Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[AlliciaCapulet]

personally as a solo player I do prefer direction in frontlines because there is just so much going on that it's hard for me to pick an optimal decision other than "stay with the pack or die". it is pretty exhilarating playing with a good shot-caller.

Best tip I can tell is, if there is no caller, stick with the group, and try to not get a tunel vision, meaning don't chase too far for the kills and forget about the objectives or worst don't notice that you charge alone in a bunch of ennemies.

I sometime take the lead and make some call, when there is noone to do it. A premade helps, but honnestly, there is good solo player queueing that can face them. Also, don't stack too close to your team, if everyone is stacked you just give a good opportunity to an AOE LB that will wipe everyone...

I have a winrate of 40% on first place on over 800 game, and 35% second place, and I never play with a premade. Yeah sometime you get bad team, but a premade is not needed to win. Take the lead if nobody takes it.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I'm overall fine with the callers existence. I think it's pretty impressive to be able to herd cats around. The only downside that I dislike from their introduction is how reliant many folks are becoming nowadays. What's that? No DRKs around? Well I guess we'll just not going to get BH/lose lmao. What were y'all doing in those times before DRK's Salted Earth became so rampant? Feeding, or feeding? Couple that with the huge amount of defeatist you're likely paired with, that's definitely a recipe for not-so-fun environment. I.e. getting called "tryhard" for attempting to fight back or god forbid, wanting to win, etc. I'm so glad some of them are still barred from their Field Commander's Coat to this day.

At this point I just want them to make FL-exclusive actions and 8v8v8 or 16v16v16.

[Mawlzy]

I'm overall fine with the callers existence. I think it's pretty impressive to be able to herd cats around. The only downside that I dislike from their introduction is how reliant many folks are becoming nowadays. What's that? No DRKs around? Well I guess we'll just not going to get BH/lose lmao. What were y'all doing in those times before DRK's Salted Earth became so rampant? Feeding, or feeding? Couple that with the huge amount of defeatist you're likely paired with, that's definitely a recipe for not-so-fun environment. I.e. getting called "tryhard" for attempting to fight back or god forbid, wanting to win, etc. I'm so glad some of them are still barred from their Field Commander's Coat to this day.

At this point I just want them to make FL-exclusive actions and 8v8v8 or 16v16v16.

I think this is one of the downsides of the aggressive commanders, particularly when so many are DRKs leading a premade. People who have some interest in the mode are not actually learning the key strategies and tactics. They're simply learning to follow directions, then pressing all their buttons in the hope something positive happens. Commanders who treat players like recalcitrant NPCs shouldn't be surprised when the same players show very little initiative in less directed situations.

[Lydia77]

Looking back past 20 pages i see one common issue: Dark knights. Not them in practicular but how the game goes around them. Pulling you back from Narnia, unkillable. Having so many follow ups even with no premades. Avoid them they say. I do. 10 other teammates dont. use high skill tactic to calculate when they are about to strike and monk push them away, while all they need is 1.5 buttons YOLO rush. Oh you just use guard to not die to following DRG LB. While some other jobs in coordination remove your ability to guard. Seems fair.
Oh i am so skilled because i swaped to DRK. Show me RDM 55% win rate, sage? white mage who got nerfed to the ground? Only job dancer has is to remove guard so DRK combo works even betetr. without them its useless waste of an air. Of course you can get decent results as any job. But we are talking about general idea here. If i see a paladin i see a free kill. A fat one but free. i am never afraid to meet one rushing to me. Brads are a joke. i used to play as one to silence DRK combo but now they are nerfed to nothingness. Their buffs are meaningless. Red mage only real means to do any damage is melee combo. With caster defence. You charge in, you get spreaded on the grass as a tiny layer of red goo. Every discussion here rotates about dark knights and their *suck in, root everybody and let my teammates do the rest while i am literally unkillable*
As for the rest - i queue up with my BF but he just run around on his own. I try to coordinate people as much as i can but as soon as they see an S point in the middle they will sin on a tiny bridge for the whole match, feeding DRK combos, ignoring other points that are free to get. In the end you see results like +200 points from kills - 687 from deaths for your team. No matter how good you and couple others perform, those 1-11 k/d ration players will loose the game for you making less damage than my sneeze does.
You can say they ballance jobs around CC and not FL but thats not an excuse. Why dont you remove mass pull in from DRK? Why does warrior has only a single target one? why doesnt paladin has any? Why doesnt ninja aoe root anyone it hits? Why does dragoon LB hits so hard on multiple targets, while machinist hit only one? I want point blank aoe with 36k potency as a machinist too. and it will be more fair since i am a squishy target and not immune while charging it.
Surely players will always find a broken combo of jobs to abuse other players who queue up for free exp. But as for now we all complain about DRK and their buddies. Noone ever said that sage is so unfair and broken. That astro LB is so strong it can change the flow of a battle. There is only DRK and jobs serving its purposes.

[Astralrisk]

You can say they ballance jobs around CC and not FL but thats not an excuse. Why dont you remove mass pull in from DRK? Why does warrior has only a single target one? why doesnt paladin has any? Why doesnt ninja aoe root anyone it hits? Why does dragoon LB hits so hard on multiple targets, while machinist hit only one? I want point blank aoe with 36k potency as a machinist too. and it will be more fair since i am a squishy target and not immune while charging it.
Surely players will always find a broken combo of jobs to abuse other players who queue up for free exp. But as for now we all complain about DRK and their buddies. Noone ever said that sage is so unfair and broken. That astro LB is so strong it can change the flow of a battle. There is only DRK and jobs serving its purposes.

I think the main reason why don't want to try and balance the abilities themselves around FL is because of how much more time it would take to balance it, at least if they were trying to balance for both CC and FL. At this point I feel like they would need to just create a whole new kit to balance jobs for FL specifically in order to make it balance. However, not only would that create a disconnect between two different PvP modes, but having to make a completely separate sandbox for one gamemode and try and do balancing for that separately would require a lot more time for the devs.

The best suggestion i've seen in regards to making the balancing on abilities work for CC and FL is to just aoe cap abilities to 5 targets, which works to stop the aoe heavy jobs like SMN, DRK, DRG, however it doesn't help with jobs who have no aoe potential like WAR, PLD, etc. This is also the reason why they do the FL unique modifiers to balance jobs, because its really easy and they don't have to adjust for abilities specifically. I don't personally like how they do this, especially with what they've done recently by making every melee incredibly tanky and requires a lot of focus fire to actually deal with them. It would be cool if they did something that would fix FL balancing without ruining CC balancing, but I am not a game dev so I don't have any real perfect answer.

[VictorSpoils]

Still think the mode was better when the DR values were lower. DRK and DRG flourish because most of the other jobs can't kill anything. Even when SMN and WHM used to rack up kills there weren't as many complaints.

[Aravell]

Still think the mode was better when the DR values were lower. DRK and DRG flourish because most of the other jobs can't kill anything. Even when SMN and WHM used to rack up kills there weren't as many complaints.

The old SMN/WHM easy kill farm meta didn't have time to settle before things were changed, if it stayed for as long as the current DRK one did, I 100% bet that there would be a lot more complaints.

Honestly though, that old SMN stacking meta did need to be changed immediately, because unlike a DRK that you can see coming and you can then react by guarding, there was absolutely no counterplay to a SMN stack dropping 4 Bahamuts on your alliance. You don't see it coming, you don't have anything to react to, they just all press 1 button and then your entire alliance is respawning.

It was basically a game of how many SMNs your alliance had and who drops the most Bahamut bombs first, a game that a 4-man premade would always win as 4 Bahamuts were enough to kill any job.

[AriannaStormwake]

premades queue syncing and stacking limit breaks
and pugs who"play badly" and let themselves be beaten by the obvious premade for free points is not fun
think i found hidden gorge the better more fun map(design-wise that is) when 1 opposing team doesnt have a premade again haha

[Taliriah]

I think this is one of the downsides of the aggressive commanders, particularly when so many are DRKs leading a premade. People who have some interest in the mode are not actually learning the key strategies and tactics. They're simply learning to follow directions, then pressing all their buttons in the hope something positive happens. Commanders who treat players like recalcitrant NPCs shouldn't be surprised when the same players show very little initiative in less directed situations.

It is not possible to show initiative in a game mode where it is pretty much never ever possible to disengage from fights when you're outnumbered. You have to remain with the flock at all time or die. If the flock doesn't go for objectives, then that's that. You have zero personal agenda in frontline. Zerging is always rewarded, taking risks is always punished. I don't understand how they managed to design something that bad. Even epic BGs in wow aren't quite as terrible.

[Mawlzy]

It is not possible to show initiative in a game mode where it is pretty much never ever possible to disengage from fights when you're outnumbered. You have to remain with the flock at all time or die. If the flock doesn't go for objectives, then that's that. You have zero personal agenda in frontline. Zerging is always rewarded, taking risks is always punished. I don't understand how they managed to design something that bad. Even epic BGs in wow aren't quite as terrible.

I mostly agree with you. Zerg is clearly king. Equally, I've had some very interesting skirmishes, typically on Onsal when like-minded individuals abandon Mid to pick-up nearby nodes. In fact I discovered, much to my surprise, that it's possible to win a 5v5 (3 KO'd, 2 ran off). I'm wondering to what extent the lack of such skirmishes reflects a lack of imagination by the player base? Opportunities are certainly rare, but I do wonder if the 3 x full-party structure could be employed more effectively, rather than essentially being little more than a requirement of the UI.

If the alliances within a team can be employed effectively as individual raiding parties, it will never happen with DRK+ premade commander calling the shots. Indeed these raiding parties only seem to coalesce in the absence of a primary shot-caller: another reason I don't care for hardcore commanders.