HP Scaling, Please Remove It

[cengeal]

Ok, here's the deal, all minutia aside for the moment.

Here is my personal experience with the HP scaling system. I am a member of an unusually large linkshell. The leader of which is incredibly kind and helpful. Many times in the past I have seen exactly this happen: LS leader announces they are trying start a group to fight 'X' HP scaled NM. Many members voice their interest in joining. Inevitably the leader says 'I really want to include all of you, but because the difficulty goes up with more people, and we are already struggling to win, I'm afraid I have to turn you away'. This has happened frequently enough that as of now, events are no longer announced, the leader simply sends a /tell to the members who can be included in whatever content they are attempting and the rest of the linkshell remains completely out of the loop.

I am certain I am not the only person to have experienced this.

This is my problem with the HP scaling system. Regardless of any other complaints, this is the end result: Small groups of people who are successful at clearing the content stay together and are actively discouraged from inviting anyone else into their group by this mechanic. This is very damaging to the community in the game. Yes, there are other ways of obtaining gear to bring your character to an acceptable level of strength. But, if there are no groups willing to take any new members then what is the point? This is a multiplayer game and it should have mechanics to encourage people to play together.

I'm not even saying it should be removed entirely, as I said, it would be fine if it were limited to only the toughest fights. But it is applied to everything.

I could probably come up with all sorts of counters to your specific points, but frankly, I don't care about all that. This is the point I am trying to make, if a multiplayer game actively discourages players from working together then that is very bad for the community, and it is very bad for the longevity of the game.

This is exactly the experience I had in my old linkshell that was unusually large. A number of people wanted to do things, but they were nowhere near skilled or geared enough to come, thus making them deadweight. I acknowledge that there is a lot of legwork needed to be done to participate in this content, but the issue is, there were a number of them in this position. They were all expecting me or some of the other senior LS members to continue organizing events for them. At some point, they need to take it upon themselves to get this stuff done. I don't mind helping people. Babysitting on the other hand I can't stand.

A lot of these new/returning players want to skip steps. If you're good enough, you might be able to take two steps at a time. But these newbies want to walk up the entire flight of stairs in a single step, and then they get frustrated and mad at everybody else when they fail and fall down like an idiot. I find a lot of people who "fail" at this game are the ones who never take it upon themselves to get out of the position they're in (always being excluded or left behind).

I do agree that there are times when being discouraged to team up is bad for the game. I never liked the exp penalty for forming a party. It felt like a punishment for wanting to work with another player. I also agree that the whole 119 ilvl label is incredibly misleading. But as I previously stated, I hate babysitting. Everybody needs help from time to time, but the handholding is doing nobody any favors. New/returning players get the wrong impression when they become the beneficiaries of this.

[Fae]

There was a time hp scaling didn't exist, it turned hard fights and strategy into "throw more people at it" to win, which due to tp feeding still often didn't work. There was a time too when timers didn't exist, and it turned strategy into only "can you do a bit of damage and not die". You would have RDM running around for example, tying up a pop point of which there is only one, for over an hour just because they want to basically making 2-3 groups wait for them to kite and kill a mob extremely slowly. It was quite often, awful. Events usually last maybe 2 hours, and that's a long time to get a lot of people together to do something. Some of the fights without timers would take way longer than that. The game is MUCH Healthier with hp scaling and timers. People got things to do in life, and strategy shouldn't only evolve around if you live or not. Some tanks are nearly unkillable now unless the mob has the right status effects meaning they could solo pretty much everything. Breaking the game already.

As others have said, if you expect to go to the hardest fights in the game with the juiciest gear but haven't done your gear progressions that were put there intentionally to allow people to build up to end game, which the gear progression is doable solo by the way on many jobs if you're willing to put in the work up to at least T3 Sky. Work on your gear progression, most other end game players have and it's a lot of work, why do you get to be leeched to end game? I guess since there's no EXP bar and all gear is labeled 119 it is a bit confusing, but really what you're asking is being a level 50 character and asking people to leech you to higher level because you don't want to do it the hard way and I just have no real sympathy for that at all. I don't understand why so many come here asking to make the game easier for them. The game being a challenge is one of the reason me and so many others play it in the first place if things are made easier I'd have nothing to do, I get no joy from bashing in stupid easy mobs over and over, unless it helps serve the purpose of I'm going to down this really hard boss, or do this crazy solo. It gives me a feeling of accomplishment in game and like my choices and actions matter, that's sort of the entire design principle as I understand it.

I can understand wanting to group up with people, and being told no and seeing it as a flaw in the game. Leeching endgame should be discouraged by the game design though, so I'd say working as intended. There's still nothing stopping you from grouping up for easier content. I realize less people want to group up for easier content, but the reasons for that are it has no real challenge and with that no real sense of accomplishment and the rewards are less... which is what would too happen to the hardest content in the game of which imo there isn't enough of compared to all the super easy content.

I realize SE has to find a way to make players at all levels of gear happy, I think they have done a TON to help out new and returning players lately. Ambuscade, new JSE augs with a ton of accuracy, and now they're adding an RoE to get your starting point even past sparks gear which already boosted you forward at light speed. I think the problem is that a lot of players simply don't understand the difference in gear and work between X "119" player and Y level "119" player with the best gear for every slot for every action (hint, it's a ton). We almost could use gear ratings or something, because too many players try to do content and don't understand why they lost. It takes a lot of game knowledge and a lot of working on LOTS of sets to even do some of the endgame stuff. To me it is like people being upset they can't leech level 55 to level 75 easier, I realize people always try to find the easiest ways to do things and yah in some ways it made humanity successful. But this is another one of those cases people just need to be willing to do the work and not feel they deserve or are owed it without that work. Maybe I'm just that way, back when Doom was a thing all my friends would put on the cheat code for god mode and think it was the funnest thing ever. For a while. Then the stopped playing it at all. I always thought it ruined the game, what was the point in beating a level if you had no to little chance of failure. I was always the opposite I enjoyed putting it on nightmare and seeing how many levels I could get through. To me ffxi was always a game that appealed more to the "nightmare" difficulty people, while not being as hard as that, one of it's key points has been the challenge yet most of what I see on these forums are requests for SE to make the game easier for them it makes me sort of sad to be honest

Also in reply to people saying earlier, that the game is just about gear and takes no skill, we must be playing a different game. I've seen people with 119 RME weapons that struggle to do very basic fights. Even have some HQ abjurations to go with it. But they refuse to use equipsets or get a deeper understanding of the game so they just aren't good, objectively, at the game. Skill and knowledge are still more important than gear when it comes to hard fights but all three are important. I was doing a UNM the other day, everyone there had several well geared jobs, and long time players with a lot of game knowledge. But they kept dying, and me too while I just did what they wanted being the new person to join the party. I offered a setup I knew worked, we changed some jobs, made some order out of the chaos of the supports working together, and we won every time. Gear can make some things trivial but in almost every case it's content that isn't current/end game and even then if you don't know how to use it effectively and how to execute it then welp. I feel like it's people who would say a car race only matters to have the fastest car, then perplexed why when they get their pet dog to drive an F1 Racecar their dog doesn't win the car race against a person in a Mini Coop. An extremely silly example and everything else on the spectrum exists, such as if you put some teenager who thinks he's a "fast" driver against a professional racecar driver, both in the same car... the racecar driver wins obviously. It isn't "just a numbers game", they are driving the same car. Almost everything in life is the same way in this regard so people are just being incredibly silly and maybe a bit bitter to say it is only a numbers game. I've seen ilvl people die to stuff some people could solo at level 75 without trusts, so it is just making me laugh now when people say that.

[Selindrile]

There are a lot of good points, on both sides, here, perhaps a compromise would be in order, I too think that HP scaling in it's current state is detrimental, there's almost no scenario I can imagine that I'd rather go with a group of 18 than a group of 6 the way things are now, which, for a game with a storied history of (at least debatably good) alliance content, this is a bad thing, I think.

In large part it's due to the diminishing returns, extra TP feed without equivalent damage increase (skillchains being important in today's meta) or magic damage resistance, each extra person yields less and less benefit to the group, reguardless of how well geared they are, (though obviously if they are weaker, it makes it even harder on everyone), and also because trust grant a solid benefit without contributing to the HP scaling of the mob.

Perhaps the answer is that to answer this diminishing returns of bonus players, the hp scaling could mirror that, instead of approximately 100k HP per extra person (or whatever it is), each extra person could provide the monster consecutively less bonus HP, so instead of +100k HP per person, +100k, +80k, +60k, +40k, +20k, +15k, +10k, +10k, +10k, etc, etc, etc, and I'm not proposing these specific numbers, simply saying what if the bonus HP scaling was lower for each extra person, much like the benefit to a party is.

[OmnysValefor]

I know that the official forums attract a different audience than the fan communities, but I'm glad to see that there are still players in this game that don't want to be carried til they're capable.

And that's just it, I don't mean to imply that you necessarily want to be carried through the rest of the game (though some people actually do), but you want all the hard work done for you, by people that will assure you victory, so that you have the gear. My linkshell has a lost puppy that shows up to events he wasn't invited to and just waits to be invited to get loot. It's content he doesn't have the offensive or defensive stats for. He doesn't say anything, doesn't ask, just waits for the invite.

I used to help him quite a bit with earning gear and content/combat advice, but I realized he's standing there just waiting for another serving of help. He will not push forward on his own.

If I can manage to get geared up on Valefor, I assure you that Asurans can do it.

You want to get to go to events by people who will assure you victory and guess what? So would I! Sovereign Behemoth refuses to give me his torque for one measly extra DT% (for my geo and blu--because again, dedication). When I go, I look at my friend's list and linkshell and ask people that I know will carry their own weight. If they're not on, I don't go.

[Olor]

I am not asking to be carried through content, I am asking for the older, more outdated content, such as delve, to just be put back to the way they were before - which is no timers and no scaling - a lot of people beat delve NMs for the first time before they put timers on them - so how is it bad to take the timer back off that was never there in the first place? The timers were put there because of congestion - that doesn't exist anymore, so why continue to keep the timers they added?

And removing the HP increase would allow folks to do the content - not be carried through it, but do it, together, with the jobs people have available.

Part of the issue is people are never invited to groups ever for anything, so how are they supposed to learn to play in a group? Making older content a little easier to complete with a group of scrubs would only be beneficial to the game.

I mean seriously - when is the last time you saw a delve shout? I haven't seen one in months. So how is someone who has never done it, who doesn't have a good LS, supposed to get delve clears? Are they supposed to make a fool of themselves by leading a run doomed to fail because they don't know every little thing about it?

That's stressful, not fun. It's not much to ask to lower the steps on the ladder by an inch or two. Keep the HP scaling on "current best" events, sure, but old stuff that no one does anymore? Let people get the clears easier so they can practice being in groups and get some needed items.

[Zekander]

I notice, Omnys, that you are assuming I myself am an undergeared player who is having trouble finding a group. This is not the case. The jobs I have leveled are all geared adequately for high-end content. I have Jobs that are on your list of desirables. I have WHM which I actually enjoy playing. I have SCH, which I'm less interested in, but it is geared fairly well and I know how to play it. I have PLD, which I really hate playing but it is fairly well geared anyway.

I used to have a group of friends who I played with often, and we were able to clear almost all high-end content. Most of those friends have quit, and those few who remain are no longer enough to clear anything.

I have been in parties for Reisen T3 nms and I have 'pulled my own weight'. However, the only reason I was there was because one of the groups regular members was absent. Once that player returned, they had no reason to include me any further.

This problem is not only affecting undergeared and inexperienced players. It is also affecting orphans of a declining population. As it stands, the only way I can get back into playing the game is to gather up enough other orphans as quickly as possible before they quit from not being able to play the game.

Is removing this mechanic going to instantly solve all that? No.
But it is in my opinion, a step in the right direction.

[Zekander]

When I go, I look at my friend's list and linkshell and ask people that I know will carry their own weight. If they're not on, I don't go.

This, exactly this, is my entire point. You take people who you already know can clear the content. You say that if someone gets their gear up to snuff they will be included. Yet you yourself admit you will not take anyone new. Why then do you think anyone else will?

Edit: Sorry, I realized this could sound like a personal attack. I didn't mean it to be, I wanted to illustrate the problem with the entire community. I completely understand why you would do this, I myself am wary of new people. And that right there is the problem, it is mechanics like this one and many others in the game (many of which have been mentioned in this thread) that make us all afraid to include anyone who might drag us down. This should not be happening in a game that asks many people to play together.

[OmnysValefor]

This, exactly this, is my entire point. You take people who you already know can clear the content. You say that if someone gets their gear up to snuff they will be included. Yet you yourself admit you will not take anyone new. Why then do you think anyone else will?

Actually, that's not the case.

I meet new people and witness how they play. If a player seems to perform reasonable, be prepared, and yes--have the gear to be able to perform--I'll bring them with but I also know who I either can't rely on or is just simply not geared enough to be there. If they're exceptional DPS but always the first to die, I'm not interested in bringing them. I don't do the hardest content all day long, I encounter a lot of people.

There's a semi-undergeared player right now that I'm very interested in. He comes as prepared as can be, asks questions if he doesn't know and admits when he makes a mistake. He also plays a WHM so the bar is a little lower on gear requirements (doesn't NEED to be able to debuff the boss, especially since another mage probably can).

You know what else he does? If he doesn't feel like he's geared enough to be there, he'll bow out.

Another guy the other day, pretty nice guy and in fresh gear. He saw an abjuration drop that he wanted but HE deemed that that one piece of gear wouldn't turn him into an amazing performer so he'd pass it on to someone who could use it more*. Completely and totally respect him for that.

* A random example: +50 more accuracy will do more for the guy at 1150 acc than the guy at 850. The second guy will still be whiffing non-stop. So you see, it's not carrying someone through one thing, it becomes necessary to carry them through everything or they can put work into their own character and actually contribute.

For instance, if you're opening (or closing) darkness for the BLMs to MB, I barely care how much your WS did to create the SC, as long as it hit, but I do expect your ws's to land, otherwise you really don't belong there (and when dealing with undergeared people, I try to find multi-hit weaponskills to help them out--I'll favor Requiescat over CDC if the skillchain can work with either).

[Zekander]

Sorry Omnys, I re-read through the whole thread and I'm still not entirely sure what your argument in favor of HP scaling is. You bring up melee accuracy, you list several other mechanics in the game that reduce the effectiveness of large groups of people, and generally try to provide helpful tips for new players. But I can't find any real argument there. Fae made a much more compelling (if long winded) argument that I completely understood. End game players want to feel that their effort is validated, I completely understand that. I don't want to eliminate gear progression, or put the game on easy mode. I simply saw a clear relationship between a mechanic and the exclusion of players (possibly competent, possibly not) from playing and enjoying the game.

[Zekander]

Really, my biggest objection to HP scaling is not that it exists, but rather the fact that it is applied to all iLvl content.

If there were a single, or small set of bosses that had this mechanic that would be great, it would be unique, it would be interesting. But when it is blanketed over the entire game it becomes a cudgel that beats players into the same strategies over and over again.