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.

[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.

[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]

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?