HP Scaling, Please Remove It

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.