How to Play: Frontlines PVP -- Important Breakdown of Mechanics

[Kinseykinz]

1. You need mid...but not any more or less than you need to hold your bases. Holding bases is the cornerstone of victory yes, but it is a very, very rare thing to be able to simply hold 3 of your bases the entire time, and still win w/o any involvement in the middle (basically for this to happen, the other 2 teams would need to duke it out enough to spread the points from mid evenly among them...and typically, one team dominates the middle each match so again, this is unlikely).

The problem with Mid, is it's become an obsession for some. They stay up there too long, teams send too many up and lack defense below, people go up at the wrong times, people take it upon themselves to leave their team and post to go mid because 'no one is mid!, potentially losing their post. All of this adds up to many times, Mid actually caused your loss. But not because of math, because your team used it wrong. People need to treat mid as the 'risk/reward' zone. For every person your teams sends to mid, yes, your chances to get and claim the nodes increases, but your ability to hold and defend your bases, decreases. So unless you have really lame opposition, or really awesome support teams, over-committing to mid almost always =2nd/3rd place. That said, sending the right amount of people mid, at the correct times, while holding consistantly at least 2 bases, almost always =WIN.

However, where the OP is correct, is there are SOME teams that don't have any bases/desperately clinging onto 1 base, and their entire alliance goes up top. THIS ALSO will not help you win. If you're behind, I mean, like really behind, (esp if it's not 'big node time). Then this is sometimes a good time to regroup, let the other teams fight over the nodes, and take advantage of the smaller enemy forces and get your Flags back/maybe even ninja some of theirs. The TOP is really only helpful for the 'healthy', it's not going to pull you from last to first magically. In this he was correct. So there are times when sending ppl (esp. too many ppl) Mid is a bad choice. Of course, once you have a healthy hold on your OP and FLAGS, you should consider sending a team up for the next round mid.

2. The bigger problems (and why ppl lose/win) have nothing to do with this Mid vs. Hold the bases problem. But rather, the populations lack of wanting to 'stand and do nothing'.

Once you have a FLAG, YOU HAVE WHAT THE ENEMY WANTS! So logic would dictate you should leave it reasonably defended (esp the non OP flags). Sure, it's okay to send 1-3 people to go assist another team, snipe the other teams OP, fight off the opposition as they try to come back up the ramp on the ramp...but the FLAG is important. So often, I see my team gain a post like Manors, only to all rush off to go to another point/mid and leave it with maybe 1-2 people tops within 20seconds of the flag. Yes, standing on a flag, doing nothing for 10 minutes is boring, but it allows you to keep it. Bare Minimum, don't leave a flag if there are still 'dead people' around. They can see you leave, and /a still works if you're dead.

If you don't have the FLAG and are trying to claim it:
-Do not, I repeat do NOT, fight on the ramp leading up to the flag. That is wasted energy/lives/time. You need the flag, therefore fighting anywhere other than on it, is a waste of time. (body counts aren't worth it) Also, typically if you are being met with 6+ opposing team members on the ramp up to the Flag, that means there are few to no opposing players standing on the actual flag....you just need to figure out a way to get to it. Anyway, force them to fight on the flag. Because the FLAG=Points...everything else is a stall tactic that plays in the other teams favor (every tick they have the flag is points your team doesn't earn).

3. The entire alliance and their Momma, does NOT need to be Mid, nor should it be....ever. I don't care that the big node is popping. EVERYONE playing on ALL the teams know the big node is popping. Let B team (+maybe, maybe 1-2 more from A/C if B senses they need backup) handle it. If the other alliances are sending 2+ teams up top, yes, they might get the big node....but they also committed a lot of people to the top and away from bases. Go clean up. Steal their OP's/ heck steal that Flag on the opposite side of the map from your spawn point. But if you send everyone up, the other teams will see that, and all it takes is a /a Flames have 2+ parties up on node. Go claim their OP/Flags for your team to be screwed.

which leads to the final:

4. Know how and when, to use Alliance chat.
-ALWAYS /a if you know how many of the enemy are guarding a flag your team is after. This helps people know if you need assistance or if switching plans and targeting another Flag is a better option.
-Warn if you see 'Spawn Camping' or a large opposing group on the move towards your held bases.
-Be specific. Don't type a/ MIDDLE NOW! ....because that tends to confuse and you end up with people leaving their positions who shouldn't going mid. You only meant ' Team B head to middle' THAT is what should be typed....ideally 1-2 minutes before they should be there....LOTS of times people say something about the middle too late....this is the worst thing you can do as now people leave their bases under-defended AND go up top to the slaughter and the nodes are gone. And again, best to let Team B decide if they should /assist A&C in holding bases or go mid. (Like sometimes skipping the first set of drones in order to claim all 3 strongholds+enemy Op=better start than only claiming 2 Strongholds+2 Drones). But so often, this is where people F up. They see no one up top, and take it upon themselves to go do it....and in so doing, lose the base they were responsible for holding AND typically ride of to their death/don't get a drone. Basically
-Be a good sport, ditch the profanity. Win Lose or Draw, do your best NOT to bemoan and belittle your teammates. You might think they are the most horrid PvPers you've ever seen....you might be in 3rd. It's okay, it's only a game. It'll be over soon. Filling the chat with negative information however leads to people ignoring it/turning it off/ reporting you or purposefully doing things to annoy you more. The /a chat should be fairly quiet except for information that needs to be known by other teams. Keep everything else out of it.

[Divinemight]

A guide should be include information about the basic layouts only. It is not recommend to put in your personal ideas about the strategy. All strategies would work, but at the end of table, it is still three GCs anticipate each other's strategy.

We all know centre is important, but what if

- one GC decides to lock down the path going up with knock back?
- your GC party got sandwiched by two other GCs at the same time?
- vice versa

Are you still going to blame that you are lost because your own GC is bad? That sounds kinda immature.

[TeddyPrime]

The math is nice and all, but flawed. This is only true if you have 3 superior teams that can defend and hold 3 outposts at all times. But there's only 6 outposts, and 9 teams. So it quickly becomes very hard for you to hold those points of interest.

Frontlines is all about adapting to the opponents to be able to see where there's a high concentration of the opponents, then they would have to have left some places unguarded. But the other way around is also true, if they have very little people at one station, it means that they're targeting someplace else. And if you're at that point with the rest of your team, you can probably ask the majority of that team to head someplace else to secure another point.

One of the best moments in frontlines for me was when we were in the last place, knowing that the node was going to spawn. I asked each party to send one DPS with LB to the heliodrome. Within 5 seconds of the heliodrome spawn, we 3x LBed the node with 2 DPS LB and one caster LB, killing the node. This shot us up in first place, and we did win that match.

[Caly]

to the OP : holding 4 base = 8 pt / 3 sec
Holding 5 base is 16 pt / 3 sec

i assume 6 base is 32 or more every 3 sec having 3 base and rush another one to breakdown other GC team is the best

[Namasu]

If you are solo-q'ing, and can get your team to ride it out easy and hold your camp in check, then I think it's alright to play safe and aim for 3 camps control at all time, placing little to no value in mid (but that mostly matter if you are in the B alliance). It's a decent strategy to aim for 2nd place and we know 2nd is still better for earning marks than 3rd.

BUT............

Like other people mentioned, playing safe like this and not pushing to control middle is not effective in most situation and frankly it just say that you are settling for 2nd which gets lame after a while. As for personal experience, I don't have much but I have been getting 2nd place more consistently by applying this strat when I queue with 2 or 3 other friends. The only time that I managed to win 1st this week so far was when I got into B alliance, assisted the other alliances, and took my team mid to kill a couple nodes and the big boss.

[Caly]

Well you get 5 point for each kill you do on the allagan plateform mid, + 20 point per drone and 200 per boss.

You have 2 choice :
- get 3 point, and ninja the 2 others start spot sometimes
- get 3 spot, and VH mid (assuming you can keep 3 spot by staying mid)

It's actually easy to get a 4th spot alone since no one defends GC post.
Early game is a VH party, kill other GC 2-3 time and you will start to get 15-20-25 sec or more with no resistance to get more spot.

The best choice is to get both other GC spot each time you have clean a bus or add pop in mid because every one is focus of the middle fight or waiting to the raise, and there is no one to def GC spot ^^
If you can get 4 (or 5 with good people) spot for 30 sec with 16 pt / 3 sec, it's really worth it instead of wasting time mid ^^