Group Size and Loot
We're still gathering feedback on the new dungeon, but one change is clearly needed soon: we need to lock down group sizes and looting rights. Right now, we're incentivizing everyone to group up into clumps of as many players as possible. That doesn't just sap the challenge from the dungeon, it's also just a lot more boring.
I mentioned recently that we were waiting on this change until the new GUI was done, but I've changed my mind -- I'm implementing it now and it will be in the next snapshot build. (The GUI display will be rudimentary, but good enough for now.)
Here's how it will work:
Hunting groups will be capped at six players instead of 10.
When fighting elite and boss monsters, only the first group that attacks it will be able to loot it.
The monster will become "locked" to the first attacker's group, with a little lock icon visible to other players and groups to let them know.
Each member of the locked group will get their own share of treasure, just as they do now, but no one outside that group will be able to loot the corpse.
This applies to elites and bosses only! Looting rights for other monsters will continue as they are now.
This only affects loot. Things like XP, combat wisdom, and curse removal remain as they are now.
That's it. It's actually a pretty small change, all told. It doesn't change other game mechanics, because right now I'm mostly concerned about the proliferation of loot.
This change is really important for group dungeons like Labyrinth and Gazluk Keep, but I'm also eager to see how this affects druid events. Right now, it seems that druids group up into mega-groups, sometimes with over a dozen people killing the same hapless monster, even when it would be much faster to split up. If druids start grouping in more sensibly-sized groups, several of the events will become much faster -- possibly too fast, it's hard to tell. That's information I need before adding the next batch of druid events.
We'll take it slowly and see the ramifications of this change, then make other changes as necessary. We’ll be watching our metrics, of course, but -- as always! -- we will need your feedback.