Remove Shatter and Secure from the rotation.

[Valence]

The crowd movements don't really matter as an individual, you can single out enemies from crowds and this is partly where the fun comes from. Plus crowds as you mentioned them vary greatly from game to game.
Also the node rng allows diversity.

Hard disagree on Shatter's crowd movements. They're always pretty much the same and following a script.
I haven't played new Secure enough so I will refrain from judging it, but I think it has better potential by offering different avenues even without the rng Seal Rock and Onsal have. It was a lot easier in the older Secure to change one's own patterns depending on where you wanted to go (like Shatter v1.0), but the fact remains that there is a fixed node spawn timer that forces every team into middle movements at regular intervals and forces a certain rigidity at specific times.

[Mawlzy]

I was hoping that Secure would at least allow for skirmishes from smaller groups on the flags, but people will 99% of the time run away/not engage even when they outnumber the opposition. Watching 6 people flee while 2 enemies cap a flag never ceases to be sad, or the amount of times I would jump in to take on 3 people knowing there were 4 right behind me a moment ago only to end up dead as they STOOD THERE A WHOLE 40 SECONDS WAITING FOR THE JUMP PAD TO ACTIVATE made me stop trying to actually fight at flags, and I just treat it as the mount carousal it was clearly intended to be. And then all that waiting to get to mid just to shoot at nodes and drones, whoohoo...

Somehow Secure makes people want to play even less PVP than Shatter, and I didn't think that was possible.

This is why I've given up on Secure. Maybe the map has potential, but it seems to attract the same group of people who do not want to PvP that like Shatter.

The flags are particularly maddening because, once you've flipped one, the buff should allow the defending team to hang onto it with a significant numerical disadvantage.

Instead the enemy winks in the general direction of the flag and everyone runs away.

[Divinemights]

I was hoping that Secure would at least allow for skirmishes from smaller groups on the flags, but people will 99% of the time run away/not engage even when they outnumber the opposition. Watching 6 people flee while 2 enemies cap a flag never ceases to be sad, or the amount of times I would jump in to take on 3 people knowing there were 4 right behind me a moment ago only to end up dead as they STOOD THERE A WHOLE 40 SECONDS WAITING FOR THE JUMP PAD TO ACTIVATE made me stop trying to actually fight at flags, and I just treat it as the mount carousal it was clearly intended to be. And then all that waiting to get to mid just to shoot at nodes and drones, whoohoo...

Somehow Secure makes people want to play even less PVP than Shatter, and I didn't think that was possible.

I don’t think this behavior has anything to do specifically with Secure—it’s just how people tend to act in any mode.
You’ll often see this happen more frequently when 90% of the alliance is made up of ranged jobs.
These backline players are much more likely to abandon melee teammates who are already engaged in combat and immediately chase the next objective as soon as it appears.
After playing over 20,000 Frontline matches, I’ve come to use this pattern as a reliable indicator of what kind of alliance I’m in.

[Valence]

I was hoping that Secure would at least allow for skirmishes from smaller groups on the flags, but people will 99% of the time run away/not engage even when they outnumber the opposition. Watching 6 people flee while 2 enemies cap a flag never ceases to be sad, or the amount of times I would jump in to take on 3 people knowing there were 4 right behind me a moment ago only to end up dead as they STOOD THERE A WHOLE 40 SECONDS WAITING FOR THE JUMP PAD TO ACTIVATE made me stop trying to actually fight at flags, and I just treat it as the mount carousal it was clearly intended to be. And then all that waiting to get to mid just to shoot at nodes and drones, whoohoo...

Somehow Secure makes people want to play even less PVP than Shatter, and I didn't think that was possible.

I think the jump pads were the worst addition to the mode, and that's what I was afraid of even before they released it. People don't need to commit to the sides anymore. Makes everybody at a jump away from everything, which also encourages zerg blobbing even more.

[jesseleewelch]

Somehow Secure makes people want to play even less PVP than Shatter, and I didn't think that was possible.

I can believe that. I loathe secure. Very often, my team will loiter at mid, long after the mid event is done while the other teams sweep up our outer nodes. This is especially detrimental late game, when the lead team has already left mid, has over 2300 points, and now has 5 outer nodes. Meanwhile, I can't get my team to leave mid at all (damage padders?). I feel like half my Secure matches play out this way.

I don't really have a problem with Shatter or Onsal and Seize (Seal Rock) is actually my favorite. But I would LOVE to see Secure removed from the rotation. Probably won't happen though.

[Atreus]

This is why I've given up on Secure. Maybe the map has potential, but it seems to attract the same group of people who do not want to PvP that like Shatter.

The flags are particularly maddening because, once you've flipped one, the buff should allow the defending team to hang onto it with a significant numerical disadvantage.

Instead the enemy winks in the general direction of the flag and everyone runs away.

I stand by it, the best iteration of Secure was 2.0's release and it was ruined when they added points to kills and extra speed to mounts. Used to be that points were solely from holding points and busting nodes. It basically created a culture where each flag had a group of 8 fighting for it at all times and "deathblobbing" wasn't really a good strat.

[Divinemights]

I can believe that. I loathe secure. Very often, my team will loiter at mid, long after the mid event is done while the other teams sweep up our outer nodes. This is especially detrimental late game, when the lead team has already left mid, has over 2300 points, and now has 5 outer nodes. Meanwhile, I can't get my team to leave mid at all (damage padders?). I feel like half my Secure matches play out this way.

I don't really have a problem with Shatter or Onsal and Seize (Seal Rock) is actually my favorite. But I would LOVE to see Secure removed from the rotation. Probably won't happen though.

In the current EU/NA PvP ecosystem, which is heavily dominated by the Horde Stompede, the scenario you described is largely irrelevant.
This leading team is likely already controlling the Center and maintaining a strong lead in battle high.
The outer node no longer functions as it once did.
It now primarily serves as a mechanic to encourage PvP engagements during Center cooldowns—nothing more.
Capturing the outer node is never detrimental.
What truly matters in this new version is control of the main outpost.
If the enemy team occupies it, your team will suffer significant consequences.

[Divinemights]

I think the jump pads were the worst addition to the mode, and that's what I was afraid of even before they released it. People don't need to commit to the sides anymore. Makes everybody at a jump away from everything, which also encourages zerg blobbing even more.

This also leaves your own primary outpost vulnerable to being captured.
That’s the main reason it now provides an occupation damage buff and is positioned farther from the spawn point.
The 15-second invulnerability on respawn has become largely irrelevant, as it typically expires by the time players reach the main outpost.
If your team is aligned with Horde Stompede, you’ll often see a single enemy player repeatedly capturing main outpost—forcing your entire alliance to scramble between the outer node and main outpost.
This kind of distraction can significantly impact your team's overall score.

[jesseleewelch]

In the current EU/NA PvP ecosystem, which is heavily dominated by the Horde Stompede, the scenario you described is largely irrelevant.
This leading team is likely already controlling the Center and maintaining a strong lead in battle high.
The outer node no longer functions as it once did.
It now primarily serves as a mechanic to encourage PvP engagements during Center cooldowns—nothing more.
Capturing the outer node is never detrimental.
What truly matters in this new version is control of the main outpost.
If the enemy team occupies it, your team will suffer significant consequences.

I'm not entirely sure we are talking about the same game. I am talking about Borderlands Ruins (Secure), the frontlines map. Is that what you are talking about?

If it is late game and lead team holds outer nodes, they will be getting 10 points every 3 seconds or so. 12 if they got 5 outer nodes and so forth. If my team is stuck in a never ending battle at mid that is going nowhere, the lead team can just sit back, sip tea, and laugh at us all the way to the win.

[Valence]

This also leaves your own primary outpost vulnerable to being captured.
That’s the main reason it now provides an occupation damage buff and is positioned farther from the spawn point.
The 15-second invulnerability on respawn has become largely irrelevant, as it typically expires by the time players reach the main outpost.
If your team is aligned with Horde Stompede, you’ll often see a single enemy player repeatedly capturing main outpost—forcing your entire alliance to scramble between the outer node and main outpost.
This kind of distraction can significantly impact your team's overall score.

Perhaps this is what the design intent was, but in reality it doesn't work because of the horde stampede that you mentioned above. There is always people respawning, and unless you want to get bogged down into fighting them one by one as they drip down and draw more and more of them to you, you need serious numbers (light party or above) to seize that outpost and hold it. And then their blob inevitably lands onto your face precisely because even if they're middle, they can just teleport back with the teleporters, or if someone actually smart in their team tells them in chat, they can also just /return and smash you to smitherens, or pincer you between the people coming back and the people respawning or porting back.

In most games when I see an enemy outpost getting captured is when one of the teams/blobs has had free leeway to push all the way to said base without being contested, or being contested by one or two single lone souls that just get into the zerg meatgrinder. Fact of the matter is, they did everything to favor blobs since they increased mount speed in ShB, and doubled down on it after by adding fast movements tools like those new allagan teleporters to make sure people don't miss the action. Guess what happens when you can't miss the action? Just follow the blob.

There is also another thing that tends to feed into this incentive as well, since the map design and mount speeds are just big enablers, and it's that most of the casual pvp base thinks in pve terms (which is very notable in CC questions from newbies: "what is my rotation?" "what is my opener?" "do I keep the GCD rolling?" or when you just see the DNC partnering a BLM). Thinking in pve terms, they just imitate what they know, which is following the blob like in hunt or fate trains for example, or exploratory content. It's what people tend to do in MMOs, and SE is just enabling it.

The thing is, you could already steal the main outpost before with small teams as well while everybody was mid. In fact, it was easier, precisely because the only way to go back in a scramble was through /return, because no teleporters otherwise. Or just jumping down the cliff, which also works well tbh.