Frontline PSA - Playing to Win

[Purrfectstorm]

While PvP exp and Wolf Marks matter, a lot of us who play PvP also want achievements like the ADS mount, which we can only get with 1st place finishes. So while going 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, may seem just as good as going 1st, 2nd, 3rd, in actuality many of us don't feel that way.

I have noticed a large number of teams who seem to play for 2nd place. Maybe they think the 1st place team is too far ahead and 2nd is all they can aspire to at that point. However, I have seen comebacks from 100-700 when both of the teams who are behind work together to take points away from the 1st place team.

It is frustrating to be the team playing for 1st when one of the other teams is playing for 2nd. You leave the other team alone to go after the team in the lead and then the team you left alone snipes your node or otherwise starts harassing you. Then you only have 2 options:

1) Continue to go after the 1st place team and probably get 3rd, because you're essentially fighting 2 teams at once.

2) Leave the 1st place team alone and fight the other team for 2nd.

It's really a classic prisoner's dilemma type situation which is best answered by the Tit-for-Tat strategy. In other words, if you are team A and team B is in the lead, you have to go for team B, but if team C attacks you, then you have to punish them by retaliating against them rather than trying to press team B.

In that situation, team B will always win. The size of the lead for this to happen varies quite a bit, mostly dependent on the perceptions of the other 2 teams, but I really don't like playing for 2nd so I wanted to share my perspective with the community.

Sometimes stealing territory, even if it would be easy to do so, is bad overall strategy. It takes attention away from the team in the lead and forces other players to instead play for 2nd.

If you want to play for 1st, always focus the team in the lead. Only play for 2nd when the other trailing team refuses to cooperate.

[MihaelB]

It would be great if people could understand this and basic strategy to begin with. Most people just go for kills and chase anything that moves.

Some people have asked about it in game and it's something you could do if your Grand Company is thick headed, you could pull the Grand Company you want to fight by yourself or your friends if you don't mind a high suicide/ dying probability, as soon as possible before it's a 1 vs 2 GC scenario.

This will at least present the plate of people to kill that is necessary instead of your 'team' trying to think of who to kill and fail to pick the one that has the higher score on the scoreboard despite how simple it is to understand it.

[S-snape]

Just gotta have some shotcallers on your gc/datacenter, if you don't you should try to become one yourself; you'll see alot more wins if you can organize everyone. It can be frustrating, but if you really wanna play for wins, having atleast decent shotcallers to get everyone onto the same page regarding strategy is needed when there are so many new guys running around not knowing exactly where to go.

[MihaelB]

Just gotta have some shotcallers on your gc/datacenter, if you don't you should try to become one yourself; you'll see alot more wins if you can organize everyone. It can be frustrating, but if you really wanna play for wins, having atleast decent shotcallers to get everyone onto the same page regarding strategy is needed when there are so many new guys running around not knowing exactly where to go.

That's the problem, DECENT shot callers. Primal Flames has so many wannabe shotcallers that make the worse calls with no logic behind them which is frankly worse than letting your company mindlessly killing anything that moves.

If you're not in a position of leadership in real life or have no leadership experience, you will likely not be good at it. It's not something you can pick up and do, you need experience, understanding of human behavior and natural talent/charisma to lead people.

[Februs]

If you're not in a position of leadership in real life or have no leadership experience, you will likely not be good at it. It's not something you can pick up and do, you need experience, understanding of human behavior and natural talent/charisma to lead people.

The quality of leadership is definitely important. The problem with this is that it is difficult to come across as charismatic in a purely text format, because it is impossible to accurately communicate tone or body language. The part that "leaders" need to get is that how they talk to people is what will make the bigger difference in this kind of situation.

Text exclusive environments are unique in that everyone has a flat voice and there are no readily identifiable authority figures. So, leadership becomes a 2 way street between tactical knowledge and good communication skills. Making good tactical calls gives credibility. Communicating those calls in short, simple, and easy to follow instructions efficiently without coming across as arrogant, egotistical, or condescending is paramount and helps the leader appear more charismatic. Having good people skills makes this kind of thing easier, but even the ability to create a point-form list can be wildly effective if done correctly.

[MihaelB]

The quality of leadership is definitely important. The problem with this is that it is difficult to come across as charismatic in a purely text format, because it is impossible to accurately communicate tone or body language. The part that "leaders" need to get is that how they talk to people is what will make the bigger difference in this kind of situation.

Text exclusive environments are unique in that everyone has a flat voice and there are no readily identifiable authority figures. So, leadership becomes a 2 way street between tactical knowledge and good communication skills. Making good tactical calls gives credibility. Communicating those calls in short, simple, and easy to follow instructions efficiently without coming across as arrogant, egotistical, or condescending is paramount and helps the leader appear more charismatic. Having good people skills makes this kind of thing easier, but even the ability to create a point-form list can be wildly effective if done correctly.

Charisma can be seen through the conveyance of emotions, goals and attainment of these goals, especially if you fight on the front-lines day by day with the same peers and chat with them even via typing. If you share your emotions, persona and achievements, strength and perception of the person can reflect their charisma.

Our real life persona and abilities are usually conveyed through to the game unless you are aware of your real persona and purposefully choose to contradict the non-virtual reflection but even then your capability is still limited to what you as an individual possess.

I agree communication is key and vital especially with the limitations of all the perceived senses besides sight and perhaps sound if you haven't muted the game.

Strength and credibility can easily be displayed through how the player performs and the results they achieve through their tactics. If the person repeatedly makes calls and creates results with less than efficient results, it's obvious and clear when they should not be the one issuing commands and will result in negative credibility.

A lone shot caller with foresight and tactical knowledge can change the field dramatically in comparison to someone who sees only 1 step ahead, only if the team listens however can strategy even be made into results.

[TheWaywardWind]

The quality of leadership is definitely important.

The main thing with Frontlines is that it's usually not that difficult to figure out what your team should be doing next. In almost all situations, there is almost always a "right answer" per se, in the sense that tactically it makes the most sense for your team to move in a specific direction. Maelstrom holding two not-easy-to-defend nodes while Adders and Flames have one while also leading both? Maelstrom gets teamed.

The problem also lies with a lot of players' attitudes. It's going to be near impossible for anyone to properly direct anyone if people still maintain the awful "YOU'RE NOT MY DAD/THE BOSS OF ME!" attitudes so many people seem hellbent on keeping.

As I stated before, some direction is better than no direction at all. Has anyone here ever played a match where nobody says or calls anything? Let me tell you, the results are far from pretty. Everyone wanders around like they're daydreaming and the entire GC gets crushed. It's like you're playing like the Adders do on primal.

I'd rather someone take the reigns and go, "Here, I'll do my best to lead everyone, even if people don't agree with me," then have everyone sit and twiddle their thumbs because nobody has any idea of what they should be doing. Still, the attitudes are the most important thing, but it's also important to remember that it's not always the person who's making the shot calls' fault. If the same people persist in just actively shit talking other people for no reason other than because they dislike said person, then they are far worse than the person making calls, whether they be good or not.

Teamwork is also important, but if people are getting mad at the one person who's actively trying to make the team actually work as a team, then fuck all can be done about it.

[S-snape]

Very well put wayward, agree 100%, I find the players attitude is usually pretty alright in this game though when it comes to shotcalling, I think most people want someone to guide the whole alliance. It's just a select few whiners when it's going bad.

[Februs]

The main thing with Frontlines is that it's usually not that difficult to figure out what your team should be doing next. In almost all situations, there is almost always a "right answer" per se, in the sense that tactically it makes the most sense for your team to move in a specific direction. Maelstrom holding two not-easy-to-defend nodes while Adders and Flames have one while also leading both? Maelstrom gets teamed.

I agree. Teamwork is definitely the most important thing. I find that some of the absolute best advice I've ever seen in the chat box is: "Stay together!" There's strength in numbers, even if the group is doing something dumb. The number one priority of any FL team should be to try and actually work together, regardless of the plan.

The only thing is, I just wish that more people had a grasp of fundamental tactics, because not grasping them can lead to terrible teamwork as well. Take your own example:

In your scenario, Mael's logical response would be to mimic Blitzkreig: Preemptively attacking one aggressor while maintaining a skeleton defense on your rear. The idea is to swiftly defeat one of the two attacking armies before both sandwich you, thereby avoiding a war on two fronts. It's a gamble, obviously, because if your attack force is outmatched by their opponents then they stand to lose everything. However, if they win their assault they will always come out in a favourable position, even if their second opponent successfully takes the Nodes to their rear. The reason for this is because, by defeating one enemy soundly and quickly, they have successfully opened an avenue of escape from which they can maneuver into a better tactical position and either wait for new nodes or retaliate against the second enemy to their rear.

Yet, in Frontlines, the vast majority of players scream "DEFEND!" and then buckle down and wait for the inevitable tag team. There is no logical or tactical advantage to doing this. You can't build trenches. You cant set up traps or defenses. You know both of them are coming, and it's not hard to reason out that you will be unlikely to hold off a combined assault from both enemies. Unlike preemptively attacking one of them (where there are fairly even odds to victory or defeat), you are fighting on two fronts against superior numbers. You're basically just waiting to die, bleeding away your points before being forced to scatter or respawn, thereby losing you any and all momentum you might have had and any tactical position you might have been holding.

Now, obviously there are exceptions to this (say, for example, those lovely times in which your two enemy GC's are so busy fighting one another that they don't even pay attention to you), and it can be the best decision to just sit and wait it out, but in the circumstances in which you know that both enemies will most certainly be coming to sandwich you, there really is only one good decision: Gamble. Yet, despite this, groups rarely decide to do it, and even if there'a a voice in the box advocating for it, there's someone else who is screaming DEFEND!! As if it were actually possible.

Again, even if they chose to defend it is best to stay together, but the dissenting voices in the chat box lead to a lot of people getting confused. They end up just following whichever mob of dots on the map is bigger, and the smaller group gets pounded.

[TheWaywardWind]

People should always try to strive for first place no matter what; I can't tell the number of times where I've had people join into a team and outright announce to the entire Alliance that they have no interest in working as a team or winning. They simply just want to get kills and their tomes and move on for the day.

What's worse is that a lot of people don't realize that they are the problem. Too many people, at least on Primal Flames, like to run off and say nothing and die without saying anything and then talk smack about those who are leading the entire group of people. People like that tend to be the most useless, I've found, as all they tend to do is cost points whenever they play and then frustrate the other ~20 people listening to calls.


It's always better to follow someone's who's making calls, even if you don't agree with them. Do the entire alliance a favor and work as a group. Anything less and all you're doing is stirring shit. Splitting up is never a good idea.

My advice, honestly, would be to help out as much as you can, even if it's throwing out your own personal idea as to where the team should go. Far too often people just cause shit without any advice as to what the Grand Company should do to win properly. Those people tend to be the same people who complain without realizing that they are the problem.