New Frontlines

[Nalien]

It is utterly mind numbing that SE is still insisting on keeping them around, even though there is literally no reason to do so.

I think it adds nice flavour to Frontlines, but they really need to make it less rigid... I see no reason why we cannot have a system that simply prioritizes putting you in your Grand Company, rather than locking us to them... If 72 people are queuing, start a match, if it's a 24A/21M/27F split, take some of the Flames and put them in Maelstrom, perhaps with some additional rewards involved to encourage not throwing matches for your true Grand Company...

Would be quite nice if PvP had a skirmish style lobby to play around in during queues... So rather than queuing and sitting on your ass, you queue and get put into a non-serious waiting room-style match, and as that fills up we get given options; 24 or 72? Seize or Shatter? Temporarily sign up with a different Grand Company for additional rewards to speed up queues? Would make waiting somewhat more entertaining, and provide us with options to speed up queues, win-win. We can't even get them to show us how the queue is filling like with every PvE queue though, so that's probably just a futile dream...

In general though, Grand Companies in this game are just pathetic... It really feels like they just went down a checklist of things a MMO needs, without actually justifying this faction system... "We need a faction system! Why? IDK"... I'd kill for something like XIs Conquest system, shame the development team seems pretty incapable of emulating good content from XI. Yes I'm talking about Hunts and Diadem... They could honestly just remove Grand Companies from the game entirely and I doubt it would have any real negative impact... They've done nothing with them, there's no nationalism in this game like there was with XI... It's a damn shame, and I'd like them to fix that since I think it really enhances the game in general, but right now it's just a means of restriction and nothing more... Be that for Frontlines or glamours...

[Februs]

They could honestly just remove Grand Companies from the game entirely and I doubt it would have any real negative impact... They've done nothing with them, there's no nationalism in this game like there was with XI... It's a damn shame, and I'd like them to fix that since I think it really enhances the game in general, but right now it's just a means of restriction and nothing more... Be that for Frontlines or glamours...

This is the bottom line right there.

Don't get me wrong, there are certain things that I actually like about GC's. It's nice to feel like you belong to a specific team, for one. The crusader-ish attitudes people take towards certain GC reputations is proof enough that there is at least some form of twisted pride within GC's. It's also nice to see regular faces. There are some people within my GC that I am genuinely happy to see on regular occasions ... but not at the expense of waiting an hour just to get into a match.

The fact is that GC's really don't do anything other than isolate players from active matches. There's nothing truly unique across the three GC's either, other than the regular players you might run into. If matchmaking was handled differently, then there might be more options to work with, but PvP uses the same DF as PvE, so there's a limit to how efficient it can be. Slapping on GC restrictions just needlessly bogs up the works. At the very least, easing up the restrictions would be a MASSIVE improvement. Filling in spots on teams by temporarily swapping a person's GC is fine. I wouldn't worry about people throwing the matches since people already do that anyway, and there's nothing to stop people from actively swapping GC's to chase queues. That said, removing GC restrictions is still the best option, because it works with the DF matchmaking.

Imagine if they added a "Free Agent" queue, on top of the typical GC queue. What do you think would happen? DF has a long history of showing us that people will always queue for the fastest option. Therefore, people would almost ALWAYS choose the Free Agent queue, because queue times would be infinitely faster than trying to queue for a specific GC. As a result, GC queues would die. The negative side effect of that would be ... oh, wait. There isn't one. The only potential pitfall is that it would take slightly longer to get GC specific rewards (mounts), because you couldn't force yourself to be on the same GC every match. However, given that queue times would be ridiculously faster that's hardly something to complain about. People might actually get their mounts quicker, since the overall time between matches would be much shorter. Aside from that, absolutely nothing else in this game would be negatively effected ... or effected at all, for that matter.