SP pre November patch

Not trying to back track the 'progression' of this game but...

Did anyone else like sp gains before November patch? I know they were random gains sometimes, but you actually had people outside the aetherytes and not just focusing on leves.

Yes I know we have a huge decrease in the population since November but just wanted to see people's thoughts on sp gains now and back then

Players can still get really good SP from party grinding, but because the monsters and combat are so boring and uninspired that they don't even bother looking for other like-minded people.

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Originally Posted by Warp

Players can still get really good SP from party grinding, but because the monsters and combat are so boring and uninspired that they don't even bother looking for other like-minded people.

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Well the difference now is that you are directed to have smaller parties, max sp gain being with a party of 8. When you have a small group of people, combat isn't so boring actually.

I remember being on Lancer before they fixed our Accuracy and being with a party other DDs killed it and then i missed a lot and i got not a lot lol...if thats what you mean by having a chance of a skill up each time you landed a hit. Once i could actually hit it wasn't too bad but i prefer it now. I think i remember seeing a rank 50 Archer two weeks after launch must have been all the hitting.

The Rank 50 you saw 2 weeks after launch was from the Leve bug lol before a patch in Oct you used to be able to kill any mobs for increased SP while under leve and get massive SP gains.

i like the current SP, i also grind fine in normal parties with the mages that actually cures and nukes instead of spamming dart for a chance of SP.

the only problem now is that most of the times people barely have time to do grinding parties because leves occupies 2 out of 3 days, on free days people wants to relax.. and then there are people that wants to grind but do not know where to go, or if they do knows where to go, the kills are so slow because they do not have any idea how to utilize BR, hence they stop doing normal grinding parties.. this keeps going until no one does grinding party anymore.

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Originally Posted by DeadRiser

Well the difference now is that you are directed to have smaller parties, max sp gain being with a party of 8. When you have a small group of people, combat isn't so boring actually.

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i know they say 8, but i have noticed that 6 is actually your highest sp per kill. when you go to 8 the sp per kill drops drastically. i know the extra 2 people do make kills faster, but there's not many places in which you have enough mobs with fast enough spawn time to make sp an hr worthwhile for a party of 8. personally i enjoy the larger 15 man parties because i am in a big ls and it's easy to get 15 and hate telling people they can't join because it'll hurt our sp. there is just not enough mobs in game that will benefit a bigger party so i do understand them wishing to drop the max party size.

I like the system as it is now, before that november patch i got around 3x more SP than the conjurer in my group because he was healing and buffing. Grinded rank 35-37 on random mobs that gave 199 to 405 SP each...I see nothing wrong with this.

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Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

i know they say 8, but i have noticed that 6 is actually your highest sp per kill. when you go to 8 the sp per kill drops drastically. i know the extra 2 people do make kills faster, but there's not many places in which you have enough mobs with fast enough spawn time to make sp an hr worthwhile for a party of 8. personally i enjoy the larger 15 man parties because i am in a big ls and it's easy to get 15 and hate telling people they can't join because it'll hurt our sp. there is just not enough mobs in game that will benefit a bigger party so i do understand them wishing to drop the max party size.

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I hate 15 man parties. There is just no fun to them outside of NM.

The main issue is that the old SP system actually encouraged people to "play worse."

For example, you used to get SP for healing your party members. This meant that more damage received by your party members would result in more opportunity for skillups. Eventually people started playing "naked" to increase the damage they received, and mages would cluster close to the mobs to take damage from the AOE so they could heal themselves.

You also had a chance to gain SP for connected attacks. The SP was supposed to scale based on damage dealt, but the formulas were not set up properly. For example, Thms figured out that they would get more skillups by just spamming Phantom Dart than actually landing DoTs like Poison.

Basically the old SP system incentivized inefficiancy instead of rewarding cooperation and quick kills the way the Exp Chain system in FFXI does. Something just felt flat out wrong about the old system way beyond the "random" factor of skillups. Keeping mobs on "life support," dragging out every battle in order to maximize SP gain, and "cure sniping" are just a few examples, but there are many many other reasons why the current system is vastly superior.

At the time, I wanted a flat rate SP system... As a healer, I always seemed to cap out when the DD's were getting junk... We'd move, the DD's would be capping, and the healers would be getting junk. Then we'd find a nice balance, where everyone did well... Except the tank or someone else, who would be getting junk...

I just hated to see some people miss out, and it seemed like someone always did.

But, with that said, roaming around, looking for new camps, and fighting with a bunch of people out in the field was a LOT better than doing leves, and infinitely better than solo'ing doblyns.

Since they changed it, I basically just quit leveling all together. First it was because of the solo trend, and I don't play mmo's to solo... I even craft in parties. But now, it's mostly because of the leves. They just don't appeal to me. Not sure why, but leves just seem to get on my nerves, like they feel repetitive and annoying... But for whatever reason, getting a party of 6+ people, and going out to a camp and just slaying around for 2-3 hours was always fun... Especially when people would be chatty and joking around and such the whole time. Leves just seem like an on-rails experience, and Idk, they just bore me...

Maybe if they had better leves... Like party based defense leves that are actually tough, and not because the mobs oneshot your tank... Like, have a 20 minute duration, with wave after wave of mobs, one after the other. Maybe like garrisons from FFXI, but on steroids. That's a leve I would enjoy... Running back and forth killing filthy peon monkeys for necrologo pages, or running all over just to sit at a spot for 8 minutes and kill a weak crap efts... meh... Just meh, like x1000.

But that's just me. In general though, I definitely think they need to eliminate the star ratings from leves, and just make completely different leves for small, large, and huge parties, then make all the current ones just solo class leves.

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Originally Posted by DeadRiser

I hate 15 man parties. There is just no fun to them outside of NM.

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no that's what i was saying. i wish there was more mob types that supported the bigger parties. to me the biggest issue is the higher mobs that could support a big party to defeat them have a massive attack that will 1 shot a whole group of r50 people. there is no middle ground where they have mobs that a group really has to team up against to defeat besides the nm's. that's why i said i understood why they dropped the sp to being most beneficial for an 8 man party, but would love to see some mobs besides nm's that you need teamwork and a bigger group to attack and have a tough and engaging battle.

Absolutely not. While the original SP gain was interesting *on paper* it was disastrous in practice.

Why? It actually encouraged NOT to kill the monster, and to try and make it last as much as possible to get more SP. It also discouraged the use of any skill that didn't directly result in SP gain (for instance shock spikes and the like).

Any system that discourages *winning* in a game, and discourages the creative using of one's tools is utterly flawed at it's roots.

It was good in theory but in a multiplayer situation it was untenable. Pugilist was going to level the fastest since it hit the fastest. In a behest you would have 2 or 3 pugilists hitting something and you wouldn't even get a chance to target the mob before it was dead. If you can't hit it, no sp for you. I think it was a cool system in FF2 but that's single player where no matter what happens you get credit for it.

I wish it was more purely like FF2, with no experience points or skill points at all. Originally I think that was the concept but because they ran out of ideas they threw in EXP and SP. Like if my ice magic went up when I cast ice spells. I think this system is way better for the gain you get within a certain amount of time.. but sometimes I wonder. What do you all think?

No I hated the original SP system.

I didn't like that it promoted spamming 11111 taking damage and killing slowly. Though I wish there where better incentives to party grind, maybe more party sp bonus. I think if an 8 man raptor party could pull in say 400-500 sp a kill at mid 40s then it would definitely be worth doing much more then it is right now, that way leves would serve their intended purpose for those that dont have much time instead of the main way to get SP.

No thanks. we were forced to go easy on the monster so we could get more hits, im glad its gone.

No thanks, I like to actually use my most damaging abilities and use gear that is above level 1.

A few months ago...

Me in a party of 3 people...

We fought a bat in Mun-Tuy Cellars...

It kept healing itself over and over again during the entire fight, took a ridiculous amount of time/effort/resrouces to kill...

Only got 100 sp to show for it.



I am in favor of the old SP system.

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Originally Posted by Galamantyl

A few months ago...

Me in a party of 3 people...

We fought a bat in Mun-Tuy Cellars...

It kept healing itself over and over again during the entire fight, took a ridiculous amount of time/effort/resrouces to kill...

Only got 100 sp to show for it.



I am in favor of the old SP system.

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yeah those bats can be total beasts. i hate fighting them even now. the thing is i know not to fight them now because the sp stinks on them, but i would rather people learn to fight mobs the correct way and the old system did the opposite.

i hated getting in groups under the old system where people would intentionally get beat up instead of killing the mob. i feel like the old sp system just promoted playing the class the opposite of the proper way which alot of people still have not learned how to do. to me this sp method needs some tweaks on sp gained from some mobs, but it is much better than the last system.

worst system ever

have to keep monster alive as long as possible to get more SP

and for a healer you need to have evil intention, want to see your allies get wound for more healing chance

I really disliked the old sp system because you had to fight against your party members to gain sp. Some one was always loosing out every fight. I remember being very frustrated when i gained around 90-100 or less skill per mob and some one else was constantly "Capping" out. Hell i remember a lot of cases not gaining a single point of skill especially early on, its was a real kick in the dangly parts to get no skill what so ever because you were killing to quickly.. at rank 1.

All these people talking about intentionally getting hurt and whatnot to gain sp.. THAT'S pretty much exploiting the system. I meant in the way that people actually grinded for those every so often 500 sp a kill. I didn't nor did any of my parties dumb themselves down to get max sp like that. Never mind. fail thread

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Originally Posted by DeadRiser

All these people talking about intentionally getting hurt and whatnot to gain sp.. THAT'S pretty much exploiting the system. I meant in the way that people actually grinded for those every so often 500 sp a kill. I didn't nor did any of my parties dumb themselves down to get max sp like that. Never mind. fail thread

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I can't say I know of a single person who did not try to maximize the sp. Most people I know would not want to go several fights without sp and then the one magic monster that gave 200. Why not get 500 every time?

It's kinda like saying that you don't care how much sp doblyns gave, you would much rather fight the roadrunners who are harder and net half of the sp just because.

SP are something like money

and everyone want money :D

Old SP system was horrible. We made tanks not wear gear so they'd take more dmg and we could spam cure them, we'd fight AOE mobs so we could spam cure more, we'd intentionally do less dmg, not debuff the mobs, not hit too hard, not WS, spam taunt, spam random abilities, etc.

I always found it odd that mages never debuffed... I always got like 90-150sp per debuff back in the day when sp proced. having a 15 person with 5 mages... trying to get cure sp was sorta stupid.

Pre Nov patch SP was only good for mages. all other classes sucked hard. At times the mob would die before you could ever get in a hit. exspecially in big parties. Also if you wern't a PLD god forbid you pull a mob. I really hated the game before the patch and was so so glad what they did with the SP gain.

You didn't debuff because it made OTHER PEOPLE gain less sp, and even you. You slow the mob? You get less SP from having to cure less, you para or bio the mob? Same thing. You dia/poison the mob? Everyone gets less SP because it dies faster. If you had 5 mages, then yeah I could see why you'd debuff/nuke. But I would basically get really pissed at that point T_T

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Originally Posted by JayvirDeforte

I can't say I know of a single person who did not try to maximize the sp. Most people I know would not want to go several fights without sp and then the one magic monster that gave 200. Why not get 500 every time?

It's kinda like saying that you don't care how much sp doblyns gave, you would much rather fight the roadrunners who are harder and net half of the sp just because.

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Well you just met someone and haven't met the rest of the population. All the eft parties and antling parties I went into we never did such a thing.

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Originally Posted by Elkwood

The Rank 50 you saw 2 weeks after launch was from the Leve bug lol before a patch in Oct you used to be able to kill any mobs for increased SP while under leve and get massive SP gains.

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No this was because the system rewarded those who could hit most...the patch i remember was to fix the mage exploit where people got exp for curing instead of killing.

I think the game originality is forever lost and buried.
From here on all we gonna see is more of the same.

Everything so far are quick fixes , not even trying to balance and giving up on what could be the next best thin since coco-cola.

I gotta say i agree with OP SP before was worth parting for. But instead of fixing/balancing it , they decided the easy way out of making it flat, and since is to hard to balance sp gain in party grind soon after that , they just raised it exponentiationaly .is the same with everything else.easy way outs and no balancing.

Sometimes i feel the devs really are amateurs .Stop with the easy fixes take your time and do it right.
Im depressed now. good night!