Is co-op too easy?

Another solution would be to limit the maximum number of players to 4 or 5 per party.

A drastic solution but with other benefits :

-More interesting party gameplay. Less chaotic.
-Loot clutter not as bad
-Particle effects manageable for the eyes and for lower end pcs

Or maybe keep the max at 6 but with an exp penalty starting at 5 members.

Either way, in public parties, there should be an option to limit the number of players.

My personal preference for balancing group play usually revolves around manipulating stat conversions. This is a little more difficult in PoE because some character stats are percentage and some are ratings converted to percentage. However, the basic idea is that your gear becomes less effective when you add more people.

For example, you can lower accuracy, resists, attack speed, etc. While this is much more complicated than merely adjusting the monster's health or damage, it has the added benefit of being much more adjustable. You can choose to scale down those with better gear harder than those with worse gear, so groups get nudged towards a more median effectiveness. It is also easier to balance across the wide variety of specs in this game - if you want more people using Resolute Technique you can nerf accuracy harder.

But for now I don't want groups to be less effective than soloing. I think it's fair that those that take the time to organize something with other people (and take the risk of ninjas, afks, etc.) be rewarded with the option to perform at a higher efficiency. Also, I like the effect it has on build priorities and race planning.

Your idea could work but I think players would be more frustrated with becoming weaker as opposed to monsters getting stronger. I don’t think GGG should punish groups too hard; but they do need to adjust the challenge. Right now Groups are significantly more effective than Solo to the point that groups = easy mode.

At low levels, it is. Not much chaos, attacks/spells are pretty simple, minion counts are reasonable, etc. and the enemies have 6 targets instead of just one. It's WAY easier in a party early on, way easier.

Once players really hit their strides and have things like lesser multiple projectiles, faster cast speeds, etc. things get chaotic and you can die without even realizing you are getting hit as the enemy is hiding among the skill/spell/minion spam. I prefer the calmness of small parties at high levels (although occasional jaunts in packed parties is fun, until I die) but at low levels the safety-in-numbers is awesome.

Velker has a point about limiting the group size. Balance is worse the larger the group. While steamrolling in a 6 person group is fun a 2-4 person party can be much more social and balanced.

I am not of the belief that playing in a party should be just as difficult as playing solo. The benefit of playing in a team whether it be in POE or in life in general is that things are easier to overcome when you work together, many hands make light work and all those other cliches.

Playing together should be easier but it is fair to say that currently POE becomes trivial when played coop. I don't think that is necessarily due to the health pool or the damage output off mobs. While they do both require additional balancing for parties I don't think just bumping them up with more players is a competent way of increasing 'difficulty'.

Just because there are more players doesn't mean a single player can take a x6 multiplicative of the normal mob damage especially melee builds. That mistake has already been made by other games in the genre & has since been dropped in favor of keeping mob damage the same for parties resulting in an increase in multiplayer activity.

Mob health however does need some increase with the amount of players, a group working together should have the ability to deal with more health as there is also more damage output from partying. This too needs to be balanced correctly, again other games have got it wrong recently and have since readjusted the figures resulting in more multiplayer activity. I'm not sure what the figures are in POE with regards to added heath per player but i do feel that in higher levels it could be increased somewhat without going too far.

So what else can be done? Well I think 1 thing that POE's mobs in general lack is mechanics. I am hoping that Act3 mobs have abit more to them than what we see in act1&2. Most the mobs we have now are fairly dim witted & don't really react to what the player is doing to them other than bits and bobs like the apes doing the old fallen tactic of fleeing when an ally is slain or archers moving away when you approach, things like that make encounters much more dynamic & varied rather than just blasting down the next pack that runs blindly towards you.

I understand that adding all these mechanics is a cost factor issue but that doesn't mean that they aren't relevant when talking about why multiplayer (and the game in general) is abit too easy.

+10% attack speed/cast speed/ movement speed for each added players
nerf portal abuse

^

All you have to do is fix portals somehow and party questing speed will normalize. Maybe have it to where onle 1 portal can be open per party...or you can only have portals open in 1 zone.

As for playing together being easier...it should be? Unless personal preference dictates otherwise. Just because partying is a little easier than soloing doesn't mean soloers are punished. The game isn't easy. And people in parties can still die if they play poorly.

I'm not sure why Wrathmar is worried about group play difficulty.

I thought he would never play in a group because of FFA. xD