Quote Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI View Post
I had a secure match earlier tonight. A nice little random surprise from the roulette. I've also coordinated 2 Seal Rock weekends in the past. If people actively only queued for one mode over another, and told their friends to or formed parties to do so and they followed through, it'd happen.
Key bit here is that by organizing those Seal Rock Weekends you created incentive to queue that would not normally be there.
A few things I wanted to address all over this post:

1. Why must it all appeal to casual players? Sure, it is important, but you make it sound like if casuals won't like it, it's not worth doing. Casuals generally don't like or do Extreme trials, so no point to queue for those, right? Ultimate Coil exists. . .
Its less "casuals won't like it, so it's not worth doing" and more "if it can't attract a large/balanced enough population you can't really do it." Without WT, Ponies, Birds and now the Wolves most Extreme trials would be ignored, Coil and Alexander (Savage) are mostly ignored currently, Omega(Savage) and Ultimate Coil will gradually die down in popularity, but in the end you only need to find 8 people interested to attempt the content. On the other hand you can't do a 72 player mode with 71 players or a 24 player mode with 48 in one GC, 18 in the second, 7 in the 3rd and 0 freelancers.

Liking a piece of content is meaningless if there are not enough to do the content with.

2. Shatter, as I said before plays like a mix of Secure and Seize, and a very poor one. The biggest problem? Shatter practically rewards passive play where the other two do not. Drones shoot back, Seal Rock nodes must be successfully interacted with, THEN defended. Ice? Just hit it. People will ignore someone at 10% HP for that damn ice.
Not going to deny that Shatter has problems. The 3 satellite Big Ices should have been Secure style bases to be fought over with the Central Big Ice and the scattered Small Ices drawing players away from the various bases when they activate..

3. The only randomness of Seize is the rank of the node. The locations are fixed, as are ice locations in Shatter. But the activations of the ice are just as random. Sometimes a team gets 2 near their base from the start. Sometimes all the small ones activate at the start. Seize is better, again in that you don't know which will activate, nor what rank it'll be. No bases to afk, excuse me, "guard" on, and camping a node before it spawns is all but impossible because what if it's a B rank, and the one you didn't go to is an S? Maybe an A pops up closest to you at the start? Maybe an A and an S pop up near the end, and you can win by going for the A and letting the other 2 teams fight over the S because you have the lead? Most importantly, it doesn't award passive play. If you're not actively trying to capture a node or reduce enemy points, there are no base ticks to win off of. There's no objective to go and tunnel on and get points without ever attacking or being attacked by another player. Capturing is only half of scoring. Defending your node is where the mode shines over Shatter.
Which tomeliths activate is an incredibly major factor in determining which alliance wins. Your example of an A and S activating and then winning because the other two GCs went after the S? I've won and lost matches close matches just because the last tomeliths activated behind one or the other GC in a melee, gotten pincer crushed by both of the other GCs because all 3 starting tomeliths activated in our base area, spawns that kept 2 GCs fighting on one side of the map while the third GC racked up points without needing to lift a finger other than to touch the tomelith. Winning because the RNG was nice to me isn't as fun to me as winning with superior tactical understanding. Far to many matches had me cursing my side's bad luck than admitting we got outplayed by the winner.

Many people still don't know that if you wipe out a team at a large ice, then let it reset, you can take full points from it, even if it was at 1%. And a full 300 from large ice is quite significant. Works on small ice too. Doesn't work in Seize. You want it, you fight for it, or fight to keep it. That's not to say Seize didn't have its faults, but ask anyone who actively played both before 4.0, and the larger majority much prefer Seize over Shatter.
Seize being less bad than Shatter does not make Seize a good mode.

Quote Originally Posted by Wintersandman View Post
You forget Black ADS from any mode, and FC mount from any mode, and Garo Mounts from any mode. Slaughterhouse and Hand of Mercy from any mode. So check your achievements again.
And as you say they can be gained from any mode. They do not influence why players queue for the various Frontlines modes. If Secure or Seize had a new glamour set or mount added that mode would be queued over Shatter. As it stands Shatter gives the best reward and so those without it queue Shatter in hopes to get it, others knowing that there is a large population queuing for Shatter over the other modes also queue Shatter to get more matches which imbalances the queues further in favor of Shatter. The much larger casual playerbase being more interested in one mode over another tips the balance towards that mode even if the smaller hardcore playerbase prefers another mode.