Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Wanderer42]

Yea the balance could use some tweaking sure but i think the main issue causing fl to suck as it very much does right now is premades, not just parties of 4 queueing together but discord servers with pvpers queueing up at the same time in multiple parties of 4 trying to get as many of their parties into a match as possible, and then deciding amongst themselves who the winner of that match will be before it even starts. I have played WAY too many matches where one team just attacks one other specific team regardless of their score or objectives or anything for the entire match handing an easy win to the "chosen" team. That's not pvp, that's a group of jerks wasting peoples time to farm easy wins while having zero actual skill at pvp whatsoever. I think a few things that might help with this are 1. separate frontline matches into casual and ranked. 2. remove the ability to queue in parties AT ALL from casual matches, you either queue alone or not at all. 3. make ranked matches REQUIRE full premade parties, that way everyone knows what they're getting into, let the people who want to work together outside of the game to coordinate and strategize do it to their hearts content AGAINST EACH OTHER instead of against unsuspecting groups of random people queueing to just complete their daily roulette or try to work on getting their seal rock coat.

I don't have a problem with the idea of people wanting to play frontlines together with outside methods of communication that allow for better strategy and shot calling and whatnot that's great the problem is you can't throw those groups up against randoms who don't know what's going on and don't have that same ability to coordinate with each other. Find a way to keep them separate and punish groups who abuse the system to waste the time of random people who might enjoy pvp but get turned off by it because of their toxic cheating behaviours.

[Valence]

Not gonna lie, the effort required to pull off premade kitchen sinks is abysmally low. The effort required to shut them down is thrice higher, and the easiest solution of them all is not to kill their BH5 (that's suboptimal and requires skill), but to make sure each alliance fields at least one SGE that knows what they're doing with Mesotes.

[CosmoBabylonia]

Not gonna lie, the effort required to pull off premade kitchen sinks is abysmally low. The effort required to shut them down is thrice higher, and the easiest solution of them all is not to kill their BH5 (that's suboptimal and requires skill), but to make sure each alliance fields at least one SGE that knows what they're doing with Mesotes.

In my opinion, it's not that hard given how easy I found to be tagging along by guessing their timings. What I find is more dangerous than pre-mades is actually the experienced solo player. Experienced and good solo players can pick out shot callers and follow along very easily. A competent driver will weaponize all of the solo players into something insanely scary. A stack of 4 really can't make that huge of a difference.

[OliviaLugria]

Not gonna lie, the effort required to pull off premade kitchen sinks is abysmally low.

You should probably make one then. The easiest solution to stopping a premade is having your own to dive them when they attack your team anyways.

Successfully counter dive once or twice and they'll have to slow down, try to target the other team or wait for you to engage something else.

[Valence]

You should probably make one then. The easiest solution to stopping a premade is having your own to dive them when they attack your team anyways.

Successfully counter dive once or twice and they'll have to slow down, try to target the other team or wait for you to engage something else.

I'm talking in terms of balance. I don't like the idea of having to use nukes in order to stop nukes, because nothing else matters. It's toxic for gameplay variety and leaves 80% of the job roster on the bench, useless.

Also not super fond of engaging into it to start with. It's boring gameplay, whether you steamroll casual teams or pit your premade against another one, especially when in most cases the winner is the one jumping first and inflicting crippling casualties anyway. Which loops back to the imbalance in terms of efforts and defense.

It's cool some people have fun with it though. I'm more of a CC player myself anyway.

[AriannaStormwake]

now premades use rprs lb(that goes through guard and removes it) with drks pull and drgs jump thats fair not
neither is machinists marksman spite 1 shotting uh can we delete these two limit breaks and give people NO stuns in frontline
because being stunlocked by a premade of war/drk/mnk/whatever else and ending lowscore third(because third place in FL is not removed for some reason) is fun right

[AnotherPerson]

I was thinking about the two games I had in Shatter today. One game was full of sandbaggers and I hoped that wasn't the case the moment I noticed the signs from the start of the match, but it became apparent with the responses they made in the match that it was intentional. People just wanted to farm only big ice and nothing but big ice. No fights or anything after getting run down. Even then, I'd argue that could've still somehow worked out ... if it wasn't for the fact that the entire 24 man was more or less dedicated to farming ice even after one alliance was pulling super hard ahead. Welp.

The other game was with 2 or 3 conflicting groups. One group wanted to unga bunga don't read (they got pinched because they didn't back away but were fearless otherwise and doesn't mind a fight, even though it was against 2nd place), one group decided to give rational commands, one group wanted to give up halfway in the match. That one was salvageable. It worked out, someone shotcalled and led the groups and we had some finally synergy going with at least half the alliance. Even though one alliance had lots BH4 & BH5 and a 400 point lead over us, we still managed to turn it around, winning us first place with roughly a 100 point lead in 2nd place and ~200 point lead against 3rd place.

After reviewing the gameplay, I concluded that Frontlines suck due to a map design issue like Shatter and people mentality issue (immediately giving up or not even trying at all once they fall behind). New shatter map just sucks since it's hard to play around a bad mentality when the game tries to segregate opposing groups to wait for big ice. Other than that, the map does fine, but the timing for ice spawns is not ideal to encourage some consistent chaos and fights. Due to the nature of Ice having HP pools, BH usually takes a higher priority to do more damage, so you're bound to fall off late game without fighting at all in this map. Lots less wiggle room to play around strategically. Definitely my least favorite map by far.

As far as premades go, there was an enemy team on the second match that used the DRK combo were the same group with BH4 & BH5 with the 400 point lead. They got deleted from our mismatch group (with little to no BH at the time and without running any meta compositions) after my alliance finally decided to work together to jump them during a good pinch.. so premades didn't feel like an issue at all. Or rather, I didn't feel the pressure from premades at all that game. The biggest and most notable issue I've seen is just the lack of trying in these Frontline matches. It's definitely not the premade matches that's making the most polarizing solo gameplay experience I have, it's just quitters and sandbaggers actively sabotaging the game long before the match reached a point where an alliance has enough points to win.

[Tj_Azzam]

After reviewing the gameplay, I concluded that Frontlines suck due to a map design issue like Shatter and people mentality issue (immediately giving up or not even trying at all once they fall behind). New shatter map just sucks since it's hard to play around a bad mentality when the game tries to segregate opposing groups to wait for big ice. Other than that, the map does fine, but the timing for ice spawns is not ideal to encourage some consistent chaos and fights. Due to the nature of Ice having HP pools, BH usually takes a higher priority to do more damage, so you're bound to fall off late game without fighting at all in this map. Lots less wiggle room to play around strategically. Definitely my least favorite map by far.

As far as premades go, there was an enemy team on the second match that used the DRK combo were the same group with BH4 & BH5 with the 400 point lead. They got deleted from our mismatch group (with little to no BH at the time and without running any meta compositions) after my alliance finally decided to work together to jump them during a good pinch.. so premades didn't feel like an issue at all. Or rather, I didn't feel the pressure from premades at all that game. The biggest and most notable issue I've seen is just the lack of trying in these Frontline matches. It's definitely not the premade matches that's making the most polarizing solo gameplay experience I have, it's just quitters and sandbaggers actively sabotaging the game long before the match reached a point where an alliance has enough points to win.

considering current shatter, i think blaming player mentality is firing at a sympton and not the cause, the map doesnt have the rng to give a leg up in case your team falls behind in the third place, because of that trying to cooperate with the second place still gives a very unlikely chance at a win, and like you said, map design is an issue, the layout makes a lot harder to make a joint offensive on the leading team, its a tall uphill battle to take on and i dont blame an unskilled team for not trying it, not only youre very likely to be rewarded in the winning chance nor in the gameplay side, because lets be real, the gameplay shatter offers is just bad.

such player mentality issue wouldn't be so apparent if the map was better, like onsal and seal rock, i dont see people giving up on these near as often, actually, i dont remember the last time i saw a team give up on those.

[AriannaStormwake]

speaking of seal rock i got a nice blue premade as the enemy who wont let me cast at all
and are stunlocking so hard they might be using some sort of bot(just like in wows pvp surprise)
not only does rprs hysteria remove guard and lets his buddies one shot you same applies for marksmans spite(30k+ damage through guard)
and these are not nerfed nor are lowscore third places rewards removed

[Valence]

Good luck finding enough "experienced solo players" to turn the tide, especially when:

1) Shot callers dont need to be alive to continue commanding, and even if you mean the local premade callouts more than the field commanding itself, it's not like somebody else can't pick up callouts anyway.
2) Experienced solo players don't always play the meta jobs
3) Disrupting the DRK is only gonna delay the moment your whole alliance of casuals is gonna get kitchen sinked
4) I have rarely seen more experienced solo players in my team than there was in the premades facing us


Edit: I realize re-reading that you meant by picking out, solo players in your team immediately falling in line with a competent driver (DRK for instance). If so, I need to go play on Coeurl because I've never seen that once in my life, and believe me I tried asking people. Nobody was interested, even the "experienced solo players". Fact of the matter is, nobody cares enough, me included. It's not something most people find enjoyable for the reasons I exposed already.
Odds are, if actual solo players followed you or some random driver that well, they were probably either part of a premade you didn't detect, or premade afficionados playing solo.