SP pre November patch

[DeadRiser]

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

[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.

[DeadRiser]

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.

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.

[Luluna]

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.

[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.

[Chardrizard]

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.

[darkstarpoet1]

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 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.

[Veasna]

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.

[DeadRiser]

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

[Aiko]

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.