Post-Patch SP findings

[Grey Jorildyn]

You mean to tell us that you've been saying this and that about the game for months now but you don't even have a battle class at 20 yet? Please clarify.

[Hyan]

It's not some super secret that I don't "play", and this is my 5th character since September . Is it some kind of pre-requisite for talking shit?

[Grey Jorildyn]

Not necessarily, but lacking in-game experience certainly makes arguing certain points difficult. Just kinda threw me for a loop I guess since you are a fairly ravenous poster in a section for a game it seems you don't really play to any degree. Just sayin'

[Hyan]

I find this more entertaining than actually playing, lol. I try to avoid subjects I can't really say anything about, but I guess that doesn't always work, heh.

Either way, I try to contribute (Hyan? Contribute?) from now on.

[Grey Jorildyn]

That's cool man, I ain't knocking you for it or anything. I just think on certain topics, which hopefully you would avoid giving an expert opinion on, people would prefer first-hand experience. This is all off-topic though.

I am finding that grinding mobs that have a larger party bonus (crabs, jackals, efts, etc.) are best in 3-4 player parties in the late-20s/mid-30s. Heck any party that size seems to be ideal until like raptors where taking 6-7 is like a sweet spot. Even for the ones at Everlakes.

[Hyan]

Are you implying that there is a significant drop in SP after 4+ party members?

[Grey Jorildyn]

No just that you don't need anymore than that. Holy trinity + another dps is all you need.

Also many camps don't have great respawn timers so 3-4 is a good kill speed at certain camps, many in fact (copperbell, cassiopeia, mistbeard).

[Nartosar]

What's that trinity? Glad... Con or Thaum... and ?
I have no idea I'm just guessing (and never partied yet in FFXIV).

[Hyan]

Tank, dd, healer i guess.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Right. Holy trinity is Tank + Healer + DPS. It's a general MMO term, not nearly specific to FFXIV lol

[Balb]

Just providing some numbers regarding the bonus in SP for more "difficult" mobs. We were in a Trio PT testing mob EXP in Mistbeard Cove: R29-34 PUG LNC CON.

330SP vs Blind Efts
330SP vs Floating Eyes (ahrimans)
224SP vs Plain Puddings

We also fought yarzons en route to ahriman camp, but they were significantly less exp, sorry for no hard numbers. But what may be interesting to note, for the less exp, they are always in groups of 2 or 3, and go down relatively fast, so perhaps a tradeoff.

Also, to Grey's point:

Even if that were implemented, I have serious doubts of SE's ability to accurately rate the difficulty of their own mobs.

This made me laugh, because it's true. By no means were the Ahriman's any harder than say the puddings or yarzons. Granted, it does use an aoe move that's pretty damaging (i think Aural Vacuum), but only saw this once out of 15 or so mobs. I only saw it when I was fighting one from behind (flail?) that one-shotted me. Again, nothing entirely hard to deal with.

We actually started off outside in Western La Noscea just messing around with the Toxic Toads, and were getting LESS SP than the Ahirmans and Efts, and was comparatively, a harder fight. The toads inside the cove gave the same SP. How this makes sense idk, maybe they missed applying the bonus to these mobs in the code, or they aren't that hard and we just suck? Probably.

Either way, it may be good to have a list of these "harder" mobs that people are seeing the bonuses attached to.

[Enygma55]

I know pre-patch ahrimans and peistes gave more sp than any other mobs of the same lv. Difficulty I dont think matters. Some mobs have more HP than others at same rank.

Not to say these rules still apply now, I honestly have no clue how they are rating mobs with this wierd cap they have on sp and how its divided amongst party members.

[Sephiroth]

I wouldn't expect SE to get it right straight away if they are rating mobs based on difficulty. It's hard for them to know how each mob is going to play in a party situation, it's probably too much effort to test every mob. What they can do is monitor who is SPing on which mobs and adjust them based on that. If few people SP on drakes for example, give them a further SP boost. If half the server is SPing on doblyns, lower their base SP. I'd love to have a proper incentive to take on tougher mobs, XI badly needed something like that.

[Elrina]

They should just get rid of the shitty con system and have the mobs show their levels, and base difficulty off of that. It doesn't have to be universal. A coblyn at the same level as you and a malboro will have different levels of difficulty, so sub-con them differently. The malboro might have a red name at the same level, while the coblyn needs to be a few levels higher to be red, or whatever. You get the idea. There are other things they could add as far as difficulty too, that are mob specific, but it would require even more work and time that aren't really that necessary, on top of the previous.

And it's not like this game has a bagillion different mobs in it or anything, or even all that many. If they can't spare the effort to test the mobs that they're putting in the game to make sure they're functioning properly then they shouldn't be putting the damn things in the game until they can find the time. It's part of their job, part of the process of making the game. They shouldn't be just throwing shit in they haven't tested, especially now.

Otherwise, a dynamic exp/SP system like that is, I think, a good idea. I actually proposed that very same idea last year to my friends, and a similar concept (only the exact opposite basically) regarding sky pop NMs in XI years ago, dynamically increasing/decreasing their pop rates based on demand. I don't know how difficult the tech side of it would be, but the idea is sound. They wouldn't even really need to reduce the SP on something that was being leveled on too much, they could just write up a formula that gradually boosts the given SP by the mobs not being leveled on to a second noticeably higher cap. And then just gradually reduce it from that back down to it's base SP when/if too many people spend too much time exping on them. It doesn't really need to go below the base rate.

[Grey Jorildyn]

The game really needs something to determine mob "difficulty" off of other than just levels. As was said already, having "sub-cons" might work, but it needs to be implemented within a system that differentiates between solo mobs and party mobs. What I would call for is an "elite" system as most other mmos have. While we have a pseudo-system in place, which is implemented in two different ways, they need to be unified.

The first way this is implemented is via mobs that appear to give 1.5x/2x SP. These mobs include crabs, efts, jackals, peistes, ahrimans, raptors, and a few others I'd have to look up. Basically these are mobs you dream of grinding on, but their HP totals vary so greatly from one family to the next, they're not always ideal to grind on due to factors sucb as long respawn (Peistes) or low frequency of spawns (ahrimans/efts).

The second way this is implemented is via covertly difficult mob types. Humanoids, undead, and malboro to name some. There might be others I cannot recall atm, but they're basically the super difficult leve mobs you avoid.

If the first type were transformed into "elite" mobs, we would know they were party mobs. Aion did a great job of this by having different target bar design. Mobs also had dots that represented difficulty. SE could use stars for this since they seem to love them so much this time around. Here's how you implement tiers: boulderdowns raptors/nine ivies efts are 1star elite, everlakes raptors/iron lake efts are 2star elites, velociraptors/salamanders are 3 star elites, etc. Please read this SE--I am trying to help you unsuck your con system.

Apply the same principle to the second group and make them into elites with party bonus sp like the first batch of mobs listed. This ain't hard. Just do it /nike

[BethorBismarck]

They really need to adjust the SP's gained during those crafting leves and even normal crafts. Since the SP update you can get like 1 level in a few hours in the LV30 range now. It's kinda hard to keep the craft up for the weapon repairs. After 30mins of crafting I want to throw up reaaaalllllllllyy hard ;x
Or they just need more crafting leves which are closer to your rank. I'm still getting a fuck ton of LV1's, 5's and 10's @LV23 which are giving like no SP at all. The only advantage is the shard/crystal reward if you trade them in... but running around for that is still a killer.

I really hope SE fixes and balances stuff at a good pace. The update last week was a good shot though. Let's see when they add the 1st new jobs ;x I want BLU back into the game! XD

[Gulkeeva]

Craft harder stuff.. level faster >.>

I'm leveling various crafts from lv 20's, 30's and 40's... can do a level in any of those ranges in a matter of hours 3-4 hours almost (yes even the 70-80K tnl lv 40 ones) if I have enough mats and not in surplus anyway >.>
got blacksmith Lv 22->24, alchemy 34->35 and weaver over halfway to lv 43 in like 6 hours crafting!

[Kurokikaze]

What Gulk said. Before the patch I was getting 250 from Iron Celata Visors at my range... now I get that on breaks and 500-600 on successful synth. Craft stuff a few levels higher than you (+5 I'd say) for best results.

[Enygma55]

Rank difference is the only thing that matters when crafting now. The bigger the difference the more sp jumps. Vice versa for recipes below your rank the more sp gets cut drastically. +3-4 rank is ~300sp where as +7 is like 600sp for regular synth recipes. This system rewards you for crafting hard stuff but accidentally destroyed crafting anything 4-5 ranks below you including local leves. (doing R30 local @R40 gives 100 sp)

[Gulkeeva]

If ya got mats to burn and don't care to much make stuff 10 levels over you (about 900-1100 SP), a break is about 400-500 sp (well as long as you get 50% + progress)

If you got preserve+ hands of the gods, its not too difficult