Shatter

[Lisieta]

But in something like slaughter, it only makes sense to have a small area. There is no motive to go off over the map to other areas, or break off from main group, or spread your team out.

This doesn't make sense, though. If you want a mode where "PVP matters", why would you encourage teams to spread out across a wide area? Slaughter's tiny top map was EXACTLY what forced people to PVP, instead of just running away or "waiting in mid for ice", like they do with Shatter. And as AdamZ pointed out, trying to arbitrarily make use of a "larger map" by adding random objectives to it just does exactly what everyone has been complaining about with Shatter...more focus on running away to PVE.

The top area for slaughter is fine for 24 man matches but way too small for 72 man. Would have been nice if the 72-man death match battle ground is like maybe triple the size of that top area.

[Magic-Mal]

"which premade brought the better healers and has more of their BLMs on VOIP to time Cometeor drops". It's like when they took away Cleric Stance because 8 JP WHM Holylol trains were borken as heck in Secure - rather than doing something about multiple Cometeors, the developers tried to create maps where the spaces aren't so enclosed as to allow that to be a viable strategy.

Instead of fixing BLM's Cometeor they should instead just remove the ability to go premade already and no one will ever have a problem.

Premades are fun and all but it's also not fun standing no chance. It's not fair in the slightest going against a full team of coordinated players with voice communication while you have a bunch of randoms. It ruins Frontlines. It's like having an instance where it's a damage contest and whatever team does the most damage on the dummy wins. But 8-man premades are allowed to queue up against random teams.

It needs to be removed. Or at the very least, 1 partner. Like Feast. That would be fair. And if it's needed, have 24m( 8v8v8) premade Full Party Frontlines separately.

[Eul]

Instead of fixing BLM's Cometeor they should instead just remove the ability to go premade already and no one will ever have a problem.

Premades are fun and all but it's also not fun standing no chance. It's not fair in the slightest going against a full team of coordinated players with voice communication while you have a bunch of randoms. It ruins Frontlines.

It needs to be removed. Or at the very least, 1 partner. Like Feast. That would be fair.

I agree with this, having premades is not fun at all. Like it's ridiculous they can dominate 2 GCs at same time. And I also agree at least they can party with max 1 or 2 man.

[loreleidiangelo]

I agree with this, having premades is not fun at all. Like it's ridiculous they can dominate 2 GCs at same time. And I also agree at least they can party with max 1 or 2 man.

This would also be an acceptable alternative, yeah. I'm just trying to point out that the problem with Slaughter wasn't necessarily Slaughter's design, it was how stupidly effective Cometeor stacking was. Slaughter was actually a mode where a TON of PVP happened, it was just hugely tilted PVP where people only attained kills through a total cheeseball strategy rather than simply being good at strategy.

EDIT: To be fair though, people in Slaughter would stack Cometeors even if they were queuing solo. It wasn't exactly a strategy that required voice communication - you saw an orange circle drop on the ground, you dropped yours too and hoped you nabbed all the kills from it. I still maintain that a true PVP map that forced skirmishes in small map areas would have issues with Cometeor either way, simply because it's a huge radius and does a respectable amount of damage.

There are multiple problems with PVP in this game, really. I enjoy playing it, but it's hard to narrow down the plethora of issues to which ones have a "higher" priority.

[Serilda]

The Cometeor timing happens in JP groups irrespective of voice communications; the leader simply throws down a marker or two when everyone signals that they're ready in text and does a countdown so people have a chance to use their crowd control. Bam, half a dozen perfectly-timed AR explosions and most of an entire team wiped out. I don't know how it is on non-JP datacentres but blocking premades won't stop that in the slightest; most steamrolling GCs are just 1 sensible person with lots of macros and a bunch of randoms who follow orders. Personally, I don't mind it the way it is (Slaughter is ridiculous but it never pops any more due to the level cap).

[Rilasha]

The Cometeor timing happens in JP groups irrespective of voice communications; the leader simply throws down a marker or two when everyone signals that they're ready in text and does a countdown so people have a chance to use their crowd control. Bam, half a dozen perfectly-timed AR explosions and most of an entire team wiped out. I don't know how it is on non-JP datacentres but blocking premades won't stop that in the slightest; most steamrolling GCs are just 1 sensible person with lots of macros and a bunch of randoms who follow orders.

In non-JP datacentres, premades stomp without having to stack caster LBs. They literally win by killing people normally and the other two teams get steamrolled by this one party. The skill level gap between premades and randoms in non-JP servers is huge compared to the JP servers.

[loreleidiangelo]

The Cometeor timing happens in JP groups irrespective of voice communications; the leader simply throws down a marker or two when everyone signals that they're ready in text and does a countdown so people have a chance to use their crowd control. Bam, half a dozen perfectly-timed AR explosions and most of an entire team wiped out. I don't know how it is on non-JP datacentres but blocking premades won't stop that in the slightest; most steamrolling GCs are just 1 sensible person with lots of macros and a bunch of randoms who follow orders. Personally, I don't mind it the way it is (Slaughter is ridiculous but it never pops any more due to the level cap).

In non-JP datacentres, premades stomp without having to stack caster LBs. They literally win by killing people normally and the other two teams get steamrolled by this one party. The skill level gap between premades and randoms in non-JP servers is huge compared to the JP servers.

Both of these perspectives are exactly why PVP in general has a lot of problems. Trying to limit scope by saying "premades are the problem" or "Shatter/Slaughter/whatever is the problem" barely TOUCHES upon the plethora of issues the game mode has. There's not just problems with premades - tons of solo queuers could make macros to stack Cometeors in Slaughter, and they do it sometimes in Shatter too, it's just that there's not as many casters left in the mode due to caster-gutting so it doesn't always work out. It's not just a problem with Cometeor spam though either - there's not much room to capitalize on that in Shatter due to both less casters playing AND a bigger arena, and yet premades are still trolling around the map with multiple Battle Fevers winning the match with mostly just kills alone.

Even the removal of three-team gameplay, while solving a LOT of problems, would mean nothing without a separate queue for soloers and a separate queue for premades. And even THOSE things might mean nothing without the removal of personal LBs, back to the system of one shared LB that you were forced to coordinate and use wisely. Or even the removal of the LB system altogether.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly just one thing that is screwed up with PVP in this game right now.

[dragonseth07]

I never understood complaining about premades in a PvP game. It's like "I don't have friends to play with, so noone else should be able to play with theirs". It makes no sense to me. Yes, teamwork is OP, but that's the point of a team game, isn't it?

[Zojha]

I never understood complaining about premades in a PvP game.

Well, nobody complains about premades as such - it's premades fighting non-premades that's always the issue, because one team has a (potential) advantage. That's just like bots, cheats, hacks and extra programs are only an issue if people using them are matched with people not using them. The real complaint is always a lack of parity - one side has an advantage.

As such, the solution is simple: Premades get matched with other premades of the same size. If the matchmaker can't find matches for that size, well...tough luck.

[Enlial]

Imo when people complain about premades in frontlines what they're really complaining about is the battle high/fever mechanic. It massively amplifies any discrepancy in skill level between the alliances.

Ive seen I think 2 noteworthy groups on aether that could loosely be considered premades, and I do frontline's a lot. I see a lot of groups of people from the same server, presumably queuing together, whom playing against doesn't feel any different than randoms (no offense to anyone)

19 out of 20 frontlines matches are well balanced atm (and this is better than its been in the past lol). Preventing that 1:20 doesn't justify preventing friends from queuing together. (99% of statistics are made up, btw)