Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Mawlzy]

Lol, I doubt they would exposit the golden land that is JP FL and que sync together if they didn't want better quality games. Some groups do just want to grind their achievements and roll over others. They have crystal for now, but I'd prefer that this just wasn't an option for them. I don't know why you're jabbing at me though XD. I have my guide posted everywhere relevant, and try to spread the good word. I'd keep it to myself if I just wanted to farm easy wins. Finally, my FC is focused on FL commanding so I don't have to command (please get good at calling so I can dance and black mage, thank you everyone.)


Guide Link: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/

My "jabbing" is hopefully perceived more as friendly banter than malice. I suspect I do it because I regard your guide as a menace that will take FL into a worse place. I've presented my reasons, you disagree. All good.

[AnotherPerson]

It would be interesting to see how other DCs play and how well I adapt to differences in playstyle. Not sure how bad the latency would be, but I don't know until I try and I'll certainly give it my best effort!

Here, I've found that matches have improved a little recently, but still depends on how fortunate you are with your queues. At one point, premades were in practically in every game, with a couple of premades in particular becoming widely recognised for their obvious use of voice chat, use of DRK-RPR-DRG-DRG combo, and for being highly arrogant in games (responding to conflicting calls/team unrest in ways such as "Do you have a 90% win rate? No? Well I do, so shut up and do as I say"). Over time, this approach hasn't won them favour amongst many random players and, as a result, I see more and more negative responses aimed at them, both from their allies and opponents. More recently, I see those particular teams less often. Premades are still a common sight, but it doesn't compare to how the problem used to be (I hope I haven't jinxed it with that sentence!)

I have a feeling I know who you're talking about. This is an old screenshot, but I have a feeling you're talking about the players from Adders Team B.



I played with a EU alt against them, they're definitely skilled and very experienced players. Had a lot of fun matches against them when I'm cooking a new strategy with different jobs and notice their shenanigans (mind you I'm also solo). I won against them twice in a row and then they stopped queueing (probably due to timezone difference at the time). A shame, really. I had a lot of fun adapting to whatever type of strategy they came up with. Fighting against good players helped me improve on jobs I don't play much to develop a playstyle for them.

[Mawlzy]

That must've been a helluva match. I've never seen a DRK in a premade hit anything like 17/0/121 and lose! Congratz on thwarting them.

[Mawlzy]

just made it to 55% the other day. Even before running premades and doing light calls I still had a respectable 40~ percent.

I take your comment to mean you don't support rewards for participating in a pvp mode? Also, thanks for leaving out the part about captures XD. If someone got an extra .25% of a level, a .5%for a kill, and maybe 1% for a capture do you think there would be less participation or more? Add in a multiplayer for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd like x1.5, x1.25, and x1.0, would people try to win? You could even have the exp gain show up in the log for a bit of dopamine. I don't see why you shouldn't reward the people doing more. My own personal performance isn't that much different with or without a premade, it really only changes the win rate. That's mostly due to drk facilitating damage more than actually doing it.

So if you've gone from 40% to 55% since running premades (and the 55% includes that pre-premade oh good grief phase), your win% as a premade is well above 55%? And you wonder why people push back?? But enough. I had an idea for this rewards business.

I was thinking more about your quantitative approach and believe you're on the right track, but there's this issue with job-to-job variations. So I came up with the following. It's called JeRCJobI (Jessa's Revolutionary Cross-Job Index).

For each map, SE has a massive database of K/D/A and damage dealt (which we'll call X) for each job. It can therefore determine an objective distribution of all FL job performance, perhaps using an expression of the form:

aK + bA + cX - dD

calculated for each job in every match. Doesn't need to be linear, obviously, but I can't think of a reason why it shouldn't.

Here a, b, c and d are all positive, and roughly you'd set a ~ d, b ~ a/5, and c ~ a/100,000. Give or take.

For each job, this will produce a distribution - likely a Gaussian thanks to the Central Limit Theorem - which is handy because Gaussians are lovely to work with and it's trivial to identify those in the top 10%, 25%, 50%, and so forth. Or if you preferred less granularity and just wanted to award rewards based on "bad," "average" and "good," you could use the inter-quartile range instead.

Since healers do still bravely heal sometimes, their index could include a health restored term.

Absolutely trivial to code and ensures each player in a given match is rewarded based on how well they played their job relative to the population as a whole.

[Bonoki]

Effort-based rewards would only result in there being even more premades than there already are, (until most people got their rewards and quit playing). At this point we'd be better off with a PvP mode that is premade vs premade instead, while gating the rewards behind that. You essentially get the same effect at the end of the day with fewer development resources. Or win-traders, but you won't ever stop that.

[Valence]

I do not want to be forced onto a party dedicated queue when I just want to casually queue up with my friends just because some premade meta is ruining everything... Imagine queueing up with your casual friends and end up in a sweaty tryhard party only game full of premades... That's the worst idea ever, unless your aim is just to kill casual groups.

Also, while I like the idea in concept, beware of the unintended effects of proportionally attributing rewards on placement and performance. As soon as people see that the premade death ball is in the other teams and not theirs, they might just give up entirely and stop playing to make the game end faster.

[Scintilla]

snip

Quite possibly. I wouldn't say that any premade setup is particularly 'skilled' (as mentioned in my previous posts) but I wouldn't doubt that they've spent a lot of time in FLs. We have had a few decent premades recently, but they don't seem quite as active as they were in the past, in which they appeared to be queuing for games for hours throughout the afternoon and evening - just typical that that was the point in which I was trying to get the Seal Rock coat on my alt, but I'll keep that grudge to myself
The k/a scores look fairly consistent with an average game of theirs.

It certainly poses a challenge and when I realise I'm playing against them my personal goal changes instantly from: win the game > stop them winning. From calling with early warnings and marking the DRK to trying classes I wouldn't normally play in PvP (like RPR) purely to try to hinder them as much as possible. Sadly, though, in such cases it ultimately requires a premade of your own or a 2v1 focus of both random alliances vs the premade to keep their score down to a level that the opportunity to win is open and balanced for all teams. Sometimes this does work (and I have noticed it happening a little more frequently now that these premades have become so widely recognised), but it only takes a single random alliance to not get the message and to continue with the game as if it were a normal match or to do worse and decide to help farm the other random alliance purely to get 2nd place for themselves, and this all falls to pieces.

[Mawlzy]

Effort-based rewards would only result in there being even more premades than there already are, (until most people got their rewards and quit playing). At this point we'd be better off with a PvP mode that is premade vs premade instead, while gating the rewards behind that. You essentially get the same effect at the end of the day with fewer development resources. Or win-traders, but you won't ever stop that.

Yes, very likely, hence my preferred solution of dual queues.

Besides, performance-based rewards are antithetical to FF14. Good gravy, do it for FL people might expect it in raids and dungeons. Not gonna happen.

Tbh JeRCJobI is what happens when the FL queue dries up of an evening.

But it would provide a road-map towards a matchmaking algorithm. Valence, does that help address your desire to queue with friends while avoiding the voice premades? Because without a massive change in LBs and skillsets, there will always be a premade meta while queues are mixed. All that will change with tweaking is the comp.

[OliviaLugria]

Effort-based rewards would only result in there being even more premades than there already are, (until most people got their rewards and quit playing). At this point we'd be better off with a PvP mode that is premade vs premade instead, while gating the rewards behind that. You essentially get the same effect at the end of the day with fewer development resources. Or win-traders, but you won't ever stop that.

When everyone is a premade, no one is. In all seriousness, it doesn't take much for a solo player to go from underperforming to decent to above average. There's just no reason to do so right now.

A premade's strength comes from a willingness to work together and perform well. Instilling this in the average player would quickly allow them to catch up.

I think premade vs premade would just be a dead que, and solo only inspires more mediocrity.

[AriannaStormwake]

look i understand the reason/or reasons "why" people do what they do with the premades
coordinated/voice chat or whatnot work together do objectives win alot and having fun is good for everyone

but surely that wont cause/or have caused bigger issues for the pug/s more than what we already have seen
or just break queue sync to not work and you and me probably wont see those premade guys again(a big IF tho)

tho my issue is with premades existing in frontlines only(i dont play ranked)
that and some of the pugs who fight the premade(guys with lot of battle high 4 or 5 blue in one of my my games today) over the 2nd high score team(maelstrom/red)
half were busy dying to blue teams coordinated lb/stun stacking while red gets a free big ice
what happens in the end blue wins because my team chose to get lowscore third and engage them and not red(and not get the big ice to catch up)