Party Exp

I think SE needs to disable the party penalty for all stages of partying. I've got friends I'd team up with and play with, if it wasn't for the exp drop. Other players in party should be treated as trusts. I wouldn't even let the exp divide. It would incentivize party's like it was back in the hay day.

Are you talking about what specifically? Experience Points, Capacity Points or Exemplar Points?

For the first 2 yes, there's a penalty but the amount of points you get is so high it's usually not a big deal to be in a party with other people. Granted that there are two types of penalty, the first tier is for 2-6 people, and the second is for 7+, and this second tier yes, can be a problem.

Exemplar Points on the other hand is the "endgame" exp. The amount you get from monsters is incredibly low in itself, and this is made even worse by the fact that to level up you need insane amounts of it. These two aspects alone work in synergy to make the necessity for EP quite dire.
In this scenario the penalty becomes an issue, and it's not just the number of party members (tier1) itself that is the big deal, but the fact that the amount of EP you get from a monster, which as we said is very low to begin with, gets even lower the higher your level goes compared to the target's level (which has its own range and doesn't go up of course).

This is the real "game killer" for EP farming, imho.
Add to this that atm there is no single way to boost EP gain per kill, other than COR's "Corsair's Roll".
So, other than that, the only real way to make EP not good but at least remotely "decent" is to use the old FFXI system of "chains", it goes up as the chain goes up, capping at 2x when you reach chain #50.
But here's the trick... the time allowed to chain is much stricter than all the other regular chains (EXP and CP) in the game, making it somehow much harder to keep the chain up.


Basically, every single aspect is made in pure "old 2003 FFXI style" to give you a kick in the nuts and make it feel terribly punishing and frustrating.



It's cool that they wanted to bring some of that feeling back, but times have changed a lot and I think they went a bit too much overboard.
A few of the mentioned limitations would've been fine, but putting them ALL together is a way too much, imho.
I think everybody agrees with that, but the opinion diverges on a single point at the end. On one side players who are completely against this, and those who say it's fine because "Master Levels are not necessary to play the game", so even if the system sucks, it's ok because it's not needed anyway.

I dunno, you make your own opinion of course, but the point of this post of mine was to explain to you that the "party penalty" is part of the problem for sure but I wouldn't say it's the main problem itself.

Considering they actually want players to play together, having a penalty for them to party is counter intuitive.

Probably the original idea was conceived when forming party was no issue, and having less people would mean more risk and difficulty thus higher reward, nowadays this context aged like a already rotten milk.

If anything, they could ADD bonuses for partying, thus making people actually prefer to drop trusts and party with others

A rotten milk in which a filthy galka, that was race changed from a taru, came in and farted over.

I'm all for that and would greatly support this change, but the point I was making is that what really kills EP gain is not the fact you're in a party (as long as the party is up to 6 people, different story for 7+).
There is a penalty which is unknown (check BGwiki) but it's a small penalty, so small that you still gain way more EP by being in a proper party, compared to being solo.


The real penalties are others, like the ones I mentioned.
Mostly the level difference. The more levels a target is above you, the more EP it gives you, and vice-versa.
Which means if you're ML5 and someone in your party is ML30, you will get the EP a ML30 would get, even if you're ML5 and would in theory get more alone.
This can be "solved" by using Level Sync, but even with that, your ML will slowly go up, and as it goes up, the EP per kill you get will go down.
The amount of additional "power" you get by getting one more ML, doesn't sadly compensates the loss of EP per kill.
It's a small bump in power alas, it doesn't really allow you to kill that much faster.