Ideas on Fixing/Improving Frontline - Balance, Map Design, UI/UX, Objectives

[HylianBebop]

Intro: I haven't used the OF in years, but I figured I'd give it a try in an attempt to suggest some changes to Frontline. I know we're on the cusp of big PVP changes in 7.1 and 7.2, but I'm not confident everything will be addressed by the dev team. But, these issues being given more attention could lead to the devs addressing them in the future, so I think it is still a worthwhile effort to discuss them here. I got into Frontline PVP around the end of A Realm Reborn and became a regular starting with Shatter's arrival in Heavensward, so I've played through all iterations of the Frontline maps and all iterations of the PVP toolkit and have played 15,000+ Frontline matches across NA, EU, and JP.

The following issues and suggested fixes will address balance, map designs, and the objectives that contribute to win conditions in each map. In regards to the balance/adjustments, I am keeping in mind that they must first and foremost not break the balance of Crystalline Conflict as it is the dev's primary focus. Though truthfully I wish this was not the case, I tried to remain realistic with these adjustments in order to not disrupt CC's competitive balance. Please note, this only considers Ranked/Casual/Light Party CC in which job stacking is NOT allowed. My adjustments do not take into consideration custom CC matches with job stacking as that is just an unrealistic task to balance around.

This is not a comprehensive list, and I know others will have issues they'd like to see addressed, but I wanted to get the ball rolling. Also, I'm not suggesting any individual skill/tool fix or adjustment, just broad strokes fixes that would apply to all or most jobs, as I feel like these would largely solve the balance issues, whereas small, job specific adjustments (ie delete Salted Earth) are merely symptomatic fixes that do not actually remedy the true cause of the balance issues (some of which are listed below.

[HylianBebop]

1) Cap All AOE based damage to 5 targets, including Limit Breaks

Current Frontline meta favors synchronizing AOE bursts around grouping up enemy teams and disabling their ability to guard/act. This is achieved via stacking abilities like Dark Knight's Salted Earth combined with Reaper or Dancer's LB and then unleashing heavy hitting AOE LBs and skills. By simply stacking up certain jobs you gain a significantly stronger chance of winning than ever, even when all things are equal in terms of player skill level, but the other team has less effective jobs that synergize with this strategy.

Just try to go up against a SCH stack without jobs that can weather their barrage of DOT damage ... There's a reason the meme "book club" exists. Not to mention, stacking DNC/RPR LBs to keep you locked out of taking any actions for upwards of 10-15 seconds, combined with DRK's Salted Earth to group everyone up, and then sending massive AOE damage via DRG LB, SMN LB, usually enhanced by AST LB or the like. It quickly gets out of hand.

By capping AOE damage to 5 targets, you greatly reduce the potency of AOE abilities and reduce the potency of the "Death Ball/Murder Ball" strategy currently employed by strong premades/groups on NA DC, which largely forgoes engaging with objectives in favor of simply running around the map killing as many people as possible. AOE Sync Bursts would still be potent, but they should not be the end all, be all for winning or strategy in any Frontline map.

If capping AOE damage at 5 targets isn't feasible, then a damage scale reduction like the one that exists in PVE currently, for example the one for Afflatus Misery (Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 1,320 for the first enemy, and 50% less for all remaining enemies.) should be applied to all AOE damage abilities (including Limit Breaks) in PVP. Though I would honestly prefer the 5 target cap, I'll take what I can get at this point.

[HylianBebop]

2) Disallow the Stacking of Certain Debuffs/Effects (Or Re-Implement Unique Immunity)
This is quite possibly one of the most broken things possible in Frontline. It is painfully clear many of these types of abilities were never meant to be used back-to-back since you would normally only encounter just 1 of them every CD window in Crystalline Conflict. The biggest offenders are Miracle of Nature, Reaper's Limit Break Tenebrae Lemurum with its Hysteria effect, and Dancer's Limit Break Contradance with its charm effect.

With Miracle of Nature, if you have enough WHM on a side and with proper focus/coordination, it is possible to fully shut down a player or players for an extended period of time that is just simply broken. For all other types of normal crowd control, you can use purify to give yourself a window, but it does not work against Miracle of Nature. This is fine in theory for a single use, but not for multiple uses in a short time frame. This type of chain use was never the intent of the ability since it is designed around a mode where there should only ever be 1 WHM on each team with a 45s CD window. Thus, this problem does not exist in normal Crystalline Conflict play. Yet in Frontline, it's possible to keep a RPR or WAR locked out from anything other than movement for the entire duration of their own Limit Breaks, which are critical parts of their toolkit. Stacking oGCD abilities should not be able to fully negate a Limit Break (IMO, you should have to spend an LB to counter an LB). Simply adding a specific Miracle of Nature resilience that lasts 45 seconds would solve this issue.

As for the more important issue of certain Limit Breaks, getting hit by multiple DNC LBs to keep you locked out of actions for longer than the duration of a single DNC LB should not be possible. Same with RPR and WAR LBs. Similarly, MNK LB should also only go through a single guard + stun. A 2nd MNK LB, while it should deliver damage, within a certain window of time should not break guard or restrict your movement. The window of time is up for debate, but I'd start with a 10 second resilience to each LBs effect. However, using different, unique job LBs in succession would still be possible, so using 1 DNC LB, then using 1 RPR LB, and then 1 WAR LB, etc, etc, would still work. But no more getting chained by multiple DNC LBs or locked down by multiple MNK LBs. And again, like I said in my first bullet point, any AOE LBs should only affect up to 5 targets max.

[HylianBebop]

3) Restore the Pre-6.1 Limit Break System
Several of the above issues would be immediately solved by returning back to the old role-based Limit Breaks. Healers and Tanks would provide party-wide healing and mitigation to survive big bursts, Melee would provide a massive single target damage (encouraging chain Melee LBs on hard-to-kill targets), and Casters/Ranged would provide AOE LBs much like SMN LBS. AOE sync bursts (ie Death Ball/Murder Ball) were still possible pre-6.1, it just didn't happen as frequently each match so that it wasn't such a dominant strategy that it could be largely relied on to win the match rather than being used to win a single objective. It also would restore a bit of the original role identities without reverting back to the old style which the devs stated put too much pressure on healers, in which healing was almost exclusively the responsibility of healers, as well as damage mitigation was largely the responsibility of tanks.

4) Change the Battle High System to Be More Like Soaring
Rival Wings has the right idea for a kill perk system for Frontline, though ironically Soaring/Flying High might actually not be the best fit for Rival Wings. In case you don't know, Soaring, like Battle High, increases your damage and healing potency, but it also increases your LB generation, and most importantly you can't lose your Soaring stacks. However, the iteration of Soaring/Flying High I'd like to see implemented for Frontline would NOT impact LB generation, but you would not lose it upon dying. It should be 20 (200 points max, 5 pts per kill, 2 per assist) stacks shared between your party, and for every 4 stacks (40 pts from any combo of kills/assists), you gain 1 BH level (10% increase to healing/damage). So BH1-5 still exists, but you earn it as a team, it takes more points to achieve each BH level, and you can't lose it.

This reduces the anxiety around dying for newer players, as well as encourages more aggressive fighting rather than playing overly defensive as you won't have to worry about your players risking their BH. It also allows weaker teams to catch up more quickly rather than being bullied into submission and not being able to mount a decent counteroffensive. This would combat the widespread issue on NA DC of 2nd and 3rd place focusing on each other rather than 1st place because they believe the 1st place team is too strong/out of reach. This mentality has led to worse quality matches and in general bad vibes about Frontline/PVP.

[HylianBebop]

5) Improve the UI/UX
The scoreboard change was a nice first step, but the UI/UX of Frontline is still woefully outdated. At the very least, timed objectives need to be more clearly displayed via HUD elements like they are in Rival Wings, and the map elements need to be refined to be closer to how they look in Crystalline Conflict so that you can have an easy to see map element open at all times and not the clunky PVE style map and minimap elements we have now. Also, like CC has a countdown now for the end of the match, there should be an option to enable more prominently displayed or communicated notifications about a team about to win, or time about to expire. I'd say a 2 minute warning for the end of a match, or a team is within 100-200 pts of winning. Also, if 1st place starts to get a lead over say X amount of points over 2nd and 3rd place, there should be some sort of warning encouraging the teams to shift focus.

Also, we need better commander tools. Why can't somebody ping a spot on the map and a visual icon shows up for me immediately rather than having to click the chat box (real fun for controller players, btw). Just look at other contemporary/popular multiplayer games for what elements they use to help teammates communicate without needing voice/typing. Frontline (and FF XIV PVP in general) need to improve on this front.

We need more info in-game, too. Tell me where in-game or on the Lodestone where you can find the point value for any objective in any Frontline map? You can't. Most players can't tell you what any objective is worth, and even veterans like myself struggle at times to do quick math in our heads to figure it out at times when an objective is already capped/being occupied. Or seeing more visually the impact of your player deaths on screen by showing like a -5/-8 flash so newer players get how much a death impacts the score, and vice versa when you're scoring kills. Scoring values need to be more easily and readily communicated to players in the match. This leads into the next point...

6) We Desperately Need a Training Mode with Bots
Listen, we know there are concerns that this could be abused. So here's a simple solution! Disable all rewards for this mode. However, we could really use a training mode with bots to help teach newer players, or simply to allow newer players to jump into the mode in a consequence free zone where they can make mistakes and learn. Or for veterans to try out new jobs to get used to them. And it honestly should be required to go through one of these bot matches before you can even queue into any PVP modes with normal players. If you don't want us to have bot matches as an option, we really need some sort of training mode at least to show players the basics of PVP (ie the shared actions like sprint, guard, recuperate, limit break) and the fundamentals of each mode (like capping objectives/destroying ice in Fronline and what kills/deaths mean score wise).

[HylianBebop]

7) Restore the Third Ramp/Path Option to Side Big Ice in Shatter
The Old Shatter map was not perfect. It was too big, yes, and probably a bit too tall (see a point below for what I'm hinting at). But one thing that is undeniable is that it was designed in a way that better suited a 3-team format than the current iteration of Shatter. This is simply due to one alteration. The removal of the third approach to the side big ices. tl;dr 2v1 (2 teams versus 1 team) is a baked-in come back mechanic in Frontline that has existed since the dawn of the mode. JP was utilizing this in Slaughter/Secure way before we saw it on NA/EU, and it's clear this is the intended way to keep matches close when one team is clearly too stacked.

Unfortunately, the current iteration of Shatter massively reduces the potency of the 2v1 comeback mechanic by removing the extra lane to a crucial objective, as well as another approach point to more equally engage an enemy team with the help of another. While there are some strategies that can still be employed, they are nowhere near as effective as they are in the other maps, which provide ample opportunity for 3-team engagements. Thus, you see the losing teams generally struggle to mount an effective 2v1 push back on the current Shatter map, and thus, you see the most lopsided matches on Shatter nowadays. Beyond being a comeback mechanic, the third lane approach to the side big ice just meant more 3-way engagements in general, which means more fighting over actual objectives, which is something that's currently a big problem in Shatter, where kills matter way more than the ice a lot of the time.

[Sinstrel]

1) Cap All AOE based damage to 5 targets, including Limit Breaks

I've seen this argument a lot on these forums. I understand why, but I think it would be more fun if they just uncapped healing/support from just affecting your own party. It would inadvertently buff a lot of rarely used jobs and allow for a much more diverse meta.

One criticism is that this could potentially make support/heal jobs overpowered. I wasn't around long enough to know if this was actually the case at some point in the history of Frontlines. Perhaps it was and maybe you could share your experiences if that was the case. I'm interested to hear about it.

[Mawlzy]

I think it's telling that we've accepted that FL will never be balanced independently of CC. AoE target caps and similar are a way of finessing a solution, and I support such suggestions. But if the devs refuse to treat FL as a unique mode, I suspect its best hope is to end up covered in sticking plasters. As such it's never going to be very good IMO.

[Aravell]

I disagree with making fall damage non-lethal. Perhaps a damage reduction is fine, like normally lethal falls at 100% HP would drop you to 20% instead.

The reason I think fall damage should remain lethal is because golfing a DRK with invuln up is a valid tactic and one of the few counters against that job, since they still die to fall damage while in invuln.

[Mawlzy]

I disagree with making fall damage non-lethal. Perhaps a damage reduction is fine, like normally lethal falls at 100% HP would drop you to 20% instead.

The reason I think fall damage should remain lethal is because golfing a DRK with invuln up is a valid tactic and one of the few counters against that job, since they still die to fall damage while in invuln.

Agreed, and the current maps don't really make fall damage a major cheese.