In several threads, I've seen the limiting of s1-s3 (s1-s2?) raids to 4-man parties listed among the Rise changes that many consider negative. While I agree that changing them to normal battles is a mistake (as they'll lose the seal of bravery, extra QB core, etc.), it seems like the focus of the complaints is the 4-man party size limit. Can someone explain the rationale? I'm a little confused by this, because right off the bat it seemed like a positive change, particularly for countering classes. The most detailed argument against it that I found was this:
I don't think the 4 player system is a positive change. There are some runs that scale stats based on the amount of players, and the challenge makes it fun. East is already pretty empty, but if we can fill 4 spots, there will be less need for more players. 8 player raids means more diversity, more team work and coordination, more challenge in some cases, more social opportunity, and QB's allow more rewards.
As far as I'm aware, boss HP is the only stat that scales up with party size, it only does so up to 4 players (i.e., boss HP with an 8-man party is exactly the same as with a 4-man party), and is generally logarithmic (e.g., duo boss HP is only 33% more than solo boss HP, trio boss HP is only 25% more than duo boss HP). Based on this alone, smaller parties would be expected to be more challenging.
The argument about teamwork and coordination is interesting, because it's true that 4-man parties may change the dynamics of raids such as krak. However, in most other cases what this change really means is that parties will no longer be able to hold a boss for half of a 5-minute raid. (Where's the challenge and teamwork in wailing on a sandbag? Just the coordination in staggering holds?) There are already enough sandbag bosses in the game without holds. Smaller parties mean
more boss HP relative to the party size, fewer holds per run, and more aggro per player. Not only would it be more challenging, but it would help balance ranged classes like kai and chain vella in full parties without hurting their solo capability. Most importantly to me, it would help allow countering classes to actually play how they're designed to play rather than being shut down every time someone holds a boss. Sure, I can just spam focal point or crescent/full moon all day, but that's not why I'm playing fiona/hurk/etc.
I realize it's possible to raid with smaller parties even without an imposed restriction, but it's just not a realistic option unless you're the host AND you have a party that doesn't care about the extra QB rewards (lol). I also realize my main problem with large parties would be better addressed by making (ex-)raid bosses immune to holds, but limiting party size to 4 still seems like a net positive. Granted, I'm pretending that the additional damage changes won't let us cheese bosses.
Yeah, it'll suck if you want to do a set of raids with more than 3 friends. Except they won't be raids anymore.
Comments
Before this update, if you wanted to 4 man, you just got 4 people and pressed start, now that's all you have. It's the idea of restricting the player that's really the issue here, not balance or difficulty, it's a bad change to compensate for how poorly this game tends to run on a peer to peer connection.
Teamwork and coordination died the day s2 came out and people no longer needed to use boss mechanics like titan's balli, droping lionotus off the cliff, colru walls,etc
On s3 raids force you to use mechanics but they dont feel as rewarding as those times since all people now have a hold skill, the most we had in that time was evie RG and fiona sp skill:shield bash high stun rate, heck i even remember when people used the F's macros to communicate so they could balli titan properly, oh ye olde fun times when everyone raged because the party got wiped and almost no one had GG nor GF and the most fun of all on my humbly opinions was trying to drop a boulder on irukul and then fall to your death because the camera and controls become clunky as hell in that part of the map haha
Lako ballistas, kraken tents, panth pillars, lavasat chains, druid bombs, chrom statues, regina corruption, braha bomb and switch, lugh shield, eochaid infestation chain, abom bell...
What people seem to be missing is that they are no longer raids, just normal battles like larken or whatever. Complaining that you are being limited to 4 players is like complaining that s3 dailies "limit" you to 4 players max.
I originally liked the idea of them being re-balanced for 4 man parties, because lets face it, its pretty hard to get large parties for low level raids. But derpcat went full **** and made them not raids in the first place, so you dont get seals. No seals = nobody is going to run them except for titles/expertise/quests.
It doesnt take a genius to realise that this is a lame change to get people to buy VIP so that they can get more seals from running s3 raids twice.
I can't imagine anyone not having enough VIP at this point to just freely pop them whenever they feel like it. New players maybe, but it's unlikely they're going to be hot and heavy on the raid trains.
You can only buy one 2 day VIP per week from the AP shop. Other sources of VIP (other than the depot obviously) are the once a month arielle visit (not even guaranteed) and airtight VIPs which are reliant on people spamming gachas and willing to sell to you (most are hoarding them for their own use).
The only people i know of that have near infinite VIP stockpiled are peope who have spent a ton of money on gachas or people who have them stockpiled from old events but never used them because they didnt play at all. I was around for one event that gave tons of VIPs and still have them on my secondary account, but most of the ones on my main are used up because it was quite an old event.