Why is Borderland Ruins Secure the worst Frontline map?

[OskarXCI]

Probably because it was the first map they ever made. Compare Secure to Danshig Nadaam and you can tell they're a lot better at designing maps. Not that Onsal is without flaws, but its flaws are a lot less significant than those of older maps. I'm not sure, precisely, how to fix Secure.

Just so you know, Secure has already received a makeover before. It used to be about 40% bigger and less open. More rocks and debris scattered around breaking line of sight, as you suggested. The stairs that lead up to 3 of the bases originally wasn't there. You had to go by the edge of the map to reach those. I think the original intent from the developers were that teams would split up into three groups that fight over the adjacent bases to your home base and then push into the spawn area of an enemy team, for the entire match. No running in-between left and right except when it was time to go to the center of the map for drones/node. Slower mount speed and the time limit was 30 minutes back then. If you/people think Secure drags on now, it used to be worse.

But I think we all can agree on that the TR needed to win a match need to be lowered.

No, what they're saying is what would happen if they removed invulnerability... and why it was added in the first place, back in SB. Experienced players would just farm newbies over and over, literally spawn-camping them. Removing invulnerability is a horrible idea. That's what they were saying.

Situations like spawn-camping would be less likely if they removed the respawn invincibility. Matchmaking is now random and premades are limited to 4 players. It used to be faction-based matchmaking and premades could be 8 players. While adding invincibility improved things on Seize and Shatter (Onsal wasn't added yet), it made things worse on Secure. It lead to less engagement between teams which in turn made matches last longer.

If spawn-camping is a no-no, then they might as well remove the bases from Shatter. No point in trying to claim them if you have little to no chance of holding more than 1 base for longer than 30 seconds.

Slauter Secure mode was removed because up platform

They never said why but I can guess that they removed the Slaughter version of Borderland Ruins because Shatter was more or less the intended replacement.

[Cabalabob]

For me secure just has a stigma attached to it from when it had outdated mechanics compared to seal rock and slaughter. Kills in secure didn’t count towards your kill achievement, there was no battle high and the shared LB still existed which just sucked.

All of these issues have been rectified and secure is pretty uniform with the other modes now, but my brain is just conditioned to hate secure still. That’s not to say the mode is otherwise perfect, it’s still slow and boring. But I just hate it more than I think I should because of it’s history.

If I was to rework secure. I’d focus on the “secure” part, as it is you just take a node then leave it either undefended or lightly guarded. What if the longer you held a point the more fortified it became? For example instead of Allagan nodes spawning in the middle they would start to spawn around a captured node to attack enemies, gates could spawn and become increasingly powerful if not destroyed (wood gate upgrades to iron gate etc.) you could have people go out and gather materials from the field to speed up the process and killing other players would make them drop their materials allowing you to fortify your base faster so you can move on to attacking enemy bases before they get too fortified themselves.

[Valabrog]

Its just horrible in compare to other 3. I love FL so much and play daily, but never event do roulette if its Borderlands.

Endless riding simulator. We have ESO Cyrodiil for that...

[Asuka-Hykiri]

I try to stick away from Borderlands and Seal Rock (When I get my 300 clear achievement, it can burn in the pits of hell)

[OskarXCI]

It seems to be made for games where you split smaller teams to handle flags and mid rather than going all units in 1 spot but rarely seem that and most of time ends up just feeding other teams.

The idea was that one team would hold 4+ bases throughout the match but when they added respawn invincibility, it made going for 4+ bases too risky. While respawn invincibility had little to no effect on Seal Rock and Shatter, it more or less broke the intended match flow on Secure. The 1600 Tactical Rating needed to win a match is simply too much at the moment. They need to lower it to 1400 or increase TR gain from everything. Preferably both.

If I was to rework secure. I’d focus on the “secure” part, as it is you just take a node then leave it either undefended or lightly guarded. What if the longer you held a point the more fortified it became? For example instead of Allagan nodes spawning in the middle they would start to spawn around a captured node to attack enemies, gates could spawn and become increasingly powerful if not destroyed (wood gate upgrades to iron gate etc.) you could have people go out and gather materials from the field to speed up the process and killing other players would make them drop their materials allowing you to fortify your base faster so you can move on to attacking enemy bases before they get too fortified themselves.

While that sounds interesting, I think it's too ambitious for it to be the simple balance adjustments needed.

Instead of reworking Secure with that, it would work better if it was a new map entirely.

[OskarXCI]

The 6.18 changes to Frontline had little to no effect on Secure. Since people are harder to K.O, engagements between teams now last longer but that's about it. Match duration is the same. K.Os only exchanges Tactical Rating between teams.

I can see people be slightly more willing to storm another team's home base with the current damage modifiers but the 1600 TR needed to win a match is still too much.

[Mutemutt]

It seems to be made for games where you split smaller teams to handle flags and mid rather than going all units in 1 spot but rarely seem that and most of time ends up just feeding other teams.

It used to be played that way in the beginning. Though, to be fair, getting from point also took a lot longer before since not only was the map much bigger, but the points also didn't have those staircases in the middle. If you wanted to get from point to point, you had to go along the outside wall.

Anyway, the actual change that made this mode take forever is that they changed how the node points are awarded. Originally, it was whichever team did the most damage took all of the points. This includes the big node that pops up at the 10 min mark. Typically the game would end there or at the next set of node pops, because one team would get a huge bump in score. When secure returned they changed the node points to be awarded like in shatter, so all the teams stay much closer together now.

But yeah, I think they should up the value of controlling the flags so that the game ends sooner

[OskarXCI]

Anyway, the actual change that made this mode take forever is that they changed how the node points are awarded. Originally, it was whichever team did the most damage took all of the points. This includes the big node that pops up at the 10 min mark. Typically the game would end there or at the next set of node pops, because one team would get a huge bump in score. When secure returned they changed the node points to be awarded like in shatter, so all the teams stay much closer together now.

But yeah, I think they should up the value of controlling the flags so that the game ends sooner

The change to how TR were awarded from drones/node had both positive and negative effects. When it was all or nothing, the team that got the large node would 8/10 times win the match . There was little chance for the other teams to catch up because the team in the lead would play very defensively. The large node had too much influence on the outcome of the match. It made holding bases kinda pointless.

The map had its makeover with 4.3 and until they added invincibility with 4.56, the map was perfectly fine. Matches ended in a timely manner since TR generated from holding bases were higher due to teams trying to hold all 6 bases on the map. Invincibility changed the meta, matches would last longer, often till the time limit was reached, like what see now.

[AnnRam]

Since it takes 10 people to take down a melee class now , just stay on top and camp bridges with MNK/ MCH, enjoy getting max BH and lots insta kills

[george357]

seems to be a bigger war in the forums then in pvp i check here every now and then to see if the smoke has cleared and so far the war is still raging.