24-man (NOT 72) Mode Vote

[Vaeria]

Considering the que times/ interest (..or lack of)/ mechanics of the current Shatter, me is wondering what people in general would really like to see more of. Since, for whatever reason, factual or 100% imagined, the devs refuse to lift gc restrictions (or at least give us a DF body count) im going with shorte 24-man modes for speed's sake. Vote 'LIKE" on your absolute top favorite mode, then giva reason why you like it over the other ones. (Restricting this to Frontline content, not 24-man Feast) Who knows..the devs may actually listen.


My own thoughts...revive secure ...change absolutely nothing but the adding of the adrenaline gauge and just make it 60. Funnest mode hands down. Even with 72-man, teams were divided up on the field enough so that every encounter wasnt just a mindless cluster-fug. Each gc had its own playstyle as well (adders bombarded flags with healers, flames went super blob mode on everyone, and Mael was always punctual with nodes, call-in suppoert assists. The terrain isn't so much an issue (have to take a longer rounte in some areas) but fighting can still be maintained (not to mention boasting the center top tactics and Ramp'o'death adventures.

Slaughter- Great 'just got offa work' mode when you wanna jump into some mindless killing. (blms may dissagree but way funner with 24-man imo since ya get to do a little more as a melee) The constant flow of fighting keeps it from getting dull (then there are those matches where your team decides to go up another's ramp for some serious backdoor/ sandwich action!)

Seize. This is not pvp. This is Poor-man's Coil. Any mode of pvp in any game where a match can be won completely without having to engage even 1 time is a gross contradiction unto itself. The only mode where youre more likely to hear 'DONT fight" then encouragement TO do so. The strategic element should support the fighting...not the other way around. Just my opinion though.

Shatter. The word 'filler-content' comes to mind, like the process of building a relic. Its not BAD but between travel time, landscaping, killing giant rocks, and the '1 team all goes in same direction' cluster play....its.....I dunno. I know the devs are trying but..at the end of the day..isnt killing lalas the only true reason we sign up? Not as bad as Seize's -tape the joystick in upwards position and go read a book- style, but just not enough blood-letting.

[Vaeria]

S E C U R E~

[Vaeria]

S L A U G H T E R~

[Vaeria]

S E I Z E~

[Vaeria]

S H A T T E R~

[Exira]

I'd like to see a move away from 3 faction pvp as it's really cheesy. I would kill for 48man 2 team pvp. As for the question. 24man slaughter/big ice shatter are the only ones I think are even remotely close to pvp. 24man seal rock was literally a standing around simulator. 24man secure I don't remember enough about but recent roulettes of it paints it much the same as Seal rock. All of the frontlines maps are insanely too big for 24man


3 faction pvp makes for some really garbage maps and they refuse to balance them at all. Open the shatter map the next time you're in there. Look at the distance from spawn to each teams first point. Now look at the distance from South spawn to the SE/SW big ice. Someone please buy square some mirrors so they can learn how to mirror maps properly

[Guesswhat]

24 man Slaughter is fun. 72 man is just huge cluster????. But that can be fun too.
24 Secure is only fun if peeps want to actually pvp; same thing with seize, but there are higher chances you are forced too pvp due to RNGod. 72 secure Is best thus far imo. Too bad it's dead and will never be revived. 72 Seize can be very frustrating if people leave their brains out. And I'm not a big fan of the RNG nature of it. Same thing with shatter.

As of now I think actually shatter is the mode I like the least...

[Casmir_Chev]

I have given up hope of ever trying the new frontlines, I have only gotten in a few times because of the Que times changing every time It ry to log into it. I haven't been able to que for it for day.

[Februs]

• Secure: 72 man, hands down.
  
  In 72 man, you had enough capture points that securing them actually made a difference to the final score, and players were constantly fighting over them. Drone spawns were just there for an added bonus, and were not the main point. In 24 man, once you caught your primary capture point everyone just cluttered up on the top of the tower and waited on Drones. Drones spawned. Dps check started. Drones died. People pecked at each other for a bit, but mostly, people just split up and waited for the next drones. It was stupid and boring, and there was more PvE than PvP (sound familiar?).
  
  The only time I'd like to see 24 man Secure brought back is if they take the stupid Drones out of it entirely and replace them with a fourth flag on the top of the tower.
  
  
• Slaughter: 24 man, I guess...
  
  Honestly, I don't really care, because that game mode was a huge s*** show from start to finish, no matter how many people were in it. 24 man seems the most viable way to do it, though. Given that there's practically no objectives and the map is huge, it would be best to split the map up into smaller zones and just make it 24 man.
  
  
• Seize: Either, but I preferred the 72 man.
  
  This is mostly just because of the size of the map, and the fact that it's a 3-way fight. It's next to impossible for a 8 man team to split up and still be effective, so in 24 man matches there's always one GC who could potentially be left out from all of the combat. That's kind of lame. 72-man had more possibilities, and it was less likely for any teams to be completely uncontested.
  
  
• Shatter: 24 man, but it's really hard to judge this one.
  
  So far, the spawn pattern of the Shatter Points has had more of an effect on how fun the Shatter game mode is than the actual size of the teams. I'll take 24 man for faster queue times and more team-oriented game play, but so long as Shatter is just a big game of whack-a-mole, I don't think the size of the team makes a big enough difference to care about.

[Eorzean_username]

I like all four maps for different reasons. I would prefer a system that keeps all four maps in circulation (such as making Frontline Roulette a more motivating choice over specific-queuing). Lately my Frontline Roulette queues have been very strange and giving me Secure and Slaughter almost as frequently as Shatter. This variety makes the queue a lot more fun.


Secure:

24-man with a 4th capture point at the top/middle sounds really good. The one thing that dulls 24 Secure is that there's not much incentive to do anything but kill drones and then retreat. In fact, this is unfortunately smarter than engaging most of the time. I agree that a 4th capture point would make for great matches.

Slaughter:

24 has the 'Shatter Problem' where it's more efficient to just retreat and hug the edges any time the enemy blob notices your own. I think 24 Slaughter would be more fun if it had the Big Node from Secure pulsing its nasty AOE onto the field and motivating a lot more hostility in the otherwise-avoided center region.

Seize:

Someone called 24 a 'Standing Around Simulator'. I did experience that sometimes, but usually Seize matches in 24 were a lot more interesting for me, with a lot of back-capping, back-stabbing, team-ups, betrayals, sneaky deactivations and other prowling.

I really liked 24 Seize because there's no just grabbing a node and then falling back somewhere safe: if anyone shows up, you must defend or suffer the long delay caused by deactivation. And if you want a node, you must destroy the opposition or they'll keep interrupting your activation.

This was the most PvP-oriented map I've had, in my limited experience, and I miss Seal Rock a lot now that Secure-Slaughter-Shatter has become my queue's new meta.

Shatter: In my experience there's four flavors of Shatter:

• Small Ice 72: This is okay. There's enough players to distribute that fanning out and contesting most of the small nodes is effective and sort-of fun. But mostly it's just giant blobs cautiously circling each other and padding time until another ice appears.
• Large Ice 72: This is forgettable. With 72 the Large Ice dies too fast to feel exciting, and then the match just becomes awkward and aimless poking at each other. For some reason, more players seems to motivate less conflict.
• Small Ice 24: This is very dull. The map is too big and teams are too small to distribute safely or effectively, so it becomes a slow whack-a-mole and no one seems very bothered to pursue any Ice that isn't located conveniently. These are the Shatters where everyone feels exhausted and just kind of doing whatever to get it over with.
• Large Ice 24: This is the most fun I've had in Shatter. The Ice is a huge deal, it's exciting when one pops, it takes long enough to die that annoying and disrupting the enemy feels like a legit tactic, and when the Ice isn't up there's a sense of having enough time that pursuing other objectives (bases, skirmishing) is worthwhile.

I think every map can be a lot of fun in 24, the one problem being over and over that the maps are too large for 24 players and the designs offer too many safe ways out of avoiding conflict and still winning.