Frontlines: Slaughter & 24 Man have Killed Secure

[bigjohnny]

As a concerned PVP player, I really feel that this matter needs to be brought to the attention of the developers. With the introduction of Frontlines: Slaughter, in addition to the changed queue system for Secure to make 24 man's more prevalent, 72 man Secure has been almost completely abandoned. I recognize that this isn't as desperate a situation on the Japanese servers and so the struggle the NA data center's are having with it isn't seen as very important, but for us Frontlines activity has really been stifled.

While the queue system change seemed like a great idea at first to ensure the continued health of Secure matches, it's sadly turned out to be the exact opposite. There are several factors contributing to this, the most obvious of course being the popularity of Slaughter, due to the imbalance of reward vs. effort for that mode... But I'm not here to point fingers only at Slaughter, as there are a number of other points that need to be addressed.

24 man is one of the primary problems. The on the spot coordination among the three teams is really what made Secure such a fun challenge, and people would queue for it if they could. Secure 24 man is simply a watered down, bare bones version of a once epic mode.

But the dissatisfaction with 24 man doesn't just stop with that; there are more issues within this one issue. The great thing about 72 man Secure was that alliances could cover for each others' weaknesses. Joining a team with poor composition wasn't necessarily The End. It was an uphill struggle, sure, but you had 16 other players to help balance out anything that wasn't optimal. In 24 man Secure, however, you're stuck with what you have. This leads to less strategic diversity, and ultimately a far less enjoyable mode.

There's also the age old problem that comes from these small scale encounters – it's just too personal for some. 24 man almost guarantees that at some point the party will need to splinter into smaller groups to cover multiple objectives. Being exposed like that without backup isn't to many peoples' taste. Though I am not one of them, I completely understand why someone would feel uneasy. Small groups really boil down to skill vs skill (and/or composition) and many players just aren't that experienced or confident in their abilities to thrive in this sort of environment. These players prefer to be in a less standout role—just be in the background doing their own thing. Forcing them into the foreground just makes them shy away from this mode altogether.

Even players who are confident in their ability to hold their own in whatever situation may arise don't like paired down Secure and it's simply because of personal preference. Let's face it, it's not for everyone. Many players don't like Wolves Den, and many players don't like 24's.

Plus, Slaughter's rewards are just so much more inviting. Slaughter is an easier mode with better payout... Why would players who are incentivized by rewards ever queue for Secure?

There's just a whole slew of things that boil down to 24 man Secure being a very unfun mode for a large amount of people, which in turn means that these people don't queue, which in turn means that 72 man Secure is all but extinct.

Now, I'm well aware that there is wide-spread discontent among the NA PvPing community with Slaughter in general, many voicing their wishes to simply remove the mode entirely. I am not here to do the same, as I said above. I fully believe that both Frontlines modes should be viable options to cater to player wants/needs/play styles/etc. No side should be alienated just because one side's preference isn't quite the others' cup of tea. But as it currently stands, the issues with Secure aren't being handled. Slaughter and 24 man Secure have destroyed 72 man Secure. This is a massive problem that stands to hinder FFXIV's PvP longevity.

Speaking from my own personal perspective, I have seen dozens of my server's PvP regulars basically stop completely. People who were routinely getting in 50+ games a week are now getting in less than a handful. Looking around the PvP forums and Reddit it's clear that this problem isn't just isolated to my server; it's affecting a huge population of the NA Data Centers.

People want 72 man Secure but they aren't getting it, so they just aren't playing Frontlines at all. It's true that Slaughter has brought in a lot of new players to PvP—which really is great—but it's been at the cost of a massive percentage of the old PvPing population.

To fix this problem SE needs to take action. I do not have a definitive answer or solution. Currently Slaughter is much more lucrative than Secure, so perhaps with a change to rewards players would have equal incentive to queue for Secure or Slaughter. The main issue really stems from how often 24 man Secure seems to pop... This needs to be dropped down on the priority list, otherwise the PvP community simply won't queue for it.

Additional Note: I actually wrote this before the release of Gold Saucer, but since patch 2.51 the problems have all been compounded. We're still 3 months away from Heaven's Ward and it would be a huge shame if Frontlines was left to just stagnant until then due to simple, small changes that could be implemented to increase PvP's activity once again.

I implore the community to show as much support for this topic as possible. Perhaps if we can garner enough attention we can get a GM's response and possibly a solution. Wishful thinking, maybe, but where there's a will, there's a way.

[Saiyakupo]

I agree that Slaughter has killed 72 man secure, and basically killed PVP itself.

What's happening mainly from my point of view is these two things:

1: The roulette que thing puts you in only one mode or the other mode. It doesn't put you in a line for both if one doesn't fill. No. It just splits up the entirety of everyone queing into two groups, thus thinning out the number of people in the que even more. This is the opposite of a fix. This is heavily contributing to our ridiculous secure wait times.

2: Secure mode is more fair, though sadly, like the OP said, we can only get in 24 man version now. Not enough people are queing for secure to get us a full version ever again. Slaughter mode is like, whoever has the most black mages wins. Unlike in 72 man secure where the better balanced group would win. No. It's just all about Black mages now. Forever.

Those two things kill it for me, and for everyone in my PVP linkshells. Heavily disappointing! I love PVP so I do want it fixed ]:

[Brianmj]

I'm with the OP. I played Frontlines hardcore from the middle of 2.3 to 2.5. On the Primal Datacenter we had something, every night at prime time. I would see a lot of the same names every night, we were a community. If you knew what to do your queue times could be instant, or an average of five minutes, and hardly ever longer than fifteen minutes. 72 player was where it was at. When Slaughter came about, I watched Secure get destroyed overnight. The Primal Datacenter PvP community, though decently sized, was never large enough to support two concurrent running PvP modes. 2.5 fragmented the PvP community. Sure it brought in new blood, but that was mostly for Slaughter. With the removal of 48 person Secure, large scale Secure has been a thing of the past. I have not once seen a 72 player Secure match since 2.5. For me, it's only been 24 player and 30+ minute queues. Obviously the thing to do would be to play Slaughter, but even as someone that mained SMN in Frontlines, I have no appreciation for the new mode. I derive no pleasure in Slaughter as a healer or as a Summoner spamming Cometeor - this is what they want us to do, right?

I'm really upset with how Square handles content in this game. For me, Square destroyed Frontlines.

[Zensho]

I hope heavens ward pvp won't suck lol.

[Evangela]

Secure is way more entertain than Slaughter.

Slaughter needs a huge adjustment.

[kisada]

While I generally agree with everything that's been said, I think it's fairly evident at this point that SE places an extremely low priority on how they handle PVP in general.

Things like holding onto an archaic matchmaking system for wolves den, doubling down on GC restrictions, etc. etc. all goes to show that SE is willing to put cursory effort into PVP but not much more. As long as it's out there for people, the company has almost literally no interest in even the most fundamental of issues, most namely accessibility. To them it doesn't matter if people actually play the game or not, and queue times that can often take upwards of an hour or more for comparatively little gaming (I have many screenshots of waiting over 3 hours for what ends up being a two minute WD match) don't seem to be an issue for the developers. When it comes to PVP you find that their work doesn't extend beyond creating the content. Improving it over time is not even an afterthought.

Furthermore, the current MO seems to be "this is what we want everyone to play, and let's forget everything else exists." While that may work for PVE as this game relies on a vertical progression system, that is not the case for PVP. By abandoning or straight up ignoring other PVP game modes (wolves den has been laughably cast aside, as is FL secure), there becomes a distinct lack of variety and richness to PVP. IT IS NOT FUN having only one viable option to play PVP and it ends up becoming extremely work-like and monotonous for us to be forced to play the same thing over and over. Personally I only like wolves den and I would play it any day over any of the other modes. I'm not often afforded the luxury of getting to play den, so at least I would like the simple option of more diverse modes rather than just playing slaughter day in and day out. However, with the way SE tunnel visions on what's current in PVP, I don't even have the choice of playing regular secure games.

Let's boil it down a bit more. Pretend that you stripped away all the PVE content in this game and were left solely with slaughter. Who in their right mind would think that hour long queues for 15 minute matches for a single game mode over and over and over is ok? I hope SE reads and rereads this: THIS IS NOT FUN. THIS IS NOT FUN. THIS IS NOT FUN.

PVP has a niche following and it's small enough that the playerbase doesn't require expansive content. But the playerbase does at least need SOME options beyond the bare minimum, and often times we don't even get that. You can't treat PVP thinking that it's PVE content without ruining the rest of it and poisoning the playerpool in the process.