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

[Wilford111]

how dare people in my mmo pvp play together and coordinate

If you don't want anything to get better and for PVP to continue being a meme, please keep spreading this mentality.

[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).

[jesseleewelch]

I play on aether, where premades are not the problem, stupidity is.

I have seen teams ignore callouts, lose because of it, and equate callouts with spam.
I have seen peeps ignore pinch warnings, drop 100 points in mass death in 10 seconds, then lose the match by less than 50 points in the end.
I have seen teams full of BH5 lose because they weren't paying attention and focused the wrong team.
I have seen people go all in against the 3rd place team over a B rank node whilst giving the lead team an S rank unchallenged.

But the worst is when teams not only blow it, they attempt to argue or talk back.

I could write multiple, lengthy posts about this, but the bottom line is that the stupidity problem is WAY bigger than the premade problem.

[YumieYumiki]

I play on aether, where premades are not the problem, stupidity is.

I have seen teams ignore callouts, lose because of it, and equate callouts with spam.
I have seen peeps ignore pinch warnings, drop 100 points in mass death in 10 seconds, then lose the match by less than 50 points in the end.
I have seen teams full of BH5 lose because they weren't paying attention and focused the wrong team.
I have seen people go all in against the 3rd place team over a B rank node whilst giving the lead team an S rank unchallenged.

But the worst is when teams not only blow it, they attempt to argue or talk back.

I could write multiple, lengthy posts about this, but the bottom line is that the stupidity problem is WAY bigger than the premade problem.

That's not stupidity. Personally I am routinely guilty of all of these, and the reason is I simply cannot care at all about the outcome of a battle in a game mode that has never brought me even one second of fun (when I do it it's just because I need the exp or tomestones)

I don't like zerging, and frontline is all about zerging.
I don't like slippery slope game mechanics, hello battle high
I don't like that initiative is always punished. Stray from the zerg = die. More enemies around than friendlies = die. People spreading all over the place = there is nothing you can don to influence anything.

You have zero personal agency in frontline, and I hate that. (Compare with wow where in most BGs a single rogue can often turn a BG around by sneaking away to cap something poorly defended)

It's a bad game mode, built on top of a bad PvP combat design, built on top of awful netcode. It's bad all the way down. I absolutely don't care about the score, other than "is this thing over soon"

[jesseleewelch]

That's not stupidity. Personally I am routinely guilty of all of these, and the reason is I simply cannot care at all about the outcome of a battle in a game mode that has never brought me even one second of fun (when I do it it's just because I need the exp or tomestones)

I don't like zerging, and frontline is all about zerging.
I don't like slippery slope game mechanics, hello battle high
I don't like that initiative is always punished. Stray from the zerg = die. More enemies around than friendlies = die. People spreading all over the place = there is nothing you can don to influence anything.

You have zero personal agency in frontline, and I hate that. (Compare with wow where in most BGs a single rogue can often turn a BG around by sneaking away to cap something poorly defended)

It's a bad game mode, built on top of a bad PvP combat design, built on top of awful netcode. It's bad all the way down. I absolutely don't care about the score, other than "is this thing over soon"

Sounds like you're part of the problem i was talking about...

[Sunhwapark]

-snip-

It's not a great proposal, but what I would usually do if I want to chill is to visit another data centre and try the FL queue over there to see if the environment is less competitive or filled with more randoms. It's either that or skipping some queues if you happen to know the name of the person/people that seem to be tilting your games. I am not sure if you run many queues in a row, but it may be worth a shot at least.

It's a difficult situation on how to adjust frontlines, since it is easy to get into - but like Valence says, it isn't exactly a spotlight for balancing since it all seems to be Crystalline Conflict based, also the skill gap between roulette queuers and regular PvPers is a bit wide which often leads to a few key players being able to heavily influence the outcome of games. I think things may be better if the entry skill level was improved a bit by guiding players through something like the halls of novice but specifically for PvP where they can learn how to use Crowd Controls, potions and the general way PvP's battle foundations work since it mostly seems to be a 'keep dying over and over' until it clicks. Of course, such a wish would require investment from SE and I'm a bit doubtful they would be willing to go that far for frontlines at the moment...

[TofuLove]

Regarding PrEmAdEs:
Bravery needs a nerf. You shouldn't be able to cast it on other players.
Gunbbreaker, viper etc stacking is working because of bravery.

On the other hand, i've said it before - we need more premades, to be able to have good "balanced" games... Rather than 1 team dominating the queue.
Saying that - SE sometimes, hilariously, puts all the good players in 1 alliance and it's a stomp fest...

[UkcsAlias]

Your chance of winning IS NOT 33% if you aren't good.

This to me does not sound like a flaw at all, its how it should be. Skill needs to be rewarded.

Other than that, premades are an issue, but thats not the fault of the game. There have been many pvp games that suffered from friends going to a single side and dominating a server. Nearly any pvp game with a high player count in a match in it can suffer from this. Any shooter, rts, or basicly any game that allows people to team up suffers here.

The real problem is that premades arent compensated for in any way. There is absolutely no skill matching going on that tries to compensate. You first of all do need 3 equaly skilled groups of premades in order to be able to get a fair battle, or its going to cause a severe imbalance. Individuals rarely have this problem since they are randomly assigned, and then it realy comes down to how quickly they can organize themselves as a team, which is just a direct skill measurement again.

It just dumps each premade in a separate team, but the strongest one is still having equal allies. Which does give them a significant advantages as they have on average 3 good players more than the rest.

Now inventing a complete ELO system might be a bit excessive for this. But measuring performance acros the last 4 months in winrates can be used here. If the group of 4 has all high winrates, they can decide to force 3 lower winrates into their team, and after that randomly assign the remainders to a team. Can it negatively impact it for them, probably... but if they are that dedicated to winning, they should be focussing on CC for that instead.