HP Scaling, Please Remove It

[Zekander]

This mechanic is very detrimental to the community.

Firstly, it makes it very difficult for new players to make progress with their equipment, since any character that cannot 'pull their own weight' in parties makes it even more difficult to complete then it would without this mechanic. This discourages established groups from accepting new members, especially those who are already having some difficulty clearing content, thus meaning that new players cannot help other new players and are forced to rely on veterans who have already completed most of the content in the game (who have little incentive to do it over again just to help new/undergeared players).

Second, when combined with timed fights, this forces the community to use only the optimal job setups for each fight. This is a major contributor to our current state of having less then half the jobs available in the game to be actually used. If parties were able to bring more people to endgame content there would be more leeway available for people to fill with jobs that they actually enjoy playing, rather then being forced into cookie-cutter setups with only the absolute minimum number of people required. This is supposed to be a massively multiplayer game, and while I know the population is declining, it should still encourage people to play together, not exclude others because bringing them along hinders their chances of success.

Mechanics like HP scaling are quite obviously damaging to the longevity, and more importantly the enjoyment of the game. There is no reason that it should be included, anyone who clamors for more difficult content should find their own ways to make the game more difficult (such as bringing sub-optimal jobs to difficult content). Intentionally making it more difficult for people to play together in a multiplayer game is simply bad design. I understand that the current team of developers is not familiar with some of the older mechanics and may have difficulty alleviating them (such as the exp penalty for larger parties that was included in the original release), but this is a relatively recent mechanic and should be easily removed, please do so as soon as possible.

[detlef]

Larger groups are already penalized by having more people to share the same amount of drops. But you can't just add more DDs because they step on each others' skillchains. You can't just add more nukers because of cumulative magic resistance. You can't just add more support because they become redundant and who wants to play a game where 12 out of 18 people in an alliance are support?

If nothing else, it has to be adjusted significantly.

[OmnysValefor]

You're going to hate me, and that's fine but I have no problem with HP scaling. People should carry their own weight.


This mechanic is very detrimental to the community.

Firstly, it makes it very difficult for new players to make progress with their equipment, since any character that cannot 'pull their own weight' in parties makes it even more difficult to complete then it would without this mechanic.

Shouldn't it though? Why should a person get to be carried through 135 content in 109 gear? A player doing nothing but missing the boss isn't contributing anything. Seems like the most common job newbies level is thf.


This discourages established groups from accepting new members, especially those who are already having some difficulty clearing content, thus meaning that new players cannot help other new players and are forced to rely on veterans who have already completed most of the content in the game (who have little incentive to do it over again just to help new/undergeared players).

There are gateway jobs that are relatively easy to gear, but it seems like every newbie wants to play THF for reasons I can't understand. I honestly think it has to do with them seeing THF blow all applicable CDs and bust one massive weaponskill, not understanding that the THFs that do that put actual effort into it.

When I came back, my precious aegis/ochain PLD was outshined by a friend of mine with Burtgang 119. To include me in events, they brought me on PLD and his BLM and I felt awful, so I set about to building up a useful job. I picked Geomancer, but I could have also picked SCH, BLM, COR, RNG, DNC or WHM. I've also been passively working on my BLU along with finally getting my PLD his own burtgang.


Second, when combined with timed fights, this forces the community to use only the optimal job setups for each fight. This is a major contributor to our current state of having less then half the jobs available in the game to be actually used. If parties were able to bring more people to endgame content there would be more leeway available for people to fill with jobs that they actually enjoy playing, rather then being forced into cookie-cutter setups with only the absolute minimum number of people required.

This is more a design issue. It doesn't matter if the boss' hp scales or not, I don't want to bring more than 1-3 melee (including the tank) to feed the boss excessive amounts of TP. The TP model was built at a time when "haste-capping" (max'ing your attack speed) was a pipe-dream. Even then, more melee meant more boss-specials which meant more healing and more danger to the tank. I knew people who were amazed the Byakko could be low-manned. They didn't understand the notion that, with skilled players, lowman was easier (even though it took longer) than an alliance.

If I'm suddenly allowed extra slots, I'm bringing more magic users. I still don't want the MNK who can't hit anything, and frankly, I don't want to see him win the lot for an item over the blu who actually contributed. I don't want to fight it a bunch more either.

[Karbuncle]

You're going to hate me, and that's fine but I have no problem with HP scaling. People should carry their own weight.

I don't disagree because, I can safely say I hate carrying people too... but it really sucks when this creates, in practice, a situation of "You need gear to get gear", and since no one wants to help new players in old content, and experienced players dont want gimp players in new content, have fun crawling to acceptable 119 or quitting.

There are some jobs that can circumvent this but a person shouldn't be forced to level GEO just to be accepted to content so they can gear up other jobs they want to enjoy. Oddly enough, people want to have fun while playing, and while i'm all for versatility (I have like every job 99 minus 1 or 2), I don't think this should be the required norm, Especially not this late in the games life.

Not saying everything should be easy but hopefully I dont need to clarify that...


Shouldn't it though? Why should a person get to be carried through 135 content in 109 gear? A player doing nothing but missing the boss isn't contributing anything. Seems like the most common job newbies level is thf.

People still do this. That said, HP Scaling is retarded if the rewards don't scale with it. If the difficulty is going to remain about the same, and honestly I'd argue more people just brings more problems and "too many cooks in the kitchen" etc... with that in mind, the reward pool should scale with people because more people means harder enemies and more competition for loot... it creates a system that punishes larger groups when it should REWARD larger group play.

I don't want a nerf to solo or low man groups, I want a buff for larger ones. Basically, 1~11 person party should be the normal rewards they are now. but with 12~17 people you should get 1 more guaranteed loot slot, and with 18 people 2 more. Encourage more people, don't discourage it. This isn't a perfect idea but the concept remains the same, encourage group play in an MMO, shocking.

I'm sure for some of the Ru/Reisin T3's more people might be better but for all the content Ive done, the lower the better... and it simply shouldn't be that way in an MMO... I don't want them to make low play less viable than it is now, simply make alliance play more valuable.

[cengeal]

Carrying people does no good for anybody. As Omnys has pointed out, there are an abundance of THF's running around, and 98% of them are gimps. Don't get me wrong, if you really love THF, then play it, and strive to be the best. But you also need to accept the fact that THF is by no means "the best job", not that there is one mind you, but if there was, it would NOT be THF. Some fights are very difficult to be melee'd, and some are flat out impossible to be melee'd.

The point of HP scaling is to make a fight easier when you can't get people to join who pull their own weight. You're then stuck using a trust, which should always be a downgrade from bringing an actual player. Now, when I can stand here and say "a trust would be an improvement over this idiot", that's a huge problem for everyone, not just the two players involved. There are dozens of guides available on the internet (the best being on ffxiah.com) on how to gear/play a job. Using a trust over a player should be a huge downgrade, therefore the monster's HP should be scaled. When a real player isn't offering the advantages over a trust they should, the fault is on them. If you really want to get better, you need to be prepared to contribute. That means leveling more jobs to be more useful. It doesn't mean level Samurai if you already have Dark Knight leveled.

[Zekander]

I agree, people should carry their own weight. People should be able to find a job they like to play, and put some effort into learning how to play the job well. The problem is, as has already been mentioned, if people are unable to get proper gear for their job (either by being able to clear old content and gradually work their way up, or by immediately leeching high tier equipment) then they will never even get a chance to try.

I am not advocating to scale drops up with more people (that just makes no sense and is obviously too easy to abuse). But there is absolutely no reason to penalize parties who want to include more of their friends in the fun.

It would be fine if this mechanic were used sparingly on fights that are meant to be incredibly difficult, however this is not the case. It has been applied to all item level content that allows more then a single party to participate.

What jobs you want to take in your party is entirely your preference, just don't force everyone else to play exactly the same way you do.

Also: everyone needs to keep in mind that what the developers should do is often not in the realm of what they can do. Ideally, in order to improve this and other aspects of the game, they should overhaul the whole tp gain mechanics and mob aoe damage and many other things that are inherent in the current system. However, we all know that right now they are working with a much smaller and less experienced team of developers and fewer resources in general then they did even five years ago. This means what they are actually capable of doing with this team is far less then what would be the best changes for the game. So I proposed this being a fairly simple change that they can do.

[OmnysValefor]

Darn it, Stompa. You made fair points and then, as well, made me sad for the loss of your friend! :(


Its not just that a new player just needs to get a full 119 set and capped skills, to engage in high tier battles.

If they are melee, they need to get a really serious Accuracy set, with expensive random augments. My Jobmaster War has some really nice accuracy armors, and routinely misses hard mobs.

They also need to get a heavy DT set, and spend the rest of their life toggling their Accuracy Set / DT set macros in order to hit mobs and survive catastrophic attacks.

To be fair, there is a practical ascension of gear and the JSE weapons go a long way towards bridging acc gaps, especiallya for dual-wilders. But yeah, they also need -dt gear and the reason a lot of melee die is because they simply refuse to accept this. I was killing an NM in Escha - Ru'Aun and a certain DD told me "I can handle adds", he died to the very first one. He thought he was just going to beat them down before they beat him down.


With ilvl, 99% of Vana'diel becomes Too Weak, the remaining 1% becomes just a numbers game.

So true, the old world feels made out of paper. Mostly because the mobs weren't meant to handle 15k WSs (from a pld!) or more.


I have said before that I liked the 75 game better, but that I was willing to accept the move to 99, as it opened up the rest of Vana'diel to solo / lowman groups. 119 was the opposite, as it effectively killed the rest of Vana'diel, making all pre-2013 areas basically unexciting one-shot-kills, and making any new content just a number crunch of Accuracy/DT.

I like 99 better, I like the gear options at 99. At 75, most dt/pdt/mdt gear (darksteel set, anyone?) was trash or obscenely hard to get. Now we have gear that has -dt and refresh or accuracy or all kinds of stats. I don't care for ilvl though, I would rather the progression to 119 be real. Now we're in this crazy place where the original WKR drops 119 gear, but so does ilvl 135 content.


That was never what FFXI was about, it was about experimenting with unorthodox party builds, maverick play strategies, having fun as a group of different jobs, using skills not gear to overcome challenges. The change from skills to gear as a requirement, as seen in 2013, has driven away a lot of veteran FFXI fans, including most of my LS friends. HP Scaling and other measures are just an inevitable knock-on effect of this ilvl shift from game skills and novel strategies, to gear number-crunching.

A lot of it wasn't though. For a long long time, content was about zerging for all you had. It was silly that we needed to do bard rotations (but practical that players realized it was necessary). Most fights were not a "controlled-burn" and didn't really use unorthodox strategies. I've done some lowman things that were unorthodox, but real endgame has been pretty consistent per era. Paladins and ninjas tanked pre-aby. Monks tanked Aby, Paladins and RUN tank now. You still don't bring a warrior to tank or a blm or bard to main heal.


I built a Xaddi Set, from Delve, and auged it for PDT/MDT, to make life easier for WHMs. It is now obsolete armor set. Also much of Skirmish 2 etc. gear is the same. This is just one example of ilvl "built-in obsolescence."

New gear replacing gear you spent ages farming a half a year ago, is not why I played FFXI. I loved spending ages farming an item, and then using that item for years. It became my favourite piece of gear, that I enjoyed using. It also has many memories, of farming the NMs with my friends.

Most veteran players know the feeling too well.


My best friend in FFXI, Pasajet, died of a health disorder in 2011. We had partied together every day, for seven years. We had farmed a lot of nice lvl 75-99 gear together.

I simply insist on using my favourite level 75-99 pieces from the pre-2013 game. I farmed these with my best FFXI friend, who is no longer with us. Those pieces are loaded with happy memories of our adventures together. I wear that gear as a tribute to my best friend in Vana'diel.

I won't be told to toss/replace old/new gear every few months just to hit a mob that my capped-skills level 99 Jobmaster character in HQ level 99 gear, eating accuracy food, can't hit the mobs anyway.

You sound like an intelligent player. You know what's required, even if you have your own reasons for avoiding it.

Noone can tell you to toss old gear (I still have so much that has sentimental value). But yeah, they can ask you to replace it in combat.

It's a tragedy when someone has a touching story like this when still two things would happen: Your recognize yourself that without ilvl armor, and good stuff, you don't belong at hard content. You wouldn't be able to contribute anything notable as any job but say brd. You have your reasons for wanting to stay in old gear, and that's fine, but it's all off-topic from the OP's point about wanting to get the good gear.

[OmnysValefor]

I agree, people should carry their own weight. People should be able to find a job they like to play, and put some effort into learning how to play the job well. The problem is, as has already been mentioned, if people are unable to get proper gear for their job (either by being able to clear old content and gradually work their way up, or by immediately leeching high tier equipment) then they will never even get a chance to try.

But you don't understand. The way content is designed, nothing but the most thoroughly equipped melee belong at high-end bosses, and that's only when nuking isn't the preferred method. You have to have excellent DPS sets, excellent "oh crap" sets, etc etc. You don't just get one set of armor and go.


I am not advocating to scale drops up with more people (that just makes no sense and is obviously too easy to abuse). But there is absolutely no reason to penalize parties who want to include more of their friends in the fun.

Yes there is a very good reason. If a fight is hard for 6 people, but there's no penalty for bringing 12 equally skilled people, they will. They're still not bringing a monk who doesn't have the accuracy or the capability to be near the boss and honestly: why would you want to just be given gear? Knowing that you didn't actually contribute to the fight that got it?


It would be fine if this mechanic were used sparingly on fights that are meant to be incredibly difficult, however this is not the case. It has been applied to all item level content that allows more then a single party to participate.

What jobs you want to take in your party is entirely your preference, just don't force everyone else to play exactly the same way you do.

You even said that if hard-core players want the game to be harder for them, they should just bring sub-optimal jobs. That's absurd. A false challenge is nothing because overcoming it easy "I guess warrior can't tank this, go get on your paladin". Many players want a challenge they have to earn. You say people shouldn't force their playstyle on others, but you're wanting to force your idea of fun on others.

People also need to quit talking like playing a job for benefit to your group so you can get gear for the jobs you love is something new. Many WHMs, RDMs, BLMs, SAMs, and Bards would finish an event and go back to their bst, pup, dnc or drg.

It's how XI works. Jobs have never been balanced, content has never been balanced.

[Olor]

Some folks don't mind getting help getting geared up though, why should that option be removed just because you don't think it's the way to do things? And let's be honest, people still do leech people up to current basic standards - just only very close friends and the like. And if we're able to get 119 gear from a goblin lottery each day then I don't see why it's fundamentally awful to make it so groups are not punished or completely unable to complete content if they bring more people. At any rate, let's not pretend we haven't all been powerleveling people and such since this game began - no need to let your gear ethics remove an option other people might like to make use of.

Also, you seem to be ignoring the fact that without the HP penalty a lot more folks might actually *be able to* clear the content (especially if time limits were removed from older events) as participatory members as 8 melee whiffing 70 per cent of the time are going to do more damage than 4 melee whiffing 70 per cent of the time - you're also ignoring the issue that a lot of jobs are behind right now and the HP penalty just means zero incentive to bring folks, even folks that can hit the mob, if they are not on a great job. It also does nothing for the health of linkshells to have to basically exclude people all the time.

I might be more sympathetic to your argument Omnys if the game wasn't so out of whack right now. I mean, I have a full set of 119 gear for blu and I spent a lot of gil trying to augment it and I still don't have enough accuracy and DT, and I have zero way of getting into content that would get me that last 100 ACC I need to not whiff all the time. Anyway I wouldn't even have that if I had not happened to be around when bard was still half wanted for stuff.

And I am willing to play bard but no one wants it... really I don't think telling every player in the game they must level GEO if they want to progress even a bit is a solution.

And really, how does it hurt you if other people are able to help their friends? I don't understand it. Why be against it?

[OmnysValefor]

Some folks don't mind getting help getting geared up though, why should that option be removed just because you don't think it's the way to do things? And let's be honest, people still do leech people up to current basic standards - just only very close friends and the like. And if we're able to get 119 gear from a goblin lottery each day then I don't see why it's fundamentally awful to make it so groups are not punished or completely unable to complete content if they bring more people. At any rate, let's not pretend we haven't all been powerleveling people and such since this game began - no need to let your gear ethics remove an option other people might like to make use of.

If you balance around 6 appropriately geared people, it's not even a challenge when you bring 10+.


Also, you seem to be ignoring the fact that without the HP penalty a lot more folks might actually *be able to* clear the content (especially if time limits were removed from older events) as participatory members as 8 melee whiffing 70 per cent of the time are going to do more damage than 4 melee whiffing 70 per cent of the time - you're also ignoring the issue that a lot of jobs are behind right now and the HP penalty just means zero incentive to bring folks, even folks that can hit the mob, if they are not on a great job. It also does nothing for the health of linkshells to have to basically exclude people all the time.

No, I'm not. If a challenge has X difficulty and you're allowed to throw more bodies at it without the difficulty increasing, it becomes easier. That's obvious.


I might be more sympathetic to your argument Omnys if the game wasn't so out of whack right now. I mean, I have a full set of 119 gear for blu and I spent a lot of gil trying to augment it and I still don't have enough accuracy and DT, and I have zero way of getting into content that would get me that last 100 ACC I need to not whiff all the time. Anyway I wouldn't even have that if I had not happened to be around when bard was still half wanted for stuff.

And this is one of the confusing points of ilvl for a lot of people. Tojil's weapons are 119, so are drops from Reisenjima. The difference between the two is staggering. They shouldn't both be called 119.


And I am willing to play bard but no one wants it... really I don't think telling every player in the game they must level GEO if they want to progress even a bit is a solution.

It's not, play whm, play blm, play geo, play corsair, play sch. Just do it to the best of your ability rather than, as some people insist on, fulltiming one gearset and not understanding why they aren't winning. Putting together a solid whm is very easy these days, something a sparks geared DD can make great headway into. You need a healing potency set, cursna gear, refresh set to idle in, -DT gear, (Earth Staff is still a decent start for this actually, when you're not controlling trusts), whm empy pants (reforged to 109).

And really, how does it hurt you if other people are able to help their friends? I don't understand it. Why be against it?[/QUOTE]

Because you can't simply say "You can bring 3x or 6x the players and the fight won't be any harder" without major ramifications.

Right now the content is designed that, whatever the size of your group (3 or more), you can go and kill it if the combined skill is enough.

A lot of this is people just wanting to leapfrog content.

---

I am truly sorry if I come off as mean or anything like it. I help people, and I do carry people. I've helped probably a dozen different people get Rawhide armor or various UNMs. I play PLD and GEO because I like to bridge the gap but just because I'm helping people through entry level content doesn't mean I'd want them at Hidhaegg (ilvl Nidhogg) or Sovereign Behemoth.

Take those two for example, they will wipe out an undergeared group, hp-scaling or not. And they should, that's how MMOs work. You don't ding cap and then go kill some of the hardest bosses.

[Railer]

Yea I'd rather have the time of the battle reduced rather than the monster health power increased.

[detlef]

No, I'm not. If a challenge has X difficulty and you're allowed to throw more bodies at it without the difficulty increasing, it becomes easier. That's obvious.I actually don't think it's obvious. If it's a solo fight but you bring 2 people, yeah, it becomes a lot easier. But due to various mechanics including TP-feed, skillchains, and cumulative magic resists, you reach a point where each additional person is bringing less and less to the table. At some point, bringing more people doesn't help you anymore. And at some point, bringing more people hurts you. Especially if you consider that the people being added last are often the worst geared/skilled.

The point where you consider leaving people out is often dangerously close to a 6-man PT which means you're completely hosed if you have a larger group. Splitting up is an option but it's unrealistic to expect a group to be able to divide itself down the middle to make 2 winning groups.

[Ataraxia]

This mechanic is very detrimental to the community.

Firstly, it makes it very difficult for new players to make progress with their equipment, since any character that cannot 'pull their own weight' in parties makes it even more difficult to complete then it would without this mechanic. This discourages established groups from accepting new members, especially those who are already having some difficulty clearing content, thus meaning that new players cannot help other new players and are forced to rely on veterans who have already completed most of the content in the game (who have little incentive to do it over again just to help new/undergeared players).

Second, when combined with timed fights, this forces the community to use only the optimal job setups for each fight. This is a major contributor to our current state of having less then half the jobs available in the game to be actually used. If parties were able to bring more people to endgame content there would be more leeway available for people to fill with jobs that they actually enjoy playing, rather then being forced into cookie-cutter setups with only the absolute minimum number of people required. This is supposed to be a massively multiplayer game, and while I know the population is declining, it should still encourage people to play together, not exclude others because bringing them along hinders their chances of success.

Mechanics like HP scaling are quite obviously damaging to the longevity, and more importantly the enjoyment of the game. There is no reason that it should be included, anyone who clamors for more difficult content should find their own ways to make the game more difficult (such as bringing sub-optimal jobs to difficult content). Intentionally making it more difficult for people to play together in a multiplayer game is simply bad design. I understand that the current team of developers is not familiar with some of the older mechanics and may have difficulty alleviating them (such as the exp penalty for larger parties that was included in the original release), but this is a relatively recent mechanic and should be easily removed, please do so as soon as possible.



I completely agree with you. Akihiko Matsui need to pay close attention to this.

[OmnysValefor]

I actually don't think it's obvious. If it's a solo fight but you bring 2 people, yeah, it becomes a lot easier. But due to various mechanics including TP-feed, skillchains, and cumulative magic resists, you reach a point where each additional person is bringing less and less to the table.

Fair point, but I was replying to the idea that a group of people missing 70% of the time might just win if they just throw more bodies at it. It's not the case, people missing that much will miss a lot of Weaponskills, feed a lot of TP, cause curagas to cause a lot of hate. Over a longer duration, the WHM will run out of MP or enmity cap, or both. Hate cap still does exist after all.

You and I both know, of course, that if you have say two DD with 70% hit rate (hit capping isn't always easy or feasible)--or two SCH, but that's besides the point--then there's little reason to bring a third. The two will TP fast enough that the third has almost no opportunity to WS and is only feeding the monster more TP. If the the two are BLU, SAM, or DNC, they can use excess TP to make their own solo skillchains. In the event that one dies, there's always the tank to skillchain with. Further, if the two are BLU or DNC, they can provide utility as well (Tenebral Crush, Useful steps, Attack Speed, Emergency healing, Stuns)

Or, just bring two scholars and your SC people probably never die.

--

One of the points posted earlier in this thread is that it's a sad state when a person relies on a trust more than a player but let's be honest, some of the trusts are better than players for specific purposes. Zeid will stun if it can be stunned. He doesn't have the recast that even a blm or stun-geared DRK does, but if stun is up, and he can, he will.

Selh'teus ("Seth" as I call him) is overpowered for small groups. He's the reason my paladin can grab a melee and a mage and go kill things, because he'll feed us TP/MP/Free HP. He screws up some skillchains, but only if you don't know how to work with him.

I went to a Delores once that you would have laughed so hard you cried if you saw it. Grabbed a whm, and he said his girlfriend was the better healer so we grabbed her and he switched to RDM/WHM. I explained the fight, the things to watch for, where to stand (near the boss, not behind the tank, etc). I got breathed and everything got para'd. I spammed remedies, wouldn't go off. Begging in party chat for para, just para, I'll med the rest. Nothing. BLMs got meleed to death and they're begging in party chat too. Since then, I prefer Apururu over some random whm. She might not para me first, but she'll get to me.


The point where you consider leaving people out is often dangerously close to a 6-man PT which means you're completely hosed if you have a larger group. Splitting up is an option but it's unrealistic to expect a group to be able to divide itself down the middle to make 2 winning groups.

Yep, this is definitely true, often times a few people have to be a member of both groups. LS's are lucky to have one good whm that loves the job, let alone two. A good GEO, especially an Idris. A tank that really dedicates themselves.

[Pixela]

Remove the ability to fight them in alliances, make it single party only. Problem solved.

Anything else makes all content completely face roll. If that's what you want them just ask them to lower the difficulty.

[Olor]

---

I am truly sorry if I come off as mean or anything like it. I help people, and I do carry people. I've helped probably a dozen different people get Rawhide armor or various UNMs. I play PLD and GEO because I like to bridge the gap but just because I'm helping people through entry level content doesn't mean I'd want them at Hidhaegg (ilvl Nidhogg) or Sovereign Behemoth.

Take those two for example, they will wipe out an undergeared group, hp-scaling or not. And they should, that's how MMOs work. You don't ding cap and then go kill some of the hardest bosses.

For the record, I don't think you're mean, you're very respectful and thoughtful and I enjoy your contribution to the conversation.

I just think there are different views at play here - my view is the game is too old to exclude too many people - and right now too many people are too far behind to catch up - and the game does nothing to help people forward... even reading wikis etc doesn't always give enough info... Ambuscade is a good start right now but I worry even that will be ruined by punishing folks for soloing - we will see.

[OmnysValefor]

my view is the game is too old to exclude too many people - and right now too many people are too far behind to catch up - and the game does nothing to help people forward... even reading wikis etc doesn't always give enough info... Ambuscade is a good start right now but I worry even that will be ruined by punishing folks for soloing - we will see.

While you do need to do your missions, which SE has made much easier, catching up isn't so terribly hard.

* You can farm something for gil and buy ancient beastcoins to get your Loquacious and Brutal Earrings, so you don't even need to bother with Limbus. And honestly, you could probably get by without either of those and noone would notice.
* Related to the first point, many of the best accessories in the game are from previous expansions/add ons.
* Sparks/119 gear pretty much put you on part with a well atma'd 99, so farming needed things out of Abyssea, even if you can't get help, isn't that terrible.
* The JSE weapon augments very generous.
* There are entry-friendly jobs, like GEO but not just GEO.
* Wanted Dial / Abjuration dial is random but offers some benefit.
* Ambuscade. The armor from this looks really promising. I have a friend who just came back and because of Ambuscade, his PLD is able to -DT cap in relevant gear (meaning he has good amounts of defense, magic evasion, and base stats. His other job, DRK, is also loving the Ambuscade gear. Sulevia's is not tanking gear, but it's much better than trying to tank in abyssea area stuff. Anybody can do Ambuscade Dragon, even if they need to stick to E or VE at first.

SE has done quite a bit to make catching up easier. They could gone the alternate route and made this upgraded Salvage armor require doing Salvage. In a different era of the game, they probably would have.

[Olor]

I am looking forward to getting augments on my JSE weapons but I can't solo the last of ROV yet.

You're right there are some movements in the right direction, and Camate's latest post shows they aren't going totally wrong on ambuscade which I appreciate.

I just don't see how (say) removing HP boost for delve bosses at this point would hurt that direction - it would just make it easier for someone like me to put together an alliance of scrubs to get clears instead of feeling like my only option is paying for mercs, just as an example.

And no, those aren't the best stuff they are dropping but there are still some decent items there and it would help people get their base JSE weapon and maybe some half decent earrings etc.... help dual wielders get a second 119 weapon to start with, etc.

Right now the time limit and the boost in boss HP from more members makes it difficult for scrubs to put together groups to get these clears. The content is pretty outdated, pretty much no one does it anymore except to sell clears - so why not open it up a bit?

[Zekander]

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.

[OmnysValefor]

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

I love hand-waving.

The game doesn't discourage people from working together and playing together. It discourages people from jumping straight to tough content (if not necessarily the toughest content). It doesn't discourage your helpful LS leader from taking you to Zi'tah and Ru'aun T1s, it discourages him from taking you directly to harder content. You should do fine against 119 and 125 UNMs, but you simply don't belong at Sovereign Behemoth (135) yet.

Try giving Ambuscade some time. I whole-heartedly wish all sets had been released together, or each set had say foot-item released the first month and legs the next, etc. While Sulevia's being first happened to benefit myself (Paladin is severely lacking in accuracy options for certain slots, pre-Sulevia's) and a friend of mine, my light-armor melee friends are falling behind.

Great, I can take one to content that I can't take the others to, but I also don't want to bring any of them into the hardest content just yet.

[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.

[Karbuncle]

Again, I think removing HP Scaling will make enemies a bit easier with larger alliances as they would almost certainly have to balance it to a party of 6 with how low population the game is now... so as I mentioned back on page one, instead of removing HP Scaling, add Drop scaling.

Reward people going with more, don't punish them. Problem solved really... Low man can till low man, and alliance folks can reap more rewards.

[cengeal]

I recently left my unnecessarily large and rather noob-filled LS to form my own. I have one rule: Nobody is who dead weight and wants to stay that way. I've found that people who make no effort to change/want to stay that way reveal themselves almost immediately. I don't want to do an apex party with those kinds of players, let alone do a 135 UNM or T3 Eschan/Reisenjima NM. My point is, when you have a "no standards" play method, you get stuck with either an army of morons, or an army of deadweight, or sometimes both. I became fed up when it was the same 10 people who always came up short, so I took the people I knew were competent enough to learn from trial and error and formed my own LS. I still recruit people, but they need to pass a field test first. I'm not going to risk an expensive/difficult to obtain pop because someone is feeling left out.

Everybody is a gimpy newbie at some point or another. I was one myself once. It took a long time to build myself up and be the player I am now. Heck, I have a couple in my LS right now. What distinguishes these people from others is pride. They don't want to be carried and they don't to be given rewards they haven't earned. They don't think it's fair for them to be taking an item that somebody else could put to better use. I had a guy pass the abj for Amalric body because he didn't think he had earned it yet. It was frustrating for me, because that single body piece would have made his BLM much better. At the same time, I was ecstatic that he didn't have the "me-me-me-me first!" mindset that so many seem to have now.

The real problem is new/returning players don't understand the road that lies ahead. As has been previously stated, they see a 119 delve weapon and think "with this, I can fight Sovereign Behemoth!" okay, maybe they don't say that specific NM, but you get the point. They then go out to Behemoth's Dominion, get stomped on, and say "wuuuut? But I'm 119! I'm just as good as everyone else!" The thing is, this comical scenario isn't entirely their fault. The ilvl gear guide is misleading, and should at least be re-evaluated. However, they do need to accept the failure as their own, and improve upon it. The dead weight will begin to ask for help, shortly later they will starting pleaing, and then comes the begging, and then comes the panhandling...

Then they start wondering why nobody will bring them to anything. They may say things like "I'm a good player, I don't know why you guys don't invite me." Let's assume that's true and this person is a good player. But look, all he has is THF and a gimpy BLM that can't break 20k MB's. One job is under geared, and the other is, at best, the 4th best DD of everybody in the group (#4 is being generous btw). Right now, he's suffering from a weak Job Portfolio. Common sense dictates that a good player should be able to determine that he needs to offer more versatility to the group. Now let's assume he's not a good player. Bad players don't know that they're bad players. Most people won't say "hey you suck, not doing things anymore with you", they just will maneuver around you. They do this because they're 100% convinced you're a waste of space.

This is where you need the single most important quality in life: Humility. Ask yourself: is the problem me? If you can't answer that, ask other people. Unless they're the overly sensitive types who are terrified of people not liking them, hopefully they will give you an honest answer. Ask yourself: is my job good for this? Again, ask others if you can't answer the question yourself. This is a problem most new/returning players will have. They don't ask questions because they're afraid of looking stupid/vulnerable. Guess what: everybody does stupid stuff from time to time. Don't be afraid of demonstrating your imperfections to the world. I don't expect anybody in my LS to have an answer for every question, and I don't expect them to never contribute to a wipe. However, I do expect them to understand that their enjoyment and success in this game is on them, not me.

[OmnysValefor]

To keep it short and simple: I believe people should pull their own weight. If three people can down a boss, four people should be able to with equal effort. I like that I can't just PL some old 75 to 99 and merrily drag him through content he doesn't belong at. It cheapens the game, for him especially, to consider content obsolete that he's never even experienced. I know several returning players who have never been to Delve but don't consider it worth their time.

What this thread is asking for is for people carrying you (a little bit, or to the very extremes) to not have to make up for gaps in gear so that you can skip entire tiers of gear.

You've said this or something like it a few times:


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.

But you said this in your original post:


There is no reason that it should be included, anyone who clamors for more difficult content should find their own ways to make the game more difficult (such as bringing sub-optimal jobs to difficult content).

And I can't help but feel like you're saying that (about it being okay for a small set of bosses) until you get to that small set and want in there too.

[Zekander]

Since you brought it up, at what point does helping become carrying?

I have my own definition, but even that is vague: Carrying would be when a single (or very small minority) of the party is undergeared and underequipped for the content, forcing the rest of the party to do the entire job. Helping would be when there is a balance of veteran and inexperienced players attempting to fight a battle together.
But, to use an extreme example, what if on an entire server there is only a single person who is undergeared. They ask for help from existing veterans on a battle that they cannot possibly complete alone, but that is completely trivial to a party of veterans. Is this carrying or is it helping?

You mentioned before that you have met promising new players. At what content did you meet them and evaluate their skills? No doubt it was at lower level content that you were helping them with. Were you helping or were you carrying?

In a broader definition, both are exactly the same: One (or more) experienced and well equipped players assist one (or more) undergeared and inexperienced players complete content that they would have otherwise been unable to complete.

I'm not even saying either is right or wrong, simply a matter of degree.

[Zekander]

As for my initial stance on HP scaling. I have indeed given it more thought. And while I still see no reason for it's current implementation, in certain circumstances it would in fact be welcome.

Assuming all other fights were normal (without HP scaling), wouldn't it be cool for there to be one powerful boss who increased in power as more players fought it? And, since it was only a single fight, it would be acceptable for the drops from that boss to scale up with players as well. This would create a challenge: Bring as many people to the fight as possible and still be able to win.

Boom: Difficult content that encourages people to play together.

Furthermore, this would be quite similar to the current Ambuscade system. You can choose to solo a very easy fight for a lower reward, or you can bring a party on a higher difficulty for a larger reward.

That brings up my most important point with the problem: Choice.

For Ambuscade and Merit fights as well you choose how difficult (and thereby what rewards) you get to face. This system includes everyone, people who want an easy and fun game, and people who want more of a challenge. Without that choice all players are forced into choosing the same strategy: Bring the absolute minimum number of players possible to win.

And quite obviously, when you choose the lowest number of people that means many others are excluded.

One more thing: You say players should not have to force difficulty on themselves. But they already do this. When you solo a Merit fight on D or VD, you are forcing unneeded difficulty. When you clear (normal non-HP scaled content) with an unusually low number of players, you are forcing unneeded difficulty. People do this because it makes them feel good that they were able to go above and beyond expectations. But when you know that the difficulty is automatically adjusted as people are added and removed, it looses the appeal. Yay, you cleared a tough boss with only three people, but oh wait, that same boss was actually weaker then it would have been with more people, less yay...

[Secondplanet]

My whole argument with people who complain content is easy enough or too easy but use the best gear in the game could easily downgrade their gear if they want a challenge. It may also make them remember what its like for those who don't have those weapon and might even increase their understanding that even though its easy for you who are already geared up for those without its not.

Just like when people do naked runs in Monster Hunter just to enjoy the challenge of the fight.

[Zekander]

For some reason, whenever you say 'you' in your posts I just can't help but feel you are referring to me personally. (I know this is probably not the case)

I, personally, do not want to be carried. I, personally, do not want to carry others. What I want, is to be able to play and enjoy the game without feeling bad about turning people down because it (sometimes drastically) increases the chance of failure.

From what I understand, Vagary also scales HP with the number of people. However, it is still possible to win with a modestly geared alliance of 18 people.

With Reisen NMs however, the experience has been different. Nine people want to fight a NM. All nine fight and they loose. One person is dropped and then suddenly they win. The outside person is swapped in, they still win. Somehow the combined skill of 9 players isn't enough to beat something that the exact same skill level with 8 players can.

[Olor]

To keep it short and simple: I believe people should pull their own weight. If three people can down a boss, four people should be able to with equal effort. .

But these days so much of the game has nothing to do with effort and everything to do with what gear you have. It doesn't matter how good your gear swaps are if none of them have enough accuracy to hit the boss. It never used to be this way - the gap between "ok" gear and "awesome" gear was maybe a handful of STR and a couple points of haste. Maybe a few points of double attack. Maybe a bit higher base damage weapon. Not YOU CANNOT HIT THIS AT ALL.

If three people down a boss with perfect gear it doesn't mean that 4 people with 117 gear can do it. Or even with awesomely upgraded skirmish 1 gear - gear they spent a lot of time trying to get. Then they were stupid and quit for a few months and now it's nearly impossible to catch up.

The gear ladder is not working right now - there are too many complicated events that are too poorly understood by the majority of players and the wikis have not kept up (do please try to find info on the hard mode mission battles - nothing but a little stub saying "this is a battle, here it is, this is what it drops" - nothing on mechanics)

It used to be that there was enough info about strategies etc that came from players of different gear/skill levels that weren't buried 3 feet deep in a BG thread that you might be able to lead folks on content you haven't done without risking looking like a total idiot - but now not so much.

And to top it off - gear power NEVER used to increase by such huge amounts. Seriously - it was way more incremental, now each monthly update wipes out the usefulness of old gear and the new content can't be touched let alone completed with the old gear.

Back in Abyssea days if you had a half decent 99 set you could come back in 3 months and still HIT things. In the 75 days you weren't expected to have every drop from new content 1 month after it hit - or you couldn't participate in parties AT ALL.

The dev's decision to keep creeping the gear levels up and up with no ilevel changes - and make the bosses require better and better gear (by huge margins) has created a gear ladder missing most of the steps. There is no incentive to do older content because the gear is functionally useless for the most part, so you lost what you used to have with old content - where there was some better geared players and some less geared players doing it (all contributing) because the gear was worth it for everyone.

You could say the better geared players were "carrying" the newer players - but I saw - people all contributed, some were better than others but it wasn't leeching. And I know for myself once I had done content with people who were more experienced I often would be willing to lead on it - but it sure was nice learning from someone who already did it.

SE created this problem by invalidating every gear set every month.

[machini]

I've carried lots of people in LSes I've been in, new players and returning players, simply by virtue of "I can annihilate Yorcia Alluvion for you". And now, I'm happy to say, after having not been able to play for half a year, a lot of those players, who are now better geared than me, are willing to return the favor.

But you should not require someone who is geared on Power Level X+10 to help you get power level X gear since you are unable to do so.

[detlef]

For some reason, whenever you say 'you' in your posts I just can't help but feel you are referring to me personally. (I know this is probably not the case)

I, personally, do not want to be carried. I, personally, do not want to carry others. What I want, is to be able to play and enjoy the game without feeling bad about turning people down because it (sometimes drastically) increases the chance of failure.

From what I understand, Vagary also scales HP with the number of people. However, it is still possible to win with a modestly geared alliance of 18 people.

With Reisen NMs however, the experience has been different. Nine people want to fight a NM. All nine fight and they loose. One person is dropped and then suddenly they win. The outside person is swapped in, they still win. Somehow the combined skill of 9 players isn't enough to beat something that the exact same skill level with 8 players can.So true. You go with a large group and fail. You go back and look at it and say who can we kick? Can we kick this guy too? I'm on the fence about this other guy but to be safe let's not bring him either. That's a very sad reality.

[OmnysValefor]

Since you brought it up, at what point does helping become carrying?

I have my own definition, but even that is vague: Carrying would be when a single (or very small minority) of the party is undergeared and underequipped for the content, forcing the rest of the party to do the entire job. Helping would be when there is a balance of veteran and inexperienced players attempting to fight a battle together.

I disagree. You're being carried when an entire group of people in your gear have no realistic chance of defeating the boss.

When I came back in November after a two year break, I was in a very awkward position at first. My -dt sets were mostly non-ilvl because ilvl gear didn't initially have a lot to offer tanks. In these sets, I was tanking as much as half a zone of Delve and 1-2 bossses at the same time, back when people were first killing delve bosses. They were good sets.

In November? I could barely solo (w/ trusts) 1v1 quest mobs in Reisenjima and I even had Tojil's 119 sword from years ago.

Sparks gear isn't well itemized so I didn't pick any of it up. I felt that I was better off in my old gear than poorly balanced 117 gear.

My friends wanted to play with me, and I'd be in XP parties or on bosses as a PLD, getting beat on while the Burtgang pimp PLD was on BLM. I was being carried.

So I leveled GEO even though I didn't think it would be amazing as it was. Our group didn't have one so I made it happen. I could do things on GEO, and the PLD could be PLD. GEO doesn't have to concern itself with magic accuracy initially and still contributes quite a bit.

I could have also leveled Corsair, dug out my WHM or SCH, possibly RDM. I chose GEO and I'm glad I did.


As for my initial stance on HP scaling. I have indeed given it more thought. And while I still see no reason for it's current implementation, in certain circumstances it would in fact be welcome.

Assuming all other fights were normal (without HP scaling), wouldn't it be cool for there to be one powerful boss who increased in power as more players fought it? And, since it was only a single fight, it would be acceptable for the drops from that boss to scale up with players as well. This would create a challenge: Bring as many people to the fight as possible and still be able to win.

Boom: Difficult content that encourages people to play together.

Furthermore, this would be quite similar to the current Ambuscade system. You can choose to solo a very easy fight for a lower reward, or you can bring a party on a higher difficulty for a larger reward.

That brings up my most important point with the problem: Choice.

First, when you say drops scale up, do you mean scale up in quantity or quality?

If you mean quantity, alright. If you mean quality, I disagree absolutely. I've played other games (WoW most famously) were larger raid versions of the same fight dropped higher-quality items (same item, linear upgrade. A +1, +2, +3 basically) and I despised it. Getting 25 people together was such a pain, I much preferred 10 man.

Second, at the part of your post I italicized:

Ambuscade is indeed a nice system in the respect that newbies can solo easier versions to pursue the same gear because this is gear they will eventually very much need and will help them in their conquest of escha greatly.


One more thing: You say players should not have to force difficulty on themselves. But they already do this. When you solo a Merit fight on D or VD, you are forcing unneeded difficulty. When you clear (normal non-HP scaled content) with an unusually low number of players, you are forcing unneeded difficulty. People do this because it makes them feel good that they were able to go above and beyond expectations. But when you know that the difficulty is automatically adjusted as people are added and removed, it looses the appeal. Yay, you cleared a tough boss with only three people, but oh wait, that same boss was actually weaker then it would have been with more people, less yay...

Forcing difficulty by using deliberately poor job selection (two thfs, why not) is not the same as a difficult fight. THFs don't, that I know of, solo VD HTBFs but BST, PUP and maybe PLD do (edit: and many other jobs could--smn, dnc, sch maybe).

With HP-scaling, I find that SE has set a bar (if you bring 3 people, the boss will be this hard, if you bring 7, this hard, 9 this hard and I like it. No, the 3 of us could probably not take down a difficult UNM designed for 18-man, or maybe even 6, but we met the challenge designed for 3.

The people that solo D and VD HTBFs do so for loot and no competition.

The people that solo Ambuscade by choice.. I don't really know why. They're making a congested system much much worse. I hope SE does increase the points acquired for going with a group.


My whole argument with people who complain content is easy enough or too easy but use the best gear in the game could easily downgrade their gear if they want a challenge.

lol. False challenges are not challenges.


For some reason, whenever you say 'you' in your posts I just can't help but feel you are referring to me personally. (I know this is probably not the case)

I'm generally using the generic 'you' rather than the literal.

It's time for a silly analogy.

Properly gearing a job is like climbing a mountain. Every so often SE comes in and establishes a higher base-camp that new players are dropped off at (Perle/Teal/Aurore in Abyssea, Sparks Gear, Ambuscade Gear--sort of, both limited by its limited availability and the fact that points do need to be earned. Ambuscade wins a point for being based on total points allowing a noob to temporarily use the NQ gear while pursuing the HQ gear).

Players can begin the climb, meet the challenge, and be proud of their accomplishment or some guy coming from the top, or a much higher resting-camp can drop a rope-ladder from his chopper and say "GET IN, I'LL TAKE YOU UP!" (he has to shout, helicopters are loud). If they choose to do this, they get to the top and say "That mountain was easy!".

After that, players make one of two moves: They either clamor for a new mountain because the last has nothing to challenge them (even though they didn't experience it) or they wait for another ride up. Neither is good.

Fitting the analogy well, the newbie who took the ride doesn't understand how to actually climb a mountain and often fails at the next mountain (breaking analogy--harder content) because they're inexperienced.

[Olor]

No one is asking for a helicopter ride up the mountain, people are asking for those who climbed it first to leave their ropes attached to the slopes, and maybe post some information about which route they took.

[OmnysValefor]

That is simply not the case. The ropes and information are available on wikis.

People are asking to be included in content they don't belong at.

[Secondplanet]

lol. False challenges are not challenges.

But scaling HP isn't making it a challenge, its just artificially inflating the difficulty. Just like most of the current content its all made with poorly thought out mechanics so the monster hits harder or has more health but SE hasn't made a new challenge yet. Last challenge in this game was things like Vagary with needing to kill things under certain condition or Voidwatch where you can proc by using set skills from multiple jobs.

[Olor]

That is simply not the case. The ropes and information are available on wikis.

People are asking to be included in content they don't belong at.

Who is asking for that? I'm not. I'm asking for HP penalties to be removed on older content so I can more easily take it on with imperfect groups. Not "groups who shouldn't be there because they don't try to gear" but "groups that aren't the perfect setup" or "groups with more THF than GEO" or "groups that include DRG and PUP" - I don't want to have to shout for 6 hours to find a GEO and a SCH that is bored enough to do delve when they don't need anything from it.

Others are asking for it to be removed on newer things because it creates a perverse disincentive to invite people - even people who are well geared. I can't speak to that personally, because that's not content I'm geared enough to do - but it sounds like these folks have experienced it and found it frustrating.

[Zekander]

Once again, I am sorry I seem to be unable to show you the point I am trying to make.

You, Omnys, have misconstrued my motivation for posting this topic. I am not being asked to be carried (I already told you I don't need to be). I am not asking for anyone else to be carried (I don't like doing that either). I posted this topic because I am on the verge of quitting this game because there is nothing left for me to do on my own. My friends have all quit and I am having difficulty finding another group to play with. I am not doing this in hopes of getting a group out of sympathy. I am doing it because I know I am not alone. I know there are many other players who have experienced this very same exclusion. And I know what they are going to do.

They are going to quit.

Regardless of how you may feel about the game, people are quitting. People are quitting because they are being excluded from groups who already have met the minimum number of players required to clear the hardest content in the game.

Yes there are things I (and others) could do to get back into the game. We could spend many hours, days, and months sifting through all the people you have already rejected, trying to get a group together that can compete.

But we all know that the vast majority of players don't have that kind of motivation and dedication. This is a game, people are going to put Game amount of effort into it. They are not going to put Career amount of effort into it. When a game stops being fun, and becomes a thankless job, people quit.

I made this thread because I saw a very simple thing that the developers could do in order to keep people playing. This is a relatively new mechanic, and they should be able to remove it easily. Will this fix everything in the game? No. But I believe that it will help. At this point anything that helps people keep playing, and more importantly enjoying, the game can only be a good thing.

[OmnysValefor]

But scaling HP isn't making it a challenge, its just artificially inflating the difficulty. Just like most of the current content its all made with poorly thought out mechanics so the monster hits harder or has more health but SE hasn't made a new challenge yet. Last challenge in this game was things like Vagary with needing to kill things under certain condition or Voidwatch where you can proc by using set skills from multiple jobs.

Okay--

Content without HP-scaling will not be balanced around 18 people. I think SE has realized that 18 man and 36 man content has gone the way of the dinosaur. It's too hard to get that many people.

So it's balanced around 6. If it's balanced around 6 and you can bring 10, 12, or 18, it's made easier, if for no other reason than you can bring backup, reserves, or more Death BLMs.

SCH1 & 2 skillchain, BLMs #1 and #2 cast Death, then SCH 1-2 Skillchain while BLMs #3 and #4 cast Death because #1 and #2 are waiting on cooldown/recovering MP.

See, in the present design, extra melee are a wasted slot and hinderance on the group.

Good setup: Tank that can hold hate, 2 melee, WHM, GEO, BLM

Better setup: Tank than can hold hate, land ws's and survive, 1 melee, WHM, GEO, BLM or SCH, BLM

Best Setup: Tank that can hold hate, WHM, GEO, SCH, SCH or BLM, BLM

In any setup on a boss where magic is effective, more than 2 melee is absolutely wasted, but there's more.

Because all NMs build a short resistance to magic (this "buff" lasts 5~ seconds, the magic burst window basically), having excessive BLMs, especially when some are weak, hurts the other damage output of nukes that follow. So the thing you end up with, like detlef said earlier in the thread, is more people on support, debuffing the boss or waiting in the flanks as backup/nuking rotations (Stratagems / Death BLMs / Ballads for the BLMs).

If a BLM was going to magic-burst nuke a magic-evasive NM and it was going to land for 60k then 40k but my GEO nuke hits first or in-between and is resisted to 5k, the BLM's second nuke is likely gimped further than my 5k damage. In that scenario, the best thing for me to do is not to nuke.

And VW's proc system was terribly designed. Don't get me started on that. Forcing diversity without addressing balance still creates a terrible experience. Who remembers are the BLUs and Bards running around with unleveled skill but they were your EV proc? Who remembers slowing damage while the only blu in the alliance reset spells or depending on the melee who couldn't hit Kirin, let alone Qilin.

[OmnysValefor]

Once again, I am sorry I seem to be unable to show you the point I am trying to make.

Honestly, no personal insult intended but I get your point: You want content wide open to everyone nearly disregarding the difficulty and I think that's an awful design. I think people should put be more willing to do more for themselves.

I realize I'm in the minority here on the official forums, but look at your first post where you called it a useless mechanic and how much support it got. That alone shows the large number of people that are looking for anything to pin the problem on rather than their own deficiency. The problem isn't that they can't equally contribute, the problem is that the HP is higher when they're added to the group! If only it wasn't higher, then the group that can kill the boss without them could kill the boss with them!

And sure it's a game, but so are Chess and Poker. You don't go to tournaments for these games and ask to play by Checkers or Go-Fish standards.

(Edited for tyos)

(^lol, Edited for typos)

[Urmom]

Honestly, no personal insult intended but I get your point: You want content wide open to everyone nearly disregarding the difficulty and I think that's an awful design. I think people should put be more willing to do more for themselves.

I realize I'm in the minority here on the official forums, but look at your first post where you called it a useless mechanic and how much support it got. That alone shows the large number of people that are looking for anything other to pin the problem on rather than their own deficiency. The problem isn't that they can equally contribute, the problem is that the HP is higher when they're added to the group! If only it wasn't higher, then the group that can kill the boss without them could kill the boss with them!

And sure it's a game, but so are Chess and Poker. You don't go to tournaments for these games and ask to play by Checkers or Go-Fish standards.

The difference is even if the extra person has the ability to contribute as much as anyone else there is an efficiency loss after a point so it becomes impossible to actually to add as much as everyone did before you were added even if you add as much as anyone else while in the group. As already brought up extra melees no matter how good will add less and less dmg. Similar with support and MBers. What they will add is some leeway in terms of surviving thru bad stuff happening. And then their is the whole not being on the perfect job etc. This wouldn't be a problem if adding more people didn't literally make the mob harder AND make it so you still have to kill in the same amount of time.

bringing a friend to play along with you in a Chess/poker tournament also doesn't also cause everyone to lose the tournament either...

[Fae]

Carrying is when you're doing most if not all the work, which can be considered help. The difference people make is if you're doing something for them constantly and they don't have any initiative to get good on their own they rely on you basically and want you to accelerate them to end game where they didn't do much to deserve it or give back in any meaningful way VS. they do most the stuff themselves but sometimes ask for help with harder mobs and also give back to the LS. The only degrees is

1) do they put in their own work on their own time, to get better and have a desire to get better under their own power, or they rely on you to make events and organize things for them? The first is acceptable the second isn't. Ex. Will only get capacity points if a campaign is up, someone else organizes the party, and the CP is fantastic and they don't have to do much. Soloing CP can help you understand your job in more ways, it gives you a metric to measure yourself and more reasons to better your gear: faster capacity points.
2) Do they give back to the LS as much as they take out, or put in MORE than they take out, or are they basically leeches and only show up when it benefits them to do so and always the ones asking for help? How helpful are they? Even if you're not geared there is a lot of ways to help a LS so there is really no excuses. The first two ways are acceptable, the last is not. Ex. People who only show up to events if it has clears or gears they need, and will never show up otherwise.

Some people tend to think they have less play time, so it's justified they should be able to leech and not give much in return. That isn't so. If you don't have the time to play after work and all else is done, play to the time you have. No one likes a person who looks for excuses to be unfair to others. Give back if you take, and if you have too limited time, accept you can't get all your in game goals done in any short amount of time. It's really that simple.

It's very easy for a LS leader or event organizer to tell which kind of person you are, for one thing they deal with it relatively constantly and for another they aren't stupid. Whatever you do, you start to get a reputation. The #1 way I've seen returning/new players get into endgame is from recommendations from veteran players. You aren't gonna get those recommendations trying to pressure and cajole your way into gear, you get it by being the real deal which you become by doing the work. Which should be fun, the game has a lot to experience and offer, a lot of great storylines and central characters, and a lot of unique battle systems and content. Enjoy the journey instead of focusing only on the end.

[Fae]

The difference is even if the extra person has the ability to contribute as much as anyone else there is an efficiency loss after a point so it becomes impossible to actually to add as much as everyone did before you were added even if you add as much as anyone else while in the group. As already brought up extra melees no matter how good will add less and less dmg. Similar with support and MBers. What they will add is some leeway in terms of surviving thru bad stuff happening. And then their is the whole not being on the perfect job etc. This wouldn't be a problem if adding more people didn't literally make the mob harder AND make it so you still have to kill in the same amount of time.

bringing a friend to play along with you in a Chess/poker tournament also doesn't also cause everyone to lose the tournament either...

I don't think that's actually true. 18 man Schah was recently cleared and I did an 18 man Warder of Courage. The DPS was really high, and on some fights even with DD's such as Erinys, it is better to have more DD. It really depends. There is a definite loss of adding even more than one melee DD in a lot of cases, SAM for example, and most every melee DD can self chain now. It's still ok to pair up as DD, but after that skill chaining goes out the window. And that's also ok on a lot of mobs, which have high magic resist and so that's why you're using melee anyway. And even if that isn't the case, some zerg strats do very well without waiting around for skillchains such as Might Strikes resolution warriors. There is a falloff, but adding more DD can still end up being more damage and at some point it can't really TP move much faster than it is. To be honest for some reason the people just after you add a 2nd party seems to make it a lot harder. But fully functioning alliances with two parties fully focused on dealing damage especially with a nuke setup in my experience if the people are well geared it's actually often easier than low man situations just because your ratio of damage dealers to support is so dang high. Those two geo and the SCH's making skillchains in rotations, are multiplying the damage of a lot of mages bursting, to the point it even overpowers the magic acc reductions if magic bursts are very close to each other.

[Zekander]

I'm still struggling to understand your position. The best that I can understand is that:

A) You believe that making the game challenging is entirely the responsibility of the developers, by any and all means necessary.

B) You believe it is entirely the responsibility of each individual player to surmount that challenge, by any and all means available.

C) You believe that the present mechanics of the game have a positive effect on the community and that the best course for the game is to take no action.

The last one seems the most baffling, but to each his own I guess.

[OmnysValefor]

I'm still struggling to understand your position. The best that I can understand is that:

A) You believe that making the game challenging is entirely the responsibility of the developers, by any and all means necessary.

B) You believe it is entirely the responsibility of each individual player to surmount that challenge, by any and all means available.

C) You believe that the present mechanics of the game have a positive effect on the community and that the best course for the game is to take no action.

The last one seems the most baffling, but to each his own I guess.

A) Yes, a player created challenge is stupid. "I made this harder on my group.". I believe bringing people on sub-optimal jobs is dumb. A BLM/WHM could main heal a lot of easier fights, but you wouldn't want them to. I hate people that steadfastly refuse to level more than one job or more than one style of job (2h melee) and yet want in on everything.

Yes, my GEO can get in on nearly everything, but I don't even want to be on GEO most of the time. Still I play it, so I make sure to play it well.

B) I believe it's on each player to do their best, but that's not the mentality in this thread wants.

C) No. I believe that monsters gain tp way too fast, the game is heavily biased against melee. I think that mechanics need a reworking, I just don't think HP-scaling is the problem.

I've been around these forums for a while. I know some of the posters here that are always complaining how they're not welcome in any content ("I can't get 50 JP on any job!") and when I see them posting in this thread, disguising their true desires to be given gear, it bothers me.

No, you seem intelligent Zek. I don't think you want handed gear, but I certainly believe a lot of your fans in this thread do.

[Zekander]

I see, thank you very much for clarifying that.

Unfortunately, I have seen many dev posts citing their dwindling resources, and I would imagine that reworking core mechanics like those would probably be beyond their capability.

[Olor]

when I see them posting in this thread, disguising their true desires to be given gear, it bothers me.


I don't think you're in a position to judge people's "true desires" friend.

I am definitely someone who has had a lot of trouble getting into content since the buffing job I spent a lot of time and effort levelling and gearing was made obsolete.

I definitely find the JP grind soul-agonizingly boring, and I think it really sucks that the only groups that exist require you to be on only specific jobs with outrageously good gear.

I strongly dislike that the job I most enjoyed soloing on, the job I had the easiest time soloing on (though still had to work at it) was nerfed hard.

I play in fits and starts so the current gear ladder is an issue. I don't think the game should be so poorly designed that if you take 2 months off you're so far behind you can't catch up anymore.

I'd really rather not merc gear etc. I'd like to play with others as a contributing member. The game is not as fun since all my friends left - for XIV or otherwise.

I support Zekander's suggestion because I think it would help players like me (NQ players - infrequent players - casuals - people without REM) climb the gear ladder together.

I don't expect to probably ever be doing 135 content. I have never in the entire time I've played XI, asked to join a group I didn't think I belonged in, in terms of skill and gear. (Exception - in Abyssea Era, I got some megaboss kill titles from people farming. I'll admit that, but I had zero other reason to do those mobs.)

I'm actually super paranoid about joining groups because I don't want to be dead weight.

So please don't assume players are asking for handouts when what they are asking for is the ability to make progress together.

Also - some people only have one job because playing this game is not their full time job - and gearing several jobs takes a LOT of time. Maybe that's time they don't have. Heck, maybe they play games to have fun and for them it's not fun to play a job they don't like? The game should be designed so that every job has a place in content.

I, for example, have WHM leveled and sort of geared but I am not going to play it in anything serious because if anything goes wrong, everyone blames you, and it's stressful. You can point at whm as a job with a lower gear threshold for players but it is the absolute least fun job to play in the game. I will never ever blame someone for not playing whm to gear their other jobs that they will never be allowed to play again.

[cengeal]

People get carried when players of a higher skill level take them through content those lesser players have zero chance of winning without that higher leveled player present. Used to happen all the time in my old LS. I would take a bunch of gimps with me to events. Being a very well geared BLU, it was easy as long as they were as intelligent as trusts. But sometimes, they weren't. I quickly became fed up with their attitudes, so now I've moved on to better things. I enjoy the game more playing with people who don't need me to babysit them through everything.

I've probably earned a reputation as a bit of jerk at this point, but I don't care. I have a few people on a "no pearl" list for my LS, because I have nothing but bad experiences with them. Outside of people who share pearls, I've cut all ties to the oversized LS. Without all that deadweight slowing everybody down, I've found that we accomplish stuff much quicker and more efficiently. Like I keep saying, it's the players responsibility to get better. These deadweight players need to take it upon themselves to get better. Often times that means leveling another job. This "I do what I want, when I want" attitude is funny to watch when Ron Swanson does it, but in reality, it's more detrimental than anything. If all you want to play is DD's, fine. However, people who "do it their way" don't tend to make it very far when their way is the least effective way.

[OmnysValefor]

I see, thank you very much for clarifying that.

Unfortunately, I have seen many dev posts citing their dwindling resources, and I would imagine that reworking core mechanics like those would probably be beyond their capability.

Absolutely agree with this, but we get silly event content and a mount system, new trusts.

On the other hand, if HP can scale with the number of people, why can't a monsters' tp gain rate from taking damage? If 6 people give the mob 20 tp per strike, 12 people should give say 12 or 14 TP (because doubling the party size doesn't mean another tank or necessarily double the support).

Why can't we have a player command to shut off their ability to SC? For instance, if you have two BLUs chaining CDC for light, why can't the monk type /nosc and freely ws without interfering. You can't just have them not WS because that's boring AND does reduce their damage and thus value.

I imagine that when you use a ws, like Asuran Fists, it places a debuff on the boss for Gravitation and Liquefaction and the next WS has to correspond to SC or overwrites the debuffs. Why can't a person just disable their own debuffs. If this is how it works programmatically, it shouldn't be hard to disable the appliance / conflict with sc-debuffs. There are weapon skills that have no skillchain properties (Spirits Within, the aby-elemental WSs like Sanguine Blade) but they tend to do awful damage on high end content (due to magic accuracy, and whether the person has an MAB set for the WS).

[Zekander]

Those sound like pretty good suggestions.

The first one might be easy if they simply overlay a scaling subtle blow effect on all party members when an alliance is created. However, the effectiveness of that would depend on whether or not they can make it break, or if they simply increase the subtle blow cap (50% iirc).

The second one might be difficult if they have no way to modify the existing skillchain properties.

[Ketaru]

If we're talking about players catching up to their peers, there is a lot they can do that doesn't involve letting players leech content.

It looks like they've already taken notice and are adding ways to get 119 gear via Records of Eminence, even if the gear is only nominally so. I'd argue that trusts should be permanently buffed rather than only as a function of campaigns. They already leave a lot to be desired as it is, but permanently buffed trusts that don't die as easily will be a huge boon to helping players catch up with their peers. Easier ways to get Rem chapters 1-5 could get people back on their feet with at least their AF/Relic/Emp to start with and build upon from there. As it is now, it feels much easier to get 6-10 than it is to 1-5.

I personally see the virtues of HP Scaling and what it is intended to dissuade. But if the goal is to bringing returning players back into the fold, they have to create better opportunities for them to catch up. Nobody is going to want to return to the game if you tell them, "The right way for you to do it is to solo for a very long time until you've slowly amassed just enough gear to maybe fight Cunnast or Angrboda."

Speaking of which, some of the Escha Zi'tah T1 NMs, which do drop gear that would arguably make several jobs contributing members to current content, are disproportionately too difficult in my opinion, especially when you consider this is supposed to be the new baseline gear. Aglaophotis, Revetaur, and Vidala really need to have their difficulty toned down. Those aren't things that somebody is Eminent gear is going to be able to beat.

[OmnysValefor]

I'd argue that trusts should be permanently buffed rather than only as a function of campaigns. They already leave a lot to be desired as it is, but permanently buffed trusts that don't die as easily will be a huge boon to helping players catch up with their peers. Easier ways to get Rem chapters 1-5 could get people back on their feet with at least their AF/Relic/Emp to start with and build upon from there. As it is now, it feels much easier to get 6-10 than it is to 1-5.

Agreed. Trust HP/MP buffs should be permanent. The players who rely on trusts most tend to have lacklaster trusts. Gessho is the only good tank trust til August or Amchuchu and none of them are that great. August is good if the enemy doesn't cast powerful magic and Amchuchu is good if the enemy sticks to one element and doesn't have tank-killing physical moves. August has an ability that reduces his damage taken but neither seem to have any innate -DT. A move that will the party to 10% HP will take August there as well.

None of white mages, even both UC WHMs have stellar mp-throughput. Their ws "Nott" is something but I often find them running out MP, especially if the boss has a curse (-hp down) that they can remove. They'll remove it, Cure VI, remove it, Cure V, remove it, Cure VI.


I personally see the virtues of HP Scaling and what it is intended to dissuade. But if the goal is to bringing returning players back into the fold, they have to create better opportunities for them to catch up. Nobody is going to want to return to the game if you tell them, "The right way for you to do it is to solo for a very long time until you've slowly amassed just enough gear to maybe fight Cunnast or Angrboda."

Won't lie, when I came back from 2013, Angrboda put the hurt on my Aegis/Ochain a few times (I don't think he ever killed me without killing trusts first), Cunnast's breath attacks one shotted me a few times. Amchuchu, during hp campaign was a better tank.


Speaking of which, some of the Escha Zi'tah T1 NMs, which do drop gear that would arguably make several jobs contributing members to current content, are disproportionately too difficult in my opinion, especially when you consider this is supposed to be the new baseline gear. Aglaophotis, Revetaur, and Vidala really need to have their difficulty toned down. Those aren't things that somebody is Eminent gear is going to be able to beat.

You know, I agree. These fights take other players unless the sparks-geared person happens to be on the job key to the fight (Paladin or RUN for Angrboda, RDM/BLM/SCH for Revtaur/Vidala) and that's still depending a bit on good fortune (cursna works on tank, procs work on Vidala, Angrboda doesn't dominate your trusts).

[Urmom]

I don't think that's actually true. 18 man Schah was recently cleared and I did an 18 man Warder of Courage. The DPS was really high, and on some fights even with DD's such as Erinys, it is better to have more DD. It really depends. There is a definite loss of adding even more than one melee DD in a lot of cases, SAM for example, and most every melee DD can self chain now. It's still ok to pair up as DD, but after that skill chaining goes out the window. And that's also ok on a lot of mobs, which have high magic resist and so that's why you're using melee anyway. And even if that isn't the case, some zerg strats do very well without waiting around for skillchains such as Might Strikes resolution warriors. There is a falloff, but adding more DD can still end up being more damage and at some point it can't really TP move much faster than it is. To be honest for some reason the people just after you add a 2nd party seems to make it a lot harder. But fully functioning alliances with two parties fully focused on dealing damage especially with a nuke setup in my experience if the people are well geared it's actually often easier than low man situations just because your ratio of damage dealers to support is so dang high. Those two geo and the SCH's making skillchains in rotations, are multiplying the damage of a lot of mages bursting, to the point it even overpowers the magic acc reductions if magic bursts are very close to each other.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I didn't say you couldn't do it with more or that adding players didn't add anything but that you had diminishing gains which in light of increasing hps makes it harder. For example 3 players capable of say 1k dps you'd get more or less the same amount of skillchain dmg with 2 or 3 so the average dmg is higher with 2 than 3 even if all 3 do exactly the same amount of melee and ws dmg. In fact your odds of skillchaining without holding back your dmg go down as you add more so your average skillchain dmg might actually be less with more players