Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Mawlzy]

just made it to 55% the other day. Even before running premades and doing light calls I still had a respectable 40~ percent.

I take your comment to mean you don't support rewards for participating in a pvp mode? Also, thanks for leaving out the part about captures XD. If someone got an extra .25% of a level, a .5%for a kill, and maybe 1% for a capture do you think there would be less participation or more? Add in a multiplayer for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd like x1.5, x1.25, and x1.0, would people try to win? You could even have the exp gain show up in the log for a bit of dopamine. I don't see why you shouldn't reward the people doing more. My own personal performance isn't that much different with or without a premade, it really only changes the win rate. That's mostly due to drk facilitating damage more than actually doing it.

I think FL in particular is currently being held back because the rewards (particularly roulette XP) are too generous and too evenly distributed, along with the fact some players seem to need every glam and mount in the game. That said, I agree with you that if performance-based rewards actually increased effort (both short-term in match participation and long-term in players trying to improve), then they should be encouraged. I'm also more than happy for people who are more effective at positively influencing a match receiving a reward boost, but as discussed above, this is challenging to implement. Worse, the simples solutions could even be counter-productive.

Here's an example. Suppose there was a far larger difference in XP for first, second and third. At first sight, this would appear to encourage people to try to win. Now suppose your premade with its 55% win-rate is on the field. Definitionally, this means in most matches the two teams you are not on will not take first. Moreover, depending on the map, this is obvious from the first encounter or two. (Magnified when someone types in chat" "Oh no, it's Olivia, we're playing for second.")

So what happens when there is a significant XP gap between first, second and third? The two non-you teams conclude they maximize EV by beating up each other and playing for second, thereby removing the primary counter to your premade and not actually playing to win at all. How has this helped?

[Mawlzy]

just made it to 55% the other day. Even before running premades and doing light calls I still had a respectable 40~ percent.

I take your comment to mean you don't support rewards for participating in a pvp mode? Also, thanks for leaving out the part about captures XD. If someone got an extra .25% of a level, a .5%for a kill, and maybe 1% for a capture do you think there would be less participation or more? Add in a multiplayer for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd like x1.5, x1.25, and x1.0, would people try to win? You could even have the exp gain show up in the log for a bit of dopamine. I don't see why you shouldn't reward the people doing more. My own personal performance isn't that much different with or without a premade, it really only changes the win rate. That's mostly due to drk facilitating damage more than actually doing it.

So if you've gone from 40% to 55% since running premades (and the 55% includes that pre-premade oh good grief phase), your win% as a premade is well above 55%? And you wonder why people push back?? But enough. I had an idea for this rewards business.

I was thinking more about your quantitative approach and believe you're on the right track, but there's this issue with job-to-job variations. So I came up with the following. It's called JeRCJobI (Jessa's Revolutionary Cross-Job Index).

For each map, SE has a massive database of K/D/A and damage dealt (which we'll call X) for each job. It can therefore determine an objective distribution of all FL job performance, perhaps using an expression of the form:

aK + bA + cX - dD

calculated for each job in every match. Doesn't need to be linear, obviously, but I can't think of a reason why it shouldn't.

Here a, b, c and d are all positive, and roughly you'd set a ~ d, b ~ a/5, and c ~ a/100,000. Give or take.

For each job, this will produce a distribution - likely a Gaussian thanks to the Central Limit Theorem - which is handy because Gaussians are lovely to work with and it's trivial to identify those in the top 10%, 25%, 50%, and so forth. Or if you preferred less granularity and just wanted to award rewards based on "bad," "average" and "good," you could use the inter-quartile range instead.

Since healers do still bravely heal sometimes, their index could include a health restored term.

Absolutely trivial to code and ensures each player in a given match is rewarded based on how well they played their job relative to the population as a whole.

[Bonoki]

Effort-based rewards would only result in there being even more premades than there already are, (until most people got their rewards and quit playing). At this point we'd be better off with a PvP mode that is premade vs premade instead, while gating the rewards behind that. You essentially get the same effect at the end of the day with fewer development resources. Or win-traders, but you won't ever stop that.

[Mawlzy]

Effort-based rewards would only result in there being even more premades than there already are, (until most people got their rewards and quit playing). At this point we'd be better off with a PvP mode that is premade vs premade instead, while gating the rewards behind that. You essentially get the same effect at the end of the day with fewer development resources. Or win-traders, but you won't ever stop that.

Yes, very likely, hence my preferred solution of dual queues.

Besides, performance-based rewards are antithetical to FF14. Good gravy, do it for FL people might expect it in raids and dungeons. Not gonna happen.

Tbh JeRCJobI is what happens when the FL queue dries up of an evening.

But it would provide a road-map towards a matchmaking algorithm. Valence, does that help address your desire to queue with friends while avoiding the voice premades? Because without a massive change in LBs and skillsets, there will always be a premade meta while queues are mixed. All that will change with tweaking is the comp.

[Valence]

I do not want to be forced onto a party dedicated queue when I just want to casually queue up with my friends just because some premade meta is ruining everything... Imagine queueing up with your casual friends and end up in a sweaty tryhard party only game full of premades... That's the worst idea ever, unless your aim is just to kill casual groups.

Also, while I like the idea in concept, beware of the unintended effects of proportionally attributing rewards on placement and performance. As soon as people see that the premade death ball is in the other teams and not theirs, they might just give up entirely and stop playing to make the game end faster.

[OliviaLugria]

Effort-based rewards would only result in there being even more premades than there already are, (until most people got their rewards and quit playing). At this point we'd be better off with a PvP mode that is premade vs premade instead, while gating the rewards behind that. You essentially get the same effect at the end of the day with fewer development resources. Or win-traders, but you won't ever stop that.

When everyone is a premade, no one is. In all seriousness, it doesn't take much for a solo player to go from underperforming to decent to above average. There's just no reason to do so right now.

A premade's strength comes from a willingness to work together and perform well. Instilling this in the average player would quickly allow them to catch up.

I think premade vs premade would just be a dead que, and solo only inspires more mediocrity.

[Mawlzy]

When everyone is a premade, no one is. In all seriousness, it doesn't take much for a solo player to go from underperforming to decent to above average. There's just no reason to do so right now.

A premade's strength comes from a willingness to work together and perform well. Instilling this in the average player would quickly allow them to catch up.

I think premade vs premade would just be a dead que, and solo only inspires more mediocrity.

That's 50% nonsense and you know it. Members of a semi-static premade will of course have a willingness to work together, otherwise the premade would never have formed! And anyone with that level of organization and commitment isn't going to go to all that trouble then stink up the place. The power of a premade comes from the specific combination of jobs (as described explicitly in your own guide), and the fact that LB coordination in FL is devastating.

You don't instill these principles in the average player by curb-stomping them, you instill cynicism and defeatism in all but the handful that choose to form their own premade, thereby deepening the current crisis.

[OliviaLugria]

Part of performing well and working together is choosing a job that performs well.

Would I rather all the jobs be equally viable. Sure, but until that happens I think finding a job that suits you and viable in the meta is the best option.

[Mawlzy]

Part of performing well and working together is choosing a job that performs well.

Would I rather all the jobs be equally viable. Sure, but until that happens I think finding a job that suits you and viable in the meta is the best option.

Agreed, but I don't see the relevance. Besides, a premade completely changes the relative value of jobs compared to solo. Job selection is based almost entirely on LB coordination. As I said, this is explicitly stated in your guide. One advantage of playing solo is it makes far more jobs viable.

What is your ultimate goal here? How many premades do you want to see in a typical match? And is there any number of solo players telling you they find playing in matches with a premade to be tedious that might sway you from this messianic mission?

Currently on Aether, would you agree about half the matches contain one premade? If so, that suggests the number of players adopting that playstyle (weighted for volume) is less than 3% of the population. Why should such a tiny fraction of players dictate how the mode is played, particularly when it directly conflicts with the wishes of the majority?

[OliviaLugria]

I don't really care about how many premades are in a match. I want people to coordinate.

I want darks having salt timers and countdowns for when they pull.

I want dancers, warriors and reapers alerting their LBs are ready.

I want the burst jobs to be right behind them ready to go.

I want the Monks, ninjas, and white mages locking down key targets.

People locking their full map open and watching their behinds for pinches.

Tbh, I can't relate to how many people are actually giving up and being defeatist on aether. I can say that those people have probably been on my team, seen my macros, and could do these exact things with or without a premade to similar effect. I don't use voice, I don't use anything outside the game.

Even if you somehow get your wish for a pure solo que. Your complaint will simply change from "the team with the premade" to "the team most willing to act like one."

I don't understand your point about majorities. If 99% of people thought the sun orbits the earth, it doesn't make it true (this is also true in reverse.) It is evidance that dictates truth, and it should be evident that the way premades play is superior for achieving the intended goal of FL (winning.)

It's not like premades are abusing mechanics the designers didn't intend. PVP has always been centered around burst. In feast, in old FL, in CC, and in the current FL. You could perhaps argue it has never been as easy as it is now, but I'm not sure I'd agree.

In any case, it is the mechanics of a game that dicate how it should be played, not the players. The players will need to discover and learn how to utilize those mechanics, but they are going to be there regardless of if players buy into them or not.