PvP Frontline, same old, nothing new

[jesseleewelch]

I haven't really had a problem with premades lately. I don't know if it is because I play on aether or what, but it's very rare that I witness a steamroll anymore.

The real trouble is lack of awareness imo. Being aware of things is a major problem in NA.

For example, in one match of seal rock, my team was blue and in south. Red team had tons of bh5 and was killing it in combat, yet they got tunnel visioned on fighting yellow. Node rng was good to us, and even when we had 2 nodes and over 600 points, the other two teams just kept fighting up north while we sat on our nodes to win.

Imagine if just one person on red had said "kill blue". With just one line in alliance chat, they could have made a bigger difference than anyone could have hoped to achieve with kills and damage numbers alone. They might have made a win lose difference.

In another match, this time Shatter, we had a similar situation. My team (blue) had 1432 points and our big was up. Red had all the bh5 and 1575 points. Yellow was all in on red.

Our commander took half the team to go pinch yellow! SERIOUSLY!?! Thankfully, the rest of us were able to burn down the ice and win before they could blow it but still...

I kinda feel like I should start taking screenshots of game states so people can see what I am talking about, but for me the general awareness seems a much bigger issue than premades. You can be an absolute gigachad in combat but if you're ignoring callouts and totally unaware of incoming pinches or which team is in the lead, you a liability.

[Cidel]

If you took this as a veiled complaint about premades, you not only missed my whole post history about the matter (which I don't blame you for), but also the entire point of this thread, which is specifically targeting bad designs and a lack of care for the mode (or either an unhealthy endorsement of that kind of gameplay by the devs which I'd find pretty horrifying).

The idea that the devs listen to JP more is also one of those memes that gets flung around on the western part, which is amusing when you read the exact same opposite on the other side of the fence. In fact, the idea that JP is so much better at everything in the game than the west is also one of those memes.

If your state of mind is "I don't understand why you bother trying to make things better because they never get better", then I guess it explains a lot about the state of the world right now as well. And if you're one of those that seemingly never learn the lesson and tell us to stop bringing up complaints because things aren't gonna change before the next expansion, you'll have to realize that waiting for the next expansion to be actually finished and released is already too late. If anything, this is the right moment to point fingers at problems.

We both know I'm not going to comb your post history about how you feel about premades; I'm responding to what you've laid out here. The thing is, from what I'm reading you've seem to have lumped the existence of premades in with this bad design and lack of care. "Premade fiesta," "their own little premades," "sweaty tryhards" and emphasis on "steamrolling;" I'm picking-up a lot of jadedness on that issue. Other than that, you've alluded to the concentrated AoE meta being problematic, DRKs (both components of the meta premade comps), and the existence of super-casuals and "tryhards" and the expected outcome of that relationship.

You keep side-stepping the JP behavioral argument and brushing it off as some urban myth or meme, as if it has no effect on however FL gets designed, while admitting that you haven't done any research or seen for yourself about how their matches and groupfights tend to play out. So if you don't want to acknowledge that elephant in the room, you aren't ever going to be satisfied with whatever so-called answer you're wanting from SE in response to how NA players behave. I'll say this again, if you're actually serious about SE addressing the design choices in FL, get some feedback from JP first; otherwise you're not seeing how their half of the playerbase interacts with and feels about the design.

And spare me your philosophical analyses; this thread thus far hasn't exactly given SE a blueprint on how to improve FL (for who, really?), and the first post comes off as little more than a blogpost with some rhetorical questions. If you truly believe asking the PvP intern developer to question their design choices in regards to how NA behaves to it, then you do you. I've been around here long enough to see where largescale PvP specifically falls on their priority list, so you'll have to excuse my cynicism. If you want to see FL-only changes before next expansion, I'd suggest creating a more succinct list of feedback describing exactly what issues you have with the current state of FL. Otherwise it comes off more as a rant thread.

[TofuLove]

I sympathise with Valence. As a Light local, I think that the contrast between organised groups vs casuals is probably the most stark out of ANY DC I played on, on ANY region (NA, JP & EU...oce if that counts?). I frequently go to Chaos for some "better" games whilst playing in EU. Seal clubbing is very prevalent on Light. I just don't know why that is so. I could go on so far as to say that it's, in my opinion, the worst FL DC in the world at the moment.

Whilst watching back some FL game clips from about a year I noted how slow the play felt then. I think the erosion of value of guard, additional dps from role actions, more BH and the like had sped up the gameplay quite a bit. And I used to complain in endwalker that it was a sped up from shadowbringers back so... so... it's even faster than that.

p.s.
I had a thread about reward system in FL. This obviously still a problem in my opinion.

[Mawlzy]

I sympathise with Valence. As a Light local, I think that the contrast between organised groups vs casuals is probably the most stark out of ANY DC I played on, on ANY region (NA, JP & EU...oce if that counts?). I frequently go to Chaos for some "better" games whilst playing in EU. Seal clubbing is very prevalent on Light. I just don't know why that is so. I could go on so far as to say that it's, in my opinion, the worst FL DC in the world at the moment.

Whilst watching back some FL game clips from about a year I noted how slow the play felt then. I think the erosion of value of guard, additional dps from role actions, more BH and the like had sped up the gameplay quite a bit. And I used to complain in endwalker that it was a sped up from shadowbringers back so... so... it's even faster than that.

p.s.
I had a thread about reward system in FL. This obviously still a problem in my opinion.

Part of the problem is that there is a subset of premades that emphasize padding over winning.

Indeed, on one of the larger PvP Discords, the "Frontline Mentor" specifically advocates this approach. That same Discord also organized groups to "raid" Dynamis last year, with the specific intent of knocking inexperienced players into the middle of next week.

[TofuLove]

Part of the problem is that there is a subset of premades that emphasize padding over winning.

Indeed, on one of the larger PvP Discords, the "Frontline Mentor" specifically advocates this approach. That same Discord also organized groups to "raid" Dynamis last year, with the specific intent of knocking inexperienced players into the middle of next week.

I am not sure this thread is specifically about padding - I actually don't have a problem with it. The reason why it exists is that people still want to play games after getting all the rewards, and want some target to achieve. I think padding is different on different regions. Ideal conditions for padding is LONG games - which is something that people fail to emphasise. To achieve long games you need teams that know what enemy team to go for, but aren't amazing at syncing their burst - this is again something that frequently gets failed to be mentioned.

On Light, people just can't read score plain and simple, and don't know which team to go for or there are the memes - like 4 monks sitting in enemy base and just killing every person that respawns. Which to be fair is a legit tactic if you aim it at a winning team, but if it's just done for the memes it's kinda eh

NA padding is frequently different. There is obviously a fair bit of misreading of the score in roulette, but I think NA padding happens naturally because of bad coordination Basically they frequently fail to sync the burst, so the enemy team just retreats and you can press your cooldowns again and again, without actually anyone dying. Which basically means you do more damage. NA Onsal is kinda funny because of this.

That's why JP numbers are frequently lower - they sync their burst really well and so the enemy dies quicker. More efficient.

[Valence]

We both know I'm not going to comb your post history about how you feel about premades; I'm responding to what you've laid out here.

That's why I wrote that I wouldn't blame you for it. Nobody in their right mind would parse post histories of anybody. But I've repeatedly talked against people screaming their minds out about how premades were the worst thing on the planet and should be removed, and how they didn't care especially for all the actual premade groups of friends going in casually without steamrolling tactics in mind. I've been of the mind since day one that the problem arises from bad design decisions.

There is jadedness because while I can myself deal perfectly fine with premades, it's becoming incredibly harder to actually delete their members because premades for one, do learn, and because deleting their key members (like the tanks) usually involves your team actually participating, else you'll just suicide your wind/meteodrive into nothing. The reason this works less and less is because people have also learned to identify premades better and they just flee immediately and I don't blame them for it. It's very pavlovian in nature: if they die from a full alliance wipe at the first engagement, they will not try again for the remainder of the game. And as said in the OP, the addition of stuff like rampage, rampart, bloodbath etc, not only makes premade players incredibly harder to pin down and kill, but it also gives them tools to facilitate the slaughter by bypassing and even outdoing the progressive AoE nerfs that SE gave to jobs over time (DRG, etc).

And this doesn't even start addressing the worst of all: being paired in the team of the premade, which is the most excruciatingly boring shit that can ever happen. That those players actually find this fun, I will never understand.

You keep side-stepping the JP behavioral argument and brushing it off as some urban myth or meme, as if it has no effect on however FL gets designed, while admitting that you haven't done any research or seen for yourself about how their matches and groupfights tend to play out. So if you don't want to acknowledge that elephant in the room, you aren't ever going to be satisfied with whatever so-called answer you're wanting from SE in response to how NA players behave. I'll say this again, if you're actually serious about SE addressing the design choices in FL, get some feedback from JP first; otherwise you're not seeing how their half of the playerbase interacts with and feels about the design.

I'm asking for nothing more to make some research, but the problem is that there is literally zero way for me to do so unless leveling an actual alt on JP worlds, which is too much effort especially considering then I'd have to run a good sample of games to make sure there is different trends that I can notice.
The reason I'm being doubtful about it is because of people's natural tendency to overblow cultural differences as it's been a literally trend on those forums for ages.

You keep asking me for research and to get my own evidence yet I've yet to see anybody actually explain to me how it behaves differently on JP. All I've been told is that they don't have the problem. Then why? What is the meta they do follow? Do they also use AoE doomstacks? If not, then why? What makes it so different as what people claim? Even in the west when you get queue syncs, people don't suddenly change their meta when every team is filled with premades, because it still steamrolls as well as it does, and it also counters itself the best.

I also have my own CC experience to inform me of the small differences that EW saw between EU/NA and JP at high level, and it seemed to stem from one side lacking complete discipline and control and leaving their backline die if it meant going for kills, while the other side was at the opposite glued into a formalism that lacked creativity and initiative. The latter actually makes me wonder how JP would deal with our own meta.

And spare me your philosophical analyses; this thread thus far hasn't exactly given SE a blueprint on how to improve FL (for who, really?), and the first post comes off as little more than a blogpost with some rhetorical questions. If you truly believe asking the PvP intern developer to question their design choices in regards to how NA behaves to it, then you do you. I've been around here long enough to see where largescale PvP specifically falls on their priority list, so you'll have to excuse my cynicism. If you want to see FL-only changes before next expansion, I'd suggest creating a more succinct list of feedback describing exactly what issues you have with the current state of FL. Otherwise it comes off more as a rant thread.

I'm sorry, I am not a game designer, I don't have years to work on this, and I'm not paid to do so either. I'm giving feedback of something that I do consider problematic. I do genuinely hope that you're not here like that other forum poster to dismiss anything that doesn't come with a formal essay about the technicality of solutions to bring up to fix the issue, because that's frankly ridiculous. If anything, beware of people that instantly come up with clear, simple and evident solutions. I am also cynical enough not to expect much of it, but then I'd question why you even bother replying or posting in the first place if you're jaded enough not to care anymore at all.

[Atreus]

PvP in this game has always been designed and balanced around the ceiling of what jobs and players can perform. It's never going to feel good in any mode when people are playing with their elbows and giggling about their free EXP.

If you don't want to play on JP, then just look at their PvP section of the forums. They spend their time giving gameplay feedback rather than bitching about premades and shotcallers. They seem to embrace them, rather. Should tell you all you need to know.

[Valence]

If you think this is bitching about premades, then I'm afraid your also totally missed the point.
Funny how giving feedback is suddenly "bitching about premades" when it's not glorifying the mode, but when it is, then it becomes "gameplay feedback".

[Cidel]

There is jadedness because while I can myself deal perfectly fine with premades, it's becoming incredibly harder to actually delete their members because premades for one, do learn, and because deleting their key members (like the tanks) usually involves your team actually participating, else you'll just suicide your wind/meteodrive into nothing. The reason this works less and less is because people have also learned to identify premades better and they just flee immediately and I don't blame them for it. It's very pavlovian in nature: if they die from a full alliance wipe at the first engagement, they will not try again for the remainder of the game. And as said in the OP, the addition of stuff like rampage, rampart, bloodbath etc, not only makes premade players incredibly harder to pin down and kill, but it also gives them tools to facilitate the slaughter by bypassing and even outdoing the progressive AoE nerfs that SE gave to jobs over time (DRG, etc).

So then you're dissatisfied with the general lack of skill or lack of effort of your average NA player? I mean I get it, it's frustrating to be on that team that just stands there, tunnel-visioning when you see an obvious (oftentimes marked) DRK running-up to plunge into a cluster of unaware people whose only reaction is to run the opposite direction and end up dying instead of reactively Guarding or Purifying and surviving the follow-ups. Something like that is completely possible outside of premades anyway though. All it takes is one DRK with a macro and a team that pays attention and can chew gum and walk. As I already stated, that's always going to be a skill issue. People have the tools to mitigate and lessen the impact of it. The problem is most aren't even aware of them.

I'm asking for nothing more to make some research, but the problem is that there is literally zero way for me to do so unless leveling an actual alt on JP worlds, which is too much effort especially considering then I'd have to run a good sample of games to make sure there is different trends that I can notice.
The reason I'm being doubtful about it is because of people's natural tendency to overblow cultural differences as it's been a literally trend on those forums for ages.

You keep asking me for research and to get my own evidence yet I've yet to see anybody actually explain to me how it behaves differently on JP. All I've been told is that they don't have the problem. Then why? What is the meta they do follow? Do they also use AoE doomstacks? If not, then why? What makes it so different as what people claim? Even in the west when you get queue syncs, people don't suddenly change their meta when every team is filled with premades, because it still steamrolls as well as it does, and it also counters itself the best.

While it's not plastered all over about how the JP function in Frontlines, a little searching in places like here or even reddit of all places do have some people providing comments or even detailed insight to how their behaviors out on the JP datacenter works. I'd be happy to give you a quick and dirty rundown of what I've gathered/seen regarding how their side treats Frontlines if you're looking for specifics:

• 1) This is going to be the biggest one, but teams are most often times directed by a single commander/shot-caller. Many times all three teams have one. This person will do everything from alert the team to spawning objectives like mid drones in Secure to directing the team around the map and directing where to attack with macros. The team listens. There's no 3-4 different people all backseat commanding or bickering about it. Nobody whining about a sound macro. At the end of the game, people thank said person for commanding. We see bits and pieces of this on NA, but not as profoundly as on JP games. Because of point #2:
  
• 2) They are very team-oriented. They don't have nearly the same amount of ego as NA has. They do not like sticking-out or causing trouble for others. Everybody queued-up is intending to put in effort. Back when roles used to matter in Frontlines, they would be sure to have a couple healers and a tank in a party. Not stay on 3 BRDs, 3 MCHs, a DRG and maybe a SMN. As I already mentioned, there are no people queuing "just to get tomestones," so the player skill disparity is smaller. If you are identified as being disruptive or trying to hide, you'll probably get vote-kicked.
  
• 3) Due to points 1 and 2, matches are usually always close. None of these largely helpless blowouts we commonly see on NA; which exists because of both general lethargic and and oftentimes directionless teams of the blind leading the blind. They don't have entire games of both losing teams griefing each other; first place is usually getting constantly pincered.

They absolutely can and do run AoE doomstacks; the difference is they might have to work harder and smarter for it than NA's DRK -> profit meta usually works out. On NA, you plunge-in on DRK with a couple AoE jobs supporting and you'll likely kill at least almost a full party-worth of people with minimal issues. On JP, unless you're sneaky about it, you'll probably only kill 2-3 people while maybe being bounced-back by attentive enemies with knock-backs or WAR chaining you and other focused cc. And they sure as heck don't take their ball and go home and mentally check-out after seeing 1 DRK draw-in kill a chunk of their team.

Really, you could almost say a lot of the meta NA premades are just replicating what JP regularly practices. The difference seems to be that usually only enough players on one team cares enough to coordinate, so it always stands out when it happens.

I'm sorry, I am not a game designer, I don't have years to work on this, and I'm not paid to do so either. I'm giving feedback of something that I do consider problematic. I do genuinely hope that you're not here like that other forum poster to dismiss anything that doesn't come with a formal essay about the technicality of solutions to bring up to fix the issue, because that's frankly ridiculous. If anything, beware of people that instantly come up with clear, simple and evident solutions. I am also cynical enough not to expect much of it, but then I'd question why you even bother replying or posting in the first place if you're jaded enough not to care anymore at all.

Okay, but the feedback here is sounding a lot like: "my team is bad, I want a system that dumbs down everything so when we face a team that is good, there's less skill expression for them to outplay us with." Hyperbolic, yes, but after the bare minimum of what I just described on JP server Frontlines, the defining problem is oftentimes just "PEBCAK." Which is why I am trying to explain that the cultural differences in how JP behave in Frontlines as opposed to NA causes this perceived belief that the mode is fundamentally flawed (which it can be in other areas) when it actually boils down to skill differences.

So really, what's your feedback? DRK draw-in is oppressive? There's already threads for that (though I'd like to point-out they haven't changed that aspect about DRK this entire time). There's too many AoEs? Yeah, fair, maybe there is. People die too quickly? Can probably blame the existence of Guard, stacks of self-heals and elixirs on-demand for that. To be honest, any feedback approaching that got drowned-out by the all the talk and jabs at premades, tryhards and veterans. If your feedback isn't just "bitching about premades" then your introductory post itself has a strange way of wording it.

[jesseleewelch]

If you are trying to get wins and certain premade(s) are really dominating every match, all day, then you have 2 options...

Option 1) DC Travel to another data center and try playing there. If primal is dominated by a powerful premade, try playing on dynamis or crystal instead.

Option 2) Just keep rolling the dice. If you queue and end up on the same team as the premade then there ya go. Enjoy the ride. If not, accept that you probably looking at a loss, go for kills or node captures for other achievements, and queue again.

Personally, I generally go with Option 1 when presented with this problem, but but I haven't had this problem in a long time.

If you going with Option 2, you can use player search to find what zone they in. Seek them out, then watch them right after you get the pop. If the disappear from screen right as you too are zoning into Frontlines, you know that they're present in the match. This way you don't psych yourself out needlessly when you don't see them on your team as they might have simply stopped playing.

Basically, you have options for how to either get around the premade problem or adapt to it.