Frontline in Recent Time

[potatsdevourer]

Not sure where to rant about this.

Usually I could just enjoy occassional bloodbath in Frontline. Even during Endwalker time (or before role action comes into picture) there would be only one thing that had to be constantly watched out: Dark Knight's Salted Earth.

Nowadays? Good luck scoring anything when out of nowhere certain mass of individuals just jump to you with its high Battle High and on top of that the Rampage.

Guard!

Oh, nevermind. Here comes Dancer's Contradance. Or Reaper's LB.

Everything muddled and 3 minutes in, these same people already at Battle High 5.
Sure we can take 1-2 people off their Battle High, but it is easy to replenish when you just have to tag along.

And when I happen to join along their lethal wagon? Very unsatisfying. PvE is already calculated, movement is like dance steps. You saying that PvP too?

I do love it when the run was so messy on all group, though. Feels like the struggle still means something, unlike the recent development. Feels like fighting is pointless when you will be deleted 5 seconds into battle.

[Exmo]

That's premades for you

[Jeeqbit]

That does happen at first, but eventually you get used to following the herd. As long as you stay with your team you usually won't get ganged. If you feel you're getting gang, time to pop defenses and try to get behind your alliance and use them as a shield. Occasionally, your alliance does nothing to defend you, but usually it initimidates them enough to retreat.

The main time I run ahead as a tank is if I have Hallowed Ground up. I use this to act as bait and push ahead. It's shocking how well this works - just me, on my own, running ahead with Hallowed Ground makes the opposing teams flee in many cases and can motivate my team to then push.

Outside of that I just push ahead slightly with my team roughly by my side ish, maybe me just slightly ahead. That way I can retreat behind them if I'm being ganged, then stun any stragglers that chase so we gang them.

To be completely honest with you, the only thing I don't like in PvP is 1-shot attacks like Samurai has. It comes completely out of nowhere, when I'd otherwise be completely confident of surviving a one-on-one duel with someone, or even a 1vs2.

[Fawkes]

I definitely feel like there's a lot of cheating that happens. Although as a solo-queue player even premades feel like playing against cheaters. But I have seen other players on my team claiming the other team was using some scripts or something.

Maybe the recent heat on the mod scene followed by SE doing nothing about cheaters has emboldened people to cheat more. Like they convinced themselves that "it's fine as long as you don't talk about it" applies to anything and everything.

[Shadygrove]

That's premades for you

With voice chat.

[ChrysOCE]

I definitely feel like there's a lot of cheating that happens. Although as a solo-queue player even premades feel like playing against cheaters. But I have seen other players on my team claiming the other team was using some scripts or something.

Maybe the recent heat on the mod scene followed by SE doing nothing about cheaters has emboldened people to cheat more. Like they convinced themselves that "it's fine as long as you don't talk about it" applies to anything and everything.

Of course the other team is cheating. It definitely wouldn't be when your own team tries to fight an entire alliance in 1s and 2s, feeding them BH points, or fights 2nd/3rd place instead of 1st. Or people stay too long on an engagement and then feed the other team, when they become outnumbered or let the 3rd team accumulate points. Oh how about chasing a team back to their spawn point and then suddenly getting surprised when they become outnumbered and respawners can hit you with their invuln up. Yea, its cheating or premades that does that.

For the OP, if you are dying in 5 seconds of an engagement, sounds like you are pushing in with no support/teammates. Or getting caught out of position. I don't know, use the map and look at what the enemy are doing? if a dancer/reaper is running towards you, are you backing off or are you sitting there oblivious and wondering why you are suddenly getting hit with contra/hysteria?

[Moonlite]

I wouldn't accuse people of cheating. But I have seen a few games where it seems like the same 8 people end up together. They also all end up with 15+ kills. And there is way too much coordination going on for them not to be in chat. But it happens so rare it isn't that big a deal. Or you could have just got unlucky and players on your data centre who are 10+ kill type players all got qued together and it snowballed. SE has no balance for teams.


Now with all of that. If you are in third place and the other team has farmed kills most of the game just block them. As much as people think BH will win games. If third place decides to just block first and allow second to get all the A ranks that spawn at the end of the game, BH won't matter. I have seen a few games where teams have 1000+ points gained from kills and still lose.

[Luluna]

I have done a lot of frontlines over the years and I have seen a big shift over time. I know the players using the plugin for when I target them or go to use my LB as it is just to fast a response and I think to myself yet another person who cannot play and has to cheat lol.

I enjoy FL matches and I try my best but sometimes it is just so annoying to be teamed up with players who are throwing matches and also wtf is is with people standing with huge mounts on where I am running? so I cannot see >.<

The players who just stand at the entrance and throw matches also annoy me and it has become way worse and also the premade issue. I solo que and have to take my chances on who I get. I wish it would go back to being for my GC and not chosen for me. I know there where this also. It would be good if they maybe looked at the rewards and also stricter criteria as some players just do not care.

[Batbrat]

There are people who cheat with plugins, yes. That's a confirmable fact that is very very painfully easy to verify.
So that isn't a question of whether it happens or not, because it does in fact happen and thousands of little yellow school bus riders do it regularly.

That said, I've never actually noticed the people that do this in-game, so I don't think its actually very good for the most part. If you know what you're doing, you can usually outsmart them anyway. Frontlines games almost always come down to formula's. People use the same rotations. You have to both physically look at their attack animations and most importantly, listen to them as well. I'm able to stop most LB's instantly because depending on the job, I can hear when it's starting and interrupt it (some have very small interrupt windows though, so keep that in mind). You also have to generally be able to predict what they're going to do as well, which again, isnt hard when they all do the same thing anyway.

That's because jobs don't actually have that many important skills. Each job is generally going to wait on and use the same maybe 3-4 attacks over and over again. If the best skills aren't up, they run to the back and wait for the cooldown to die. So if it's a drk, right? I know they're going to stall for a bit, and then jump in to pull everyone, do a few attacks with his team, then run to the back again to heal and go back to stalling again. They will not run out again until that cooldown is up, which lets you know ok, by the time I see that drk in the front again, he will again be ready to pull. You gotta put two and two together that way, with all the jobs at once. I say this as the very thing a lot of you hate; The premade player in voice chat. We do the same tricks every time. Notice the pattern, and we're easy to interrupt.

Also as I've said before, it doesnt matter what era of FFXIV it is, Frontlines will always have groups that decimate teams and that's because higher levels of communication. Premades are talking and agreeing on what to do all at once, while the rest of you are just kind of running around aimlessly unsure of what to do and fighting alone despite being with 20 other people. You're not working together, you're not telling each other when to dump attacks, or hide and all ambush. As long as people have friends, there will always be groups that steamroll, because they're actually working together which is the entire point of Frontlines to begin with.

[YumieYumiki]

Frontlines are just a terrible concept with a terrible implementation.

I'll never understand why people (game designers and players both) are so attracted to the concept of massive pvp fights. Do they imagine an epic war scene like in lotr or something?

There is absolutely nothing fun ever about large scale pvp. Your individual actions dont matter. Everything is laggy and unreadable. The only thing that matter is how many more people your team have concentrated in the same place. Going anywhere else than where everyone else is results in death, so initiative is punished.
(At least in wow when you play as rogue in one of the terrible "epic battleground" you can stealth away from the zerg and pick on stragglers)

On top of that the battle high system is a terrible slippery slope system, where people who win are rewarded with additional damage (see this article for a game design perspective about this: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/slip...etual-comeback - no, frontlines aren't one of the exceptional cases where this is a good thing).This eventually tip things into curbstomping territory. Curb stomping isn't fun, even when you are the one doing the curbstomping. I like to feel that my actions matter (i mean really that's the #1 thing i crave from pvp), rather than winning fights because a bonus says so.

Finally the "limit break" system is also crap. I thoroughly dislike ultimates systems, where the game grants you a spectacular i-win button just for putting in time. Again I want to win because I cornered my adversary through clever use of cool downs, not because the game says it's my turn to one shot somebody.