About the party

the only reason for me to play in parties is the master leveling. above lvl 6 its really too slow, if you only do it yourself :( I dont even want lvl 8, only getting to 7 is pain on your own.

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crowthedark wrote:

So you are saying that this game is really not-social-party oriented. Right?

you could say it is the exact opposite in that it openly discourages party play. A lot of mechanics in the game flat out dont work well in party play

the cons to grouping with people far out weigh the pros. It is something people have been constantly complaining about.

Other advantages of partying:

1. you're playing WITH people. +1 Social. Sometimes this may be appealing.

2. See other builds, learn about the game through chit-chat & experience.

3. Sometimes other ppl in the group can motivate you.

4. Sometimes an item drops for someone else and they don't want it and you say "can I have that?" and they say "yes".

5. Sometimes someone says "first person to type my name in chat exactly as it appears can have this corrupted drillneck" and you do it and they give you the drillneck. /thumbsup


Disadvantages, I'll agree:

1. Lag/performance/efficiency issues, general chaos ... including but not limited to:

2. ppl who don't run the map by the correct route

2a. ppl who separate from the group, thus you don't get the full item drop bonuses. thus you are getting the penalties of partying without the full advantage.

3. ppl cursing over your curses. esp. blasphemers.

4. Varies based the group, but, sometimes party is WAY slower and u should just solo.

4a. On occasion I play with someone who's "way" faster and that's actually annoying, too! ;P

5. ppl don't seem to want to party. it can be hard to get a gg going.


I guess there can be an assumption (based on other games) that partying is a way for weaker players to combine their strengths and tackle harder-than-otherwise-possible content, but it doesn't seem to work that way in PoE. If you can't, basically, tackle a zone by yourself, then you probably shouldn't be partying in that zone either. At least not if it's your goal to actually contribute to the party.

Somewhere along the line, ARPGs go from "i'm going to chop this skeleton with my sword" to "I am going to use my WMD to rack up masses of XP as fast as possible", and in the latter scenario, there's just not a whole lot of bootstrapping that stronger players can do for weaker ones. ...Other than simply killing everything for them!

The extreme of which is the case where you can have a whole group of scrubs following around one COC or discharge guy who lays waste to everything in 2 seconds, but that's not really all that much fun, either, for long.