Please prevent pre-made parties from queueing into Frontline

[Xylira]

You're assuming that every premade is playing on VC (or that you need VC to combo Skyshatter in Salted (or a premade to combo at all)).

That's not what I said. I know you don't need a premade to pull it off, I said as much. But I did say that premades have an advantage for playing with people they know and can they can coordinate better than if they didn't. Even more of an advantage if they're on voice chat together. Even just knowing before hand that they're going to set up that combination and queuing with a DRK+DRG+DRG+RPR is an advantage over getting dumped in a team where you may or may not even have people playing those jobs, let alone working together.

[DefaultMiqote]

I wouldn't play frontlines if I couldn't do it with my friends! It's not fun for me. It takes a really long time to queue into as well!

[AnotherPerson]

That's not what I said. I know you don't need a premade to pull it off, I said as much. But I did say that premades have an advantage for playing with people they know and can they can coordinate better than if they didn't. Even more of an advantage if they're on voice chat together. Even just knowing before hand that they're going to set up that combination and queuing with a DRK+DRG+DRG+RPR is an advantage over getting dumped in a team where you may or may not even have people playing those jobs, let alone working together.

Yes, results do show that if people made the effort to communicate, they tend to play better.

If you play in a premade and don't communicate together at all, the result will be no different with joining a group of players who don't communicate at all either.

I don't honestly do not understand what you're trying to point out. Communication with random people isn't barred from FL either, unlike in CC.

[Xylira]

Yes, results do show that if people made the effort to communicate, they tend to play better.

If you play in a premade and don't communicate together at all, the result will be no different with joining a group of players who don't communicate at all either.

I don't honestly do not understand what you're trying to point out. Communication with random people isn't barred from FL either, unlike in CC.

Communication over voice chat is easier and more effective than macros or typing. Premades can setup voice chat for a match, solo players can't. Or at least I have never once in all of my years of FF PVP ever seen random players setting up voice chat mid-match, so this is an edge premade teams have.

And I'm also not only talking about communication. It's also preparation and familiarity that they can have an advantage with. If a group of friends plans ahead what jobs each are going to play, what strategies they're going to use, are familiar with how each other play, and they all hop onto voice chat together to communicate during matches, they are going to have a massive advantage playing together over equivalently skilled individual solo queued players who are randomly dumped together on the same team.

My point is, and always has been, that premades have several advantages available to them over the average solo queued player. It's these advantages, particularly when coupled with a lot of very poorly balanced job design decisions, that can and do lead to extremely unbalanced matches when these advantages are leveraged together.

I'm not necessarily saying that premades should be banned from FL, though there is a valid argument for it. They're not allowed in ranked CC for a reason, after all. But there are certain jobs that really need a proper balance pass with FL in mind.

[IllidanFang]

Title. I've lost so many Frontline matches just because I happened to queue in to an alliance that didn't have a pre-made party. They're easy to spot. If you see a group of 6 - 8 players, all with battle high V, you've run into a pre-made party and there's nothing you can do about it except hope the match ends soon so you can try again afterwards.

It's depressing.

I just don't understand. You can't queue into Crystalline Conflict matches while you're in a party, so why don't the same rules apply to Frontline? The same consequences apply in both game modes.

Some might argue to not take Frontline so seriously since it's just chaos and most people just queue in for tomes or exp. The only problem with that logic is that there are several mounts locked behind wins. None for participation, only wins.

Some might also argue to not be a bad loser and to take losses in stride. This is a little more fair, but you'd think that Square Enix would recognize that Frontline is by far the worst-designed thing in the game and soften the blow of unfair match-making by making the mount rewards participation-only.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just heated because I'm making this thread immediately after a Frontline roulette, but I'll let y'all be the judge.

Someone got farmed alittle too much by drk ast spam, ya hate to see it

[Wilford111]

Someone got farmed alittle too much by drk ast spam, ya hate to see it

lol just the other day, literally half of my alliance got KO'd by a DRK pull + DRG LB. We lost that match by a looot of points.

[Astralrisk]

My point is, and always has been, that premades have several advantages available to them over the average solo queued player. It's these advantages, particularly when coupled with a lot of very poorly balanced job design decisions, that can and do lead to extremely unbalanced matches when these advantages are leveraged together.

I'm not necessarily saying that premades should be banned from FL, though there is a valid argument for it. They're not allowed in ranked CC for a reason, after all. But there are certain jobs that really need a proper balance pass with FL in mind.

Pre-mades to have an advantage but a majority of people aren't using them to sweat in FL. Not saying people like that don't exist, it's just in a minority that you perceive as a bigger problem than it actually is. FL is balanced around having everyone in the entire alliance having to push on objectives together, ever since they made the damage reduction passives for the mode much larger. Even if there is a group of four people who manage to set up a good LB combo of DRK + DRG, that singular group is not going to make that team win the game if no one else in the alliance capitalizes on it to push the enemy team, or do objectives.

I also think job balancing has nothing to do with making the issue worse either. Yes the jobs are balanced for CC and not FLs, however I feel like there can be things done to make it better for FL specifically. Them doubling the damage reduction for everyone, while incredibly horrible change and a bit lazy, does help fix the issue of people getting owned by mass LB spam from classes like SMN or DRG. They could do more, like adding diminishing returns like they used to, could also just adjust some LBs to accumulate differently in FLs, but that's the most I can see them doing for any FL specific balancing. I personally think the way jobs balanced now is fine for every PvP mode, and the only bad form of balancing specifically for FL itself.

[Valence]

They're not allowed in ranked CC for a reason, after all.

Comparing CC balance with FLs is somewhat hilarious, ngl.

The only thing banning premades is going to achieve is:

1) Pushing away 95% of the actual premades, the ones that are harmless, not full premades, and not using the unholy combo but just having fun with their non meta jobs with their friends.
2) Either pushing away the actual tryhards that use the combo at the cost of bullet point 1, or actually transfer them into solo queue with actual party coordination. Not rocket science to do, so they could do it. "Anybody going DRK? I can go DRG" -> Watch 3 people suddenly changing jobs, and back to copium complaints on the forums

Once more, just address the unholy combo or give FLs their own job balance and what have you, and the problem will disappear on its own. Your solution is literally using a nuke to kill a fly, and to hell with all the collateral damage.

[4clubbedace]

CC is the actual serious pvp that shits balanced at all, you cant even duos in casual (bleh)

frontlines is a 24 v 24 v 24 mess, its just a chaos rush and hope someone can do chat callouts and ppl listen

classes hsould not be balanced with fl in mind, thats actual crazy talk

[ThaCa]

Bigger issue than people making small parties in Frontlines is the lousy current balance.
People wanted to tune down the AoE spam, because their only tactic was deathballing and still is.
Now since everyone was given unholy amount of damage resistance people use what still works.
Your best bet is to wait for 7.0 Frontline revamp, I doubt they are going to make larger changes until then.

As for partying up in general, I would love to see them allowing it in Casual CC. If people are worried about it being valuable enough for higher rank premades coming in and stomping, then increase the Ranked rewards in comparison so much that it's not worth it to do over just playing Ranked.