Why Frontlines is a bad Gamemode

[HeliosDemi]

Hello, this is (hopefully) the only post I make here, but I feel something in particular needs more attention than Sqex has been giving it for years now. Irritatingly, the character limit is 3000 & this whole thing was originally 8000 so I'll be more brief;

Frontlines is supposed to be entry-level PvP instance that players of any skill level can just que into & earn a massive amount of EXP through their daily roulette. As far as the different kinds of maps are concerned (and this is a matter of my opinion), Shatter is the most successful at achieving this, Onsal less so, the other two just suck.

As you may already know if you frequent this mode - it is entirely ruined by Premades running extremely potent tank shells with a significant amount of ranged & bulk support. This is a big problem on the Primal server, though I can't speak for the other data centers aside from Crystal (which is nicer). And the people who engage in running coordinated shells often have alt accounts for the sake of PvP too. Be prepared to lose or suffer if you que solo. Your chance of winning IS NOT 33% if you aren't good. And I say this as someone who does spend time marking problem players so the rest of the team can watch out for them mid-combat.

I want to make this perfectly clear; I'm not talking about commanders who que mostly solo. They help the entire team get a win regardless of their skill lvl. PMs are collectively very good at PvP while engaging in coordinated behavior better than one commander could (while also sometimes being toxic). They're very difficult to break apart even when outnumbered. If you've teammates who don't recognize how to neutralize the threat, they will 100% get steamrolled over and over esp because of their max Battle High. GNB does not take any real damage in these groups, and if they would - PLDs save them for literally free. Have to bust my ass on WAR praying I get a good pull, because that is the only way me and anyone else not part of a sweat clique has even a sliver of a chance at getting a kill on them without instantly exploding.

Here we have a situation where the overall vibe of Frontlines has gotten so sweaty and toxic that literally almost every single match I have qued for in the past weeks on Primal - people effectively stop fighting for the win because they want to dropkick the team that keeps hassling them, more than usual. I've noticed too; I almost never get put on the team with the PMs in solo que, hell - it's happened maybe only once in the past month.

How I know this? There's always that one dude on GNB ONLY on an opposing team who keeps jumping that has massive battle high and is backed by a few people. Probably the same guy who serially jumps when they were playing Monk before the Purify nerf.

And no, I'm not interested in Crystalline Conflict. You're trolling if you're telling me to play CC instead.

[theunhappypotato]

how dare people in my mmo pvp play together and coordinate

[Valence]

I don't see any clear solution for what could be done to alleviate the issue. Stuff isn't exactly balanced for FL already since it's primarily designed for CC, but the way the whole mode is thought out still works within the frame of queue syncs full of premades that know how to counter each other and use synergies offered by the system. The new role actions notably, are extremely strong for some (or outright S tier or broken), and only add up on specific job comps and combos used in the mode, which again, is fine when everybody knows how to play with it in the mode. Of course some roles like tanks are completely batshit especially since the addition of role actions, go figure when you have stuff like rampage/rampart and diabrosis while DPS roles have very little in comparison... Anyway, people will use what's meta, some oddballs like MNK/RPR/DNC can counter it here and there somewhat, and that will work out.

This whole paradigm however completely breaks at the seams when dropped into a daily roulette mode that's filled with players that have no idea how to truly capitalize on the tools at hand. Before role actions were added they were already dying to meta comps from premades of players with actual skill, and now with the addition of role actions that allow the latter to kill whole alliances even better, it's no surprise that it leads to seal clubbing. Pvp solo vets can however deal with it somewhat, and I've been in teams full of vets with no coordination that could punch back and even win at times when flanking the problematic team at the right moment, even though you're still obviously at a disadvantage there. But yes, this is essentially a skill gap issue and I don't know what SE could even do. To give a pve analogy, it's like we took the more intricate battle system of HW in daily roulettes of casual content, but had half the enemies suddenly behave like savage+ encounters (that's essentially what a good premade of players is gonna feel like in terms of difficulty to the casual player).

- Remove role actions that offer synergies to play around? Sure, but at the cost of mechanical and teamplay depth.
- Remove premades? Yeah right, forbid people to play together and have a good time in a MMO.
- Nerf supports? That'd probably be a start. They're also problematic in CC, so that's something both modes have in common. But will that be enough? Probably not.

Somewhere not only FL would really need its own balance beyond simple tweaks on innate DR and LB gen, but perhaps it could benefit from a simplified mode specifically designed for the casual experience (notably on AoE cleave abuse), but that would require to enable a custom or ranked mode for more tryhard players. How would the latter would even pop queues? Idk, probably at the mercy of queue syncing.

Let's also not forget that seal clubbing is not a new problem in FL. In every rework of pvp in XIV, it's been riddled with seal clubbing situations coming from many parameters (no freelance queue at first, full 8 man premades, etc).