immortal flames unplayable

[PvpDRG]

I'll record some of my matches and put them them up here just to show you guys what im talking about.

[Synestra]

Some times mael and adders team up and attack us while we just have a single B rank node. Its nuts and annoying as hell.

Ofc you team up with other GC and attack the weak one even if its not needed, and i can say this from experience as this happens alot for adders due most of them being pussies when it comes to fighting. Other reason might be a grudge, if your GC dominated for long peroid then it will eventually turn against you in form of "other GC's teaming up for revenge".

[Dimitrii]

Ofc you team up with other GC and attack the weak one even if its not needed, and i can say this from experience as this happens alot for adders due most of them being pussies when it comes to fighting. Other reason might be a grudge, if your GC dominated for long peroid then it will eventually turn against you in form of "other GC's teaming up for revenge".

The second place team teaming up with the first place team to farm the last place team? That makes no sense for the second place team. And neither does it make sense for the second place team to stand back and watch the first place team farm the last place team for battle highs/fever (so fking annoying when we as maelstrom do this cause ppl are all like "oh no dont get involved let em fight" even if the first place team clearly farming em for highs/fevers"). Second place team should be hitting the first place team from behind for a sandwich if first place team focusing last place team for whatever stupid reason, unless of course they dont really care about winning anyway.

[Synestra]

The second place team teaming up with the first place team to farm the last place team? That makes no sense for the second place team.

Yeah it makes no sense but thats the way adders usually roll, adders being weakest GC most of the time means that they will "farm" 2nd weakes with help of stronger GC. I know this sounds kinda sad but it is what it is atm, only time you can get actually a good match is either latenight or when there is adder pre-made going on. And because of this i kinda stopped caring about winning, if i get in good group i will play properly, if not then i will just do some random duels and derp around like rest of the team.

[ess-vid]

No, dimitrii has the right of it, you, and people with your mindset, are why we lose. Seize is not Slaughter with a new map, no one cares about your kill count. Seize is a tactics game, your primary focus is to capture, defend, and overtake nodes. Flames can't seem to grasp this and will instead spend several minutes fighting at a long dead node, chase people clear across the map, and turn a push into a skirmish at the edge of a node that gets half the alliance killed in a succession of painflares and cometeors. We lose nodes for the same reason, everyone is so obsessed with fighting 50ft away from the node that they don't even see the flank unit swing around to capture our node behind us then promptly pincer us from the rear of our line.

The reason the other teams "gang up" on us is the same: we have zero tactical sense. We are the datacenter joke because we will consistently do stupid things in the pursuit of battle high/fever and end up getting decimated. I have, more than once, watched a full party chase a couple of stragglers from an opposing faction right by a node that is claimed but totally undefended and not even bother to turn it off because lol kill count and rush right into the main body of that team and get destroyed, while whining "where's our backup" even though the other sixteen of us are trying to defend our node from the full brunt of the third faction. Our defenses collapse, our pushes stop short, we will scatter all over the map chasing random things when we should be bunched up and we'll linger in a cluster skirmishing when we should be spread to anticipate new nodes. We are easy marks and it doesn't take a conspiracy or collusion for adders and mael to know this, and capitalize on it at the first sign of weakness. The "teaming up" thing is just another excuse for flames to not admit we lose most matches to bad play, the same as "need more SMN" and "the winning team got lucky with RNG".

A story: one morning doing 24man Seize matches, we ended up in an odd spot. We were north, 400 points, with the beach and lighthouse nodes captured, mael south with the southern node to the immediate west of their base captured and 250 points, while adders from caves were also 250 points and lord knows where. No one is attacking. So we go for the smart play and sit tight because the obvious moves from the opposing teams would be for adders to come in from the northwest to push beach while mael pushes lighthouse from the south. Not five seconds pass before one guy just goes "push mael". What? No. We have a commanding lead and an uncontested claim on two of three nodes. We hold defense and we win this. "Guys we need to push mael or we're going to lose." We're at 450/500 and have no idea where one of the teams even is, defense is the smart play here. "You guys are dumb this is pvp if you don't fight somebody you'll lose" (yes, seriously). This guy was so upset that we refused to risk points in needless skirmishes that he spent the morning telling every new group that myself and another player were "AFK tome grinders that don't want to win". The one time he actually got people to follow him, he took us from a commanding lead by 200 to trailing in third by by 250 with no nodes held and only one set left to spawn in under a minute. His response to his bad call getting us massacred and our leaking points like a broken fire hydrant was "keep pushing, we're doing just fine." He spent the last set of nodes in the middle of nowhere trying to kill a ninja (that had an AST and WHM as support, they were basically throwing shields and regens out while the NIN autoattacked as this guy just kept flailing) and ended the match with "sh*t happens".

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More to the point of your personal play, do you even realize how bad those screenshots make you look? Seven screens, five as WAR, one node occupied total. Mythril Tempest makes you a living bomb, your main objective should be the arrowhead of a push so you can quite literally scatter their defense and tag the node while the rest of your team supports you by harassing the members of their now broken defensive line. You should be using the same move when defending your own nodes because nothing breaks a vanguard faster than the rear seeing the front be literally tossed aside. Your key contribution metric on the end of match screen (locations occupied) should have at least a couple each match if you can help it (node RNG is what it is, can't help it if someone ends up closer to new spawns), yet you're linking a bunch of goose eggs and bragging about k/d ratios because you're apparently running around the map going "LOL FELL CLEAVE" or something. Stop worrying about big crits and "lol we wasted that guy", be a bomb with me and help PUSH BADDERS AND FAILSTROM OFF THOSE NODES!

[Februs]

No, dimitrii has the right of it, you, and people with your mindset, are why we lose. Seize is not Slaughter with a new map, no one cares about your kill count. Seize is a tactics game, your primary focus is to capture, defend, and overtake nodes.

Basically this.

I wouldn't generalize so much with all that "we" stuff (since there are quite a few Flames out there who have perfectly good win records and obviously do things right), but this is an accurate assessment. You can show us all of the loss records in the world with video montage evidence to boot and it wouldn't make a difference. Neither does your kill record. It doesn't matter how much "sick deeps" you have. It doesn't show me anything one way or another. I've been in several teams that have won matches where they didn't fight anyone at all (not for the lack of Adders/Mael trying to force us into it). I've also won several matches where we got into several fights defending nodes but killed almost nothing (no battle highs/frenzies in the entire GC).

Tactics win matches. Communication wins matches. Not having people propagate a negative chat atmosphere wins matches.

I'm not saying having high dps and a good kill squad is a bad thing (it sure makes things a lot easier if you have to fight, and if you prefer more aggressive tactics than you need the dps to back it up). I'm also not trying to imply that it's all your fault and the reason you lose matches is because of you, but, like I said before, you need to be honest about a few things when you assess your losses. Again, 1. Was someone leading the team? 2. If yes, were they making good calls? 3. Was the team communicating? 4. Did the team listen to shout outs or ignore them? (new nodes, stop fighting, attack, defend, etc.) 5. Did they all fight as a team, or did they split up and divide their forces?

I wasn't asking these questions to be an ass or something. I was asking them because these are the things that lose matches, and it makes absolutely no difference which GC you are in. Flames, typically, have the most casual/noob player base, so it is a little more difficult to keep them on point. That's why it's even more important that someone takes charge and makes sound calls that the team actually listens to, but this is no less true for any other GC. If the team is working as a team and doing objectives, it will go smooth. If the team is acting like a bunch of ducks and treating it like a free for all, things don't go smooth. It's that simple.

[Guesswhat]

As pointed out before: communication and teamwork is key. Individual skill not that much. Of course, high skill = better rate of success, no doubt.

But I feel you. I recently switched to adders on chaos. The drop in win rate is very noticeable due to 0 to little communication/teamwork and sheer stupidity (lol sorry, no offense :P). I knew it was like this, but, man, does it get frustrating and tiresome. After 5+ matches in a row losing for the same reasons (team splitting up, fighting all over the map, peeps not listening/caring), combined with long queue times, I find myself guilty of polluting chat with things I don't really mean. Which is not good for morale and my own reputation.

That being said, I feel adders have been getting better.

Edit: Scratch that, they are actually getting worse... The pain ;_;

[xxczx]

Edit: Scratch that, they are actually getting worse... The pain ;_;

when i moved to adders for two weeks, it was fun trying to get battle high without dying while the rest of Adders are falling flat in a couple of seconds lol. though it's a good match if the pheonix pre-made are playing, they are actually decent Adders to play with/against.

[PvpDRG]

I get those kills defending/attacking LOL what are you talking about my mind set is just on kills. I'll record some matches and upload them after the blade and soul third beta is over. I'll show you what im talking about.

[Serilda]

I'm on a completely different data centre so maybe my opinion isn't valid but I have to agree that this isn't some kind of Flame-specific problem. If anything, Flames have an extremely minor interface advantage in that their map icons look like a weird blend of friendly alliance/party indicators on the mini map which annoys and confuses me in pincer attacks since it cannot be customised (it's not a significant advantage, but just worth mentioning). In my group I find the Flames are excellent opponents (I'm on Maelstrom) and whenever it seems as though two GCs are teaming up or the Adders are hounding us for no reason it's simply because we're not reading the battle properly. With a good leader and communication about enemy movements even losing battles are enormously satisfying.

Factors which make a team bad are nobody trying to direct the battle, people being weird about their job choices (what was with that team make-up in one of the sample screenshots where almost everyone was a tank...?) and people soloing/farming rather than sticking together to take territory strategically. In my data centre everyone with more than one job levelled (which is pretty much everyone) immediately shuffles around at the start until we have a balanced team (currently as many SMNs as possible - kidding), we delegate a leader and share some simple ideas and information (e.g. "If you're struggling when we get going, I'll switch to healer too"). Sometimes we get teams stuffed with inexperienced players and things don't go so well, but for the most part it only takes a couple of sensible people to lead the newer players and the whole experience gets better. A little communication and teamwork goes a long way.

I don't see why Flames in particular would only attract bad players, but in any case please don't assume all Flames are stupid across all servers. There are good ones. The real problem is probably experienced players bandwagon-jumping to the same GC but I don't see how S-E can be expected to sort out social problems like that.