The Solo VS Party Issue: How to resolve it? NPC?

Personally I would love the option of a dedicated NPC like we had in D2. If players can party up and have up to 6 entities in a map, what's really the problem with letting single players have one extra entity to help them experience the game?

Obviously the game is already balanced to contend with multiple entities by increasing monster power and density. If anything it would be less of an advantage because the AI is going to be nowhere near as good as a human player.

Even in the early days I struggled with party play because nobody moved at the same speed so there was always players zooming on ahead, killing and looting everything before I got close to anything, plus it's always a burden whenever anyone wants to stop and sort their inventory, or shuffle around some skill points, craft some gear. NPCs have infinite patience when it comes to how I like to play the game.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts on the topic so far!

The issue is very similar to Warframe's group system. Other players are just a means of faster loot.

Other players aren't needed to clear hard content. They're not needed to help with survival. They're not needed to ease play experience and there's little to no social purpose.

Most of this is a result of removing enemy engagement interactions. In old PoE you would dynamically adapt to enemies. Melee bottle necks enemies so ranged can go ham. Melee occupied Shield Charge enemies so they don't charge ranged. Melee avoids GMP rares like the plague and lets range drop it.

These types of interactions are old as MUDs and MMOs up to early WoW era.
Just think about the interactions within the group that happens in order to pull a group of mobs. Then also if a patrol of adds joins in. None of this is in PoE now. Other players might as well be bots.

This isn't a void in the ARPG genre either. I've tanked for groups in D2 many times with multiple builds. Dungeon Siege has similar group interactions. More, I'd say.

Fixing this issue is no simple task at his point. GGG has backed themselves into a corner.

Easy:

Don't credit monster kills to any one player (the MF culler).

Credit them to the party, and average out the IIR/IIQ across all the party members.

That way, casuals playing together b/c they want to play with their friends don't get some sort of global IIR/IIQ penalty for party play, solo players don't get as much FOMO, and optimized groups get brought down to earth a little bit more.

So it doesn't matter if a DPSer kills a monster, or if an MF culler kills a monster, it's 330% bonus IIR across the part, divided across 6 party members = the same as though the mob was killed with 55% IIR by an average player.

This might have other unforeseen circumstances such as "IIR bot service" that just tags along in TFT to give your 0 IIR character 300 IIR just because.

Or, the IIR credit can be equal to the 50th percentile IIR player, rounded down. That is, the 4th ranked IIR player in a party of 6, the 2nd ranked player in a party of 2, etc.

^ Or ya know. Delete those stats from gear like a game made in the last decade.

That's yet another thing GGG has now backed themselves into a corner with MTX.

Again. Similar to Warframe. The devs introduce a high mats cost weapon then players complained and you know what the dev's response was? "Use X + Y + Z frame to triple your drop rates". At least they're transparent about it. Every dev is taking those things into consideration which is why those stats aren't used much anymore. It's a headache when you can just have a normalized drop rate.

When you have meta stats like that the devs either ignore them in drop rates (never seen this) or they consider them which means anyone not using said stat is losing out.

One thing they can do is stop pushing Scarabs then increasing grind for base content. Scarabs are literally Number of Scarabs * Number of Player * Map Passives in their value.

That makes no sense, though.

Think about it--we juice maps to try and get more drops. We use scarabs and sextants to get more drops.

So why not let players juice their maps through their gear as well? Wear worse gear with IIR/IIQ stats -> get more drops.

It makes zero sense that there should be no IIQ/IIR in an ARPG--it's just another form of juicing.

Yet currently it's not even worth juicing maps anymore.

It's quantity over quality. Better to just alch and ago. Players complain about not being rewarded from difficult content while IIQ/IIR on gear being considered in drop rates is one of the many reasons.

Rewards only need to be based in the difficulty of content and how efficiency you can clear that content. A meta stat only serves to complicate things and essentially punish player not using it.

This is more true now that there are flat drop chance Altars and maps from bosses. Which is why spamming for altar mods with an alch map tends to yield more if you're a robot. Should note that's more Exarch Altars over Eater. Eater is more Quantity/Rarity always with biggest pack size possible. Still Atlas passives like Elder/Shaper are direct multipliers.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

It isn't an issue, its pure FOMO caused by isolating specific gameplay moments then thinking it represents the norm. Its perfectly viable to get rich solo, you also aren't beholden to anyone else while doing so.

you're also isolating a specific gameplay element (drops).

loot definitely is a big factor, but as i've mentioned many times, for teamplay you get to play in a safer environment where monsters have more than 1 target, also you'll be under the effects of more auras. you could even benefit from a dedicated curser/aurabot.

sure, party loot might not be as good as it was before but the fact that no loot no hit public parties still exist show there benefits of having a party is significant enough people would invite randos to leech xp and actually wait for a full party to begin.

yeap you definitely can get rich playing solo. i have spent like what 100 divs this league playing solo playing semi casually. that said, i m not blind enough not to recognize the various benefits partying can have.

The group i play with rarely maps as a party because of visual clarity and general rippyness from having things being so tanky, there's a desire to do the organized partys that a lot of people recognize as the "party" experience but its a lot of work and investment often into territory of gear far beyond endgame min-max levels for most players.

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SilentSymphony wrote:

The group i play with rarely maps as a party because of visual clarity and general rippyness from having things being so tanky, there's a desire to do the organized partys that a lot of people recognize as the "party" experience but its a lot of work and investment often into territory of gear far beyond endgame min-max levels for most players.

lol yeah thats really POE's double edged blade showing its point. theres a lot to unload, from having a gazillion projectiles fired out at once multiplied by players attacking/casting over 10 times a second. to having fancy effects that look great alone but in party play becomes a huge vomit of special effects.

i do know the pain as i used to join master rotas. as much as i bitch about party play being superior to single play in certain aspects, i would really want party play to be improved too in the sense that players can actually have some visual clarity. visual clarity is really shit.

i sometimes party with a friend of mine for the purpose of unlocking atlas bonuses or achievements. we're just a 2 party team but in many cases i really dont know wtf is going on.

if theres anything that single play does much better than party play, i will say its visual clarity 100%.

i would say enemy tankiness does contribute to deaths but i believe the real main contributor is not knowing whats going on. especially if you're melee. oh and erm. AN mods