Enhancing sp gain: more than just chaining.

[Physic]

Nope, proccing skull sunder while the mob was already under the effects of skull sunder does not give you proc SP, only damage SP.

Concussive Blow x2 and x3 did not award SP for the status proc, and neither did Disorient x2 or Disorient x3. It wasn't worth using after the first one hit.



It wasn't a 1:1 proportion of damage to SP. The harder you hit, the more SP you got per hit, but if you killed the mob too fast, you won't have enough total hits to average out the randomness, so you might get less SP overall. On the other hand, you could hit many times for less damage, and get enough total hits to accumulate SP despite the randomness, but have the fight drag out. When individuals in parties had both methods of play in the same party, problems occurred.

Dragging the fight out gave you less sp over time, because as long as you can move on to the next mob, its always more valuable to get more sp per proc, unless you are running out of monsters, not to mention, you were less likely to hit the cap which was actually a bad thing, although everyone liked to see it. Better to get 499 per fight than wasting an extra 100.

pretty sure i got sp for concussives, i often hit or surpassed the exp cap. and mostly it was the debuffs in addition to the dmg that allowed me to do that, but its been awhile, i may have been rotating debuffs and going for whatever debuffs the party was missing by the end there.

Anyhow thats not the real issue, if everyone shared the sp gains, it wouldnt be important who got it first, and if they had a system like now with a base SP, and rewarded you non randomly and for the whole party, as the OP suggests for sucessful/useful actions/strategies, then it would solve both issues, while also giving incentive for harder battles.

Another option is they give you grades on the fight which give you more exp, much like SF games later would give you ranks like s a b c d f based on various factors mentioned, then give you exp bonuses based on that, so as to make it simpler for people to understand.

[ZephyrAM]

The suggestions all sound like interesting, valid options... but considering the massively larger amounts of SP that groups can already get over solo players, just doing things like this would only widen that gap and 'completely' destroy the solo game. As a game that's supposed to allow for either, they have to make sure that SP gained while outside of a team can at least remotely keep up with SP gained while in a team.

... of course, that's hardly even true right now XD. So we'll see how it goes. SP chaining for consecutively killing the same type of enemy can get pretty dull, but perhaps there are other options!

[Physic]

The suggestions all sound like interesting, valid options... but considering the massively larger amounts of SP that groups can already get over solo players, just doing things like this would only widen that gap and 'completely' destroy the solo game. As a game that's supposed to allow for either, they have to make sure that SP gained while outside of a team can at least remotely keep up with SP gained while in a team.

... of course, that's hardly even true right now XD. So we'll see how it goes. SP chaining for consecutively killing the same type of enemy can get pretty dull, but perhaps there are other options!

they need to reduce or eliminate those old methods, they are killing the game. I mean i can understand leve linking sort of, because if it wasnt there people just would not link, and repeat the quests over and over, but it basically creates a game where people only feel rewarded for doing the same leves over and over, and have not much desire to explore/kill in the open world.
Behest would be fine, if it was actually challenging. The other thing is, some of these types of bonuses could translate into solo play, with long fights and what not, If the chains are linked to killing fast, soloers will always be unable to compete, if its linked to other types of things, it can boost a soloists exp as well, though of course parties will get more benefits from more different types of things.

I think that party exp should be noticeably better than solo exp though, just as long as soloing isnt impossible or totally unfeasible. With a good party search system, you should be able to solo/explore while seeking or creating parties.

[Peregrine]

I think soloing is best left to instanced settings. Way too hard to balance open field sp where parties should be. Soloers are probably best placed inside a large mog house, with a scripted series of fights and tasks for their level over the course of 30 minutes or an hour, that gives them sp based on things that SE can script and control for their level.

Or put the parties in instanced scripted sp settings, and give the soloers the fields.

25-30 just sucks. Too low for 1 star R40 leves. Too big for the field regen rates. Mobs just aren't dense enough to do anything but leve link after about level 26. Where SP on the field goes from about 26k an hour to immediately half that, right at the time where your TNL's start getting 40 and 50k tnl. It's demoralizing.

[Meridian]

I really like your ideas for encouraging tactical play and group co-operation. It would certainly be an improvement over the current "kill it! kill it all!" method of levelling.

[Peregrine]

Not only do I think a system that overlays base-rate SP would be more engaging and interactive, but I think the developers could also use it to train the players on how to play their jobs effectively.

It should be no surprise, then that it turns out that the best way to get great SP per hour is in fact a great way to play marauder, lancer, thaumaturge, etc. That is, get the thing disorientedx3, concussive blow'dx3, dia'd, and paralyzed within the first few seconds of the fight, then blowing it away with a regimen actually shows players what they are truly capable of that goes above and beyond mashing 1 and spamming multishot primes.

Such a system can train good play into players, instead of rewarding them for playing like drones. The players will embrace whatever they're trained to get the best results from, so it only makes sense to reward them for playing their jobs well instead of DPS'ing "tha best."

Naturally kills per minute and sp per kill=sp per minute should be a big factor in your total, because otherwise people will just stall on kills and play with a mob (which is not humane), but not to the point where people are just incessantly focussed on DPS and what jobs are gimp versus gauranteed.