Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Roguewaves]

The amount of cheating in PVP is ridiculous. Will SE please have a dev play frontlines and ban the OBVIOUS cheaters. It would only take a few bans to make the cheaters scurry away like the cockroaches they are. One obvious cheat is the DK players using a program that activates their lb to survive a ninja assassination or monk lb. I play ninja and monk and i have seen these cheater DK's perform this miraculous lb timing over and over and over in a match and every match all night. This is obvious program cheat usage and a DEV playing a few matches could spot this easily and ban the offender on the spot. A few bans is all it would take to make the coward cheaters run.

Oh my dear, Drake.... it's really troubling that you genuinely have been spewing this for months in various discords and many in-game FL matches. You're actually famous across all NA DCs for being so deranged. Why is it so hard for you to comprehend that some players have better ping, are more familiar with their skills, have better map awareness, and have learned to play preemptively. If I see a DRK running towards my group I immediately break away or counterattack if I'm on RPR/MNK, if I see a NIN running towards me and I'm near 50% I obviously know he wants to LB so I spam recups, if I see a DNC running in I burst them down in the hopes of killing them during their LB animation...do all these scenarios mean I have a program telling me when to press a button? No. It's basic pvp sense that you naturally develop after playing the game for a bit.

Also you're example of a DRK LB'ing when being NIN LB'd....there's a milisecond delay before NIN's LB engages, that gives a player enough time to press their DRK LB if it's up. It's not cheating, I can do it and I'm on console, there's literally no way I can install 3rd party add-ons on my game.

Time to wake up Drake and realize there's just TONS of players that are above your skill level. And this is coming from a solo player, I don't play with a team and I rainbow all jobs.

[Mawlzy]

If by the problem you mean hackers then I can only just make assumptions. These hackers usually use their throwaway service accounts as to not get banned on their main accounts. So you're paying a monthly subscription to meme/have fun with cheats in a game mode just to get a reaction from players. Hackers have always been rare in case and usually if there is a notorious hacker its usually the same person playing on different alts using the same hacks, they're pretty obvious they're the same player. Can only guess they get bored of doing it/want to lay low because they finally did receive a ban.

PvP in this game mode speaks for itself in that not very many players actually care about it and the few that do care more than likely wouldn't bother cheating to gain an advantage as there's not very much to even cheat for reward wise. The last notorious hacker afaik did what they did because of drama with other players who they believed take the game mode too seriously and wanted to trigger them/get reactions/get back at them, etc.

Thanks. Makes sense.

[KageTokage]

Oh my dear, Drake.... it's really troubling that you genuinely have been spewing this for months in various discords and many in-game FL matches. You're actually famous across all NA DCs for being so deranged. Why is it so hard for you to comprehend that some players have better ping, are more familiar with their skills, have better map awareness, and have learned to play preemptively. If I see a DRK running towards my group I immediately break away or counterattack if I'm on RPR/MNK, if I see a NIN running towards me and I'm near 50% I obviously know he wants to LB so I spam recups, if I see a DNC running in I burst them down in the hopes of killing them during their LB animation...do all these scenarios mean I have a program telling me when to press a button? No. It's basic pvp sense that you naturally develop after playing the game for a bit.

Also you're example of a DRK LB'ing when being NIN LB'd....there's a milisecond delay before NIN's LB engages, that gives a player enough time to press their DRK LB if it's up. It's not cheating, I can do it and I'm on console, there's literally no way I can install 3rd party add-ons on my game.

Time to wake up Drake and realize there's just TONS of players that are above your skill level. And this is coming from a solo player, I don't play with a team and I rainbow all jobs.

Cursory research into the subject would reveal that there is, in fact a readily available plug-in/addon that can automate several aspects of PvP, including usage of survival cooldowns. How prevalent its usage is can't be said, but its mere existence does make me suspicious of a lot of things that have happened in my matches.

I can't see how the devs could actually do anything to counter/prevent its usage, though.

[Infindox]

Premades have been extremely irritating lately, especially on the Azem Steppe map.
I know that most people are just playing to get the exp and the minion/mount atm, but I genuinely enjoy playing FL and it's frustrating to lose simply because your team doesn't care. I had to stop yesterday after 5-6 matches because either the team wouldn't follow whoever decided to step up and lead or the team that had an obvious premade would just keep coming after, and while I fight I can't do much on my own if my team isn't helping. (One match literally everyone ran when we could have beaten the small group and gotten the ovo!)

[Xylira]

With how unbalanced, easy to team stack, and RNG Frontlines is, SE should probably just stop tracking the win/loss rate for the game mode. By all means the total count of wins can and should still be tracked for achievements, but there's no reason to track and show total games and losses as well. It's only serves as something that encourages toxic behavior from the groups of PvPers that intentionally stack matches so they can brag about having unrealistically high win ratios. And yeah, it won't stop premades entirely, but it would at least take away some of the perceived incentive for them to go out of their way to be toxic in the game mode.

[Mawlzy]

Cursory research into the subject would reveal that there is, in fact a readily available plug-in/addon that can automate several aspects of PvP, including usage of survival cooldowns. How prevalent its usage is can't be said, but its mere existence does make me suspicious of a lot of things that have happened in my matches.

I can't see how the devs could actually do anything to counter/prevent its usage, though.

Online poker attempts to address the problem by frankly invasive means. Like if you have a range-vs-range equity calculator open while you're playing, it'll detect it and boot you from the game. Repeated offenses can lead to a ban and forfeiture of funds. I believe SQEX has said they will not do this, hence the rather peculiar situation of "mods are strictly against ToS, so please don't mention that you're using them."

Unfortunately in poker, it's a typical gamekeeper-poacher arms race where the dedicated cheaters just get better at circumventing the countermeasures.

Those videos I linked to indicate that anyone who wants to cheat can do so (please note I didn't include any links to the cheating tools themselves), so yes they are out there and not hard to find. I think we just have to rely on the hope that most players value their accounts too much to try such shenanigans.

[Mawlzy]

With how unbalanced, easy to team stack, and RNG Frontlines is, SE should probably just stop tracking the win/loss rate for the game mode. By all means the total count of wins can and should still be tracked for achievements, but there's no reason to track and show total games and losses as well. It's only serves as something that encourages toxic behavior from the groups of PvPers that intentionally stack matches so they can brag about having unrealistically high win ratios. And yeah, it won't stop premades entirely, but it would at least take away some of the perceived incentive for them to go out of their way to be toxic in the game mode.

I'd agree that's part of it, but it also appears these premades simply enjoy the easy and lopsided wins. Moreover, members greatly value their personal K/D/A. They are posted far more frequently than win%, which is strange (is it not?), given many of these commanders make the dubious claim they are trying to improve team play.

I've tried to better conduct this discussion by understanding the mindset of those engaging in this playstyle, and frankly I'm at a complete loss.

First, I'm not even sure what a "good" win-rate looks like when you've completely tilted the battlefield. Similarly, what is an impressive K/D/A when it's being artificially boosted in this way? Finally, and most importantly, the DRK+ meta stack just strikes me as an incredibly dull and repetitive playstyle. One of the enjoyable element of games when premades are not on the field is that the match unfolds in unpredictable ways. Sure sometimes it's a complete fiasco. But I'll take that over matches that go down the same dreary path and, the vast majority of the time, produce the predictable result.

One other consequence of all this is that premades further drive away players trying to learn through the K/D/A their members achieve. Like when a serious solo player has put in a decent volume of matches, and they see a stat line like 10/0/105, they may easily conclude they are never going to get "git gud" and return to raiding.

Matchmaking by win-rate would naturally isolate all the premades into their own pool, thereby allowing the rest of us to determine if we're any good or not. That sort of fair comparison is something that drives most people to try and improve.

[Xael_Jehuty]

With how unbalanced, easy to team stack, and RNG Frontlines is, SE should probably just stop tracking the win/loss rate for the game mode. By all means the total count of wins can and should still be tracked for achievements, but there's no reason to track and show total games and losses as well. It's only serves as something that encourages toxic behavior from the groups of PvPers that intentionally stack matches so they can brag about having unrealistically high win ratios. And yeah, it won't stop premades entirely, but it would at least take away some of the perceived incentive for them to go out of their way to be toxic in the game mode.

agree with this. I've seen someone call my friend a 33%er because my friend said that their dark knight dive was unfortunate (they dove on an enemy team and nobody followed up). As a person that plays in premades, the dopamine of getting good win rates is nice but it def does inflate some egos (even my own to an extent) More harm comes from it than good.

[Mawlzy]

agree with this. I've seen someone call my friend a 33%er because my friend said that their dark knight dive was unfortunate (they dove on an enemy team and nobody followed up). As a person that plays in premades, the dopamine of getting good win rates is nice but it def does inflate some egos (even my own to an extent) More harm comes from it than good.

Concerning egos, I've never known you to be anything other than pleasant in and out of matches. Moreover, you've never claimed to be carrying out some grandiose scheme whereby you drag the unwashed masses, kicking and screaming, to FL nirvana. And to top it all, your commanding style is appropriately restrained.

It's unfortunate you get pushback from those solo players who put all commanders in the same bucket. A group which until recently included me, as you know.

[Aravell]

I've seen people bring up egos quite a few times and I don't understand it.

How does someone's ego get inflated by stomping people who clearly don't want to be there and don't know how to play? I feel like that's the equivalent of getting an ego out of stomping passive bots in a MOBA.

I honestly don't see the fun of lopsided matches. I vastly prefer matches where the points are very close and we run out the clock. Like my favourite matches in ranked CC are those that go on for 30+ minutes because neither team wants to give up and lose.

I personally think that people who give up easily are worse for the mode than premades tbh.