Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Xylira]

Really? Spitefully? Where's the spite in that kind of organized event with the pvp community? The last few times I've been in these events, we had almost 2 full lobbies of FL matches for these specific events, are you going to tell me there are 140+ players that are spitefully joining in that event? And with the off chances that are very few players that are in the game with us and didn't queue because they didn't know, I can guarantee they either join the fun or mind their businesses and people let them mind it.

I wouldn't say they're spiteful, but they're definitely inconsiderate.

As for your guarantee, sorry but no, I can guarantee you that not everyone just happily goes along that isn't actively participating. I've encountered a few of these 'events' on occasion, and I find them neither fun nor quirky. They're disruptive to regular FL gameplay, and personally I've only ever been irritated by being stuck in matches where these 'events' have been going on.

[Cidel]

I've been following this thread for a while, and like most things, the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. The people who hate disingenuous premades abusing the meta with a passion like Mawlzy have valid points, as do people like Olivia on the topic of FL being oversaturated with listless fodder that need basic direction and apparently be told how to think. Wall of text inc, I know, sorry, but this has been a long time coming towards both sides:

snip

Apowowo has the right of it; I'd suggest reading it if you haven't because there's a lot of truth there in a fraction of what I'm about to type, in which a lot of the issue is just people who pay about as much attention to their surroundings as your average player in Alliance Roulette paying attention to what an AST in a different party is doing with their cards...

Okay, first of all: "I'm not having fun because a marked DRK with a working brainstem and macro on my team is dragging us around to tactically favorable spots and getting us BH off oblivious, tunnel-visioning exp farmers leading to a win" is something I haven't heard anyone say after a game, ever. Maybe I can count on two or three fingers the number of times somebody commented after winning about how it was "too easy" because of it, but never how it ruined their experience. But I dunno, I'm not there for 100% of every FL game on Primal. Sometimes there might even be somebody thanking them for commanding, outside of the generic "gg"s (which I've come to stop associating with an actual "good game," as people will still use this even if their team's score didn't break double digits). But hating it when your team has the murder ball... you sound like a bitter parent upset when their kid's team wins just because their kid didn't score a point all game.

I'm willing to bet most players are just appreciative they can contribute to something or feel powerful for once when they get to be a part of the "murderball," not guilty and bothered when they finally get their next win towards their total wins achievement glamour. Heck, I always solo queue and still have a generally unfavorable opinion of premades running the DRK draw-in meta, but if one is present on my team, I'll appreciate the break from watching cats not herd themselves and sitting in a room on fire saying "this is fine." One of the main advantages a DRK murderball brings to the table is that people have a clue on where to be and what to be doing with their attacks; organization. Can that organization exist outside of a premade DRK murderball meta? Of course, I'll get to that later- but honestly, without any commanders most teams usually attack aimlessly and die repeatedly over nothing and you have people come here and to reddit to complain how 2nd place always keeps attacking them instead of 1st place when in fact, it's actually as simple as the sheep at large following a handful of ignorant tunnel-visioners just because they seem to be fighting something.

It's been said over and over, but the DRK thing wouldn't be half as effective if people actually paid attention and learned to Guard and crawl away on reaction. But I get it; it's hard. Especially when most of the PvE content involves training players to memorize scripted mechanics, watching cast/health bars, and memorizing what order of buttons to press with your fingers. Yes, RPR, WAR and DNC can exist to make the combo almost impossible to escape; but quite frankly majority of the wipes I see from DRK pull-ins happen from raw jumps and AoE spammage with absolutely no Guard-breaks. How do I know this? Because I'm moving away in my bubble (maybe I lost half HP from late server tics, but I'll live) alongside 1 or 2 others, while almost a dozen people on my team are laying flat on the ground because they neither pay attention nor think of Guard the moment they see their character drawn-in. And people see this devastation and all their dead teammates and predictably come here to cry about it (like SAM's LB) when I can almost guarantee at least half of those dead people are your stereotypical 0-effort exp farmers who probably don't even make liberal use of Recuperate. Ever seen somebody slowly die over the span of 10 seconds with full MP? It's painful. So at some point I'm skeptical of criticizing the strat over the inability of the lowest-common denominators to deal with it.

Having said all that, the disingenuity of premades on any platform is eye-rollingly pathetic. And when I refer to premades here, I'm referring those running "meta" comps and strats, not the incredibly uncommon 4-actual-friends-playing-whatever-jobs-to-have-fun. The "wE jUsT wAnT tO pLaY wItH fRiE~e~EnDs, lol" justification isn't fooling anyone. There's 21 jobs to play as. It's not a coincidence that yall are using the same 3 or 4 meta jobs with 1 DRK minimum. Why don't you play as a RDM, 2 NINs and a PLD? That's right, because you're looking to curb-stomp, you're looking to tip the scales in your favor, you're looking to win. If you just came out and admitted it I'd have more respect for you, but instead you play the "playing with friends" excuse which puts the people who actually want to play with friends in a bad spot.

I get it. You want to win. You want to give yourself any legit advantage. I'm old enough to remember when people went around asking how to get more FL wins and they were always told to "make a premade." All the way back then when premades could be full parties of 8. Before the devs finally noticed how freaking oppressive that was and cut premades down to 4, even without DRK's massive pull-ins turning FL into a game of shooting fish in a barrel. That's why the devs were smart enough to split ranked Feast into Single entries and Light Party. And fortunately they can also smell the bull**** of "let me queue with friends (so we can stomp in there too)" in CC against randos and have been hesitant about that too. It's hard to take any altruism at face-value when these are the same people who really just use party queueing as anything from a tool for winning more to actively griefing other players (and yes, that exists, I have a screenshot of someone on reddit admitting to it, and another mentioning how 1 premade were getting their laughs-in by curbstomping randos in FL, only to stop wanting to play when actually pit against another premade).

But it sucks being stuck with 0-effort exp farmers, right? I get it. That's why you increase your chances of winning and having more influence in a given match by abusing large-scale PvP oversights like job-stacking and synced LBs (ie: 5+ WHMs spamming Medica II and Holy in Secure and casters group sleep/binding into stacked Cometeors). Fortunately, the devs eventually notice how these negatively impact the experience for everyone else, and make changes like diminishing debuff times or limiting HoTs, nerfing potencies, can no longer queue more than 4, and eventually eliminating GC queues. I don't know what 7.1 has in store for FL, but I will not be surprised (nor particularly blame them) if they decide to cut premade sizes once more (or altogether) or do something drastic. Which would be a shame, because premades weren't as powerful/influential throughout ShB-EW until the PvP rework and all jobs getting varying degrees of gamebreaking LBs.

Personally, I am also of the opinion that the main "problem" everyone really has is job-stacking, LB-stacking + DRK's toolkit. The former two are harder to deal with, because punishing people for playing the same jobs will likely just hurt more people who might be limited on what they can play as, and making LBs so that they do decreased damage if used in succession with other LBs of the same job seems unrealistic. So really, that kind of just brings us to DRK in itself as "the problem:" a job that can draw-in entire alliances into a single spot and bind them into a neat package-size enough for most jobs' AoE skills and LBs to nail all at once... Then escape any repercussions with a 10-second invincible LB that is usually up for any DRKs attempting this. The fact that PvP's Crystalline kits are bound to their FL's kits are what keeps them from simply adjusting the behaviors of abilities in FL without gutting how it works in CC- though it has been floated as an idea multiple times to just cap AoEs to 5(or at least the pull-in) or grant pull-in immunity to Purify or grant resistances after affected by it. Time will tell if the PvP person team will address this rather overbearing meta based around DRK, but I would adjust them and general job-stacking before taking a heavy-hand to the premades.



tldr; both of yall are right for different reasons: stop complaining about DRK premades, most people dying to it repeatedly don't even know or care enough about PvP. Premades, stop acting, most of yall just want easy wins or else you wouldn't be DRK'ing it up. If SE nerfs DRKs or the ability to continue premades, you'll know why.

[FatCatEnjoyer]

hey jessa didn't you get suspended from these very forums for calling someone an ignorant <expletive>

[Mawlzy]

hey jessa didn't you get suspended from these very forums for calling someone an ignorant <expletive>

I did get suspended, yes. The gentleman (?) in question repeatedly mansplained to me using such constructions as "Let me tell you...." "What you need to understand is..." and "Your problem is..." so I responded that he was an "arrogant X," where X is both a synonym for a donkey and a butt.

Again, I don't tell people they're stupid or ignorant simply because I disagree with them. I wouldn't presume to question someone's intellect, merely their manners. And I am only "rude" when repeatedly provoked. No doubt I could do better. As Chasuble remarks in The Importance Of Being Earnest: "Charity, dear Miss Prism, charity! None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts."

I leave it to you to decide if my response was proportionate to his rudeness, whether a 10-day suspension was a punishment to fit the crime, and who you suppose might have gone running to the mods to report the heinous act that I committed.

[Mawlzy]

Snip

I don't disagree with any of that and thank you for taking the time to write it. The only area in which we differ is our enjoyment of playing on the same team as a premade, and that is simply a matter of what we personally find enjoyable in matches.

[FatCatEnjoyer]

whoops today was the 7.05 patch

[Bobby66]

Meh, let us be honest here at the core premades exist to curbstomp people. If course we enjoy the tight match but for the most part it boils down to hanging with friends and geeking at all the kills and damage.

Hell back in TOR we played the dildo game where we marked someone with the light saber hilt and just train them. If not we farmed numbers obj be damned. Unless it was huttball then we sat in acid passing the ball around having our healers farm HPS. Having a 4 man premade on a 8 man team people would hate that far more in a game with a smaller pvp community. Premades kill swtor I was one of those premades that put our own fun above everyone else.

In short premades are often just group of friends or like minded players dicking around just having fun.

[Riletz]

This brand of "fun with friends" at the expense of 68 other people is absurd. All it takes is one cheese-fueled engagement for a premade to start rolling in Battle High and spiral the game out of control, which is coincidentally the exact amount of engagements necessary to figure out you're up against a premade. Oh yeah, I'm sure the Shatter cliff drop has so many counters. Maybe, you know, let's have a guy or two sit up there! Get real. These groups have an indefensible advantage. The Frontline community has proven that they're not willing to matchmake in good faith. Premades should be removed.

As an aside, you don't need Salted Earth to ruin a Frontline match. There are as many ways as stars in the sky. My personal favorite: four BH5 AST macros going off at once. Have fun dealing with that.

[Morphiana]

Frontline just isn't fun. People can join as a group which ruins the whole match for the other 2 groups and because it is 3 v 3, it always feels like there's a RNG aspect to it. So no matter what you do, it feels like in some matches that no matter how good your team is, it won't matter. For example, blue may be hammering your team without regard for who wins while red just sits back and eats up all the points (literally just happened). Sometimes it's an even match or you're losing but for whatever reason the other 2 decide to focus your team into oblivion. Then the spawn points of things in certain matches feels like they favor certain teams because at times, nodes will spawn almost entirely near the spawn points of the other two teams.

Ultimately, I'd prefer a large scale 1 v 1 match with capture the flag or something. Keep it simple.

[Kuroka]

I still want an mode where kills dont matter, only the captures. As long as the third team might feed the second kills, you will always face of way too many battle high players...