Unwilling to balance jobs? Then limit jobs in Frontline.

For a long while now they have refused to balance jobs properly. I think people are sick of it at this point.

- Too many classes have a gap closer, making it nearly impossible to kite
- Melee has too many abilities with increased range/multi hit abilities
- The "shield" abilities is pretty much worthless, as you can still be crit for 25+K as well
as be knocked out of it.
- Too many classes have a pull in ability
- Too many classes have have higher mitigation, while still having high dps output.

Because of all of these issues and more are being neglected; and the strongest classes keep being made stronger, while others are being nerfed or just passed over; I think I have a solution to this.

Limit the jobs you can have in a frontline, similar to what Overwatch had with the multiples of heroes. You can only have 1 or 2 per job; forcing people to switch roles, in order to limit the shenanigans that keep happening with class combos or just overwhelming numbers of the flavor of the month classes.

Limiting the jobs for FL would just make people hate the mode even more, similarly to how there was a lot of people who really didn't like hero limits in Overwatch. I assume a system like this would work in a way where it just locks your class when you zone into the map. It would make popular/meta classes have extremely long queues, which makes players either wait too long for the queue to pop or make them play a job they don't want to play. Also I assume it would remove the ability to swap jobs mid instance, unless you can then you could run into the issue where someone swaps to a job you wanted to play but you can't. I think tackling the main issue with why the balance is bad is much better than trying to limit peoples ability to play the game.

Good, make the people that want to queue as the broken metas wait longer; that's the point. Keeping it as balanced as possible is the goal. Those who queue into the jobs will take priority over those who switch after they zone in. Unless the devs want to get off their butt and actually balance things properly, this is more than likely the only way to keep things as balanced as they can.

Nah just stick to the reasonable request of balancing the jobs.

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Originally Posted by AmiBeau

Good, make the people that want to queue as the broken metas wait longer; that's the point. Keeping it as balanced as possible is the goal. Those who queue into the jobs will take priority over those who switch after they zone in. Unless the devs want to get off their butt and actually balance things properly, this is more than likely the only way to keep things as balanced as they can.

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I agree that they should balance jobs so there isn't a horrible meta that is dominant like right now. But saying there should be a rule that makes the game mode worse and prevents people from playing what they want because they won't balance is not only much harder work, but also doesn't fix the issue at all. I don't get why anyone would suggest that as a good idea.

Quite frankly I would LOVE the idea of them actually allocating a team to balance everything; however, they have no teams actually doing that... they don't even have a team that's focuses on only PvP; hence why we keep getting stupid "fixes" that only seem to buff the meta of the month. So if they aren't willing to put the resources into balancing, then the only way to fix it is to limit classes to get rid of the metas.

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Originally Posted by AmiBeau

Quite frankly I would LOVE the idea of them actually allocating a team to balance everything; however, they have no teams actually doing that... they don't even have a team that's focuses on only PvP; hence why we keep getting stupid "fixes" that only seem to buff the meta of the month. So if they aren't willing to put the resources into balancing, then the only way to fix it is to limit classes to get rid of the metas.

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With your fix your purposing, you don't eliminate the meta at all. All that would happen is you have less of said meta job, and all you need is 2 or 3 people on DRG/DRK to actually be able to do the best synergies with the job. Again, they do need to do balancing, but they probably have issues with FL specifically, since they have to figure out some specific way to balance for that mode. Personally, I think they should just limit the rate at which LBs generate in the mode so it'll at least deal with the issue of DRK/DRG and how strong they can LB.

The amount of bad takes on this forum lately has been staggering.

You don't seem to understand my proposal; instead of calling something a "bad take." You could offer solutions instead of criticizing without providing ANYTHING. My topic was that UNLESS they actually get off their butts and balance things properly, this is about the ONLY solution.

It's been beaten to death in no less than 3-4 threads all in the last posts first page, and the solutions have been debated to death and the more reasonable ones have all pointed at limited AoE stacking in FLs in any meaningful way. The main issue is that most players don't know how to counter or at least protect against certain job combos (or just certain jobs), combined to the fact that some jobs overperform in FLs dramatically (which has always been the case and is far from new in this mode), which means introducing a way to kneecap the prevalence of certain combos, mainly AoE here, which is the root of all abuse. I also do think they could bring back the 8v8v8 versions with some innate DR tweaks and smaller premades allowance (duos) just to see how it goes.

Coming up with silly ideas like removing premades or preventing people to play what they want (which has already been brought up as well), or worse, asking them to play a job they don't even have unlocked, doesn't make any sense, on top of destroying the queue times or the queues period. People already pointed out what's bad with the proposal, and I do believe it would be actually very detrimental to the mode popularity or appreciation and turn it into something people consider even more as a chore just to level their jobs daily.

SE said, I believe, they're working on FLs specific things for 7.0, but I do agree that them taking so much time to do actually anything worthwhile right now, is also detrimental for the health of the mode, as seen by aforementioned countless threads malding about it.

I realize that my reply came out as snappy, and I apologize.

Ive always said a start would make it dps only. while an set party would be nice, you will never get ppl to change jobs... at least make all about equal.

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Originally Posted by AmiBeau

For a long while now they have refused to balance jobs properly. I think people are sick of it at this point.

- Too many classes have a gap closer, making it nearly impossible to kite
- Melee has too many abilities with increased range/multi hit abilities
- The "shield" abilities is pretty much worthless, as you can still be crit for 25+K as well
as be knocked out of it.
- Too many classes have a pull in ability
- Too many classes have have higher mitigation, while still having high dps output.

Because of all of these issues and more are being neglected; and the strongest classes keep being made stronger, while others are being nerfed or just passed over; I think I have a solution to this.

Limit the jobs you can have in a frontline, similar to what Overwatch had with the multiples of heroes. You can only have 1 or 2 per job; forcing people to switch roles, in order to limit the shenanigans that keep happening with class combos or just overwhelming numbers of the flavor of the month classes.

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With a restriction like that all that's going to happen is that queues will take longer for certain roles. Your pve content suffers from this. Feast extremely suffers from this due to there not being an incentive for queuing for non-popular roles back then. If folks are willing to wait 15-30 minutes for a popular role that will be fine. If not, good luck trying to enjoy frontlines if you're one of those that grinds endlessly each day.

Your shield abilities are fine as is. It's been made to where it's easier to pressure/kill and harder to defend. Everyone will just have to learn how to stack their defenses when needed.

I don't have a fix all solution to this, as it's obvious that the current kit is suited for crystal conflict. Here's where I would suggest starting from without destroying CC completely (this has been mentioned before): have drop off damage for the AOE attacks like they do in pve. Full value for your intended target (or closest), 50% for the 2nd person that is nearby, 25% for the 3rd person that is around, and 12.5% for whoever is remaining. If that's too much damage reduction it can be capped at 25% of the value at least. I think if that was done in the first place then everyone would not be needing so much of a defense buff for frontlines.

It's ok, I do understand that people have repeated things; however ultimately it falls on the devs to actually do anything about. My suggestion is definitely more of a band-aid than an actual fix.

I will admit; in a perfect scenario; they would take the time and divide CC and FL into their own things. Then they could actually get and analyze feedback/data and adjust things while realizing how they interplay with one another and not just do blanket fixes that create a different problem/meta. Homogenization and trying to balance small scale vs large scale will ultimately leave the game with neither being meaningful.

To be fair I much prefer your solution than the similar other ones that have been brought up (trying to limit the amount of identical jobs after the queue by adding debuffs to duplicates, etc). I'm not totally sure that the benefits would overcome the drawbacks, notably that it would have to make people unable to swap jobs once inside unless it's not already taken by someone else, but credit to be given where credit is due, it's not terrible.

You'd still see local armageddons with solo players playing DRG, etc though. Or more creative premades stacking DRG/AST/DRK/SMN or whatever.

Limiting jobs is impossible as some people only have 1 job unlocked, what happens when they join and there are already 2 of said job on the team?

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Originally Posted by Llynethil

Limiting jobs is impossible as some people only have 1 job unlocked, what happens when they join and there are already 2 of said job on the team?

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I think the original idea of the OP was to limit duplicates before the game, during queues.

Even if they limited que to one player per job, DRK/DRG/AST can still 1-shot your alliance.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I think the original idea of the OP was to limit duplicates before the game, during queues.

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So how does it work when you join a game in progress then?

People with only 1 class unlocked would get the priority for using that class. I imagine the restriction part would happen before a game and prevent it from starting while people are in the barrier circle, and lock people to that class the entire game.

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Originally Posted by AmiBeau

People with only 1 class unlocked would get the priority for using that class. I imagine the restriction part would happen before a game and prevent it from starting while people are in the barrier circle, and lock people to that class the entire game.

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That still punishes players who have multiple classes unlocked, who probably have a 2nd class not even because of PvP influences at all. Also I imagine you can get around that issue by making a new character to have 1 job and then get that front-of-the-line skip pass.

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Originally Posted by AmiBeau

It's ok, I do understand that people have repeated things; however ultimately it falls on the devs to actually do anything about. My suggestion is definitely more of a band-aid than an actual fix.

I will admit; in a perfect scenario; they would take the time and divide CC and FL into their own things. Then they could actually get and analyze feedback/data and adjust things while realizing how they interplay with one another and not just do blanket fixes that create a different problem/meta. Homogenization and trying to balance small scale vs large scale will ultimately leave the game with neither being meaningful.

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It's not a band-aid if you contravene some basic principles that everyone considers to be important, which I believe is the case- we all should be able to play the job that we want in FL. We can switch jobs if another job is unlocked - but no one can force us to do so.

FL has made numerous design decisions because of these principles (or rules) and your "bandaid" isn't a trivial "fix". in addition, job selection is so important to many people since it directly impacts their UX, that they would find work arounds and then we'd be back to where we started.

L and CC don't necessarily need to be completely separate, as doing so could lead to strange things like skills being introduced just for one mode (not necessarily what we might want for upkeep and other issues), but they shouldn't design for CC then kind of throw their hands up in the air and treat FL as an afterthought for months at a time. There are some fairly straightforward ideas that have already been discussed (like AOE limitations) that should be viable.

Here's the issue that keeps happening on this thread. My proposal is an IF AND ONLY IF statement; people who are attacking this are already under the mindset that the devs will NOT do anything to balance things out.

If you think they should keep design decisions that have PvE affect small and large scale PvP, then you are objectively wrong. THE prime example for this is WoW's mess that was a creation of their own making. Balance is always the hardest thing; however making different aspects of the game affect an entirely different one is not a good idea. The fact that we constantly have "adjustments" that don't actually fix anything and just create different metas is mind boggling to me, because that is indicative of not knowing the synergistic effects of their own classes.

Limiting classes IS a band-aid because as much as it pigeon holds players into a class they might not want to play, but it forces the reduction of shenanigans that CAN happen. Yes you will probably still end up with it cropping but, but at the same time it reduces the probability of stacking things (i.e. having a frontline where you seem heaps of DRK+ AST/DRG.) The very, very short fix without limiting classes would be just reduce salted earth to a 3-5 yalm radius. But again, this is banking on the devs taking PvP criticism to heart, and diverting from the CC only balancing mentality.

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Originally Posted by AmiBeau

Here's the issue that keeps happening on this thread. My proposal is an IF AND ONLY IF statement; people who are attacking this are already under the mindset that the devs will NOT do anything to balance things out.

If you think they should keep design decisions that have PvE affect small and large scale PvP, then you are objectively wrong. THE prime example for this is WoW's mess that was a creation of their own making. Balance is always the hardest thing; however making different aspects of the game affect an entirely different one is not a good idea. The fact that we constantly have "adjustments" that don't actually fix anything and just create different metas is mind boggling to me, because that is indicative of not knowing the synergistic effects of their own classes.

Limiting classes IS a band-aid because as much as it pigeon holds players into a class they might not want to play, but it forces the reduction of shenanigans that CAN happen. Yes you will probably still end up with it cropping but, but at the same time it reduces the probability of stacking things (i.e. having a frontline where you seem heaps of DRK+ AST/DRG.) The very, very short fix without limiting classes would be just reduce salted earth to a 3-5 yalm radius. But again, this is banking on the devs taking PvP criticism to heart, and diverting from the CC only balancing mentality.

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Even with this in mind being a fix only if there isn't balancing done, I still think even with that in mind it is not a good fix at all. I get that your idea is just a band aid fix, but I just think there better band aid fixes to be used.

The adjustments that we've been getting have been pretty mid and they could definitely be better to help fix FLs specifically, without breaking the balance for CC. Like it or not but CC is the primary focus of PvP balancing in this game, which I personally agree with. If I had the choice to balance between the small competitive arena mode where the individual is much more important vs the 24v24v24 game mode with randomized objectives, players more likely to be lower skilled and much less individual influence, I would rather balance the former. Not saying they shouldn't care about balancing FL, since I think it can be done and I do want it to be done so I can enjoy the mode more.

I also don't get the one sentence about the current mode creating a different meta. Meta will always exist in every game, its just the developers job to make sure the meta isn't too overpowered or promote "lameplay". With the purposed fix in mind, it will only just make a different meta of something like DRK/DRG/AST/SMN. And assuming job lockouts are full-party based and not alliance based(because of the math of how many jobs exist in the game) there can be at least 3 of a meta job in the alliance and the problem still exists.