I don’t see any difference in the behaviour of the Follow Me tool from 2017 to 2018 on the Mac version anyway. It must have been making segmented curves in 2017:
I see the same behaviour as @MOCAW when I try to scale the base after the Follow Me operation. Welding the base circle together doesn’t help either. To get the shape to scale, you’d have to show hidden geometry (View->Hidden Geometry) and weld all the segmented long edges (the ones the same shape as your profile) together with an extension like TIG Weld. Then the object will be like @DaveR’s version which can easily be scaled with the base, leaving the top cut circular and blending smoothly from top to bottom.
I tried it with a hexagon base so I didn’t have too many edges to weld but 48 segments would take a while.