Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Wilford111]

https://imgur.com/a/2dnyj3N

Anyone who thinks this is okay is seriously deluded.

btw we lost, because the other team had more Dark Knights. SE should seriously just delete Frontline if they aren't going to do anything about the horrendous balance. What a joke. How long have they had to fix it, and did nothing? What is going on over there?

[AllenThyl]

I appreciate you engaging in a positive manner, and I agree with some of your points. Notably, improvement needs to be community-driven.

Behold, "positive, community-driven improvements":

Really remarkable how a small group of curb-stomping clowns make the mode unplayable for everyone actually interested in good PvP matches.

I do worry that, with a new generation of mini-Olivias taking the helm, the times they end up on the same team will just magnify the current problems. I guess I can hope they'll self-destruct through infighting.

Have you ever thought about how games and game modes grow? How new players become interested in a mode and want to get better? PvP games/modes are notorious for struggling with this, and it's invariably because of a self-appointed elite who are completely deaf to any criticisms that might diminish their "fun," and who can't see beyond "win at any cost."

A skill gap which you insist on widening by running your premades.

I dislike playing with you and people who adopt your playstyle.

What really amuses me is these premades actually believe they are "doing PvP" and are good at it.

Pretty sure FL will be part of the Mogtome event starting in a week. I'd like to encourage premades and other Discord-based abusers (such as the Q-synchers) to back off during this period. Maybe take the opportunity to learn to play solo. If you unleash your usual tricks, this will achieve two things:

[Aravell]

So, I don't have a horse in this race because I'm neither pro-premade nor anti-premade, but I do think both sides have a point.

The pro-premades have a point that premades aren't the whole issue with frontlines and that people who find every reason to give up and leech exp are very much detrimental to the game mode. Also they're right that it's not their obligation to make sure their opponents have fun in the game.

However, the anti-premades do also have a point that new players being completely destroyed by a coordinated group and not knowing what to do about it would cause the new player to just abandon the mode when they could've eventually become a regular player.

Neither side is fully in the wrong here.

[Mawlzy]

Speaking of nodes, the ones doing the killing were also taking them into neutral *and leaving them that way* to use as bait.

More likely they were doing that for padding purposes. Not getting points from objectives gives more headroom to achieve better personal stats. While I believe many premades are taking what the mode gives them and trying to win as efficiently as possible, there's clearly a group with different goals.

[Mawlzy]

So, I don't have a horse in this race because I'm neither pro-premade nor anti-premade, but I do think both sides have a point.

The pro-premades have a point that premades aren't the whole issue with frontlines and that people who find every reason to give up and leech exp are very much detrimental to the game mode. Also they're right that it's not their obligation to make sure their opponents have fun in the game.

However, the anti-premades do also have a point that new players being completely destroyed by a coordinated group and not knowing what to do about it would cause the new player to just abandon the mode when they could've eventually become a regular player.

Neither side is fully in the wrong here.

I completely agree with this. I've been persuaded by the arguments of others that, contrary to my starting position, banning premades is a blunt instrument and lazy method of making matches more interesting for all players. But so long as FL offers massive XP rewards, the non-combatants aren't going anywhere, and SQEX sure as hell isn't going to start banning people for doing insufficient damage. Meanwhile, new players conclude the mode is -- to quote one today -- "dogwater."

If someone can tell me how we can achieve a rapprochement, I'm all ears. Otherwise, the battlefield is simply going to get more toxic. I think three ranked tiers would work. It does in many other PvP games.

[Archeron]

Frontlines is never going to be "Good" PvP. It's just a fact we have to accept. The engine this game runs on is terrible, and it holds the entire game back, and it's never going to be fixed.

The goal should be "Good enough" PvP. To me, this means More maps, better job balancing, Better team balancing, better introduction to PvP, clearer map objectives for brain rot players. Give me a reason to queue into Frontlines beyond just a free roulette bonus, or FoMo rewards that require zero skill to attain. I'm doubtful they will make PvP "Good enough" with 7.1 with their track record. But time will tell.

[Aravell]

I am honestly very curious how NA and JP developed so differently when met with the same strat.

We all know how JP was ground zero for the DRK meta strat. But shortly after the meta became widespread, we started getting 4-man WAR premades whose sole purpose is to disrupt the DRK players.

When the DRK meta got to NA, there doesn’t seem to really be any attempt made to counter it, instead people jumped onto the DRK bandwagon for easier wins.

It seems that the end result is that NA Frontlines turned out more miserable than JP Frontlines.

Now, I'm by no means glorifying JP players, I have met some NA players who were fantastic at countering DRK dives. It's just an interesting observation that JP immediately developed counters while NA just added more DRKs.

[Mawlzy]

I am honestly very curious how NA and JP developed so differently when met with the same strat.

We all know how JP was ground zero for the DRK meta strat. But shortly after the meta became widespread, we started getting 4-man WAR premades whose sole purpose is to disrupt the DRK players.

When the DRK meta got to NA, there doesn’t seem to really be any attempt made to counter it, instead people jumped onto the DRK bandwagon for easier wins.

It seems that the end result is that NA Frontlines turned out more miserable than JP Frontlines.

Now, I'm by no means glorifying JP players, I have met some NA players who were fantastic at countering DRK dives. It's just an interesting observation that JP immediately developed counters while NA just added more DRKs.

Isn't it simply that there are enough low-skill/disinterested players in NA that the foxes never run out of rabbits? Or is it more that commanders on JP like the challenge of competing against other commanders, whereas for the most part on NA the premades seem happy to farm weak players for their nosebleed win-rates?

It's also the case that, while many of the pros here tell us how easy it is to counter DRK+ premades, the only recent guide on the "correct" way to play the current meta is based entirely on the DRK+ paradigm. So clearly it's all Olivia's fault. (Kidding, honey.)

I suspect if someone went to the trouble of writing a guide on, say, the quatro-MNK anti-DRK stack it might gain some traction. But it seems the NA Discord community is, for the most part, perfectly happy with the current meta and the easy win-farming it allows, even if it means traveling to Dynamis to unleash its full fury.

It's even possible that if the top third of NA players only played against each other, a JP-like meta featuring interesting counterplay would evolve organically.

[Aravell]

Really? Huh... I just assumed EU and JPN (plus OCE) were just as miserable as we were doing the exact same thing, lol.

Not really. JP and OCE have a very robust Frontlines experience. Commanders die all the time, no one is invincible, it's great fun.

Isn't it simply that there are enough low-skill/disinterested players in NA that the foxes never run out of rabbits? Or is it more that commanders on JP like the challenge of competing against other commanders, whereas for the most part on NA the premades seem happy to farm weak players for their nosebleed win-rates?

Well, I wouldn't presume to speak from authority on why NA Frontlines ended up this way, but it is an interesting observation to be made. How 2 different groups react very differently to the same situation.

I have been getting pretty close matches on Crystal DC lately though.

[AllenThyl]

And yet that's exactly what happened, unless you really think those 48 people did nothing at all the whole time (as opposed to the last minute when they knew they were cooked and done), which doesn't seem to be the case considering how many times they would have needed to die to get that score, or how Yellow was at least trying to take nodes.

You yourself admit that you constantly engage in lethargic behavior. So yes, it can actually be reasonably assumed that quite a number of people basically did "nothing at all" the whole time.

or how I actively ignore "commanders" because these people are *not* playing to my benefit but my active detriment by demanding I play an NPC in "their" mode.

"I deliberately and actively engage in behavior I know is detrimental to my team's success, why are my teams not having much success?"
You are playing a team game. Your ego will have to take a back seat for 12 mins. You are the Warrior of Light only in terms of story, you aren't really the center of the universe. To the enemies, you are just <jobname>. Stop being so unbelievably entitled in a competitive game mode, and start working on your own attitude.

So no, I don't want anything to do with people from these guides, Discords, linkshells, etc because they're the reason the mode sucks to begin with and I would sooner get banned than turn into such a loathsome thing. The only thing they are to me at this point are enemy units I can't target, and if that sounds toxic or hostile to you, I'm simply giving the same energy back because this "community" you speak of never cared about making things better for anyone other than themselves, so spare me the faux-altruism.

Or, you know, stop queueing. That is an option. If you don't intent do be a net positive for your own team anyway, just stay away.

It's not even *just* new players, where exactly is the motivation supposed to be for regular players like myself when I'm no better at stopping a premade from doing what they're going to do whether I'm on their side or not?

If you cannot motivate yourself to engage in a gamemode you voluntarily queued for yourself, why should this burden then somehow fall on others? You have excuses for everything, but show very little personal responsibility for anything it seems.

Is this what PVP (and PVE) has decayed to in this game? That the majority of the group is forced to play a captive audience for someone else to flex on? Seems like another example of "I don't think this community is as well-meaning and cooperative as people think it is" when some of our biggest topics that a *lot* of us keeping popping up in are about premades and "slow-solo" tanks in the Duty Finder, or how one mode is completely dominated by one job with its one skill, while the other mode can't even bloody justify the existence of AN ENTIRE ROLE!

You get the community you foster. By enabling feeders, griefers, afkers, dps who don't aoe in a dungeon, NINs that use doton on single targets, healers that only heal, healers that don't heal at all, tanks who don't mitigate, never calling anyone out for these behaviors but aggressively shouting down anyone that does, you get a community of precisely that. Which makes the few people who actually do give a damn about the game that they pay money for, and invest a lot of time in, actually stand out like a sore thumb. Also, PvP content isn't "cooperative", it's competitive. Just because Frontline doesn't have some league mode or similar, doesn't mean it's not competitive. The other teams aren't interested in giving you a fun match, they are there to win, and that means killing you as often as possible whenever possible. And YOU should have the same motivation.

And for all of that which can be laid at Square-Enix's feet for their less than ideal design decisions, it was ultimately the playerbase that chose to exploit those flaws until we became our own worst enemies. Hell, almost have half a mind to make a separate topic precisely pointing this out...

"Exploit". DRK's pull in doesn't have 20000 km range, stop standing together tightly packed every single second of every single game. The maps are 3D and offer lots of space and at times verticality to have map presence without being an easy target.