Why does battle high exist?

[Avenger]

I don't really get PvP in Duty Finder or Roulette. Usually there is no communication, coordination, or strategy of any kind. Everyone usually just splits up quickly and then runs around randomly, ignoring the objectives, fighting pointlessly, and dying. On our data center, Maelstrom seems slightly more coordinated, but I don't really know why that should be. Flames seem to avoid any strategy and ignore objectives usually, but I don't really know why that should be either.

The random selection of jobs doesn't seem to help; I've seen games where there is a single healer for the entire alliance.

Battle high may make things worse; it seems to make it easier for one team to steamroll another. But the root problem seems to be that PvP is usually just stupid and pointless, and there doesn't seem to be any system to help teams work together effectively, or to help players who want to learn how to play PvP learn to do so, or to help people improve, etc..

It's annoying and frustrating and really not much fun. I don't really see it improving either, as it was just as bad in ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood.

[Nova_Rox]

I don't really get PvP in Duty Finder or Roulette. Usually there is no communication, coordination, or strategy of any kind. Everyone usually just splits up quickly and then runs around randomly, ignoring the objectives, fighting pointlessly, and dying. On our data center, Maelstrom seems slightly more coordinated, but I don't really know why that should be. Flames seem to avoid any strategy and ignore objectives usually, but I don't really know why that should be either.

The random selection of jobs doesn't seem to help; I've seen games where there is a single healer for the entire alliance.

Battle high may make things worse; it seems to make it easier for one team to steamroll another. But the root problem seems to be that PvP is usually just stupid and pointless, and there doesn't seem to be any system to help teams work together effectively, or to help players who want to learn how to play PvP learn to do so, or to help people improve, etc..

It's annoying and frustrating and really not much fun. I don't really see it improving either, as it was just as bad in ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood.

So, yet again, the biggest issue with PvP is the community...

[KageTokage]

I feel like they also need to adjust the match making to make it prioritize matching premades against each other too, because that's where battle high is most prone to making an already superior team turn into an insurmountable menace.

[Canadane]

Why does battle high exist?

It's PvP. Person VS Person. What is the point to not reward the players who kill the enemies ?

Do you really want to players to only focus destroying nodes/crystals and GC camp at flags ?????? That's boring, looks like PvE.

Everytime I saw someone writing on Alliance chat "Crystals are more important than kills". Something I'm sure about these kind of players, they NEVER had Battle High and Battle Fevers. These players, they only feed the good players.

Today, I killed 11 enemies, no death as DRK on Bordeland Ruins. 11 enemies, it's 55 points for my team, however it means also -55 points for the enemies. Only by myself, I brought a difference of points of 110 points between my team and the other teams. It's huge.

Besides, it's much harder to kill a tank with a Battle Fever (+50% of def). So, I can protect my healers without being worried to get killed.
I play PvP, it's for killing people. If I want ONLY to destroy nodes/crystals, better play PvE.

To be fair, Frontlines is an objective based PvP.
If you want to purely kill without reserve, play The Feast.

[KageTokage]

I find that the flow of a typical frontlines match is that two of the three teams get into a big scuffle shortly after the game starts, one of them comes out on top, then the winning team just leverages the momentum they've gained from their battle highs and generally doesn't lose it.

If they do lose, it's either because they get too distracted with fighting one of the teams and let the remaining one have the objectives to themselves or they get ganged up on and lose their highs and a ton of points (Which doesn't happen often because people tend to start avoiding them like the plague once they see multiple players with battle high among their ranks).

[BloodRubyXII]

If the team is stomping you enough to get battle high/fever, chances are they'd beat you comfortably without it anyway. I concede it's too strong because of how quickly adrenaline fills up, but it doesn't make a difference - a pasting is a pasting. If anything it just ends your suffering faster.

[KageTokage]

Wins should be decided by a team's overall performance throughout a game and the snowballing momentum from battle high really does not encourage that to happen because it becomes a crutch with how much easier it makes it kill enemies/keep your team alive.

Losing more points from dying with it scarcely counts as a disadvantage with how easy it is to just hang back and avoid making yourself an easy target.

I think it would be more balanced if you needed to keep getting kills/assists periodically to maintain the buff instead of it lasting until death or toning down the buff somehow. In its current state I don't feel like it accomplishes anything other then making games end faster but I'd rather have a longer game where making a comeback is actually a realistic prospect. Few things are more frustrating then the battle high team basically trolling by letting you get a lead while they farm the other team, then deciding to just steamroll you in the last moments. Heck, even when my team is the one with the highs I don't feel like it's making things more enjoyable (Outside of the inherent joy of winning the match, of course).

[Cidel]

Battle High/Fever system is fine. It's meant to reward you for 'PvP'ing' smartly and having the sense to be escorted/being near healers (or having healers at all). If your team possesses multiple Battle Highs and even Fevers, that is an indication of your team's overall performance throughout a game. The increasing momentum and ease of killing targets is your reward for not having a team full of over-extending people that aren't moving with the group and end up being picked-off as easy targets. It's not a crutch, it's an indication that some/most of the people on your team are doing something right.

I don't think both bonuses are meant to be a disadvantage. They are an incentive for the other teams to get rid of players with this bonus, but at that point those players likely have 25% extra or more of their healers' attention.

The fact that Frontlines is a 3-way team conflict is the comeback mechanic. You always have the means of shutting-down any one team (in the lead) if both tactically sandwich them. The problem is this comeback mechanic is largely designed like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Do you work with the other team to take down the team in first place/ with a lot of Battle Highs & Fevers? Do you sit back and watch one completely trash the other and get Battle Highs & Fevers on the basis of controlling objectives (which might not even be enough)? Will the other team instantly turn on your team instead of continuing the double-team? Many times I have seen people wrongfully call-out "Let them fight" in situations where it was in our best interest to pincer the dominating team- only to be overwhelmed later when they finally turn their crosshairs on us.

If any one team starts getting a ridiculous amount of Battle Highs & Fevers, chances are the fault lies with the two losing teams due to at least one sitting-by and allowing it to escalate or by not creating a temporary truce to put pressure on them and 2 v 1 them.

[KageTokage]

My other problem is that it's theoretically balanced for the reasons you stated, but outside of premades people are extremely unlikely to actually behave in a manner that prevents it from getting out of control.

Case in point, in my previous game the team with highs was in the lead and all three teams were about equal distances from one another, but the third place team decided to attack us instead of them for whatever reason. I assume their base logic just told them we'd be easier kills and they decided that was more important then stoppng the lead team's momentum.

I wouldn't have a problem with it people always knew what they should be doing, but they don't and that's honestly something they need account for with balancing, especially when PvP attracts a lot of people who don't take it super seriously due to the rewards like glam and hairstyles. Alliance raids are already balanced around casual players by predominantly having mechanics that punish individual mistakes instead of the party and also generally lacking meaningful DPS checks.

With no battle high, the better team would still win, they just wouldn't totally steamroll people to the point of it feeling frustrating and hopeless. I actually got a very negative first impression of Frontlines that largely turned me away from wanting to do the full Garo grind after getting totally stomped about a dozen games in a row because of battle high.

It's gotten a bit better now that I actually understand can potentially be done to fight back against it, but the mechanic still feels unneeded, especially when there's already a reward/punishment for KOing/being KO'd by other players and that's the point increase/decrease, increasing respawn timer, and being booted back to base camp. It's those penalties that are a part of what makes people reluctant to engage a team with battle high in the first place; though that's kind of silly when it often comes down to a "Wipe their team or you lose" situation where worst case scenario they win faster and your suffering ends quicker and best case you make a comeback and win instead.

[Cidel]

But then you're essentially asking them to balance it around bad players. If you're asking them to remove Battle High in some misguided attempt to safeguard one team when the other non-winning team decides to not even attempt to win and 'fight for second,' then at that point you might as well put a buff on all players not on the winning team that prohibits the other team in 3rd/2nd from attacking them.

If the people on a team can't or don't want to enact basic strategy (or common sense for that matter), that's their problem. Finding fault in the team(s) that take advantage of that seems more like a sour grapes solution to bring them down to bad players' level instead of improve themselves. The Battle High incentivizes good players PvP'ing. It's what keeps matches being more than blindly worrying about objectives and avoiding conflict.

The crux of your problem with it seems to be:

I wouldn't have a problem with it people always knew what they should be doing

Which isn't entirely the game mode's problem. It's a "the other team is better than yours" problem. That's just how it is. You can try to lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Comparing Frontlines to Alliance Raids are apples to oranges; it's fighting against a scripted AI versus having to use your brain more and deal with other thinking, strategizing opponents.

With no battle high, the better team would still win, they just wouldn't totally steamroll people to the point of it feeling frustrating and hopeless.

This is mostly true in theory, but Battle High also has a few other purposes that I think the devs felt they wanted to include. It's a killstreak bonus, it penalizes teams from zerging and dying repeatedly without consequence (the raise timer contributes), and it should be a deterrent from simply avoiding conflict when two teams are engaged.