New Frontlines

[Odessium]

I love the PvP in this game and the community from Chaos data center who regularly play!
But they really need to fix the Grand Company restriction. I usually play after work and get a few hours of gameplay - some nights I can wait like 1 hour between matches resulting in like 3-4 matches (or less) in total each night. I mean come on. And there's no matchmaking in Frontlines so often there is one GC having very skilled players against one or two GCs with newer players which ends up in a stomp.

[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...

[Maxwell]

... I'm not saying I don't want new people getting into PvP or anything like that, but the competitive scene is not the place to draw those people in... Frontlines is... There is no sense getting completely inexperienced people into Feast, get them into Frontlines and if they feel like checking out the competitive scene for those seasonal rewards, after they've got a feel for PvP in this game?...

Good point. MOBA style games such as Smite have progress requirement before you can join ranked matches. It would make sense here (enough frontlines + WD training unlocks ranked WD), but i wonder if there would be enough players to make it interesting. This is just one issue with the whole PvP situation.

[FunkYeahDragons]

I like the concept of Grand Companies, just not the queue times resulting from our low population of PVPers. Frontlines would be significantly less fun for me without having an underdog, or without recognizing friendly or enemy players from their GCs.

That's something I dislike about The Feast in comparison, which is a true free for all with no ties outside of your personal friends and no reason to forge any cross-server alliances. There's no playfully trashing an enemy team outside the game and having a laugh because there is no enemy team.

That said, none of the fun is going to happen if queue times get too long and people don't even want to queue.

[Xenosan]

Yea Grand Companies have almost no presence without the PVP connection once the early MSQ is finished. Even their Seal currency trade system is pretty limited, what with just Fates and garbage gear hand-ins.

Maybe they'll look into expanding GC relevance, that's needed outside PVP, anyway. Factional PVP is a selling feature for western MMOs, maybe instead of removing it they could do the opposite and look at how the competition actually makes it work.

Even FFXI's passive zone control feature would be welcome for HW and future regions.

[Knahli]

That said, the "shatter" aspect might be a little iffy. In Secure, node spawns often watered down the PvP aspects of the game mode, because everyone was suddenly doing a giant PvE styled Dps check. I hope that the "shatter points" don't run that same risk. We'll have to wait and see, though. The point weight between capture points and shatter points will ultimately decide where the player focus is.

I actually like the sound of it. In the case of Nodes and Drones, their spawn point was predictable as was their timing so people knew when OPs would be lightly guarded(if at all). Shatter takes that away with the random spawn aspect and results in you weighing up your options. Is it worth chasing the spawn half-way across the map if it means abandoning the OP while the enemies are near? Should we send half a party and aim for some rather than no points? Less? Etc etc

[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.

[Februs]

I actually like the sound of it. In the case of Nodes and Drones, their spawn point was predictable as was their timing so people knew when OPs would be lightly guarded(if at all). Shatter takes that away with the random spawn aspect and results in you weighing up your options. Is it worth chasing the spawn half-way across the map if it means abandoning the OP while the enemies are near? Should we send half a party and aim for some rather than no points? Less? Etc etc

I agree. I'm not against the "shatter points" outright. I actually like the idea, because it gives some depth to the game mode. I just don't want to see a repeat of those PvE Secure matches. It is my firm belief that PvP game modes should be exactly that: PvP. Having it turn into a giant PvE fest kind of defies the point of queing for PvP. I could get the same type of gameplay in a 24 man raid by competing against the other two alliances for top dps/tank aggro ... which makes my skin crawl just saying it.

The fact that the shatter points will be (presumably) random is my guiding ray of hope here, because it will actively encourage combat instead of discouraging it. Like I said before, the player focus will fall to how much weight is given to capture points vs shatter points. If SE strikes a good balance, and makes those shatter points random or semi-random, then this could actually make the combat more intense and enjoyable (unless you're losing). If they make the same mistake they made with Secure, though, then it's just going to be a big PvE Dps check, which gets kind of stale after a while. Either way, modelling it after Secure is a good idea, in my opinion. It's probably the best FL game mode to date, so that's a good a base as any to build on.

[Knahli]

I agree. I'm not against the "shatter points" outright. I actually like the idea, because it gives some depth to the game mode. I just don't want to see a repeat of those PvE Secure matches. It is my firm belief that PvP game modes should be exactly that: PvP. Having it turn into a giant PvE fest kind of defies the point of queing for PvP. I could get the same type of gameplay in a 24 man raid by competing against the other two alliances for top dps/tank aggro ... which makes my skin crawl just saying it.

The fact that the shatter points will be (presumably) random is my guiding ray of hope here, because it will actively encourage combat instead of discouraging it. Like I said before, the player focus will fall to how much weight is given to capture points vs shatter points. If SE strikes a good balance, and makes those shatter points random or semi-random, then this could actually make the combat more intense and enjoyable (unless you're losing). If they make the same mistake they made with Secure, though, then it's just going to be a big PvE Dps check, which gets kind of stale after a while. Either way, modelling it after Secure is a good idea, in my opinion. It's probably the best FL game mode to date, so that's a good a base as any to build on.

I'm really sad that there only seems to be three flags though. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the new dynamic has more potential to involve a lot less camping around in your own Outpost, but aside from missing the good, old Secure Days, I'd like to see different cells of your team make independent decisions. It was difficult enough just trying to hold your own flag and consider whether a push was wise or not, but add nearby Crystal Spawns to the equation and it all sounds really exciting...

Ufff... I hope that a six-flag version at least does exist and can be triggered with some planned, queuing effort like level 50 Secure currently does.

[Februs]

I'm really sad that there only seems to be three flags though.

They probably made it three because they were thinking ahead. As cool as it would be to have more capture/shatter points, I can think of a few glaring problems that would come about from having it set up that way.

The first is spreading people out too thinly and deter actual combat. The more objectives there are on the map, the less likely people would fight. Have you ever played a Seize match where only two GC's are fighting, while the third is gallivanting around the empty side of the map? How about a Secure match where one GC sweeps around all the Capture point's without fighting for them while the other two were throwing themselves into the meat grinder at the top of the tower? The same thing could happen here if there are too many capture points. One of the 3 teams could just cruise their way to victory by having uncontested areas while the other two get into a massive death match over the rest. Tunnel vision is real in Frontlines, after all.

The second reason is the size of the map. Adding more objective points would likely increase the map size, because they'd have to avoid clutter and overlapping objective zones (especially on the actual map, to avoid confusion). A bigger map size creates problems. One of the biggest complaints about the map for Seize (besides the fact that it was unbalanced) was that it was simply too big. It took players a long time, even when mounted, to cross the entire map, and if RNGsus was feeling particularly troll-ish that day, you could spend half of an active node timer just trying to get to it. Everyone had matches where RNG gave them the shaft, and all the nodes spawned in one area; so, it's not that hard to envision why it would be a problem. It's even more of a problem in a 24-man match, where the teams are much smaller ... Which brings us to problem number three: 24-man matches.

SE has to plan ahead for 24-man matches, because they do happen and will inevitably become the norm. Even when the game mode is new, less populated Worlds, or any players who play at abnormal hours for their Data Centre, will end up in a 24-man match. 24-mans just don't have the players to support a wider spread of objectives. Even if they coded the game to adjust for this (which they likely won't do, for the sake of system memory), the map would be needlessly big and have a lot of unused space. We probably wouldn't notice it right away, but late in this game-modes life cycle it would become pretty apparent. It happened with all the previous game modes of FL. The original Secure greatly downsized the number of capture zones for this exact reason; so, I can't imagine Shatter working out any differently. Three flags (assuming that there are only three) is likely a product of them learning from what happened in the original Secure.