[Ranylyn]

What Blues said. One hundred percent.

That said, Khalid DOES have a good point; more people does take longer simply since more people need to take their turns, which often means things like waiting on the one person who got up to get a drink since someone else was taking too long, people refusing to sit still to be healed and running headlong into death like an idiot, forcing the party to take more time to get them on their feet and fighting fit before the next battle, people just flat out getting in each other's ways and hindering each other, etc. No, seriously, I've lost track of the number of times I've either deployed a medibot next to someone with 1 HP only to have them sprint off towards a Jammer Beta and die from the acid retaliation, or the number of times one ally knocked enemies out of the range of another ally's invocation or something. People are just complete IDIOTS when it comes to battle, sometimes, and the whole party suffers for it.

This next scenario is something I see nearly every time I'm solo in a BDP and there's another party in it; I'll get to the core after clearing my area, and see a party of 4 fighting a boss; there's the boss and 2 normal enemies left, and the party is already at close range and attacking. I'll fight the boss solo. I'll check on them after I'm done. They still have the boss and both normal enemies left. IF you can manage solo (Which IS a big if; see my spoiler tagged rant about IC builds vs OOC optimizing below) there seriously ISN'T a reason to ever party up since all you're doing is butchering your efficiency. 2 people splitting up to clear a floor is seriously 4x faster than one party of two clearing a floor. And it only gets worse with 3 or 4 people in the party.

I'm all for adding more enemies per party member simply to give more rewards for partying, so it's not a complete waste of time. Unless absolutely no one has AOEs, it shouldn't take much longer than normal per battle, and it'd let each individual fight actually be worth something as opposed to needing to wait for a Crazy. So long as this means the ones going it alone don't get overwhelmed to the point that people are forced to party. It's a small community, parties aren't always available (especially since RP often takes place outside of BDPs,) and solo is a fact of life.


Rant about how IC restrictions and RNG-based struggles can actually make PVE hard for a number of builds:

Not every build makes PVE trivial, and getting the gear you need is very RNG dependant; what you need for a more gimmicky niche build may not be stocked by players running shops. Seriously, do NOT get me started on the hell that is acquiring a 4-5* item that can't be crafted. They're not either already high power or ideal for rebelling, so no higher levels usually want them, so they can't be sold to said higher levels, meaning they can't be sold for thousands of murai, meaning people either don't often bother stocking them, or charge over a thousand anyways, which keeps them out of the hands of level 40s still using the tutorial weapons but who can't bring in the big money yet.

Here's just one example of how not every build dominates PVE. You know people joke about how gunners are now plate mail wearers due to the def/res revamp and the ability to allocate stats? Let's look at what happens to someone who gets tired of that and tries to go full glass cannon with low def/res, but all kinds of great offenses. Black Beasts happen. Said gunner goes to beasts. Kiting the beasts is impossible due to their high move, and even if you apply liberal use of movement hampering/boosting (Celcius Shell + Shukuchi, for example) they'll just Dark Calling over. The low-def gunner is just straight dead unless they use both One Overcharge and blaze shells. End of story.

"Well, what kind of idiot wouldn't use blaze shells against things weak to fire!? And who in their right mind would ever go low def!? Serves that moron right! Let them die and suffer and screw what they think, I want the entire game to be balanced around the people who min/max for raw efficiency at the expense of IC, and aren't idiots!"

Maybe you haven't noticed, but sometimes, people like to go for themes that match IC motivations. For example, in Final Fantasy 4, Rydia lost her home in a fire, and as such, didn't learn the fire spell until she was forced to by a story event (needing to melt a wall of ice blocking the way forward, and she was the only black magic user. She had absolutely no choice in the matter. If she didn't, an entire kingdom would have been wiped out. Avoiding the kind of thing that forced her to learn fire is downright easy in SL2, considering we don't have anything that dramatic and serious going on.)

It can make perfect sense for a character to swear off an element, focus more on an element, swear off a stat, focus more on a stat, etc. Someone with a leg injury that never properly healed may choose to go low cel, even as a class that benefits from it, and compensate via other stats. A duelist who nearly froze to death might swear off crystal rose because the cold now holds a much more sinister grip on their mood. A Corbie who lost their wings in a fight might hamper themselves by not using Gain Air anymore. Yes, some people do limit themselves like this, for IC reasons, and these are all things that can potentially make PVE downright infuriating for some people.