Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[IDontPetLalas]

You can play what you want. Its not like I can make you do otherwise. I'll ask for more tanks and guardbreaks but it's not like I'm gonna yell at people in a match unless they're feeding or afk.

I take issue with people saying a job is good when it isn't. Be it on reddit or the fourms or discord I'm going to argue against what I see as misinformed takes when I see them.

It's pvp, I assume players would have more fun by getting kills, dying less, dealing a lot of damage and winning the match. If a different job will drastically effect that then it's worth suggesting.

There is another aspect to consider. I would agree that not all jobs are equally balanced/good in the context of FL. However, have you considered that player on a very strong job can actually get bored? It can actually be more fun and challenging trying to get the best out of what may be seen as a weaker job.

[Mawlzy]

There is another aspect to consider. I would agree that not all jobs are equally balanced/good in the context of FL. However, have you considered that player on a very strong job can actually get bored? It can actually be more fun and challenging trying to get the best out of what may be seen as a weaker job.

Given boredom is a key feature of the current meta, I think that quite likely. Besides, where else can one experiment with jobs they don't ordinarily play? But if the only goal is to optimize win% at the expense of enjoying the match, Olivia's position has merit.

[saucyshortcake]

Good gravy, don't tell Olivia that! She wrote a highly-acclaimed novella on the topic. (Soon to be released as an improvised PPV event featuring former cast members of Happy Days.) Unfortunately, it promotes precisely the playstyle that has led to the majority of the player base to not give a tinker's cuss about the mode.

oh youre right, i didnt notice hes one of the guys always doing this stuff. i should have noticed it was familiar, he links his twitch after every game. big surprise he only plays shatter ofc.

[OliviaLugria]

There is another aspect to consider. I would agree that not all jobs are equally balanced/good in the context of FL. However, have you considered that player on a very strong job can actually get bored? It can actually be more fun and challenging trying to get the best out of what may be seen as a weaker job.

I'm well aware that a good player can perform well on any job. I'm more concerned about the people playing once a day, lacking basic knowledge on how the mode or how their job works.

Just picking a better job can drastically improve their experience and be a gateway to engaging more with the content.

Obviously, I'd rather all jobs be viable and roughly even, but it's just not the case right now for FL.

[Mawlzy]

I'm well aware that a good player can perform well on any job. I'm more concerned about the people playing once a day, lacking basic knowledge on how the mode or how their job works.

Just picking a better job can drastically improve their experience and be a gateway to engaging more with the content.

Obviously, I'd rather all jobs be viable and roughly even, but it's just not the case right now for FL.

I say this to save you future frustration and disappointment. First, your "concern" is, with respect, misplaced. That's their business, not yours. Second, that situation will not change while there are significant rewards simply for showing up for a roulette. I'm sure we'd all like the players you describe to get better, but as noted by many in this thread, they have no motivation to do so. You browbeating or shaming them will not change that.

[DolphinsFan]

I have quite a few issues with these "commanders", and most of it comes down to their general attitude, and behaviour towards the community.

They will be the first ones to hop on here, make fresh accounts and tell everyone about how positive they are for the community, how they do this, that, and the other thing. How gracious of them. Yet they will often talk down to the community, they insult people who play "Non Meta" jobs, sometimes even openly in Alliance chat, and I've seen some nasty discord chat logs, (especially when their teams aren't dancing to their tune). They seem to forget that they're curb stomping 2 teams of 48 other players who often have no relation with each other, and limited experience with PvP, and that nobody is impressed by their winrates, or how "skilled" they seem to believe they are.

90% of the hostility in the pvp community is a response to the amount of toxicity directed at them from people who don't make a serious effort to learn, and who join discords to skim for gotcha moments and start arguments rather than try to engage in productive conversation.
Fwiw, I think making fun of people for playing non-meta classes is stupid, because you can put up good and helpful stats on any class. Now if you're going to type in chat "this drk so stupid cant even win with prmade" then put up a statline of 0-4-12 with 100K dmg, yeah you're going to catch some flack. Also for all the talk about premades only caring about meta comps in this thread, I find a statement like "they're curb stomping 2 teams 48 other players who often have no relation with each other, and limited experience with PvP" telling, as from my own experience, it is exceedingly rare for there to be premades in only one team. Just no one cares about those other premades because they aren't playing the spooky 2 drk 1 ast 1 drg comp (I've literally touched none of these classes).

[Mawlzy]

90% of the hostility in the pvp community is a response to the amount of toxicity directed at them from people who don't make a serious effort to learn, and who join discords to skim for gotcha moments and start arguments rather than try to engage in productive conversation.

Fins, I've played many matches with you. You're amusing in chat and a strong player. I'd like to suggest a different reason for the origin of the hostility.

In FL at the moment, we have two groups who are serious about the mode, but who have completely different goals. And these goals clash massively. Olivia and her minions are the archetype of the first group. They place wins above everything else, and consequently play meta stacks. The second serious group is comprised of solo players who work hard on getting better, but who emphasize enjoyable matches above wins. For them, being ordered around is not enjoyable. The gameplay that a meta stack produces is not enjoyable.

Setting aside the players who don't care at all, these two groups of serious players get dumped in the same matches where their playstyles are completely at odds with each other. The key to greatly reducing the current hostility is by removing that clash of styles through queue separation.

[Gunz_Zbestest]

I wish shatter didn't pop all of it's smalls at once or in small waves within the window of a minute, but rather the style of having2 or 3 pop off randomly at a time while the 2 bigs are up so that way small skirmish parties could face off and not all focus on a single choke point or mosh pit in the middle all game. I actually love the influx of new players to pvp because everyone is testing pictomancer and viper charging around like shock troops.

[saucyshortcake]

Fins, I've played many matches with you. You're amusing in chat and a strong player. I'd like to suggest a different reason for the origin of the hostility.

In FL at the moment, we have two groups who are serious about the mode, but who have completely different goals. And these goals clash massively. Olivia and her minions are the archetype of the first group. They place wins above everything else, and consequently play meta stacks. The second serious group is comprised of solo players who work hard on getting better, but who emphasize enjoyable matches above wins. For them, being ordered around is not enjoyable. The gameplay that a meta stack produces is not enjoyable.

Setting aside the players who don't care at all, these two groups of serious players get dumped in the same matches where their playstyles are completely at odds with each other. The key to greatly reducing the current hostility is by removing that clash of styles through queue separation.

the reason people like olivia stick to frontlines is because anytime he tries any other pvp mode we swiftly remind him why he should stick to only pvp'ing once every 3 days on shatter. and we're sorry you have to deal with him.

[Archeron]

90% of the hostility in the pvp community is a response to the amount of toxicity directed at them from people who don't make a serious effort to learn, and who join discords to skim for gotcha moments and start arguments rather than try to engage in productive conversation.

Your discord is your responsibility, and anything that occurs on it is 100% on you. Don't want people looking for Gotcha moments on your server? Don't allow toxicity, undprocutive conversation and other behaviour that reflects poorly on your community to be on your servers in the first place. Also just how do you classify someone is "Not trying to learn" because I've seen sarcastic and misleading answers on a lot of PvP servers, some people are going to be skeptical about the advice they are recieving. People being toxic ingame towards premades that aren't winning are also easily dealt with via support desk tickets.

Fwiw, I think making fun of people for playing non-meta classes is stupid, because you can put up good and helpful stats on any class. Now if you're going to type in chat "this drk so stupid cant even win with prmade" then put up a statline of 0-4-12 with 100K dmg, yeah you're going to catch some flack. Also for all the talk about premades only caring about meta comps in this thread, I find a statement like "they're curb stomping 2 teams 48 other players who often have no relation with each other, and limited experience with PvP" telling, as from my own experience, it is exceedingly rare for there to be premades in only one team. Just no one cares about those other premades because they aren't playing the spooky 2 drk 1 ast 1 drg comp (I've literally touched none of these classes).

Premades are not fun to play with. That is our core problem. Get caught in salted earth? You die. You either instantly evaporate people, or you get instantly evaporated. Now in theory, you would assume that "Hey every team has a premade now! That would make it more fun!" It actually doesn't. The gameplay is repetitive, and boring, and greatly encourages the use of a limited number of jobs to power up the meat grinder. That is not fun gameplay to me. Meta stack is boring, and it encourages me not to queue a second time when I see this sort of gameplay, as it does with so many other people.

Now personally if you're contributing nothing to the match, and doing less than 100k dmg (Or even less than 300k dmg on any job) then I think they should be looking inwards rather than outwards. Most of the people complaining about premades here I can safely assume have some idea what they are doing with any given job they've chosen to play. The way to address these underperforming players who complain openly in Alliance chat is to ignore them, especially when they've got nothing productive to say. Calling them out, telling them they're bad, saying they need to play X job, or kicking people from the match because they're not playing to your teams tune however is unacceptable, and I've seen that a whole lot, especially on Aether/Primal. (Not directed @Olivia)

"Bad" premades, or even just a single commander running around aren't the problem. Nobody is calling a stack of 4 Scholars, or 4 dragoons, or any other "Sub optimal" non Dark premade unfair. A team of random players can still pose a threat to them, and it doesn't crater our winrates into the single digits when they're playing. DRK/DRK/RPR/AST does, and the solution is to both nerf DRK knight, and I would limit premade parties further down to two players.

Now is EVERY premade commander toxic, and trying to ruin the game mode for everyone? (Specifically to those who run DRK/DRK) Probably not. But are they? Yes, and they should have some self awareness of what they're doing, and why people despise it, and why there are calls to adjust Dark knight to end the Meta. It's not unreasonable for people to be miffed about being insta-killed repeatedly and having their winrates plummet because they lost the 1/3 chance of being on the premades side. The two sides to this will never come to any kind of agreement.