All this smack against "premades"

[Kwehvehpeh]

Good job SE for finally doing the sensible thing for once.

As someone who spent months farming frontlines with a party of 8, I don't blame you for hating premades. I mean, I got my 100 wins in no time, with 100 GC Win mount, Garo Mounts, etc. It was fun. I got all the wolf marks I needed for glamour and other stuff. I also had a lot of fun with my friends. We'd win, maybe 75% of the time, due to bad rng from crystals, or just one specific healer on the crystal DC that was practically impossible to kill. We ended up getting him to join our CWLS. It was hilarious fun. God like WHM and fantastic NIN. However, I'll you what, premades are not invincible. Especially if the healers are learning in our group or perhaps we're all just messing around. We'd try new strategies, do dumb stuff, all for fun. Sometimes we'd win, sometimes we'd lose, but we had a really nice community going... before some people got too win hungry and started causing drama because we weren't winning 100% of the time. Go figure.

The point behind all this is that, yeah, SE did take a step in the right direction for fixing roflstomp frontlines, but at the same time, they destroyed communities and ruined any chance of running pvp during non hot spot hours.

[Crit]

Gotta accommodate the pve ultimate heros that think pvp is bad without even trying it out fully with an ego boosted by scripted content!!

Them dirty pvpers always playing together!! How unfair!!! HOW DARE they impede my progress towards my mount by playing with each other as friends!!!! Blasphemy!!! SE do something about it!!

[RemoveMateria]

You're actually just straight up wrong though. Those aren't the premades anyone is complaining about. They mean the people who deliberately go into a Frontlines Discord for the express purpose of trying their little hearts out in a stacked team. Sure these people might *become* friends that way but the initial intent is "I want to stomp in a casual 72man and ruin the game for everyone". Then everyone who (shockingly) doesn't like being stomped shifts to that GC to avoid getting stomped. It's ruining the experience for people who don't feel like sweating in a discord call with a bunch of tryhards just to have a decent game. Right now it's happening on Aether with the Flames.

[Nalien]

Complain about premades in alliance chat.

Belittle them for "being so bad they need to group up to win", type such drivel all match instead of actually playing.

Proceed to ask absolutely nobody in your alliance if they'd also want to group up to improve your chances of winning.

Lose and queue up solo again.

Complain about premades in alliance chat.

[RemoveMateria]

Complain about premades in alliance chat.

Belittle them for "being so bad they need to group up to win"

Did you do it? Did you get the casual Nadaam win? Did you have fun in Discord with randoms instead of a vc with your other friends? Was it time well spent?

[Nalien]

Did you do it? Did you get the casual Nadaam win? Did you have fun in Discord with randoms instead of a vc with your other friends? Was it time well spent?

Literally what?

I made no mention of Discord, VCing with friends, or any of that. I was simply mocking the many people I've seen in Frontlines recently who seemingly queue solely to complain and moan all match. There is something hilarious to me about people spending more time typing in alliance chat than actually playing, about how terrible premades are and how unfair an advantage it is, while making zero attempt to form their own. How hard is "Does anyone want to party up after this?" to type? No, instead they fill alliance chat with constant moaning and pessimism and drown out anyone actually trying to make a difference by calling the shots... There's a reason such players are always on the losing team, and it isn't premades; It's their own damn rotten attitude. Thankfully many are either giving up at this point, or somehow manage to get 100 wins on a 1% win rate.

[JuliusRath]

If I want a solo queue pvp experience I'll play Feast.

If I want to be social with my friends and have fun, I play Frontline. SE thinks I only want to play with 3 out of my dozen + friends. Goodbye Frontline.

I agree that 24 mans should be reduced to a 4 player party, but 8 people in a 72 man cannot carry a team of newbies to victory with certainty.

I can't wait for this mode to be dead in 2 weeks and for people to complain about that. I will revel in it.

[Rufalus]

Can still play with friends after the changes. You might finally need to hit those friends sometimes now but the people are still there, on a random team ;p.
Did premade vs pugs ever make sense? They have to decide if it's locked to premades only or a pug game, can't be mixed because that doesn't make for fair and competitive matches. They took 6 years to act and now it's finally a casual pug mode ignoring GC affiliation, with a small caveat that you actually can mini premade up to 4 people just like Rival Wings. This is probably the best compromise to ensure casuals have a fair and equal chance to win, without completely smashing your ability to get a few buddies on your team.

[swiss_Momo]

There's a huge difference between "wanting to play together with friends" and "lol let's cheese a cheap win by queue syncing with all the vets. gg ez"
Let me take the liberty to quote this from another thread

The survival of this mode has little to do with how good or bad it is, ultimately. What makes the frontline modes more or less successful is the easy availability with a roulette, short queuing times, long-term mount farming and very decent rewards (tomes, pvp currency, exp). Of course, some people just enjoy pvp. But most need a bait to get into it. Rival Wings would probably be just as popular as frontline if we had a Rival Wings Roulette that rotates the maps, same way than the frontline rou rotated modes. I wager that's what will happen, either that or it'll be added to frontline rous once GC affiliations have been canned.

That said, I am at a loss for word that there are people even trying to defend what is currently happening in frontline. That a specific number of players are exploiting a loophole in the system to ensure victory is the very definition of what cheating is. If the developers had intended for pre-made 24-men alliances to be a factor in frontline, they would let people queue as such. Clearly, they never intended for that. Essentially, what we're seeing right now is the equivalent of a professional team rigging the system to play against a team of amateurs and then trying to justify that what they did is fair play. It's not.

Any competent and respectable player, in any sport, esport or pvp environment, would look down upon such practices and the people doing it. A victory against your equals is something to be celebrated. Setting the game field so all the experienced players can stomp over the less experienced players is nothing short of pathetic.

PVP players often mourn that pvp is unpopular in FF14. That not enough people play it, that queues take forever. If you're participating in the current frontline disaster, you only need look at yourself as to why FF14 players dislike pvp. You make the experience miserable for everyone.

[Rufalus]

Yeah that's a great quote tbh. It's not really about friends, it's about stacking with the highest skill players so you never have to fight against them. It's dodging fights that are potentially difficult to ensure only lesser opponents are on the other teams and high winrate is guaranteed. Maybe that's not true for everybody who is protesting the changes but that's what a lot of people use the gc system for and that's why it's changing.