Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Xylira]

This puzzles me too. I do believe Olivia would like to be able to develop the strategies she outlines and play with similarly-dedicated individuals. Interestingly, this makes her quite an oddball within the Discord community, where it is readily apparent that the dominant ideology is not producing more competitive matches, it's padding personal stats. As those on Dynamis can testify.

I could make an educated guess to why they defend it.

The whole position is just nonsense though. Getting curb stomped by premades doesn't encourage me to get better, it just dissuades me from wanting to bother with the game mode. Even if I somehow became the best Front Lines player in existence, it's still largely inconsequential unless I'm paired up with other competent players capable of countering one of the meta comps. The only way to consistently attempt to address the issue is, ironically, to run with a premade group of my own to counter other premades. Which if that's the intent of all of this, then SE should just split the FL queues between group and non-group queues.

[Mawlzy]

I could make an educated guess to why they defend it.

The whole position is just nonsense though. Getting curb stomped by premades doesn't encourage me to get better, it just dissuades me from wanting to bother with the game mode. Even if I somehow became the best Front Lines player in existence, it's still largely inconsequential unless I'm paired up with other competent players capable of countering one of the meta comps. The only way to consistently attempt to address the issue is, ironically, to run with a premade group of my own to counter other premades. Which if that's the intent of all of this, then SE should just split the FL queues between group and non-group queues.

A lot of the positions are nonsense. Complain about a loss because your team was full of idiots, then show how clever you were via K/D/A/ when the idiots were on the other teams. Doing this without imploding through cognitive dissonance is a real gift.

But to the main point, Olivia's approach is not only stymied by the dominating presence of rouletters who are not going anywhere, she's also hamstrung by players who claim to be in her camp who clearly enjoy the current situation.

[OliviaLugria]

The community in general. It's rather obvious from the tryhard premades that tend to run DRK+ groups that it works.

And yes, it is rather sad that 4 players are able to wipe entire alliance raids simply by coordinating their LBs.

Why are you so insistent on defending poor game balance? PvP is clearly unbalanced for FL, yet your response to anyone raising concern with it is just to dismissively tell them to play better.

It works because few if any people try to stop it from happening.

It is easy to mark an enemy Dark.
It is easy to run away from their engage.
It is easy to play a stronger job.
It is easy to play a job that stops the stronger jobs.
It seems impossible for any common player to give a damn.

I'm trying to look at it from a developer's perspective. There's 6ish strong jobs that work extremely well with Dark Knight. How many players in a game actually switch and utilize said jobs? Not very many. I'm lucky to get a single good Dancer, Dark Knight, or Dragoon outside the people I bring with me.

As far as balance is concerned, the mode IS BALANCED. Everyone who ques has the choice to select whatever job they want, use the chat how they wish, party up with 3 other people, and have an equal chance to get f'd by rng.

Are the jobs balanced? Not really, but each one still has their niche. As I previously mentioned, a more organized team can use jobs that I consider quite bad to much more devastating effect than anything a single premade could do if a team actually committed to it.

You seem to support beating down the skill ceiling as a form of balance when I'd much rather people rise up and try to compete at a higher level.

[Xylira]

It works because few if any people try to stop it from happening.

It is easy to mark an enemy Dark.
It is easy to run away from their engage.
It is easy to play a stronger job.
It is easy to play a job that stops the stronger jobs.
It seems impossible for any common player to give a damn.

I go out of my way to do all of these things when I encounter a premade, yet it rarely makes a difference because it's entirely contingent on the rest of my team being halfway competent.

I'm trying to look at it from a developer's perspective. There's 6ish strong jobs that work extremely well with Dark Knight. How many players in a game actually switch and utilize said jobs? Not very many. I'm lucky to get a single good Dancer, Dark Knight, or Dragoon outside the people I bring with me.

And that right there is something I pointed out before. Premades can be far more discerning about job stacking to abuse the current metas, which is part of what contributes to drastically lopsided matches.

As far as balance is concerned, the mode IS BALANCED. Everyone who ques has the choice to select whatever job they want, use the chat how they wish, party up with 3 other people, and have an equal chance to get f'd by rng.

Incorrect. The premade group that goes out of their way to job stack for a meta to abuse has a drastic advantage over a team composed entirely of solo queuers.

Are the jobs balanced? Not really, but each one still has their niche. As I previously mentioned, a more organized team can use jobs that I consider quite bad to much more devastating effect than anything a single premade could do if a team actually committed to it.

Well at least you can admit that jobs aren't balanced.

You seem to support beating down the skill ceiling as a form of balance when I'd much rather people rise up and try to compete at a higher level.

Believe me, I'd love if the average player was capable of putting in effort and playing better, but I'm just being realistic with what we have to work with. I just want to be able to play FLs with fairly balanced teams. I don't care if it's 4 competent players coordinating together on each team, or 24 competent players on each team, I just want fair matches. The problem is when it's a coordinated premade of 4 competent players on one team, versus the other teams that don't even have that, resulting in heavily skewed matches.

[Lydia77]

Its not!
Even when i expect them to do their so hard to preform combo i have other limiting factors.
I use guard and get demolished by macrocosmos anyway. No LB needed.
I used guard and survived it but 5 of my teammates died and enemy team is full of BH5
I used guard and we semi-succesfully survived the comp of yellow premade.... Only for BLUE premade do the same WHILE MY GUARD IS ON CD
I used guard and it was removed by one of 3 jobs they usualy pack up jsut to counter my counter. Fun!
Do not tell me to punch off DRK away with a monk
And today i had a bad day and PVP roulette was my last one. Solo. And we had 2 parites of DRK+ premades on "lick the ice" map. Enemy team had one. Yeah what the heck i thought. I just swaped to astro (from BLM) and followed the marked DRKs to do my stuff. I want to say that my heals buffs and timed LBs mattered but it would be a lie. all i had to do is gravity and macrocosmos.
We won topscoring on everything but ice. WE just ignored objectives.
To make DRK combo succesfull you dont have to be in their premade or voice chat. just follow them and do what these comboes do. And we all know what that is.
To do that as 20 summoners with dancer astro and bard buffs is another story. Too much coordination, when you can just leap in, suck 50 people, dont even root them, guard or LB while your team annihilates them be them in your premade or not.
This has to end

[Archeron]

I see a lot of blame being thrown at "Leeches and Feeders". "Trash teams". Yes they are out there. People play deliberately poorly. Just run a few matches on Dynamis and you'll see the attitudes pop up in Alliance chat semi-frequently.

I know a decent chunk of these players are *Trying* to figure out what the hell is going on. The fact that they have to depend on Third party guides, and the community to understand how to play PvP is honestly an embarassment. There NEEDS to be a mandatory introduction that forces you to set up Recuperate/Guard/Purify/Elixir at the bare minimum. That alone would solve a lot of problems with the "Worthless trash" players as they're so commonly referred to. That really encourages them to want to stick around and learn PvP after all.

I don't see a push for that very often. The focus on performance based incentives is obvious for Premades. They want to reap even more rewards off their stomping of random players. I'm not against performance based incentives, but the reality of its implementation is that it will punish new players, and even further alienate people who may have otherwise given PvP a chance. The excuse of ignorance for performing poorly in matches needs to be eliminated as a priority. And I stand by slashing premades down even further to a maximum of (2) Players. Every other PvP game I have EVER played that is worth its salt balances Premades against other teams with premades. Thats not happening in a 1v1v1 system with 4 party premades.

Now I wouldn't mind if there was a competitive mode, with 8v8v8 frontline matches with premade teams only. That would certainly have far more interesting matches, but the population of frontlines is lacking as it is, and I strongly doubt Frontlines can ever have its queue seperated without the merging of duty finder across the entirety of NA.

[WeakestZenosEnjoyer]

It works because few if any people try to stop it from happening.

It is easy to mark an enemy Dark.
It is easy to run away from their engage.
It is easy to play a stronger job.
It is easy to play a job that stops the stronger jobs.
It seems impossible for any common player to give a damn.

If the solution to a DRK is:

play a job that specifically counters it,
feed (or be) an allied DRK ("play stronger jobs"),
run away,

that's bad actually. You should not be forced into a job you don't know how to play because otherwise you'll die to a midly coordinated DRK if you actually try to fight the player in the PvP mode. That's how you get apathetic players instead.

[OliviaLugria]

If the solution to a DRK is:

play a job that specifically counters it,
feed (or be) an allied DRK ("play stronger jobs"),
run away,

that's bad actually. You should not be forced into a job you don't know how to play because otherwise you'll die to a midly coordinated DRK if you actually try to fight the player in the PvP mode. That's how you get apathetic players instead.

Every job has 8 skills at most. It is not difficult to have a few at your disposal. Have you never heard of a counter pick before, or are you the type of person who always chooses scissors against rock and complain you lose? Some jobs being better in a matchup is just a by-product of them being unique.

You also haven't heard of baiting before. If a decent size portion of your team spreads out and avoids the drk burst, you can re-engage with them while they're out of resources. Higher end games are all about these cascading engages.

Finally... ya, when you're using the term "fighting" as in blindly charge in at a mob of enemies with all their lbs and defensives available to them, it is and should remain a bad tactic. Blindly charging the enemy isn't a sustainable method. Moat jobs' damage spikes for 3gcds then you deal basically nothing for 20-30 seconds. Playing around this timer and fighting efficiently is how you beat a dark team or any team for that matter.

[Mawlzy]

Every job has 8 skills at most. It is not difficult to have a few at your disposal. Have you never heard of a counter pick before, or are you the type of person who always chooses scissors against rock and complain you lose? Some jobs being better in a matchup is just a by-product of them being unique.

You also haven't heard of baiting before. If a decent size portion of your team spreads out and avoids the drk burst, you can re-engage with them while they're out of resources. Higher end games are all about these cascading engages.

Finally... ya, when you're using the term "fighting" as in blindly charge in at a mob of enemies with all their lbs and defensives available to them, it is and should remain a bad tactic. Blindly charging the enemy isn't a sustainable method. Moat jobs' damage spikes for 3gcds then you deal basically nothing for 20-30 seconds. Playing around this timer and fighting efficiently is how you beat a dark team or any team for that matter.

Have you ever seen such a game on Aether outside of Q-synchs?

[OliviaLugria]

Have you ever seen such a game on Aether outside of Q-synchs?

actually, last shatter on crystal had this going most the night! Can even go see the vod on my twitch!