Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Chasingstars]

I don't disagree with implementing a MMR system of some kind, even if it were hidden. It could even be perfectly acceptable in such a system if premade teams were paired against 2 enemy teams with more skilled players. I just highly doubt that Square is willing to invest that much in the way of development resources into a mode they have shown no interest in providing regular content to.

I think it would be funny, all the premades have to deal with their own equivalent of hell because of their MMR as the only other people up that high are just other premades.

Would certainly create a prisoner's island for them.

[Valence]

Honestly, premades are awful, nothing is worse than seeing your entire alliance get pulled by a drk and melts infront of your eyes, it doesn't matter if you're a solo vet or a casual trying their best. So, you're forced to try to play something to TRY and counter the premade but you'll most likely fail because the odds are usually stacked against you. Ultimately, it's pointless really and not fun at all to try and spend the game shadowing one of the premade guys knowing your team is gonna get rolled anyway. It doesn't matter if you have 69 macros or not.

I used to love frontlines but now I only do it to get my series level to 25 and never touch it again, I don't even see any of the solo regulars I saw back in the time either and it really makes me sad. I don't know how SE managed to make frontline worse but they deserve a medal for their truly valiant efforts.

Sweet summer child, I see you've never played in the first half of Stormblood pvp. The current state of FLs right now isn't great, but it's miles away from the pit of despair it used to be during certain times.

Not saying what they're doing with the mode is a good thing though, they were so happy about their new rework and shiny crystalline conflict (which I actually love, for once, and I'm a CC main and foremost) that they either "forgot" to adjust FLs in the wake, or just thought it would be fine until they "deal with it later". I mean I guess it's fine right? MMO players are a funny beast, they only play for rewards, and this obsession for it literally puts rewards so high on a pedestal above every other consideration that just having a daily roulette and a mogtome event full of goodies makes them queue for it anyway.

And to be frank, they could queue for something else to make mogtomes. If they queue for this, it's for a reason, and not necessarily that it's faster (Rival Wings actually is). So yes, I doubt casuals are having such a bad time with it than us who play it a lot more. Not only that, but the amount of games where I count an actual, serious premade at least where I play, is about a third of the time tops. Before the mog event it was way lower, and less sweaty.

I think it would be funny, all the premades have to deal with their own equivalent of hell because of their MMR as the only other people up that high are just other premades.

Would certainly create a prisoner's island for them.

Joke's on you, they already organize such events.

[Valence]

Just had another one of those games, where I stumbled into the team with a premade. Nothing ever fancy comp wise, and yet we rolled over everybody without any reaction, BH5 very fast, etc etc. It's a bit sad because while everybody (aka casuals) is happy, they get their victory, more mogtomes, and you have the premades congratulating each other and everybody for literally the most effortless games ever just makes me question why I keep bothering when I solo queue. It's a gamble really, sometimes you get into good games without that kind of crap, sometimes not and you waste 10 min of your time.

Before that there was a premade vs another premade. They kept essentially exchanging kitchen sinks with mass AoE kills. It's the game mode and balance that essentially boils down to that more than anything.

[Mawlzy]

Just had another one of those games, where I stumbled into the team with a premade. Nothing ever fancy comp wise, and yet we rolled over everybody without any reaction, BH5 very fast, etc etc. It's a bit sad because while everybody (aka casuals) is happy, they get their victory, more mogtomes, and you have the premades congratulating each other and everybody for literally the most effortless games ever just makes me question why I keep bothering when I solo queue. It's a gamble really, sometimes you get into good games without that kind of crap, sometimes not and you waste 10 min of your time.

Before that there was a premade vs another premade. They kept essentially exchanging kitchen sinks with mass AoE kills. It's the game mode and balance that essentially boils down to that more than anything.

Assuming certain jobs retain their fundamental identity, there are some that simply cannot be balanced for both solo and party queueing.

[Colt47]

I mean PvP in this game in general is garbage. The main reason people are doing PvP is because of the carrot on offer from the crystal trophy points because I can tell you otherwise no one would want to do it other than to be that guy who gets to show off the fancy pvp armor.

Like I've said in endless posts elsewhere, Frontlines is like a school of fish with people mostly fishing each other out of the groups and running around without a clue of what they are doing, and while CC is a far cry better than what we had in shadowbringers, it's still mostly just unorganized mob play at a smaller scale with the limits of a clunky tab target system.

Also, going to put it here that there are people who also just go into pvp matches and sabotage the match by not participating. I've seen it in frontlines and in CC, but at least the guys who sabotage frontlines don't keep spamming the good job emote mocking everyone actually there to play.

[CosmoBabylonia]

The way I've seen it is FL sucks mainly because of a stale meta. I tried running along (solo) people who suspiciously look like pre-made teams and try to join in their kill combos; it is honestly not hard to pull it off once you figure out their timings, and imagine how easy it is using a mic. The skill and focus investment required to knock out pre-made kill teams as a mostly solo queue team is extremely high. The cost of counter-play vs. the play is completely out of whack in terms of balance where one side is dramatically easier (at least from my experiences spamming FL non stop solo for a week to get a feel for it). So when the most effective way to play is not really challenged much, you have an extremely stale meta. A stale meta just feeds a negative feedback loop of annoyance and player frustration. If the only way to play is to try to counter pre-made DRK kill teams, which you see almost every game, then something has to change to freshen things up again.

Talking about Dark Knights, they are honestly fine in a vacuum. When you bundle them together with all the other shenanigans like easy to pull off kill skills, network lag, bad tick rate, and so on it becomes a monster rather easily. So the "just stun the tank" argument doesn't work in my opinion.

[OliviaLugria]

The pvp system will get completely reworked again next expansion like always, so hopefully they make something that is balanced for every game mode.

[Wanderer42]

Yea the balance could use some tweaking sure but i think the main issue causing fl to suck as it very much does right now is premades, not just parties of 4 queueing together but discord servers with pvpers queueing up at the same time in multiple parties of 4 trying to get as many of their parties into a match as possible, and then deciding amongst themselves who the winner of that match will be before it even starts. I have played WAY too many matches where one team just attacks one other specific team regardless of their score or objectives or anything for the entire match handing an easy win to the "chosen" team. That's not pvp, that's a group of jerks wasting peoples time to farm easy wins while having zero actual skill at pvp whatsoever. I think a few things that might help with this are 1. separate frontline matches into casual and ranked. 2. remove the ability to queue in parties AT ALL from casual matches, you either queue alone or not at all. 3. make ranked matches REQUIRE full premade parties, that way everyone knows what they're getting into, let the people who want to work together outside of the game to coordinate and strategize do it to their hearts content AGAINST EACH OTHER instead of against unsuspecting groups of random people queueing to just complete their daily roulette or try to work on getting their seal rock coat.

I don't have a problem with the idea of people wanting to play frontlines together with outside methods of communication that allow for better strategy and shot calling and whatnot that's great the problem is you can't throw those groups up against randoms who don't know what's going on and don't have that same ability to coordinate with each other. Find a way to keep them separate and punish groups who abuse the system to waste the time of random people who might enjoy pvp but get turned off by it because of their toxic cheating behaviours.

[Valence]

Not gonna lie, the effort required to pull off premade kitchen sinks is abysmally low. The effort required to shut them down is thrice higher, and the easiest solution of them all is not to kill their BH5 (that's suboptimal and requires skill), but to make sure each alliance fields at least one SGE that knows what they're doing with Mesotes.

[OliviaLugria]

Not gonna lie, the effort required to pull off premade kitchen sinks is abysmally low.

You should probably make one then. The easiest solution to stopping a premade is having your own to dive them when they attack your team anyways.

Successfully counter dive once or twice and they'll have to slow down, try to target the other team or wait for you to engage something else.