I don't think losing mettle on death is a good mechanic.

I'm relatively new to BSF, and I'm not here to debate the pros and cons of mettle, just a reaction I had to the possibility of losing it.

A CE popped. Only 4 other people had gone into it. I knew the mechanics for that CE. I also knew that a lot of other players didn't. It's an early one and quite possible to clear without essences, but had at least 2 instant KO mechanics iirc without essences. However, I saw how few people had joined, and that the possibility of a wipe could be high. I looked at my mettle, thought about how much I'd lose if we did wipe and no-one came to res (it was relatively early in the morning server time on a week day when this happened) so just didn't bother with it.

The thing is, I quite enjoy CEs, but I don't enjoy losing mettle. So the thought of the latter mechanic made me not engage with events in the game as well as other players.

It just seems a mechanic which makes one disengage with the game would be a bad mechanic.

While I hear you and it does initially feel demoralizing to lose progress just because you died, you'll eventually come to realize that your total mettle at any one time is not actually all that important. It is ludicrously easy to come out ahead on mettle gain over the course of a single stint in BSF or Zadnor. This gets even sillier when you start doing CLL, Dal, and DR. Unless you're feeding yourself to the bad guys all day long, you're fine.

At first I had horrible flashbacks of FF11, but this isn’t the case at all. Although you lose mettle, the lose is easily gained. I do think mettle per kill would be nice, but that’s another topic. Just saying, you get use to it. Also there’s something truly satisfying about being the last man standing and crushing a CE boss. Everyone watching while you save the day. Been there more then a few times and it’s always a great feeling.
My advice...always stay prepared for whatever might happen. Carry a couple phoenix downs to Rez players who can help save the CE.

I'm not a huge fan of the mechanic myself, but thanks to Zadnor any mettle lost can be easily regained and then some. Grinding mettle was never hard to begin with though.

If you would not lose mettle, you could queue solo for castrum or dalirada, off yourself in a mechanic, return and wait for the party to clear it ... and repeat that. The problem with this is, the content scales with numbers of players in it ... so if you had 5 ppl afk the players who do it the normal way would have to work extra.

Lets not create more loopholes.

Just to echo what has been said, your perspective will probably change once you reach rank 25, clear the Dalriada, and unlock valor. You need 20 million mettle to exchange for 3 medals, and I think you need 55 or so medals to cap all 3 categories. Just by casually clearing a few skirmishes, FATEs, and Dalriada in Zadnor, I went from 8 million to 14 million in less than an hour.

The only thing that I think needs to be tweaked is rate of mettle loss in the Southern Front.

I'm fine with mettle gains in BSF being capped relatively low because they want to push people into Zadnor, but given that the game still clearly wants us to do stuff in BSF even after making it through the storyline (with several relic drops and a weekly quest for CLL being tied to the zone), it doesn't feel right that you still lose just as much mettle dying there as rank 25 as you would anywhere else. It's not like the content in BSF is drastically easier compared to Zadnor or anything, either.

Eureka would have potentially had the same issue, but because there XP is only lost if you home point, it mostly avoided that problem.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

The only thing that I think needs to be tweaked is rate of mettle loss in the Southern Front.

I'm fine with mettle gains in BSF being capped relatively low because they want to push people into Zadnor, but given that the game still clearly wants us to do stuff in BSF even after making it through the storyline (with several relic drops and a weekly quest for CLL being tied to the zone), it doesn't feel right that you still lose just as much mettle dying there as rank 25 as you would anywhere else. It's not like the content in BSF is drastically easier compared to Zadnor or anything, either.

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As a returning player that just started doing BSF and Zadno, I see this to be very true.

After reaching 25, I would lose about 65k per dead while I gain about 30-50k per Critical Encounter in BSF.
While the CEs in BSF are just as hard as in Zadnor.

This clearly incentifies me to never go BSF, if I want to farm valor. Only CLL is worth doing there.
In contrast, Zadnor CEs, Delubrum and Dalriada give substantially more.
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The only problem of this aproach is the resistance gear. If I wanted to be more effective in resistance areas, I would have to farm ludicrous amounts of normal bozjan coins - seeing that upgraded of one chest piece is like 1050 coins or so, I'm resigned to just give up on that. I might get normal versions for glam. But the coins for upgrade, that I would have to farm in BSF, are a bad joke.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

While I hear you and it does initially feel demoralizing to lose progress just because you died, you'll eventually come to realize that your total mettle at any one time is not actually all that important. It is ludicrously easy to come out ahead on mettle gain over the course of a single stint in BSF or Zadnor. This gets even sillier when you start doing CLL, Dal, and DR. Unless you're feeding yourself to the bad guys all day long, you're fine.

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Yes, you DO come out ahead on Rank 25, y'know, assuming you're not doing Bozja content that costs you 61k Mettle per death while the CE itself only gives 25ish. Or you have to release and lose 300k while probably failing to get the 25k to begin with.

But what you don't see is that the penalty adds up over time. That mettle that you lost is mettle that you wouldn't need to grind again, grinding mettle back gives you a net 0 mettle, making part of that grind a waste of your time just because you lost Mettle. And considering that you start needing upwards of 40mil Mettle for a SINGLE Ray of Valor, every little bit that you're forced to grind again stings all the more. I don't even want to THINK about how much total Mettle I've lost, probably 1 or 2 Rays on that alone.

It's just a throttle so you'll need more of the stuff. It's artificial and because of the ammounts lost with that much insta-death? It's infuriating.

One annoying thing I sometimes see is when someone refuses to accept a raise for the remainder of a difficult Delebrum Reginae fight (after they died) because they don't want to lose more mettle since they're afraid of further deaths, when people should really be accepting raises almost all the time; the only time you shouldn't is if you're waiting a tiny bit longer to time your mid-battle respawn past an ongoing mechanic. I want as many people alive and contributing toward the fights as possible; it'll cost us less time and less future deaths.

It's also more perplexing now because you get something like ten times the amount of mettle for completing that instance, but that's how some people are, I suppose; even slight losses discourage some people from more actively contributing toward bosses.