GGG Please Figure out how to stop Boosting (screenshots included)

You are almost right, I will admit I personally don't see exp/levelling as much of a 'competition' as others do. For me these games are more about killing stuff & loot popping out & I mainly see exp as a way of making your character's power balanced to the content.

That's not to say I ignore the fact that others see it as a race but what happens more often than not is the top of the ladder is full of people employing "a clever use of game mechanics" rather than folks who actually have a good build & grinded their ass off for their place in the ladder.

If I knew the game had mechanics that made levelling as legit as possible then yeah I might take the ladder a little more seriously but until then I am not the sort of person to bend rules to the n'th degree in order to 'win'.

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Let me pose this question, if there was no IIQ bonus in parties, and the only way to increase IIQ was to have multiple people hit the same mob, would you be for that mechanic?

I actually would be ok with this but let me preface that by saying it would require the game's content matching the player's level.

As we have it now by lvl70 you outlevel the whole game's content. Yes it will change with Act3 but it is what it is atm. We have a situation now where players can one shot packs not because they have good gear but because their gems outlevel the content. So yes as it stands monsters would need more hp in order for everyone to get in a hit before shit dies.

But wasn't MOC basically that premise? Mobs got harder & gave better loot. I didn't get to play it but I imagine groups found that the deeper they went the more they would have to group in order to kill the mobs. Look at boss fights in any game, people come together & their combined damage does the job. If it meant you got better loot the more people who got in on the fight then sure I think people would be grouping up more aswell.

I may be wrong on the maths as tbh I never actually set up a spreadsheet before making the post but I still stand behind the logic that if a group works together they will kill faster & earn more exp/time as a result. Not only that I wish to encourage people to work as a group in MP rather than what often happens where everyone solo's and the only reason for the party is the added bonuses.

What I don't get is why people would feel they deserve exp from mobs they had no hand in killing. I know I have done Fellshrine pubs where some low leveller just follows me leeching & not really doing any dps. If you are in a group it should be because you get a benefit from working as a team not because you get some buff just for being there.

I'm not saying mine is the best solution ever but then again the current one ain't worth a damn either.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

I actually would be ok with this but let me preface that by saying it would require the game's content matching the player's level.

As we have it now by lvl70 you outlevel the whole game's content. Yes it will change with Act3 but it is what it is atm. We have a situation now where players can one shot packs not because they have good gear but because their gems outlevel the content. So yes as it stands monsters would need more hp in order for everyone to get in a hit before shit dies.

But wasn't MOC basically that premise? Mobs got harder & gave better loot. I didn't get to play it but I imagine groups found that the deeper they went the more they would have to group in order to kill the mobs. Look at boss fights in any game, people come together & their combined damage does the job. If it meant you got better loot the more people who got in on the fight then sure I think people would be grouping up more aswell.

I may be wrong on the maths as tbh I never actually set up a spreadsheet before making the post but I still stand behind the logic that if a group works together they will kill faster & earn more exp/time as a result. Not only that I wish to encourage people to work as a group in MP rather than what often happens where everyone solo's and the only reason for the party is the added bonuses.

What I don't get is why people would feel they deserve exp from mobs they had no hand in killing. I know I have done Fellshrine pubs where some low leveller just follows me leeching & not really doing any dps. If you are in a group it should be because you get a benefit from working as a team not because you get some buff just for being there.

I'm not saying mine is the best solution ever but then again the current one ain't worth a damn either.

I agree and disagree with this post.

First, its not the level of the player thats causing this issue. Its just players can do more damage than the mobs have HP.
This really is not a bad thing as its good for solo players to able to kill stuff easy as that's kinda what ARPGs are about (at least what I know from D2 it is).

However when you in a party, the DPS of the party is so high, most party members cant even get attacks in on mobs they just die that fast.


Party members shouldnt have to do DPS to each mob to get exp. This is a very bad idea. I already pointed out why. The large AOE skills will be the only choices. Which is very very limiting to the game.

I used to play with a player and She used dual strike. It was like 10k DPS single target. She would group up mobs, and kill necros and rare mobs very fast. But let the other mobs alone mostly because she knew the AOE part of our group would clean them up very quickly.

In your system she couldnt do this, when this is very good team play. Same thing goes for making a tank build. Unless you use an AOE skill you wont be getting much EXP and you are at the most risk.

I agree it is somewhat AOE biased but I maintain that for a majority of builds that isn't an issue. With regards to your friend I already made that comparison with dual strike & while I understand what she does is a team dynamic I haven't seen many single target builds that have way more dps than aoe builds where the aoe guys would struggle with said necros & rares.

Maybe the 'everyone needs to hit the mob' is abit extreme but it is with the intent of making it more beneficial to group up to kill.

The game is nowhere near where people would decide a group needs a tank but if we ever start heading that direction then more than this aspect of the game will need addressing.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

I agree it is somewhat AOE biased but I maintain that for a majority of builds that isn't an issue. With regards to your friend I already made that comparison with dual strike & while I understand what she does is a team dynamic I haven't seen many single target builds that have way more dps than aoe builds where the aoe guys would struggle with said necros & rares.

It's not that AOE can't be achieved for most characters, it how the person wants to play. What you're saying here is GGG might as well drop all single target skills, people should give up there play styles, just to satisfy some arbitrary party mechanic. I can't agree to that.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

Maybe the 'everyone needs to hit the mob' is abit extreme but it is with the intent of making it more beneficial to group up to kill.

Beneficial to a subset of players. This isn't a career for some people, I don't want to have to analyze group dynamics every time I join a party. You're also giving the community as a whole way to much credit, most can barely speak coherent sentences, let alone enact coherent game play.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

The game is nowhere near where people would decide a group needs a tank but if we ever start heading that direction...

I'll play WoW.

This is an ARPG. Class specific party roles do not belong in this game.

And for the record, I'm all about the loot. Exp means absolutely nothing to me. What I'm afraid of, is that whatever rule/mechanic they come up with for balancing out exp, they will also apply to loot drops. There I said it. I'm a loot whore.

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Desbris wrote:

Sent: November 5, 2012 8:11 PM
From: Chris
To: Desbris

Hi there,

Thanks for the mail. The reason why players are currently allowed to do it is that it's part of the game and is necessary to get experience at a high rate. It's not cheating. We've been very clear that we don't punish people for playing the game in the way that it's written.

However, we don't like boosting and will be removing it. Until then, though, players have to do it if they want to be competitive. This probably won't be a problem for long.

I would much rather have this policy (it's fine until we remove it) than to label it as cheating and have players unsure about what game systems they can and can't use intelligently while playing.

Kind regards,
Chris


I guess that is about as official as it goes, and many may not agree with it but it is pretty clear they never considered it cheating, hence why they never made a post about it, they are waiting till they find a solution to be implemented before stopping boosting. I hope now this small response I got puts alot of theories to rest on their stance, I wanted to know their reasons and now I do, do I agree with it all, no, but at least now I know their stance and know they are working to fix it.

I think this should be the end of the thread. While it does not give the answer the OP is looking for specifically, it does give the best answer they're going to get for the time being. Chris' stance is very much what we can call 'The GGG Way': It's fine until we implement a way to make it not fine.

I do think GGG erred in their priorities this time around: pvp should have been kept on alpha for further testing, and this 'solution' to boosting should have been the priority before running a month-long race. Releasing a clearly imbalanced pvp (which was the focus of GGG's attention these past few weeks) has aroused the beta community's ire and disbelief (although expecting balance at a 'beta' level is like expecting raw meat to be cooked before you put it on a barbecue), and this month-long race in which boosting is allowed has been a farce.

But better that GGG makes such mistakes now rather than later. We probably shouldn't forget that Closed Beta is as much a learning process for the devs as it is for us, if not more so. We ARE the guinea pigs. Every outburst, every cry of dislike and every post complaining is simultaneously more important to us than to GGG (because we 'live' these conditions, as it were) and more important to them than to us (because they're the ones who need to decide if our reactions warrant change, or if we're just easily-distressed guinea pigs).

I believe Chris when he says (and has said, repeatedly) that they're going to remove boosting, and that until then, it's just a feature. It's precisely the same as the secure trading/scamming situation. People wanted us (devs and mods) to police drop-trade scamming -- well, that just can't be done. Better to say, 'do it now while you can, and enjoy it, because soon we're going to make it impossible' than to say, 'you shouldn't do that! We will punish you if you do that! But we...our system allows it?...oh...good point. Shit.'

So enjoy it while you can.

I won't close this one -- the conversation, the dialogue, is interesting and informed. Needless to say: keep it civil.

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Charan wrote:

I do think GGG erred in their priorities this time around: pvp should have been kept on alpha for further testing, and this 'solution' to boosting should have been the priority before running a month-long race. Releasing a clearly imbalanced pvp (which was the focus of GGG's attention these past few weeks) has aroused the beta community's ire and disbelief (although expecting balance at a 'beta' level is like expecting raw meat to be cooked before you put it on a barbecue), and this month-long race in which boosting is allowed has been a farce.

OR, a company risking millions of dollars wanted to get some EXTREMELY relevant data on how parties/boosting will affect the game and economy when put to extreme limits. Seriously, the VERY first day that GGG didn't respond to the first boosting thread, it was very clear to me that there was data being collected, and if they said ANYTHING, that data would be skewed.

This is information GGG MUST have, because, like it or not, people will be boosting as long as there is the smallest benefit to it.


OR, they messed up.

You make a really good point. There I am talking about how we're the guinea pigs and they're the lab techs making notes about our every whisker twitch and nose wiggle, and I forget that this is probably what has been happening this very race.

Also, I draw your attention to Chris' latest announcement regarding 0.9.13e on the Announcement board.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/55816

I think *that* is the end of the thread.

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Charan wrote:

Also, I draw your attention to Chris' latest announcement regarding 0.9.13e on the Announcement board.

I think *that* is the end of the thread.

...or the start of another