Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Cidel]

The second iteration was the release of the reworked map. It was somewhere between what we have now and what we had before, meaning ice wasn't constantly spawning and we had a bit of smaller downtimes to actually go fight and skirmish with other teams. Small ices were also not always all spawning all at once I think, like on the first map?

Current version is scripted ice licking hell.

Mm. Not quite. If we're talking about the initial reworked Shatter, small ices were always constantly spawning and encouraged many players (ie: tomestone farmers) to never leave the two-to-four ices spawning by base. Large ices spawned in seemingly random orders, so it wasn't unheard of that your team only had your ice spawn once while another team had three spawns in the same match. There was plenty of ice-licking, it was just concentrated on the small ices instead.

Before or before-before? I kinda liked the og variant the best, warts and all.

Same. OG Shatter was much better than what they turned it into now; even if the map was rather asymmetrical. The south team was routinely harassed up into their ramp because the distance between the east and west teams appeared far wider. Didn't care much for having capturable bases, minor distractions at best. People complained about cliffs and MNKs, but that probably just meant you were bad and had a poor sense of spatial awareness and were salty that you were knocked-back to your death.

All ices only spawned once, so there were strategic importance to being a presence at large ices and actually sending a reasonable amount of people to attack small ices and hovering around remaining ice. But most importantly, there was a lot of downtime to actually have PvP. Two adjacent teams actually both had some sort of ramp access to large ices between them, none of these 95% suicidal drops without a safe escape route.

I think OG Shatter was better than Secure. Secure was a sterile, boring back-and-forth slog where most teams travelled in a giant murderball to an adjacent flag only to find the other team had just left and nothing but maybe one or two stragglers to erase, only to find out your flag on the opposite side had just been claimed. Rise and repeat. Even if you did have small-scale skirmishes between people trying to hold/stealth-steal flags, not much happened, as with FL's insane defense bonuses + self-healing just makes everything that doesn't involve half a dozen people attacking one person a half-minute ordeal (and even then, melee DPS and tanks can oftentimes survive that much).

[KageTokage]

I'd really like PvP better in general if they brought back diminishing returns on CC and gave everyone higher base HP pools in exchange for less self-healing.

It feels frustratingly volatile at present because you can get bursted down so quickly that you can't even react to it, and having higher time to kill via larger HP pools would help with that. The effective HP people have between Recuperate usage and your actual HP can remain the same, but the ratio could be more like...80% HP/20% Recuperate healing vs. 50/50ish ratio it has now.

[Lalisajr]

are you serious lol wow

nobody could ever die in frontline everything is so tanky you need 5 people to kill 1 person

this is why i like CC and RW more

[Mawlzy]

are you serious lol wow

nobody could ever die in frontline everything is so tanky you need 5 people to kill 1 person

this is why i like CC and RW more

??? That's precisely why you have the pack following the DRK+ premade. Admittedly it's extremely tedious, but facing a zerg you need enough DR to survive a sub-zerg.

[Marxam]

??? That's precisely why you have the pack following the DRK+ premade. Admittedly it's extremely tedious, but facing a zerg you need enough DR to survive a sub-zerg.

problem is that there is no counter in FL due to how chaotic it is. A group of DRKs and RPR's in a premade can wipe a team. I know cuz I was just in a match where both teams except adders (I assume was permade) was sub 200 at the end. There were just taking turns drawing in, rpr hysteria to cancel guards and then drk spam and wiping two sometimes entire alliances in one sweep. at that point its better just to afk cuz there is no amount of counter to premades especially when they are literally 1200 above everyone else just because of a specific combo. But hey its just for fun right?

[Mawlzy]

problem is that there is no counter in FL due to how chaotic it is. A group of DRKs and RPR's in a premade can wipe a team. I know cuz I was just in a match where both teams except adders (I assume was permade) was sub 200 at the end. There were just taking turns drawing in, rpr hysteria to cancel guards and then drk spam and wiping two sometimes entire alliances in one sweep. at that point its better just to afk cuz there is no amount of counter to premades especially when they are literally 1200 above everyone else just because of a specific combo. But hey its just for fun right?

The two losing teams were sub-200 on Shatter? That must have been a fun experience for absolutely nobody other than the premade.

It's basically become impossible for SE to sell FL as the "fun, casual, chaotic PvP mode" because premades impose their iron will of "serious, sweaty, and highly-organized." Sure the rules allow it currently. That is a design error. And I actually have less respect for these premades chasing rewards and personal stats than I do the players just there for XP and tomes, at least if the latter expend minimal effort. As you note, many respond to the misery by AFKing. And given the mountain they're up against when facing a premade, I'm impressed any bother trying at all.

Combining solo and party queues inevitably combines two diametrically opposed playstyles and expectations. It doesn't work. Split the queues or implement match-making. We need a level playing field.

[Windfire]

are you serious lol wow

nobody could ever die in frontline everything is so tanky you need 5 people to kill 1 person

this is why i like CC and RW more

You mean like right now where it takes an an entire team (so 1/3 of the alliance) to kill one drg/rpr/nin/any tank?

[Teno]

You had a very bad team, and the opposing dude was semi competent, that's what. And no, it doesn't take a full team that has read its skills to take down one dude, even at max stacks.

[Soxforrow]

Rival Wings is where it's at because DRK falls off later on when everyone builds up soaring and you can start countering them, but RW also has that issue with DRK completely taking over during initial mid fights.

[Mewi]

Call me crazy, but I think the solution to frontlines is simple. Make 2nd place wins add to the achievement score in some meaningful way, how about .5 an achievement point? May take some minor coding. Sure it will change the dynamic a bit... but currently there is just way too much to acquire in frontlines and the grind is absolutely pure RNG and sucks miserably.

I'm not going to even rant about the poor balance and how healers are shafted with the frontline bonus ranking.