Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[OliviaLugria]

Multiple reasons.

1. You claim a premade win-rate for yourself of 70%+ which I believe, although on Onsal I'd expect it to be 80% minimum. I've heard 80% from others, and as high as 90% for those real charmers who type that in chat to tell dissenters to fall in line or piss off. Let's take 80% as typical.

You or someone similar is running a premade session. I load in and find you are not on my team. I now have a 1 in 10 chance of winning the match (since the remaining 20% not sucked up by you is a priori split 50/50).

This is unlikely to be an interesting match since you're in it, and a 1-in-10 win probability is unattractively low. What else could I do to enjoy the next 15 minutes? Denying you a victory sounds reasonable. A natural side effect is that it increases the win probability of each of the two non-premade teams. Thus it increases my win chances, despite the fact the strategic imperative is to prevent the premade winning. As an advocate of "win at any cost" I would think this would appeal to you.

2. An attempt to evolve the meta. When premades are on the field, they dominate the current meta, both strategically and tactically in the stacks they use. Siding with the other non-premade team to defeat the premade is really the only counterplay, and by actively pursuing it, it's likely other solo players will follow suit. Again, this increases my win-rate long-term.

3. Spite.

I don't think that logic is sound. What I criticized was throwing the game to ensure a premade lost. If a premade farmed a team so hard they no longer have a chance of winning then they should also expect not to win due to retaliation.

This stays true the other way around. If you're going to attack a premade to the point they can't win, they will ensure your loss as well. So, really, it wouldn't increase your chances of winning, but only the 3rd unrelated team.

Obviously, hitting the premade team and keeping them from barreling over everyone is strategically sound. Doing this to the extent you also lose is stupid.

[Mawlzy]

I don't think that logic is sound. What I criticized was throwing the game to ensure a premade lost. If a premade farmed a team so hard they no longer have a chance of winning then they should also expect not to win due to retaliation.

This stays true the other way around. If you're going to attack a premade to the point they can't win, they will ensure your loss as well. So, really, it wouldn't increase your chances of winning, but only the 3rd unrelated team.

Obviously, hitting the premade team and keeping them from barreling over everyone is strategically sound. Doing this to the extent you also lose is stupid.

I'd suggest there's also a flaw in your logic.

If a premade team farmed a non-premade team so hard the non-premade team retaliated, what would happen? The non-premade team would get wiped out even faster. This is the crux of the matter. The only counterplay is if both non-premades get sufficiently hacked off they double-team the premade. Which is not easy to do without cross-team chat, although ironically the one group that could arrange this are PvP Discords. (Hence an unrelated concern about win-trading.)

Where I suspect you and I agree is that I regard it as contrary to the spirit of the game when non-premade_1 deliberately feeds non-premade_2 so that non-premade_2 edges ahead of the premade. The level of frustration is so high in some games I have seen it happen. I would never advocate for that approach.