What's going on Frontlines?

[Mayhemmer]

Are you solo-queueing?
Cuz I can tell you, only people who queue together in a party ever get wins. It's a sad reality of Frontline and it's a main contributor of why it's the worst game mode in FFXIV.

What a weird thing to say.

[Wilford111]

What a weird thing to say.

How is it weird? Do you disagree?
I will admit I was being hyperbolic but it's not too far off.

[Mayhemmer]

How is it weird? Do you disagree?
I will admit I was being hyperbolic but it's not too far off.

I do, and I worded that too smugly I think, so I apologize.

Good party play in Frontlines highlights the issues people have with things like...

The out of control crowd-control
Emphases on AoE bursting
Overtuned personal shielding
The CRIMINAL abundance of "get out of jail free" abilities that allow individuals to get away with making insanely dumb decisions (elusive jump, sky high, phalanx, Eventide, etc.)
The damage reduction bandaids slapped onto the gamemode that further facilitate insane aggressive zerging
Tick-rate that can't keep up with 72 people clustering together

All things people have taken to abusing through even mediocre levels of coordination.

Rather than addressing these, tons of people would rather the source of their immediate aggravation be taken away, but that doesn't fix the issues.

[Valence]

The out of control crowd-control

Use guard and purify. It's not that worse than in CC. If you're out of both, don't go in, that's simple. People blame CC chains when they've been caught pants down by a 20 player blob dunking on them. If you get targeted, zoom out immediately after purifying.

I'm ready to admit that the DRK pull in is annoying, but again, if you have guard and purify ready, you should be fine. If it's a case where you're fleeing, then you probably fucked up way before for being left behind and caught pants down. No matter the CC you eat, you have a 20 man blob on your ass and no way to outrun them (they can mount, you can't).

Emphases on AoE bursting

Definitely more of a problem than in the old pvp model. AoE should be capped with heavy fallofs in FLs imo. PvE has them, so why not wide scale PvP (not crystal conflict pls, it's fine in small scale pvp)?

Overtuned personal shielding

???

The CRIMINAL abundance of "get out of jail free" abilities that allow individuals to get away with making insanely dumb decisions (elusive jump, sky high, phalanx, Eventide, etc.)

It's fortunate that those are here. A DRG without elusive and barrier after LB is a dead DRG. Even with both of those, it can be a dead DRG anyway. People are just not very good at catching them and ganking them out of the sky.

Tanks invulns don't bother me. They don't make tanks invulnerable to crowd control anyway, and a chain CCed tank after their purify is over is a dead tank.

The damage reduction bandaids slapped onto the gamemode that further facilitate insane aggressive zerging

Amusingly enough, with good players, they're not a lot of reduction. You can gank almost anything very easily. On the other hand, it's clear that it's way too much for the average playerbase, and generates jobs that seem impossible to kill when competently played.

Like everything in the complaints about this mode, it's mostly tied to a skill scale problem. It's like putting first league football players with elementary schoolers. Ofc the former will stand out as unbeatable, but people prefer blaming premades and unfair combos.

Tick-rate that can't keep up with 72 people clustering together

Yeah it's pretty bad. They should scale it down to the old 8v8v8 and see how it runs, with damage reductions cut by half or more obviously, accordingly.

Rather than addressing these, tons of people would rather the source of their immediate aggravation be taken away, but that doesn't fix the issues.

If only it was the source of their immediate aggravation to begin with...

[Mayhemmer]

Snip...

Cutting up each and every problem and examining them in isolation doesn't mean anything, because you'll never encounter these things in isolation in a match. Offering cookie-cutter advice to dealing with them doesn't mean anything, because Frontlines isn't a vacuum. That's just the way it is.

You can try these, and should, because there's good advice to be had, but if they were just fix-all's and worked every time, I don't think we'd be here right now.

[Valence]

Cutting up each and every problem and examining them in isolation doesn't mean anything, because you'll never encounter these things in isolation in a match. Offering cookie-cutter advice to dealing with them doesn't mean anything, because Frontlines isn't a vacuum. That's just the way it is.

You can try these, and should, because there's good advice to be had, but if they were just fix-all's and worked every time, I don't think we'd be here right now.

See, I'd agree with that statement, because it's the same in CC, and I'm sick of people using the same cookiee cutter, perfect scenario replies. However, the problem I have right now, is that I can't relate at all.

Like, I agreed with some points actually, but some like shields? I never had any issue with shields? Shields are inconsequential, what matters in FLs is crowd control and catching people so they're screwed in the middle of your blob, or out of position (with your blob pouncing on them). That's pretty much all there is to it. I'm honestly curious how you find shields a problem, how you find tank invulns even a problem either. Tank pops invuln, yeah, so what? Kill another target. Why are they getting away with it could be the better question to ask. Getting caught by salted earth? Just guard. How hard is even just pressing a guard button? What other point does even intersect with this to make this invalid somehow? I'm genuinely trying to think of situations that would compound otherwise, but I can't.

Now, if the actual point is "i can't punish the stupid BH5 DRG everytime I try to stun them once they're back down", then yeah, fortunately, you can't truly hope having a 100% success rate at this, and if you had, then nobody would use DRG like that anymore (or perhaps they still would if it allows them to kill multiples each time... but harder to pull without BH).

[Mayhemmer]

See, I'd agree with that statement, because it's the same in CC, and I'm sick of people using the same cookiee cutter, perfect scenario replies. However, the problem I have right now, is that I can't relate at all.

I'm honestly curious how you find shields a problem, how you find tank invulns even a problem either. Tank pops invuln, yeah, so what? Kill another target. Why are they getting away with it could be the better question to ask. Getting caught by salted earth? Just guard. How hard is even just pressing a guard button? What other point does even intersect with this to make this invalid somehow? I'm genuinely trying to think of situations that would compound otherwise, but I can't.

Because the jobs that people are taking the most issue with are the ones that benefit the most from these things? Because they're busted...? You can't punish the DRG when they smash elusive jump to get out of grab range before they even come down from LB client-side for everyone else. You can't rush after them because you're going straight into a blender blob, and even if you did, they're 50%+ hp shield PLUS FL dmg reductions means you're basically doing nothing to them. You can't just guard the salted earth because of the DNC dashing up to punish you when you do. Sure, the DNC may die, but if that doesn't happen in time, that's a good chunk of an alliance dead.

The most you can do is dance just outside another team's range and try to bait them so they waste the burst, which rarely works anyway, because the dives are always deep into your team, not the very edge of it.

[VictorSpoils]

What a weird thing to say.