Hi!
Controversial topic I suppose for a lot of people, but I want to address this as someone who really enjoys this game mode, and would like for the general intensity levels of the game to go up and game quality to go up and skill levels to go up.
Over the period that I played this mode (around 2 years almost every day, chain queueing), I noticed a lot of players who come for EXP via daily roulette "throw" matches, to get it over with quicker - dying or going after 2nd/3rd place to let the 1st place win quicker. This is all just to get EXP rewards and Tomes quicker. There is almost no incentive to try to play better.
As someone who enjoys this game mode, this makes the games really unsatisfactory - it feels like a race to the bottom in terms of level of skill, with no attempt to improve. I suppose the mentality is "Why try, if I don't try - I can get it over with it quicker, get some rewards, and i can do stuff that i actually enjoy, and frontlines are all RNG anyway". The fact that frontlines are only RNG to an extent, and that extent is determined by the ability to actually PVP is sadly overlooked.
There is another subset of players who play regularly and "grief" the friends/enemies that they see. Whilst a bit of friendly competition is good, it sort of creates a situation where if they decide to make someone their target and drive their alliance via calls or just attacking their "friends" - they almost always make themselves 2nd or 3rd place. I see this on Light DC sadly too often.
The only real solution I can see to that is to encourage playing to win. I don't think increasing the rewards for 1st place is enough to discourage bad performance, and would love to see 2nd or 3rd place not get ANY rewards for their participation.
Why now? This wasn't a problem before or was it?
It sort of was a problem for awhile, but unfortunately, PVP community for frontlines on EU is kind of in a rut after the hit detection changes and most "good" players who would try to encourage their team to play to win decided not to play the game leaving the majority of players on the DCs not as experienced in the game mode. So this problem just intensified in the recent months to the point of being ... quite painful to ignore.
Would it really solve the problem?
Possibly. If it encourages playing to win, in the long term it would encourage general population to view the mode as more competitive. Sure, some people will stop queueing frontlines completely, as it wouldn't be a guaranteed way to get EXP or tomes. The only way out of that I see is increasing rewards for winning - new rewards and higher exp/tome gain for win.
p.s.
Do I really think SE will implement this? No, unfortunately I do not. They consistently ignored that this mode exists and treated frontlines as a forgotten child. But I can moan about it on the forums so here I am. The benefit of good pvp scene in an MMO could be a subject of it's own post, but I digress....
Continue reading...
Controversial topic I suppose for a lot of people, but I want to address this as someone who really enjoys this game mode, and would like for the general intensity levels of the game to go up and game quality to go up and skill levels to go up.
Over the period that I played this mode (around 2 years almost every day, chain queueing), I noticed a lot of players who come for EXP via daily roulette "throw" matches, to get it over with quicker - dying or going after 2nd/3rd place to let the 1st place win quicker. This is all just to get EXP rewards and Tomes quicker. There is almost no incentive to try to play better.
As someone who enjoys this game mode, this makes the games really unsatisfactory - it feels like a race to the bottom in terms of level of skill, with no attempt to improve. I suppose the mentality is "Why try, if I don't try - I can get it over with it quicker, get some rewards, and i can do stuff that i actually enjoy, and frontlines are all RNG anyway". The fact that frontlines are only RNG to an extent, and that extent is determined by the ability to actually PVP is sadly overlooked.
There is another subset of players who play regularly and "grief" the friends/enemies that they see. Whilst a bit of friendly competition is good, it sort of creates a situation where if they decide to make someone their target and drive their alliance via calls or just attacking their "friends" - they almost always make themselves 2nd or 3rd place. I see this on Light DC sadly too often.
The only real solution I can see to that is to encourage playing to win. I don't think increasing the rewards for 1st place is enough to discourage bad performance, and would love to see 2nd or 3rd place not get ANY rewards for their participation.
Why now? This wasn't a problem before or was it?
It sort of was a problem for awhile, but unfortunately, PVP community for frontlines on EU is kind of in a rut after the hit detection changes and most "good" players who would try to encourage their team to play to win decided not to play the game leaving the majority of players on the DCs not as experienced in the game mode. So this problem just intensified in the recent months to the point of being ... quite painful to ignore.
Would it really solve the problem?
Possibly. If it encourages playing to win, in the long term it would encourage general population to view the mode as more competitive. Sure, some people will stop queueing frontlines completely, as it wouldn't be a guaranteed way to get EXP or tomes. The only way out of that I see is increasing rewards for winning - new rewards and higher exp/tome gain for win.
p.s.
Do I really think SE will implement this? No, unfortunately I do not. They consistently ignored that this mode exists and treated frontlines as a forgotten child. But I can moan about it on the forums so here I am. The benefit of good pvp scene in an MMO could be a subject of it's own post, but I digress....
Continue reading...