Battle High needs to change/be removed

[Mawlzy]

Folks complained about it then, about losing battle high completely and about having to last hit in order to gain battle high. If reverting is only going to bring those same complaints back up it's not worth it. (see previous post about this)

I think we can be fairly confident that reverting, removing, or maintaining the status quo with BH will produce a similar number of complaints. This may be because it's impact is a symptom of something deeper that is broken.

[Aravell]

Folks complained about it then, about losing battle high completely and about having to last hit in order to gain battle high. If reverting is only going to bring those same complaints back up it's not worth it. (see previous post about this)

Doing anything would cause complaints regardless. But the benefit of reverting to the old system is that there would be less BH5s on the field and people can no longer make excuses thar they lost the fight because the other team has too much BH5.

[Valence]

The main problem I see in this thread with people trying to consistently dampen or outright remove the mechanic whether it's battle high or anything else, is that you're all by definition trying to accommodate more for the losing team by removing rewards for skill expression and victory conditions. Again, the reason BH is there is to force people into tactical kills and engage each other instead of sitting on objectives and occasionally fighting for them, which is what already happens btw when all teams are lead by nobody and the majority of their players are clueless of how the mode works (cf my shamelessly reposted meme pic on the first page). If you remove all teeth from BH or just remove it, that's essentially the type of gameplay you'll foster.

The fact remains that people complain about BH because it makes good players kill better and get rewarded for it into a snowball mechanic, but the fact is also that the other players are just complaining that a good team is winning and they're not. I've been into useless teams that can't seem to win any engagement no matter what you do, and they don't even sit on objectives either! They just don't win, and you get pushed back, eventually rooted, and farmed. You don't fix this by limiting the BH or rewards the other team gets, you fix this by making people play better. You all have to come to realization that this isn't CC with clear rank segmentation triaging people according to their skill level and matching them equally. You have everybody mashed up into the mode, from the green novice that's lost to the hardcore premade tryhard, with casual rouletters and tryhard solo vets somewhere in the middle. It's like having a football game with randos in both teams and complaining that the other team is crushing yours because they have a group of professional players and you only have a semi pro at best with the rest of your team made of preschoolers just here to kick into the ball and have fun.

You don't fix this by changing the rules of the game. You accept this is a casual mode and you learn to live with it.

[Mawlzy]

It's like having a football game with randos in both teams and complaining that the other team is crushing yours because they have a group of professional players and you only have a semi pro at best with the rest of your team made of preschoolers just here to kick into the ball and have fun.

Right, and outside of pathological cases like charity matches, football is never played like that.

[Aravell]

You don't fix this by changing the rules of the game. You accept this is a casual mode and you learn to live with it.

I'm not personally in favour of removing Battle High because I believe that players who engage successfully in PvP should be rewarded, I also know that the system encourages people to not sit on their thumbs and actually go and fight each other.

However, I do think that Battle High as a system does need to be updated to fit the modern kits. The healing increase was attached to it back when the team required healers to keep them alive, the healing increase was to make it easier to keep the BH5 player alive as they're a priority target. But now that everyone is responsible for their own survival and we all get at least 4 x 25000 heals in every engagement, there's really no need for the healing increase anymore.

[Valence]

Right, and outside of pathological cases like charity matches, football is never played like that.

Then the solution is to introduce ranks. Do you think it will really happen to the FL mode though? I'm spamming X for doubt.

I'm not personally in favour of removing Battle High because I believe that players who engage successfully in PvP should be rewarded, I also know that the system encourages people to not sit on their thumbs and actually go and fight each other.

However, I do think that Battle High as a system does need to be updated to fit the modern kits. The healing increase was attached to it back when the team required healers to keep them alive, the healing increase was to make it easier to keep the BH5 player alive as they're a priority target. But now that everyone is responsible for their own survival and we all get at least 4 x 25000 heals in every engagement, there's really no need for the healing increase anymore.

BH could definitely be better for sure. Not affecting Recuperate for starters, people don't even imagine how squishier it would make BH5 players already as a change. I feel people greatly underestimate what such a change would do on its own, before even talking about innate DRs, etc. I'm very mixed on BH not affecting healing from job specific healing abilities though since they're part of the kit, but I do acknowledge that a BH5 aspected benefic is absolutely disgusting for the AST to stay alive. Fortunately most of those big heals are found on squishies and not on melees, except tanks perhaps.

My personal problem with BH is how it still relies on getting the last hit for a kill. It's so unreliable, and doesn't promote any good gameplay anyway. Some games you'll get BH5 in two engagements because you're just lucky, and sometimes you'll just struggle because the rng gods hate you. It feels very arbitrary and on top of it, affects jobs completely unequally. The only job that's very bad at getting last hits that isn't suffering from this is actually SCH, for example.

I don't know how it would hold ultimately but I'd like BH gauge rewards not be based on final hits, but on damage contribution perhaps, or on a fixed amount split between the amount of participants (doesn't have to be linear else it would be ridiculous). And perhaps you could reward players with a lot more BH tied to the BH rating of the target they manage to kill. For instance, deleting a BH5 player could reward you with 5 times the amount.

And then frankly even though it's not about BH much, either innate DRs for melees are way too high, or they're way too low for ranged jobs. Ranged jobs are absolute trash in this mode beyond a few that get some redeeming qualities due to specific key abilities of their toolkit and even then...

[Mawlzy]

Then the solution is to introduce ranks. Do you think it will really happen to the FL mode though? I'm spamming X for doubt.

I think doubt for any significant PvP change is a wise default position.

However, SQEX has mentioned cross-region queues and even experimented with cloud hosting. NA has 3.5 DCs. If we all queued together into a 3-tier ranked FL mode, there would be no issue with queue times. It could even be used as a test case for broader application across dungeons and raiding.

As discussed elsewhere, for FL to survive it needs new players, and I think retention of such players is far more likely if they start off in the kiddie pool. And it'd give the premade tryhards what they want -- JP-style FL with all the comforts of home.

And I wouldn't have anything to moan about. Seriously. This fixes the whole shebang as far as I'm concerned.

Wait. Inventory space. I'll complain about that.

[Mistress_Irika]

I think we can be fairly confident that reverting, removing, or maintaining the status quo with BH will produce a similar number of complaints. This may be because it's impact is a symptom of something deeper that is broken.

Seems like another Tuesday truth be told. Folks don't like change to their, and everyone will have verbal pvp to make sure that their class is the best and that they can do extremely well with said changes. No doubt that something is always going to be busted. It's a balance between multiple modes, and that's the beauty of it. What doesn't work for one mode may work for the other.

Doing anything would cause complaints regardless. But the benefit of reverting to the old system is that there would be less BH5s on the field and people can no longer make excuses thar they lost the fight because the other team has too much BH5.

There needs to be a bit more harsher penalties for dying. That I can agree. They took too much of the punishment away when trying to make frontlines more friendly and ironically made the game a lot longer to finish due to taking away the additional points earned from the old system.

You don't fix this by changing the rules of the game. You accept this is a casual mode and you learn to live with it.

You might be late with this message. Not the casual part, but the rule changing part. All of these rule changes over time, and the only thing that improve besides the offensive/defensive difficulty swap is having little to no barriers as far as going to objectives are concerned. If that means making a class useless just to keep the farming power going then so be it. It's pretty obvious to me that many would rather run to the devs for feel good changes rather than simply adapt. That punting fiasco is a great example since out of that Secure remains a locked map, and the new Shatter map does not have any downtime regarding to farming ice. I fear as though this is only going to continue until solo carrying is close to nonexistent, and you're forced to rely on another player to get the job done, preferably another random instead of a friend based off the topic of premades.

[Bobby66]

Imo if you die it should reset your BH back to zero. Would not solve much in the grand scheme, but I do not think losing half is enough when you get caught and end up dying with BH5.

[Mawlzy]

Imo if you die it should reset your BH back to zero. Would not solve much in the grand scheme, but I do not think losing half is enough when you get caught and end up dying with BH5.

Might that have the unintended side effect of making BH5 players less likely to engage in fights?

I tend to default to anything that increases engagement and rewards/encourages good play. Valence's idea of getting more match points (BH points too maybe?) if you KO a BH5 player is appealing in this regard. BH5 opponents should be primary targets. Reinforce the point with a carrot.