PvP Frontline, same old, nothing new

[Cidel]

There is jadedness because while I can myself deal perfectly fine with premades, it's becoming incredibly harder to actually delete their members because premades for one, do learn, and because deleting their key members (like the tanks) usually involves your team actually participating, else you'll just suicide your wind/meteodrive into nothing. The reason this works less and less is because people have also learned to identify premades better and they just flee immediately and I don't blame them for it. It's very pavlovian in nature: if they die from a full alliance wipe at the first engagement, they will not try again for the remainder of the game. And as said in the OP, the addition of stuff like rampage, rampart, bloodbath etc, not only makes premade players incredibly harder to pin down and kill, but it also gives them tools to facilitate the slaughter by bypassing and even outdoing the progressive AoE nerfs that SE gave to jobs over time (DRG, etc).

So then you're dissatisfied with the general lack of skill or lack of effort of your average NA player? I mean I get it, it's frustrating to be on that team that just stands there, tunnel-visioning when you see an obvious (oftentimes marked) DRK running-up to plunge into a cluster of unaware people whose only reaction is to run the opposite direction and end up dying instead of reactively Guarding or Purifying and surviving the follow-ups. Something like that is completely possible outside of premades anyway though. All it takes is one DRK with a macro and a team that pays attention and can chew gum and walk. As I already stated, that's always going to be a skill issue. People have the tools to mitigate and lessen the impact of it. The problem is most aren't even aware of them.

I'm asking for nothing more to make some research, but the problem is that there is literally zero way for me to do so unless leveling an actual alt on JP worlds, which is too much effort especially considering then I'd have to run a good sample of games to make sure there is different trends that I can notice.
The reason I'm being doubtful about it is because of people's natural tendency to overblow cultural differences as it's been a literally trend on those forums for ages.

You keep asking me for research and to get my own evidence yet I've yet to see anybody actually explain to me how it behaves differently on JP. All I've been told is that they don't have the problem. Then why? What is the meta they do follow? Do they also use AoE doomstacks? If not, then why? What makes it so different as what people claim? Even in the west when you get queue syncs, people don't suddenly change their meta when every team is filled with premades, because it still steamrolls as well as it does, and it also counters itself the best.

While it's not plastered all over about how the JP function in Frontlines, a little searching in places like here or even reddit of all places do have some people providing comments or even detailed insight to how their behaviors out on the JP datacenter works. I'd be happy to give you a quick and dirty rundown of what I've gathered/seen regarding how their side treats Frontlines if you're looking for specifics:

• 1) This is going to be the biggest one, but teams are most often times directed by a single commander/shot-caller. Many times all three teams have one. This person will do everything from alert the team to spawning objectives like mid drones in Secure to directing the team around the map and directing where to attack with macros. The team listens. There's no 3-4 different people all backseat commanding or bickering about it. Nobody whining about a sound macro. At the end of the game, people thank said person for commanding. We see bits and pieces of this on NA, but not as profoundly as on JP games. Because of point #2:
  
• 2) They are very team-oriented. They don't have nearly the same amount of ego as NA has. They do not like sticking-out or causing trouble for others. Everybody queued-up is intending to put in effort. Back when roles used to matter in Frontlines, they would be sure to have a couple healers and a tank in a party. Not stay on 3 BRDs, 3 MCHs, a DRG and maybe a SMN. As I already mentioned, there are no people queuing "just to get tomestones," so the player skill disparity is smaller. If you are identified as being disruptive or trying to hide, you'll probably get vote-kicked.
  
• 3) Due to points 1 and 2, matches are usually always close. None of these largely helpless blowouts we commonly see on NA; which exists because of both general lethargic and and oftentimes directionless teams of the blind leading the blind. They don't have entire games of both losing teams griefing each other; first place is usually getting constantly pincered.

They absolutely can and do run AoE doomstacks; the difference is they might have to work harder and smarter for it than NA's DRK -> profit meta usually works out. On NA, you plunge-in on DRK with a couple AoE jobs supporting and you'll likely kill at least almost a full party-worth of people with minimal issues. On JP, unless you're sneaky about it, you'll probably only kill 2-3 people while maybe being bounced-back by attentive enemies with knock-backs or WAR chaining you and other focused cc. And they sure as heck don't take their ball and go home and mentally check-out after seeing 1 DRK draw-in kill a chunk of their team.

Really, you could almost say a lot of the meta NA premades are just replicating what JP regularly practices. The difference seems to be that usually only enough players on one team cares enough to coordinate, so it always stands out when it happens.

I'm sorry, I am not a game designer, I don't have years to work on this, and I'm not paid to do so either. I'm giving feedback of something that I do consider problematic. I do genuinely hope that you're not here like that other forum poster to dismiss anything that doesn't come with a formal essay about the technicality of solutions to bring up to fix the issue, because that's frankly ridiculous. If anything, beware of people that instantly come up with clear, simple and evident solutions. I am also cynical enough not to expect much of it, but then I'd question why you even bother replying or posting in the first place if you're jaded enough not to care anymore at all.

Okay, but the feedback here is sounding a lot like: "my team is bad, I want a system that dumbs down everything so when we face a team that is good, there's less skill expression for them to outplay us with." Hyperbolic, yes, but after the bare minimum of what I just described on JP server Frontlines, the defining problem is oftentimes just "PEBCAK." Which is why I am trying to explain that the cultural differences in how JP behave in Frontlines as opposed to NA causes this perceived belief that the mode is fundamentally flawed (which it can be in other areas) when it actually boils down to skill differences.

So really, what's your feedback? DRK draw-in is oppressive? There's already threads for that (though I'd like to point-out they haven't changed that aspect about DRK this entire time). There's too many AoEs? Yeah, fair, maybe there is. People die too quickly? Can probably blame the existence of Guard, stacks of self-heals and elixirs on-demand for that. To be honest, any feedback approaching that got drowned-out by the all the talk and jabs at premades, tryhards and veterans. If your feedback isn't just "bitching about premades" then your introductory post itself has a strange way of wording it.