Disruptive Frontline Gameplay

[Mawlzy]

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)

I've seen an increasing number of instances on Aether in which a team gets smacked by an obvious premade a couple of times and then throws to that team to get it over quicker. Like it's advocated in chat. Seems overly defeatist to me, but reflective of the growing frustration with the mixed queue.

[AriannaStormwake]

ah i see nevermind that they start pvping against both teams and guess who ends up lowscore third?
id rather leave when such teams do that as its not worth my time

[Raionek]

No matter the game and how you balance it. There always gonna be meta.
FFXIV is overbalanced in many cases. That annoys people a lot. Like in pve all jobs got almost the same skill kit.

The only way to avoid in PVP things like "everyone plays the same combination of characters because it is the strongest" - is to make all jobs do pretty much the same thing.
Do you really want that? I would rather look for ways to deal with that kind of combination. Like having specific players in your party to do the same thing or just insta-kill the annoying players as samurai or something.

In the current meta you can pretty much always find a way how to counter something specific.

[Chasingstars]

No matter the game and how you balance it. There always gonna be meta.
FFXIV is overbalanced in many cases. That annoys people a lot. Like in pve all jobs got almost the same skill kit.

The only way to avoid in PVP things like "everyone plays the same combination of characters because it is the strongest" - is to make all jobs do pretty much the same thing.
Do you really want that? I would rather look for ways to deal with that kind of combination. Like having specific players in your party to do the same thing or just insta-kill the annoying players as samurai or something.

In the current meta you can pretty much always find a way how to counter something specific.

Meanwhile I can look at a starting party comp in frontlines and get a pretty good feel of what the match is going to be. "Oh we only have one tank or only one healer and the rest are dps? Guess we are coming in second or third today as we don't really have a frontline".

Also its a lie to say "You can pretty much always find a way how to counter something specific" when most people don't treat frontlines more than as a free exp roulette. And therefore why should people give any actual thought into how something seems unbalanced or how to counter it. As for the average person they play it once a day at most then they are done. If they do more runs its because they are on a winstreak. Meanwhile if they get a 3rd place, they might just end their ff14 session early because they feel too frustrated at "not being able to get 1st place enough times" for a title or a mount or piece of glamour.

[RyanCousland]

hmmm ive only had a cursory look at this thread but seems like its the same as all others that have an issue with DRG,DRK,SCH,AST in FL or any other class so the only solution i have is to remove the ability of changing your class during a match, i imagine this might hinder those that are trying to level one class then change to the supposed meta whether or not this is good or bad i cant say but aside from creating a separate large scale HB toolkit, or removing LBs from FL, theres not much that can be done for the state of FL

[Scintilla]

An AST dies in like 2 hits. Just guard when you see a DRK jump in. Don't waste your guard at pointless times; or wait for it to come back up before you engage a large zerg. Have map awareness so you don't get caught unaware. Keep your map open. Easy day.

As people have already said: Guard can be removed.

'Just use Guard' is not the magic solution that so many appear to see it as.

I haven't personally seen many DRK, AST, AST, AST teams, so I wouldn't want to say too much about those team setups specifically. But premades definitely are an issue.

In a classic DRK-DRG premade, Guard can help, but it's not a perfect solution. You have to be prepared and more aware of your surroundings to ensure you use it quickly enough. A slight delay will leave you still taking some damage after casting, and a single unlucky stun can be the difference between getting it cast in time or not. 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.
These premades are bad enough to vs and all you can really hope is that with warnings/marks, your team can weather the attacks well enough. This isn't often the case, so premades are regularly left with a significant advantage even in this workable setup.

The most troublesome setup I have seen so far has probably been DRK, RPR, DRG, DRG.
DRK vokes, RPR removes Guard, DRGs LB = a mass of dead alliance members, regardless of whether they used Guard or not. The only sure way of avoiding is to keep far away from your group to avoid the voke entirely - and even this isn't possible in all maps, particularly the centre podium of Onsal or the many bottlenecks of Shatter.

Reaper having such a short LB cooldown means a guaranteed Guard removal every single time. And RPRs teleport allows it to get into and out of position extremely quickly, making it almost impossible to stop before it gets chance to LB.

Seeing premades with consistent 350k+ damage, 40+ kills, and 80+ assists and a 90% win rate, shows just what an advantage they have. An advantage which quickly leads to defeatist attitudes amongst some within opposing teams which just exacerbates the issue.

[Mawlzy]

Seeing premades with consistent 350k+ damage, 40+ kills, and 80+ assists and a 90% win rate, shows just what an advantage they have. An advantage which quickly leads to defeatist attitudes amongst some within opposing teams which just exacerbates the issue.

Exactly this. Irrespective of balance and meta comps, the ability to synchronize LBs perfectly through voice simply gives such premades an advantage that is poisoning the mode. I would also hope that, rather than playing whack-a-mole, members of such premades would prefer a fair challenge and pit their evident skills against other premades.

[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.

[Bonoki]

Can't do much about premades, and removing frontlines as the last bastion of premades since CC doesn't probably isn't healthy either. (You wouldnt be able to queue with your friends!)

I think people need to accept that until a deeper solution is addressed, you need to cave into the meta jobs. I can't tell you how many times I pop into a Frontlines, see no tank so I take it upon myself to go DRK instead, but the rest of the party is all Physical Ranges and Sage. So, I think to myself, "Welp this is probably a lose." Basically, what I'm saying is that party make up can influence alliance moral at the start of a match as well. If I queue in and I see DRGs, DRKs, ASTs, ect. I'm more like "Ooo~ We have the fire power~" and far more likely to follow Mr Triangle over his head. It's unfortunate but playing the job you wanna play just isn't gonna really cut it if you wanna win. PvP is unfortunately one those modes where Meta does sort of matter. It is by no means mandatory and nobody gonna tell you that you have to do it, but you need to accept reality that you are making things for harder yourself and everyone else by not playing such jobs.

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.

The problem is, you can't really counter those premades. Not unless your group suddenly magically decides to get organized and change jobs so you can fight fire with fire. By the time you realize that the enemy alliance is an organized group, it's probably already too late. They got a plunge or two in with Battle Highs now built up and even focus targeting only goes so far when they zerg their whole alliance on you. In order to counter an alliance at this point, you pretty much need to sacrifice the game to fight them, which you're probably feeding more than anything. The only true counter is to run away when you see them and try to play for objectives strictly. This is one of those situations where premades are only so busted because of the Battle High mechanic. If that was no longer a thing then we would be back to equal skill issues. But an alliance with a strong Battle high lead over an alliance without any is a recipe for one to get destroyed and bodied.