Communication is always a problem in MMO objective-based PvP. FFXIV's new frontlines are no exception. At first, as people always do in battlegrounds with multiple bases and one non-base objective, for a while, everyone wrote off middle as completely unimportant. "Bases win matches. If you're in middle, you're bad." In less than two days, the entire deal had begun to flip-flop. You immediately found equal numbers of opponents and proponents to focusing middle every match. Now, it's obvious to most that middle is important and bases are secondary while middle has something spawned. Despite this, every single "strategy" macro I see spouted in alliance chat always completely ignores middle (except for ONE player that I saw who rewrote his to include it - I like him).

I generally take it upon myself to add in the bit about middle and adamantly (and respectfully) persist that B absolutely go middle 1 minute prior to every spawn, even if they have to drop everything else. I can honestly say that, when people listen to that advice, we are far better off then when they follow the oh-so-common and very misguided "strategy" that people love to macro in order to pretend they have any idea what they're doing.

One of the best matches I was in was when I was in B, and everyone in B let me take charge. They didn't reduce themselves to mindlessly following my orders, no, but they took my suggestions (and that's what they were - suggestions, not orders) with a fair bit of weight and made their own decisions based upon them. I suggested early on that we focus middle and, in between each spawn, we ninja/hit two of the outposts, then immediately head back to middle. All agreed. We missed middle only once, when we got caught up in a skirmish between both other factions for one of the outposts, which I called out as a bad idea, and we avoided skirmishes like that for the rest of the game. Every other time, we got every node in middle, slaughtering the B teams from both other factions reliably, and got the only large middle spawn that ever happened (the one worth 200 points). On average, throughout the game, we controlled 2 outposts, alongside whatever else A and C could manage (which was generally 1-2 bases).

Now, keep in mind, we were doing well. However, at the start of the match, one of those "strategists" called that B would support A and C whenever needed. Naturally, since we decided to go outposts, we were not around to do that. We were called out on it in Alliance chat multiple times. We assured one another in Party chat that what we were doing was more helpful, and I mentioned that helping those other two bases that A and C were after would be too far away from middle and would stop us from being able to react to middle properly due to travel time. We ignored their pleas for help and continued onward. As it was apparent that we were winning by a large margin, the complaints that we weren't helping soon stopped, as we were the only team actually accomplishing much of anything aside from holding one base.

By the end of the match, we owned four bases, three of which were outposts thanks to B's ninjaing skills, had A assaulting their base, and held C's base. The game ended at around 1600:600:800, with us winning. This was an amazing victory, and it worked because people were willing to put their pride on the line and coordinate together as well as under the guidance of another. I could only imagine the amazing PvP matches that would ensue if every team would work together like we did. I could not have asked for a better team experience than I had that match.

I hope I didn't come across too conceited in this post. It's all just very exciting that I managed to experience a game like that with such a cooperative group. I'm very proud of that victory because of how smoothly executed it was. Our team that match ran into problems, but we always managed to regroup and overcome them. We made mistakes, but we managed to come through on top anyway. And it wasn't just us, teams A and C, too, were a big help, doing an excellent job coordinating with one another to ensure that we always at least had one non-outpost base. All of this was only possible due to our ability and willingness to communicate and cooperate. I hope to see more of this in the future.