Frontlines over coordination Issues

[Mawlzy]

In your opinion, what is an appropriate level of coordination? Your example, to me, sounds like a normal level (we can even argue a minimal level) of coordination. You described a team working together to win a fight.

In my opinion, something is only over-coordination when it hurts your team's chances of winning.

Isn't the issue primarily one of whether the current job skills produce a required level of coordination for max win-rate that is healthy/enjoyable? If you take the approach that win-rate is everything, you form a premade with a meta stack and coordinate. Those who do just that mostly conclude this highly-coordinated approach is jolly good, whereas the rest of us mostly find it tedious.

[Silaryn]

Isn't the issue primarily one of whether the current job skills produce a required level of coordination for max win-rate that is healthy/enjoyable?

This thread was supposed to be bait. The OP of this thread put "over coordination" in the title to bait people into clicking on it. Nobody is going, "oh no, my team is working together too well". I responded to the person I did because I think they are being genuine but who knows, maybe their Fisher is a higher level than OP's and I took the bait. They were talking about jobs working together and the thread title claims to be about coordination so that's what I focused on. "Do these skills when comboed together make the game fun?" is a different question than "Are people working together too much?".

If you take the approach that win-rate is everything, you form a premade with a meta stack and coordinate. Those who do just that mostly conclude this highly-coordinated approach is jolly good, whereas the rest of us mostly find it tedious.

If too much coordination is bad then I would ask you the same question I asked the person I responded to: what is an appropriate level of coordination? Let's assume anything a premade can do, solo q-ers working together can do as well.

Over coordination is when both alliances are ganging up to one alliance(usually with the lowest point), and pointing that out will get you kicked out! It happened to me.

Pinching another team is normal. Ideally it should be 2nd place and 3rd place pinching 1st place but any team can be a victim of it. It is definitely frustrating when you're in 3rd place and it happens to you but there are many reasons that it can occur. Sometimes it's coordinated, like 2nd place needs to farm 3rd place for BH before they can fight 1st place. Sometimes it happens because 2nd place is either colorblind or can't read a scoreboard to save their lives (no coordination). Doesn't make it suck any less though.

[Mawlzy]

If too much coordination is bad then I would ask you the same question I asked the person I responded to: what is an appropriate level of coordination? Let's assume anything a premade can do, solo q-ers working together can do as well.

Your assumption is nonsense, obviously, but setting that aside...

There's nothing wrong with team coordination. The problems arise from the current emphasis on burst and LB coordination and the fact that players in their first match are pitted against players in their 10,000th, the latter typically stalking the field in a highly-effective premade. Add to that your lead DRK dropping a waymarker, and the whole exercise -- even when done "well" in the context of this playstyle -- involves everyone running after the waymarker in a deathball.

That is highly coordinated, and very boring.

Any team PvP mode requires coordination. Unfortunately, the current job skillsets reduce that coordination to a self-appointed commander barking instructions. Rather than headless chickens, this produces chickens tethered together, except on Shatter where they are lemmings.

And before anyone leaps in with "but there are far more interesting strategies on JP..." Sure, no doubt. On NA where half the team is only there for XP, such strategies will never emerge.

tl;dr I agree with your definition of over-coordination within a team being something that hurts the team's chances of winning, although I can't think of an example of how that would happen. My gripe is with the nature of the coordination that arises in the current meta.

[Sinstrel]

What is it about the organization of a pre-made that can't be organized by a commander? Genuine question here. I suppose one could argue voice chat but, having 4-8 people in a discord call becomes more chaotic than organized in my experience.

If it's just one person calling the shots in a voice call... isn't that just the same as using markers and sound effects in-game?

[LibitIncarne]

What is it about the organization of a pre-made that can't be organized by a commander? Genuine question here. I suppose one could argue voice chat but, having 4-8 people in a discord call becomes more chaotic than organized in my experience.

All 4 people have functional braincells and are here to win the game rather than wait for the other 23 people to go do it for them.

[Mawlzy]

What is it about the organization of a pre-made that can't be organized by a commander? Genuine question here. I suppose one could argue voice chat but, having 4-8 people in a discord call becomes more chaotic than organized in my experience.

If it's just one person calling the shots in a voice call... isn't that just the same as using markers and sound effects in-game?

I'd suggest part of it is simply practice. Some of these premades are effectively statics. They play together a lot, develop a common cadence, understand the strategy they will employ, and stack in a specific way. I guess it's possible you occasionally queue in and find 3 players you know well on your team, and you switch jobs to create a pseudo-premade, but if that happens more than 1 match in a 100 I'd be surprised.

As to voice, again it's familiarity with using it in a static. And anything that frees up your fingers is powerful IMO. Moreover, on Aether we're now seeing "silent premades" who coordinate burst via voice and don't even bother to involve their "team-mates" at all. No shotcalls, just the four of them moving in harmony.

The efficacy is also revealed by commanders following the Olivia model who play as DRK shotcaller in a premade. If commanding solo was as effective, I'd imagine more of these commanders would do it. Instead they tell us they are the only competent players on the field. Thus they have to play as a premade because they can't trust the "idiots."

The response immediately before this one is a classic illustration of that precise point. Really nice "community," huh?

[LibitIncarne]

The response immediately before this one is a classic illustration of that precise point. Really nice "community," huh?

What I said was an exaggeration, but it's exactly what they believe.
Given the number of players who have 0 damage at the end of a match, you can't exactly blame them, especially when no-one calls them out in the middle of a match.

This wasn't an issue in 8v8v8 where you could easily see where all of your other party members were, and everyone had more individual power so if one person was sitting around doing nothing People would notice.

[Mawlzy]

What I said was an exaggeration, but it's exactly what they believe.
Given the number of players who have 0 damage at the end of a match, you can't exactly blame them, especially when no-one calls them out in the middle of a match.

This wasn't an issue in 8v8v8 where you could easily see where all of your other party members were, and everyone had more individual power so if one person was sitting around doing nothing People would notice.

The number of players doing 0 damage on Aether is invariably 0. One at most, which I'd like to think is a DC. I agree some players are doing very little to help, but again on Aether they are IMO a minority. I also agree 8v8v8 would be a significant improvement.

[IDontPetLalas]

I'd suggest part of it is simply practice. Some of these premades are effectively statics. They play together a lot, develop a common cadence, understand the strategy they will employ, and stack in a specific way. I guess it's possible you occasionally queue in and find 3 players you know well on your team, and you switch jobs to create a pseudo-premade, but if that happens more than 1 match in a 100 I'd be surprised.

As to voice, again it's familiarity with using it in a static. And anything that frees up your fingers is powerful IMO. Moreover, on Aether we're now seeing "silent premades" who coordinate burst via voice and don't even bother to involve their "team-mates" at all. No shotcalls, just the four of them moving in harmony.

The efficacy is also revealed by commanders following the Olivia model who play as DRK shotcaller in a premade. If commanding solo was as effective, I'd imagine more of these commanders would do it. Instead they tell us they are the only competent players on the field. Thus they have to play as a premade because they can't trust the "idiots."

The response immediately before this one is a classic illustration of that precise point. Really nice "community," huh?

Interesting enough I was in a match recently where the "idiots" self- organized and managed to win the match. Our team didn't have a single tank, and was mostly ranged. If I remember correctly, the whole alliance had one tank - a WAR, whereas at least one of the other alliances had a few DRKs , ASTs, and a couple of DRGs. In our alliance, one person self-designated as the commander and called out a few key commands. Was a a very enjoyable win. Would we have won against a very strong pre-made? Most likely not, however while I agree that there are some people who are lost in FL, categorizing everyone as "idiots" aside from a few known friends is contemptible.

[Mawlzy]

Interesting enough I was in a match recently where the "idiots" self- organized and managed to win the match. Our team didn't have a single tank, and was mostly ranged. If I remember correctly, the whole alliance had one tank - a WAR, whereas at least one of the other alliances had a few DRKs , ASTs, and a couple of DRGs. In our alliance, one person self-designated as the commander and called out a few key commands. Was a a very enjoyable win. Would we have won against a very strong pre-made? Most likely not, however while I agree that there are some people who are lost in FL, categorizing everyone as "idiots" aside from a few known friends is contemptible.

It is indeed, and it's also extremely off-putting to anyone trying to get better who joins a PvP Discord server and discovers how they are perceived by that community.