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

[Kaurhz]

This is a problem around designing it around 24v24v24, it's incredibly saturated, and more often than not you get people in there that either play lethargically, or play to do kill stomping (e.g., don't care about win/loss, but about kill count for achievement)

Whilst it is annoying -- This is a horrible solution, and all it will do in the long run is lend itself to being a more toxic environment than it already is, tbh.

Trying to enforce this is an incredibly bad decision, again, just on saturation alone.

[Mawlzy]

This is a problem around designing it around 24v24v24, it's incredibly saturated, and more often than not you get people in there that either play lethargically, or play to do kill stomping (e.g., don't care about win/loss, but about kill count for achievement)

Whilst it is annoying -- This is a horrible solution, and all it will do in the long run is lend itself to being a more toxic environment than it already is, tbh.

Trying to enforce this is an incredibly bad decision, again, just on saturation alone.

I definitely think the better solution is to suspend players for lethargic play.

But the toxicity is mounting around this issue. A vote kick went through today. This led to an apparent friend of the dismissed ("They weren't AFK, I was talking to them on VC") rallying the party to report the vote kick to the GMs, recommending that whoever initiated the vote kick have their account suspended.

I hope I don't have to report back on how that ended up.

[Atreus]

I definitely think the better solution is to suspend players for lethargic play.

But the toxicity is mounting around this issue. A vote kick went through today. This led to an apparent friend of the dismissed ("They weren't AFK, I was talking to them on VC") rallying the party to report the vote kick to the GMs, recommending that whoever initiated the vote kick have their account suspended.

I hope I don't have to report back on how that ended up.

This is exhausting to constantly be vigilant of and probably not sustainable for GMs to be on constant watch (even though I do wish we had active moderation to begin with). I think killing the incentive for lethargic play is the way to go.

[Mawlzy]

This is exhausting to constantly be vigilant of and probably not sustainable for GMs to be on constant watch (even though I do wish we had active moderation to begin with). I think killing the incentive for lethargic play is the way to go.

Right, which is why I think extending auto-kick beyond the current 2-min AFK and/or auto-suspensions for repeated sub-standard engagement numbers. SE have the data.

Like yesterday I had two 0/0/0s in the summary stats. The process of me reporting them and a GM reviewing those numbers (assuming they do) is unnecessary. Once in a blue moon any automatic system will flag someone who had some disaster with a bowl of soup or something, but it's easier to automate the kick/suspension process and allow a rare appeal than the current system.

In other words, I think you kill the incentive for lethargic play by imposing ToS, not via rewards. Because in a 24-person teams it's too easy to do nothing and get carried to a win.

[Goldolds1972]

I think they should start making people play the different classes in frontlines. Whatever you join in as is the class you play instead of being able to switch. Yes, it has helped me level alt classes, but it also gets annoying to join as a melee person and everyone else on the team is ranged. Im seeing that majority of players on FL are ranged (mainly being either bard or summoner) now being they all have push back and pull in skills. Its really frustrating when playing as a melee and its pointless as you cant do anyhting at all cause you get pulled and pushed around 10+ times before being stunned and then destroyed. In my opinion it should be either even out the teams between ranged and melee or take away all push back and pull in skills and start making players actually fight instead of cheap kill players. Yell at me if you will, but thats my take on it. I try to fight in pvp but all pvp players wanna do is a cheap slap and run away and hope the enemy gets stunned and killed by others. And give more awards to those that actually try and fight while taking over bases and such instead of just pushing and pulling people all over the place. If the malmstones did not have any rewards to work for, i would never do pvp cause theres no fighting each other unless its a gauranteed 10 on 1 victory.

[OMGJesuis66]

Honestly, a lot of people here are saying, "If you change Frontline rewards, no one will play it." And if the reason why people play a game mode is because you are being overgiven a reward? Then, the mode itself already failed in its purpose of being an engaging experience? It creates a bad mode.

And Frontline is precisely that, a low effort, big reward mode that requires none or a bare minimum of skill expression within a competitive system with other players.

Sadly, you cannot remove the rewards. As said, people would not play it, and they indeed would not play it. FFXIV players have little-to-no care about PvP, they want the gratification, and the system itself rewards that kind of behaviour and mentality. As it stands, the game whole PvP system needs a massive overhaul to pursue improvement and try to be more engaging for players. It is genuinely sad.

At the very least they could add Rival Wings to a PvP Roulette, so we could have a proper variety when playing that perhaps leads to a lesser frustration. Granted, rewards are not just given based on the PvP system itself but the bonus reward from the Roulette system. PvP by itself gives basically 0 rewards, no matter if you win or lose. Just add more modes to it, I think it will improve the situation a tad.

[Mawlzy]

Honestly, a lot of people here are saying, "If you change Frontline rewards, no one will play it." And if the reason why people play a game mode is because you are being overgiven a reward? Then, the mode itself already failed in its purpose of being an engaging experience? It creates a bad mode.

And Frontline is precisely that, a low effort, big reward mode that requires none or a bare minimum of skill expression within a competitive system with other players.

Sadly, you cannot remove the rewards. As said, people would not play it, and they indeed would not play it. FFXIV players have little-to-no care about PvP, they want the gratification, and the system itself rewards that kind of behaviour and mentality. As it stands, the game whole PvP system needs a massive overhaul to pursue improvement and try to be more engaging for players. It is genuinely sad.

At the very least they could add Rival Wings to a PvP Roulette, so we could have a proper variety when playing that perhaps leads to a lesser frustration. Granted, rewards are not just given based on the PvP system itself but the bonus reward from the Roulette system. PvP by itself gives basically 0 rewards, no matter if you win or lose. Just add more modes to it, I think it will improve the situation a tad.

I think it'd be a mistake to add RW into a general PvP roulette. From a personal point of view, it would mean I wouldn't play 2-3 days out of every 5, and I suspect that would not be uncommon.

What I'm really frustrated about right now is that the recent FL changes have been good. I agree with you if people only engage in a mode then it is a poorly-designed mode, but I feel FL is rising above that. The issue is 72-person instances are difficult to populate by nature, particularly while we have this silliness of having division by DC.

I'm optimistic about the mode because, in most matches at any time of day, I see a lot of players I recognize. There is a dedicated FL community. IMO it wouldn't take much on NA for players who want to play the mode to support tolerable queue times.

[OMGJesuis66]

I think it'd be a mistake to add RW into a general PvP roulette. From a personal point of view, it would mean I wouldn't play 2-3 days out of every 5, and I suspect that would not be uncommon.

What I'm really frustrated about right now is that the recent FL changes have been good. I agree with you if people only engage in a mode then it is a poorly-designed mode, but I feel FL is rising above that. The issue is 72-person instances are difficult to populate by nature, particularly while we have this silliness of having division by DC.

I'm optimistic about the mode because, in most matches at any time of day, I see a lot of players I recognize. There is a dedicated FL community. IMO it wouldn't take much on NA for players who want to play the mode to support tolerable queue times.

No need to make RW compete with Frontlines for the PvP Roulette.
We already have Frontlines as something separated in the unused "Daily Challenges" section. Just add Rival Wings as the extra "Daily Challenges". Both with the same degree of rewards, given it's PvP. You finish Frontlines, you queue for Rival Wings and that's that.
This is the only reason why Frontlines has the peak of engagement it always has, and while it is nice to see there *is* a dedicated FL community, in counterpoint, we have people complaining that such a thing is rising due the crescent amount of premade groups.

Personally, I would love it if the same love was given to Crystalline Conflict, *the* mode where PvP genuine has a skill expression.
It was quite disappointing when I wanted to try Monk in PvP, went to look around for any guides or anything to explain more or less combos of the class and goal of how to play the class in the PvP modes and the only thing I found was one YouTube video with surface level explanation of it. Hells, even the forums here have almost none conversation about Crystalline Conflict.

Perhaps with the rising level of engagement within Frontlines, a hopeful more attention in Crystalline Conflict, SE could make more PvP modes where they walk away from 72-man instances and instead give us 16 or 24-man instances. I lean more toward the 16, so this way you could have just Team A vs. Team B rather than 3 teams competing. I think that would do *a lot* of favors to the whole game mode.

[MatchaokaCha]

It's already plenty toxic when 50% of the team does less than 200k damage, 0 kills, pitiful amount of assists and handful of deaths.

I shouldn't have to spend 10 minutes after every frontlines match reporting players because the system allows such players to leech from others.

So what about the other players who genuinely do try? This all or nothing attitude is NOT how you're going to get me to queue for PVP, since you're effectively turning this into a complete dice roll and punishing other players for participating. If my efforts result in no rewards, then whats the point of me even playing this mode? Have fun getting Rival Wings queue times.

[MatchaokaCha]

How is telling people who ELECT to join a "team-based PVP mode" that they must contribute to said PVP or get nothing, toxic??
Even setting the dmg bar low; 100k dmg, would probably prevent 7 players per match from getting rewarded. (Dmg is an example, could be another metric)
Forcing them to participate or not que. Allowing someone who wants to play/try to join.
Enforcing people to do what THEY SIGNED UP FOR, is not toxic.

It is more toxic for a person to join a TEAM based environment, mode, game, or setting, and not do anything constructive to help the team.

Yes, you're taking away any motivation to even play Frontlines.

You don't want the atmosphere turning into a MOBA brainrot cesspool. You really don't. This will actually deter average players that are interested in learning PVP.

Not only that, but you're going to incentivize more people to cheat with only one team being able to reap the rewards. This is not the solution you think it is.