Frontlines 7.1

[Akimitsu]

With this thread I would like to get the opinion of others regarding how FL plays now compared to how it did prior to 7.1, as well as provide some feedback.

The general feeling is negative for multiple reasons. I understand the will to shake things up and make things fresh again but I don't think people were complaining about job balancing before, so why even change some of them so drastically and turn them into shell of themselves or clunky messes?
Let's consider the main issue people had regarding FL; the DRK meta. While salted earth should have never been considered an issue in itself (rather, it promoted team play), a lot of things revolving around it made it very dominating in Frontlines and should have been adressed before. The issue had multiple solutions that could have worked on their own; nerf the radius of salted earth, cap the number of targets it could pull, remove guardbreak mechanics, implement diminishing returns so you wouldn't get pulled multiple times, give dashes to some classes who struggled with mobility so they could escape... You had 2 years to adress all this, and 4 months of preseason, but instead you implemented the current mess at the start of a new CC season?

If I had to give my own opinion, the biggest issue in FL was the scaling of MCH limit break with battle high (the HP pool of some ranged being nearly equal to the full damage of their LB alone with BH5), the absence of diminishing returns + purify not nullifying KB and pull, and the Guardbreak LBs (It's not good pvp to be rendered unable to do anything, in FL or CC), and instant death LBs (SAM/NIN).

I'm not going to comment further on this because it's barely an issue anymore but I wanted to insist on the fact that aside from the DRK meta, most people were happy with Frontlines and could have fun in it.

While some things could have simply been fixed, some skills revamped, some added as follow ups to already existing ones, a lot of jobs now have a very different gameplay that really doesn't feel good in FL, both because of the new hit detection system and the new skills. The overabundance of crowd control has become absurd, and despite this increase the duration of purify has been reduced…
The pace is also rather different now, and while I would very much like to try the current FL with the previous hit detection, I feel like the damage we deal would still be underwhelming because of the HP and defense increases. There really is no satisfaction dealing sub 10k damage with most skills (without BH).
This is a point that should also be taken into consideration when adjusting jobs; a lot of the most enthusiastic FL players play to challenge themselves to either do a very high amount of damage or rack a maximum of kills. When you nerf the individual impact of players, you create a very casual pvp audience and NA data centers certainly don't need more people who are "only here for their quick xp regardless of the outcome of the match".

[Mawlzy]

It does feel like the players have provided consistent and detailed feedback about FL over the last couple of years, and the changes the devs made are completely decoupled from the feedback we provided. Poor customer service at the very least.

[Teno]

Frontlines feels extremely sluggish and disconnected now, particularly because of how delayed attacks are and feel with this many people. They removed a bunch of cc options to single out a target and people are even tankier. Snapshot + Delay means that trying to optimize aoe feels bad too.

Overall less skill expression and even more basic zerg dps ball.

Some classes have become pretty good duelists so going for isolated 1v1-3 is ok, but then it's not really the point of FL.

Probably the worst iteration it's ever been in large part due to the hit detection.

[IDontPetLalas]

I'm just going to address a couple of OP's points - (1) most people were happy with Frontlines and could have fun with it"- highly subjective, I could point to quite a few people who weren't happy with the prior iteration for quite a few reasons. In any case, there were good points with the prior version, but I could point to a very, very long list of improvements that could have been made.

(2) Your concluding that"a lot of the most enthusiastic FL players play to challenge themselves to either do a very high amount of damage or rack a maximum of kills. When you nerf the individual impact of players, you create a very casual pvp audience and NA data centers certainly don't need more people who are "only here for their quick xp regardless of the outcome of the match". " OK, who doesn't want to rack up kills? However how do you conclude that the changes to FL are going to lead to people going to the complete oppposte end of the spectrum, "just here for XP" mindset? If someone is just there for the ultra-high dopamine rush, why would they even be doing FL in the first place- I'm asking honestly- it wouldn't the game I would seek out for PvP. I don't see it happening.

[Akimitsu]

snip

1: I terms of job balancing I can assure you it was mostly ok (and no previous pvp iteration had achieved this level of balance), SAM/BRD/SGE could have used a buff or some changes imo but taken separately, things were balanced. If you're refering to the gameplay of the different Frontline modes, this is another issue entirely, which I haven't even talked about in the op.

2: Are we playing the same game? 95% of players in FL are there for their daily roulette and couldn't give a damn about their performance in a match. Sure they want kills but they certainly don't care about the most efficient way to achieve it, or getting better. Having played all iterations of pvp and Frontlines, every new one made FL more casual in a bad way, for various reasons. All of the successive pvp iterations had 1 thing in common; the gradual reduction of individual skill impact.

If someone is just there for the ultra-high dopamine rush, why would they even be doing FL in the first place

What kind of question even is that? People play the pvp mode they enjoy, I don't like CC, I play FL.

[Mawlzy]

(2) Your concluding that"a lot of the most enthusiastic FL players play to challenge themselves to either do a very high amount of damage or rack a maximum of kills. When you nerf the individual impact of players, you create a very casual pvp audience and NA data centers certainly don't need more people who are "only here for their quick xp regardless of the outcome of the match". " OK, who doesn't want to rack up kills? However how do you conclude that the changes to FL are going to lead to people going to the complete oppposte end of the spectrum, "just here for XP" mindset? If someone is just there for the ultra-high dopamine rush, why would they even be doing FL in the first place- I'm asking honestly- it wouldn't the game I would seek out for PvP. I don't see it happening.

I think there is a subset of players who like FL because they can kill so many players at once in a premade. gidsonBrand has stated as much. I don't understand it at all, partly because in any game I play I'm trying to win rather than pad. I think it's conceivable that with skill expression being diluted by the current... situation... the XP-motivated crowd may become a larger contingent in matches, simply because people who enjoy responsive PvP quit FL and 14 for other games.

[IDontPetLalas]

I think there is a subset of players who like FL because they can kill so many players at once in a premade. gidsonBrand has stated as much. I don't understand it at all, partly because in any game I play I'm trying to win rather than pad. I think it's conceivable that with skill expression being diluted by the current... situation... the XP-motivated crowd may become a larger contingent in matches, simply because people who enjoy responsive PvP quit FL and 14 for other games.

I believe that this is a fair assessment, however I'm still kind of scratching my head over this because I've never found PvP in FL to be responsive in comparison to other games. I've done my best , but it's just never really felt good. My be due partially to my location, perhaps other people are more fortunate.

[IDontPetLalas]

1: I terms of job balancing I can assure you it was mostly ok (and no previous pvp iteration had achieved this level of balance), SAM/BRD/SGE could have used a buff or some changes imo but taken separately, things were balanced. If you're refering to the gameplay of the different Frontline modes, this is another issue entirely, which I haven't even talked about in the op.

2: Are we playing the same game? 95% of players in FL are there for their daily roulette and couldn't give a damn about their performance in a match. Sure they want kills but they certainly don't care about the most efficient way to achieve it, or getting better. Having played all iterations of pvp and Frontlines, every new one made FL more casual in a bad way, for various reasons. All of the successive pvp iterations had 1 thing in common; the gradual reduction of individual skill impact.
What kind of question even is that? People play the pvp mode they enjoy, I don't like CC, I play FL.

It's not a question- it's an observation - PvP is not part of the game's core design, it isn't well supported, FL barely gets any attention from the dev team- there's nothing to stop someone who is extremely competitive and extremely skilled at PvP from being in FL, but wouldn't other games being both more interesting and challenging? That's my point. By the way- I am not saying that FL does not deserve more attention from the dev team, nor am I in any way telling anyone what they should or should not be doing.

[Mawlzy]

I believe that this is a fair assessment, however I'm still kind of scratching my head over this because I've never found PvP in FL to be responsive in comparison to other games. I've done my best , but it's just never really felt good. My be due partially to my location, perhaps other people are more fortunate.

Understood, it's always been somewhat janky for known reasons. My guess is the latest iteration makes skill application more random, but honestly it could just be we're not working around the problems effectively yet. I'm fairly close to the NA servers and... ick.

I'm wondering if the devs have decided that the solution to bad netcode-related response is to build in additional delay to wash out the intrinsic problem with an extrinsic one. If so, oopsie.

[Valence]

I'm not sure I would call a lopsided design where everything is built around DRK centric stacks, "balanced". That is a strange choice of words to me.