Frontline Kinda Sucks

[Kaen_Yume]

Running Frontlines to get a title or mount will probably make you go insane. There's quite a few outstanding problems that I feel should have been addressed a long time ago, but still haven't been.

1. DRK and DRG. I'm kinda surprised they haven't done anything about these two since the PVP update because they are so broken together. When a DRK pulls a group in and a DRK LB's, DRG's LB does so much damage and DRK's LB lasts 10 years (seconds) on top of doing a moderate amount of damage. Some say you can "easily" counter it with guard, but that's not true. Most of the time they are also paired with a DNC that can lb and remove guard. It ends up obliterating your alliance most of the time and you see it so, so often. Even if they don't have a Dancer and you manage to escape the AoE pull in, another DRK can pull you back. This has been a problem for so long and is such a broken meta. How is this not addressed yet?

2. Premades. Premades make Frontline not fun. So many people queue up Frontlines just for the exp, and that makes it hard to win. It makes it even harder to win when you're going against a premade party that has its stuff together. Sometimes they play DRK/DRG, sometimes they're all Scholar and make me rethink my life choices. Sometimes both teams will go against the premade group to make them lose out of spite, so I can't be the only one that dislikes seeing them.

3. RNG and the maps. Even when you try your best, RNG screws you over anyways and gives the win to the other team. You're 100 points away from winning? Cool, just gonna spawn an S rank next to yellow's base and now they get to win, nerd. RNG doesn't even matter sometimes though, because the premade you are facing is too strong to be bothered by that S that spawned in the enemy teams base. The only map that didn't have an RNG problem was the one that's being reworked right now, Borderland Ruins. I really hope they don't change much about it because that was the most balanced map.

There's other stuff like cheating players, purify, guard being useless because so many things go through it, AST being pretty OP, being tossed around like a hot potato because of all the pull-ins, and more that makes Frontline pretty bad imo. All in all I wish there was more balance because Overwatch 2 at the moment is more balanced than FFXIV PVP, and that's impressive. I've also heard from others that they really hate running Frontlines and I feel like that shows the position it's in right now. Hopefully they can make it better eventually. If anyone took the time out of their day to read this, what do you think? What are your thoughts? (and also, thanks)

[IvoryBadge]

First and second points are relevant to each other so I’ll talk for both.
It’s mostly balance and server issues, say, DRG is super tanky while dealing so much burst damage, draw ins-outs animation locks you and you can’t do much about it, some abilities defy Guard and Purify is useless in a lot of situations, the list goes on.

In my opinion nothing wrong with coordination even within meta classes/premades, and they’re actually easy to counter if you’re aware of your surroundings AND your own abilities (also having an amazing alliance by your side), but the issue is you can’t do anything for the other 23 teammates you have other than watching them getting nuked, since, most of them are there for exp, they probably won’t bother learning how to counter in such situations. one time I literally got called Toxic for saying in alliance chat “Spread when the marked DRK is approaching” because it seems to them I’m “giving orders/taking the said mode seriously”, so that says a lot i guess.

If you don’t like getting killed a lot try playing “safe” classes like Machinist, Summoner and Ninja.

As for RNG maps, the maps are bad as a whole there’s no denying that, Shatter is just depressing, at least Onsal Hakair is awesome.

It’s a shame you’re having a bad experience in Frontline to get achievements, but from my own experience, I didn’t have to grind for achievements because I unlocked most of them without even realising, i just spam frontline for fun, and I encourage you to try and enjoy it instead of thinking about it as a grind. Even if you’re a god tier FL enjoyer who knows every little detail about Frontline, you will lose a lot so you have to accept that winning and losing are inevitably random.

[ThaCa]

Biggest issue is how badly the game scales for such a large scale conflict. They had to slap massive damage reductions on people to not evaporate immediately in bigger fights, which in turn makes low count brawls drag on forever with nothing happening, which in turn leads to only somewhat viable playstyle being the deathball zerg. DRK/DRG/AST meta is direct result of only big bursty fights mattering, it used to be SMN/SCH/WHM before the damage reductions, but instead of not grouping up and getting wiped by aoe people never learned and kept doing it, they intervened.

The decision to have the system also be 3way fight is baffling, in theory being able to gang up on the leader should make the games less volatile to stuff like premades is rendered moot because 2nd and 3rd place often just end up fighting each other and ignrore the 1st team. While it introduces a level of randomness, it's absolutely horrible to play because the 3rd party will more often than not play to win and just mess with the game. Also result of the roulette giving good rewards for low or no participation.

Randomness wouldn't be so bad if the game would inform people about the next spawns way way earlier so they have time to reposition before the stuff goes active. Maybe ensuring that the spawning nodes have more even split throughout the map would also help.

Don't get me started in some of the older map shapes or past changes. Seal Rock has quite a big of spawn differences and Borderland Secure got butchered to the point where spawn protection makes main bases basically uncappable, reducing it to yoyoing around the side spawns.

Hopefully the 7.0 Remake will completely changes how the mode works, but they probably just do some small tweaks and call it a day.

[Mayhemmer]

Snip...

I don't really have much to say that isn't just basically this. This sums it up better than most breakdowns I've seen. I can only hope the devs actually dedicate to examining and tackling the whole of the issue from top to bottom, and not just continue with the status quo.

[Themarvin]

Well only people that is going to openly exploit it would think that it is a great idea with this combination, however it is not fairplay whenever it get to it and the way it works now it is pretty much what you would call an open exploit that is being used as it is, there is nothing great about it.

As for cordination of a couple of massive skills, it is not rocket science to do, absolutely requires next to no skills to do.

[Miki_L]

Part of the issue with DRG + DRK is the general lack of player skill. I think with the change where DRG LB's now appear red things may get slightly better (yeah right!). I'm more disappointed that there aren't other combos in the game like it to diversify it a bit. Ideally, moves get different properties in frontlines and more jobs can synergize in this way.

The lack of updates for the mode for several patches has been severely disappointing. I thought the last set of frontline specific adjustments all made sense, they just didn't take it far enough and missed some things (AST).

I think randomness is necessary for how the playerbase plays this mode, which is full of casual players using no comms whatsoever. If you consider the least random of all the maps (Shatter), it features the largest steamrolls when premades are involved. Of course there are other reasons why this is the case, but the general symmetry and predictable flow of the match means that once you are ahead you generally do not need to take risks which is why the best strategy for that mode is to ignore ice for the first part of the game and just focus on battle high. I find it funny that the super esports competitive mode Crystalline Conflict has more map gimmicks than the more casual mode with mostly roulette players in Frontline.

[Mayhemmer]

I think randomness is necessary for how the playerbase plays this mode, which is full of casual players using no comms whatsoever.

I will admit, the way objectives are designed currently does make sense for the 3-team design. I imagine it's harder to justify perpetually-static, symmetric objectives when you have to consider the presence of an odd number of participants on an asymmetrical map.

Personally, I just feel the adherence to the 3-team design lends to a lot of problems that might otherwise not exist, and is extremely frustrating to play around.

[Astralrisk]

Biggest issue is how badly the game scales for such a large scale conflict. They had to slap massive damage reductions on people to not evaporate immediately in bigger fights, which in turn makes low count brawls drag on forever with nothing happening, which in turn leads to only somewhat viable playstyle being the deathball zerg. DRK/DRG/AST meta is direct result of only big bursty fights mattering, it used to be SMN/SCH/WHM before the damage reductions, but instead of not grouping up and getting wiped by aoe people never learned and kept doing it, they intervened.

I think your entire post is really good, but I want to comment on this part since I resonate with the bit on the damage reduction aspect the most. Before the DR changes in 6.1, I thought that FL was a lot more fun since it felt my individual contribution was much more important. If I went in a small group/by myself to take a point from a small group/one person in a game of Seal Rock, I can actually conceivably do it. Which felt nice that in a team of 24 people, I as an individual could contribute if I was good enough. Now it feels like if I don't have enough people to overwhelm anyone I am fighting, I can't actually beat them. Especially if the person I am in a fight with is playing tank/melee, which does not feel fun at all. I know that FL is a big team battle mode, but I felt like there was some form of individuality that was taken away.

[AnotherPerson]

First and second points are relevant to each other so I’ll talk for both.
It’s mostly balance and server issues, say, DRG is super tanky while dealing so much burst damage, draw ins-outs animation locks you and you can’t do much about it, some abilities defy Guard and Purify is useless in a lot of situations, the list goes on.

In my opinion nothing wrong with coordination even within meta classes/premades, and they’re actually easy to counter if you’re aware of your surroundings AND your own abilities (also having an amazing alliance by your side), but the issue is you can’t do anything for the other 23 teammates you have other than watching them getting nuked, since, most of them are there for exp, they probably won’t bother learning how to counter in such situations. one time I literally got called Toxic for saying in alliance chat “Spread when the marked DRK is approaching” because it seems to them I’m “giving orders/taking the said mode seriously”, so that says a lot i guess.

If you don’t like getting killed a lot try playing “safe” classes like Machinist, Summoner and Ninja.

As for RNG maps, the maps are bad as a whole there’s no denying that, Shatter is just depressing, at least Onsal Hakair is awesome.

It’s a shame you’re having a bad experience in Frontline to get achievements, but from my own experience, I didn’t have to grind for achievements because I unlocked most of them without even realising, i just spam frontline for fun, and I encourage you to try and enjoy it instead of thinking about it as a grind. Even if you’re a god tier FL enjoyer who knows every little detail about Frontline, you will lose a lot so you have to accept that winning and losing are inevitably random.

Pretty much this comment right here.

Don't take this the wrong way OP, but most of your problems just stem from player skill issue, and mostly just playerbase mentality issue rather than game mode issue.

There is more to the game than just coordination. Aggro, Tactics, strategy, map awareness, player skill levels, etc. Those might sound like just random words, but a lot of people never really considered how to counter stuff like DRG LB or DRK+AST combo. They just run in, get killed, and think it's OP without stopping to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of the combo.

If I really had to be honest, it's just this playerbase tends to give up and throw matches rather than play the game and use all those points I previously listed to their advantage. Some people I met even thought waiting for the purify buff to be over before applying a CC is cheating when it's just... using your brain and trying to win by not wasting your CC to make the biggest impact. Half of them just put in the bare minimum effort and then expect to win or be carried. You can't really expect much more from players in a casual game mode as they aren't categorized based on their ranking and individual mastery of their PvP job when they are queued up to FL. It's a hodgepodge of players of varying skill levels and coordination taking part of a match. Not to mention, this isn't PvE - for some reason people are stuck with the mindset that things aren't fair because they're having a tough time against opponents. Every opponent on the opposing side is a player as well and subject to the same limitations as you are. That's just how the nature of PvP works. Not everyone wins. Things naturally have a stark contrast when there's a group of players who work like a well-oiled machine as opposed to the group who are running around like headless chickens. Regardless of whether it is a premade or not, it wouldn't make a difference in the presence of people who are actively trying to win by coordinating together against people who aren't. You can't have your cake and eat it too.


I got my Frontlines mount as a solo player, fought against plenty of premades, and won plenty of times to get the mounts without ever getting close to going insane. It's definitely possible to win games even playing against premades as solo. Even with some premades, players tend to play like bots and I just change up my strategy to beat them based on what behaviors they exhibit. If they have more coordination, I just destroy it with various tactics based on how the map, alliance positioning, etc. is going on. Of course, it helps to shotcall so everyone stays on the same page as well. It's a lot of player skill issue because most players never considered those factors would make a drastic impact and I can't blame them either. PvE is literally as lifeless as it can get in terms of interacting with the enemy and the environment and that's the mindset most players have when going into PvP -- when in reality PvP has the most interactive gameplay through CC, knockbacks, and zoning/capturing point locations. PvE enemies are always going to just run up at you and start whacking away whoever seems to be the most threatening target. Considering how people would just attack the nearest target (usually tanks jobs who ran up) in PvP, I say the habit of people turning their brains off and panic guarding when things suddenly turn bad translated very well. You just have to be very proactive in creating those situations rather than passively let them happen, as in the case of PvE. You might not always win, but you can win more than you lose as long as you play your cards right and your alliance isn't intentionally throwing the game.

As for RNG, that's actually beneficial than a downside. Otherwise games will always play out exactly the same and that's super boring. It's exactly why PvE feels so dead compared to PvP.

[Themarvin]

Pretty much this comment right here.

Don't take this the wrong way OP, but most of your problems just stem from player skill issue, and mostly just playerbase mentality issue rather than game mode issue.


I got my Frontlines mount as a solo player, fought against plenty of premades, and won plenty of times to get the mounts without ever getting close to going insane. It's definitely possible to win games even playing against premades as solo. Even with some premades, players tend to play like bots and I just change up my strategy to beat them based on what behaviors they exhibit. If they have more coordination, I just destroy it with various tactics based on how the map, alliance positioning, etc. is going on. Of course, it helps to shotcall so everyone stays on the same page as well. It's a lot of player skill issue because most players never considered those factors would make a drastic impact and I can't blame them either. PvE is literally as lifeless as it can get in terms of interacting with the enemy and the environment and that's the mindset most players have when going into PvP -- when in reality PvP has the most interactive gameplay through CC, knockbacks, and zoning/capturing point locations. PvE enemies are always going to just run up at you and start whacking away whoever seems to be the most threatening target. Considering how people would just attack the nearest target (usually tanks jobs who ran up) in PvP, I say the habit of people turning their brains off and panic guarding when things suddenly turn bad translated very well. You just have to be very proactive in creating those situations rather than passively let them happen, as in the case of PvE. You might not always win, but you can win more than you lose as long as you play your cards right and your alliance isn't intentionally throwing the game.

As for RNG, that's actually beneficial than a downside. Otherwise games will always play out exactly the same and that's super boring. It's exactly why PvE feels so dead compared to PvP.

There is no skill in what they are doing with the method, it is just using the next open exploit as it is, it barely requires anything to do at all, lol don't call it skill what they are doing.