Light Party Restriction In Frontlines

[IllidanFang]

As someone who was there for 100 consecutive freelancing losses during Nadaam's first week... no. Good riddance to it. A mere 4 people can do insane amount of work if they're kept healed enough, a full team coordinating around known map exploits and what-not? No thanks.

A lot of the PvP's quality comes down to the players, and more importantly how they approach the match. Team stacking inevitably just results in some of the most boring matches around, with one team stomping around anything in sight, and then the one team not getting stomped as much coming after the one that's been fighting non-stop with nothing to show for it. While that still exists, it'd be far worse on fully stacked frontlines.

If you're on the receiving end of this kind of behavior a lot, you lose all interest in even fighting. Before they ditched the old system, it was common for some teams to literally just idle waiting for their inevitable ganking. Which is heartbreaking, because everyone that did try ultimately didn't matter at all.

WHAT THE we ALL were there during the adder bandwagon. that has NOTHING to do with premades. that was a bunch of people who wanted carries and easy wins for the mount so they could stop queueing up. premades dont stomp everything in sight especially if other players idunno... fight back? you give me the impression you just hang back and afk. staying idle waiting to die? nah GET IN THERE. LEARN HOW TO STOP these premades.

and the only "exploit" these bois doing is actually using their maps. crazy i know.

[Mistress_Irika]

I'm very hesitant on this subject. Obviously, I would want full party premades back for selfish reasons. However, as a solo player I always have to ask myself this: Will I enjoy this sort of revert, or will I have to go back to dealing with a team that gives up at the sight of a premade? It was already difficult enough to try and maintain a positive mindset when this sort of thing happens back when 24 man was a thing. I just don't have the energy to deal with this in 72 man.

Then I have to keep in mind the current state of frontlines. While it seems to me like it's benefitting most people I honestly don't like how things are. With the exception of Shatter I don't play as aggressive as I used to, not after they took away full party premades. With the focus going to all/majority of objectives it took a while to learn not to play aggressive, because I was mainly dying from a lack of commitment in a fight. Playing at my best sometimes felt very useless at the end, because people will give up if they sitting in last place and announce that they didn't care to win from the beginning. I have to avoid parts of the day (sometimes the entire day), simply because frontlines, to me at times, feels more like a pve roulette than an actual pvp mode. I'm a bit disappointed with what the changes reaped thus far.

[Rinku421]

I'm very hesitant on this subject. Obviously, I would want full party premades back for selfish reasons. However, as a solo player I always have to ask myself this: Will I enjoy this sort of revert, or will I have to go back to dealing with a team that gives up at the sight of a premade?

People tend to give up regardless if there's a premade present or not after falling behind a certain threshold of points. The fact that players are rewarded regardless of placement also kills the will to truly try and win as many just participate for daily rewards. Players complained about losing to "premades" in the past but now presently a vast majority don't care if its a win or loss because of how the system works.

[Novani]

What exactly are these map exploits you're referring to? I've played PvP since Heavensward and I've never encountered or heard of such things.

What map exploits exactly? Because for as long as i've been playing pvp i have never seen whatever it is you're talking about. Also, all this fear about full premades just 100% stomping or dominating is so false

Alright, exploit was an extreme term to use for it, apologies about that; tired brain goes for the first word. As far as it does go, is mainly to do with how weirdly some Z levels interact near some nodes (Seal Rock and Nadaam specifically) that can be difficult for the attacked team to respond to. If it happened once I'd blame server tick, but well, can only go by what was experienced on a few occasions prior to the change. Edit: For clarification, I meant around under the edge of center left node and southeast cliff node in the respective maps). This was experienced under an old unstable ADsL connection though. For all I know, it might've been complete coincidence.

Not ruling out being wrong, but can only go by what was experienced over the course of several matches against the same premade. This isn't the rule for premades sure, nothing in life is ever so clear cut. But I sincerely doubt it'd go anywhere good.
After all PvP, and Frontline in particular is always a mixed bag. And there's still plenty of ways to be social; just in this stuff, the worst comes out first.

Apologies also for the late reply.

WHAT THE we ALL were there during the adder bandwagon. that has NOTHING to do with premades. that was a bunch of people who wanted carries and easy wins for the mount so they could stop queueing up. premades dont stomp everything in sight especially if other players idunno... fight back? you give me the impression you just hang back and afk. staying idle waiting to die? nah GET IN THERE. LEARN HOW TO STOP these premades.

and the only "exploit" these bois doing is actually using their maps. crazy i know.

Gee, what a novel concept.

I love these knee jerk reactions. It's like having a differing opinion's the equal to saying the most vile thing in existence. Makes things ever so civil.

For the record: I do not sit idle, if anything I'm aggressive in a fight and always moving to and from objectives. A few times I questioned teams that sat passively, you know what the response (when there was one) I got was when I dared to question the wisdom? It wasn't civil let me tell you that.

Far as I see it, there's no point in PvPing if well, you don't go and give it your best shot, and work as a team if you can. If you win, great. If you lose, well there's always next time. Personally, it's more about the quality of the match, which comes largely from the players. I don't see premade dominated matches encouraging anyone to having a go. But that's just my two cents, not like my opinion matters. >.>

[Rinku421]

Alright, exploit was an extreme term to use for it, apologies about that; tired brain goes for the first word. As far as it does go, is mainly to do with how weirdly some Z levels interact near some nodes (Seal Rock and Nadaam specifically) that can be difficult for the attacked team to respond to. If it happened once I'd blame server tick, but well, can only go by what was experienced on a few occasions prior to the change. Edit: For clarification, I meant around under the edge of center left node and southeast cliff node in the respective maps). This was experienced under an old unstable ADsL connection though. For all I know, it might've been complete coincidence.

Not ruling out being wrong, but can only go by what was experienced over the course of several matches against the same premade. This isn't the rule for premades sure, nothing in life is ever so clear cut.

Node spawns are completely random and RNG based. As someone who's played Frontlines for almost 3 years I can tell you a premade being present does not factor into the equation at all.

[SuperZay]

Maybe make a separate 24-man mode just for full premades? Or 16-man even, because 3 factions is the most unfun aspect of Frontlines. Matches with premades will never be balanced when mixed with solo players.

[Rinku421]

3 factions is the most unfun aspect of Frontlines.

This is sole reason why I prefer Rival Wings over Frontlines. Having to constantly worry about being "flanked" and basically deterring people from actually fighting in matches. If they could somehow revamp Frontlines to just be 2 factions it would be so much better.

[Divinemights]

This is sole reason why I prefer Rival Wings over Frontlines. Having to constantly worry about being "flanked" and basically deterring people from actually fighting in matches. If they could somehow revamp Frontlines to just be 2 factions it would be so much better.

That is also why Rival Wings is not popular on EU and NA because once the game is one sided you will immediately hearing "Let them win so I can get out of here"
You won't hear this in Frontline because there is always a chance your GC can take over the lead from a successful flank.

[SuperZay]

That is also why Rival Wings is not popular on EU and NA because once the game is one sided you will immediately hearing "Let them win so I can get out of here"
You won't hear this in Frontline because there is always a chance your GC can take over the lead from a successful flank.

It's not popular but for another reason entirely: it's not part of a daily map rotation and doesn't have roulette bonus. When there are incentives to que for it directly, like moogle tomestone events, there are 2, and sometimes 3 matches going on at the same time. Regardless, you have a 50% chance to win in a faster RW match than 33% chance in slower Frontline matches so it's much less annoying and doesn't leave a sense of a time wasted.

[Garten]

As it stands now just a four player stack can still pretty heavily decide a match. PvP is such that the top four DPS for example can have more effective productivity (damage, total kills, kills on important targets, coordination, disruption, etc.) than all of the rest of that alliance combined, and decide battles pretty fast. I appreciate the notion of trying to have as many people in a larger party able to stick together, but I think letting eight stacks back in is going to ultimately make the game worse for the casual player. I feel four stacks, while they can still be potent, increases the likelihood of separating power (though RNG can still allow pretty stacked teams).

I would have to disagree.

^ This 100%

Whoever says that an 8 man team premade out of 24 ppl is not heavy enough to smashroll everything from the other alliances is just bad at pvp or a liar.
As someone elses said i was on the both sides of the stick in the past (on a premade with 5/6/7 other ppls i knew, or alone against one or more full premade) and it was "almost" always a massacre.