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

[Archeron]

The three teams just creates a dynamic where the losing team can throw for whichever team they like. I prefer my matches end with the most skilled team winning the game. That doesn't happen in a 1v1v1 setting. Just look at half the matches on seal rock without premades. North spawn, or South spawn teams get camped and farmed at their spawn points and they're denied the ability to even capture a single node for several minutes that effectively seals their fate in third or second place without the intervention of RNG spawning nodes right at their doorstep. Even Onsal is guilty of this happening as well, though unlike Seal Rock the node spawns are at least loosely balanced and defensible between the teams.

Three way PvP is not a good idea if you care for competitive PvP.

1v1 PvP has always been superior, and if one team is getting slaughtered, they lose the match and it ends quickly for them. There is a reason the vast majority of PvP games are 1v1, not 1v1v1. If you want your comeback in a 1v1 setting you better work for it and not hope that one of the other 2 hostile teams throws for you.

[Gunz_Zbestest]

It would be boring without a 3rd party to pinch other teams and would take away the need for situational awareness. Imagine the dominant team also getting all the nodes on their side. There are fights where the 3rd place team has pulled ahead and won as well. Sometimes it's just bad rng.

[Archeron]

It would be boring without a 3rd party to pinch other teams and would take away the need for situational awareness. Imagine the dominant team also getting all the nodes on their side. There are fights where the 3rd place team has pulled ahead and won as well. Sometimes it's just bad rng.

Bad RNG = Bad map design.

And not often is third going to make a gigantic comeback without aforementioned bad RNG spawning all the nodes ontop of them. It's bad design. 1v1 Also has the potential for comeback when the losing team finally gets together and coordinates properly, I mean overtime exists in CC for a reason.

Frontlines is not competitive and will never be competitive the same way that casual CC will never be as well. Hoping to get anything competitive with a mode filled with casuals players just interested in having casual fun or doing their dailies is a pipe dream. If you want something competitive in XIV, the current and only mode for it is ranked CC, period. They'd need to add a ranked FL mode for it to ever happen.

Seal Rock is a great map in terms of variety when it comes to its layout where no other map even comes close (Seal Rock has small winding corridors, wide open areas, altitudes, promontories, tunnels beneath those). The main problem with Seal Rock is that the spawns and the nodes are not balanced, and it's a real shame.

I'm not against a 1v1 mode in FLs provided the game gives a lot more catch up mechanics to the losing team in order to make up for it, because 1v1v1 does work where I play most of the time, and most of the time the winning team gets attacked by the two others. People just notice the times one team is being dented and make blanket statements out of it.

Frontlines needs to be MORE competitive then it is. Thats why it sucks. Thats why we have useless ice licking casuals who score 100k dmg and die 18 times and it doesn't matter. Thats why premades on NA have been dominating every single match with DRK meta comps. The rewards the same, the gameplay becomes stagnant, and nobody is having fun except the premades slaughtering the dead weight on the 2 opposing teams. A prime example of zero competition was the older versions of revised Shatter. There was literally no incentive to kill other players before they made adjustments, it devolves into a mario party minigame. Casual CC actually does have competitive PvP, far more than Frontlines ever has had. A ranked mode isn't needed to encourage more competition.

If you want Frontlines to be better, you need to put boots to asses to incentivize winning, not just participating. The reward structure of PvP as a whole needs to be revised so RW isn't dead, Ranked CC has participation throughout an entire season, and there is actual effort being put in on the part of ice licking casuals - even if it means they actually have to press a button more than five times so they get their full roulette bonus.

[Foraet]

Frontlines needs to be MORE competitive then it is. Thats why it sucks. Thats why we have useless ice licking casuals who score 100k dmg and die 18 times and it doesn't matter. Thats why premades on NA have been dominating every single match with DRK meta comps. The rewards the same, the gameplay becomes stagnant, and nobody is having fun except the premades slaughtering the dead weight on the 2 opposing teams. A prime example of zero competition was the older versions of revised Shatter. There was literally no incentive to kill other players before they made adjustments, it devolves into a mario party minigame. Casual CC actually does have competitive PvP, far more than Frontlines ever has had. A ranked mode isn't needed to encourage more competition.

Nah, I think that will have the opposite effect. The mode is sustained by casual participation and good rewards. I don't believe for a second they could get the number of participants to sustain back to back matches if they do what you suggest. We barely have a competitive mode now in CC because it always has so many issues. FL is a casual mode and wishing it was anything else is a pipe dream.

I generally think the mode is fun enough early in the day before people start running metas. People are actively trying to win the match, playing the objectives and actually look at the map. The callouts are concise and helpful. I personally feel like my contribution to the game matters. Once the we get later in the day you can see a lot of people just stop trying. Following a DRK train around is not really all that engaging, imho. People falling for obvious pulls over and over and over again. Tons of spam in alliance chat and people constantly complaining about everything. People off doing weird things. Lots of poor sportsmanship. Few looking at the map or checking their flanks. Whole segments of the team not even doing objectives because it's not necessary. It's barely worth playing at that point.

SE just needs to give the mode more attention. They should be constantly tuning it. But they don't because it's practically a throwaway mode in comparison to everything else in the game.

[Mawlzy]

Nah, I think that will have the opposite effect. The mode is sustained by casual participation and good rewards. I don't believe for a second they could get the number of participants to sustain back to back matches if they do what you suggest. We barely have a competitive mode now in CC because it always has so many issues. FL is a casual mode and wishing it was anything else is a pipe dream.

I generally think the mode is fun enough early in the day before people start running metas. People are actively trying to win the match, playing the objectives and actually look at the map. The callouts are concise and helpful. I personally feel like my contribution to the game matters. Once the we get later in the day you can see a lot of people just stop trying. Following a DRK train around is not really all that engaging, imho. People falling for obvious pulls over and over and over again. Tons of spam in alliance chat and people constantly complaining about everything. People off doing weird things. Lots of poor sportsmanship. Few looking at the map or checking their flanks. Whole segments of the team not even doing objectives because it's not necessary. It's barely worth playing at that point.

SE just needs to give the mode more attention. They should be constantly tuning it. But they don't because it's practically a throwaway mode in comparison to everything else in the game.

Things really do deteriorate once the pros show up.

[Archeron]

snip.

Tell me this, should someone who is a dead weight player that does less than 100k dmg, and dies 10+ times get the same reward as the person on their team who killed 5+ people, and dealed 500k of damage/healing to other players? No. They should not. But they do, so why even bother playing to win? Why try? It doesn't matter what happens as long as the match ends and your team hasn't kicked you out.

The quality of matches on NA is overall poor, with or without the Meta stomping premades. Go to any DC where people actually try to win and the experience is better. JP teams are always highly coordinated, Aether has slowly had randoms figure out how to counter the DRK meta. I had a team of randoms win against a DRK meta team, and a SCH stack. That would literally never happen on Dynamis/Crystal, maybe rarely on Primal. I can slaughter a lot of people on those weaker DC's, but its not rewarding, and it's not fun. I want a real challenge not pushovers. I'm not one to defend the DRK premades either, especially not the ones with elitist attitudes, but they only exist because they can feast off dead weight players who repeatedly fall into that trap, and if people aren't going to learn how to deal with them, there will just be a new meta that takes over when DRK has it's inevitable rework, and everyone will be whining about what comes next. Tuning is only half the battle if the community isn't making use of the tools they already have. There needs to be performance incentives, not just a participation ribbon. If player counts drop, then cut the teams in half. That would also alleviate AoE concerns. I don't want people on my team who don't really want to be there, and won't contribute anything meaningful to the team anyway.

The reason Ranked CC is barely popping is because there is nothing to work towards. Do you want the ugly Commendation Crystal Weapons? No? Well why even bother with ranked at all? There is no reason to do it more than once. If there were a sexy, exclusive gear set, or mounts, or titles locked behind ranked PvP, I guarantee you Ranked CC would be far more active than it is. Since there is no incentive, and people still want comeptitive matches for fun, you still seem them queueing into Casual CC every single day. Rival Wings suffers from the same problem of there being no reason to even queue for it, as well as nobody having any clue what they're supposed to be doing, because the introduction to PvP as a whole sucks absolute balls and is probably the leading cause behind most people refusing to even engage in PvP.

I don't know about anyone else, but if there are poor sports, or whining crybabies on my team, and they're in my party I'm going to initiate vote kicks on them, and everyone else probably should too. Nobody has time for people with shitty attitudes on their team. The trash needs to be taken out sometimes or it gets smelly.

[Mawlzy]

snip

Any performance-based approach eliminating lethargic play is going to have to be really drastic to have an impact on the current freeloaders. Like setting a threshold of Dmg or Assists that has to be crossed to get any XP, for example. I'd be fine with that, but that's so contrary to SQEX's approach it's just never gonna happen.

[Valence]

Bad RNG = Bad map design.

And not often is third going to make a gigantic comeback without aforementioned bad RNG spawning all the nodes ontop of them. It's bad design. 1v1 Also has the potential for comeback when the losing team finally gets together and coordinates properly, I mean overtime exists in CC for a reason.



Frontlines needs to be MORE competitive then it is. Thats why it sucks. Thats why we have useless ice licking casuals who score 100k dmg and die 18 times and it doesn't matter. Thats why premades on NA have been dominating every single match with DRK meta comps. The rewards the same, the gameplay becomes stagnant, and nobody is having fun except the premades slaughtering the dead weight on the 2 opposing teams. A prime example of zero competition was the older versions of revised Shatter. There was literally no incentive to kill other players before they made adjustments, it devolves into a mario party minigame. Casual CC actually does have competitive PvP, far more than Frontlines ever has had. A ranked mode isn't needed to encourage more competition.

If you want Frontlines to be better, you need to put boots to asses to incentivize winning, not just participating. The reward structure of PvP as a whole needs to be revised so RW isn't dead, Ranked CC has participation throughout an entire season, and there is actual effort being put in on the part of ice licking casuals - even if it means they actually have to press a button more than five times so they get their full roulette bonus.

I never talked about ice licking, which is a whole different story altogether. You mentioned competitive, and perhaps we have different definitions of it, but even casual CC is not. There is no competition in there. No matter how you make FL more or less hardcore than it is, it will never be competitive.

I'm all for ice licking to be permanently removed from the game. I'm all to have systems that encourage actual pvp to happen. I'm all to have bad rng spawns to be fixed (but at least those are still infinitely better than static objective maps). I do not know what kind of rewards you'd like to give more incentive for victory though. We already have differently drastic xp rewards depending on the place achieved at the end of the game, and same for mogtomes currently. Perhaps more? But to what point exactly? How much is more?

I generally think the mode is fun enough early in the day before people start running metas. People are actively trying to win the match, playing the objectives and actually look at the map. The callouts are concise and helpful. I personally feel like my contribution to the game matters. Once the we get later in the day you can see a lot of people just stop trying. Following a DRK train around is not really all that engaging, imho. People falling for obvious pulls over and over and over again. Tons of spam in alliance chat and people constantly complaining about everything. People off doing weird things. Lots of poor sportsmanship. Few looking at the map or checking their flanks. Whole segments of the team not even doing objectives because it's not necessary. It's barely worth playing at that point.

Not gonna lie I haven't played on NA since late SB since I moved over to EU, but reading about NA sure is wild. The FLs I get at any time of the day are just different. Not full of skill or anything, just different. People follow objectives and go for flanks or the winning team. Especially during mogtome events.

[SeaJae]

You mentioned competitive, and perhaps we have different definitions of it, but even casual CC is not. There is no competition in there. No matter how you make FL more or less hardcore than it is, it will never be competitive.

Yes. I would say that these "definitions" are indeed different. If you don't consider any game that is PvP "competitive" in nature, regardless of casual or not... that is actually just definitionally incorrect.