Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[BoneAppleTea]

Skimming the thread has been a little relieving to see some are having common issues with frontlines. In particular salted earth...
Admittedly I'm still pretty new to FF14 PvP, but feels like the design of Dark Knights heavily impacts the game mode way more than it should. I'm having a fun time, overall though.

Regardless I guess it can't heard to dump my own thoughts too so far...

Generally feels like some things in front lines and pvp overall could use some adjusting. Salted earth on its own and as a concept isn't too bad, it's quite similar to what I remember dealing with in some other MMOs like Warhammer's Choppa/Slayer. However I feel like if DRKs can do a draw in AoE action, they

1. shouldn't be able to do it with so little to no risk(their LB in particular)
2. the radius should be trimmed down since they can leap to a target(I think it's silly that you can be yanked back in after a repel shot/leap back)

Although I started off as a BLM and main as Pictomancer, I've been queuing more as bard in FL because the silence/bind helps A LOT when/if it works. That unfortunately isn't always reliable and can be pretty difficult if the team has more than one DRK or uses their LB. Almost feel obligated to do it now since that feels like the best way to generally have a better experience solo.I can't catch them all, but it helps...

One thing I did notice is that there also isn't much of a form of diminishing returns/immunity after being having an affect placed on you. Sometimes it's just wild to me how many times I've been yanked around and I'm unsure if its the server being weird or that there just is no cap or diminishing of CC actions. Highest I've counted so far is 5 times(DRK leaped at me, I repel shot out of their salted earth and got SEed several times by other DRKs in the team).

I don't take FL very seriously and enjoy the chaos of the mode, but it'd be nice to have some things looked into.

[embersolaris]

Skimming the thread has been a little relieving to see some are having common issues with frontlines. In particular salted earth...
Admittedly I'm still pretty new to FF14 PvP, but feels like the design of Dark Knights heavily impacts the game mode way more than it should. I'm having a fun time, overall though.

Regardless I guess it can't heard to dump my own thoughts too so far...

Generally feels like some things in front lines and pvp overall could use some adjusting. Salted earth on its own and as a concept isn't too bad, it's quite similar to what I remember dealing with in some other MMOs like Warhammer's Choppa/Slayer. However I feel like if DRKs can do a draw in AoE action, they

1. shouldn't be able to do it with so little to no risk(their LB in particular)
2. the radius should be trimmed down since they can leap to a target(I think it's silly that you can be yanked back in after a repel shot/leap back)

Although I started off as a BLM and main as Pictomancer, I've been queuing more as bard in FL because the silence/bind helps A LOT when/if it works. That unfortunately isn't always reliable and can be pretty difficult if the team has more than one DRK or uses their LB. Almost feel obligated to do it now since that feels like the best way to generally have a better experience solo.I can't catch them all, but it helps...

One thing I did notice is that there also isn't much of a form of diminishing returns/immunity after being having an affect placed on you. Sometimes it's just wild to me how many times I've been yanked around and I'm unsure if its the server being weird or that there just is no cap or diminishing of CC actions. Highest I've counted so far is 5 times(DRK leaped at me, I repel shot out of their salted earth and got SEed several times by other DRKs in the team).

I don't take FL very seriously and enjoy the chaos of the mode, but it'd be nice to have some things looked into.

Agree with this 100000000000%!!!!

[Commander_Justitia]

Why is salted earth a thing to begin with? Because you can't kill anyone anymore, without being in a group of at least 3+ people, or you would take 5-10min to kill a single player. That is the reality of passive frontline mitigation/damage adjustments and excessive healing and cc abilities for every player.
So you are forced to unleash all your few damage abilities in a single moment, to actually get a kill before people can press their healing and invulnerability buttons.

Their "hold my hands, I don't want to die and don't know how to play and make constant mistakes" emergency buttons, no matter how much you were caught off guard, no matter how skilled your opponent was, high chance you get out alive anyway with them. Unless there are too many opponents at once.

I think going away from the trinity roles tank-healer-damagedealer was a mistake. Why was that done? To improve queue times for the arena mode - Crystal Conflict, as previous The Feast iteration had very slow queue times during some periods. Did frontline have slow queue times? No, not really.
Which makes it clear, you will need a more complex system.
You can't make changes for Crystal Conflict that are good for frontline and vice versa.

What can be done? Customization. Make a tab for frontline skills loadout and another for the arena mode. PvP has dozens of skills that are unused and removed now, bring some back.

Reduce self heal for frontline, it is too much, make it 2-3 charges instead, or give it a regen effect. Make sprint cost 500 MP per tick. Make purify resist draw in effects.
Give tanks aoe mitigation and utility in frontline that are on a higher cooldown. Like Paladins Limit Break 33% mitigation buff would be great if it could be used without using Limit Break. Like so many other skills that have double or triple effects. You want to bind someone as redmage? Well, you gotta use one of your highest hitting damage ability for that. It makes no sense.
You are on samurai and need a defensive ability, great, let us use Chiten - but oh wait, it inflicts a vulnerability debuff of massive 25% on your enemy, so it is actually an offensive skill, one that is very important for when you need to burst. Well, you can't now, be useless instead.

It is a hot mess of numbers floating around that can't really be used smartly. Let us play smart...

Stop being afraid of your playerbase being too newbie to click 2-3 more skills, while you bring out PvE content or casual minigames that are way more difficult to play than PvP in its current iteration.

Also add something like teleport tickets or dyes for wolfmarks. Consumables. Or let me buy Timeworn Artifacts for the lvl80 relic for 1000 Crystal Trophys, because that step is still cancer.(We used to be able to grind relic light in frontline, so it wouldn't be a new concept)
Or let us invest trophy crystal to upgrade the abandoned PvP rank further past 50, enabling you to buy past series rewards or PvP themed mounts. So you reach rank 75 or 100, you get a PvP wolf mount or some commander general glam or even skills or traits for those ranks. Or even a special icon next to your name indicating your rank tier. You can even create a matchmaking system depending on peoples tier then.
Frontline is not competitive after all. It doesn't have a ranked mode. It can be allowed to be more creative. If you ONLY would split it from the arena mode of PvP in this game.

[Bobby66]

Wait i am confused say they add an MMR system with such a small population of players wouldn’t that just put people of a certain mmr on the same team. Or are you looking to make an MMR system that mixes teams but does FFXIV even have the population to do that on a large scale? Maybe if it was 8v8v8 but premade would still wreck in smaller formats maybe even more so. Look at any other game with a smaller pop that has PvP and see how premade wreck. Look at tor. Maybe if they add a bot system it could work idk.

[Mawlzy]

Wait i am confused say they add an MMR system with such a small population of players wouldn’t that just put people of a certain mmr on the same team. Or are you looking to make an MMR system that mixes teams but does FFXIV even have the population to do that on a large scale? Maybe if it was 8v8v8 but premade would still wreck in smaller formats maybe even more so. Look at any other game with a smaller pop that has PvP and see how premade wreck. Look at tor. Maybe if they add a bot system it could work idk.

I'm looking for any system that separates PvP sprouts and AFKers into a bottom tier and the tryhards into a top tier. This reflects the fact that the complaints in this thread are mostly generated by a dislike from serious players having to endure players who invest zero effort, along with the fact that there's a solid, committed middle of solo players who dislike the oppressive, one-dimensional playstyle of premades.

Honestly I suspect this will backfire on me personally because I might creep into the top third and get landed on the same team as the premades I so dislike. That said, with a team of competent players, the negative impacts of premades are vastly reduced.

Just banning party queueing is a simpler solution, but despite the way I am painted, I am actually trying to accommodate all playstyles.

Contrast this to the steady stream of premade members coming in here telling us "this is fine." Ironic given the thread's title and number of pages. Premades may enjoy eating cold porridge. Okay. Just don't force it on the rest of us.

[Bobby66]

I'm looking for any system that separates PvP sprouts and AFKers into a bottom tier and the tryhards into a top tier. This reflects the fact that the complaints in this thread are mostly generated by a dislike from serious players having to endure players who invest zero effort, along with the fact that there's a solid, committed middle of solo players who dislike the oppressive, one-dimensional playstyle of premades.

Honestly I suspect this will backfire on me personally because I might creep into the top third and get landed on the same team as the premades I so dislike. That said, with a team of competent players, the negative impacts of premades are vastly reduced.

Just banning party queueing is a simpler solution, but despite the way I am painted, I am actually trying to accommodate all playstyles.

Contrast this to the steady stream of premade members coming in here telling us "this is fine." Ironic given the thread's title and number of pages. Premades may enjoy eating cold porridge. Okay. Just don't force it on the rest of us.

Question is does the "top tier" have enough players to sustain competitive matches, or is your goal to just put all the people with low MMR on the same team so they get steamrolled? More or less making a high MMR pseudo premade on the other team? I just don't see what problem you solve with an MMR system. It seems like it would create more problems imo.

Unless you think new players should have a harder time in PvP and earn their way to better teammates.

As for you point about with a team of competent players the negative impacts of premades are vastly reduced. This is true, but does FFXIV pvp even have enough competent players to evenly split at the very least among two teams? or will the system split them or try to split evenly among all three while also spreading out the low MMR players among the three teams? This is what confuses me, correct me if I am mistaking but as stated wouldn't your system just unfairly treat new players by putting them on the low mmr team verse the higher mmr teams?

[Mawlzy]

Question is does the "top tier" have enough players to sustain competitive matches, or is your goal to just put all the people with low MMR on the same team so they get steamrolled? More or less making a high MMR pseudo premade on the other team? I just don't see what problem you solve with an MMR system. It seems like it would create more problems imo.

Unless you think new players should have a harder time in PvP and earn their way to better teammates.

As for you point about with a team of competent players the negative impacts of premades are vastly reduced. This is true, but does FFXIV pvp even have enough competent players to evenly split at the very least among two teams? or will the system split them or try to split evenly among all three while also spreading out the low MMR players among the three teams? This is what confuses me, correct me if I am mistaking but as stated wouldn't your system just unfairly treat new players by putting them on the low mmr team verse the higher mmr teams?

The idea is that new players and low win-rate players would be in the same tier. They would play against other new players and low win-rate players. This would mean sprouts would start off not running into curbstomping premades and would have a chance to enjoy the mode and improve, rather than the current situation where they get smashed into oblivion.

Similarly, high win-rate players would be placed in teams that face off against other high win-rate players. Since those who play in premades have outrageous win-rates, this would filter them all into the top tier where they would play each other. This is precisely what Olivia et al claim to want. High-quality matches a la JP. If true, they should support this proposal.

This strikes me as a fairly standard method used by PvP in other games to ensure players are pitted against others of comparable skill. League springs to mind. I wouldn't regard it as a ladder that needs to be climbed, although it's fine if some choose to do so. Just a method of creating more balanced and competitive matches.

I have no doubt members of the Discord Mafia will find some way of abusing the system. That's what they do. But the general principle is that FL currently includes players of massively different skill levels, either because they are new, don't give a rat's-synonym-for-a-donkey, or at the other end of the scale will go to any lengths to maximize wins. I can't think of another game in which the "fun, casual, entry-level" PvP mode expects sprouts to contend with meta-stacks comprised of players with nosebleed win-rates and 10k+ matches of experience.

The current system dooms the majority of players to endure porridge that is either too hot or too cold. I want it changed.

[Bobby66]

The idea is that new players and low win-rate players would be in the same tier. They would play against other new players and low win-rate players. This would mean sprouts would start off not running into curbstomping premades and would have a chance to enjoy the mode and improve, rather than the current situation where they get smashed into oblivion.

Similarly, high win-rate players would be placed in teams that face off against other high win-rate players. Since those who play in premades have outrageous win-rates, this would filter them all into the top tier where they would play each other. This is precisely what Olivia et al claim to want. High-quality matches a la JP. If true, they should support this proposal.

This strikes me as a fairly standard method used by PvP in other games to ensure players are pitted against others of comparable skill. League springs to mind. I wouldn't regard it as a ladder that needs to be climbed, although it's fine if some choose to do so. Just a method of creating more balanced and competitive matches.

I have no doubt members of the Discord Mafia will find some way of abusing the system. That's what they do. But the general principle is that FL currently includes players of massively different skill levels, either because they are new, don't give a rat's-synonym-for-a-donkey, or at the other end of the scale will go to any lengths to maximize wins. I can't think of another game in which the "fun, casual, entry-level" PvP mode expects sprouts to contend with meta-stacks comprised of players with nosebleed win-rates and 10k+ matches of experience.

The current system dooms the majority of players to endure porridge that is either too hot or too cold. I want it changed.

Maybe things are different are your DC, but I play on dynamis with friends at times we really only have one match going at a time. Unless what you are suggesting with your change they also make PvP cross DC. Then maybe then it could work, but without that change I do not see this working, maybe on a more populated DC it may work.

[Sinstrel]

Even on Aether (arguably the one of the most populated DC) there are only 2+ games going at once. Any MMR system would likely make games impossible to find for anything other than the most bottom tier ratings. Since everyone else would be waiting hours for a match I could see that leading to people creating alts just to play Frontlines, intentionally throwing matches so they can get faster ques, etc.

I also think folks are grossly overestimating the amount of pre-made teams there are each game. Unless we are referring to pre-made = any player queing in with friends, I've always thought of pre-made being an organized team of players queing in with the explicit intention to win. If we are referring to the latter, I find it hard to believe there are more than 2 of these in any one game at least on my Data Center of Aether. And I can tell you from over 5k games of experience that pre-made is nothing without a commander, having a commander that your alliance trusts is the main force multiplier. If you are losing games because the other team had a commander and yours didn't... well that isn't a pre-made problem. You can put all 2+ pre-mades I mentioned earlier all on the same alliance doing their own thing and they will most likely still lose to the team with the strong commander who que'd up solo.

Each team is supposed to have at least one person stepping up to the plate to command the alliance, this is the way Frontline was intended to be played. Take a look at Frontlines in JP data centers, they have a main commander of the alliance, and 2 sub commanders who shepherd and make sure their 8-man group is following the instructions of the leader, making sure they using the right burst/support/limit break at the right time, etc. Everyone queing up is queing up to actually play and try to win and each player is held accountable in their groups.

This contrasts to the way Aether Frontline is currently, where nobody wants to lead, nobody wants any responsibility, we don't hold anyone accountable, there is most likely no commander, 60+ players have no idea what any of their abilities do and are just here for the exp, tomestones, trophy crystals, series pass xp, and wolf marks. There are probably a plethora of socio-cultural differences between Asia and the West that contribute to this difference.

Bottom line is this: if you want to win, you need to change and/or improve the way you are playing. Through your own actions, set an example that others want to aspire to. Look for the resources, ask questions, try your hand at commanding and don't give up because it was too hard the first 4-5 times you tried it. Stick with it and people will follow you, I guarantee it. Myself and a few others I have seen in this thread came from a time back when even Aether had commanders on all 3 teams and true 8-man pre-mades, those games got really intense and even new players were in awe at how awesome those games could be sometimes. I have seen Olivia command some games and she's been doing a great job. But just know she isn't/wasn't the only one. Before her there was Ash, Naes, Krystin, Beast God, etc. etc. and many many others who decided to step up and start winning. Olivia commanding in this worst iteration of FL should be inspiring to anyone wanting to get into frontline tbh. She's literally put an entire guide out for everyone to learn from, and nearly everything in it is pretty spot on.

[Mawlzy]

Each team is supposed to have at least one person stepping up to the plate to command the alliance, this is the way Frontline was intended to be played.

Really. Source?