PVP in this game isnt fun

[Yeti851]

I feel like this game's PvP has a lot of potential, but a lot of it is an afterthought.

The concept of Frontlines, for example, seems to work on paper, and once catered to your Grand Company choice. Now, you get cycled between the Grand Companies, defeating a part of the purpose.

In terms of game mode balance, SE has to alternate between catering to 5v5 CC, 24v24 RW and 24v24v24 FL. The issue is, your abilities are consistent throughout all three of them. A great example of this is AST's Macrocosmos. It's somewhat powerful in CC, but FL lets you stack jobs on a team, and combined with DRK, which can snare teams, you can get hit by 3 or 4 very coordinated Macrocosmos, which can tear teams apart. Because SE caters primarily to CC, this makes FL extremely unbalanced.

This isn't even addressing getting "pinched" by two teams. Quite frankly, having three teams doesn't even make sense. Basically all battles in warfare are between two sides. If this is trying to make the player feel like these are wargames, they've failed miserably.

In terms of individual class balance, some of the classes with unbreakable CC moves (especially MNK) and classes with quick takedown mechanics (especially SAM and NIN) can be exceptionally infuriating to fight against. Some maps have obnoxious players who spend the whole game getting knockback KOs and doing literally nothing else. I get most MMO PvP content isn't well balanced, but there's a lot of decisions that were made that I REALLY question.

My final grief is the maps. The maps in FL, for example, all kind of more of less feel the same. Objectives pop up, secure objectives, fight enemy teams for objectives. RNG is very often a factor in winning, which is not fun. I get they're trying to make the games feel consistent, but it'd be much more interesting to see maps that REALLY felt different from each other!

These are just some of my major criticisms. A few minor ones to top it off include:

-RW is extremely neglected
-Only three PvP modes (plus dueling in Wolves' Den)
-Games always feel short
-People literally queue just for XP and do the bare minimum or just AFK

To reiterate, I do think this game has a good amount of PvP potential. However, I'm really not convinced things are gonna get better, not for a while.

[Cidel]

In terms of game mode balance, SE has to alternate between catering to 5v5 CC, 24v24 RW and 24v24v24 FL. The issue is, your abilities are consistent throughout all three of them. A great example of this is AST's Macrocosmos. It's somewhat powerful in CC, but FL lets you stack jobs on a team, and combined with DRK, which can snare teams, you can get hit by 3 or 4 very coordinated Macrocosmos, which can tear teams apart. Because SE caters primarily to CC, this makes FL extremely unbalanced.

This is a very important factor. PvP is absolutely designed around their small-scale, sterile and controlled modes first and foremost; Feast and CC. There's no job-stacking or overlapping; no threat of being hit by 3+ coordinated Skyshatters or Bahamut bombs or accumulating more than 1 SCH DoT. You can never be focused on by more than 5 enemies. In Frontlines and Rival Wings, you have the potential to be mobbed by over twenty. They are clearly only interested in balance and function in CC over the largescale modes, which is reasonable, given how difficult to impossible it is to balance one mode without affecting the other outside of (what I imagine is) the logistical nightmare of creating two entirely separate skillsets.

This is also reflected in the PLD Guardian oversight where the ability made the tethered player basically uninterruptable on interactable objectives. No such system existed in CC, so it obviously either wasn't a pressing issue to the PvP person team, or they didn't immediately know how to fix it; we had to wait half a year for it to be addressed. Frontlines and Rival Wings are absolutely afterthoughts and the seemingly flippant memes about stop expecting balance in Frontlines are actually warranted.

This isn't even addressing getting "pinched" by two teams. Quite frankly, having three teams doesn't even make sense. Basically all battles in warfare are between two sides. If this is trying to make the player feel like these are wargames, they've failed miserably.

I disagree. As I've said many times, the three teams system is supposed to be the "catch-up mechanic;" expecting the two losing teams to keep any leading team in check while still looking out for their own interests. Getting pinched sucks, but in most situations they are self-inflicted and avoidable, if not at least with ways to mitigate your losses. Having a third team to keep an eye on actually adds depth and potential strategy, not to mention opportunities to create comebacks. The best shot-callers are the ones watching the movement of both enemy teams and warning them of incoming pinches well before they actually happen.

However, yes, it absolutely can happen where the third team griefs your team so hard to drag you both down, whether it be out of malice or (in most cases) ignorance. But I notice that most of the time, that is self-inflicted. Did your team "bully" them early on? Do you have a particularly dense subset of teammates constantly harassing theirs or constantly playing cat and mouse with them? Did your team have a proclivity of picking fights with them over objectives simply due to how much closer they spawn? Part of the nuance of the three-way match is smartly goading one or both enemy teams into responding a favorable way. People have a negative bias about all the times a third team worked against them, but never acknowledge when having a third team benefitted them.

The "I hate the three team system" complaint is one of those "you think you want it, but you don't," scenarios. Rival Wings are almost always 1-sided stomps, where the match is obviously decided in the first 3 minutes based just by how people handle the 1st middle skirmish, how the lanes are being pushed, and how fast mechs are spawned. You either get to be on the team getting stomped at every corner, or on the team that is basically seal-clubbing; outside of uncommon equally-matched scenarios.

RNG is very often a factor in winning, which is not fun.

The biggest RNG that actually impacts most matches is who you get on your team. Rarely is RNG objective spawning a certain way a deciding factor; there is usually a way to turn most scenarios in your favor- and sometimes it's not so straightforward. Sometimes the "right" answer is to retreat or circle-around, or even wait to see if the other two teams engage each other first. The problem is most people queueing FL just blindly run to the closest objectives- even if its tactical suicide, and cry "foul" when they inevitably get pushed out.

I keep seeing people mention some kind of Frontlines rework in Dawntrail; I'm not holding my breath that whatever it is will improve things much, let alone if it's more than more sweeping defense modifiers or LB timers.

[Aizuh]

bard needs a faster lb animation too

[Elfidan]

bard needs a faster lb animation too

You don't like having to run to the back of the arena so you don't get merc'd while being self-stunned? XD

[chip793]

Depends on the mode and the job you play. I LOVE DNC in Crystaline Conflict, but for Frontline I always go tank (usually PLD). CC isn't much of a problem in the former if you know how to position instead of making yourself a sitting duck by standing inside your teammates. Frontline is always a toss-up and given how many players it has per match, I like it that way.

Sure you can get trash teams, but I play both casually anyway since now all the tangible rewards aren't tied to top 100 nonsense. The malmstones are a great incentive to just queue up a match or 5 when I get bored of other grinds.

[Bonoki]

The only Frontlines rework I am aware of is the rest of the modes will modt likely be getting the treatment that Shatter got.

[Mistress_Irika]

I pray they don't touch Onsal, because the mode is fine as is.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[…]The biggest RNG that actually impacts most matches is who you get on your team. Rarely is RNG objective spawning a certain way a deciding factor; there is usually a way to turn most scenarios in your favor- and sometimes it's not so straightforward. Sometimes the "right" answer is to retreat or circle-around, or even wait to see if the other two teams engage each other first. The problem is most people queueing FL just blindly run to the closest objectives- even if its tactical suicide, and cry "foul" when they inevitably get pushed out.[…]

I’ve seen this happening too often.

Telling people to fall back from a potential pinch is easy. Sometimes even when the pinch never end up happening, people still back off peacefully.

Telling people to wait few seconds before actually engaging to avoid getting sandwiched between 2 forces is possible, but doesn’t always happen. (There’s always those who’s overenthusiastic or don’t feel like pvping lol)

Telling people to give up/abandon an objective to prevent more casualties & BHs? Very unlikely. More than not, people are hell bent on “I will die a honorable death!!!” while defending the frontline/objective with half of an alliance’s manpower then wonder why it turns into an uphill of a battle to win after.

[CidHeiral]

PvP is very fun since the rework. The vast majority of complaints I've seen amount to "I am bad at PvP so PvP is bad" which is the same sentiment you find in WoW PvP, fighting games, MOBAs, etc. Why work to improve when you can cry on social media and blame everything except yourself.

[Lorentz]

I feel like this game's PvP has a lot of potential, but a lot of it is an afterthought.

Any potential this game has for PvP is offset by how horrifically bad the input latency/netcode for this game is, it isn't an issue in PvE where it is masked fairly well, but for PvP (and the fall guys event) its absolutely atrocious and I don't expect this to ever get a fix given how deeply ingrained it is to the game's core systems.