Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Archeron]

I don't contribute much to chat unless nobody else is providing input, in which case I'll bung in a compass direction when the new S-rank has apparently been overlooked. But I will make the exception pre-match when people are complaining about premades. I agree it can be successful. Why? Because most solo players regard premades as a legal cheat, and are primed to do something about it.

One particularly encouraging approach, once the premade has been identified, is to suggest we lay off the opposing team without the premade. On a good day, that team notices and understands the plan. Smush the premade team to limit their points, then duke it out with each other for the win.

Ah... small pleasures.

"Unga Bunga smash (Premade Grand company here)" is a personal favorite of mine with a team of defeatists. Even the rouletters join in on such a simple, evil plan. Decent enough commanders can probably outplay it, but it at least throws a wrench at their odds of winning when half or more of their team is bogged down, and kept under constant assault. Usually works best on Seal Rock. With Onsal Hakair its mostly just a sabotage play, doesn't make it any less enjoyable to me though.

[IDontPetLalas]

I don't contribute much to chat unless nobody else is providing input, in which case I'll bung in a compass direction when the new S-rank has apparently been overlooked. But I will make the exception pre-match when people are complaining about premades. I agree it can be successful. Why? Because most solo players regard premades as a legal cheat, and are primed to do something about it.

One particularly encouraging approach, once the premade has been identified, is to suggest we lay off the opposing team without the premade. On a good day, that team notices and understands the plan. Smush the premade team to limit their points, then duke it out with each other for the win.

Ah... small pleasures.

There are definitely people who will complain about pre-mades. However extending this to a claim that "most" solo players regard this as "legal cheating" is not only basis but an oxymoron.

Pre-mades are allowed, you just admitted that it can be enjoyable to beat them, and I agree completely with that.

[Mawlzy]

There are definitely people who will complain about pre-mades. However extending this to a claim that "most" solo players regard this as "legal cheating" is not only basis but an oxymoron.

Pre-mades are allowed, you just admitted that it can be enjoyable to beat them, and I agree completely with that.

As in the past, you have fairly called me out on my hyperbole. Thank you. I suspect this happens because I tend to drop in here after the latest negative experience on FL.

What I was trying to express is that a lot of the defeatism and non-engagement by causal players is, IMO, being driven by the fact many such players regard mixed queues as unfair. I base this on chat in Aether FL matches. One can sometimes exploit this sense of injustice to rally the troops. And while it can indeed be fun, it seems a rather roundabout way of generating interesting matches when other structural solutions are available.

[Aravell]

What I was trying to express is that a lot of the defeatism and non-engagement by causal players is, IMO, being driven by the fact many such players regard mixed queues as unfair. I base this on chat in Aether FL matches. One can sometimes exploit this sense of injustice to rally the troops. And while it can indeed be fun, it seems a rather roundabout way of generating interesting matches when other structural solutions are available.

While mixed queues may be unfair because premades may have a communication advantage, you also can't really argue that FL would be fair in any way if they did remove premades.

As long as there's no matchmaking rating, matches will never be fair. Instead of the team with the premade winning, it will be the team with 2-3 people that have less than 10k damage done and have more than 5 deaths that will lose.

If you remove the upper portion of contribution by removing premades, you'll end up with the lower end of contributors having that much bigger of an impact on the outcome of a match. Those people will feed, regardless of there being premades or not.

[Mawlzy]

While mixed queues may be unfair because premades may have a communication advantage, you also can't really argue that FL would be fair in any way if they did remove premades.

As long as there's no matchmaking rating, matches will never be fair. Instead of the team with the premade winning, it will be the team with 2-3 people that have less than 10k damage done and have more than 5 deaths that will lose.

If you remove the upper portion of contribution by removing premades, you'll end up with the lower end of contributors having that much bigger of an impact on the outcome of a match. Those people will feed, regardless of there being premades or not.

You've made that point before and I don't agree with it. If there is a single premade in the match, you have a 71% chance of not being on that team. The distribution of weak players is random. While you will occasionally find that you have an unusually high proportion of people who don't care, that's a random process comparable to getting bad spawns.

Their presence has nothing like the impact a good premade can have.

You're correct that without a matchmaking algorithm that any individual match likely has a skill imbalance. Again this is simply a statistical deviation arising from the distribution of skill in the overall pool. It has nothing to do with "fairness." It may be, all other things being equal, a bookmaker would give you a 28% chance of winning a given match because of particularly weak team-mates. So what? Next time maybe it's 38%. It washes out. I would love it if everyone who queued into FL was trying, and a matchmaking algorithm is an interesting idea. But bad players isn't a fairness issue.

Besides I think this discussion is being driven by the quality of games and the health of the mode, not by win %. But if you want to take that route, the presence of premades guarantees that an average player who doesn't command has a long-term win-rate below 33.3%! The presence of weak players has no impact whatsoever on the long-term win %.

[Archeron]

The bottom % of players already dictate how most matches go, regardless of if there is a premade on their team or not. Dead weight players are bad enough that even premade teams cannot carry them to a win.

The "Upper portion" of the community should not be SOLEY attributed to premades. I'd wager they aren't even top bracket players in most instances if they queued without the premade. The upper bracket of players are those who rank high ratings in one or several categories like DMG/Assists/Healing/Kills/Caps, and players who help to coordinate their team effectively. None of this is exclusive to premades. The aftermath of a world where we either removed them outright, or reduced premade parties down to 2 players would be fairer matches. Note the key word "Fairer" here. PvP will be unfair in some aspects by nature, its just a matter of it not being unfair to the point where it becomes impossible to overcome with skill. A great example of this is Seal rock. The map has obvious terrain advantages/disadvantages that have been known about for ages, yet the winrates for all teams are fairly even in my experience.

I don't disagree with implementing a MMR system of some kind, even if it were hidden. It could even be perfectly acceptable in such a system if premade teams were paired against 2 enemy teams with more skilled players. I just highly doubt that Square is willing to invest that much in the way of development resources into a mode they have shown no interest in providing regular content to.

[Aravell]

I personally greatly disagree that premades cannot be beaten with skill, I've beaten many premades in a completely silent team before. The only reason premades have an advantage is that it requires both team to not feed the premade, this is why I think the players that don't try are the root problem, they're the ones who feed and enable the premade, without food, the premade is nothing. You said it yourself, the premades are likely not top tier players, so if you take away their food, what can they do?

I read earlier that some of you plan to try JP FL, you should give it a shot, maybe you'll see that premades aren't as big of an issue outside of Aether as you thought.

[Mawlzy]

I personally greatly disagree that premades cannot be beaten with skill, I've beaten many premades in a completely silent team before. The only reason premades have an advantage is that it requires both team to not feed the premade, this is why I think the players that don't try are the root problem, they're the ones who feed and enable the premade, without food, the premade is nothing. You said it yourself, the premades are likely not top tier players, so if you take away their food, what can they do?

I read earlier that some of you plan to try JP FL, you should give it a shot, maybe you'll see that premades aren't as big of an issue outside of Aether as you thought.

In a higher-skilled pool, the impact of a typical premade will be less, sure. The problem is that NA is currently a low-skill pool, and it will remain that way if premades are allowed to continue feeding on the hapless and removing agency from players who might actually improve if they felt their contribution mattered.

There's also the issue of the frequency of premades from two different angles. It sounds like premades are more common on JP? So: 1. players have more opportunity to learn counters; 2. a given match may have multiple premades, completely changing the dynamic. From the videos I've watched of JP FL it seems pretty clear all teams have excellent commanders, further nullifying the power of premades. It looks like fun, but that's not where NA is at.

I'll obviously follow the progress of Olivia's training program of premades - with a mix of interest and horror - and if it works and improves games on Aether I will happily admit I was wrong about all this. But I'm pessimistic partly because I've played with these people. We're told that abusive scholar "event" was fun for the participants. Wonderful. I can imagine the squealing with delight as all your ASSIST announcements started pinging like popcorn. But that kind of contemptuous attitude for those with whom you share the field has me convinced you're going down completely the wrong path. I'm baffled that such people claim to care about the mode and that they wish to improve it, while being so completely oblivious to how their actions damage it.

[Archeron]

I personally greatly disagree that premades cannot be beaten with skill, I've beaten many premades in a completely silent team before. The only reason premades have an advantage is that it requires both team to not feed the premade, this is why I think the players that don't try are the root problem, they're the ones who feed and enable the premade, without food, the premade is nothing. You said it yourself, the premades are likely not top tier players, so if you take away their food, what can they do?

I read earlier that some of you plan to try JP FL, you should give it a shot, maybe you'll see that premades aren't as big of an issue outside of Aether as you thought.

I've never suggested that a premade can't be beat with purely skill. Especially not against bad commanders. But how often is a silent team winning against a premade? I bet you its very rarely. If a team can beat a premade with no communication, or coordination I have to really question whether you're actually facing a premade at all, perhaps a team that just happens to have a lot of DRK players, or just a disorganized group of friends trying to imitate what they saw a premade doing.

Premades don't just win because they are "fed". If you focused on kills the entire match, you lose. Plenty of premades lose matches because they tunnel visioned on killing other players. It takes taking/holding nodes, minimizing losses, and maintaining battle high to win matches. Players that don't try are a symptom of a problem. The problem is Frontlines is not fun or enjoyable for the majority of players who participate in PvP content, either willingly, or unwillingly for rewards. The solution? Make Frontlines fun. That as I've described previously will take a MAJOR overhaul, which is likely not forthcoming since we've had more content removed from frontlines, than we have had added since 6.1.

My JP character will get to the point where its playable in frontlines. Once I stomach clearing ARR for the 18th time again to unlock jobs I personally prefer rolling as.

[Aravell]

In a higher-skilled pool, the impact of a typical premade will be less, sure. The problem is that NA is currently a low-skill pool, and it will remain that way if premades are allowed to continue feeding on the hapless and removing agency from players who might actually improve if they felt their contribution mattered.

Obviously the problem in NA is more complex, I'm not saying it's simple to fix. I at least respect Olivia for trying to do something about it, but how do you even begin to raise the skill floor of a region that still occasionally has someone retort "Shut up, tryhard" to "Stop hitting yellow, they have 0 points"?

It takes taking/holding nodes, minimizing losses, and maintaining battle high to win matches.

And all this is made a lot easier when they're fed. You claimed that premade players are often not that good to be at the upper end of skill, so they're nothing without being fed kills, yes?

I honestly disagree that players who don't try are a symptom. I believe they're one of the roots of why FL can be unenjoyable. If everyone actually tried to win regardless of the situation, you'd always end up with less people feeding the premade because everyone would be trying to survive and not give out free points. If people give up the moment they see a premade, they'll play worse and give in to an endless cycle of feeding the premade, which demoralises the rest of the team.