PVP/ Frontline Problems

[Esmoire]

I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with the idea of Frontline. I can look at problems with the UI, the UX, the way the game teaches things to the player, and some issues with PvP at large, but when it comes to Frontline the fundamental idea is good.

It is tempting to draw analogies of other competition, but I think that's unfair. Frontline is inherently volatile because it has random nodes and 72 players with almost no control over who your team mates are or any attempt to fairly distribute skill; it hopes on randomness taking care of that, but randomness and some components of human psychology will always be a huge determining factor. I think 24v24v24 is unique, and exciting, and suits the maps well. Not everything has to be one team versus another; some games have 4 teams going at it, or free-for-alls with a hundred players. The medium is young and we have barely explored what is possible.

Statistically speaking, if you are completely average, and player skill is evenly distributed, you will place first 33%~ of the time. This means you'll need about 300 games to get a specific mount for a GC, or a mount from a particular duty, and if it takes longer you are either not good at the game or really unlucky. That said, if you are good at the game, good at communicating, good at teaching, you can get it sooner. As an example:

Looking at my own stats, I was able to get them sooner than 300 games. Of course this means consistently performing as top DPS and shotcalling, so it requires mastery. That said... isn't this what people want? A place where your individual skill increases the likelihood of success? Of course, sometimes, no matter what you do or what you say, people will not listen, or they will listen but you can just not have enough strong players on your alliance. This is kind of just inevitable with almost completely random distribution, and it's fine.

I think Frontline is more or less fine, though I think for future patches they should focus more on their other offerings in PvP. As it is right now, there is effectively nothing in-between The Feast and Frontline. I 100% respect that Rival Wings has a community doing their best to keep it active, but it's effectively dead. To address this, they should make some revisions to streamline RW a little bit and make it more fun for people besides the diehard fans. Then they should bring back 8v8 Feast, but repackage it as a new mode. Then from there, they can make it so the daily challenge for PvP dynamically places people into the three modes based on participation numbers.