Why should we party for maps again?

I think there is a huge issue with how maps and the corresponding loot works.
If i am doing maps on my own, most of the time i am using about 4-5 portals to carry out all of the valuable loot, be it valuable rares or items that are part of recipes (mostly recipes).

If my friend plays on his own, the same stuff applies to him, he uses about 3-4 portals for items (his item quantity/rarity find is lower than mine).

Lets say doing a map takes about 5 minutes, and the amount of loot you get for that map is worth 5 portals.
If we both play solo, over a time period of 5 minutes, we get 10 portals worth of loot and since we have 12 portals, we can use that loot for recipes and stuff.

If we do a map together instead, we not only get less loot over the same time period of 5 minutes, which is 5 portals x1.5, which is about 7-8 portals worth of loot instead of 10, but we cant even carry out all of the valuable stuff.
Since we can only carry out 6 portals worth of loot, the amount of loot gained over 5 minutes is reduced to 6 portals worth of loot instead of 10.

We get less loot to choose from and we get to keep less loot, even though the time invested is the same.
Time investment and efficiency are the two most important things in arpgs, so why exactly should we team up for the map?

I realize that the amount of loot for a particular map is increased, but thats irrelevant if we can both sustain our maps while doing them solo, and since playing in a group doesnt increase map drop rate, this argument is completely irrelevant.

This issue gets even worse with more players.
With 6 people in the same party, they increase the amount of loot to 17-18 portals worth of loot over 5 minutes.
If all of them had played solo instead, they get 30 portals worth of loot over 5 minutes instead.
Not only is the amount of loot that one can choose from almost reduced by half, but the amount of loot that can be carried out of the map is 6 instead of 30 even though the time invested is the same.

Dont bring up the point that you can do maps faster in a party, its about the same speed and sometimes even slower, depending on coordination of the party members.
In my experience we can do maps a little bit faster if we are doing them together, but if we are doing them in a group of 3 we dont actually get faster, sometimes we even get slower than the 2 man group setup because the coordination isnt perfect.
Pugs are a lot slower than us doing them solo separately.

Im even of the suspicion that we are getting a lot less experience if we are playing in a party of three, just based on observation, i dont even need to look at the mechanics thread, but i did.
For 2 players (if i understood the experience segment correctly), the experience per monster is 195% while for 3 players its only 265%.

Not only do we get less loot over the same time period (and less loot to choose from) but we also get less experience.
Worse of all, it gets worse with additional players.

Please tell me im wrong about all of this and my observations are bs.

To level. Try chain popping lvl 67+ maps.

If you can't run maps faster in a group, you're doing something terribly wrong.

Also, since the IIQ is increased, this gives much better odds of orbs dropping. Now whether you will be able to get said orb is a different story entirely.

It's been said elsewhere, but for efficient farming, groups of 2-3 tend to be best. However, if you share high level maps with players/friends, being able to have up to 6 enter is more beneficial.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Also, since the IIQ is increased, this gives much better odds of orbs dropping. Now whether you will be able to get said orb is a different story entirely.

This is wrong.
If 6 players play solo, they get 600% loot, which also includes orbs.
If 6 players play together, they get 350% loot.
Half the amount of loot, nothing you say is going to change this fact, you get less drops, period.

"

If you can't run maps faster in a group, you're doing something terribly wrong.

This is also wrong.
I can 1 shot blue camps with my build, rares take about 2 seconds.
You cant make that better by increasing the amount of players, you can only make it worse.
If a single player cant 1 shot enemies anymore because their health got scaled up a little bit, and all the other players dont attack at the same time (which is the case, because we arent robots and people will fall behind or get ahead -> its called imperfect coordination due to being human) then killing enemies will actually take longer than doing them solo.
This stays true even if you CANT 1 shot enemies.

I can tell you from experience that farming doesnt get faster by increasing the amount of players, except if your character is shit and the only reason why you can do maps is because of the additional help of the other players in which case YOU are doing something terribly wrong.

Just look at diablo 3.
I can farm 80 million experience per hour on my tempest rush monk.
My friend can also farm 80 million experience per hour on his double tornado barb.
If we play together, enemies have 75% increased health, which is less than double, but because we arent robots and our characters arent going to overlap at all in their movements, we only manage to get about 50-60 million experience per hour.

Being able to 1 shot enemies and then adding a player and thus not being able to 1 shot them anymore is going to result in less experience gained.
If you want to get more experience, you would have to overlap the two characters in their movements in a perfect manner, which humans cant do.

The best cooperation you are going to get is between two players and even then its almost impossible to get more experience.
The more players you add to the equation, the higher the margin of error becomes, thus decreasing efficiency by a lot, making it completely non viable.

The first one to reach paragon level 100 in diablo 3 was a barb doing solo runs.
Humans being imperfect is the reason why and the same applies to Path of Exile.

generally you're correct, and all of this is compounded by the ninja-fest looting system (if you're playing with randoms)

but I think there are a few cases where you might prefer to squeeze as much loot out of a single map as possible, such as high level maps, unique maps, or maps with near perfect mods

also, regarding experience

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gh0un wrote:

Im even of the suspicion that we are getting a lot less experience if we are playing in a party of three, just based on observation, i dont even need to look at the mechanics thread, but i did.
For 2 players (if i understood the experience segment correctly), the experience per monster is 195% while for 3 players its only 265%.

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Chris wrote:

Version 0.9.13e

• Players now receive the same amount of experience from nearby monster kills regardless of how many members are in their party. Because experience is awarded to nearby party members equally and is not divided up between them any more, monsters are no longer scaled up in experience if you're playing in a party.
• This means that larger parties who stick together will get slightly more experience than before, and that idling characters elsewhere in the level no longer increases your experience gains. Solo players receive exactly the same experience that they did previously.
• Experience is still scaled down if the player is too high or too low level, or if there's a much higher level party member nearby. These equations have not changed.

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Chris wrote:

Specifically, the consequences of the experience changes are:

Players who play alone will notice no change.

Players who "boosted" by having lower level party members in the area (out of experience distance) will now receive the same experience as if they killed monsters in a solo game.

Players who play in a party and stay near each other (the radius is around the distance you can see them on the map unpartied - quite far) will receive more experience than before. The same experience per monster as if they were playing solo, but there are two of them fighting harder monsters.

since this patch was released on November 12, and the mechanics page with the relevant info was last updated October 18, I think it's safe to say it's out of date

Ghoun

You're assuming people have an unlimited supply of high level maps.

You're also not understanding im saying PER MAP. If you have say three people, you will get more currency per map. This is because there are the same amount of monsters. So increasing IIQ will increase the amount of loot per map. When you get a another map, say a level 65+. Your team now has more currency than a solo player since they have been getting more currency per map. They can share their loot, and roll more times than one who plays solo.

Now, if maps were in unlimited supply.and did not cost currency to run, you would be correct. Alas, this is not the case.

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gh0un wrote:

This is also wrong.
I can 1 shot blue camps with my build, rares take about 2 seconds.
You cant make that better by increasing the amount of players, you can only make it worse.

Lets assume 3 identical characters enter a map, and lets assume for the sake of this example that the HP of mobs increases directly proportionately to how many people are in a group (I'm not sure if it works this way in POE or not).

So that's 300% the DPS against 300% the health. Right there, already, you have complete equilibrium. Then, take into account auras, shock debuffs, the damage reduction due to freezing, potentially beneficial passives, and all the other good stuff that stacks in POE, and you exceed your damage output, and even reduce your damage taken.

The only thing that determines speed is your damage output compared to the damage requirement, and that clearly increases in a group. Now, I'm fully willing to accept that you don't have the capability of taking advantage of this increase, but that can hardly be said to be the games fault, can it?

As for the loot situation. If the increase isn't 1 to 1 for each player, that is seriously degrading the potential of grouping. However, the idea of having grouping as a safe choice, whereas solo running is harder with more reward, is quite interesting. After all, in POE death actually means something, regardless of league.

Best advice I got was run sub 65s solo to burn them quickly but anything 65+ run as a group. If you have 6 people who are all doing this all 6 people can benefit from those higher lvl maps therefore in general each person will do many more higher lvl maps than they would on their own.

I generally play solo, and enjoy doing so but I don't think partying has too many drawback to make it unplayable.

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Imbalanxd wrote:

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gh0un wrote:

This is also wrong.
I can 1 shot blue camps with my build, rares take about 2 seconds.
You cant make that better by increasing the amount of players, you can only make it worse.

Lets assume 3 identical characters enter a map, and lets assume for the sake of this example that the HP of mobs increases directly proportionately to how many people are in a group (I'm not sure if it works this way in POE or not).

So that's 300% the DPS against 300% the health. Right there, already, you have complete equilibrium. Then, take into account auras, shock debuffs, the damage reduction due to freezing, potentially beneficial passives, and all the other good stuff that stacks in POE, and you exceed your damage output, and even reduce your damage taken.

The only thing that determines speed is your damage output compared to the damage requirement, and that clearly increases in a group. Now, I'm fully willing to accept that you don't have the capability of taking advantage of this increase, but that can hardly be said to be the games fault, can it?

I already covered all of your pointless points in my posts but im going to explain it once again for the dull ones.

If i can instagib any monsterpack, the only thing that limits my farming speed is movement speed, more damage is pointless.
If you increase the number of players, your runspeed isnt increased, but the monsters health is increased by 50% in PoE.
If i cant instagib these enemies anymore, then the farm speed is decreased, regardless of how much damage the other player deals.

In theory, if the monsters have 100% increased health per player, 2 players should be able to farm at the same speed as alone, but it doesnt work out due to two reasons.
The first reason is that not every player deals the same amount of damage and thats the reason why many developers choose to increase the health of enemies only by 50-75% per player instead.
The second issue is that players are humans and not robots, they cant synch up perfectly.
If one of them is still searching the ground for items but the other already wants to kill more enemies, effectively his farm speed is decreased.
The more players you add, the worse it becomes in terms of coordination problems.

The only way to clear stuff faster, is to have all the players perfeclty synch up and do the exact same movements.
Any deviation from this is going to result in a player reaching an enemy pack faster than the rest, and since he cant instagib them anymore, he has to wait for the other players to also start attacking, or alternatively he himself attacks twice.
If he has to attack twice, thats halfing the farming speed.

For diablo 3, blizzard initially increased enemy health by 115% per additional player, because they thought that aoe buffs and synergy would increase the players damage to amounts that would enable them to clear enemies faster in a group than solo.
Their charts showed otherwise and player complaints opened their eyes, they reduced it to 75% increased health per player.
Even after that nerf, the first one to reach paragon level 100 was a solo playing barbarian, the reason for this i have stated already.

If you can kill mobs in 2-3 seconds, then additional damage wont help.
Even at 5-10 seconds, additional damage doesnt help too much with farming speed.
The time you waste for running and searching for enemies far outweighs the time that is needed to kill enemies, and if the time to kill enemies is even increased due to increased health and imperfect player movement (you have to hit twice now), overall farmspeed is decreased.

As i said, from my observation, if i do maps with a friend of mine, we can clear maps a little bit faster than if we do them solo separately.
If we do maps in groups of 3 or more, we dont get faster anymore, sometimes we even need more time to clear the map because of imperfect player movement and not every player dealing the same amount of damage.

Go watch some of the highend streams for diablo 3 or some of the archived videos of kripparrian doing farm runs, or mine if i decide to upload some.
Solo players are always faster at 75% (if they have the gear) increased player health per additional player, thats just too much.
50% increase is probably almost at the equilibrium, where an additional player neither increases or decreases farm time, which is a good place.

What bohers me is that the loot is decreased even though farm speed isnt increased.
Not only that, but you cant take all of the loot outside of the map because the amount of portals available isnt increased per additional player.
The tl;dr of this thread.

Yes maps can be cleared faster when run solo, (I'm a solo player as well).

The point the others are making though is that there's more to it than just that. If solo'ing maps was truly better than partying then all the top ladder players would solo 100% of the time when infact none of them do.