Remove the Grand Company aspect entirely from Frontline

[Drawxne]

And make freelancing the mandatory, ONLY option. This should heavily discourage GC-jumping for free Frontline wins and hopefully reduce the amount of premades so one side isn't always steamrolling the other. Case in point, look at the Frontline rankings on the website. You'll see that the majority of wins are for Maelstrom players.

In fact, everywhere I've read online the general consensus is that if you want to win PvP all the time, then switch to Maelstrom. How is this a fair and healthy gaming mindset?! The more players go to Maelstrom, the more times freelancers are placed on Flames and Adders, the more discouraged the players in those GCs get, the more players switch to Maelstom. It's an unhealthy cycle that completely ruins Frontline and the entire aesthetic of Grand Companies as a whole.

End the favoritism and give the other GCs a fair and equal chance.

[swiss_Momo]

ehhh, I'd say that premades usually end up with Adders, since they consist practically only of freelancers

[OskarXCI]

Removing the GC aspect would probably be too resource consuming but making Freelance status permanent is something that I'm much in favor of. I say this as one of those that switched to maelstrom for easier wins. I rather have people queue premade than having all the good players queuing solo in one GC. Stop the snowball effect of people switching to one GC!

One of the things that is better with Rival Wings. More even for everyone.

[Kai_Lee]

If rival wings is so great, why did the queue die for rival wings? If maelstorm is so great, just make sure they don't win even if your GC lose, and it will change the meta real quick for player jumping GC.

[Beckett]

If rival wings is so great, why did the queue die for rival wings?

Because the Frontline Daily Challenge came out and revitalized Frontlines. Why would anyone bother queuing for Astragalos and get half the rewards? If they introduce a new Rival Wings map and Rival Wings Daily Challenge, people will flock to that mode again. Heck, even putting in a Rival Wings Daily Challenge without adding a new map would probably get lots of people queuing for it again, since a lot of people never got achievements for Astragalos.

[RiyahArp]

Rival wings died because it needs 48 people to pop. PvP used to only support about 24 people in the off season, until they said hell with it, and only let us queue for one pvp instance in frontlines per day. RW isnt on the roulette as well, so the once per day people ignore it. It actually was a better mode than frontlines in terms of being objective based.

As for killing mael, tried. The problem is that adders winds up attacking flames, when flames goes after mael. Like mael can be 100 points away from winning, and have a 400 point lead, and adders attack flames over them. It makes literally no game sense for adders to do it, but they do it every time. You can't do anything because of it.

[OskarXCI]

Rival wings died because it needs 48 people to pop. RW isnt on the roulette as well, so the once per day people ignore it. It actually was a better mode than frontlines in terms of being objective based.

Rival Wings required too many people plus class balance was wayy off, healers were wayy too OP.

I did a bunch of Rival Wings matches this weekend thanks to the Chaos Discord that organizes events and I can say that the mode is a lot more balanced now compared to when the mode launched.

1. Power generator at mid was nerfed.
2. You get twice as much CE from killing mammets
3. CE tanks spawns in more places.
4. Healing on mammets was nerfed by 50%.

I think Aether and Primal has a RW discord as well. Join those. Give the mode another shot.

it doesnt matter, the pvp community wants to ruin the mode, thats why they keep running premades. They have to know by now its hurting it, but they keep doing it. So just let the mode get ruined already

They aren't running premades. They all switch to one GC, which is Maelstrom, and turns off freelancer mode while queuing solo.

Freelancer status is forced if you queue as a premade.

[Cidel]

Serious question, as someone who has always been on Mael from the very 1st Frontlines- probably can count number of freelanced matches on one hand (and that was just out of curiosity when it went live): Are there ever people making call-outs on Adders and Flames (especially Flames) on objectives? It appears that Adders probably do, as they always tend to be our biggest threat in most games; but Flames really look like they spend most matches actively spoiling the game for another GC rather than play around objectives and trying to win. At least on Primal, anyway.

There's truth to Zalestra's observation that Maelstrom frequently has players calling shots (with <se.#>'s: this is crucial because the tunnel vision is real), constantly observing the map and actively reeling-in (with varying success) overzealous aggressive chasing at the expense of favorable map positioning. Premades on Mael really aren't a thing (and I think most stigma about them prior to freelance were overblown), and I say that as someone who religiously solo queues and would notice if a constant group of people kept being in the same party.

I do think abolishing the GCs in Frontlines would see a better distribution of skill and probably even speed-up queues. But somehow I feel that the devs are too invested in the shallow "lore" of Frontlines to outright do anything about it. That and they've put a good amount of achievements into it that I don't think they'll want to have to adjust/abolish.

[RiyahArp]

Serious question, as someone who has always been on Mael from the very 1st Frontlines- probably can count number of freelanced matches on one hand (and that was just out of curiosity when it went live): Are there ever people making call-outs on Adders and Flames (especially Flames) on objectives?

On flames, people will call out objectives, but Mael acts in unison far more, to the point of timing their limit breaks to use together when taking a point. And mael, especially in 8 man, always has 2 healers and a ton of ranged, where flames will have a mix of melee, healers, tanks, etc. There's definitely a difference; in HW mael geenrally weren't THAT organized where they roll over people so easily, and the leads varied a bit more. I mean, you can call out stuff, but if your parties obey instantly all the time more likely than not they are premades.

[Zsolen]

Serious question, as someone who has always been on Mael from the very 1st Frontlines- probably can count number of freelanced matches on one hand (and that was just out of curiosity when it went live): Are there ever people making call-outs on Adders and Flames (especially Flames) on objectives? It appears that Adders probably do, as they always tend to be our biggest threat in most games; but Flames really look like they spend most matches actively spoiling the game for another GC rather than play around objectives and trying to win. At least on Primal, anyway.

Flames are really bad on Aether. They often either attack Adders the entire match or attack Mael the entire match, often throwing the win to the GC they didn't go after. When the other GC not winning is trying to angle themselves, so they and Flames can pincer the leading GC, Flames seem to find a way to still go after the non-winning opponent. When I'm in Flames with one or two other people (forcing freelancer), I think the one match they actually listened. The other matches they basically laughed at me trying to rally them. Adders are generally more responsive. Sometimes I have to make calls. Sometimes someone else steps up. Adders are usually ranged heavy, so chasing us a little bit on retreat is usually a coin flip on whether it is a good idea or not. Mael is usually the most organized, but sometimes they get too much bloodlust. I've seen Mael lose matches, because they had no focus on objectives with multiple people with double digit kills. I also noticed that Mel is a bit of a glass cannon. Once they are on the run, unless they can phalanx themselves, they often get swarmed.