Quote Originally Posted by Zekander View Post
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.