Disruptive Frontline Gameplay

[EmeraldGreenz]

There are groups running around as a DRK, AST, AST, AST in frontlines, and its very disruptive to normal frontline matches. When this team operates they can down a full alliance without much counter play, and there are several groups, on multiple Data Centers, that are abusing this to make other players have less fun. On Crystal, other players from Aether travel here to do it, and no one likes to see them in the game because of what they do.

This Class-Combo is actively making the frontline game mode unfun when they appear, and its personally irritating to see the same people doing the exact same menial thing and succeeding.

So, please nerf DRK and/or AST.
DRK's Salted Earth pull has always been problematic,
and AST's Macrocosmos has too big of an area of effect to be that good at dealing damage on top of the compiled damage returning as a heal in Microcosmos.

The '50% damage decrease after one target' can be added to AST, even just for frontline. Maybe even the same for DRG's limit break as it has been used to similar effect in the past, though in recent times it has been unfavorable compared to AST.

I know adding changes to frontlines exclusively may be seen as a slippery slope, but these would be a few the community could handle. There's already a flat damage reduction for most classes. And it wouldn't change how the abilities fundamentally function and cause confusion.

In conclusion, this method of running in to kill half the enemy team with a single button press is not conducive to a fun experience in frontlines. A reward as great as that should not be so simple to execute, especially coming from three healers.

[SpritePR]

It's unfortunately the frontline meta because its very easy to execute. Salted earth just needs to be looked at and tweaked so its not as overpowering. I honestly feel like they should look at limiting the number of players able to be hit with AOE skills and take it from no cap > a much lower number (5? I'm not sure but thats the devs job)

On the other hand you can counter drks by silencing them if you wait till they plunge in and try your best to stay spread/use guard when there's no other options.

[Zeastria]

For ppl who cry about AST beeing OP in FL,
I dare you to go and play it yourself and see how "op" it is. LOL

I play ast solo, it's one of the weakest jobs, you have very low survivability..
AST is only good if you have high BH buff and is lucky with your team..

Premade => job stacking + DRK(CC) is the biggest issue,
Maybe make it so u can't enter more than 1-2 of the same job

Note: Battle High buff (BH) is also the reason why many jobs are broken,
along with how CC workes - we need cc immunity after the first cc.
Remove BH along with one-shot abilities..
and we might get something worth calling pvp.

[Akimitsu]

From the perspective of "a FL veteran" it's difficult to fully take a stance on the DRK/DRG/AST situation. I feel like the issue is coming from elsewhere to be honest, and I say that fully aknowledging that I sometimes still get killed by those premades.
The fact that FL draws in so many clueless people who are just here for their quick XP, the general western mentality about doing minimal (mental) effort is a bigger issue imo.
Try to follow a premade in your alliance if you spot one, and coordinate your efforts with mass killing on DRK pulls and see if you still find it that bad/unfun, and if it works do wonder why it's working (answer: because the people you're killing are just clueless).

An issue I would definitely agree with is the overabundance of CC and absence of CC resist: getting double polymorphed, triple pulled backwards, DNC charmed then MNK LB without the possibility to do anything about it, etc. Guard should never be able to be broken by anything, and it should prevent absurd one shot mechanics that take no skill to achieve (SAM). RPR and DNC forcing the DRK pulls to work everytime IS an issue unlike the pulls themselves. Guard should probably also be reworked to activate when pressed and not years later after all enemy damage has registered...

Regarding Battle High I really don't understand why people want that gone, for anyone who enjoys FL it's an additional reason to play, to get stronger and be able to do more for your team (or just for your own pride!). FL without BH would be so horribly flat...

[KenZentra]

Fights should be interesting, somewhat close, just using the best exploit available is the typical western mentality, where as respect for the players you are with as well as the opponents is an entire different story.

So instead of trying to cooperate with someone who is making an effort to coordinate things, you make an effort to sabotage the game because you're a special snowflake. Speak for yourself when you say stuff like it gets on everyone's nerves, you are everything that's wrong with western mentality.

The fact that FL draws in so many clueless people who are just here for their quick XP, the general western mentality about doing minimal (mental) effort is a bigger issue imo.

Oh my god, you two talk like THOSE relatives at Thanksgiving dinners. Please get over whatever culture thing you guys have a hookup on, it really has no place in this conversation.

[Akimitsu]

You literally came here to nitpick sentences from 2 people who are absolutely discussing the topic at hand. Maybe your comment has no place in this conversation? A troll from Goblin, the irony...

Only someone like you would deny the fact that yes, culture does play a part in how we play, while the eastern one tends to focus on coordination and not being a burden for the rest of the people they play with, the western one (for the majority) couldn't give a rat's ass about what they do and how they do it as long as they get their reward. And since they don't care to get better or offer constructive criticism we get this kind of thread, and despite what people may think SE does listen sometimes and then we get reworks that are failures after failures.
I also sincerely hope people realize that, at the moment, baring the intervention of the third GC, the DRK/AST/DRG thing is one of the only sure ways to make a comeback from impending defeats.

[Mawlzy]

You literally came here to nitpick sentences from 2 people who are absolutely discussing the topic at hand. Maybe your comment has no place in this conversation? A troll from Goblin, the irony...

Only someone like you would deny the fact that yes, culture does play a part in how we play, while the eastern one tends to focus on coordination and not being a burden for the rest of the people they play with, the western one (for the majority) couldn't give a rat's ass about what they do and how they do it as long as they get their reward. And since they don't care to get better or offer constructive criticism we get this kind of thread, and despite what people may think SE does listen sometimes and then we get reworks that are failures after failures.
I also sincerely hope people realize that, at the moment, baring the intervention of the third GC, the DRK/AST/DRG thing is one of the only sure ways to make a comeback from impending defeats.

That's one helluva sweeping statement made without evidence. Is there a sub-population of FL players who turn up once a day for XP? Yeah probably. The same is true in every roulette mode. Is this more common on NA servers? Possibly. But the natural instinct of any gamer is to try to play well and win in whatever mode they're playing!

I'd suggest the issues arise when individuals feel they have very little agency in impacting the result. Part of that is inevitable in a 24v24v24 outside of being a competent shot caller. It is compounded massively by this bizarre situation of mixing solo queueing with premades. The last Shatter I played yesterday began with the chat: "Oh well. We lost." "Yup!" when those players noticed the shot-caller with the effective premade was not on our team. I recognize this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but equally all those who cared enough to check the end-of-match stats could hardly avoid the laughable K/D/A of the same four suspects over and over again.

You don't encourage people to try harder by making their efforts irrelevant to the outcome of a contest.

[Jettinson]

It is no way disruptive, this is simply a change of how people used to kill faster.
We went from Bahamut spam to this because as I said months ago, it takes a lot of damage resources to kill melees now so taking a class that can pull players and able to AoE burst efficiently lead to this.

A bunch of solo players teaming up and coordinates are no different than a premade for example and them learning that being able to full nuke a team with right tools is no sign of disruption.
I play in Light DC which is notorious to have a certain premade dominate but for a damn good reason:
Coordination, people marking themselves and putting markers on maps. I actually enjoy being able to follow a coordination and pull something as well being able to fight against the premades if the people are willing to actually play serious and not waste time in self defeat or just blindly feed.

For actual changes, CC needs to dial down or at least have more ways you resist including to pulls like War's chain etc

[Zairava]

We just need passive CC resist back in frontline and for purify to affect draw-ins and knockbacks as well. The pull in is fine, the issue is that it's REALLY easy to abuse.

Not sure why I see some people advocate for BH's removal. It makes frontline VERY enjoyable to me regardless if the job I'm playing. I get to do more for my team the better I've performed during the match? hell yeah that's great

[Themarvin]

It is even very boring to be on the team of those guys... seriously starting to just walking into the other direction or posting markers at different spots instead, because it is talentless grinding like that... also the spam macro text gets on everyones nerves as well and for me a degree I just report it as spam from time to time.

I like to put an effort and feel ike having done an effort to win these rounds, not just following a couple of clowns around seriously exploiting the game that does not only ruin it for the opponents, but also their own team mates.