Disruptive Frontline Gameplay

[Akimitsu]

Not only this, but a notable proportion of your team will be infrequent players who may not be so aware of what's happening and will be too late or even overlook Guard entirely.

This is the main issue, people being too pvp casual to even think of countering the premades, or worse, unwilling to even try to work with the rest of their alliance. Those people just deserve to lose, and they don't care, since they are only here for the XP. If people realized that -since a lot of them do the FL roulette at least once a day- they should take 10 minuts to figure out a burst and the rest of their skills at the Wolves Den Pier, things would go differently. This is also SE's fault, some tutorials might be good.

Reaper having such a short LB cooldown means a guaranteed Guard removal every single time

It does make it very bad to counter the DRK thing but let's not exaggerate, not every single time. I'll give you one thing though, no LB should work through/remove guard.

An advantage which quickly leads to defeatist attitudes amongst some within opposing teams which just exacerbates the issue.

I fail to see how the people who queue 1 time a day for their XP roulette could care, they get a reward whatever the outcome of the game is. For the people who queue multiple times a day solo, I'm not saying it's ideal, but with a little effort no premade is unbeatable. When I face one I usually try to lead a bit, or play jobs that can support the team to minimize the casualties.

through voice simply gives such premades an advantage that is poisoning the mode

They don't need to use voice, and most don't. They just pay attention to calls. Synchronizing things suprisingly only requires 2 things: being able to read and be willing to work with a shot caller.

Having played a lot of solo and premade both, I can also tell you premades usually aren't after a particular display of skill, this is FL after all, a mess. They're mostly interested in achievements or sometimes topping the weekly FL standing on Lodestone. Or just playing with friends.
And what makes them good, even above the DRK factor, is decision making and leading.

[Scintilla]

This is the main issue, people being too pvp casual

Taking time to learn the extent of their skills would help in a sense, not least by making some aware that Guard even exists, but by making them more aware of the full capabilities of their classes. True, it will allow you to focus more on your surroundings, more aware of defensive buffs/skills to help support your team in regular FLs (though this is not remotely enough to vs some premades). And, with practice, it can make you more aware of how these skills may be applied to better defeat classes regularly used by premades (use of MNK stun and knockback vs DRKs on Onsal podium etc). However, this not only requires a knowledge of your own class, but of other classes too. And the application of these skills in such a way will often only come with practice - just knowing the skill exists doesn't necessarily mean that a player will consider such applications. That will come more from practice than basic Wolves Den training.

But this still only applies to classic premades. Knowing your class means little when you are dragged into a DRK voke, instantly sent into Hysteria to cancel Guard and prevent actions, and then flattened by a spam of LBs. Where is the benefit in knowing your actions, when you can't actually use any of them

Standard RPR cooldown is 75s. Faster than most other class LBs, including DNC and WAR (two other classes who's LB removes Guard). Also, the use of Plentiful Harvest gives the RPR a buff to speed up the LB cooldown even further. With that used, it is more around a 60s cd.
By the time the LB has been used and the opposing team killed, the retreat, reheal, and the movement of the team to a new location to prepare another attack, it will be ready to use again.

I fail to see how the people who queue 1 time a day for their XP roulette could care, they get a reward whatever the outcome of the game is.

I feel it is precisely because they don't care that this defeatist attitude comes about: "get it over with", "just die to them and end this faster" etc.

Basically: No point trying, lets just get our reward and get out. It's an attitude that I hate to see. Premades can be beatable, but in the worst cases it often needs an unsaid mutual agreement between the two random teams to focus down the premade's alliance 2v1. Sometimes it happens, but not often.

My point is: this shouldn't be the case at all. If it comes to this, clearly premades are too abusable. I enjoy PvP, I don't want to see new players turned away from it because of this.

They don't need to use voice

This I cannot disagree with more. You get excellent coordinators in random teams who make a very strong team. But they never compare to good premades. If these teams are comparable to the premades you've seen, you can't have seen very good premades at all.

[Doozer]

It's unfortunate this thread has just devolved to arguing when these comps are an actual problem, especially on Shatter (I don't care about what you think of Shatter). I saw a team win by reaching the score limit of 2000 with 1450 being from player kills. They almost completely ignored the objective entirely and just nuked whole teams. "Just Guard" doesn't work when there's 6 ASTs on the same team all running together behind the same DRK that they're pocket healing.

Specific jobs aren't the problem, but allowing that type of party comp sucks out any remaining fun in Frontlines. I can't queue for casual Crystalline Conflict with one friend but people can do this? Sure, yeah, that makes sense.

[Chasingstars]

It's unfortunate this thread has just devolved to arguing when these comps are an actual problem, especially on Shatter (I don't care about what you think of Shatter). I saw a team win by reaching the score limit of 2000 with 1450 being from player kills. They almost completely ignored the objective entirely and just nuked whole teams. "Just Guard" doesn't work when there's 6 ASTs on the same team all running together behind the same DRK that they're pocket healing.

Specific jobs aren't the problem, but allowing that type of party comp sucks out any remaining fun in Frontlines. I can't queue for casual Crystalline Conflict with one friend but people can do this? Sure, yeah, that makes sense.

I guess its become more widespread sentiment for party comp? I been seeing an uptick of people talking about premades featuring drks and astros in actual frontlines matches.

[Doozer]

I guess its become more widespread sentiment for party comp? I been seeing an uptick of people talking about premades featuring drks and astros in actual frontlines matches.

It's hard to tell if they're actually a premade without checking their FC or something. Many times someone will just say "hey switch to DRK" and they'll adjust on the fly. 4 people playing together wouldn't be a problem if Frontlines didn't allow them to just all be the same jobs with huge AoEs.

[Chasingstars]

It's hard to tell if they're actually a premade without checking their FC or something. Many times someone will just say "hey switch to DRK" and they'll adjust on the fly. 4 people playing together wouldn't be a problem if Frontlines didn't allow them to just all be the same jobs with huge AoEs.

More so of people noticing DRK and Astro on enemy teams. Like I have two seperate stories.

The first one was with Onsal. Red side. We should be really be fighting blue. But team keeps wanting to pinch 3rd place yellow. Reason? "They are a premade with DRKs and Astros, and could make a comeback victory." Come in second place. Blue wins by literally 2 points.

Second Story was with Seal Rock. Blue Side. Red is doing pretty terrible, barely able to get 50/800. Yellow is the most dominant and is already at 500 points as they are basically pubstombing the first half of the match. Team is taking stock of yellow team, making observations. Noting they have a lot of BH5 Astros and Drks, post-match it would turn out that yellow had a whopping 8 Astros. I swap from reaper to Astro to help, as we spend the remaining 10 minutes of the match just battling yellow. Blue comes in 3rd at 531, Yellow at 2nd with 536, Red winning the match. No surprise Red won, as between them getting good node spawns, and helping with beating the hell out of Yellow, the match was turned around for them. Most of the comments from Blue-side after we got 3rd was basically "I'm just happy yellow didn't win."

[Jettinson]

It's hard to tell if they're actually a premade without checking their FC or something. Many times someone will just say "hey switch to DRK" and they'll adjust on the fly. 4 people playing together wouldn't be a problem if Frontlines didn't allow them to just all be the same jobs with huge AoEs.

That's job/class stacking in a nutshell though.
Fighting 5 or 6 SAM stacks is absolutely obnoxious as an example but it is not like they are exploiting the system or do anything wrong per se.
Heck, Frontline changes happened because of job stacking to begin with

At same time, 72 people and handling on limit job stacking is a bit different than working on Crystal Conflict with 10 people.
Do we want to make sure that you cannot change class once you start queueing and pray the kind of team you get and fight against?
Or something that people will race on switching said job and rob people's choices?

AST's Macrocosmos could even get nerfed but I don't think that'll fix anything in Frontline if the goal is to make it less painful

[EmilySummerstar]

I've been frustrated enough to try this strategy with moderate success on RDM.

In White stance, stay out of range and watch the DRK. When he jumps in, silence him. It's not too difficult to target him because he'll be out in front. Most Astros will stand close enough that when your shot pierces, it will hit them too. That silences the entire bunch. Follow up with your LB and do more damage while healing your team. It takes a bit of practice to get it correct but it's pretty effective. I'm not a fan of nerfs. If a counter is effective, I hope SE would take a hint to encourage it and work it into balancing of the meta rather than nerfing.

[Jettinson]

I'm not a fan of nerfs. If a counter is effective, I hope SE would take a hint to encourage it and work it into balancing of the meta rather than nerfing.

I agree but judging from the amount of times I see Astros or caster/ranged jobs fight up close on groups is honestly astonishing and this is not talking about getting flanked but straight up running head on toward a team.
The fact that I could play MCH and get top kills through a powered up Bioblaster just because they keep targeting tanks is hilarious.

[AriannaStormwake]

I dont suppose people in a random team in frontlines feeding one of the opposite teams with kills/or points counts as disruptive?
ive seen it happen few times frontline starts people start fighting BOTH teams,the obvious premade wins with drk pull/stun chains after that pull and LB use at the same time(premades should have their own separate pvp instances against other premades)