Frontlines: Leechers and Feeders

[Genz]

I don't trust the devs much for imposing expectations on players, but they really needs to do something (as it's been said, it's slowly plaguing PvE too)

Even Ocean Fishing requires 1200 pts during the mogtome events, to get the mogtomes (nothing outstanding, but at least it requires the player to push buttons for a couple of minutes)

For Frontline, it should expect players to deal 100-200k damage (~10k per minute), and not get killed 7-8+ times... Again, nothing incredible, just pushing buttons and have some basic survival instinct.

(another "solution" would be to just delete the roulette, or lower drastically the rewards, so the leeches aren't interested any more. It would be fine by me. Anything to keep them away...)

[Mawlzy]

I don't trust the devs much for imposing expectations on players, but they really needs to do something (as it's been said, it's slowly plaguing PvE too)

Even Ocean Fishing requires 1200 pts during the mogtome events, to get the mogtomes (nothing outstanding, but at least it requires the player to push buttons for a couple of minutes)

For Frontline, it should expect players to deal 100-200k damage (~10k per minute), and not get killed 7-8+ times... Again, nothing incredible, just pushing buttons and have some basic survival instinct.

(another "solution" would be to just delete the roulette, or lower drastically the rewards, so the leeches aren't interested any more. It would be fine by me. Anything to keep them away...)

Yeah, we have this conundrum atm. I've suggested deleting the roulette or massively reducing XP, but the problem raised by others is that this would kill the mode through long queues.

I don't think this would be the case, at least not on Aether. That said:

I really like the idea of some reasonable threshold for players that you make. Avoid dying a large number of times, inflict some damage, you get the XP. The suggestion by Namazu and others of giving XP for each K/A (and possibly a subtraction of each D?) is very much in the spirit of gaming, but once one starts worrying about cross-job balancing it becomes far too complex that SQEX would consider it IMO. Plus the bulk of the players who are solo are not going to be thrilled watching meta stacks farming 10/0/115 when it's way beyond the reach of strong solo players.

Fundamentally it's just difficult to use normal gaming philosophy to motivate people who regard the mode as a miserable chore rather than enjoyable content. Providing minimum requirements as you suggest is the best idea I've heard so far.

[LibitIncarne]

I'm positive it would kill queues on Dynamis at least, given the bulk of people playing the mode are in fact doing it for the XP (while hopefully trying to learn the mode), especially with Road to 90 being a thing where even coming in 3rd with the roulette bonus is practically an instant level up, and even without the bonus, it just takes maybe... 3 matches per level? If that goes away, yeah, all the leechers would likely bail, but then at that point, the only ones showing up are the premades wanting to farm newbies, and if those newbies aren't there to gobble up...

I mean, yeah, it would make the blighters from Aether/Prima/Crystal finally leave I guess, but then it also means anyone wanting to do Frontlines on Dynamis is right back to begging in shout for people to queue (as the case often was before Dawntrail, and it rarely worked), or data center hopping to A/P/C again (which I've already been doing again anyway). So even without removing the XP bonus at all, I'm not confident Dynamis Frontlines is going to stay sustainable by the end of the year anyway.

If we had 24man frontlines back, this wouldn't be as much of a problem.
The general opinion from people who have played both is that discounting the 8man premades that ran rampant, 24man was a much more balanced experience and there was naturally more communication because each person's actions individually meant more to the game.
It also popped a hell of a lot more, especially during non-peak hours.

[Mawlzy]

If we had 24man frontlines back, this wouldn't be as much of a problem.
The general opinion from people who have played both is that discounting the 8man premades that ran rampant, 24man was a much more balanced experience and there was naturally more communication because each person's actions individually meant more to the game.
It also popped a hell of a lot more, especially during non-peak hours.

This is fundamental to any good game content. Players have to feel that what they do influences the outcome of the game. And that should include both positive and negative contributions. If you make a mistake and there is no impact on the outcome, it's an uninteresting mode. If you AFK and there is no impact on the outcome (or repercussions for you), there's something seriously wrong with the mode.