Tagging Experience

[DiZzy]

Jesus, If you look at what you're saying.

Someone shouldn't feel forced into not playing with a certain class just because it's "broke" and I use broke in quotes is because a HUcast is really only broke in the hands of the right player with the right gear. I've played with many HUcasts and there are so many that cannot keep pace with my RAcast/RAmar.(Sure in a TA setting HUcast is the be all end all in just about every situation but thats maybe 1% of out playerbase who can pull that out) All classes have the potential to very good and play a role in a party effectively its all in the hands of the player. Telling someone not to play with a certain class because its just too good is elitest in itself. Its about making the game friendly to new players and old in not feeling restricted to their style of play cause at the end of the day people want to have fun playing.

On the subject of early game doesn't matter, TBH it really doesn't matter for some of us. There are people coming here who have played PSO for years and have done the early game over and over and over again. After awhile its just a damn chore. If the exp share were to be implemented you could simply make it a toggle command that way someone who wants to take their time enjoying the early game again or for the first time can spend the longer period in it and those who want to just get through the early grind can do it at a faster pace without feeling limited to TTF/MAS spam again for the umpteenth for efficient exp and would actually encourage more group play as you would have more incentive to play some other quests for once.

 

[MelloMoka]

The real problem is the players, not the game. There was a time when people actually helped each other level up even to the detriment of their own progress, because they thought about whether their friends were having fun, and not just about their own personal gain. The notion that being efficient is the "correct" way to play has eaten away at the PSO community like a cancer, and this is what we're left with: rather than adjust their own tactics so that their teammates can eke out even a modicum of enjoyment, the proposed solution is to just hand out EXP to everybody so that nobody has to give a single thought as to how their own choices affect their teammates. You'll still be trailing behind the HUcasts and picking up their leftovers, but at least you'll get to level up while you're not having fun!

First, I like this post because after reading as many viewpoints as a I could before making this, yours is the first interesting opponent that isn't "leeching sucks".

Slowing down to allow others to "have fun" is a nice thing to do. I don't quite know when the golden age when most people did this was, but it sounds like a great community of people. However, again the flaw here is you're suggesting players handicap themselves for others. This might improve the experience for said others but its not fun for the players handicapping themselves, even if they are being nice in doing so. Why play tug-o-war with whoever's experience is most fulfilling when we could add a mechanic that levels the playing field.

Other HUcasts or myself playing a different class won't solve the problem. Not by a long shot. Put us on a HUney, HUcaseal or a RAcast and it could be the same story, different day. It's inevitable that experience in the current system will be lost from those favoring certain playstyles, "especially" in parties of 4. The current mechanics of the game do not compliment tagging well. It's tough to worry about tagging when every other hit knocks you down and you're struggling to keep yourself and your party alive. And the tools to help mitigate the issues with tagging (debuff range, spread weps, etc.) are not available to early players. Koko wouldn't even have a SN right now if another veteran didn't hand one to her.

 

[Aleron Ives]

Telling someone not to play with a certain class because its just too good is elitest in itself.

What is your definition of elite? >_>; HUcast is the most elite class, so not wanting to play with one hardly makes you elite as well. It's all well and good if you want to play in constant TA mode, but if you're feeling annoyed that you can't keep up with HUcast and that you never get to do anything or get any EXP, then there really aren't many options to solve the problem other than for the HUcast to slow down or for you to find somebody else to play with who will let you contribute more than the occasional Resta.

There are people coming here who have played PSO for years and have done the early game over and over and over again. After awhile its just a damn chore.

PSO is PSO. If you don't enjoy killing Boomas in Normal, you probably won't enjoy killing Bartles in Ultimate. Even if Very Hard tends to overstay its welcome a bit, I will never understand the attitude that not having access to the best equipment or having to deal with being instantly chained to death makes the early game somehow pointless. If that were really true, everybody would earn their own S-Ranks, because clearly Challenge mode requires no skill, since it doesn't take place in Ultimate and thus is not part of the "real game".

 

[Aleron Ives]

the flaw here is you're suggesting players handicap themselves for others.

Asking people to be nice to each other and to consider other people's feelings is not a flaw in my book. PSO is a cooperative online game, not a competition (outside of Battle mode).

Why play tug-o-war with whoever's experience is most fulfilling when we could add a mechanic that levels the playing field.

The goal of PSO isn't just to increase the number over your head in the lobby. If your teammates aren't able to contribute anything, they probably won't be having much more fun if they get free EXP for merely following you around and casting Resta.

It's tough to worry about tagging when every other hit knocks you down and you're struggling to keep yourself and your party alive.

Rangers shouldn't be getting hit that often, and the fact that it's a problem suggests that nobody has provided her much guidance on how to play one. If you want to teach a new player how to play, you have to sacrifice your own enjoyment to some degree so that the newbie has a chance to try things out. New players won't learn anything if you just do everything for them, and teaching people to play PSO is very different from playing PSO for yourself.

Koko wouldn't even have a SN right now if another veteran didn't hand one to her.

Needles are a bad way to tag on V3/4, anyway, since they have trash range. Just use Rafoie and see how your teammates react. If they scold you for your completely unacceptable desire to level up, they're dicks, and you should find nicer people to play with.

 

[DiZzy]

What is your definition of elite? >_>; HUcast is the most elite class, so not wanting to play with one hardly makes you elite as well. It's all well and good if you want to play in constant TA mode, but if you're feeling annoyed that you can't keep up with HUcast and that you never get to do anything or get any EXP, then there really aren't many options to solve the problem other than for the HUcast to slow down or for you to find somebody else to play with who will let you contribute more than the occasional Resta.

Ok maybe not Elitest, Arrogant would be more fitting here. High level hybrid FOs are essential for fast runs in just about every quest. No they're not gonna be mowing down enemies with superior attack damage, the force augments the other players and can throw down some mean crowd control and cleanup damage.Plus put a force nuking in episode 4 and the situation can be reversed in alot of instances with techs ruling supreme there. Give a ranger some charge arms, a baranz launcher and a Heaven striker and they could wipe a spawn before the Hucast can run over to it if they so choose.
The class system is designed so each party member can play a different role albeit not very balanced yeah(this isn't gonna change) but if you play the class to its strengths you'll find a very fulfilling experience and no this isn't telling someone to play a certain class because they can't keep up its just the reality of how PSO was designed. If you wanna throw down damage pick hunter/ranger if you want to play the role of support pick FO. Take a look at Zen's most recent TA video. How many Hucast players do you know that can destroy the game like that? and then how many of them still actually even play? That is a HUcast played to its maximum but in a normal party everyone will have a chance to contribute to killing the spawn without the worry of Mr.Hucast killing everything in sight instantly.

PSO is PSO. If you don't enjoy killing Boomas in Normal, you probably won't enjoy killing Bartles in Ultimate. Even if Very Hard tends to overstay its welcome a bit

It is leagues better to kill a bartle in ultimate then killing a booma on nomarl. They're faster and hit harder putting you less of a margin of error. Apply this to just about any enemy in ultimate but this is my personal stance and you have yours.(see next reply)

I will never understand the attitude that not having access to the best equipment or having to deal with being instantly chained to death makes the early game somehow pointless. If that were really true, everybody would earn their own S-Ranks, because clearly Challenge mode requires no skill, since it doesn't take place in Ultimate and thus is not part of the "real game".

All you need to understand is that people enjoying playing the game in different ways and nobody is really wrong on how they feel about that. Giving players the option to do so freely is what we should be promoting.

I dont' know how you can compare challenge to the normal game? No rare weapons and you're limited to your stat gains. There is no running through a quest multiple times to get stronger and come back to where you were stuck. You work with what you're given and that is where the challenge comes from.

Edit:This is really getting off the orginal point of exp share. I've been arguing most of my points towards the Ultimate end of things but @MelloMoka brings up a good point of early game pso and classes leveling faster than others mind you this applies in Ultimate too.

TLDR; It shouldn't feel like a loss when you don't get the exp because you were supporting your DPS or vice versa(playing your class role). This is why I don't get involved in discussion on the forums its all just arguing in circles with people who don't see both sides of the story.

plus i'm tired of typing this shit out

 

[Harborer of Hope]

Asking people to be nice to each other and to consider other people's feelings is not a flaw in my book. PSO is a cooperative online game, not a competition (outside of Battle mode).


The goal of PSO isn't just to increase the number over your head in the lobby. If your teammates aren't able to contribute anything, they probably won't be having much more fun if they get free EXP for merely following you around and casting Resta.


Rangers shouldn't be getting hit that often, and the fact that it's a problem suggests that nobody has provided her much guidance on how to play one. If you want to teach a new player how to play, you have to sacrifice your own enjoyment to some degree so that the newbie has a chance to try things out. New players won't learn anything if you just do everything for them, and teaching people to play PSO is very different from playing PSO for yourself.


Needles are a bad way to tag on V3/4, anyway, since they have trash range. Just use Rafoie and see how your teammates react. If they scold you for your completely unacceptable desire to level up, they're dicks, and you should find nicer people to play with.

Ives-Samaaaas! <3!

 

[Harborer of Hope]

Ok maybe not Elitest, Arrogant would be more fitting here. High level hybrid FOs are essential for fast runs in just about every quest. No they're not gonna be mowing down enemies with superior attack damage, the force augments the other players and can throw down some mean crowd control and cleanup damage.Plus put a force nuking in episode 4 and the situation can be reversed in alot of instances with techs ruling supreme there. Give a ranger some charge arms, a baranz launcher and a Heaven striker and they could wipe a spawn before the Hucast can run over to it if they so choose.
The class system is designed so each party member can play a different role albeit not very balanced yeah(this isn't gonna change) but if you play the class to its strengths you'll find a very fulfilling experience and no this isn't telling someone to play a certain class because they can't keep up its just the reality of how PSO was designed. If you wanna throw down damage pick hunter/ranger if you want to play the role of support pick FO. Take a look at Zen's most recent TA video. How many Hucast players do you know that can destroy the game like that? and then how many of them still actually even play? That is a HUcast played to its maximum but in a normal party everyone will have a chance to contribute to killing the spawn without the worry of Mr.Hucast killing everything in sight instantly.



It is leagues better to kill a bartle in ultimate then killing a booma on nomarl. They're faster and hit harder putting you less of a margin of error. Apply this to just about any enemy in ultimate but this is my personal stance and you have yours.(see next reply)



All you need to understand is that people enjoying playing the game in different ways and nobody is really wrong on how they feel about that. Giving players the option to do so freely is what we should be promoting.

I dont' know how you can compare challenge to the normal game? No rare weapons and you're limited to your stat gains. There is no running through a quest multiple times to get stronger and come back to where you were stuck. You work with what you're given and that is where the challenge comes from.

Edit:This is really getting off the orginal point of exp share. I've been arguing most of my points towards the Ultimate end of things but @MelloMoka brings up a good point of early game pso and classes leveling faster than others mind you this applies in Ultimate too.

TLDR; It shouldn't feel like a loss when you don't get the exp because you were supporting your DPS or vice versa(playing your class role). This is why I don't get involved in discussion on the forums its all just arguing in circles with people who don't see both sides of the story.

plus i'm tired of typing this shit out

DiZziiiiies! *waves tiny paw maniacally!* <3

 

[Mille Marteaux]

If you want to enjoy PSO, make a point of never playing with HUcasts.

I know there's the rest of an entire post here, but this is such a horrific thing to say that a lot of people would have stopped reading after this sentence. Hell, I know I did.

Please do not say things like this. I know a fair chunk of people that just play HUcast because he's a cool robot knight, and posts like this just make people feel bad for wanting to play a character they like.

Ultimately if players are asking for a QoL change like this, sitting around and pointing the blame at other players or classes isn't going to help anybody except your own ego or temper. This entire thread's purpose is about trying to make the game more accessible to all players. Pretty much every other online RPG out there does this at this point, hell even Ragnarok Online is better about sharing EXP than PSO is.


There is nothing wrong with streamlining the flow of the game with something as small as removing tagging for EXP. I guarantee you that if this change was made, nobody arguing against it would actually care within a day of it being added.

 

[Eva]

To be fair, within the specific context of playing with a new friend who is worried about how weak they are, not playing a hucast yourself is pretty good advice. You really couldn’t make it any worse for them. I’d personally play a fo or ramarl/huney it I was teaching someone, but yeah, best to avoid shaming robots whenever possible.

As to the handicap flaw, that’s not a flawed argument. You might not agree or might find it weak, but that’s not the same thing. That you have to handicap yourself is one view, the other is that you should avoid being rude by killing things before your friend can tag. Neither is logically flawed, neither is totally convincing, either.

Anyway, from a “veteran” point of view, it would be really nice to be able to mat a character up, give it a powerful mag, and join newbie games without being a total dick for one shotting everything. Probably still not ideal, but way better than the forced separation we have currently.

Seems like more vets in lowbie games would also help cases like this where part of the problem is someone not having a good understanding of pso out the gate (because pso makes no sense out of the gate).

 

[TaoChaos]

I wonder how hard it would be to implement programming wise. I'm guessing at the start of each level all enemies are marked as "tagged" by all party members. How would that be affected by people joining or leaving a party?

Also, I remember playing events last year where I was barely able to tag enemies with a lvl 120 RAmarl. I think I only got 50-75% of the enemies because the others were so deadly efficient. It ended up handicapping me because I had to decide between doing damage or gaining exp.

FOney is a tricky class in general. Her boost is for weak techs, so it's hard to get multi kills with Ra- techs. FOnewm wins out there with the Gi/Ra boost. That's the issue with the tagging, in a game like Final Fantasy, the white mage gets equal exp because they are an equal contributor of the team. Nobody argues that a white mage isn't pulling their weight. In PSO, it is bs that the FO classes have to work twice as hard to earn 75% exp, assuming they tagged enemies.

Imagine a low-level HUcast's frustration if they were playing with high-level FOs that nuked a room before they could hit anything

 

[Mille Marteaux]

To be fair, within the specific context of playing with a new friend who is worried about how weak they are, not playing a hucast yourself is pretty good advice. You really couldn’t make it any worse for them.

Contrary to popular belief, HUcasts and RAcasts do not pop out of the assembly line at level 200 with max stats and gear. A freshly made HUmar or HUnewearl would be just as good at killing things too fast if the player is experienced and their friend is not.

Imagine a low-level HUcast's frustration if they were playing with high-level FOs that nuked a room before they could hit anything

You don't need to imagine this. It's called "Episode 4."

 

[Eva]

Contrary to popular belief, HUcasts and RAcasts do not pop out of the assembly line at level 200 with max stats and gear. A freshly made HUmar or HUnewearl would be just as good at killing things too fast if the player is experienced and their friend is not.

Sure, if we pretend their stats don’t matter. I’m not saying the op needs to avoid hucast but it’s silly to suggest that playing something other than what’s widely considered the best class and that’s overwhelmingly used in time attack and challenge mode wouldn’t narrow the gap here. There should be a better solution, but until something like this is implemented, there isn’t.

The bottom line is that if you want to go full throttle without killing things too fast for your partner, playing a slightly weaker character would help. It's not going to fix the problem entirely, and obviously any experienced player can outpace a newbie enough to be problematic, but let's not discount a potential option while we wait for a better solution.

 

[DrSmiley72]

Contrary to popular belief, HUcasts and RAcasts do not pop out of the assembly line at level 200 with max stats and gear. A freshly made HUmar or HUnewearl would be just as good at killing things too fast if the player is experienced and their friend is not.


You don't need to imagine this. It's called "Episode 4."

This is why I blown up things once, then let others get a few hits before I start nuking. Lol


That aside, I still stand by my previous post that, if possible, the should implement it similar to the drop system. With a choice of of original style (tagging needed) and a new style where tagging isn't needed and exp shared.

That way people who didn't want the possibility of leeches can turn it off, and others who want to help people level up and not worry about having to let people tag can just go to town.

 

[Xurai]

I think what DrSmiley suggested with the ability to toggle Shared EXP on or off while creating a new room would be best. That way it avoids the whole "if you don't like them you can just leave or add a vote to kick system". The thing about vote to kick is not everyone will always play to "your" liking, so I can see people getting kicked for no reason. (This would further decrease the playerbase, which is already low enough.)

Seriously though, if I could make a new FO and have some friends power level me back to ultimate that would be great ^^

But I'm also perfectly content with the way it's set up now.

 

[MelloMoka]

I believe players here might be presuming some things about me. I've played this game on DC and Schtack, but I'm by no means an expert player. The only reason why I chose HUcast this time around is because I've never played as one before. I had no idea the class that I chose could be the bud of this debate. I'm by no means a decked out HUcast with crazy weapons or items.

It did make me laugh to see some blame put on the character that I play since I wasn't at all expecting it. Even still, I can't help but feel this line of reasoning is projecting away from the main point. Ask yourselves if HUcast didn't exist as a class, would we still have a tagging problem?

Asking people to be nice to each other and to consider other people's feelings is not a flaw in my book. PSO is a cooperative online game, not a competition (outside of Battle mode).


The goal of PSO isn't just to increase the number over your head in the lobby. If your teammates aren't able to contribute anything, they probably won't be having much more fun if they get free EXP for merely following you around and casting Resta.


Rangers shouldn't be getting hit that often, and the fact that it's a problem suggests that nobody has provided her much guidance on how to play one. If you want to teach a new player how to play, you have to sacrifice your own enjoyment to some degree so that the newbie has a chance to try things out. New players won't learn anything if you just do everything for them, and teaching people to play PSO is very different from playing PSO for yourself.


Needles are a bad way to tag on V3/4, anyway, since they have trash range. Just use Rafoie and see how your teammates react. If they scold you for your completely unacceptable desire to level up, they're dicks, and you should find nicer people to play with.

I'm not a fan of asking people to be nice to each other because there's no way to adequately convey that message. Proper game design teaches people how to play through its innate conveyance. Should we use social methods outside of the game, that still leaves players no real incentive to do this. Remember I'm proposing this as a big picture, not simply within the context of a group of friends such as my case. Developing a proper community to do this is a chore in itself.

The goal of PSO is not to level up, indeed. But it is a means to an end. For players, the goal of PSO is to reach a more entertaining difficulty (for reasons described by another user above) and to hunt for more interesting equipment. In this game apart from others, there are not many pieces of equipment that are useful or interesting outside of Ult drops. Killing Boomas in normal might not be fun with a handgun. Killing Bartles in Ult is indeed fun with a V101 and a Zanba.

Reducing support players to mere Resta bots is a disservice. A poster mentioned playing a white mage in FFXIV and not being able to argue against their contribution to the team, which is interesting because that is the exact class Koko plays in that game. Even if players in PSO were given XP for healing or buffing their teammates, it would be a more rewarding system than what we have now.

 

[MelloMoka]

There is nothing wrong with streamlining the flow of the game with something as small as removing tagging for EXP. I guarantee you that if this change was made, nobody arguing against it would actually care within a day of it being added.

My sentiments exactly. This is actually what I've wanted to say under my breath, but it doesn't bode well for diplomacy.

 

[Liberalce]

save yourself time and don't pay attention to anything ives says
let people play whatever they want provided they're with people that want the same type of experience
if you want to play the best class, play HUcast. if you want to play something worse, play whatever ives plays

 

[anime]

Back on topic:
Is anyone even against this idea?

 

[Liberalce]

anything that turns detrimental actions that should be beneficial/null into such is a good change

 

[NDW]

I think if someone is within 30 meters (this is the range of LV30 Jellen/Zalure with +100% boost from Glide Divine; 30 meters = 15 meters * 200%) of an enemy's death, they should get 80% of that enemy's EXP as if they did tag it.

If a player is within 30 meters of an enemy's death, I'd say they are in the same area actively contributing towards the party's effort of killing monsters and should be rewarded for it.