Frontline Macro Leadership

[JustNaes]

Hello,

I'm Naes Aeraki and I'm a part of the Siren server on the Aether Data Center

I wanted to voice my concerns about reporting for leadership in Frontlines. Specifically the reportable use of macros and sound effects to coordinate groups in Frontlines.

In the game mode Frontlines I play as a Field Commander. I lead a dedicated Frontlines Discord with over 300 active players. I use text macros with sound effects to alert players on how to move on the map. I can assure you that all of my members agree that this is the most effective approach to lead and win games. In a game mode where large army cohesion is the deciding factor for victory and everyone must be on the same page for good plays and decisions, the most effective way to do that is to make use of text macros with sound effects.

However, I've been thrown into the Gaol for a caution and a warning for my macros. My reporters, most of whom are non-PvP'ers, have claimed that my macros are spam, disruptive, and malicious. GM Drazilenoteb was sympathetic of this, but unfortunately the policy right now for macro usage and gameplay is strict and there's no room for nuance or alibi. With this being my last warning before a suspension would take place, I want to voice my suggestion to Square Enix and really hope that they consider this as a gameplay function moving forward.

Currently there is a conflict of interest between hardcore Frontline players like myself and casual players who are farming currency for PvE.

My proposal is that at there be an option to immediately mute party sound effects or other players. This system is available in League of Legends and alleviates the conflict of interest by giving players the choice to listen to calls or completely ignore/remove them from the chat. The allows PvE/causal players to enjoy their game without hearing annoying sound effects or command macros, while also allowing PvP players to coordinate their efforts without annoying PvE/casual players.

I would really appreciate if someone from Square Enix could look into this. I'm really passionate about Frontlines and its a PvP game mode I believe has so much untapped potential. However, if players like myself are banned for the sake of appeasing players who do not take this mode serious really, hurts the game mode's growth.

Again thank you for reading and I really hope that this post is taken into consideration for the future of Frontlines.

[ReishaLizha]

I'm Reisha Lizha of Cactuar and I'm also apart of Aether. I fully agree with this post and I personally have experience for leading groups in Frontlines as well, and typically average about 70% - 75% win rate per week, often times not going in as a party. I do use directional macros that also have sound effects to them. There are currently at least four different premades as well as numerous people not associated with any Frontlines groups who all use macros with both sound effects and pop them once or twice to coordinate the entire team to go to certain points. About 80% of the people from my friend's list in game I met through PvP, leading.

I get far more compliments and people thanking me for either leading a team to victory or even attempting to get us a victory with close matches than I do people who complain. Often the ones who complain are the people running off by themselves and racking up five - ten deaths with the intent to feed which is also malicious. Can I start reporting every single player who appears to be throwing matches by feeding the other team and will the Square Enix team take action upon these players? Probably not, because you have no way of knowing that was their intent. But the reality is, the people complaining are legitimately throwing matches and trying to be disruptive with their own actions as well. They often move markers like A, B, C solely to make the team more disorganized.

I'd consider a large majority of reports against ANY Frontlines leaders to be 100% malicious in their own rights. What they're doing also disrupts and ruins the enjoyment for others.If these are a small number of reports coming in against people like us who have nothing but good intentions of trying to help you, the average player, win a match compared to the other 20 people in your team than there's different issues. In the past seven days I've lead numerous groups, and I've only had ten people complain about the sound effects of my macros. I've personally been ON A TEAM with 3,000 people in the past week being in about 120 - 130 Frontline matches. Using the math of 23 players times the 130 matches equals 2990 players just on my team. Please, factor in the amount of people we're playing with versus the amount of complaints received as this greatly skews the results of these complaints. Going by my own numbers, even if I double the amount of complaints I received by other players, 0.006% of them complained. Even if I had 100 complaints, which I certainly did not, that's 0.03% of players who complained.

As someone who currently lives in Frontlines, he is not a disruptive player nor is anyone else who's attempting to lead groups. We are trying our best to help average players stay organized as opposed to getting beaten into the dirt by people doing the exact same thing. I assure you, most people agree with the use of these macros and you're letting a very, very small majority of malicious players ruin coordination and teamwork.

[Siveen]

Oi,
I'm Siveen. I play on both Aether (mostly for PvP) and Chaos (mostly for PvE) and I am part of the Discord Naes mentioned.
I'd like to expand on what Naes and propose an additional measure: making false reporting punishable.
On our time playing, I've noticed a lot of people actively trying to disrupt matches by giving confusing or outright contradicting orders to lessen the odds of our team winning.
THIS is the kind of behaviour that should be punished, not the fact that someone actively tries to lead a group of 24 people via Macros.

[KageTokage]

With how dense people can be when it comes to listening to call-outs, I don't blame leaders for resorting to spamming + sound effects to try to get their team to notice what's going on.

It's way too common for teams to just let oppressors wreck a tower with no opposition early on even with call-outs going.

I really don't think this should be considered something actionable unless it's accompanied by rude remarks or something else that's genuinely offensive as opposed to just making annoying (And preventable) noises.

[LilyRaine]

Hello there,

I'm Junko Ennoshima of Cactuar in the Aether Data Center. I have been a Frontline PvP player since its first iteration in A Realm Reborn, and it is the only content I do nowadays. I have played with and against the OP on numerous occasions.

Currently, we are experiencing a large surge of new players and tome farmers in PvP and it may be surprising to them how much macros can play a part in the game mode.

In PvP, a split second decision can make the difference between getting pinched and wiped or escaping to live another day. A well timed flank could also be a factor in a decisive victory if everyone's quick enough to react. Typing orders out would simply take too much time, and people are quite fond of tunneling the enemy, regardless of what happens around them. This is why the use of macros is essential. The use of sound effects alongside them is integral to getting peoples' attention and telling them "Hey, something is happening right now!", and more often than not people will stop at their tracks and take a look at what is being said.

Most field commanders in PvP use macros, and I do not think that they should be punished for trying to organize and help people win a game. I myself use macros with sounds and use them where needed- so much so that it fills the chat log of a typical game. Do I get complaints? Rarely, but when I do it's usually by people that are actively trying to sabotage a game by giving false information or spamming chat with actual useless and annoying macros. Have I been reported? No, but this post does bring about some concern. Our PvP community is small as it is, and if our most active players are being reported and banned for guiding and teaching lesser experienced players how to play the game, it hurts the growth of the community and its competitiveness.

I believe there needs to be clearer guidelines on what is considered to be macro spam, given the context of the content we play.

I think that reports also need to be thoroughly investigated for their authenticity. The blacklist also exists for a reason, and I do not see a point of reporting someone you do not want to hear macros from when you can just block their chat messages through this in game function. Reports should be used responsibly and for extreme cases of intentional abuse, which this is not.

[Talryk]

Aerys D'Attai here, also from the same Discord and group. I can't really say much that's different from the support already voiced. PvP isn't a solo player's game mode; you win by coordination and teamwork. When there are people actively trying to accomplish this, they have to resort to "excessive" measures when people aren't working towards the objective. And if you're not working with your team, you're not working towards the objective.

I use macros and sounds to help keep people informed mid-match. I haven't yet gotten any reports or complaints. With the pace of PvP content, hand-typing messages is the least efficient method available for communicating important info.

Also, to put a pin in it, I will share something said (I forget by whom) in the discussions we were having: Why would the game have achievements with rewards such as the "Field Commander's Coat" and then punish players for acting as such?

[raionheart]

I'm speaking as a regular player here who HATED PVP before until I had a chance to experience a well coordinated alliance due to Nae's excellent leadership. If you asked anyone who knew me I hated PVP in FFXIV and probably the same reasons as many others because of lack of leadership it was always a guaranteed loss.
Thanks to Nae's cat herding skills via alliance chat our teams were able to coordinate with each other and secure a victory. I shortly joined his Discord after that, it's not always a a guaranteed win but it made PVP fun for me and I look forward to every Shatterday ever since. If anyone calls directions on alliance spam than it's probably due to trolls who just doesn't like the idea of cooperation and coming from a toxic mindset. In PVP you need to be able to pivot and react quickly to commands and sometimes repeating a command with the help of sounds is necessary because people get so tunneled vision from bloodthrist.

SE needs to adjust the rules to where an exception should be made for PVP- the commands are not coming out of ill intent but the necessity to lead.

[JustNaes]

Can we please get a response or some visibility on this issue?

[worldofneil]

Can we please get a response or some visibility on this issue?

Sorry, but Square Enix rarely post on the forums. The community support team will occasionally post in the support threads, but they're usually just following template instructions "Have you tried...".

Unfortunately we just have to assume that by posting here SE is reading it, although there's no confirmation of that.

[DrWho2010]

Can we please get a response or some visibility on this issue?

unless your thread is like miles of pages long and has posts with tons of likes, you're not likely to get a dev response. the Dev team does get a weekly report of forum activity translated into Japanese for them i believe but unless threads meet that particular criteria they're prob not going to make the cut of getting sent on to Yoshi-p.