Groups of 8 vs 6

[LaRaj]

Grouping and looting currently as most people seem to agree is a mess. I for one would love to see a change in group sizes from 6 to 8. Filling a group with 6 people is very limiting especially for members within a guild. A group of 8 would still allow you to restrict groups and loot abuse while leave group sizes more manageable for raids and quests.

[Citan]

But a group of six already steamrolls existing content. So I've been thinking smaller, not larger. How the heck would I make content for 8 people that's engaging and interesting when I haven't managed it reliably with 6 yet?!

This seems like a "we can be more inclusive while we steamroll through content, yay" thing. I'm not interested in that. The point of group dungeons is to provide interesting adventures, and I need to reach that goal of being interesting and compelling.

But don't worry, we will find other ways and places for large groups (like guilds) to have fun together later. (That's, frankly, pretty easy compared to getting small-group difficulty right.)

[drivendawn]

Completely agree Citan, I would love for it to be 4 or 5 to make them more dangerous and challenging.

[ShieldBreaker]

This idea just popped into my head, something like Dungeons have areas where group limit changes size. At the start of a dungeon the group limit is really small, like 1-3. Then at some safe room, bottleneck point the limit increases to 5 or 6, At another point the limit increase to maybe 8-10. Maybe the hallway leading to a boss encounter splits, and the group size to go to one boss is back down to 1-3, maybe the other hall is also 1-3 or maybe it is more. Maybe the reasoning is one group is going for the boss, the other is going for a guard post, control room, Treasure Room, Armoury. I see this idea working with dungeons that have more than one entry point. I'm not sure, but if the limit also weighed the power of the player in the group and said that one really powerful player was an army of one and could group with no one in the next section of the dungeon, that would certainly change things.

Just rambling, what if there was a cursed cave and there where four items that had to be carried, one by each person. If all four carried an item equipped in the group, then no negative effect would happen. But for each person in the group over that limit, or any person outside the group would be hit with an debuff or damage over time. An undersized group would get hit with a fragment of the negative effect. So soloing would be an extreme challenge, running with an oversized group would be an extreme challenge. Running with the right group or slightly off group would be doable. The Items reappear at the start of dungeon, when a group completes or is wiped out. Those people outside the group would get hit with the whole effect and maybe the effect ramps up based on the number of people over the four, past the entrance area of the cave.

[Arundel]

With the massive difference between a geared and coordinated party with massive mitigation sharing there is such a massive gap between an average group and a prepared group that I am positive you can't balance it without having particular dungeons that are for good groups only. The difference between these groups is like having twice as many players if not more. This balance issue makes me agree with Laraj that it is fine to make all regular dungeons a fun and casual experience that allows a large group to explore a dungeon. I will be emailing you a large amount of data on "balance and power level" soonish but the short version is you actually can't balance the dungeons right now to offer challenge with any disparity in gear level as mod and buff stacking for prepared players spins out of control too quickly. I am not against but you will need to focus on separating content somewhat to manage the issue.

[Khaylara]

Six seems an okay compromise to me. I mean six people with top gear and max lvl in combat skills (max for a certain dungeon that is) might find some content too easy but on the other hand not everyone is max level or in top gear so an average geared group might find the same content more challenging.

[Silvonis]

I'm in agreement with Citan. Dungeons should have lower party sizes. These are dungeons, not raids. You're approaching 'raid' sized groups with an increase.

Dungeons are intended to be difficult and there is a certain progression to them. You might have to work to better your self before going from one dungeon to the next. Simply looking at it from a skill level is not adequate when determing a characters ability. There's that of course but also player skill, gear, food, and other enhancements come into play.

It's pretty common to see dungeon groups limited to 4 or 5 people, which I think is the 'sweet spot'.

[Arundel]

I'm in agreement with Citan. Dungeons should have lower party sizes. These are dungeons, not raids. You're approaching 'raid' sized groups with an increase.

Dungeons are intended to be difficult and there is a certain progression to them. You might have to work to better your self before going from one dungeon to the next. Simply looking at it from a skill level is not adequate when determing a characters ability. There's that of course but also player skill, gear, food, and other enhancements come into play.

It's pretty common to see dungeon groups limited to 4 or 5 people, which I think is the 'sweet spot'.

The point I was making earlier in the thread is just that its not possible to "balance" dungeons to where they offer a challenge to the majority of players. If you make a more difficult dungeon like Gazluk Keep, the average or new players will have trouble and find the dungeon to be at this level of challenge. However the decently geared/coordinated that share buffs and stack mitigation will dominate these dungeons without any challenge, as they are right now. As soon as people figure some basic stuff out with buffs and how to mitigate damage, these dungeons will no longer hold any challenge. I'd argue that we need to have some harder content that requires coordinated play, maybe not "heroic" dungeons, but separate dungeons which are balanced around the top end of gear and coordination. Then we could have a more casual approach for the average player. I really don't mind if the dungeon is 6 player max for a group, but a lot of guilds feel bad leaving so many players out when they do a dungeon run for a guild quest or otherwise. If we're arguing that the dungeon should be challenging, wait until people have a slight clue about how to gear and you'll see that they are not going to challenge for long.

[Celler]

I kind of feel that how it plays now is far removed from how it maybe later.
A balanced lvl 70 group all geared out will probably not exist when the lvl cap moves upward .
Currently many get to current max lvl and farm and spec up there gear, later when lvl 80 and 90 are available folks may well just plod on by, I imagine it will be folks with higher lvl skills but perhaps less quality gear that frequent it.

I've enjoyed my time in the newer Dungeon though to be honest I feel its beyond me and I draw too heavily on my group for my liking, but I'm not really into farming gear these days and spend little time re modding stuff so its hardly surprising.

When the later folk come they may well play it much different, as they will have everything available at once and will not have long periods of grind/down time whilst there chosen skillset is being developed.

I can still have plenty of fun in Yeti,DC and Nexus with groups even though my lvl has well gone beyond those places recommended lvl.

I honestly don't think 6 man groups of lvl 50 are running Nexus and DC.

[kazeandi]

As a new player (1 month in), I feel I need to reply, because the thread seems to be replied to mainly by veterans.

I've yet to run a dungeon on level, with other new characters. Appropriate levels, appropriate gear, same level of inexperience, same lack of general skills necessary to run something properly.

When I was in the Serb crypt, I ran on cheese I looted from mice. I ran with whatever gear I could get my hands on, so no optimized mods for my build. No extra skills learned from the trainers, because the favor system was arcane to me at that point and I lacked vital boni from things like Anatomy, Gourmand etc, which give you quite a boost.

The lack of a regular resurrection spell, and cooldowns on every ability, in combinations with no auto attacks means that grouping is kind of rough. You lose a group member, you might have to backtrack to pick them up because a) they might not find the way due to a lack of minimaps in dungeons and b) respawn might make it impossible to regroup. Monsters add through walls, some even nuke through walls.

This game is anything but "easy" for a character the content was designed for. It's of course a piece of cake for a veteran leveling their 20th combat skill to max. Guild groups of course make a difference, coordination and maybe voice chat help smoothing out runs. All this makes dungeons look easier than they really are.

In a random group of strangers attempting a boss, you get a wild mix of classes, sometimes with no synergies or them going to waste, because of no coordination and bad communication. Raw power of mobs needs to take things like this into account.

I don't know, but when I look at how hard I've been working on getting really anywhere on this character and a developer writes that people "faceroll" the content, I wonder if they're actually playing their own game with the same handicaps new players have. It's discouraging to read old players with all their support skills at max complaining how easy everything is.

Of course it's easy when you have a valid build, the items for it, the complementary skills at their required level, fed with high regen foods, double the hitpoints a "real" character at that level would have. That's like turning on godmode in GTA and complaining that it's too easy.

[Khaylara]

Side note, 2 of the posters aren't vets, myself and Celler are the casual type of vet. Just to clarify things, I am in max gear and with maxed skills (after 3 years, I'm sure you can imagine my leveling experience was similar to yours). Many other players, who are less casual do "faceroll" dungeons in a group of 3-4. I think I went in GK level 2 with only 3 or 4 people several times.So the dev and the group size have to cater to the average player who will not be able to run GK in 3-4 but in 6 it's fairly okay. Citan is perfectly aware that some of us are effectively level 90 instead of 70 due to various skills synergies and indepth knowledge of skillsets+good gear. If he was to adress that type of player he would've made a group of 3, instead it's 6 precisely because he considered the average player.

Take into consideration that by the time you reach level 70 you will have things figured out, res skill, high level endurance and first aid (providing you're not exclusively focused on combat skills). But you do get there by running crypt, goblin dungeon or soloing non-elite mobs, like you are doing and like all the vets did at some point. You are not supposed to have high lvl anatomy, gourmand etc while running crypt at low level, that's precisely why you are there:) I don't see how a group of 8 would change that tbh, it would mean less mobs for a group member to autopsy, butcher or loot.

[Citan]

First, I want to clarify that I'm talking about the three "group dungeons". (Dark chapel, minotaur dungeon, and Gazluk Keep.) There's also lots of work to be done with the other content in the game -- especially low level content. But that's somewhat tangential here. Someone mentioned the Serbule Crypt -- that's probably the weirdest of the game's dungeons because it's literally 5 years old. It's the only dungeon from "pre-alpha 0" to still exist. It's been the testing bed for all sorts of things, so it has small group encounters, large group encounters, solo areas, quest NPCs, and a ridiculously large level spread of 25 levels (level 5 monsters in the front door and level 30 bosses at the very bottom). It's been the place we figured out how the game works. And as we understand how the game works better, I plan to redo all of the dungeon's content during beta. It'll have a much more specific level range -- maybe levels 15-20, something like that.

So if you're concerned about low-level content -- that's completely understandable. :) And we would love feedback on the existing content! (Not in this thread, though, please.) We're working on a bunch of new low-level content that will be added to South Serbule soon, including several large dungeons. So even if we don't immediately change the existing content, we're taking lessons from that content as we move forward.

---

So about these group dungeons -- I don't mean to say that reducing group size is a magical fix for grouping. It's definitely something I'm considering, but it's just one of a LONG list of steps I'm considering. (Beta will be chock full of changes in this area.) My point is mainly that INCREASING the group size would be steering us in the wrong direction.

What sort of changes will we see here eventually? I'm not sure of all the steps yet. But we'll definitely see a lot of ability and treasure rebalancing. The sheer number of offensive mods a player can have right now makes the "large group of glass cannons" approach always viable, and that makes it hard to support other combat roles -- without REQUIRING those roles. (The last support skill, Priest, is waiting in the wings, because right now there's not enough "room" in groups for pure healers -- and Priests lack the offensive versatility of the other support skills like Druid.) I'd like for players to have less DPS overall, and for group monsters to hit harder and have more weird powers -- and give players more ways to counter those powers. But obviously that will require a lot of balancing.

For related reasons, I'm considering rewriting how buffs work. Originally I expected all group content to be 3-man groups, and although that's changed, buffs are still balanced around 3-man groups! In a six-person group, most buffs are literally twice as good as I expect them to be.

So I'm thinking about other ways to implement buffs. Instead of "everybody in the group gets 25% melee evasion", maybe it's "the first X people that are attacked get melee evasion" or something like that. I need a system that scales better, from solo up to the largest group size. I don't know what the answer is yet though.

A lot of the steps we need to take aren't fully obvious yet because there's not enough players doing group dungeons. The group dungeons require higher-level players, and there just aren't a lot of those in the same level range at the same time. I do get some very valuable anecdotal info, but that only lets me make changes a few times. Without a constant stream of people running a dungeon -- dozens of groups every day -- it'll be impossible to keep them in sync with the rest of the game's changes. (This is also true for much of the game's economy: "needs more people".)

That's why we're working as hard as possible to get the game ready for Steam ASAP. (Of course, the presentation needs to be the best we can manage before we put it up on Steam -- but we're working very hard to get there.) When the game is on Steam, with the new GUI in place, we'll consider the game in "beta", and that's when all the fun balancing work can REALLY begin in earnest.

For now, these are just pain points we'll have to deal with. But it will get better. Content difficulty won't ever be as tight as it is in some games, because we're so free-form that it's impossible to predict a group's exact capabilities. But it will be BETTER than it is now. Both for soloing and for grouping!

(Also: often when I post more than once in a thread, it kills discussion. That sucks. I don't mean to dissuade people from posting here! I wanted to weigh in, but I'd love to hear more feedback.)

[Niph]

It seems to me that the OP did not say "we're too weak with 6 people in group, make it 8" but rather "we're a group of 8 friends that want to play together more often than being just 6, and having to split in two groups is a mess". So perhaps it's not a balancing issue, but a social one.

With the current state of the game, when 7+ people want to play together, they must
. Split in multiple groups.
. Create an ad-hoc chat, because they may not be in the same guild, or don't want to pollute guild chat, nor nearby chat.
. Pay attention to which mobs belongs to their group and which doesn't. These mobs also cannot be specifically selected.
. Loot all bodies until they find one that doesn't say "not yet".
. Pay attention to where their groupmates go (for the purpose of assisting and hitting the same mob).

So, I would suggest to implement more chat options to connect groups to the same chat easily, a list of mobs with aggro on your group and a way to select them, display options to only show bodies that you can loot (or something similar), and tags over your groupmates to help you see them moving and fighting.

[Khaylara]

Yep, it doesn't seem to be a difficulty issue. Why not create alliances? For example if you intend to make a 3 players group allow them to "ally" with another group of 3 in higher difficulty zones (for example level 2 of GK or bottom Lab). Example-group A and Group B take separate paths in GK level 1 and meet at the portal, ally for the boss there then continue as an alliance.

Tbh I dislike my own idea cause it's messy but if it's only the social aspect and maybe some bosses/elites being too difficult it could maybe work. I'm personally happy with 5-6 ppl but from what I've seen ingame the change to groups from 10 to 6 was a big deal to many players. I can't really see the reason, most of these players are perfectly able to function in a small group, maybe it's like Niph said, they would rather run with guildmates and don't like saying "group's full". Imo we have to get used to that for when we have more players but it does kill the social aspect a bit (even though gameplay-wise I prefer the reduced group size)

PS-we do have a discord server for the social part:)

[Arundel]

First, I want to clarify that I'm talking about the three "group dungeons". (Dark chapel, minotaur dungeon, and Gazluk Keep.) There's also lots of work to be done with the other content in the game -- especially low level content. But that's somewhat tangential here. Someone mentioned the Serbule Crypt -- that's probably the weirdest of the game's dungeons because it's literally 5 years old. It's the only dungeon from "pre-alpha 0" to still exist. It's been the testing bed for all sorts of things, so it has small group encounters, large group encounters, solo areas, quest NPCs, and a ridiculously large level spread of 25 levels (level 5 monsters in the front door and level 30 bosses at the very bottom). It's been the place we figured out how the game works. And as we understand how the game works better, I plan to redo all of the dungeon's content during beta. It'll have a much more specific level range -- maybe levels 15-20, something like that.

So if you're concerned about low-level content -- that's completely understandable. :) And we would love feedback on the existing content! (Not in this thread, though, please.) We're working on a bunch of new low-level content that will be added to South Serbule soon, including several large dungeons. So even if we don't immediately change the existing content, we're taking lessons from that content as we move forward.

---

So about these group dungeons -- I don't mean to say that reducing group size is a magical fix for grouping. It's definitely something I'm considering, but it's just one of a LONG list of steps I'm considering. (Beta will be chock full of changes in this area.) My point is mainly that INCREASING the group size would be steering us in the wrong direction.

What sort of changes will we see here eventually? I'm not sure of all the steps yet. But we'll definitely see a lot of ability and treasure rebalancing. The sheer number of offensive mods a player can have right now makes the "large group of glass cannons" approach always viable, and that makes it hard to support other combat roles -- without REQUIRING those roles. (The last support skill, Priest, is waiting in the wings, because right now there's not enough "room" in groups for pure healers -- and Priests lack the offensive versatility of the other support skills like Druid.) I'd like for players to have less DPS overall, and for group monsters to hit harder and have more weird powers -- and give players more ways to counter those powers. But obviously that will require a lot of balancing.

For related reasons, I'm considering rewriting how buffs work. Originally I expected all group content to be 3-man groups, and although that's changed, buffs are still balanced around 3-man groups! In a six-person group, most buffs are literally twice as good as I expect them to be.

So I'm thinking about other ways to implement buffs. Instead of "everybody in the group gets 25% melee evasion", maybe it's "the first X people that are attacked get melee evasion" or something like that. I need a system that scales better, from solo up to the largest group size. I don't know what the answer is yet though.

A lot of the steps we need to take aren't fully obvious yet because there's not enough players doing group dungeons. The group dungeons require higher-level players, and there just aren't a lot of those in the same level range at the same time. I do get some very valuable anecdotal info, but that only lets me make changes a few times. Without a constant stream of people running a dungeon -- dozens of groups every day -- it'll be impossible to keep them in sync with the rest of the game's changes. (This is also true for much of the game's economy: "needs more people".)

That's why we're working as hard as possible to get the game ready for Steam ASAP. (Of course, the presentation needs to be the best we can manage before we put it up on Steam -- but we're working very hard to get there.) When the game is on Steam, with the new GUI in place, we'll consider the game in "beta", and that's when all the fun balancing work can REALLY begin in earnest.

For now, these are just pain points we'll have to deal with. But it will get better. Content difficulty won't ever be as tight as it is in some games, because we're so free-form that it's impossible to predict a group's exact capabilities. But it will be BETTER than it is now. Both for soloing and for grouping!

(Also: often when I post more than once in a thread, it kills discussion. That sucks. I don't mean to dissuade people from posting here! I wanted to weigh in, but I'd love to hear more feedback.)

Thanks for the feedback. As others mentioned the concern we have is more than group size is limited when its rather effortless with 6 (or even 5) properly modded. I'm arguing that most dungeons should be fairly social experiences where if you can only bring 4-5 it could be a challenge but if you want to bring 8 you can. Then I think content could be added specifically to be challenging. Just my personal preference though and certainly not based on any difficulties I have had (all of the dungeons have been a pushover for my groups but we had some carrying from high level players). I just hate when guild members are left out because group size is limiting, but I suppose at any size this could become an issue.

On the topic of Serbule Crypt, I'd be sad to see it changed. I had so much fun there when I started that I virtually lived there, farming the mobs, learning about skills, and exploring for a few days to a week. Be careful about how much you change it because its currently very fun, and particularly scary even for a strong solo player who outlevels it (those bosses are rough!).

I'm glad to hear that you believe mods need rebalancing as they are obviously out of control. I think damage for certain skills needs to be brought in line (Archery for one), but I'd also hate to see this game go the way of so many MMO's with homogenization of classes and roles due to overbalancing. One of the main attractions for me is the games chaos and immersion, and everything being a "bit" haywire as far as skills and builds go takes me back to pen and paper days with Dungeons and Dragons, trying to learn how to properly build a character and being overwhelmed (in a good way) but all the rules! So I guess the challenge is bringing numbers in line, tweaking mechanics, while still keeping this games very precious sense of "not being like any other MMO". Thanks again for your feedback, it really made my day to see the devs thoughts on this subject and about balance in general.

[LaRaj]

For me, many of the dungeon runs I do are to get my guild involved or to get a group of friends together to just explore. Many of these dungeon mobs are so strong that individuals and lower level characters are afraid to explore the new content. There is unfortunately a big emphasis on having exactly the correctly powered group going, this creates a need to have a perfect build in order to contribute. I think that sometimes lower level player can become intimidated if they cannot perform to the higher level players standard. There have been many instances I have seen that lower level player and lessor experience player have been verbally attacked for performing under par in a group dungeon.

To me, the loot is not so majorly important for groups. Loot is goof but I think that a lot of people just like the adventure. Maybe less gear loot and more items of value (high value non-magical gear and jewelry?) might help reduce the need only to improve gear. Another thing to consider are the elite mobs. If an elite mob gives loot to every single group player, regardless if there are 3 people in the group or 20 people in a group, than maybe that in itself is a problem. Maybe instead, the first three people to loot this elite mob could get loot, this could be done on a rotating player basis like has already been implemented, this might make the shared looting useful again also.

As Niph stated some of the major problems with doing multiple groups comes down to communication. When you have to smaller group (to try to equally divide power) it becomes impossible to monitor how other players are doing. It is harder to know who is dieing or dead. It is harder to give directions from one group to another. Its fun getting a group together and running a dungeon. I am not so particular on the people I have in my group, I'll take low level player and high level players, for me its the group run thats fun. By reducing the party sizes wouldnt it further increase the need of have ONLY high lvl player or ONLY certain types of skills vs a free for all kind of experience. It seems to me that reducing the size might make grouping more cut throat and particular. One challenge to having multple groups is just being able to separate chat texts. Many of the text chat fonts are the same color and/or very difficult to distinguish from each other. in a dungeon like Winter Nexus talking in nearby is challenging due to the mobs that spam the nearby chat making communication to multiple groups challenging.

Maybe an option to allow larger groups that did not share xp, and/or did a complete round table loot system might be good too. That way a guild or a large groups of friends could still adventure together without breaking the system. Just my thoughts.
-LaRaj

[Khaylara]

Just an afterthought, if you want to guide some lower level guildies through a dungeon w/o spoiling the experience for them you could make a group of 6 and you (the high level player/players) stay a tad behind them and coach them via voice chat. Like a tutoring system. This way you don't interfere with the game mechanic and still get to help out your mates.

I suggested it a while ago actually but people took it the wrong way, like I expect reward for my help which was not the case. It would provide people with an incentive to help-a mentoring system. Let's say a high level player mentors a group of 5 lower level guildies (random choice of numbers), teaches them how to build, helps them through dungeons, assist for bosses etc. The lower level people could recommend their mentor and the mentor could receive a cool long term badge or something (not something gamebreaking but a badge or title or even a cosmetic item like a cape or hat).

Thoughts?

PS I know my suggestion is seemingly off topic but it's actually not, I think it would support the social aspect. Also as alternative to voice chat the mentor and the apprentices could create a temporary chat room to use till the apprenticeship is over.

[Roekai]

Serbule Crypt -- that's probably the weirdest of the game's dungeons because it's literally 5 years old. It's the only dungeon from "pre-alpha 0" to still exist. It's been the testing bed for all sorts of things, so it has small group encounters, large group encounters, solo areas, quest NPCs, and a ridiculously large level spread of 25 levels (level 5 monsters in the front door and level 30 bosses at the very bottom). It's been the place we figured out how the game works. And as we understand how the game works better, I plan to redo all of the dungeon's content during beta. It'll have a much more specific level range -- maybe levels 15-20, something like that.


---

Originally I expected all group content to be 3-man groups, and although that's changed, buffs are still balanced around 3-man groups! In a six-person group, most buffs are literally twice as good as I expect them to be.

I'd love to hear more feedback.)


Okay so I must say I am vehemently opposed to you changing Serbule Crypts.

A) It is the only Dungeon from "pre-alpha 0." That is cool. You can always add more dungeons. It's like tearing down an old cool historic building that is weird looking but structurally sound.

B) All of the different types of encounters leads to player mingling - every time I go to buy Holistic Ink or farm some Fire Dust, I end up helping/meeting/talking to/giving gear to newbs. Sometimes building lasting relationships. I think the melting pot is good, and more zones should be like this. I like the fact that @ level 70 I still have to go to the Myconian Caves (for Diamonds, of course). I think rather than eliminating this factor, it should be implemented into more zones.

C)I think the zone is functionally perfect, as is; I leveled from 10-30 there and still go back to this day. Its got puzzles and traps, long hallways and multiple floors - interesting bosses, creature diversity, and a bunch of lore. If anything, expand the graveyard or something to be bigger and add smaller tombs (i.e. the Eltibule Crypts).

I will be heartbroken if Serbule Crypt is redone.


----------------


Whats wrong with 3 man groups? Why can't we try three man groups? Then you could have up to 3 groups link together to form a raid, with only the party that does the most damage getting exp, while the others can loot (or have loot be turn based between the two groups). And this feature could be locked in certain dungeons, or have limitations (i.e. only 2 group raids in Labs).


---------------


Bring evasion back. Seriously I will never stop wanting evasion back. It is the single most important mechanic in forcing people to play sustain instead of mash glass cannon and having all the DPS mods rule.

[LaRaj]

Just an afterthought, if you want to guide some lower level guildies through a dungeon w/o spoiling the experience for them you could make a group of 6 and you (the high level player/players) stay a tad behind them and coach them via voice chat. Like a tutoring system. This way you don't interfere with the game mechanic and still get to help out your mates.

Not everyone uses the voice chat. This would only work for those who do have it. Otherwise it still creates the communication barrier, as well as the benefits of knowing how your party is doing in battle. Being part of a group purely for communication and orginazation is on major aspect. As mentioned before maybe different types of group migh be an option. One that maybe limits the elite loot and allows a large group just to group together and have some fun.

[Crissa]

Three-person group makes it harder to balance.

You lose someone in a three-part team and you've lost 33% of the team. Lose one in a 6 and you've lost 16%.

That person may or may not have been carrying a most-have ability. In a three-team, that's a 1-in-3 chance. In a six-team, that's at most a 1-in-6: Or less, since a bigger team is more likely to have overlap.

There's more chance in a smaller team that a needed ability or mix of abilities won't be able to be dug out of alternate abilities of three players than six. This is especially important if a boss is resistant to a damage type which a skill focuses on (like fire, crushing, physical, indirect, etc.)

And of course, the opposite is true for damage output/life: A bigger team can spread-fire and alpha-strike more. A smaller team will have more trouble doing that.

[Khaylara]

LaRaj doesn't create chat room command work? I understand not everyone uses voice chat but we can still create a chat room only for a specific bunch of people and everyone involved in a run would use it instead of group chat.

Off topic-I don't have a clue how crypt would be in its current form but with many more players (probably crowded) but I kinda agree with Roekai (make pigs fly now please), I'd miss it. Don't mind me, I miss the old tutorial cave so much that I sometimes go in its replica just for old times' sake. Maybe if the crypt gets redone it could be just a design improvement and not a complete overhaul?:D

@what Crissa posted-few people suggested this already-we could get a group summon because in long dungeons like GK sometimes people need to leave half way and there's no way to replace them atm. Maybe a new teleport skill called "group summon" that would require some gems or whatever to allow us to replace a group member.

PS I get it's mildly off topic but no thoughts on a mentoring feature?:) It's kinda connected to the group size/communication issue.

[Tagamogi]

I'd also be sad to see the crypt changed. I enjoy the crazy level spread. It adds a bit of a challenge for me: This time, when I go back to the crypt, can I go into that area where I died miserably before? Can I reach the next chest? (If I was choosing a low level dungeon to revise, I'd pick on the Sewers: The rat portion is pretty trivial, while the dinosaur/slime portion is about impossible to solo unless you are high enough level that you no longer care about the loot available in that area, and it's really not big enough to bother searching for a group.)

On the group size: How about allowing a group size of 5-10, with 5 getting complete xp, and the xp gradually decreasing until there is none or almost none at 10? It seems that would allow people to be either social or challenge-focused, as they prefer. And if there is a group of 11 friends that really wants to group together, they can split into two groups of 6 and 5, which at least leaves nobody with a non-viable group. As LaRaj suggested, loot could be adjusted so that only the first x group members get loot, regardless of the group size. Or maybe have some special bonus items that will only drop below a certain group size. Or maybe restrict item mods, so that groups bigger than 6 will never have yellow items drop for them.

[Dragone]

Walk into a dungeon 2 paths before you, 1) hardcore limited to x players, 2) social limited to x players.

First one is the actual dungeon limit of 3 or 5 or 6, whatever. Second is limit of 10, reduction on xp and loot.

[Crissa]

Yeah, the sewers have a huge pathing problem as you'll end up with long chains of critters attacking you. It's death for anyone below 40 and the highest loot is in the teens.

...But it does have the travel ring and neckpiece that drops there...

[Roekai]

So its settled then Citan.

If both Khaylara and I agree on something, you KNOW it has to be right.

[Khaylara]

We agree on SOME things lol. For example I'm more than willing to test a 3 group size, the only thing that worries me there is the time it would take to run a dungeon, tried already and it's like 3 hrs minimum to run GK with 3 people (sorry it's too long to be done daily or even more often, it's very draining). Tbh I think most people who are not okay with reducing 10 to 6 are older players who have troubles adjusting to the change. It would be very interesting to get feedback from new people who never experienced a 10 ppl group and see if 6 is really a problem or we're just creating one. Maybe new people find it normal or adequate. We do have tools for the social aspect, we should really focus on gameplay.


Something i strongly disagree with was the evasion mechanic applied to everything and their mother. It still exists now but in a more polished form (see the ranged mobs in GK, imho it's been done the right way there).

[Tagamogi]

Tbh I think most people who are not okay with reducing 10 to 6 are older players who have troubles adjusting to the change. It would be very interesting to get feedback from new people who never experienced a 10 ppl group and see if 6 is really a problem or we're just creating one. Maybe new people find it normal or adequate. We do have tools for the social aspect, we should really focus on gameplay.Well, I'm an older player but I've never done any groups in PG, so I'm not sure what category that makes me. Possibly the category who shouldn't post in this thread. :p

I have grouped in other MMOs, and I still vividly remember the drama when I was in a small guild and we had 7 people show up for a planned dungeon run - maximum 6 allowed. It didn't help that that game had certain required classes, so the people playing those classes were automatically in, while the superfluous dps had to compete for the remaining spots. I suppose we could have been social and just hung out in town together and chatted, but really, the reason we all logged in that day was that we wanted to run that dungeon in a guild group.

So, from that perspective, I really like a more relaxed approach to the group size - sometimes you just want to bring one or two more people along, and sometimes you are one person short of the optimal group. I understand that makes it really hard for the devs to balance content, and I do like a challenge, too.

I like my 5-10 group size idea for the social aspect (although I'm sure if someone tried to implement it, it would suck ;) ). We could have dungeons balanced for 6.5 people, so 5 people would be hard mode, 6-7 people normal, and 8-10 if you are under-leveled or just having fun. It could also work with different groups sizes, like max 8, and dungeons balanced for 5 people. There would just ("just") need to be loot adjustments, so that people would actually prefer to run the smaller group sizes if they want good loot.

I don't really like the idea of limiting groups to 3. I think that would make it too difficult to bring along less than optimal players. We could maybe have one special challenge dungeon that only allows groups of 3, but I think the majority of dungeons should allow for bigger groups.

[Roekai]

Whats wrong with my idea of having groups of 3 be able to link up together? That way, the buffs and balancing will be as intended. Three groups linked up to form a party of 9, but you only get the group buffs of your individual group of 3.

How many groups you could link together would depend on the dungeon; 1 group in places like Eltibule Crypt and Serbule Seweres, 2 groups in places like Borghild and Winter Nexus, and then 3 groups in places like Gazaluk Keep and The Labyrinth.

Whichever group did the most damage would get all the experience, and the loot could be automatically set on turns, so that each group is only getting 1/2 or 1/3 of the loot depending on how many groups are linked.

This way, you would be incentivized to have smaller groups, but could do larger groups if you wanted to sacrifice exp and loot.

I obviously think this is the best solution, otherwise I wouldn't have said it. What do you guys think, specifically of what is right or wrong with this idea.

[kazeandi]

The "most damage" point would be a mistake.
Make the groups take turns in getting the loot. Cut the exp in 3.

[Roekai]

Yeah that makes more sense; I like it.

[Khaylara]

Solo oriented myself and my grouping experience is limited to players who are "OP" so not sure my feedback is accurate either. Yours would be good if you ever decide to start grouping. My reasoning on this:

-balance content for 6 people, there will be a drama because if you can't get 6 people together you can't do the run (too hard). Only OP players will be able to do the run in less than 6.
-allow 8 people and players start bringing "sub optimal" friends who should be running let's say Lab and not GK=skipped content and not running level appropriate dungeons, what I call "leeching" (social leeching maybe but overall that's not an ideal scenario)

So the current situation is not the best it could be anyway that's why I'm happy to test a 3 ppl group.

My suggestions:

-mentoring system so a high level player can help lower level/undergeared friends without them leeching or skipping content. Let's say I organize daily Kur Tower or DC runs for a couple of other people (the same ones preferably) then I run them through wolf cave or Lab later and they grow and level as a unit. This way they can fully experience the content slow and steady and not just add them to a Lab group when they're level 48-50, I kill and they loot and get exp, they don't learn anything about how to optimize a build, they don't level their FA or endurance and they learn nothing about group synergy. I'm sure many high level players would be very happy to mentor in a more organized system.

-if too many people want to run a dungeon in the same time simply split and take different paths or start 10 minutes apart. For communication (socializing) create a channel or use voice chat. Balance the 2 groups so everyone has a puller and a buffer and just chitchat while working your way through the same dungeons minutes apart. That can work with 2 groups of 6 or 4 groups of 3 in the dungeons that Citan sees as "group dungeons" (DC, Lab and GK)

[ShieldBreaker]

For balance reason I am thinking that you groups idea should have a condition that the group be made up of only so many levels per person. Assuming you look at the best possible level of power a person could provide, I level 70 mentalist/70 unarmed carrying unmodded gear counts as a 7, even if they are currently using level 20 bard. He goes to join a group in very low-level dungeon, maybe can't group at all (group point max=5), or can only group with one (group point max=8-10). Three really powerful players in a high level dungeon, each form a one person group, which then maybe can party up as each group might be group point max=8, but party points max might be 24. Not explaining this really well, but keeping it brief. Think their needs to be a limit based on the strength of the player, because that is what will determine if there is a challenge or not.

[kazeandi]

Or just balance for 5 (group size: 6), allows for some margin of error. Give social badges for killing bosses with groups smaller than that, so hardcore players have something to show off. An MMO is a social experience, especially in this game. It shouldn't be catered only to the top 5%. Guildies or friends or just random people you meet in dungeons should be able to adventure together, without meta-planning, min-maxing builds and all the other WOW fuckery.

[Tagamogi]

Whats wrong with my idea of having groups of 3 be able to link up together? That way, the buffs and balancing will be as intended. Three groups linked up to form a party of 9, but you only get the group buffs of your individual group of 3.

How many groups you could link together would depend on the dungeon; 1 group in places like Eltibule Crypt and Serbule Seweres, 2 groups in places like Borghild and Winter Nexus, and then 3 groups in places like Gazaluk Keep and The Labyrinth.

I do like this, too, especially with kazeandi's xp change. I think it's a neat solution to the problem of how many people are going to be affected by buffs. Also, outside of dungeons, we could allow even more groups to link for druid events, etc.

One thing that concerns me is how healing would be handled. I think it's mostly a non-issue right now, but if PG goes a bit more traditional MMO and gives you a group interface that shows party members' health and makes healing others a useful part of a group, then I think healers would like to be able to help out members of a linked group without having to continually click on them to check their health.

[Arundel]

Or just balance for 5 (group size: 6), allows for some margin of error. Give social badges for killing bosses with groups smaller than that, so hardcore players have something to show off. An MMO is a social experience, especially in this game. It shouldn't be catered only to the top 5%. Guildies or friends or just random people you meet in dungeons should be able to adventure together, without meta-planning, min-maxing builds and all the other WOW fuckery.

I really like this idea unfortunately I am not able to come up with a way that it could be done since we don't have instanced dungeons. So what would end up happening is people would go down and drop group to 3 people with 3 outside of group helping and kill the boss - only 3 would get the badge but next time they can trade off. Maybe there is a way to prevent this?

[Roekai]

I do like this, too, especially with kazeandi's xp change. I think it's a neat solution to the problem of how many people are going to be affected by buffs. Also, outside of dungeons, we could allow even more groups to link for druid events, etc.

One thing that concerns me is how healing would be handled. I think it's mostly a non-issue right now, but if PG goes a bit more traditional MMO and gives you a group interface that shows party members' health and makes healing others a useful part of a group, then I think healers would like to be able to help out members of a linked group without having to continually click on them to check their health.

I just assumed when 2 groups linked to form a party all of the health bars of all of the members of the party would be on screen, and you could target them for heals, etc; but passive buffs and group buffs would only apply to your group - you would have to individually target and heal people in the other group.

Edit: Any devs want to weigh in?

[Crissa]

I like the idea of stacking trios.

My biggest problem once in a group is that everyone wants different loot, so often someone is left behind trying to skin things. I feel like a leech when I do this, but I need the xp and that's where the loot I need is.

[kazeandi]

I really like this idea unfortunately I am not able to come up with a way that it could be done since we don't have instanced dungeons. So what would end up happening is people would go down and drop group to 3 people with 3 outside of group helping and kill the boss - only 3 would get the badge but next time they can trade off. Maybe there is a way to prevent this?

I think it should be possible to detect if anyone outside the group does damage to the boss, in this case, there would be given no badge.
Of course, in such a case, people could interfere with other people's bosses to ruin their "achievement", but that's a low price to pay and shuts down the exploit.

Outside of dungeons, group sizes don't only not matter, groups should be completely irrelevant, so events can happen without locking anyone out (Druid event for example).

[Munson]

I like the idea of stacking trios.

My biggest creatine supplements stack (https://observer.com/2021/03/best-creatine/) once in a group is that different loot, so often someone is left behind trying to skin things. I feel like a leech when I do this, but I need the xp and that's where the loot I need is.

I think 8 is too much.

[Roekai]

Citan/Silvonis, Angel of Benevolence, what do you guys think of my stacking trios idea?

[Tchey]

Hi,

I like smaller groups myself, and think 4-5 maximum per team is good enough. It also ease the reading of on-screen action, and GUI managment for healers mostly, but not only.

As for group of groups, i think Rift did that for world events, and Warhammer online too (not sure, my souvenir is vague about it).

I like mentorship. Higher levels can support lower ones, but also lower levels can join higher levels for adventure. City of Heroes did a great job for finding group, joining, having purpose, and it was actually my favorite MMOG for group content. We even ended forming a guild from grouping often with the same "random" players, and we played together several months like so. Dah, i miss this time...