Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Mawlzy]

Have I misquoted you? Apologies if so. I will reiterate that a solo que would do very little to fix good players coordinating and stomping bad players.

I don't think you could diss a maid outfit, but you're welcome to have a go at it.

And you know better than most that the application of that power is far easier and more effective with a premade than with randos!!! Why else would your win-rate rocket from 40% to 55%? C'mon.

You've certainly made the maid-outfit look your own, but it's not affixed with glue. And the aesthetician is only 2,000 gil. You have a spring complexion and fall hair, sugar.

[AnotherPerson]

And you know better than most that the application of that power is far easier and more effective with a premade than with randos!!! Why else would your win-rate rocket from 40% to 55%? C'mon.

Isn't that only because random players aren't necessarily receptive to working together? See: Sandbaggers and people who give up instantly. Also randos can be new or just don't care about the game mode and want exp. Hence the chances of getting randoms who is receptive to working together is lower.

That's not something premades can't have. Premades are essentially just 4 players who are more receptive to playing together and working together. It's nothing to do with skill levels. There's plenty of terrible premades out there, but they tend to go unnoticed because they barely have an impact compared to your regular solo players.

The only premades that tend to stand out are ones who have higher skill levels or work together to develop a particular strategy. If they are a problem, then it means you simply don't like players who are skilled and working together -- which is .. an odd take considering winning in Frontlines wants people to be coordinating together. There isn't necessarily an in-game advantage premades get that solo players don't have. Solo players can do the exact same thing if they really wanted to, but they don't because they're not as receptive to the concept. This problem isn't really an issue in JP because people are particularly receptive to working together. It's more of a mentality issue in NA and EU.

[Mawlzy]

snip

Let's break down those points.

You claim I "simply don't like players who are skilled and working together." This is completely untrue and to suggest it has put you on my fashion advice list. It's an absurd assumption that doesn't follow from anything I've said. I would love to see more cooperation between random players, and I agree it can (and should) occur. My primary complaints about (good) premades, which I've repeated ad nauseum at this point, are:1. I find them extremely dull to play with, and often oppressive to play against, largely because... 2. They encourage defeatism among many players who don't cooperate at all and become little more than someone riding a horse watching others PvP. The second point can be debated, I guess. The first can't because that is my experience of the game. My enjoyment is reduced by the presence of premades.

You claim that solo players can do "the exact same thing" that a premade can. I'll accept that you believe this, but I genuinely cannot understand how anyone could reach this conclusion.

Let's take voice out of the equation for a moment (although it's clear many Discord-based premades use it). How might my experience as the leader of a premade differ from playing solo and trying to emulate a premade?

A premade can:

1. Fix the comp pregame for a classic stack and likely play those individual roles repeatedly, thereby learning the cadence and style of their party members.
2. Discuss more granular strategies than simply "follow the DRK dive, then break guard, deal damage..." as per the jobs each are playing.
3. Not only alert their party members of LB and CD status, but discuss pregame the time management of same.
4. Agree the details of the burst. (I dutifully mark DRKs and trail around after them as WAR. The details of the dive vary between DRKs; pre-dive pause and positioning; location of central target, and so on.)
5. ... Since I've never played in a premade I imagine I'm missing other advantages. Where's that maid?

You'll hopefully notice that some of the points I've already listed cannot be done with pugs, but let's look in more detail at how I might mimic a premade when solo queueing.

First, it's probably easier if I play as DRK. This is already a major concession, I don't play DRK. But "win at all costs," right? Okay, I'll play DRK.

Overflow...

[Scintilla]

snip

I wouldn't say it's only for that reason. Yes, there are always going to be those totally hopeless players who have zero intention of contributing anything and are solely there for the exp reward. Their minds will never be changed. Whether they are placed in a full random alliance or in a premade-team alliance, they will exist and continue to join. There will be some of those players on all teams. It's not a problem faced only by premades. It's not putting them at a disadvantage that they're having to regain ground from. Similarly, it's not a problem faced only by randoms.

However, a few here seem blindly focused on that leeching proportion of the playerbase and seem to think you're either an experienced player who knows of common strategies/ techniques and can play a good game or you're a leech. Too many seem to ignore that very wide range of players in the middle: those who may be on their first few games, those who may have casually played in the past for exp but do want to start learning more about PvP, those who still haven't quite found a class which they're comfortable with in PvP yet etc.
These players also exist. They shouldn't just be assumed to be leeches because they don't coordinate particularly well or do very little damage. They may still be learning the basics, may still be finding their class or learning their classes role/strengths within the FL team.

All of these factors mean that coordinating random teams, with players of various different skills and interest levels is incredibly difficult. Harder for some teams than others, but a challenge either way - a challenge which is considered not profitable enough / too hard / too effortsome to bother with, hence why some turn to coordinating as a premade.
It's easier and generally more profitable.

But sadly, this approach can often push away those sprout / inexperienced players. But, hey, we're profiting and it's not against the rules, so why care? Just claim it's 'git good' or 'raising the skill floor' and it's all fine!
Unfortunately, we are selfish beings. Just as those leeches are harming the game for others because of their own interests, the same could be said of premades. To instantly assume that an objection to premades is purely based on a dislike of 'skilled' players would be incorrect.
I want to see FL thrive and I want to see more players involved in and improve themselves PvP, whether it's non-PvP friends or random players. But premades very clearly affect this. Just some refuse to acknowledge it

[Mawlzy]

Queue pops. 45 seconds.

Re-center map, mount, drop a triangle on my head. 38 seconds.

See what jobs I have on my team. Two DRGs awesome! I start typing to ask if they want to play premade dress-up and before I've hit enter they both switch to WHM. No RPR. 30 seconds.

I ask if the DRGs might switch back and if anyone wants to play RPR or perhaps WAR. One of the former DRGs kindly obliges. The other tells me a) this isn't WoW, b) I don't pay their sub, c) they have no idea how to play DRG they are just leveling it. 15 seconds.

While all this is going on, a BRD has switched to MCH. Okay I have DRK-DRG-WAR-MCH. Workable if sub-optimal., but probably the best I could hope for. I suggest to the MCH that they follow my little triangle icon and take advantage of my dive. No response. 5 seconds.

"Okay team, here's the plan..." 0 seconds. ENGAGE.

This is going to have the same outcome as a premade that has played hundreds of matches together?

[AnotherPerson]

Let's break down those points.

You claim I "simply don't like players who are skilled and working together." This is completely untrue and to suggest it has put you on my fashion advice list. It's an absurd assumption that doesn't follow from anything I've said. I would love to see more cooperation between random players, and I agree it can (and should) occur. My primary complaints about (good) premades, which I've repeated ad nauseum at this point, are:1. I find them extremely dull to play with, and often oppressive to play against, largely because... 2. They encourage defeatism among many players who don't cooperate at all and become little more than someone riding a horse watching others PvP. The second point can be debated, I guess. The first can't because that is my experience of the game. My enjoyment is reduced by the presence of premades.

You claim that solo players can do "the exact same thing" that a premade can. I'll accept that you believe this, but I genuinely cannot understand how anyone could reach this conclusion.

It's because I've seen solo players do it before. Solo players can do it even better than needing the amount of coordination a premade does at the same skill level because to be a good solo player, you have to notice and take into accordance of many more variables and factors than a premade does and be able to make good judgements on the spot, thereby skipping the need for basic communication from macros. The faster response speed gives more advantages at the same skill level.

Yes, I also understand your primary complaint is about (good) premades, hence I pointed out that you don't want good premades to be queueing together because there's just no guarantee solo players of the same skill level and mentality to work together will appear either. Encouraging defeatism is a mentality issue in NA/EU mainly because of people unable to accept skill differences and working together. It wouldn't matter if they were solo or premade, I hear defeatism when skill gap is too wide before DRK combo existed. DRK combo just became the next blame point because it's the next easiest target. Good solo players can still coordinate just as well in any environment. Otherwise high-level ranked solo Crystalline Conflict matches wouldn't have existed outside of tournaments.

Queue pops. 45 seconds.

Re-center map, mount, drop a triangle on my head. 38 seconds.

See what jobs I have on my team. Two DRGs awesome! I start typing to ask if they want to play premade dress-up and before I've hit enter they both switch to WHM. No RPR. 30 seconds.

I ask if the DRGs might switch back and if anyone wants to play RPR or perhaps WAR. One of the former DRGs kindly obliges. The other tells me a) this isn't WoW, b) I don't pay their sub, c) they have no idea how to play DRG they are just leveling it. 15 seconds.

While all this is going on, a BRD has switched to MCH. Okay I have DRK-DRG-WAR-MCH. Workable if sub-optimal., but probably the best I could hope for. I suggest to the MCH that they follow my little triangle icon and take advantage of my dive. No response. 5 seconds.

"Okay team, here's the plan..." 0 seconds. ENGAGE.

This is going to have the same outcome as a premade that has played hundreds of matches together?

From your example just now, I think I figured out what your issue is with Frontlines. You don't like the randomness of Frontline players who doesn't have the same mentality or skill level. Premades has a way to guarantee people working together, but also because they can be playing with like-minded players with the same goal and mentality, so it's less random than hoping other players will have the same mentality and mindset as you.

So the big issue is that you want casual Frontlines to somehow provide a MMR system to balance players out in a casual queue. A MMR system will sort out bad players to play together so they wouldn't complain as much with defeatism (bad players end up with something akin to League's Iron division are roughly the same skill level), good players/good premades end up queueing together so they will always be able to communicate and have high-level matches, and people who fall inbetween those players to get their own matches so everyone has a game and matched against players with a similar level of skill.

While I can somewhat see it working in Casual Crystalline Conflict, I don't think that system particularly works in such a large-scale environment as Frontlines since it requires sorting matches by 72 players as opposed to 10 players. There's not that many players available at a given moment to create a MMR system and many matches for that as this game isn't PvP-focused like League of Legends or other MOBA games. I wouldn't opposed to it, but I don't think that's feasible without killing Frontlines entirely.

It might be possible if we were able to merge all the Datacenters into one gigantic PvP server since there's a lot of players who do play PvP if you all them all up (though that's a massive undertaking and not very feasible), but making people hop to another Datacenter specifically to play PvP is probably going to discourage plenty of players from the getgo.

[Mawlzy]

Why is everyone so keen today to tell me what my issues are? I've told you what they are. I dislike playing with premades.

I think an MMR may provide a bunny slope in which new players learn the mode and/or provide more engaging matches for higher-skilled players. As you note, LoL basically does that by default. But it's not a hill I'll die on, largely because I agree with the problems you point out with the idea. I dunno, maybe offer a "sprout queue" periodically restricted to players with less than 30 matches? I know I didn't try PvP for ages because I assumed (correctly) I'd start off pants and would likely take a while before I wasn't a hindrance.

Right, now to your well-earned fashion report...

Ahhhh.
Er....
Uhm.
Hmmm.

I got nothin, man, you're on your own.

[Mawlzy]

I'm assuming it's so active here today because nobody can be bothered to play Shatter lol. Ahem.

[VictorSpoils]

I'm assuming it's so active here today because nobody can be bothered to play Shatter lol. Ahem.

Tried a couple matches today on Aether and another on Crystal a few days ago. They're still just 15-minute auto-losses where no one engages or says anything. Really makes you miss the 6.10 SMN spam.

[Windfire]

Those saying "I want to raise the skill lvl of others" and yet being against separate queues for solo & premade tells you all you need to know-they aren't for anything but being able to steamroll randos, many of whom are "jUsT HeRe fOR ThE EXP luls". One of my biggest wishes for pvp is for them to remove the exp, every single mmo I've played that added exp to pvp ruined it because it brings in what I call lazy leeches, those who will either do just enough to avoid an afk removal or will intentionally run into the enemy over and over for "easy leveling exp".