Disruptive Frontline Gameplay

[Aravell]

You're creating a hypothetical that may be problematic for a small number of players, whereas I'm attempting to address one that is poisoning the entire mode.

Clearly it's not poisoning the entire mode. I and several others have never had much issue with this supposed pre-made problem.

Does it happen? Sure it does. Is it a problem everywhere? Not at all.

Calling pre-mades a poison upon the entire mode is an exaggeration. And before you deflect and call me one of the pre-mades, I only queue solo, been doing it since FL began, will continue to queue solo.

[IDontPetLalas]

Okay let me lay it in layman's terms for you to understand.

Your team is going to potentially lose, give away 1st place win in a frontlines match, because they want to spite another team who they believe is a premade party with astrologians and dark knights. As to your potential team, it's better that the premades have another loss.

Do I need to simplify it more? As this is what I been seeing with the whole emphasis on Dark Knights and Astrologians. And I easily play 3 matches of frontlines a day.

First of "layman's terminology' hardly applies here, so need for the condescending tone.

No wonder I said it was convoluted, you've mixed up some people that have potentially a fear not only of (a) premades (b) a specific number of jobs who may or may not be in a premade and (c) an issue that you have because you just may lose in a 3-way PVP match, because you have a grudge if you encounter a premade.

As to the 3 a day- well we're close, I usually do 2, however, it seems I've done considerably more FL than you. This behaviour is hardly new - so if anyone's should be using the "layman's terminology' , well it hardly applies here. In any case I'm not about to tell you on whether you should like it or not.

[IDontPetLalas]

Clearly it's not poisoning the entire mode. I and several others have never had much issue with this supposed pre-made problem.

Does it happen? Sure it does. Is it a problem everywhere? Not at all.

Calling pre-mades a poison upon the entire mode is an exaggeration. And before you deflect and call me one of the pre-mades, I only queue solo, been doing it since FL began, will continue to queue solo.

I couldn't agree with you more, I don't know whether this stems from people who detest the actual mode (3 alliance) , who haven't had a lot of experience with larger scale random alliances, or find it really different from their prior experience and don't like it.

For example, one prior comment said that it was "daft" to mix a pre-made into solo queues. Now, this isn't the first game where I've seen this in a non-competitive mode, it was used in a PvP/PvE game and players here would have found it even worse because a whole pre-made team (6 people) could be matched against a full pug OR a pre-made. Were pre-mades hard to form there? Not at all, yet some people solo-queued anyways - and yes, the premades would usually win.

[Mawlzy]

Clearly it's not poisoning the entire mode. I and several others have never had much issue with this supposed pre-made problem.

Does it happen? Sure it does. Is it a problem everywhere? Not at all.

Calling pre-mades a poison upon the entire mode is an exaggeration. And before you deflect and call me one of the pre-mades, I only queue solo, been doing it since FL began, will continue to queue solo.

Friend, I'm not in the habit of accusing people here of anything. I believe we bother to post because we enjoy FL and want to see it improve and grow.

I only play on Aether, so yes, I cannot speak for the entire mode.

I do hope SQEX look into the data, because ultimately that should be the deciding factor. For example, if the vast majority of those queueing as a light party have comparable K/D/A and win-rates as those queuing solo, there is no problem worth addressing. But it sure doesn't feel like that.

[Mawlzy]

I couldn't agree with you more, I don't know whether this stems from people who detest the actual mode (3 alliance) , who haven't had a lot of experience with larger scale random alliances, or find it really different from their prior experience and don't like it.

For example, one prior comment said that it was "daft" to mix a pre-made into solo queues. Now, this isn't the first game where I've seen this in a non-competitive mode, it was used in a PvP/PvE game and players here would have found it even worse because a whole pre-made team (6 people) could be matched against a full pug OR a pre-made. Were pre-mades hard to form there? Not at all, yet some people solo-queued anyways - and yes, the premades would usually win.

Uhm. Sounds kinda daft

[Chasingstars]

First of "layman's terminology' hardly applies here, so need for the condescending tone.

No wonder I said it was convoluted, you've mixed up some people that have potentially a fear not only of (a) premades (b) a specific number of jobs who may or may not be in a premade and (c) an issue that you have because you just may lose in a 3-way PVP match, because you have a grudge if you encounter a premade.

As to the 3 a day- well we're close, I usually do 2, however, it seems I've done considerably more FL than you. This behaviour is hardly new - so if anyone's should be using the "layman's terminology' , well it hardly applies here. In any case I'm not about to tell you on whether you should like it or not.

I chose to be condescending as I figured you would have understood by now that players will use what works the best, and that personal victories often matter more to an individual than the more statistical truth of actually getting 1st place, which you agreed to.

Like let me use an offtopic example for a moment. Magic the Gathering, Modern Format. There is a deck called Rakdos Scam. It blows up and becomes the most dominant deck in the format that only loses to a mirror match of itself. It takes the parent company an entire 8 months to ban one of its key cards, all the while up to that point claiming the format, aka game mode, is "healthy". Like wow, that sounds messed up the game designers would just let something run a muck for so long.

Why bring that as an example? Just look at Dark Knight. Everyone day one of 6.1 could see it had a lot of problematic elements to its kit. But Square Enix does nothing to actually address the stuff people noticed, like the AoE effect not matching the visual indicator as just one teeny tiny example. It among other elements of the job are things have existed well over a year and a half at this point. And nothing is done to actually try and fix, the expectation is more so it will dodge another patch notes update for any potential nerfs that isn't a sweeping one like the duration of crowd control or the adjustments of damage reduction. As all that matters to Square Enix is Crystalline Conflict, if it is fine there, then surely it is fine in every other game mode to them.

[Aravell]

Friend, I'm not in the habit of accusing people here of anything. I believe we bother to post because we enjoy FL and want to see it improve and grow.

I only play on Aether, so yes, I cannot speak for the entire mode.

I do hope SQEX look into the data, because ultimately that should be the deciding factor. For example, if the vast majority of those queueing as a light party have comparable K/D/A and win-rates as those queuing solo, there is no problem worth addressing. But it sure doesn't feel like that.

I'm just covering my bases so I don't get accused of being a pre-made abuser myself.

I've played on Crystal, Materia and Elemental, but the bulk of my matches are on Elemental. I suggest playing a few matches on Materia to see how people deal with the DRK combos, they've dealt with 3 famous DRK pre-mades for months now, they've gotten pretty good at dealing with it. Elemental is pretty evenly matched most of the time, you can see people fighting on mid in Onsal Hakair for 9 minutes with no clear victor, you can even occasionally time out on Onsal Hakair. Crystal is.....iffy, they seem to generally know where to go, but they seem hesitant to engage the enemy most of the time, but matches usually go pretty good if people have enough melee jobs that actually go fight.

Can't speak much for Aether, I've barely played there, maybe I'll DC travel over to do my matches to see this pre-made problem for myself.

As for SE looking at the data, I'd assume they won't see much needs changing. I won't deny that I've seen matches that massively favour one team, but I've also seen a lot of matches where the difference between 1st and 3rd place is less than 100 points. Maybe Aether really leans towards to former, I don't know, but I intend to find out for myself.

[IDontPetLalas]

I chose to be condescending as I figured you would have understood by now that players will use what works the best, and that personal victories often matter more to an individual than the more statistical truth of actually getting 1st place, which you agreed to.

Like let me use an offtopic example for a moment. Magic the Gathering, Modern Format. There is a deck called Rakdos Scam. It blows up and becomes the most dominant deck in the format that only loses to a mirror match of itself. It takes the parent company an entire 8 months to ban one of its key cards, all the while up to that point claiming the format, aka game mode, is "healthy". Like wow, that sounds messed up the game designers would just let something run a muck for so long.

Why bring that as an example? Just look at Dark Knight. Everyone day one of 6.1 could see it had a lot of problematic elements to its kit. But Square Enix does nothing to actually address the stuff people noticed, like the AoE effect not matching the visual indicator as just one teeny tiny example. It among other elements of the job are things have existed well over a year and a half at this point. And nothing is done to actually try and fix, the expectation is more so it will dodge another patch notes update for any potential nerfs that isn't a sweeping one like the duration of crowd control or the adjustments of damage reduction. As all that matters to Square Enix is Crystalline Conflict, if it is fine there, then surely it is fine in every other game mode to them.

If you figured you "choose to be condescending" in a reaction to someone who say that your argument is unclear, and could your clear up what may be a misunderstanding on their part, then that doesn't really say much for your having a good faith discussion, does it?

So I'll leave this at saying that I have no idea of where you drew the conclusion that I agreed to "personal victories often matter more to an individual than the more statistical truth of actually getting 1st place". If you want to extend " some players will form a premade because they have friends, like to play together, and like to win" to "players will use what works the best", sure I agree. Or, 'some players will switch to whatever job they think is meta", again- agreed.

[Chasingstars]

then that doesn't really say much for your having a good faith discussion, does it?

Oh that is rich coming from you.

[Scintilla]

I don't know whether this stems from people who detest the actual mode (3 alliance) , who haven't had a lot of experience with larger scale random alliances, or find it really different from their prior experience and don't like it.

I presume you aren't referring to those of us who are making points against premades because, if you were, I'm not sure where you draw this conclusion from at all?

Personally, I like the 3-alliance structure and would be rather sad to see it go. It has it's flaws, not least as it can be baffling to try to understand the logic of the third team in some games, but I still very, very much prefer it to a regular 2 alliance game.
I wouldn't say the second point applies to me either: I much prefer PvP to any other aspect of this game and, aside from a few daily roulettes, practically all of my online time is spent in playing FLs across my 3 alts (CC too, but to a somewhat lesser extent. As I said, I like the larger scale, 1v1v1 setup of FL more). 3-a-day are purely my alts FL dailies; I play extra to that even after those are completed.
And, finally, in the past I have played PvP heavily in other games before FFXIV and I much prefer the system here. In one in particular, PvP was extremely toxic and flaws in the system were heavily abused by players wherever possible. There, flaws were even greater and more numerous than those here, hence I was very pleasantly surprised when beginning here at how much different it was. However, while better than other games, this system still has issues and we want to highlight these issues in the hope that it results in some kind of resolution or improvement being found. It won't be easy or straightforward, but it's still immensely better than simply ignoring the situation.

this isn't the first game where I've seen this in a non-competitive mode, it was used in a PvP/PvE game and players here would have found it even worse because a whole pre-made team (6 people) could be matched against a full pug OR a pre-made. Were pre-mades hard to form there? Not at all, yet some people solo-queued anyways - and yes, the premades would usually win.

Purely because the situation might be worse in a completely different game, it still doesn't mean that the problems here are non-existent. Okay, so there's another worse-off game (there'll be many out there), how does that mean that this game requires no improvement whatsoever? Do only the very worst games in history need improving because the rest are "well, they're worse than us, so our problems can be ignored"?

It sounds almost like you're suggesting that because a different game is currently in a much worse situation, that means that all issues and reports of problems in this game are invalid