Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Mawlzy]

Queue pops. 45 seconds.

Re-center map, mount, drop a triangle on my head. 38 seconds.

See what jobs I have on my team. Two DRGs awesome! I start typing to ask if they want to play premade dress-up and before I've hit enter they both switch to WHM. No RPR. 30 seconds.

I ask if the DRGs might switch back and if anyone wants to play RPR or perhaps WAR. One of the former DRGs kindly obliges. The other tells me a) this isn't WoW, b) I don't pay their sub, c) they have no idea how to play DRG they are just leveling it. 15 seconds.

While all this is going on, a BRD has switched to MCH. Okay I have DRK-DRG-WAR-MCH. Workable if sub-optimal., but probably the best I could hope for. I suggest to the MCH that they follow my little triangle icon and take advantage of my dive. No response. 5 seconds.

"Okay team, here's the plan..." 0 seconds. ENGAGE.

This is going to have the same outcome as a premade that has played hundreds of matches together?

[AnotherPerson]

Let's break down those points.

You claim I "simply don't like players who are skilled and working together." This is completely untrue and to suggest it has put you on my fashion advice list. It's an absurd assumption that doesn't follow from anything I've said. I would love to see more cooperation between random players, and I agree it can (and should) occur. My primary complaints about (good) premades, which I've repeated ad nauseum at this point, are:1. I find them extremely dull to play with, and often oppressive to play against, largely because... 2. They encourage defeatism among many players who don't cooperate at all and become little more than someone riding a horse watching others PvP. The second point can be debated, I guess. The first can't because that is my experience of the game. My enjoyment is reduced by the presence of premades.

You claim that solo players can do "the exact same thing" that a premade can. I'll accept that you believe this, but I genuinely cannot understand how anyone could reach this conclusion.

It's because I've seen solo players do it before. Solo players can do it even better than needing the amount of coordination a premade does at the same skill level because to be a good solo player, you have to notice and take into accordance of many more variables and factors than a premade does and be able to make good judgements on the spot, thereby skipping the need for basic communication from macros. The faster response speed gives more advantages at the same skill level.

Yes, I also understand your primary complaint is about (good) premades, hence I pointed out that you don't want good premades to be queueing together because there's just no guarantee solo players of the same skill level and mentality to work together will appear either. Encouraging defeatism is a mentality issue in NA/EU mainly because of people unable to accept skill differences and working together. It wouldn't matter if they were solo or premade, I hear defeatism when skill gap is too wide before DRK combo existed. DRK combo just became the next blame point because it's the next easiest target. Good solo players can still coordinate just as well in any environment. Otherwise high-level ranked solo Crystalline Conflict matches wouldn't have existed outside of tournaments.

Queue pops. 45 seconds.

Re-center map, mount, drop a triangle on my head. 38 seconds.

See what jobs I have on my team. Two DRGs awesome! I start typing to ask if they want to play premade dress-up and before I've hit enter they both switch to WHM. No RPR. 30 seconds.

I ask if the DRGs might switch back and if anyone wants to play RPR or perhaps WAR. One of the former DRGs kindly obliges. The other tells me a) this isn't WoW, b) I don't pay their sub, c) they have no idea how to play DRG they are just leveling it. 15 seconds.

While all this is going on, a BRD has switched to MCH. Okay I have DRK-DRG-WAR-MCH. Workable if sub-optimal., but probably the best I could hope for. I suggest to the MCH that they follow my little triangle icon and take advantage of my dive. No response. 5 seconds.

"Okay team, here's the plan..." 0 seconds. ENGAGE.

This is going to have the same outcome as a premade that has played hundreds of matches together?

From your example just now, I think I figured out what your issue is with Frontlines. You don't like the randomness of Frontline players who doesn't have the same mentality or skill level. Premades has a way to guarantee people working together, but also because they can be playing with like-minded players with the same goal and mentality, so it's less random than hoping other players will have the same mentality and mindset as you.

So the big issue is that you want casual Frontlines to somehow provide a MMR system to balance players out in a casual queue. A MMR system will sort out bad players to play together so they wouldn't complain as much with defeatism (bad players end up with something akin to League's Iron division are roughly the same skill level), good players/good premades end up queueing together so they will always be able to communicate and have high-level matches, and people who fall inbetween those players to get their own matches so everyone has a game and matched against players with a similar level of skill.

While I can somewhat see it working in Casual Crystalline Conflict, I don't think that system particularly works in such a large-scale environment as Frontlines since it requires sorting matches by 72 players as opposed to 10 players. There's not that many players available at a given moment to create a MMR system and many matches for that as this game isn't PvP-focused like League of Legends or other MOBA games. I wouldn't opposed to it, but I don't think that's feasible without killing Frontlines entirely.

It might be possible if we were able to merge all the Datacenters into one gigantic PvP server since there's a lot of players who do play PvP if you all them all up (though that's a massive undertaking and not very feasible), but making people hop to another Datacenter specifically to play PvP is probably going to discourage plenty of players from the getgo.

[Mawlzy]

Why is everyone so keen today to tell me what my issues are? I've told you what they are. I dislike playing with premades.

I think an MMR may provide a bunny slope in which new players learn the mode and/or provide more engaging matches for higher-skilled players. As you note, LoL basically does that by default. But it's not a hill I'll die on, largely because I agree with the problems you point out with the idea. I dunno, maybe offer a "sprout queue" periodically restricted to players with less than 30 matches? I know I didn't try PvP for ages because I assumed (correctly) I'd start off pants and would likely take a while before I wasn't a hindrance.

Right, now to your well-earned fashion report...

Ahhhh.
Er....
Uhm.
Hmmm.

I got nothin, man, you're on your own.