frontlines ?

[saucyshortcake]

they just need to make it a pvp roulette and include rival wings too. then cut frontlines to 48 players, 72 is already too much for those tiny maps.

[Charlotte_Wells]

I really like the idea of an 48 Player Frontlines.

And yes, having inactive players or players that even work against your team by feeding on purpose is bad for the mode.

[Ixon]

The two biggest factors, in my opinion, when trying to look at the Frontline participation numbers in comparison with Rival Wings and Feast can be boiled down to desire to PVP, and PVP difficulty. First, and foremost, MOST people who play this game do not care about PVP, having nothing to do with the game modes. The majority of players who gravitate to this game, from hardcore raiders, story only enjoyers, Limsa RPers, do NOT care about PVP. That's just how it is. If you look at the game in it's entirety and to what player the game mostly caters to, that being the solo casual player, PVP usually falls off that players radar despite the modes themselves. Second is PVP difficulty. Now this might get a laugh because of course it really isn't that hard, but it's much more difficult than a simple dungeon run because there are consequences. Take the random casual player, they kinda know their PVE rotation, queue into a dungeon, preform mediocre damage, die once or twice to mechanics, but at the end clear the dungeon. Take that same player and drop them into frontlines. If they aren't aware, they die. If they tunnel, they die. If they are a stick in the mud to their team, they play a factor in their team losing. And that's just for Frontlines, which is the easiest mode out there. Most people still have no idea what to do in Rival Wings despite the information out there. You take the awareness needed in Frontlines and add in a MOBA mix to it and people are even more turned away. Plus you have people(myself included) that don't really enjoy the "meching up" mechanic and prefer to just run around on foot. Finally you have Feast, which stands as the hardest, as there is an entire ruleset on how to play the game not shown in game, and while you can be mediocre and still have your team carry in FL or RW, in Feast you will get stomped.

These things lead to the modes being unpopular by the majority of the player base, but there really isn't too much you can do in this game to change it. It's almost near impossible to make PVP easier(we'll see if Crystal Conflict can lower the bar even more), the game modes are as simple as they get, they cut down the actions per job to make it even more simplified, but you can't cut away the level of awareness or the fact that a better team will just beat you. Could they advertise it better? Yes. Could they provide more PVP related information? Yes. Will PVP ever sit at the foremost of popularity amongst FFXIV players? Not likely. All SE can really do is try to make PVP as fun as possible for those who actually enjoy PVP, rather than force more players in that would never touch it in the first place.