Please Remove/Limit Premades Parties in Frontlines (or nerf DRK/WAR)

[Inue]

while grinding out the current series i have had the unfortunately experience of encountering the same copy/paste premade over and over in pvp
composed of several people who are clearly sitting in a discord call together, the premades always have a dark knight, warrior, a healer, and usually a dps or two
this is absolutely miserable to play against
why?
it goes like this:

the dark knight uses plunge to jump into a group, salted earth to draw everyone in, then follow up by rampage to deal aoe damage and increase everyones damage taken
the warrior, immediately after salted earth goes off, uses primal rend, dealing extra aoe damage and stunning everyone, doing its massive damage follow-up (primal ruination) and then probably also uses rampage
if people are still alive, which they often arent, the dps, warrior, and dark knight then all spam random stuff, usually aoes, to kill everyone thats left
the healer (almost always a white mage or astrologian), meanwhile, makes killing anyone extremely hard without a highly coordinated effort
as a result, these people instantly kill a group of people with little to zero chance for them to fight back, allowing the premade to farm battle high v almost as soon as the game has begun, such as in the game i was just in where not even a minute went by before "Battle High V has overtaken a member of the Order of the Twin Adder!" got spammed in chat

roughly 70% of games ive done while going from series level 5 to 21 has had a premade team doing this
its the same thing
every
single
time
its just not fun to play against, its almost impossible to play against even, its just a free win button since the points you get from kills, especially once these people get battle high v, highly outweigh the points for objectives
it turns any map into team death match, it completely makes the map objectives irrelevant, and it makes it almost pointless to even try and play unless someone on your team, or another team, has that same premade setup to help kill the other one
ive already seen a handful of people citing this as a reason they wont play frontline, which, seeing as the gamemode requires 72 people to queue for it to even pop, isnt exactly surprising to hear as the queues get longer and longer

i have only three solutions in mind
either remove the ability to queue into frontline with a party (which sucks but it is a solution) or limit such queues to only parties of 2 to try and lower the severity of this premade pubstomp
nerf dark knight (probably by removing the draw-in effect of salted earth or HEAVILY nerfing the draw-ins range) and/or warrior (lower the stuns duration to 1 second or remove it all together)
remove rampage, add in a different role skill (warrior aoe damage with rampage added was already seen by some people as too much, but now with this premade format its just causing issues like this ontop of all that)

[Inue]

anyways, sorry for for complaining so much, i dont want to be a whiner, and i definitely have a skill issue to a degree (im just an okay pvp player at best), but theres not really anything i can do as a solo-queueing bard aside from beg a team of 24 uncoordinated people to try and focus on the 2-5 people sitting in a discord call farming battle high v
i doubt anything will come of this, but i had to at least try to say something
i want to enjoy frontline, ive always been the odd one out amongst friends saying frontline was more fun than CC, but now with this kind of stuff constantly happening its just.. miserable, its not fun, it makes me and others not want to play pvp at all and just pick up the series things when it goes in the rewards shop 2-3 years from now

[Atreus]

Nah. There have been enough threads about this nonsense so I'll keep it quick and we can hopefully move on quickly.

makes killing anyone extremely hard without a highly coordinated effort

That's the point of this entire game's philosophy.

its just a free win button since the points you get from kills, especially once these people get battle high v, highly outweigh the points for objectives

It's "free" because 8 out of 10 people queuing for Frontlines don't give a shit about being there and will feed if it makes their series pass/EXP go faster. So why aren't we having that conversation instead?

not really anything i can do as a solo-queueing bard aside from beg a team of 24 uncoordinated people to try and focus on the 2-5 people sitting in a discord call farming battle high v

Like this, you feel you have to beg people to actually play the game, and yet people coordinating is the problem? Ok.

it makes me and others not want to play pvp at all and just pick up the series things when it goes in the rewards shop 2-3 years from now

If that's peoples' only motivation for queuing up to begin with, then it's really hard for me to take these cries seriously. Literally making my point.

i want to enjoy frontline, ive always been the odd one out amongst friends saying frontline was more fun than CC, but now with this kind of stuff constantly happening its just.. miserable, its not fun

I'm sorry you're not having fun, but yours isn't the only way of playing. Not all people who group up are meta chasers and not everyone's trying to ruin the experience. Taking away their fun for yours ain't it. I'd rather address lethargic play in games and create systems to motivate players to actually try. Then your apparent pubstomp groups won't be any bit as noticeable in this 9 button PvP game.

[ChrysOCE]

There is nothing inherently wrong with pre-mades. Regardless of any other issues, its wild to me that people want to remove a feature that allows up to 4-friends to queue together, or make out that it is bad to do so, in a mmo. And no, I would put leechers and AFKers far FAR ahead of any kind of pre-mades. I've seen pre-mades get beat by alliances banding together and actually using some knowledge and skill to counter them. Feeders and AFKers? If you have too many on your alliance, there is nothing you can do. I would rather deal with pre-mades than that other group of players.

[ThreeBeastSmile]

I've made a couple of responses to similar posts such as these over the last week or so. Once again I'm moved to posit that your agency as a single player is not to be underestimated. Another hallmark seems to be the admission, albeit humble in some respects, that they're "not very good". Yet often times this coincides with an effort level ceiling that prevents them from ever trying to prove that wrong, cuz "I'm just doing it for xp/series/whatever". To say it's "impossible to counter" is claiming striking dummy status. That's simply not the case and you're doing yourself a massive disservice as a person. It might be that you just don't like the content enough, in which case the decision on what to do is obvious, at least imo.

Otherwise? Maybe review just what jobs kits are like (right down to their cd timers), what universal kits offer beyond the instantaneous benefit (e.g. pre-purifying). Maybe consider not playing BRD if you're not particularly attached to it. You could go SAM for that constant scare factor, or MNK to jump their DRK once they motion to commit (or force their healer away). A lot of the time it's a lack of melee presence that makes things unnecessarily awkward. You could also go WHM for their stupidly long range stunning LB or kappa/pig anyone significant that's close enough. Things like that you know? You can do this as a lone unit and have an impact if you just pick a really good time to do it and they aren't expecting a reaction. Complacency is often a glaring weakness of theirs.

Personally I'm not queuing as much these days because I'm quite sick of being plonked into the team where it feels like I'm the only one that wants to be there for combat, once too many times in a row. Secondly, attitudes encountered in general.

[Exmo]

Agreed with OP. I made a thread on this topic a few months back.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ontline-please

Asking other things I argued for premades to be matched only against other premades. The only people who oppose this solution are players who are themselves members of such toxic premades. They rally against any discussion that would change the status quo because they only play FL so they can explicitly stomp other players. They're not interested in balance, sportsmanship or the enjoyment of other players.

So, be prepared to deal with a lot of bad faith arguments and time wasters if you want to discuss solutions to the premade problem.

[Atreus]

The only people who oppose this solution are players who are themselves members of such toxic premades.

So, be prepared to deal with a lot of bad faith arguments and time wasters if you want to discuss solutions to the premade problem.

The comedy writes itself.

[ChrysOCE]

I've made a couple of responses to similar posts such as these over the last week or so. Once again I'm moved to posit that your agency as a single player is not to be underestimated. Another hallmark seems to be the admission, albeit humble in some respects, that they're "not very good". Yet often times this coincides with an effort level ceiling that prevents them from ever trying to prove that wrong, cuz "I'm just doing it for xp/series/whatever". To say it's "impossible to counter" is claiming striking dummy status. That's simply not the case and you're doing yourself a massive disservice as a person. It might be that you just don't like the content enough, in which case the decision on what to do is obvious, at least imo.

Otherwise? Maybe review just what jobs kits are like (right down to their cd timers), what universal kits offer beyond the instantaneous benefit (e.g. pre-purifying). Maybe consider not playing BRD if you're not particularly attached to it. You could go SAM for that constant scare factor, or MNK to jump their DRK once they motion to commit (or force their healer away). A lot of the time it's a lack of melee presence that makes things unnecessarily awkward. You could also go WHM for their stupidly long range stunning LB or kappa/pig anyone significant that's close enough. Things like that you know? You can do this as a lone unit and have an impact if you just pick a really good time to do it and they aren't expecting a reaction. Complacency is often a glaring weakness of theirs.

Personally I'm not queuing as much these days because I'm quite sick of being plonked into the team where it feels like I'm the only one that wants to be there for combat, once too many times in a row. Secondly, attitudes encountered in general.

Agree with all of this (especially the comment about being dropped into a team surrounded by people who don't want to engage in actual pvp, part of why I'm losing interest too, along with RDM changes, Secure etc etc etc).
See a DRK about to dive in? WHM LB and stun them. No LB up? Kappa them as they land or kappa the RPR/DNC/AST. But that requires effort and looking at who is coming towards you and making some decisions around who you should target and what ability you yourself have, that you should use. Or, you know, not standing there like stuffed ducks, while an enemy team runs straight at you.
Too many players look at premades and throw their hands up and go "it's impossible". BS

[Typhun]

Nah, my sole contribution doesn't mean crap. If I'm up against a premade, I've got nothing that's going to counter that and it's just a matter of trying to not end up in 3rd, and if I've got the premade on my side instead, I know they've got the match on lock and I could spam the 1-button for all the difference it'll make to the outcome

This mindset is absolutely wack and self-defeating, any job solo queue can make a huge difference in the outcome of a match. If you see a strong group on the enemy team and you're not confident in being able to shut it down on your current job, you can always swap to monk or reaper and force them to play around you. Hell, even picking a tank and gapclosing to their backlines every time the drk dives in tends to split firepower enough to nullify pulls. Instead of complaining about premades every post, learn to screw with them.

[Atreus]

Nah, my sole contribution doesn't mean crap. If I'm up against a premade, I've got nothing that's going to counter that and it's just a matter of trying to not end up in 3rd, and if I've got the premade on my side instead, I know they've got the match on lock and I could spam the 1-button for all the difference it'll make to the outcome. I've been in over a 1,000 matches and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a premade lose, and each time it seemed like a complete fluke rather than anything that could be considered skill on the part of the other two teams. (Node spawns be wily like that.)

The irony is that premades are the first ones to complain about "lethargy" and yet never stop to consider WHY such a large number of people just don't bother to try once a 4-man stack (or god forbid an 8-man one) takes the field and starts mopping up, or why it's utterly BAFFLING that when the suggestion is made to give them their own queue where they can fight the toughest and most skilled players among themselves they refuse such a gesture.

Either they're a bunch of hardcore players who should be fighting their own kind while leaving the chaff behind, or they actually enjoy slaughtering low-skill players and would hate to be forced into doing otherwise.

You know every time there's a group of 4 on your team or against you? And there's no possibility it could be anything else? And that all of their winrates are what, 90%? And that assumption effectively causes you to start soft throwing?