HP Scaling, Please Remove It

[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).