Slaughterlines - Feedback/suggestions

[Fadigre]

Hello friends!

For a PvPer, Slaughterlines was a very exciting release! Finally being able to overcome the constant healing stalemates and the feeling of personal inability! As those who have been in B teams before, there is an interesting dynamic when three teams come together in the middle. No longer do you cheese your way through with 3 healers and no longer does your backline get thrashed by heavy burst melees!

PvP was evolving!
But things haven't quite played out how they were expected...

Full games are quickly turning into chaotic mad-dashes, teaming with Fire, Thunder and Bios! As a Warrior, even I can't last two seconds outside of my team's ramp area (and that's if both Adders and Flames don't camp it as they're known to here on Chaos).

All but two of my Slaughterline games have been wrought with frustration; you could say that 80% of the time, I hated it 100% of the time!

But there have been two unique Slaughterlines games which stood out mainly because of one key feature; these were both 8-man.

All three teams were visible, a player was able to see when one team was pushing and able to see when another team was vulnerable. There was flow and players moved with purpose rather than with panic. These two games were a really fun experience and I felt like I was part of my team rather than another rubber ducky being ferried around on a conveyer belt waiting to be shot down.

Now, Carteneau is a very large map and it'd be a shame to make this mode a 24-man only experience when there's so much ground! Perhaps a scaled down optional version?

Neutral mobs could spawn inside the flag camps from the start similar to Secure preventing the 72-man disaster in middle but we would lose the 3-team dynamic that is unique to Slaughter! Would spawning only 3 neutrals at a time with one always spawning in middle be a viable option? Could this be balanced in distance from all team bases with different spawn locations or changing teleporters depending on their location?

TL'DR - Either make the varient 8-man only or give teams a reason to split into 8's and still face two opposing teams.
What'd you guys think? What would be an appropriate way to splash a slice of order with the chaos?

[Nalien]

I'm a fan of making the monsters spawn randomly or semi-randomly, similar to Hunt monsters. Hopefully it would encourage smaller skirmishes as people split up to scout, I say semi-randomly because purely random could just screw you over (all mobs spawn next to Maelstrom, for example). It would also hopefully mean the whole map is used, not just the points from Secure. While those points would generally be where monsters spawn, you'd be moving about around them looking for them, rather than holding the same area.

I like team death match, but 72 man is absurd when it is literally just 24v24v24 at mid... People should be split up looking for something, in some games thats weapons, in this game it would be monsters to gain buffs. It could be anything, the idea is that in any PvP environment you don't want a cluster f*ck of every single participant in one place... Not with this games servers anyway...

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

I like team death match, but 72 man is absurd when it is literally just 24v24v24 at mid...

This exactly. It would probably be better with just 8v8v8 (or like you said 72 man with more reason to roam)

[Sunako]

I think personal limit break generate way too fast. If you kill few players with your LB, you can continually use it and spam it.

[PotatoTree]

I think it's good because it's something fresh, but it is very very flawed.

First, healers and tanks don't get achievements nor do they get to enjoy the battle high mechanic.

Then, it's like a 72 man lagfest in the middle. There is very little strategy in it, it's basically try to snipe dps that overextend.

The ratio of people queuing is till the same from the 3 GCs, so if there is a shortage of one GC they will still be the bottleneck causing slow queues. The only plus is that the matches are a bit shorter, so the queue is chewed through a bit quicker.

Lastly, much of the map is unused and it feels like the whole thing was just slapped together.


They need to make this either only 8v8v8, or put some more reason to split up the alliance like they do in secure mode. They can also bring back 16v16v16 for slaughter, and make it so that the 2 teams in the alliance have to split to fight the 2 opposing GCs. They could also abandon the 3 alliance thing, and maybe just go with 2 alliances facing each other. That way the 2 alliances with too many people queuing can still get matches.

So far all the setup is good for is for me to rack up achievement kills on BLM before they nerf it.

[UlricCraft]

Faster matches, faster queues, I don't want to complain while these issues are resolved, but it can't be helped... Bigger issues arise!

I'm a healer. I've killed exactly one person in Slaughter. (We had 3 healers the first match I played!)
After that? Our team composition was 7 DPS 1 Healer.
This started to get stressful especially when I had more than 1 melle dps taking Flare's to the face all day.

There was one game a DPS switched to healer to help me out, but after 5minutes they raged and went back to DPS.

There's no reward for me playing healer when I can't move away from the centre, and I can't deal damage with fear someone takes 2 attacks.
I'm a static Medica II machine.

[SirTaint]

The queue times are still ridic. Waited 45min last night and 34min this morning.

Please get rid of the GC requirements.

[DividedSky]

I'm a big fan of waiting at least a week before passing judgement. New strategies will evolve. Like all melee teams rushing into zerg spamming aoe completely shutting down all loltrollblms and preventing them from casting. I'll be trying this soon. Melee aoe is pretty nice in big groups of casters. It makes them scatter and prevents them from casting/killing you. Use to do this all the Time on flags to prevent heal stackers on flags and it works wonders.

[Red_Wolf]

I think Wolves' Den is a better option than changing Slaughter to 8v8v8.

[Hiruke]

Other than tanks/healers not being able to get Battle Highs very often because they aren't really killing much (well, tanks probably way more than healers), I really like Slaughter. I wouldn't want any big changes to the format. I like how focused it is on the center and fighting each other in a grand melee.

If you just wandered the map, the weaknesses of a lot of jobs would show through heavily, which is what I was worried about when I first read the patch notes.

Tanks/healers should get bonuses for something other than just kills, that's all I would change.