Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Archeron]

Never has that been more apparent than Olivia's recent comments in this thread. Not only completely out of touch, but also standing on a Messianic pedestal of their own making. I suspect that if the broader PvP community read the last couple of pages of this thread, they'd conclude that Olivia is not the Messiah, she's a very naughty girl.

I mean honestly they shouldn't be surprised that they are disliked as a whole across pretty much every single data centre. There are *some* commanders who have a little more respect than others, but the vast majority don't enjoy that luxury. They spend hours, every single day and night make Frontlines a bad experience for the average player. They can deny this as much as they like, link their "Guides" as much as they like... (Which I find comedic. Please read this guide so you can enjoy a casual PvP mode! Imagine having to read a guide to have fun in any other roulette in the game.)

I would personally respect them more if they just took the mask off. They're playing to win. They need to stop pretending they care about the community that they see as sheep to be slaughtered to further their winrates. It's PvP. Nobody is forcing you to care about what your enemies feel. However they need to understand that their actions have consequences, and they're not fooling anyone when they claim otherwise. If you want to force change by making the game so unbearable to play that nobody queues up, well done. You're doing a fine job at scaring people off.

[Mawlzy]

I mean honestly they shouldn't be surprised that they are disliked as a whole across pretty much every single data centre. There are *some* commanders who have a little more respect than others, but the vast majority don't enjoy that luxury. They spend hours, every single day and night make Frontlines a bad experience for the average player. They can deny this as much as they like, link their "Guides" as much as they like... (Which I find comedic. Please read this guide so you can enjoy a casual PvP mode! Imagine having to read a guide to have fun in any other roulette in the game.)

I would personally respect them more if they just took the mask off. They're playing to win. They need to stop pretending they care about the community that they see as sheep to be slaughtered to further their winrates. It's PvP. Nobody is forcing you to care about what your enemies feel. However they need to understand that their actions have consequences, and they're not fooling anyone when they claim otherwise. If you want to force change by making the game so unbearable to play that nobody queues up, well done. You're doing a fine job at scaring people off.

Yes agreed, I would find this more bearable if it wasn't for the claims of altruism and the suggestion that their approach wasn't somehow for our own good. I dislike having anyone's playstyle shoved down my throat, but when I'm told my push-back is misplaced because I'm too dumb to see The One True Path, I get more than a little irked.

These individuals have every right to min-max the mode, despite the fact they are damaging it. Whether SQEX tolerates this into 7.1, we'll have to wait and see. But as you say, the price these commanders will pay is being nearly universally despised. They're just going to have to live with that.

[Aidorouge]

Hard facts, if you're playing a competitive mode and you just constantly complain about cheaters and all this then you don't need to be worrying about who's good or bad at the game, you have no idea.

True, I have no idea who is or isn't truly good at PVP, you or myself included, because too much is dictated before a match even begins, so every match comes down to RNG on whether you got the ones doing the dictating. It's the same reason I stopped trying and mostly do whatever while avoiding death as best I can as I didn't queue to be farmed for someone else's achievements (I can't control my losses, but I can at least try to negate my deaths), as exerting myself further will not change the outcome either way and I finally got tired of blowing smoke up my own backside thinking "getting good" was an actual option.

If you're more optimistic and trusting of other people's ability, have at it, but I've given up thinking it's real, even for me. Hell, I don't even bother to play as the job I queued for anymore, because originally it was for the sake of forcing myself to learn how a job worked so I knew what to expect when facing them or how one might hard-counter another, but it ended up being useless information (just stack DRK and go brrrr), and now I just switch to and stay Machinist all match so I have a valid excuse to keep a safe distance while picking and choosing my own targets that I *might* feasibly say I KO'd on my own sometimes, instead of worrying about what everyone else is doing because I can't trust my own team any more than the other two with regards to how they'll conduct themselves, and if the ones doing the rigging are just going to treat me like an NPC audience to their own farming, than I can equally and kindly disregard their presence (and especially shoutouts) as well, while also keeping the knowledge of an upcoming pinch to myself and silently bail.

[Aidorouge]

Cripes, I haven't even played VPR/PCT in PVP and now I never will because I have no incentive to do so. Queue and switch when I get to leveling them, because learning how they work otherwise is pointless with how things currently work. With that in mind, I would like to point out that people who "only queue for the rewards" are a symptom, not the cause, for why a lot of people simply don't try or stop trying later on. My own achievements state that my first Frontline was 8-29-23, that I got Slaughterhouse Four on 6-30-24, that I have played 732 matches and took 1st place in 241 of them. I would like to think I was semi-active, that I was at least part of the slightly-above-casual crowd, but *now* I just want my roulette XP before I go do other things for the day because even if I could play more I just don't have the same drive like I did when I was playing all day trying to get stuff from the vendors or do the GARO stuff, because now fresh-face me knows how it really goes, and it's ironic that *now* I'm phoning it in when I don't even have anything to spend the currencies on anymore, or indeed have plenty of other roulettes I could do for XP. You'd think someone who "just wanted the rewards" would have been half-baking it the entire time, or perhaps just stopped queuing altogether once the only thing left was achievements (because who really looks at titles anyway?)

But I was in it for the game alone at that point, but it turns out it doesn't really want me here if the attitude (and now stated goals) of premade practitioners are now known. I'm still going to queue up once a day because the body is willing, but the spirit is too spongy and bruised to keep going like I used to.

[Aidorouge]

The thread is back I see. It is a bit sad to see the fronlines skill level regress so much with the expansion launch. If you're aiming for wins, please seek out the resources and guides to help you improve.

I have no interest in these "resources" given they're all pretty much going to be the very thing I've been complaining about (it's just going to be how to make a premade, which jobs to stack, what to download/install for that "competitive edge" even if it's just some kind of voice chat program). I don't want my solution to be "just become part of the problem" because at that point I might as well just use a bot that plays the mode for me and then watch and wait to see where the coin flip landed.

So no, I don't want any help from the likes of you or your kind, doubly so knowing how you really feel about players like me outside of the exclusive club you've built for yourselves (drive us to quit, eh?), and I'm not any more willing to have *you* blow smoke up my backside than when I was doing it to myself when you claim that you "want to see other people improve". What a crock.

[saucyshortcake]

lmao his next stream just happens to be scheduled for the next day shatter runs!

but no guys he's not just a one trick pony.

[Aravell]

These individuals have every right to min-max the mode, despite the fact they are damaging it. Whether SQEX tolerates this into 7.1, we'll have to wait and see. But as you say, the price these commanders will pay is being nearly universally despised. They're just going to have to live with that.

The commander hate only seems to be a thing on NA/EU, honestly.

JP has at least 5 commanders last time I checked, they play the same way with chat macros, markers and burst countdowns. The only difference is that they're loved on JP, a lot of people thank a good commander after a win. So no, commanders aren't exactly universally despised.

Regarding 7.1 though, didn't they promise an FL overhaul? Guess we'll find out what that's about.

[Mawlzy]

The commander hate only seems to be a thing on NA/EU, honestly.

JP has at least 5 commanders last time I checked, they play the same way with chat macros, markers and burst countdowns. The only difference is that they're loved on JP, a lot of people thank a good commander after a win. So no, commanders aren't exactly universally despised.

Regarding 7.1 though, didn't they promise an FL overhaul? Guess we'll find out what that's about.

That's fair. I was speaking about NA (Aether in particular) since that's where I play. My guess is on the JP servers, commanders respect their team-mates, rather than holding the shocking views towards them expressed recently in this thread. I don't think anyone in the world appreciates the idea of a self-appointed gatekeeper who wishes to "beat" their one-dimensional playstyle into players, such that they either drink the Kool-Aid and are accepted or are forced out of the game.

I dunno, people sometimes invoke "cultural differences" to explain such things, but I'm reluctant to do so since I've never lived in Japan. A simpler explanation may simply be that the JP commanders are pleasant people.

FWIW I will frequently thank a shot-caller after a match if they have helped the team in a respectful way. But there's a world of difference between occasional reminders of the score and where an S just popped to the belligerent ordering and chat spamming of those commanders invariably playing DRK in a premade. Coupled with the fact that many of us enjoy the matches when there is no such commander, and find them tedious at best when there is, we arrive at the current stand-off.

I think X.1 has traditionally been when PvP gets some attention. At the very least one would hope the devs can see the FL meta is stale and do something to shake it up.

[Aravell]

I think X.1 has traditionally been when PvP gets some attention. At the very least one would hope the devs can see the FL meta is stale and do something to shake it up.

Oh I do agree that the FL meta is stale right now. It's boring to see DRK + (WAR/RPR) + DRG in every match.

Patch 7.1 might bring some kit reworks to fit in the new stuff though, so let's hope it breathes some new life into FL.

[Mawlzy]

Oh I do agree that the FL meta is stale right now. It's boring to see DRK + (WAR/RPR) + DRG in every match.

Patch 7.1 might bring some kit reworks to fit in the new stuff though, so let's hope it breathes some new life into FL.

Let's hope, indeed. Unfortunately balancing both solo jobs and 4-person stacks in a mode where LB coordination is key is a daunting task. Particularly if the balance is based on CC.