Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Teno]

FL should be 1v1 teams and you shouldn't get exp or any rewards if you lose. That will encourage people to either learn how to PVP of they're just wasting their time. Premades aren't the issue, the issue is the clueless people they feast off of. This would make it very clear to people that you had better show up to play or just f off. Not every game mode is for everyone or needs to be accessible to everyone. The rest of the game is cooperative and not very difficult, if people aren't good with punishing poor performance they can go do literally anything else.

If you're going to allow premades (which I'm ok with) then encourage them as much as possible. The people everyone love to complain about will likely quickly lose interest once they see they're facing stiff competition every match. Which is what PVP should entail.

What a terrible take, nobody would play this if it was 1v1. Get lucky and you'll stomp the other team. Frontline is alive only because people can just tag and get easy xp while not caring much because it's 1v1v1. Yes games are at an all time low right now and people have never been so, so bad because literally everyone is leveling up. But it'd much, much worse with 1v1, especially when suddenly you'll be more inclined to hold people accountable. In a 1v1v1 you can always use the third team to your advantage, in the worst case scenario.

[DallsBeep]

What a terrible take, nobody would play this if it was 1v1.

lol What? The number of teams involved in the match does not figure into whether people play or not. Most people just play for the exp and the PVP community wants it treated like an actual PVP mode when it isn't it's just an exp farm. And I'm telling you one method you could do to treat it like a PVP mode. If you're going to keep rewarding mediocrity in this mode to such an extent..loads of mediocre players will continue to participate. Until you address that problem then there's no point in wanting this mode to be competitive because it never will be.

I think what you meant to say but for some reason didn't, is that nobody is going to queue up if their exp isn't assured. There are already people who run premades all night over getting some lame achievements how much more so will people run premades all night if it's over exp. What it accomplishes is leveling the playing field which solves literally every issue people have with his mode. You can either continue to cater to the PVE'er who's levelling up his 11th class and has no idea what he's doing or cater to PVP'ers. Pick one.

[Aidorouge]

Ugh, no, if there were zero rewards for losing, the mode would likely die overnight or become a walled off clubhouse with only a few dozen members, because the main reason most people queue now is because there's a consolation prize at least for being stomped by premades and cheaters. Likewise, said premades and cheaters would either hate to be put up against their own "kind" and end up queue-dodging/throwing, or they would love it because it would make it super easy to coordinate win-trading when it's only ever the same 70+ players showing up each time on each data center. At that point it wouldn't be catering to PVE or PVP players, but rather just giving up and officially handing these self-ordained rulers exclusive rights to an entire mode.

I know I certainly wouldn't bother to queue anymore, as winning would still be reliant on RNG I can't control, but now losing would be even more grueling and frustrating, and that's assuming the rulers "allowed" me to participate at all because again, it would be way too easy to coordinate with their own and "push out" anyone they don't like or doesn't fall in line with their methods, and suddenly 1v1v1 has become 1v71.

[DallsBeep]

Ugh, no, if there were zero rewards for losing, the mode would likely die overnight or become a walled off clubhouse with only a few dozen members, because the main reason most people queue now is because there's a consolation prize at least for being stomped by premades and cheaters. Likewise, said premades and cheaters would either hate to be put up against their own "kind" and end up queue-dodging/throwing, or they would love it because it would make it super easy to coordinate win-trading when it's only ever the same 70+ players showing up each time on each data center. At that point it wouldn't be catering to PVE or PVP players, but rather just giving up and officially handing these self-ordained rulers exclusive rights to an entire mode.

I know I certainly wouldn't bother to queue anymore, as winning would still be reliant on RNG I can't control, but now losing would be even more grueling and frustrating, and that's assuming the rulers "allowed" me to participate at all because again, it would be way too easy to coordinate with their own and "push out" anyone they don't like or doesn't fall in line with their methods, and suddenly 1v1v1 has become 1v71.

So a PVP mode needs people who can't and/or aren't interested in PVP to survive? If the population of PVPers is so small and irrelevant that a few small parties can completely dominate the matchmaking without anyone to oppose them, then they deserve the benefits of being dominant. I for one think it's just dumb anyways to separate PVP from PVE entirely and going as far as making the abilities and gameplay completely detached and still rewarding players with PVE experience when they weren't doing anything even remotely related to their PVE class. There are plenty of ways in this game to max out a class, it isn't particularly difficult or time consuming, it's something you can just do entirely by accident. So we really NEED FL and CC to give PVE experience? Nah I don't think so, I don't even think it's even logical. Make PVP rewards separate and remove the PVE element entirely. If a "small group of people" still dominate particular game modes, then they win. Get some PVPers to oppose them then. It's far better than asking a bunch of people who don't even care about PVP to substantiate the mode's existence by essentially bribing them to keep it relevant.

If you NEED turbo casuals in the mode and insist that we must keep aforementioned bribe in play, then just accept that people who know what they're doing are going to continually exploit and crush them due to their naivety. I really don't know what you were expecting to happen when mixing those elements lol

[Teno]

lol What? The number of teams involved in the match does not figure into whether people play or not. Most people just play for the exp and the PVP community wants it treated like an actual PVP mode when it isn't it's just an exp farm. And I'm telling you one method you could do to treat it like a PVP mode. If you're going to keep rewarding mediocrity in this mode to such an extent..loads of mediocre players will continue to participate. Until you address that problem then there's no point in wanting this mode to be competitive because it never will be.

I think what you meant to say but for some reason didn't, is that nobody is going to queue up if their exp isn't assured. There are already people who run premades all night over getting some lame achievements how much more so will people run premades all night if it's over exp. What it accomplishes is leveling the playing field which solves literally every issue people have with his mode. You can either continue to cater to the PVE'er who's levelling up his 11th class and has no idea what he's doing or cater to PVP'ers. Pick one.

1v1 would lead to more stomps and a LOT more toxicity and/or divide between players queuing for xp only and the rest, 1000%. Unless they remove chat like in cc. But even then, 1v1 unbalanced large scale is a recipe for disaster. There's a reason mmos with large scale pvp that works is tri-faction.

[Mawlzy]

FL should be 1v1 teams and you shouldn't get exp or any rewards if you lose. That will encourage people to either learn how to PVP of they're just wasting their time. Premades aren't the issue, the issue is the clueless people they feast off of. This would make it very clear to people that you had better show up to play or just f off. Not every game mode is for everyone or needs to be accessible to everyone. The rest of the game is cooperative and not very difficult, if people aren't good with punishing poor performance they can go do literally anything else.

If you're going to allow premades (which I'm ok with) then encourage them as much as possible. The people everyone love to complain about will likely quickly lose interest once they see they're facing stiff competition every match. Which is what PVP should entail.

In 1v1 BH would snowball far quicker than it does now, further exaggerating any a priori skill difference between the two teams. And if it remained 24-person teams, you'd still get the inept registering for it because their contribution would be irrelevant and they'd win 50% of the time anyway. If the winning team only gets rewards and XP, I think most rouletters irrespective of how weak/disinterested they are would still queue in.

I completely agree PvP should be about stiff competition, but with such large teams with no matchmaking algorithm I don't believe your model would discourage players "just here for the XP" from playing. The people being driven out currently are those who like PvP and attempt to be good at it, but dislike playing with or against premades who diminish their agency. I do agree that the last thing most premades want is stiff competition; the majority are simply reward farmers, padders and curbstompers, as a cursory glance at their Discord servers reveals.

I actually regard this as a social media problem as much as a FL one. The bubble communities where the premades form are largely disconnected from the broader and much larger FL community. Moreover, definitionally, they can never play against themselves. Consequently they have very little idea of how disliked they are, other than the pushback they receive from players on their own team who find their presence boring, and who didn't queue in to be ordered around by an aggressive commander.

[DallsBeep]

The people being driven out currently are those who like PvP and attempt to be good at it, but dislike playing with or against premades who diminish their agency.

Yeah you're right about that. In my case, if I'm playing FL it's just because I want to level some class, which isn't often I'm pretty retired from PVE and only run CC now. And you agreed earlier in your post that if these premades were actually facing players prepared for them then they wouldn't care for it and would lose interest. So it seems clear to me, you either don't allow or disincentivize premades or you do the same with their fodder, one side of the food chain has to go or it'll just continue being a parasitic relationship. I think that's pretty gross to have as a game mode but that's essentially what we have.

[Mawlzy]

Yeah you're right about that. In my case, if I'm playing FL it's just because I want to level some class, which isn't often I'm pretty retired from PVE and only run CC now. And you agreed earlier in your post that if these premades were actually facing players prepared for them then they wouldn't care for it and would lose interest. So it seems clear to me, you either don't allow or disincentivize premades or you do the same with their fodder, one side of the food chain has to go or it'll just continue being a parasitic relationship. I think that's pretty gross to have as a game mode but that's essentially what we have.

It's why I've come round to the idea of a matchmaking algorithm, but I think then the queues only pop if you reduce team size. But yeah, I agree with you. Having apex predators feeding on herbivores isn't PvP.

[Magikazam]

idk to me frontline is that one funny free xp roulette and I don't see them touching it soon. Zerg train vs Zerg train mode rarely feel balanced in pvp.

[Mistress_Irika]

How about give people a reason to learn instead of stripping rewards entirely from the losing teams? The only thing you'll accomplish with that sort of system is the system collasping on itself. You get rid of those that are bad. Them someone within the remaining group must now become a baddie. Games start to get sweaty, and constant sweaty games aren't fun forcing more to back away until the mode is dead entirely. Very horrible idea.