Frontline matchmaking now fixed. Big thanks to the devs.

As a follow up to this thread: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ression-of-PvP.

With Forced Freelancer and the recent duty finder hotfix, Frontline is now fair and more fun. No more matchmaking shenanigans.

This happened a lot sooner compared to when I suggested, before Stormblood came out, that Frontline queues should be combined into one and the game selects a map at random. We got the much better daily rotation system instead.

A big thank you for making this happen.

Next on the to-do-list is make adjustments to Astragalos so that we can have 2 active Rival Wings maps. It's time we got a Daily Challenge: Rival Wings queue.

Will a freelance win with another GC go towards my actual GC count total? I'm wondering if this will effect my progress towards 100/200 wins with the flames.

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Originally Posted by xaventh

Will a freelance win with another GC go towards my actual GC count total? I'm wondering if this will effect my progress towards 100/200 wins with the flames.

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Good question. I'm pretty sure the win will go towards whatever GC you ended up in for the match. Hopefully someone who knows for sure will reply. XD

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Originally Posted by Ursa_Vonfiebryd

Good question. I'm pretty sure the win will go towards whatever GC you ended up in for the match. Hopefully someone who knows for sure will reply. XD

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If you are Adder, and you freelancer as Mael, a win counts as Adder. It's whatever your actual GC is, not the one you end up in the match as.

the win count goes to the GC you are on regardless of what team you're on. if you are on the Flames outside of PVP, and you freelancer on Mael and Mael wins, the win counts towards your Flame count.

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Originally Posted by xaventh

Will a freelance win with another GC go towards my actual GC count total? I'm wondering if this will effect my progress towards 100/200 wins with the flames.

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Yes. If you win as Mael or Adders, it will still count towards your Flames achievements.

Queue times are very short for frontline now. A big part is probably the holidays, but the part where a ton of players were trying to squeeze into a single GC's queue, and now are being evenly distributed instead, doesn't hurt queue time either.

They should just change the team names to something other than the GC names so it's not confusing. Everyone is freelancer and not representing those GCs they land on.

They did actually come up with 3 different tribe names that each of the GCs joined with in the nadaam fight but it was only in patch preview blurb.

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Join forces with the Maelstrom and the Orben people, the Adders and the Ejinn , or the Flames and the Horo in this grand demonstration of martial prowess, and may the mightiest prevail!

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yeah Orben vs Ejinn vs Horo

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Originally Posted by Corbeau

Queue times are very short for frontline now. A big part is probably the holidays, but the part where a ton of players were trying to squeeze into a single GC's queue, and now are being evenly distributed instead, doesn't hurt queue time either.

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actually they are longer for me now since I refused to join the premade GC before the patch.

Since they mentioned they plan to make further changes, I wonder if at some point they'll change the teams in FL to not be tied to GCs to defer confusion. Like, if the Naadam teams will be three of the tribes, for example.

Yep. So now everyone gets the experience the joy of getting grouped with timid players afraid to actually get in there and fight for a node and watch as everyone ignores call outs and scatters everywhere. XD

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

Yep. So now everyone gets the experience the joy of getting grouped with timid players afraid to actually get in there and fight for a node and watch as everyone ignores call outs and scatters everywhere. XD

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Strange I have seen way more fighting and more come from behind victories in the last week. Then I have seen since the BH changes. Teams are not afraid to pinch first place team to try to win. Before they would just see the one GC with their 6+ players all with battle high five and avoid them because they would just get steam rolled. I am not even sure what the combination is, but one ninja burst me so fast It felt like I got hit with an invisible limit break. I have had 10 losses this week and I was happy with all the games. I didn't leave any of them disgusted by the way the game went. One game the top 10 heals all had over 1 million healing and the top 4 were over 2 million. The games might have to much contesting and fighting for some nodes. As it allows the third team to pick up easy lower rank nodes.



I won't say some games won't be unbalanced. They have no system besides random for balance. I won't say the people on Maelstrom on Crystal were cheating either. They were clearly abusing the idea of equal pvp by trying to stack one team. The only miserable comments I have seen have been from Maelstrom players.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

Strange I have seen way more fighting and more come from behind victories in the last week. Then I have seen since the BH changes. Teams are not afraid to pinch first place team to try to win. Before they would just see the one GC with their 6+ players all with battle high five and avoid them because they would just get steam rolled. I am not even sure what the combination is, but one ninja burst me so fast It felt like I got hit with an invisible limit break. I have had 10 losses this week and I was happy with all the games. I didn't leave any of them disgusted by the way the game went. One game the top 10 heals all had over 1 million healing and the top 4 were over 2 million. The games might have to much contesting and fighting for some nodes. As it allows the third team to pick up easy lower rank nodes.



I won't say some games won't be unbalanced. They have no system besides random for balance. I won't say the people on Maelstrom on Crystal were cheating either. They were clearly abusing the idea of equal pvp by trying to stack one team. The only miserable comments I have seen have been from Maelstrom players.

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I was mostly making a joke. Had a great group yesterday, but then today had the exact situation I described. :P

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

I was mostly making a joke. Had a great group yesterday, but then today had the exact situation I described. :P

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It wasn't the one where maelstrom didn't even break 100 points was it? I felt bad for them. The other two teams were close in score. But not breaking a 100 is disheartening I have had a couple of those on Flames last month.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

It wasn't the one where maelstrom didn't even break 100 points was it? I felt bad for them. The other two teams were close in score. But not breaking a 100 is disheartening I have had a couple of those on Flames last month.

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No, we didn't do THAT bad. But only hit like maybe 600 points. But it was Maelstrom. It's weird. Maelstrom used to dominate and now it seems like they keep getting the worst players.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

No, we didn't do THAT bad. But only hit like maybe 600 points. But it was Maelstrom. It's weird. Maelstrom used to dominate and now it seems like they keep getting the worst players.

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I would be curious about other Data centers, I think their is a little backlash. I know I have a tendency to focus Maelstrom if the opportunity presents itself and looks like I am not the only one. Just like I get a little glee when I kill ninja. Not enough to jump up and down on their corpse.



I am really enjoying the fact third place can make come backs like they used to. I have also had the joy of not seeing any game where one team consistently wins by 1000 or more points. Even though that would be harder now that you only need 1600. I didn't magically start winning 50% of the games I play either. But I am a little worried the new found balance is because a certain group of players is in feast right now. So when they have their spots locked up if they come back the matches will start to get more one sided.

Had one of the best pvp matches yet earlier today.

As flames we had a really rough start and we had like 250:ish points towards adders 600 and maels 1k.

So obviously the naysayers in alliance chat start spouting how it was already over but we pulled our shit togheter, did some really nice pincer attacks and by the end Adder had snagged a S rank and was litteraly 1 tick away from winning when we scored the final kill to put us at 1600 and win the match.

Everyone was like "no way we won that!".

Yeah... no. My 33% winrate went down to 20% or less, because I'm playing a damn roulette and keep landing on 'Losers' now. I've even taken up the commander mantle if nobody does, with some limited success but... yeah, no. On some datacenters it's just bad. I'm sad.

Guys, was sitting more than hour yesterday in queue for Frontline roulette, got 66 lvl, was thinking all are synced anyway.
So i was sitting in long queue while you write Frontline queue is very short, i do something wrong? :/

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Originally Posted by Osiril

Guys, was sitting more than hour yesterday in queue for Frontline roulette, got 66 lvl, was thinking all are synced anyway.
So i was sitting in long queue while you write Frontline queue is very short, i do something wrong? :/

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Que was not fixed, matchmaking was fixed. Ques are shorter but I have yet to see a pop during certain times of the day due to 72 player requirement.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

They should just change the team names to something other than the GC names so it's not confusing. Everyone is freelancer and not representing those GCs they land on.

They did actually come up with 3 different tribe names that each of the GCs joined with in the nadaam fight but it was only in patch preview blurb.

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The 3 tribes are also in the duty description in the Duty Finder.

Now that everyone are freelancers, I agree they should just change the team names to something else. Before, I thought they should remove any kind of lore from Frontline altogether but now, I know of better solution. One that adds lore and also keeps it fair from a matchmaking perspective.

Instead of it only being the Grand Companies of Eorzea, how about the combatants involved is depending on the map?

The GCs of Eorzea can remain on Borderland Ruins (Secure)
Three of the four great houses of Ishgard can fight on The Fields of Glory (Shatter)
The three Au Ra tribes as already described, on Onsal Hakair (Danshig Naadam)

Not really sure who could be involved on Seal Rock (Seize). Three different clans of pirates? Maybe someone with more lore knowledge can come up with a better idea for SR.

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Originally Posted by Osiril

Guys, was sitting more than hour yesterday in queue for Frontline roulette, got 66 lvl, was thinking all are synced anyway.
So i was sitting in long queue while you write Frontline queue is very short, i do something wrong? :/

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When do you queue?

On Chaos DC, the FL queue is active from an hour before the daily reset until about midnight. Since 5.18, wait times has been about 5 min or less. There are exceptions, like when you are close to the edges of the prime-time window.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

Que was not fixed, matchmaking was fixed. Ques are shorter but I have yet to see a pop during certain times of the day due to 72 player requirement.

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If matchmaking is fixed then SE can do nothing more cause fixing que is a matter of more willing to frontline pvp, and this can be the case of me waiting more than hour long in Frontline roulette que ended by withdrawn :/
I heard there are some pvp overhaul comming, maybe ppls waiting for this to start participate?

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Originally Posted by Darker_Midnight

Yeah... no. My 33% winrate went down to 20% or less.

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Same. This is just not right. It's really depressing.

33% win rate is not happening. At least not for me. I keep landing on teams that have zero coordination or feel like they're actively trying to lose. Tried doing some call outs myself, but not really working. Played 12 matches today and won 2 of them. It's not fun at all.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

33% win rate is not happening. At least not for me. I keep landing on teams that have zero coordination or feel like they're actively trying to lose. Tried doing some call outs myself, but not really working. Played 12 matches today and won 2 of them. It's not fun at all.

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Hush now, you are going to make me nostalgic for pre-5.18 immortal flames on Crystal. Our most popular strategy was usually: ignore objectives; ignore callouts (if any); split up as much as possible; try to wipe to both opponents simultaneously, focusing on the second place team first.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

33% win rate is not happening. At least not for me. I keep landing on teams that have zero coordination or feel like they're actively trying to lose. Tried doing some call outs myself, but not really working. Played 12 matches today and won 2 of them. It's not fun at all.

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You only won 2 out of 12. But were the scores close? Say first and Second only 200 points apart at the end or all three teams over 1300? I like winning but if the games are competitive that's enough for me. A few 100 points could have been a bad double team you couldn't break committing to an S you didn't win. Some shitty spawns, nothing like seeing all the S ranks at the end of the game spawn on the opposite end of the map. I laso tamper down expectations if most of the healers had to be asked to switch to heals. They are doing it for team, but doesn't mean they are comfortable doing it.

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Originally Posted by Avenger

Hush now, you are going to make me nostalgic for pre-5.18 immortal flames on Crystal. Our most popular strategy was usually: ignore objectives; ignore callouts (if any); split up as much as possible; try to wipe to both opponents simultaneously, focusing on the second place team first.

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Any pre 5.18 Crystal Flames or Adders was about second place. Neither team felt they could break Maelstrom and would play for second. I never understood that. Second and third are the same for rewards mostly. You might as well at least try for first. The only fun I was having was you convinced whatever alliance you were on just keep pushing Maelstrom and block objectives so the other alliance can win. With the speed boost and respawn boost you can just feed them non stop, but if second place can grab all objectives they should just win.


I played 16 games yesterday and multiple times the first place team lost because teams were more balanced. I did also see a few games that first place won by almost 800 points. The mode definitely needs more balancing. One can hope they work on more team balancing issues.

I've played more than 8 hours non-stop. Won 5 Games. If you are unlucky (RNG) you get paired 10 times with the most inexperienced Players. Or Players who are just there for quick tomestones cap and don't care about winning.
On the other hand, i've heard from Players who have played 12 Games and won 9....

A dozen plays is not statistically meaningful and any 72-player matchmade game is going to have wild variation. Consistency in a small sample size would be the outlier, not an expected result.

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Originally Posted by Corbeau

A dozen plays is not statistically meaningful and any 72-player matchmade game is going to have wild variation. Consistency in a small sample size would be the outlier, not an expected result.

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This Week so far: 60 Games, 15 wins.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

You only won 2 out of 12. But were the scores close? Say first and Second only 200 points apart at the end or all three teams over 1300? I like winning but if the games are competitive that's enough for me. A few 100 points could have been a bad double team you couldn't break committing to an S you didn't win. Some shitty spawns, nothing like seeing all the S ranks at the end of the game spawn on the opposite end of the map. I laso tamper down expectations if most of the healers had to be asked to switch to heals. They are doing it for team, but doesn't mean they are comfortable doing it.

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Hmm perhaps 4 were close calls I think. The rest of the losses were just outright curb stomps. Not really blaming anyone in particular, but, it felt like a combination of literally everything went wrong. Team comps were bad, nobody coordinated overall efforts or if they did nobody listened or it just didn't work/help, people AFK'ed in spawn or other parts of the map, people split up trying to take multiple objectives instead of fully committing thereby losing both objectives, ect. By far the biggest problem was people splitting up though. That lost so many games.

Though to be fair I did another four matches after I posted my comment just to see what would happen and won 2 out of 4. So perhaps I just got really really unlucky. *shrugs*

Well ranged dps is still a problem, not has harsh as it was in 5.15. Also 3 versus not the idea for pvp, maybe if it was slaughter with straight up fighting in 2.0 it can work, but with random rng like people not listening to call out, people are not ccing people, people not killing off healer to push into other team, people not aware of having to open their map just to name a few. Smart plays makes for higher win rate, looking at each datacenter people stack grand company to play with smarter players, then again I say why not make another similar rival wing with just 2 conflicting in-game lore.

I played 213 matches last week (I need a life I know) and won 88 (41.3%), guess I was slightly luckier than average.

Some of them the three teams were extremely close. Some not so much as we just won without much competition for some reason or lost with only like 500 points. Some were great comebacks when the leading team were < 20 points from winning but in the end lost. The close matches are more fun tbh.

But overall, as someone who never did any frontlines before, I guess I had fun in general. And a lot of salt lol.

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Originally Posted by Fresky

I played 213 matches last week (I need a life I know) and won 88 (41.3%), guess I was slightly luckier than average.

Some of them the three teams were extremely close. Some not so much as we just won without much competition for some reason or lost with only like 500 points. Some were great comebacks when the leading team were < 20 points from winning but in the end lost. The close matches are more fun tbh.

But overall, as someone who never did any frontlines before, I guess I had fun in general. And a lot of salt lol.

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Grats on a good week. The info about games that were close and games that had comebacks. Crystal had none of those I saw at least pre fix. The dominant GC would have stacked battle highs and second and third would be completely broken and know that first was out of reach.We are getting some people doing call outs that think they can win just getting nodes and don't seem to want to contend when score is over 1200, haven't won one of those games. The only people I saw complain out of the matches I got in last week were dominant GC players, they are pretty bitter. Everyone else seems happy that the games are competitive win or lose.