Is it just me: Frontline

[A-Omega]

I’m at work. I’ll happily post mine soon as I get free time.

[A-Omega]

I’m seeing the confusion in this chat. Everyone is struggling to define “serious”. I’d define serious as extreme effort for success, not simply trying to win. Ie…if you’ve ever done high end raids/Exs, you’ll know there are tons of strategies, exacts in PF descriptions, and harsh punishment for anyone who fails repeatedly. That’s taking the content “serious”. That kinda intensity doesn’t translate to frontline. Making call-outs, setting way markers, or naming targets aren’t a bad thing. You’re trying to direct the masses to secure a W. Taking to “serious” is when you start verbally bashing people in the chat for not following directions. Same goes for casual CC. Nothing more annoying then catching a beating while someone is spamming “hello”, “thanks”, or “nice job”.

Disclaimer. It’s annoying in ranked but you gotta expect it. The general thought is, everyone past gold is there because they know what they’re doing. Repeated failure is more harshly approached because that IS meant to be taken “serious”.

At no point has anyone said you shouldn’t try to win or QB your team. The statement has been…don’t make a casual mode more serious than it’s meant to be.

Another disclaimer. If you have a premade, you control how serious or not serious you play. The only limitation to that is, don’t expect the other alliances to play the same way your premade does. Thats the unfair part of frontline being the only version of its kind.

[Aravell]

I’m seeing the confusion in this chat. Everyone is struggling to define “serious”. I’d define serious as extreme effort for success, not simply trying to win. Ie…if you’ve ever done high end raids/Exs, you’ll know there are tons of strategies, exacts in PF descriptions, and harsh punishment for anyone who fails repeatedly. That’s taking the content “serious”. That kinda intensity doesn’t translate to frontline. Making call-outs, setting way markers, or naming targets aren’t a bad thing. You’re trying to direct the masses to secure a W. Taking to “serious” is when you start verbally bashing people in the chat for not following directions. Same goes for casual CC. Nothing more annoying then catching a beating while someone is spamming “hello”, “thanks”, or “nice job”.

I think most people would define "serious" as being sufficiently prepared before going in. In terms of Frontlines, it would be understanding the map objectives, the ebb and flow of combat, knowing your job and trying your best to win, verbally bashing people isn't "being serious", that's "being unpleasant".

While I agree that you can't expect everyone to be serious enough to sufficiently prepare for a mode where you can just queue up for in a roulette, let's not normalise verbal attacks on others as "just being serious".

[A-Omega]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...mage/12667280/

[A-Omega]

I think most people would define "serious" as being sufficiently prepared before going in. In terms of Frontlines, it would be understanding the map objectives, the ebb and flow of combat, knowing your job and trying your best to win, verbally bashing people isn't "being serious", that's "being unpleasant".

While I agree that you can't expect everyone to be serious enough to sufficiently prepare for a mode where you can just queue up for in a roulette, let's not normalise verbal attacks on others as "just being serious".

While I agree with your definition of serious, it doesn’t translate to frontline. In fact, it helps to prove it isn’t serious simply because most people have no idea what’s going on. The average person shows up for rewards and the fun factor. I don’t see these mythical players who aren’t doing anything everyone keeps mentioning. Everyone plays, they just don’t play well.

I don’t normalize verbal attacks. In the extreme situation where you show up completely unprepared for “serious” content, you most definitely should be prepared for negative reactions. That’s also as rare as the mythical “not playing” frontliner. No one shows up knowing every detail of fights, that’s why practice parties exist. With that being said…if you show up to a clear party and have no idea how to do any mechanics, you purposefully inconvenience others and deserve what you get. That ties into your definition of “serious”. In that space, we play for keeps and expect everyone showing up to have the same energy. That’s also why Ex/Savage/Ultimate have completely separate queue from casual content.

[A-Omega]

You say don’t normalize bashing people yet this post has people doing just that because they believe frontline isn’t casual. “You clearly don’t know how to play” “You have lack of awareness” “you’re a non gamer”…the list goes on and on. That’s exactly the verbal attacks I’m speaking of.

No matter how hard anyone tries to say other wise, frontline isn’t casual content. Casual content is “play at your own pace” by design. You choosing to take it as serious as mid core/high end is a personal choice. There’s no ilvl restrictions. There’s no completion restrictions. There’s separate queue either. Don’t expect anyone to see it that way because it isn’t supposed to be. THAT DOESN’T MEAN PEOPLE ARE JUST STANDING IN THE SPAWN OR DON’T TRY TO WIN. That means we try to win, but winning at frontline isn’t the most important thing. Having fun doing something different from the norm is.

[Vatom]

Lack of awareness can lead people to look at something from a superficial aspect, just as a non-gamer may argue that gaming requires no thought because it's 'just pressing buttons'.

That’s a strawman. I never said CC “holds higher standing” than FL — I said it serves a different purpose. Design intent matters. FL was built with RNG objectives, and extra abilities specifically to make it accessible, chaotic, and casual-friendly. That’s not “ignorance,” that’s literally how the mode was designed.

Complexity doesn’t always equal competitiveness. A board game can be mechanically busy without being an esport. FL is fun because it isn’t CC — pretending otherwise just forces a seriousness onto content that wasn’t made for it.

Secondly, the claim of FL being casual because it contains RNG elements is nonsense. CC maps also contains such elements, for example, the bombs in Volcanic Heart.

Roulette is part of what makes FL casual. Rival wings, CC, Extreme, Savage and Ultimate don’t need roulettes because they’re not designed for casual accessibility. FL, on the other hand, was tied to EXP and roulettes precisely so players who wouldn’t normally touch PvP could still participate. That’s a developer choice, not an accident.

And RNG isn’t the issue by itself — it’s the role RNG plays. In CC, bombs are side mechanics. In FL, objectives like ice or nodes are the main way to score. That’s a fundamental difference. RNG isn’t just “spice” in FL, it’s part of why the mode isn’t structured like a high-stakes competitive match.

Yes. Not to everyone's taste, admittedly. The 1v1v1 setup, in particular, being quite controversial.

Of course, perfect play isn't expected, but it is expected of everyone to try their upmost to win. Sadly, too many players prefer to AFK/emote in base and spam basic attacks while watching YouTube because "I only want exp"

Don't put in zero effort because "it's not that deep" and then complain when you lose to a team who is actively trying.

There’s a big difference between literally AFKing and casually playing objectives. One is griefing, the other is valid play. Let not equate “not playing my way” with “not trying.”
If your miss understanding my stance on this please read the response I have as I do everyone else cause repeating myself is getting bothersome.

As I said, there is no expectation whatsoever for rouletters to play to the same level of veterans or premades.

Why couldn't we have this conversation instead?

[MayuAmakura]

I’m seeing the confusion in this chat. Everyone is struggling to define “serious”. I’d define serious as extreme effort for success, not simply trying to win. Ie…if you’ve ever done high end raids/Exs, you’ll know there are tons of strategies, exacts in PF descriptions, and harsh punishment for anyone who fails repeatedly. That’s taking the content “serious”. That kinda intensity doesn’t translate to frontline. Making call-outs, setting way markers, or naming targets aren’t a bad thing. You’re trying to direct the masses to secure a W. Taking to “serious” is when you start verbally bashing people in the chat for not following directions. Same goes for casual CC. Nothing more annoying then catching a beating while someone is spamming “hello”, “thanks”, or “nice job”.

Disclaimer. It’s annoying in ranked but you gotta expect it. The general thought is, everyone past gold is there because they know what they’re doing. Repeated failure is more harshly approached because that IS meant to be taken “serious”.

Alright here's the thing. Not all people who passed gold have done it because they are smart or good, most of them got it past because of luck and rng. Do you know get it how awful ranked is and how many people don't deserve their ranks? So why this happens?

- There is no demotion in gold / plat, which means hardstuck plat 4 players tend to destroy everyone's games including the wintraders that do it on purpose because they know that there's no demotion.
- A lot of players have more than 600 games played and have overcome gold but doesn't mean they were good, this is just luck.
- So many people can get winning streaks because this game doesn't have enough people in CC. Some people will have 9 games won in a row because enemy team trolls everytime or they constantly get queued up with best players while enemy team unfortunately has the worst comps possible. This is how some of them came to diamond without any issues, heck even crystal.

When I played Crystaline Conflict on my first try in season 9, I came to diamond 1 just because one day I had super easy games where enemy team trolled on purpose. It net me tons of wins even though I didn't deserve that rank and was a bad player. Do you now realize what's happening with this game mode?

Let's not go deeper into the facts that when you have 10-20 same people in queue every day, your chances of rising up are very slim and system tends to put same teams over and over so good luck if that one day you constantly have an anchor in your team and enemy team does not. This leads to queue sniping, class sniping and then general toxicity written on internet about particular person. This whole game mod needs a big rework and more people if it is ever to get serious.

[MayuAmakura]

As for frontlines, major issue is the fact that you can afk or even better, use 3rd party tools to not even do anything and get massive xp and boost your leveling. You get free things just by going in and doing nothing. On top of that we have a bad pvp showcase system THAT DOESN'T TELL anything to new players who decide to join pvp.

You get absolutely no tutorial on where to find your spells, what is a pvp tab, nothing. The tutorial that they have built-in via slides isn't something people will read, they don't care and most close it immediately. This is why you have people who don't know recuperate, potions or limit breaks exist after 2000 games. They are just clueless.

This leads to very bad quality games where in 10 minute match you'll have players that did 16k dps and mostly died around not knowing what to do. Some do it on purpose some genuinely are new and some just never bothered to learn because they are lazy and need fast xp.

It doesn't matter if you're good in pvp or not, fl are just RNG and on top of that you have premades that ruin the fun for everyone. Nobody likes to play against a team that has premades cause this is auto lose for everyone. The 3rd team will most likely do shenanigans where they will collide with you and let prem team win easily. This mostly always happens. Also rng of spawning points where sometimes square will spawn points to already winning team so they can win even harder.

Those guys are easily recognizable in every match. Either by names or the fact that they always move together and play tanks. The best classes right now where they do top dps. You can play something like machinist and do biggest dps and most kills but it won't matter if you are the only one in your team doing something and yes this happens frequently where you are the only one with over 1 million dps.

[Elephantality]

Nobody likes to play against a team that has premades cause this is auto lose for everyone.

This is false. Example, yesterday was Seal Rock. I try to premade for those especially, out of 14 games played, only 4 games won. Coordination is strong, but you can beat it as well. I played a solo game, and chat mentioned enemy team had a premade, we had a rough game, and that team did push us back a bit, but through communication, we were able to win. A tough battle though, though. Premades are not auto-win. Also skill does matter, but the RNG can screw things up. However the PVP mode has much room to improve. For example, we need a better striking dummy room, for example, for 30Y Skills, 40Y, and 50Y.