Shatter

[Cidel]

Simply put, Shatter is Chess, but most people just want to play Checkers.

Play the objectives in Shatter. No seriously. Play Shatter. All your damage/kills mean nothing if you don't win.

These are probably the two biggest points of Shatter that people actively fight against that make this mode seem like such a failure to them. It certainly isn't as successful as Seize, but the mode hasn't killed PvP; that's on the framework that constantly invalidates older modes by giving practically no incentives to run them and are left to collect dust.

And while I'm sure there are probably some unjust vote-kicks, I know there's probably two sides to every story (as there usually is). People can be down-right defiant to the detriment of their team. Going for battle highs and battle fevers (smartly) is one thing, but a lot of people don't know how to do that and usually end up just tunnel-visioning on their target before 5+ enemies pick them off as a straggler before they realize their team has been pulling out or they have over-extended. This 3-team system rewards the team that engages last or not at all because they are free to double-team the team of their choosing or go after objectives that more often than not win the game. This mode really just exacerbates that relationship more than previous modes have.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

I want to play PVP.

Then here's what you do:

Someone solo charges into your party/alliance? Everyone obliterate that target. See if he does it again.

Ice up and one person attacking it? Not anymore. Delete them.

Large ice up? Free targets.

No ice up? Look at the flow of the battle. Keep your map open. Did they go camp ice? Steal their base. Are they tunneling on the wrong team? Let them, or target both.

There's plenty of PvP to be had, but as I said, all your kills and damage mean nothing if your team loses for not having played objectives wisely. Its all on you if you ignore the game objective and lose because of it.

And to the person who said it: Yes, Casters do less damage to ice, so at large spawn, go full ham on enemies.

[Eul]

I really hate Shatter mode, make Seal Rock alive again!

[aeoncs]

The problem really isn't that Shatter is overly complicated, which some people in this thread seem to assume, it's just not fun to play for many of us.

The primary objective of any battleground in any MMO should be to kill enemy players and if you can potentially win without killing a single player, that's bad game design right there; that's really all there is to it. Seal Rock has its fair share of problems too, but you at least get some real PvP out of it.

[loreleidiangelo]

The primary objective of any battleground in any MMO should be to kill enemy players and if you can potentially win without killing a single player, that's bad game design right there; that's really all there is to it. Seal Rock has its fair share of problems too, but you at least get some real PvP out of it.

I have never seen someone win a Shatter without actually...PVPing. (I mean "someone" in terms of a GC as a whole, not an individual player, which of course is quite possible to have happen.) I think a lot of people are overblowing this issue simply because treating the map as a whole beat-'em-up in mid is a surefire way to lose, and people hate having to disengage when they feel like they're "winning" simply because they're not actually winning, the third GC is collecting all the ice and raking in points while you're duking it out with the second GC in mid.

...wait, wasn't Seize exactly like that? LOL. "GUYS, NODES"

Seriously, Seize was an awful map with random and INSANELY defensible spawns and I don't understand how people could enjoy it. The map was far too spread out to really encourage any sort of far-reaching strategy, because you could easily get caught with your pants down at some node or another with only 3 DPS and on top of that, the whole DRK spamming Unleash/SCH SMN spamming Miasma II/WAR spamming Overpower BS to prevent node caps was utterly asinine. DRK alone with Living Dead trolling could prevent a full party from capping for like a solid 30 seconds straight if nobody CC'd them (most people didn't, because hurr durr my ez kill), and by then a good portion of the points would already be drained from the tomelith.

Could Shatter use some improvements to make kills a bit more noteworthy in the overall flow of the game? Sure, but I kind of like that Maelstrom tried rolling a premade two days ago on Primal in the evening with a butt ton of casters dropping LBs on everyone and went chasing kills like a bunch of idiots, only to still lose the match...twice in a row before I stopped queuing for the evening. I like that I can see the enemy GCs on the map to strategize our own team's placement, and I like that nodes aren't random spawns, don't repeat, and aren't arbitrarily of an extremely high ranking sometimes because "lol screw you, your marginal lead is now gone a minute before the match ends because the second-place team got an S in their base".

/shrug Seize is easily my least favorite of all the PVP maps we have out now. I don't understand why the community likes it so much.

[Exira]

I share my experience from chaos : when pvp veteran players use to q as premade ( 8 man ) doing pvp only , most of the game end by a win for us getting +1100/1200 from kills meanwhile we have people yelling in shout OMG focus crystal OMG stop suicide , they don't even realize we are farming enemy team ( cuz they don't even look at the score they just watch how many ppl on ice). What can i say is that a strong pvp party inside the alliance who is able to farm other allies will ALWAYS win vs ppl who only focus ice.

[dragonseth07]

I share my experience from chaos : when pvp veteran players use to q as premade ( 8 man ) doing pvp only , most of the game end by a win for us getting +1100/1200 from kills meanwhile we have people yelling in shout OMG focus crystal OMG stop suicide , they don't even realize we are farming enemy team ( cuz they don't even look at the score they just watch how many ppl on ice). What can i say is that a strong pvp party inside the alliance who is able to farm other allies will ALWAYS win vs ppl who only focus ice.

Naturally, if you have a coordinated group who can actually kill lots of people, yeah, it'll be successful. Congrats, teamwork is OP. In a PUG, there's not enough coordination to kill people quickly or in great numbers. Me stunning and hitting a MCH with a fully specced Full Swing in the dead center of my team makes no difference. So, why bother?

[aeoncs]

I have never seen someone win a Shatter without actually...PVPing. (I mean "someone" in terms of a GC as a whole, not an individual player, which of course is quite possible to have happen.) I think a lot of people are overblowing this issue simply because treating the map as a whole beat-'em-up in mid is a surefire way to lose, and people hate having to disengage when they feel like they're "winning" simply because they're not actually winning, the third GC is collecting all the ice and raking in points while you're duking it out with the second GC in mid.

...wait, wasn't Seize exactly like that? LOL. "GUYS, NODES"

Just yesterday I had a match that ended with exactly 6 deaths on all sides. 6 deaths in a 72-player mode. With enough healers and little to no fighting in terms of real group PvP, the deaths that occured were pretty much exclusively people getting picked off. Now, this is an extreme example but it happens a lot, just to a lesser extent.
In Seal Rock you at least have to fight for nodes by overpowering the other teams, instead of dummy-dps'ing a structure; so it doesn't really matter which of the two game modes is better designed regarding objective control, because in one of them you get to PvP a lot while you mostly PvE and disengage in the other.

And I did say that you can potentially win Shatter without anyone PvPing once, which is true regardless of whether that ever happens; if that's not bad design, I don't know what is. Still, 24-man Shatter can be fun, but that's pretty much dead for now.

Snip

Oh, wow, an 8-man-premade can farm and completely dominate PuGs. What a shocker.

[loreleidiangelo]

Didn't someone post on Reddit a screenie of them winning Seize without ctually PVPing the enemy team, or close to it? In general, I think outside of a pure deathmatch type BG (which I wouldn't even necessarily be opposed to), it's probably possible to win all Frontlines matches without killing anyone, except maybe Secure/probably Slaughter. This might be an issue with three-team PVP too - if the other two teams want to just fight each other and not you, and you get more points for objectives over than kills, you could easily win by doing essentially F-all over the course of a match.

I liked Slaughter (nowhere for people to run to when nodes were down, so you just beat each other up), but it's inarguably the most hated of FL modes in this subforum.