Frontlines: There should not be ANY rewards for 2nd or 3rd place

[Mawlzy]

The thing is the solution has been directly, infront of their faces, for years, and years. Other PvP games have had these VERY SAME issues, and implemented solutions. Be that matchmaking systems, auto kicking lethargic players, adjusting job/character balancing, reducing player counts, slashing premades in half, adding a cap to the number of targets afflicted by an AoE, you name it, someones already done it. All Square Enix has to do is have their devs go and play these games, and see what works, what doesn't, and the positives/drawbacks associated with each system they run across. We don't even have to debate what's best. The R&D has been done by their competitors, and nothing is better than stealing other peoples useful ideas.

Fair. I'm very much in favor of matchmaking and auto-kick, and the other options you list all make sense.

As you've pointed out in other threads, the key is making FL in particular an attractive mode to play. I don't think the player base needs to be much bigger such that people stop countering changes (particularly such as reducing rewards for losing teams) by "but Q times!"

And obviously smaller teams addresses that directly and has other gameplay advantages.

[TofuLove]

lol no

If the devs finally decide to do something about leeches/griefers one day, it has to be based on personal performance.

My original message was about 2 types of players:

1. Those who are griefing by not participating/throwing.
2. Those that are griefing by actively deciding to just go against 2nd or 3rd place team for some personal reason. Whilst a tactic of farming a losing team for a win could in some circumstances land you a 1st place - more frequently than not it will just put you at a disadvantage, so it's a dice throw.

You can get excellent scoreboard results by padding against a 3rd or 2nd place team as they are frequently weaker, and if they are fighting 1st place - quite easily pinched. In such situation, where personal performance is rewarded - 2nd type of player is still rewarded. And the team being farmed would then get less rewards as a result of being farmed. This is kinda what we have now on Light and Chaos, and honestly the games have been terrible. The only way to dissuade this is by significantly nerfing the rewards for 2nd or 3rd place, and not just personal performance

[Mawlzy]

My original message was about 2 types of players:

1. Those who are griefing by not participating/throwing.
2. Those that are griefing by actively deciding to just go against 2nd or 3rd place team for some personal reason. Whilst a tactic of farming a losing team for a win could in some circumstances land you a 1st place - more frequently than not it will just put you at a disadvantage, so it's a dice throw.

You can get excellent scoreboard results by padding against a 3rd or 2nd place team as they are frequently weaker, and if they are fighting 1st place - quite easily pinched. In such situation, where personal performance is rewarded - 2nd type of player is still rewarded. This is kinda what we have now on Light and Chaos, and honestly the games have been terrible. The only way to dissuade this is by significantly nerfing the rewards for 2nd or 3rd place, and not just personal performance

There's a lot of this on Aether, largely stemming from Discord groups.

[TofuLove]

I think your discussions, Archeron & Mawlzy, were both quite interesting and I sort of wanted to reply to them both.

The reward structure then needs to be changed. There needs to be more weight to winning/losing. Add a special currency or something that gives access to special rewards only for winning matches. Add incentives for people to perform. Top 5 performers on each team recieving additional rewards. People who underperform or just AFK the whole match and do less than 200k dps, or just die excessively get a reduced reward (Just give them rewards equal to third place since they contributed nothing to their teams 1st or 2nd place victory.) ect.

I spoke to a friend about this, and they suggested adding a mechanic that is similar to Khloe’s Wonders Tails, which incentivises to win, and reward is not based on the amount of wins, but is RNG and might reap rewards that aren’t otherwise accessible.

Though as you said rewarding good performance is an obvious thing to do, and the fact that SE hasn’t done ANYTHING to address it is quite telling.

Fair. I'm very much in favor of matchmaking and auto-kick, and the other options you list all make sense.

As you've pointed out in other threads, the key is making FL in particular an attractive mode to play. I don't think the player base needs to be much bigger such that people stop countering changes (particularly such as reducing rewards for losing teams) by "but Q times!"

And obviously smaller teams addresses that directly and has other gameplay advantages.

If you ever tried to play Frontline on Oceania, their pops only really last few hours even if the regulars keep playing - it’s quite depressing. I think I saw someone who I think plays in Oceania in another thread about regulars leaving for 7.1, so it's even more applicable to them.

From memory about another conversation with a friend, who used to play during 8v8v8 Frontline era, the change to 24v24v24 was exactly to reduce personal responsibility… which is a shame really, as I think that would work, and still have healthy amount of pops. And addresses the problem with huge amount AOE and crowd control in the current pvp kit. Basically reducing frontline team size to make it CC on steroids.

Whilst I am still in favour of nerfing losing team rewards, I think this would combat the problem with less people in the queue.

[Mawlzy]

From memory about another conversation with a friend, who used to play during 8v8v8 Frontline era, the change to 24v24v24 was exactly to reduce personal responsibility… which is a shame really, as I think that would work, and still have healthy amount of pops.

Maybe a better way of putting it is that 24-person teams make it less intimidating for PvP rookies to get involved, but in practice that translates into a subset of so-called participants who don't actually participate. (They go beyond dumping personal responsibility and celebrate the fact they're mocking the mode.)

This reflects a larger problem with FL. It is the only active large-scale PvP in the game. As such, it tries to be accessible to new players, but equally there's a hardcore element who prize having a high win-rate and who attempt to develop advanced, premade-based strategies that have the potential to absolutely shred less-experienced players.

The players who announce at the off "just here for the glam" apparently feel safe to do so because so many treat FL as a joke.

This is why I ultimately concluded matchmaking is the best solution, since serious players and inexperienced/griefers will naturally tend to be separated. Reducing team size would then help queues, and cross-DC queues would hopefully solve the problem altogether.

The bottom line is throwing players with vastly different expectations, skill levels, and goals all in the same pool inevitably leads to the current unsatisfactory situation.

[IceEyes]

To be honest in last time i see a lot of weird propositions about FLs. I mean, they have some sense, but, usually OPs propose very radical methods to fix the "problems".

Why we just cant agrees with fact ff14 not PvP game, and as i know never was. Its a bit weird expect a lot of nice PvP content in game, what isnt target audience of the game.

FF14 offers quite a lot of equality. You fight with the same number of players. You have fixed damage and a supply of resources equal to your opponents.

I just want to remind you that in PvP-oriented games, especially when it comes to large-scale events, all these factors are usually not taken into account. You can fight outnumbered, with worse equipment, in a worse position and without a full set of buffs and resources. And yet, you won't find widespread complaints that the experience of these players is terrible.

PvP by default implies some kind of inequality. Someone will always be better and someone worse.
Any sanctions for bad play in FF14 are a bad idea, simply because the target audience is casuals.
Coming into this game, going to roulette, especially in FL, you have already agreed by default that you probably will not find yourself in the best team of players.

Do many things in FL irritate me? Certainly. But pvp players must be aware that it is stupid to expect anything more from the players. Need to change our (player base) mentality and thinking towards this regime. And this is almost impossible.

A striking example of such experience is today Onsal. Yellow team just obtained free three nodes and afking around it and getting free 300+ points without pvp, when our team fighting vs red all this time. None of the lagging teams decided to concede, and this continued until the triangle disappeared. As a monk i just /huming first 5 minutes of the match, beacuse, what i should to do? Call in ally chat? Blame on them? Team anyway didnt react. The players had already consciously decided to give the round to yellow (which later happened).

The developer is well aware of such situations and still leaves everything as is. We don't get more complex and interesting maps that reward PvP specifically. All we really can do, this is form all our criticism and try to distribute our culture and thought. But, this can be very demotivation, beacuse: "lol shut up, no one care about that, we are here for the exp".

[Archeron]

Why we just cant agrees with fact ff14 not PvP game, and as i know never was. Its a bit weird expect a lot of nice PvP content in game, what isnt target audience of the game.

Why is it weird to expect Square Enix to put nice content into their billion dollar game? I mean honestly can ANYONE explain this logic? Just because it's not the focus for this game doesn't mean it's okay to add content to the game that sucks, and then neglect it for six months or more at a time. There is nothing radical about these solutions. These are actual solutions implemented by other games that have added PvP content to an otherwise PvE focused game. Where the PvP is actually fun, and retains a dedicated audience. It's not like there are other MMORPG's on the market that have figured out how to make enjoyable PvP for years at this point.

A striking example of such experience is today Onsal. Yellow team just obtained free three nodes and afking around it and getting free 300+ points without pvp, when our team fighting vs red all this time. None of the lagging teams decided to concede, and this continued until the triangle disappeared. As a monk i just /huming first 5 minutes of the match, beacuse, what i should to do? Call in ally chat? Blame on them? Team anyway didnt react. The players had already consciously decided to give the round to yellow (which later happened).

You have openly admitted yourself to lethargic gameplay. You are ACTIVELY a part of the problem. Instead of trying to assist your team, ping them, or even going into battle regardless and assisting them as best as possible despite the grim situation, you sat and AFK'd at spawn doing nothing. Even if a loss is guaranteed, you can at least fight for second place. Your actions are against the spirit of competitive PvP. This is the gameplay that deserves to be punished. You claim that the developers are aware of the situation, I question that they're even aware of anything going on in PvP at all. They have been making out of touch, nonsensical changes since 6.1 dropped years ago, and ignoring issues that actively made the game worse for everyone. There are a laundry list of examples we can pick from to perfectly illustrate this.

[IceEyes]

I mean honestly can ANYONE explain this logic?.

You either don't catch the japanese vibe, or you don't understand what the root of the problem is. If a developer has never developed a competitive type of games, there is no guarantee that he will ever create something worthy. We literally get a MOBa format PvP in MMO. Primitive, as simple and lazy as possible. Many people even liked it and it is in demand. At some point, it was even unironically promoted as competitive with streams and events.

What do you expect from FL then? It will be even more clumsy and primitive. And given the fact that all balance corrections are based only on СС, then FL obviously, if it gets quality changes, it will most likely be in a new FF MMO.

It's not like there are other MMORPG's on the market that have figured out how to make enjoyable PvP for years at this point.

There is and was a lot. Most of them maked for korean market so they did not in great demand on EU \ NA.

you sat and AFK'd at spawn doing nothing.

Keep your fantasies to yourself, please 0/

they're even aware of anything going on in PvP at all.

I allready answer on that in other thread. That calling "excel-table symptom". And that not incurable.

[TofuLove]

Why we just cant agrees with fact ff14 not PvP game, and as i know never was. Its a bit weird expect a lot of nice PvP content in game, what isnt target audience of the game.

Hi! I don't know why it can't be a pvp game? It has dedicated pvp communities, dedicated pvp players (like me and few others in this thread), people who care about pvp balance and want it to be fun... Sure, the netcode is not amazing, but it's not why it is not enjoyable. Having healthy PVP content has a lot of replayability that PVE content may just not have, and is great for when there are no new PVE content or if you can't be bothered learning PVE content and waiting in partyfinder, but still want to have some good games.

PvP by default implies some kind of inequality. Someone will always be better and someone worse.

I am not complaining about difference in skill level. Having some people that are better than others at a game is completely normal. And skill expression and skill ceiling is reached with either talent (believe it or not, even in 8 button pvp mode that we have at the moment - some people are just plain amazing at pressing those buttons) or just playing for awhile. You can't win every game, and someone has to - sometimes it's just not you or me. Sometimes teams are just better and that's fine, but it's sad to see people not try to win at all. It makes for an experience that doesn't help with the replayability of that content.

Like sure, if you don't queue PVP regularly, just pressing buttons and seeing people melt can be a bit fun, but then if you actually go past that and ask yourself "how do i get good enough to win?". And then you find yourself in Onsal like yourself, just watching your alliance not trying at all can be a bit sad.

I am privileged enough to have experienced really really good games during organised pvp events and when finding myself in teams of good people in all alliances. I would love the high level of coordination and sportmanship to be easily accessible to all as it's very fun when everyone is trying.

I am also sad to see a lot of people who are regulars in the mode quit the game. Not just because of the hit-detection changes or pvp balance issues, but because of the lack of interest in trying from the community. All of us don't have huge amounts of time to game in our day to day lives, so why spend it on something that is just ...plain not fun because you get into a team that decided to throw a match. And after a certain point there is just no achievements left either, so... time to unsub? Huge portion of my friend list certainly think so.

My initial take of completely removing PVP rewards from 2nd or 3rd places, is meant to be a bit of a cry for help, so part intentionally radical. I appreciate that the actual answer is more subtle than that, but it's something I wish SE addressed, where good effort gets rewarded, rather than neglected.

[IceEyes]

I don't know why it can't be a pvp game?

In probably thousand of FL matches and two years of play, I was convinced that this game was simply not made for PvP. Lately the game has been doing poorly even in PvE and MSQ. I still have the feeling that PvP here exists only "for show". Just beacuse in every game always u can find some category of players like me, who prefer just PvP for fun. So i get my "pvp" but in fact that looks like it is not a priority and is not planned to change radically.

I mean, I rarely got excited about the PvP in this game, but I constantly had bad experiences.

But, for example, in other PvP-oriented MMOs, I don’t have such a feeling. I still experience negativity, but it's a different type of emotion.

I understand that you would like more exciting matches. I would also like more exciting matches. But, at the moment, the only way the game offers me is to join the primade and wipe hamsters by spamming macros and AoE. Its something like experience from 2007, but in 2007 that feeled still better in other games.

I also understand that FL might be interesting on paper. But this requires about twenty responsible player in ever team. But this is practically impossible if we talking about Light DC. People will not play on tanks, if they dont want. They will not stay around scholar to obtain buff from him. They will not pushing beacuse we have BH and KDA system so most of them will worry about personal count, not the overall result.

I am privileged enough to have experienced really really good games during organised pvp events

Thats what i talk about. You gather as an organized group with a specific purpose. Having fun and fight. This is the main point of PvP, conceptually. Obviously, you get a positive result, unlike the average random FL through roulette. But u cant change mind of most of players in this game. We just small percent. So we get a small percent of content. Thats fair, but it's hurt.