Shatter

[Dimitrii]

Shatter is trash, but if you still prefer to play Front Lines, then I would suggest queuing for Seize. The implementation of Free Agent queues along with the Garo event makes it the perfect time to revive that game. It had it's problems, but it's still miles better than shatter.

Hell, I'd even suggest giving Secure or Slaughter a shot. They're less likely to pop since they're lvl 50 options, but you never know. With all the PvP activity lately, it could happen.

Seize was popping for like a week or so when the garo event first started but is dead now once again. Even queuing as a freelancer queues will read as taking an excess of 30 min. Shatter unfortunately is the only frontline mode now with queues 5 min or less on primal.

[Februs]

Seize was popping for like a week or so when the garo event first started but is dead now once again. Even queuing as a freelancer queues will read as taking an excess of 30 min. Shatter unfortunately is the only frontline mode now with queues 5 min or less on primal.

Yeah. I got lucky a few days back, but tonight was a bust. Pretty much all Shatter, 8v8, and a couple of 4v4s.

The real sad thing about this is that a lot of the new people who just joined up to PvP with the Garo event probably don't know what they missed out on. Secure as a hoot back in it's day, especially when there was still outlying camps. Seize was flawed but it was infinitely better than Shatter. That's just my opinion, though. Like them or hate them, it's still a shame that there are a lot of players out there who will never get to even try them.

I'll keep trying as the week goes on, though. Who knows? It might pick up again.

[Cidel]

Simply put, Shatter is Chess, but most people just want to play Checkers.

Play the objectives in Shatter. No seriously. Play Shatter. All your damage/kills mean nothing if you don't win.

These are probably the two biggest points of Shatter that people actively fight against that make this mode seem like such a failure to them. It certainly isn't as successful as Seize, but the mode hasn't killed PvP; that's on the framework that constantly invalidates older modes by giving practically no incentives to run them and are left to collect dust.

And while I'm sure there are probably some unjust vote-kicks, I know there's probably two sides to every story (as there usually is). People can be down-right defiant to the detriment of their team. Going for battle highs and battle fevers (smartly) is one thing, but a lot of people don't know how to do that and usually end up just tunnel-visioning on their target before 5+ enemies pick them off as a straggler before they realize their team has been pulling out or they have over-extended. This 3-team system rewards the team that engages last or not at all because they are free to double-team the team of their choosing or go after objectives that more often than not win the game. This mode really just exacerbates that relationship more than previous modes have.

[Magic-Mal]

I've lost a lot of matches because my group can't figure out that attacking the ice is important. Yes, killing people is fun. But, you know what else is fun? Winning.

Destroy ice when it's okay to destroy ice.

If Flames have 1,530/1,600, Maelstrom has 820/1,600 and you guys have 1,250/1,600, its common sense to just attack the Flames. It's your only chance.

Most people like to huddle up at the A point or camp the base or something.. Or afraid to attack.



Although I happen to like Shatter more than Seize. Alot more. At least in Shatter the fate of your win is in your hands. But when 3 A ranks spawn in the caves(enemy base) in Seize.. yeah. It's over.

Let's not talk about the triple S rank...

[aeoncs]

The problem really isn't that Shatter is overly complicated, which some people in this thread seem to assume, it's just not fun to play for many of us.

The primary objective of any battleground in any MMO should be to kill enemy players and if you can potentially win without killing a single player, that's bad game design right there; that's really all there is to it. Seal Rock has its fair share of problems too, but you at least get some real PvP out of it.

[loreleidiangelo]

The primary objective of any battleground in any MMO should be to kill enemy players and if you can potentially win without killing a single player, that's bad game design right there; that's really all there is to it. Seal Rock has its fair share of problems too, but you at least get some real PvP out of it.

I have never seen someone win a Shatter without actually...PVPing. (I mean "someone" in terms of a GC as a whole, not an individual player, which of course is quite possible to have happen.) I think a lot of people are overblowing this issue simply because treating the map as a whole beat-'em-up in mid is a surefire way to lose, and people hate having to disengage when they feel like they're "winning" simply because they're not actually winning, the third GC is collecting all the ice and raking in points while you're duking it out with the second GC in mid.

...wait, wasn't Seize exactly like that? LOL. "GUYS, NODES"

Seriously, Seize was an awful map with random and INSANELY defensible spawns and I don't understand how people could enjoy it. The map was far too spread out to really encourage any sort of far-reaching strategy, because you could easily get caught with your pants down at some node or another with only 3 DPS and on top of that, the whole DRK spamming Unleash/SCH SMN spamming Miasma II/WAR spamming Overpower BS to prevent node caps was utterly asinine. DRK alone with Living Dead trolling could prevent a full party from capping for like a solid 30 seconds straight if nobody CC'd them (most people didn't, because hurr durr my ez kill), and by then a good portion of the points would already be drained from the tomelith.

Could Shatter use some improvements to make kills a bit more noteworthy in the overall flow of the game? Sure, but I kind of like that Maelstrom tried rolling a premade two days ago on Primal in the evening with a butt ton of casters dropping LBs on everyone and went chasing kills like a bunch of idiots, only to still lose the match...twice in a row before I stopped queuing for the evening. I like that I can see the enemy GCs on the map to strategize our own team's placement, and I like that nodes aren't random spawns, don't repeat, and aren't arbitrarily of an extremely high ranking sometimes because "lol screw you, your marginal lead is now gone a minute before the match ends because the second-place team got an S in their base".

/shrug Seize is easily my least favorite of all the PVP maps we have out now. I don't understand why the community likes it so much.

[Exira]

I share my experience from chaos : when pvp veteran players use to q as premade ( 8 man ) doing pvp only , most of the game end by a win for us getting +1100/1200 from kills meanwhile we have people yelling in shout OMG focus crystal OMG stop suicide , they don't even realize we are farming enemy team ( cuz they don't even look at the score they just watch how many ppl on ice). What can i say is that a strong pvp party inside the alliance who is able to farm other allies will ALWAYS win vs ppl who only focus ice.

[dragonseth07]

I share my experience from chaos : when pvp veteran players use to q as premade ( 8 man ) doing pvp only , most of the game end by a win for us getting +1100/1200 from kills meanwhile we have people yelling in shout OMG focus crystal OMG stop suicide , they don't even realize we are farming enemy team ( cuz they don't even look at the score they just watch how many ppl on ice). What can i say is that a strong pvp party inside the alliance who is able to farm other allies will ALWAYS win vs ppl who only focus ice.

Naturally, if you have a coordinated group who can actually kill lots of people, yeah, it'll be successful. Congrats, teamwork is OP. In a PUG, there's not enough coordination to kill people quickly or in great numbers. Me stunning and hitting a MCH with a fully specced Full Swing in the dead center of my team makes no difference. So, why bother?

[aeoncs]

I have never seen someone win a Shatter without actually...PVPing. (I mean "someone" in terms of a GC as a whole, not an individual player, which of course is quite possible to have happen.) I think a lot of people are overblowing this issue simply because treating the map as a whole beat-'em-up in mid is a surefire way to lose, and people hate having to disengage when they feel like they're "winning" simply because they're not actually winning, the third GC is collecting all the ice and raking in points while you're duking it out with the second GC in mid.

...wait, wasn't Seize exactly like that? LOL. "GUYS, NODES"

Just yesterday I had a match that ended with exactly 6 deaths on all sides. 6 deaths in a 72-player mode. With enough healers and little to no fighting in terms of real group PvP, the deaths that occured were pretty much exclusively people getting picked off. Now, this is an extreme example but it happens a lot, just to a lesser extent.
In Seal Rock you at least have to fight for nodes by overpowering the other teams, instead of dummy-dps'ing a structure; so it doesn't really matter which of the two game modes is better designed regarding objective control, because in one of them you get to PvP a lot while you mostly PvE and disengage in the other.

And I did say that you can potentially win Shatter without anyone PvPing once, which is true regardless of whether that ever happens; if that's not bad design, I don't know what is. Still, 24-man Shatter can be fun, but that's pretty much dead for now.

Snip

Oh, wow, an 8-man-premade can farm and completely dominate PuGs. What a shocker.

[loreleidiangelo]

Didn't someone post on Reddit a screenie of them winning Seize without ctually PVPing the enemy team, or close to it? In general, I think outside of a pure deathmatch type BG (which I wouldn't even necessarily be opposed to), it's probably possible to win all Frontlines matches without killing anyone, except maybe Secure/probably Slaughter. This might be an issue with three-team PVP too - if the other two teams want to just fight each other and not you, and you get more points for objectives over than kills, you could easily win by doing essentially F-all over the course of a match.

I liked Slaughter (nowhere for people to run to when nodes were down, so you just beat each other up), but it's inarguably the most hated of FL modes in this subforum.