the spawn zone behind a fence, and did the autorun into the fence so they wouldn't get booted. Or you get people who can't read callouts on where to go, hit flames base and provoke them, then are surprised pikachu face when a majority of mael chases them back to us where we are currently fighting adders.

I've told people in chat "DO NOT GO MID" and then posted a coord for where we should be going over on Beaches. People still decided to go to mid and got totally pinched and when I called them out on it someone said "Well why didn't you post it".

Mael may win a lot that's a proven fact in numbers alone, but out of those wins 4/10 of them are like herding cats that just want to sleep all day, it's frustrating. The other 6/10 is just callouts, planning, pinching, and picking battles.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chiami

... and of course anyone who isn't Mael (where all the good PvPers are on Crystal, see previous posts done by several people on the issue)

---

Well, on Light we build premades mostly of top 100's and then specificly focus Mael exactly for that reason. Its fun and i recommend it to you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinklet

Tomestones in pvp are fine.

It's just that losing offers no reprocussion to your gain.

if there's a 33% chance of winning, winning shoulder offer like, 8, second should be 4 and losing should be 2.

Other regulars to the mode shouldn't have to suffer because people don't take it serious and want to lose as soon as possible.

---

Nah 8 is way too much. 5 should definitely be the cap, and then just have it go down from there.

yea just like in normal objective based PVP, win team fights = win objective. You cannot ignore PVP. The problem is the majority of player base is so bad at PVP it's laughable. I swear there are DPS who have not set their skills from pvp profile thinking why do my skills not work??

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RenoKreuz

yea just like in normal objective based PVP, win team fights = win objective. You cannot ignore PVP. The problem is the majority of player base is so bad at PVP it's laughable. I swear there are DPS who have not set their skills from pvp profile thinking why do my skills not work??

---

Totally, I've had some people recently still try to focus the objective and always be passive, and like if you're in last place you just CAN'T do that. I've pushed people to pinch and have been called insane yet the kills at the end legit got us the game.

People sit on nodes for too long and don't take advantage of killing off from the side to help reduce BH/BF but also keep your team on top if you're winning or close the gap if you're losing.

Man, the sheer laziness of people in my last match was just astounding.

"We're Flames, of course we'll lose."
"I don't care."
"I get XP either way."
"I get tomestones anyway."
"Winning just gets you more XP and Wolf Marks and the achievement gear looks bad."
"It's quicker to just feed and requeue."

I'd honestly prefer getting stuck with a team of bots. At least you can usually pretend that they're actually trying. Christ.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

Man, the sheer laziness of people in my last match was just astounding.

"We're Flames, of course we'll lose."
"I don't care."
"I get XP either way."
"I get tomestones anyway."
"Winning just gets you more XP and Wolf Marks and the achievement gear looks bad."
"It's quicker to just feed and requeue."

I'd honestly prefer getting stuck with a team of bots. At least you can usually pretend that they're actually trying. Christ.

---

I feel this so hard. Some people really stink man. Like, stay far, far away from pvp if you're going to be that selfish and unmotivated.

Common sense is rarer than unicorn dust in PvP.

Maybe if ones listens to others that been doing pvp for long time wouldn't be so bad. Plain dumb that seeing others chasing them into there camps and they feeding others points. They don't listen that need to be together in 2 groups and not be in 4 groups to protect nodes So they let other teams take them over. Hope they never do put moogle tomes in pvp again draws in to many bad pvp players. They think it's easy 5 tomes just stand there and not listen to group leaders.