Ban premades from frontline, fix all issues

[Valence]

I wish we had NA GMs on EU sometimes. Imagine having an EU GM actually contacting you kek

[Mawlzy]

I assume people refuse to get better because it's socially acceptable by the community to trash on PvP. If it's no longer socially acceptable to throw matches, people will pull up their big boy pants and start trying to win immediately.

Hmmm. I'd suggest on NA there isn't the social cohesion that gives that kind of social pressure enough clout.

I imagine the best one might do is to compel those just there for the rewards to keep their snarky comments to themselves, find better hiding places, and develop more cunning ways of mooching their XP and rewards while still avoiding combat.

If someone has played a couple of dozen matches and they cannot inflict 100k damage, they're simply not trying IMO. The GMs can then issue a warning. Put in more effort over the next X games or serve a suspension.

This may seem antithetical to FFXIV, but in other modes such as raiding, the players do have agency to set a threshold for competency of their team-mates. In FL we don't; only the GMs have that power.

[TofuLove]

Casual players join once a blue moon, get stomped by premades, have a terrible time, don't want to keep playing it. There's no reason to get better at a game mode you don't enjoy upfront. Premades just encourage negative attitudes and low effort from most players who suffer them.

Hm I suppose a lot of regulars would say that it wouldn't change anything - casuals would still get stomped because they don't recognise the movement patterns and bursts. However, I guess that would disingenuous as realistically it wouldn't be as frequent of an occurrence.

It comes down to how we view frontline - is it a competitive mode or casual mode? If it's casual then premade or not - doesn't matter because it's just for fun anyway, right?
This seems to be the direction SE takes it, as wins only have significance for achievements and nothing else really.

However, if it's for just fun and not competitive, then "stomping" shouldn't happen - right? Not being able to react to burst is not fun for casual players - and that's fair enough.
Which makes me think that the biggest issue is how many aoe and cc effects there are in the pvp right now - it's very punishing and very easy to gain kills.
This wasn't as much of a problem in shadowbringers pvp (as far as i can remember).

Battlehigh change of 7.2 kind of countered that, because it's much easier to recover battlehigh, but dying is still not very fun.

[edit]
Another thing to think about is catchup mechanics - LB gauge gain for 3rd place & nerf for 1st place. Is that not significant enough of a boost/nerf to equalise the games to counter stomping?

[Exmo]

The single best thing they can do to mitigate the worst stomping that happens right now is put premades in their own matches.

[TofuLove]

The single best thing they can do to mitigate the worst stomping that happens right now is put premades in their own matches.

That really isn't going to happen though, is it? There are only maybe 2-3 meta premades that see themselves as that at any given time, so it's just something that wouldn't pop outside qsync, which i suppose would be fine.

I think it's worth admitting this is a casual game mode.
How many "premades" are just friends, and how many are meta stacks that figured out that pressing buttons together is just way more efficient? I would imagine they are a minority, no?
It would seem to be an overcorrection to remove ability to queue into a casual mode with friends for majority of players. Especially as the problem is "stomping" and not the innate grouping up.

Surely, the best thing to do for a more competitive game mode that you guys so want is to have solo only ranked queue with it's own rewards, but keep the casual experience casual with grouping up.

p.s.
I would thrive in solo ranked queue environment, so personally I would be all for it. I just think it's disingenuous to say that premades are "the problem", when it's actually just current iteration of skills being so insanely burst focussed.

[Exmo]

That really isn't going to happen though, is it? There are only maybe 2-3 meta premades that see themselves as that at any given time, so it's just something that wouldn't pop outside qsync, which i suppose would be fine.

I think it's worth admitting this is a casual game mode.
How many "premades" are just friends, and how many are meta stacks that figured out that pressing buttons together is just way more efficient? I would imagine they are a minority, no?
It would seem to be an overcorrection to remove ability to queue into a casual mode with friends for majority of players. Especially as the problem is "stomping" and not the innate grouping up.

Surely, the best thing to do for a more competitive game mode that you guys so want is to have solo only ranked queue with it's own rewards, but keep the casual experience casual with grouping up.

p.s.
I would thrive in solo ranked queue environment, so personally I would be all for it. I just think it's disingenuous to say that premades are "the problem", when it's actually just current iteration of skills being so insanely burst focussed.

I'm not making a distinction of causal mode (solo players) vs competitive move (premades). Players who want to buddy up in a premade can still play casually if they wish, they will simply be doing so against other premades.

There's no easy way to identify toxic premades short of collecting battle+log metrics and flexibly searching for patterns. Easier to put all premades in the same bucket.

I disagree that the problem boils down to a current configuration of skills or a meta strategy. The problem is caused by the approach and mentality of some players. You can change the skills of jobs but those players will just find another strategy that allows them to enact their desire to suffocate other players. It's naive to think all we have to do is remove salted earth and those toxic premades will suddenly stop treating all other players outside their premade as NPCs.

[TofuLove]

I'm not making a distinction of causal mode (solo players) vs competitive move (premades). Players who want to buddy up in a premade can still play casually if they wish, they will simply be doing so against other premades.

There's no easy way to identify toxic premades short of collecting battle+log metrics and flexibly searching for patterns. Easier to put all premades in the same bucket.

I disagree that the problem boils down to a current configuration of skills or a meta strategy. The problem is caused by the approach and mentality of some players. You can change the skills of jobs but those players will just find another strategy that allows them to enact their desire to suffocate other players. It's naive to think all we have to do is remove salted earth and those toxic premades will suddenly stop treating all other players outside their premade as NPCs.

I think that competitive mode IS solo mode, surely? The whole point of removing premades as a suggestion is more balanced competition, no? And casual mode is actually the one that allows groups of whatever nature they want to play.

Also, I am not talking about JUST salted. I am talking about overall damage numbers within the game mode and how many aoe and cc skills are there. This is what role actions haven't resolved, but in fact made worse - there is a lot of dps, and our healthbars are only very small.

[Themarvin]

Most premades is now more or less easier to handle, its just for both teams to figure it out and gang on them, it workd every time and the winner will be either of the two teams ganging on the premade.

Here is the thing, Flank King does not work well if you find the trigger PC's and mark them, can easy dodge them so the DRK only pulls 1-2 unlucky playes in... if the other team is smart would just gang on the premade team from behind as PvP is designed to only go in one direction in this game and as soon as their DRK and main targets move to the rear pew pew pew.....

Remarkable enough it does not require alot of cordination to deal with them either... you just drag them out..... if other team comes from the side, just give them the space needed.

It is very nice feeling keeping their so called main players down, make sure you pick up the objectives at the side, as now it is far from all BH and multiple kills.

[Burmecia]

...
do people think murderblender lead by decent caller + enough people actually listening are "friends"?

[Stasya]

Removing Pre-mades doesn't fix anything with balancing, it just makes the game worse when you can't play with your friends.

Dude go play other PVP games with good matchmaking. All this crying about "friends" is a pocket sand for any square enix person reading english forums.

Premades of multiple groups are bad vs randoms. Fix matchmaking by forcing groups vs groups first.

Nobody cares that you want to farm 100 wins for some trash glam or level 25 battle pass. Maybe people like you do RMT for battle pass leveling, that's why you are crying against fair mm?