I made a blog post about this a while back. It deals with the problems the current SP system has, and the tweaks (just tweaks, not overhauls) that are needed to refine the system and promote a more varied and entertaining experience for the players.
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...entry?e=155735
I feel that we have made much progress since the darkages of random SP gain that we had back in September. The current system allows us to kill mobs without having to worry about inconsistent SP gain. However, there are still a few issues with the system that need to be addressed.
The current SP gain calculations go as follows:
[EXP] = [party modifier] x [mob's base SP] x [dlvl modifier]
More detail can be found here:
http://kanican.livejournal.com/51730.html
http://kanican.livejournal.com/52445.html
The current system incentivizes the right behavior: killing the mobs as fast and efficiently as possible. I do think it can still be improved with several adjustments that would not be very hard to add.
Proposed solutions are in red, with the reasoning behind them detailed in regular text.
Here's what we could do:
Increase the dlvl 10 restriction so that killing even harder mobs rewards the player with more SP.
Right now, the highest rank mob you can fight until your SP is capped is 10 ranks above you. That means,
if you are rank 40, you will see the same SP gain from fighting a mob that is rank 50 and a mob of the same type that is rank 55.
I think defeating harder monsters should be rewarded, so if the dlvl restriction of 10 were raised to something like 15 or 20, it would give skilled players an incentive to go exploring and to take down harder monsters without feeling like it's a waste of time.
This issue is especially noticeable when you are in a party of around 8 or more. Fighting mobs 10 level higher than you becomes ridiculously easy and boring, yet if we fight harder mobs, we won't see any additional SP gain.
This small adjustment will make a lot of other options available without negatively effecting any of the currently established strategies. If you want to kill moderately difficult mobs in a party of 4, you can. If you want to kill really hard mobs in a party of 8, you can (and be rewarded appropriately). If you are skilled and want to low-man really hard mobs in a party of 4, you can (and be rewarded appropriately).
Enlarge certain mob populations and respawn rates so that the number of viable SP grindable areas increases.
Say that you are rank 47. If you want to find a good mob to grind on and check YG (
http://ffxiv.yg.com/npcs?f=c=2) you'd see that there are at least 28 or so mobs that are 55-59. However,
only one of those mobs is good to rank up on. Raptors. Why? Well, it's because there are so many of them in one place, and their respawn rate is pretty fast.
Most of the other mobs on that list are dotted sparsely on the landscape and/or have terribly slow respawn rates, thus are not suitable for a sustained grinding session.
If you kill a 5 mobs in any given area and have to wait 5 minutes for them to respawn again, it's very frustrating. This also adds to a lot of confusion as to only the players with a lot of knowledge know where the good grinding spots are because 1. there's so few of them, and 2. it's really hard to figure out what makes a grinding spot good to begin with.
If there were more places that are viable to grind SP, that would encourage parties to seek out these places and explore the world more.
Increase Base SP for certain mobs to make them more desirable to rank up on.
Taking a look at that same list again, and cross referencing it to Kaeko's "base SP' chart, you'll see that
there are only 3 mobs that have a base SP of 150: raptors, efts, and peistes. Everything else has a lower base SP, and while the effort to kill those lower base SP mobs is pretty much the same, that effort does not give you as much SP as killing raptors, so you're pretty much stuck with killing raptors if you want to maximize your SP gain.
If more varieties of mobs are just as worthwhile to grind SP on as raptors and efts, we'll see a variety of options open up to the player.
Implement EXP chains like in FF11 to encourage speed and efficiency, and to also give players a dynamic mini-goal to work towards.
This will give an extra incentive to
kill quickly and motivate the party to do better. It's just a plain old fun gameplay mechanic, as anyone who has played FF11 can attest to.
In order to prevent abuse and reward skill, I'd limit SP chain bonus eligibility to only mobs that are at least 5 levels higher than the player, and give an extra bonus to mobs that are more than 10 levels higher than the player.
Increasing the number of simultaneous overworld mob claims to 5 at once, so that AoE attacks play a larger part in non-leve battle (but with suitable safeguards in place to prevent exploits like Astral Burning).
Single claim only is BORING. Why do we even have AoE attacks if we can't even use them most of the time. AoE blasting multiple mobs is FUN. Increase the number of simultaneous claims to at least 5, so that I can have fun using Full Swing and Brandish. This will also give parties an avenue to create more strategies and give an outlet for emergent party gameplay.
This new claim system coupled with the SP chain system would discourage players from AOEing trash mobs for SP, since the gains would be rather minimal, and not worth it. The emphasis is always on fighting mobs that are an even match or harder - with increased rewards being directly proportional to the amount of risk a player takes.
