Sellswords

[Daemi]

It has been stated that exp rates are likely to increase in pvp. This is good news, but if I may add, what we really could use to improve pvp participation rates, and thus overall enjoyment and growth, would be the ability to join any grand company via duty finder. This can, in my mind, be easily explained in the lore by labeling players outside of their own grand company as "sellswords". It may be a slight stretch from the story intent behind frontlines, but in my opinion would still be a reasonable one. In the story, our characters are aligned with a particular grand company, but are known to all - so it is not unreasonable to imagine a military force may request the aid of established adventurers as a mercenary force.

This could be achieved by enabling the option to toggle if players want to support their specific GC in frontlines (and perhaps grant them a further bonus for doing so), or if they wish to be assigned to a random GC as sellswords without that additional bonus.

This could also allow parties of friends or FCs to queue together, regardless of their chosen GC (something which has long been desired). It is possible that large pre-made parties may need to be sorted separately so they do not overwhelm random players, or balanced to ensure they are pitted against one another - but if overall participation rates are higher, this may be reasonable.

This is something I hope the developers may take under consideration alongside any simple exp increases. Increased participation and enjoyment is the real goal, and I believe a solution such as this would be a large step toward achieving that.

I would very much like to hear opinions on this matter. Apologies as I am sure this issue has been raised in the past, but I am trying to present a reasonable method to accomplish this goal while still retaining the proper lore, which is important but has thus far has been something of a hindrance to widespread pvp participation.

[Guesswhat]

A mercenary type GC or something similar like this have been suggested many times. I hope SE implements it. I would jump on that pronto.

[Februs]

The Mercenary Que option. It has been mentioned in the past... and ignored by SE.

It's probably ignored because it would have the same effect as eliminating GC's entirely. Consider if they implemented it. You have the Seize direct que (in which you que for your specific GC and are slotted accordingly) and then you have the Merc que (which is kind of like roulette. The DF would slot you into whatever GC needs the players). Which do you think would que faster? Merc. Every time. No one would que for their GC's anymore (except maybe already established pre-mades), which would make the GC que option irrelevant.

Another pitfall is the que with friends option. If merc ques were the solution to filling in the gaps of less populated GC's (in a perfect world, maybe) than what do you think would happen if people started quing with friends within the Merc option? The DF would have a heart attack trying to slot groups of 2-8 into empty GC spots that are only 1's and 2's. This problem already happens with pre-made groups. Sometimes it's faster (though less fun) to que solo for Seize. DF has an easier time finding spots for 1 player than it does for a full team of 8, and that's within the SAME GC. Imagine if DF tried to slot a pre-made merc group into a single GC when the empty spots are spread across all 3.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Merc idea. I always have, but for DF it's a matter of filling spaces as they come up, and Merc ques could be incompatible with the current GC set up. Merc ques would work fine if GC's didn't exist. They might even work fine with GC's if it's only used for solo ques, but pre-made merc teams would probably find themselves in que limbo while the DF tries to find an open GC spot that can accommodate their total party. The solution to this would be that everyone just ques for Merc... but, then that leads back to point one. Why keep the Gc's at all if everyone is queing for merc?

It's all about the logistics of how people are slotted in ques. SE's probably considering this right now, but the hard truth is that it probably just doesn't work while GC's are still in place.

[Guesswhat]

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Adding a 4th GC as a merc GC would still -at least somewhat- keep the restrictions SE wants. There are many peeps who cares about their GC. "Mael for life!!1!", "Flames ftw!!1!", etc.

Basically a 4th GC could work as a wildcard GC when it comes to frontline matches. One could still be assigned to 1 of the 3 normal GCs when it comes to FCs etc, if that would pose any problems. There are plenty of ways to imagine this, but SE could still have merc Qs while keeping restrictions with GCs at some level. Imo a 4th "merc" GC would be the best solution to fix the queues.

[Februs]

Adding a 4th GC as a merc GC would still -at least somewhat- keep the restrictions SE wants. There are many peeps who cares about their GC. "Mael for life!!1!", "Flames ftw!!1!", etc.

I see your reasoning... but it still wouldn't work.

Firstly, the DF works off of the PvE model. Parties that que together stay together (think CT, back when it was still alive). So, in a 3 way battle between Adders, Flames, and Mael, if all three GC's were missing one player, but a pre-made party of 8 were queing from the "Merc GC," they'd be left in limbo. The DF would be incapable of breaking up the pre-made to fill the blank spaces, and no one would get in. It already happens that way now with Pre-mades, which is why solo ques are usually faster. A 4th "Merc GC," which would be likely populated by friends who wanted to play together, would never get into matches with any more than 1 or 2 people per party.

Secondly, even solo quer's from the "merc GC" would be potentially left out. The format for Frontlines is: Adders v. Flames v. Mael. The idea with the "Merc GC" would be to have those GC players fill the blank spaces in the less populated GC's to improve que times. Only, because the format is already established between the first 3 GC's, Merc players get a backseat. It would be like flying standby on an airplane. The seat for the fight is reserved for people directly queing from one of the 3 original GC's involved, and the Merc's are only there to fill the blank spaces. What if there are no blank spaces? You miss your flight. Merc's would get an absurdly long que time. It might help the que's for the other 3 Gc's but no one in their right mind would want to be a Merc and voluntarily place themselves in a que from hell (unless SE offered some seriously good rewards for it).

The only solution to this would be having DF take the players evenly from all 4 GC's, but that would be no different than the way it is now. We'd just be adding another GC into the mix. People would have to flip flop around from their original GC's to the Merc GC to even populate it, and Que times would skyrocket as DF tries to make heads or tails out of who to put where.

There's also the problem with sabotage. Since the Merc GC would have to get it's player base from people who swapped from their original GC's, and the Merc GC had no banner allegiance, it leaves the door open to former Mael/Adder/Flames who hold a grudge against the team they get slotted on and actively don't play or try to get the team they get slotted on to lose. Worst case scenario is that people would find a way to exploit it to organize rigged matches. Say, for example, you get a full pre-made of Mael qued at the same time as a Full pre-made of former Mael. if they managed to get into the same match, or que dodged until they did get into the same match using mumble or TS or w/e, you'd get a match where it would be 48 v. 24. We know it's possible because some players use a similar method to get a full Alliance with 3 pre-mades.

I've actually thought up a bunch more reasons why this wouldn't work, but you get the point. As much as I wish this had been the way it was, and that we could have a solution like this to the que problem, there's just too many problems with implementation to make it work. Compared to just straight removing GC's, this would be way to complicated and could potentially make PvP far worse than it is now.

[Guesswhat]

It's understandable why one would limit one's imagination around the current DF...

I have argued before that the PvP shouldn't be based on the PvE DF, rather some sort of host/join system. Again, there are multiple way of imagining this. If we're stuck with the DF for PvP (which I guess we are), you could flag yourself as a wildcard while still being tied to a standard GC. When solo Qing, you originally start to Q as your GC, but if the queue is taking too long you are assigned to a GC that halts the queue. It doesn't have to be a 4th GC. Some random quest could open up for a wildcard option in DF.

Of course, popping up in your hated GC could still be a problem. However, I think these sorts of scenarios would be very rare. Even now there are plenty of possibilities to sabotage your hated GC.

All in all, the most important thing for me is to play. At the current state it's not playable because of the queues. Fixing the queues in should be high on SE's PvP priority list.

[Februs]

All in all, the most important thing for me is to play. At the current state it's not playable because of the queues. Fixing the queues in should be high on SE's PvP priority list.

Definitely. The ques have always been a problem in the current system, and something needs to be done.

Honestly, I was surprised when I first say that PvP runs on DF. I thought they'd have implemented an entirely separate system for it, and I still think they should have. Match hosting might not work, seeing as how we're on dedicated servers, however, setting up a completely separate server for PvP purposes only might have been a better option. We can't communicate with our FC's while in matches anyway, so why not give us a door to go through that places our character on a PvP dedicated server which runs off of an entirely different set up than DF? If they had done it that way, we could have streamlined the game menus a lot more, and set up specific match ques based on game modes instead of being chained to DF... which doesn't work at the best of times, even in PvE.

Either way, they gotta do something. As much as it would suck in the down time, the best thing they could do is completely overhaul and redesign the system. It has too many flaws that need to be fixed.

[OllieWoods]

SE definitely need to do something, i'd play pvp all day every day if the queue times for me weren't 30mins-2hrs

[l---------------l]

The idea is good, sadly, good ideas seem to be most ignored ones.

A tip-trick-secret for chaos data center, if you want insta-queues or 5-10 min queues... Go adders, true story, I lived it... However I must warn you that they have scores like the following ones, having elite healer and DPS pair in their group:

21 matches
3 victories
7 2nd place
11 3rd place.

[Guesswhat]

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I started out in adders, and the first couple of weeks were good. But suddenly, around the time slaughter was introduced, my 3rds escalated quickly.

I also changed to adders 1 time after 3.0. After time in both mael and flames, once again, my 3rd swallowed my 2nd and 1st. Since then, after I quit adders, the 3rds are once again at the bottom where they belong.

Having fast queues are nice, but, man, being with adders usually takes all the fun out of the match. Which ruins the point. I mean... This is a good adders representation on chaos: