Is co-op too easy?

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wrathmar wrote:

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ratfacekick wrote:

I really wish we could get some dev feedback. Just a simple "Yeah, we know" would suffice.

Yeah I would like to know if this issue is on their to-do list

It has to be. The facerolling and dumbed down full party combat is breaking both the game (via ladders) and the economy.

Yeah it's too easy, but we don't want this turning into D3 where party play is so hard that it's actually better to play solo than with friends/publics

It is not as easy as it seems to party, sure you can get a bit extra survivability, but there are still benefits to solo play too. It is much quicker to clear areas solo if your character is strong. The screen can get difficult to discern some things with so many players and also you need to share loot in a group. Even in a group you can get killed in a few hits if you are not careful. I think they have balanced each play well, there needs to be a reason group and to solo. It does not look to me like one choice is always better than another.

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Rheikon wrote:

It is not as easy as it seems to party, sure you can get a bit extra survivability, but there are still benefits to solo play too. It is much quicker to clear areas solo if your character is strong. The screen can get difficult to discern some things with so many players and also you need to share loot in a group. Even in a group you can get killed in a few hits if you are not careful. I think they have balanced each play well, there needs to be a reason group and to solo. It does not look to me like one choice is always better than another.

I have to disagree. I face a much higher risk of dying while playing solo. Also the speed that an area is cleared in greatly increased with 5 additional players.

Hypothetically your build deals the most damage in your group so we will use you as the base line. We will assume that each additional party member is only able to 80% of your damage. So a party of 6 players would have a 400% increase in damage. The current Monster buff is +50% hp for each additional player so monsters would have 250% increased hp.

TheSN has a good point. GGG will need to find the sweet spot between too easy and too hard.

Rheikon and others make an excellent point about team mates spell animations/minions/zombies. The battle field can get very crowded. I would like to see alternate animations for spells like lightning strike and spark. Basically when you cast spark you see the standard/premium animation but your team mates would see a low-res version.

Any chance ggg will look at this issue?
I'm all for encouraging party play and such (although I personally don't like to party up with randoms), but right now it just feels like not partying you actively hurts you.

I think more monsters need to have abilities that are especially dangerous for groups. The more players the more dangerous those abilities should be.

Please look into this. The simple HP buff to mobs in parties does not cut it at all.

Ya agree they need to do something to close the gap a little between party play and solo play.

At this point in party since you can stack every aura in the game with 4-6 players and also most likely have at least 1 person with the double curse talent, the mobs become a joke.

Add to the fact that late game it's hard to even get enough map drops outside a party is just a big slap in the face to solo players.

I agree that in the end a full group of 6 players that are well coordinated should have an advantage, right now the advantage is like at insane levels.

End game mapping it is actually worth it to make a mule to just sit at the entrance of a map in your party since you get 50% more quantity and the mobs are not any harder (just take slightly longer to kill). To actually get 50% quantity on maps without have a mule sit at entrance you gotta face nasty things like extra damage, reduced resists, movement and atk speed, while burning currency to roll the maps. The fact that it is more efficient to just have a mule afk than actually spend alch or chaos on map solo highlights the fact that group balancing is way off.

Even GGG knows this (the 1st races are solo only and no trading) because they know that if not anybody without a 6 player party on voice chat cannot even get close to competing.

Map drops are not affected by party size. Aside from that I agree with the poor scaling.

Ya but what ends up happening is say you have 6 person group.

Everyone contributes like 2 maps each from when they were leveling or what lvl 66's they purchased from currency.

Just from that initially investment that group will has almost 0% chance of running out of maps since you can dip from everyone else's map pool.

Since maps are such a rare commodity it is slap in face to solo players. Solo player will almost always be struggling to have maps while group player will be swimming in them.


Edit: not to mention with aura stacking things like elemental weakness or -resists or even increased damage are trivialized. Elemental weakness easily countered with purity. increased damage easily countered by armor or evasion aura. Which leads to more maps more loot.

Co-op balance should be high on GGG lists of ‘must fix’. Right now a group of 6 can rush through content in relative safety. Some players will only play multi-player and never experience the challenge of solo. This creates the impression that the game is easy. I feel that the difficulty disparity between solo and co-op is harming the game.

I see people die all the time in HC while in groups.