Frontline in Recent Time

Not sure where to rant about this.

Usually I could just enjoy occassional bloodbath in Frontline. Even during Endwalker time (or before role action comes into picture) there would be only one thing that had to be constantly watched out: Dark Knight's Salted Earth.

Nowadays? Good luck scoring anything when out of nowhere certain mass of individuals just jump to you with its high Battle High and on top of that the Rampage.

Guard!

Oh, nevermind. Here comes Dancer's Contradance. Or Reaper's LB.

Everything muddled and 3 minutes in, these same people already at Battle High 5.
Sure we can take 1-2 people off their Battle High, but it is easy to replenish when you just have to tag along.

And when I happen to join along their lethal wagon? Very unsatisfying. PvE is already calculated, movement is like dance steps. You saying that PvP too?

I do love it when the run was so messy on all group, though. Feels like the struggle still means something, unlike the recent development. Feels like fighting is pointless when you will be deleted 5 seconds into battle.

That's premades for you

That does happen at first, but eventually you get used to following the herd. As long as you stay with your team you usually won't get ganged. If you feel you're getting gang, time to pop defenses and try to get behind your alliance and use them as a shield. Occasionally, your alliance does nothing to defend you, but usually it initimidates them enough to retreat.

The main time I run ahead as a tank is if I have Hallowed Ground up. I use this to act as bait and push ahead. It's shocking how well this works - just me, on my own, running ahead with Hallowed Ground makes the opposing teams flee in many cases and can motivate my team to then push.

Outside of that I just push ahead slightly with my team roughly by my side ish, maybe me just slightly ahead. That way I can retreat behind them if I'm being ganged, then stun any stragglers that chase so we gang them.

To be completely honest with you, the only thing I don't like in PvP is 1-shot attacks like Samurai has. It comes completely out of nowhere, when I'd otherwise be completely confident of surviving a one-on-one duel with someone, or even a 1vs2.

I definitely feel like there's a lot of cheating that happens. Although as a solo-queue player even premades feel like playing against cheaters. But I have seen other players on my team claiming the other team was using some scripts or something.

Maybe the recent heat on the mod scene followed by SE doing nothing about cheaters has emboldened people to cheat more. Like they convinced themselves that "it's fine as long as you don't talk about it" applies to anything and everything.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

That's premades for you

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With voice chat.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

I definitely feel like there's a lot of cheating that happens. Although as a solo-queue player even premades feel like playing against cheaters. But I have seen other players on my team claiming the other team was using some scripts or something.

Maybe the recent heat on the mod scene followed by SE doing nothing about cheaters has emboldened people to cheat more. Like they convinced themselves that "it's fine as long as you don't talk about it" applies to anything and everything.

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Of course the other team is cheating. It definitely wouldn't be when your own team tries to fight an entire alliance in 1s and 2s, feeding them BH points, or fights 2nd/3rd place instead of 1st. Or people stay too long on an engagement and then feed the other team, when they become outnumbered or let the 3rd team accumulate points. Oh how about chasing a team back to their spawn point and then suddenly getting surprised when they become outnumbered and respawners can hit you with their invuln up. Yea, its cheating or premades that does that.

For the OP, if you are dying in 5 seconds of an engagement, sounds like you are pushing in with no support/teammates. Or getting caught out of position. I don't know, use the map and look at what the enemy are doing? if a dancer/reaper is running towards you, are you backing off or are you sitting there oblivious and wondering why you are suddenly getting hit with contra/hysteria?

I wouldn't accuse people of cheating. But I have seen a few games where it seems like the same 8 people end up together. They also all end up with 15+ kills. And there is way too much coordination going on for them not to be in chat. But it happens so rare it isn't that big a deal. Or you could have just got unlucky and players on your data centre who are 10+ kill type players all got qued together and it snowballed. SE has no balance for teams.


Now with all of that. If you are in third place and the other team has farmed kills most of the game just block them. As much as people think BH will win games. If third place decides to just block first and allow second to get all the A ranks that spawn at the end of the game, BH won't matter. I have seen a few games where teams have 1000+ points gained from kills and still lose.

I have done a lot of frontlines over the years and I have seen a big shift over time. I know the players using the plugin for when I target them or go to use my LB as it is just to fast a response and I think to myself yet another person who cannot play and has to cheat lol.

I enjoy FL matches and I try my best but sometimes it is just so annoying to be teamed up with players who are throwing matches and also wtf is is with people standing with huge mounts on where I am running? so I cannot see >.<

The players who just stand at the entrance and throw matches also annoy me and it has become way worse and also the premade issue. I solo que and have to take my chances on who I get. I wish it would go back to being for my GC and not chosen for me. I know there where this also. It would be good if they maybe looked at the rewards and also stricter criteria as some players just do not care.

There are people who cheat with plugins, yes. That's a confirmable fact that is very very painfully easy to verify.
So that isn't a question of whether it happens or not, because it does in fact happen and thousands of little yellow school bus riders do it regularly.

That said, I've never actually noticed the people that do this in-game, so I don't think its actually very good for the most part. If you know what you're doing, you can usually outsmart them anyway. Frontlines games almost always come down to formula's. People use the same rotations. You have to both physically look at their attack animations and most importantly, listen to them as well. I'm able to stop most LB's instantly because depending on the job, I can hear when it's starting and interrupt it (some have very small interrupt windows though, so keep that in mind). You also have to generally be able to predict what they're going to do as well, which again, isnt hard when they all do the same thing anyway.

That's because jobs don't actually have that many important skills. Each job is generally going to wait on and use the same maybe 3-4 attacks over and over again. If the best skills aren't up, they run to the back and wait for the cooldown to die. So if it's a drk, right? I know they're going to stall for a bit, and then jump in to pull everyone, do a few attacks with his team, then run to the back again to heal and go back to stalling again. They will not run out again until that cooldown is up, which lets you know ok, by the time I see that drk in the front again, he will again be ready to pull. You gotta put two and two together that way, with all the jobs at once. I say this as the very thing a lot of you hate; The premade player in voice chat. We do the same tricks every time. Notice the pattern, and we're easy to interrupt.

Also as I've said before, it doesnt matter what era of FFXIV it is, Frontlines will always have groups that decimate teams and that's because higher levels of communication. Premades are talking and agreeing on what to do all at once, while the rest of you are just kind of running around aimlessly unsure of what to do and fighting alone despite being with 20 other people. You're not working together, you're not telling each other when to dump attacks, or hide and all ambush. As long as people have friends, there will always be groups that steamroll, because they're actually working together which is the entire point of Frontlines to begin with.

Frontlines are just a terrible concept with a terrible implementation.

I'll never understand why people (game designers and players both) are so attracted to the concept of massive pvp fights. Do they imagine an epic war scene like in lotr or something?

There is absolutely nothing fun ever about large scale pvp. Your individual actions dont matter. Everything is laggy and unreadable. The only thing that matter is how many more people your team have concentrated in the same place. Going anywhere else than where everyone else is results in death, so initiative is punished.
(At least in wow when you play as rogue in one of the terrible "epic battleground" you can stealth away from the zerg and pick on stragglers)

On top of that the battle high system is a terrible slippery slope system, where people who win are rewarded with additional damage (see this article for a game design perspective about this: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/slip...etual-comeback - no, frontlines aren't one of the exceptional cases where this is a good thing).This eventually tip things into curbstomping territory. Curb stomping isn't fun, even when you are the one doing the curbstomping. I like to feel that my actions matter (i mean really that's the #1 thing i crave from pvp), rather than winning fights because a bonus says so.

Finally the "limit break" system is also crap. I thoroughly dislike ultimates systems, where the game grants you a spectacular i-win button just for putting in time. Again I want to win because I cornered my adversary through clever use of cool downs, not because the game says it's my turn to one shot somebody.

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

Do they imagine an epic war scene like in lotr or something?

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It does feel like one.

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There is absolutely nothing fun ever about large scale pvp.

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To me it's the social aspect. Now, not everyone will understand what I mean by this when few people talk. It's something you can read from the feeling of doing it with other players and their social interaction is often just their actions and movement. Example is if you decide to stay somewhere to guard/claim a node, someone may decide to stay with you, and that entire interaction happens through movement. If you decide to retreat from a few enemies, the other person with you may follow. If you decide to gang a straggler, a few people may decide to assist you. All this communication is done by actions and movement, and they would often make a different decision if not for you.

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Your individual actions dont matter.

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I definitely disagree with that. My decision to burst typically gets people low enough on its own that my team help finish them, or the reverse of that happens. A kill we wouldn't likely have got if I hadn't chosen to burst that specific player. Another example is using my gap closer to stun someone that is low and retreating. This typically stuns them long enough that my team can finish them.

As I've mentioned before, my singular decision to storm ahead with Hallowed Ground can pressure whole teams to retreat and my team to follow me, while in other cases I can lure an entire alliance team away from something important ie. crystal or node, by using myself as bait. During that time, my team catches nodes or kills crystals.

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Everything is laggy and unreadable.

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Not laggy for me. Unreadable, yes, given how many players are using different attacks.

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The only thing that matter is how many more people your team have concentrated in the same place. Going anywhere else than where everyone else is results in death, so initiative is punished.

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This part isn't true. I regularly go and claim nodes, often alone or with 1 or 2 others. It depends if there are others doing that or not. If lots of people are claiming nodes away from the main battle, then I join the main battle instead. Going elsewhere is also done for claiming small ices before the other teams do. You just need to have an exit plan and see enemies coming in advance.

I will say that Rival Wings always felt like my individual decisions mattered more though.

if you have a reluctant group one player charging in might very well do the difference in making other players charge in as well
or you die alone and abandoned if they are too scared of pvp xD

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Originally Posted by potatsdevourer

Usually I could just enjoy occassional bloodbath in Frontline. Even during Endwalker time (or before role action comes into picture) there would be only one thing that had to be constantly watched out: Dark Knight's Salted Earth.

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There are so many classes, that I think it's unrealistic to only have to watch out for one thing. That, makes things boring. Battle high I am neutral on, not entirely sure what the reasoning to have it is. It just means, that you will want to win your first team fight, or second one if you don't do as well the first time. Which, reminds me of League of Legends.

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

Your individual actions dont matter.

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Oh this is precisely why I like Frontlines... well, "like" is a strong word, I deeply despise PvP in all its forms, however, PvP in FFXIV pays out with some flashy fun things, glams, mounts, emotes, so on, by just participating enough, so Frontlines gives me an easy method for my lack of skill and utter disinterest in improving to not be as negatively impactful, I just need to be a body and push buttons sometimes, and I am already at like marginally above average most of the time.

I actually find myself performing a lot better in smaller modes like CC, but I just don't care about it, it is a chore either way.

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Originally Posted by potatsdevourer

PvE is already calculated, movement is like dance steps. You saying that PvP too?

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Well, if you keep dying in sub 5 seconds in the same choke points over and over, then it means YOU are the calculated movement, the enemy is just exploiting your AI.

* I don't specifically mean you op, but this just applies to your team in general.

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Originally Posted by Batbrat

Premades are talking and agreeing on what to do all at once, while the rest of you are just kind of running around aimlessly unsure of what to do and fighting alone despite being with 20 other people. You're not working together, you're not telling each other when to dump attacks, or hide and all ambush. As long as people have friends, there will always be groups that steamroll, because they're actually working together which is the entire point of Frontlines to begin with.

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90% of any premade I've been a part of, no voice chat, barely any communication. The last sentence is not true either, sometimes I queue up with friends, and it's just like queueing up solo. I will say, I do want to normalize working together more with randoms of course. That would be fun. Even if premades were removed, I think people can still work together regardless, the desire and willingness needs to be there.

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Originally Posted by YumieYumiki

Your individual actions dont matter. Everything is laggy and unreadable. The only thing that matter is how many more people your team have concentrated in the same place. Going anywhere else than where everyone else is results in death, so initiative is punished.

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They do matter, the thing is team work is required. Regardless of how the party was formed. I actually do prefer winning fights as a team, rather than just 1v1 like in CC. I queued up solo, saw a tank initiating and getting battle high, so I just pumped them up with buffs as Bard, went pretty well, we eventually won.

On the other side of the spectrum, there is me that think the average lvl in fl has slightly gone up. It's been a while since I had a team of meatbags that don't understand a thing.

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

Of course the other team is cheating. It definitely wouldn't be when your own team tries to fight an entire alliance in 1s and 2s, feeding them BH points, or fights 2nd/3rd place instead of 1st. Or people stay too long on an engagement and then feed the other team, when they become outnumbered or let the 3rd team accumulate points. Oh how about chasing a team back to their spawn point and then suddenly getting surprised when they become outnumbered and respawners can hit you with their invuln up. Yea, its cheating or premades that does that.

For the OP, if you are dying in 5 seconds of an engagement, sounds like you are pushing in with no support/teammates. Or getting caught out of position. I don't know, use the map and look at what the enemy are doing? if a dancer/reaper is running towards you, are you backing off or are you sitting there oblivious and wondering why you are suddenly getting hit with contra/hysteria?

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Look, I admit that from time to time I got caught in the heat of the battle.

But when there were enough mass of allies on my side anyway, it is hard to not just 'sitting oblivious' as you said, when either we were trying disengaging and got annihilated by the backranges or we use Guard but we got contra/hysteria. There is no winning on this one.

Point is, once there are just enough people on enemy side with high battle high, it is hard to turn the tide back. Which, personally I think battle high is just pure cancer.


Also different complain, but lately I have to often abandon my class of choice which is BLM. Always have to change into something else just to get semblance of charging into enemies and not just keeping fleeing. Which I swear, before the role action dropped, I got to play more as BLM.

The devs should copy competitive games like hero shooters and limit Frontlines to groups of 2 or 3. That way no team has a group of 8 steamrolling everyone with a massively unfair advantage.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

On the other side of the spectrum, there is me that think the average lvl in fl has slightly gone up. It's been a while since I had a team of meatbags that don't understand a thing.

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I have a feeling down the line average skill level will go up and then people will complain that lobbies are too sweaty. Probably will take some time though.

I'm actually surprised at how fast entire teams get BH5 these days. It kinda ruins Frontlines. I feel like 99% of my FL games are losses, because I always end up on the 1 team with like no battle high.

I personally would not cry if they removed battle high. Maybe without it, people would be more aggressive and less scared of dying. Full attack at all times.

I don't see the point of battle high either.

The point of Battle High is to reward playing aggresive and actually trying to score KOs and assistances rather than turning the Frontline into a PvE race (cough cough Shatter).

The reasons some teams get BH is because they have a premade with AoE setups like DRK+DNC+any class with good AoE damage that mow down players that are clumped with each other, catching them unawares or one of the teams is utterly clueless and lead themselves into a bottleneck to hand out points. And it's not impossible to get BH5. Problem is, half your team will likely only be there to cash in the daily reward and call it a day and, to get BH5, you do need a team to be actually there and not just twiddling their thumbs.

When you try to grind for the mounts and see your efforts to score a win undermined by the absolute apathy of your teammates, it's hard not to understand why some people would go for the "sweaty comps". Specially if you want to play melees or tanks, since they're way less safe to play solo, making it easy to turn the experience miserable, as not only do you need to check what the other teams do but also what your team is doing, else you get abandoned in the middle of the enemy team.

I get loads of assists (which feel like kills but game doesn't register them as such because animation delays and ping that result in others technically getting final blow). And generally kills too. But I can't say I have BH4 that often for whatever reason. I'm much more concerned with catching nodes nobody else is bothering with, pointing out major objectives like S ranks, pointing out which team or objective we should be prioritizing, defending others capturing nodes, baiting enemy alliances away from what their priority should be, or catching strays from enemy teams. All these things involve a lot of fighting and assists, but battle high doesn't particularly get farmed from doing these things, at least for me.

3 minutes in? try about half of that... I've seen whole squads already BH5(1 minute 30 seconds) And they are using bots/triggers on their characters through third party programs. Third party programs which are illegal and bannable. So lets say someone's health drops below %50 for the Ninja. Before said person can heal, or if the Ninja even sees the person, the trigger sees the persons health goes below %50 and activates the Ninja's LB within milliseconds on said person before they can even heal. And many many other crap scrips these cheaters use. I regularly see people who don't have swift run around like they are on a mount. I regularly see people getting 20-30 kills which is insane with how much we have to run around. There is so much cheating and bullshit going on in FL, CC, RW, Duels its ridiculous. If i was a newbie GM I could see they are cheating. There are even videos of people cheating and the devs won't use it. Also, premades just mean you join up to coordinate with friends for a win and it pales in contribution what with all these hacks and scrips/bots out there. Lets face it, people use these cheat programs to compensate; and people make premades to have fun with friends and be on a team. Those who use programs in premades together to dominate are really compensating.

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Originally Posted by Axl-Lalafell

3 minutes in? try about half of that... I've seen whole squads already BH5(1 minute 30 seconds) And they are using bots/triggers on their characters through third party programs. Third party programs which are illegal and bannable. So lets say someone's health drops below %50 for the Ninja. Before said person can heal, or if the Ninja even sees the person, the trigger sees the persons health goes below %50 and activates the Ninja's LB within milliseconds on said person before they can even heal. And many many other crap scrips these cheaters use. I regularly see people who don't have swift run around like they are on a mount. I regularly see people getting 20-30 kills which is insane with how much we have to run around. There is so much cheating and bullshit going on in FL, CC, RW, Duels its ridiculous. If i was a newbie GM I could see they are cheating. There are even videos of people cheating and the devs won't use it. Also, premades just mean you join up to coordinate with friends for a win and it pales in contribution what with all these hacks and scrips/bots out there. Lets face it, people use these cheat programs to compensate; and people make premades to have fun with friends and be on a team. Those who use programs in premades together to dominate are really compensating.

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sounds more like you are just seething. what video evidence. link to it.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

I definitely feel like there's a lot of cheating that happens. Although as a solo-queue player even premades feel like playing against cheaters. But I have seen other players on my team claiming the other team was using some scripts or something.

Maybe the recent heat on the mod scene followed by SE doing nothing about cheaters has emboldened people to cheat more. Like they convinced themselves that "it's fine as long as you don't talk about it" applies to anything and everything.

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Recently, I feel like it's not so prevalent anymore; however, if you have multiple people who instantly dash to you. They have split-second decisions and side-stepping some abilities; chances are, they are cheating. The ones cheating are very obvious, however, and it's one of the main reasons why I stopped playing Frontlines in EW and why I think Frontlines and PvP in general is just meh.

BH should make you a glass canon. +50% damage dealt and taken. High risk high reward.

And killing a player with higher BH should net your team more points than killing one with lower BH.

Here's the all problems about frontlines summarized:

- People that afk and use anti-afk plugins to never get kicked
- People who afk and play like bots because they just want free xp, so at the end they have 0/0/0/0 score or 10k dps
- People who afk by using combat plugins so their bot is fighting you and actually doing better because they are also using heavy 3rd party tools that modify lag, clipping so some abilities go faster or are activated faster than what is possible on the system alone. Like Monk's earth reply thing
- People who are premades, even just 4 of them are enough to ruin experience of others.
- People who are premades by discord, they see they are in same team, join voice chat and they also announce everytime they will queue together or play a specific class. this is why you can see teams with full tanks or full healers, its all done by discord announcements --> which ruins the game mode.
- Battle high is garbage in my opinion. "It rewards aggressive playstyle", you mean it rewards premades? Once they are battle high and go together, it's almost impossible to stop them. This is already gg wp go next. Specially if they play Viper or someone with infinite heals and damage.
- Maps are garbage
- So many times it happens that 2nd team goes and benefit the winning team because they constantly have a death wish upon a certain player or wants to demolish other team because "i don't like them".
- People who use macros to find player they are looking for and then they just chase them. There are also people who take services for this and hunt you down if someone pays them.
- Certain classes just dominate frontlines. Tanks are mega busted, machinist and all that can be ranged.
- Job actions are so bad and unnecessary.

This whole game mode is pure garbage.

OP need to elaborate the 'recent time' part here.

OP mentioned about the Salted Earth 'problem'. But at the same time they've been pretty oppressive, the other actions mentioned save for role actions had also been around and used to have way faster snapshot time, too. These 'group of people jumping at you', imho was more oppressive in pre 7.1 than today.

Regarding premades, if I have to pick between trying to herd bunch of cats who's only there to sniff the grasses to get their participation reward vs getting my 1-3 fun buddies to queue together whether we're losing or winning, I'd pick the latter.

Sorry, I'm not a fantastic FLer by any means. But it gets apathetic and unfun when 7 out of 10 times people run around with "who's here to lose?!"-mindset, or laser focus on wrong things (i.e. blindsided by spawning S nodes when the winning team only needs couple of of kills or a B node to win in next 20s; fighting over dead nodes, etc) in each rounds; asked to not do that, then malds anyway. They ruin the moral. I just choose to not queue solo anymore nowadays unless I hit my head or something.

EDIT: also the sheer number of players who simply never gets that, PvP, like in any games, rarely have series rules set in stone. Can't succeed with X strat? Why not try different approach i.e. Y strat? People treat the mode as if the outcome would change if they keep throwing bodies. If you keep getting snitched for using same approach every single time, why do you still wonder why you lose more than winning?

I do agree that BH systems feels like a really outdated system and/or tacked on for the sake of 'being there'. Making higher BH squishier would be nice. Alternatively make them do different things depending on job role. Idk. The current +damage & healing felt pretty lazy as much as I like the reward for being aggressive.

Don't take Frontline seriously. That's the only way to endure it.
It was never fair and will never be. Just do once per day and you'll eventually get all the achievements.

I envy you all that can pay attention to what's going on in the other teams.

I'm coming back to frontlines after 3 years of being away despite not liking the rework, and all I've noticed is a bigger lack of awareness all around than when I left. Despite my damage numbers slowly going back up I am currently sitting under a 10% win rate. Part of that is me feeding still playing like this is Shadowbringers. I'm not going to complain about my losses. I already know why my games are lost between team fights, callouts, and overall focus.

Right now, I truly feel powerless with this current kit, especially since I'm forced to rely on the team. As much as I would like to join arguments about what the problems of frontlines are I'm too depressed to pay attention to the other teams. While forming a premade would be helpful for me I don't feel like fingers being pointed at my group just because we're dominating. Maybe I might try if elixirs weren't a thing. Right now, all I can do is just auto pilot at the big objectives and hope for the best. Despite knowing that you can make a difference by yourself I don't see how this can actually be accomplish with the current crowd I'm playing with today. I have more success in casual CC than I am frontlines. I'm honestly not sure how long I plan to stay, because I can't seem to find the joy with playing frontlines.

I see a few people complaining about the current battle high system here, but does anybody remember the old system? By that I mean there were only two states, Battle High and the greater Battle Fever (4 KO chain and 8 KO chain thusly). Never quite knew why that was changed, it only afforded you a damage buff and LB gauge buff back then, but also the added bane that you were visible on the map (and it was represented in a cooler way, you'd get an elite or boss mob icon!) Really, nobody remember that? We should go back to that. Didn't see quite as many players with it at any one time neither.

There may have been other nuances but it's been a long time now, recollection's a tad hazy. Today's system seems there to boost the barely participating player to give them the vague illusion they can combat others actually trying, it's just too easy to get BH (and also the boons for gaining the state are too many).

Yes I know that old system meant kill-sniping was rife, but I'd still say it was the better system. That's about the only thing I can think of as to why it was messed about with, and for this prevailing one to exist. Botched as it is. (ED: then again, LBs like the NIN's or to a lesser extent SAM's make a reintroduction of that system semi-problematic as well... still don't think it'd be impossible to reshuffle it though).