Monster Health Scaling in Parties Revisited

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

The key metric for most end game players is exp/time and solo will generally be much faster due to the unknown variable of crappy allies with zero dps.

This variable can be solved by using known good allies. Just because one can party with players of radically different skill level doesn't mean one should.

Ideally, the system would be balanced for both situations. Having good allies should definitely give better performance than solo, but not to an OP extent. Having shitty allies should definitely give worse performance than solo. Getting random allies should put you in roughly the same ballpark, with at least a decent chance of breaking even.

Inevitably what happens in this scenario every single time is that the "good" players party with other good players/friends and the pub parties get filled with brainless idiots, which would result in an unnecessary glass ceiling.
If you want people to group, it has to be profitable for everyone, all the time. ASSUMING xp gain is always higher in a group, then in this case GGG did the right thing, since xp is what most people are after. However, I've heard on another thread that assumption may be wrong and you may actually gain less xp in groups, so I'll let someone else settle that issue.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Inevitably what happens in this scenario every single time is that the "good" players party with other good players/friends and the pub parties get filled with brainless idiots, which would result in an unnecessary glass ceiling.

I'd imagine every once in a while someone on your skill level would join a pub anyway, to search for someone who isn't a brainless idiot. And, if you're there, maybe you could add him as a friend. Repeat this a bit, and you have your own party of "good" players and no longer have to rely on the pubs at all.

The trick to balancing party bonuses is to make the bonus attractive enough where players feel partying with randoms will only be a slight waste of their time (but overall worth it due to opportunity of meeting good players), yet not making the bonus attractive enough to be content to party with those randoms forever (thus marginalizing the incentive of befriending a good player when one finds one). That's a pretty narrow band to hit, so it takes precision balancing.

And it's not something you can hit in the current system, with it's overly simplistic system of "if you care about XP more than loot, group; if you care about loot more than XP, don't."

Short of having several people with top tier builds or a single person abusing the shit out of shavs and crown, there is almost no way for a 6 man group (even a solid one) to clear faster than a single top tier build solo.

2-3 man group is actually much more feasible because there is less 'overload' damage and less chance of duplicate un-synergistic builds.

6 man groups are mind crushingly slow but magnitudes safer than solo.

That's some real non-sense theoretical calculations if I ever seen one. You are completely ignoring the context of the game which is what is topic is about.

Group play can share auras and charges, group play can stack shocks 10000% faster than any solo. Group play can give support character with 4 curses, out putting more damage and cutting back the mob damage. Group play can have dedicated culler, which means even if each person only gets fraction of the share, it is still WAY more than what a solo would get. Group play can reduce the cost of map by 5/6, so even in the very unlikely event that you did not get enough loot, you will still come out ahead against a solo because the cost to run a map is WAY lower than a soloer.

Lastly, I can not stress this enough....If every member uses a google a build brain dead aegis blocker/dual striker then yes you may experience some slowness in running maps. But please understand there are MANY MANY MANY people that run builds which can faceroll mobs by themselves in a 6 man group. In fact there are so many of those, that people often advertise something like "xx map, no discharge/flicker/coc etc.." to ensure those who too much dps do not come to the maps. If you or your group find you running maps too slowly, then its YOUR fault, not the games.

If you ever think running maps in parties is hard because you kill things too slowly, understand you are at least killing things. Try a soloers shoes for once, you think killing things slowly is hard? How about instantly one shotted by 10 rohas / devoures the min you show your face? Because unlike groups, there isn't 5 other buddies to share aura and aggro for you. Even the slightest lack of defense can and will kill you as a solo, and even one death will set back a soloer's exp 10 times more than what your "slow" map group would gain.

Party in this game is a braindead faceroll. If you are having problems in parties then you are bad. Don't trust my words? Go talk to one of the streams or top ladder players or top racers, the answer is the same.

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thinkingofaname wrote:

In fact there are so many of those, that people often advertise something like "xx map, no discharge/flicker/coc etc.." to ensure those who too much dps do not come to the maps. If you or your group find you running maps too slowly, then its YOUR fault, not the games.

So basically, if your dps sucks, it's your fault for not using flicker discharge or coc?
I agree with most of what you said but some people don't want to use cookie cutter builds in this terribly balanced game.

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Nephalim wrote:

Short of having several people with top tier builds or a single person abusing the shit out of shavs and crown, there is almost no way for a 6 man group (even a solid one) to clear faster than a single top tier build solo.

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thinkingofaname wrote:

Party in this game is a braindead faceroll. If you are having problems in parties then you are bad.

I don't think anyone is arguing against party being stupid easy from a survival standpoint. However, assuming you have a decent build and aren't in terrible risk of dying in the first place, the concern isn't whether you live or not — you got that shit on lock — but instead loot per unit time, and XP per unit time. These are completely different concepts, and very much under contention.

But, yes, party is safer. No doubt. Which is why I'd make it a little more challenging if I was in charge. Reposting this to get some comments:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

By the way, this is what I'd do with party bonuses if I was king of the castle.

All monsters

• 40% increased IIR per add'l player (not IIQ)
• 40% specialized IIQ per add'l player; this would apply only to currency and gems
• 4% "link quality" per add'l player; this means items are dropped as if 20% quality Jeweler's, then 20% quality Fusing, when dropped in a six-man group. More sockets, more links, but not more screen clutter. :)

Non-unique monsters

• 40% increased health per add'l player
• 20% increased mob density per add'l player. This would be treated as a % chance to double, with the double appearing immediately next to the original mob; at 6 players this would be capped at a guaranteed 100% chance. Doubled blue or yellow monsters would have their affixes rerolled so as to not be exact clones, but would still come in pairs.

Unique monsters

• 80% increased health per add'l player
• 20% (full) IIQ per add'l player; for currency and gems, stacks multiplicatively with pre-existing bonus
• 10% increased attack/move/cast speed per add'l player

Against non-unique monsters, a 6-man group would have to fight twice as many monsters with 3 times the health, for a total health pool of six times as much. In return they'd get 3 times as many rare items, uniques, currency, and gems per monster, which is 6 times once you consider twice as many monsters.

Uniques would have 5 times as much health, but drop 6 times as much rare items, uniques, currency, and gems. They'd also present more of a threat to the group, essentially feeling like their Turbo race equivalent.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

Short of having several people with top tier builds or a single person abusing the shit out of shavs and crown, there is almost no way for a 6 man group (even a solid one) to clear faster than a single top tier build solo.

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thinkingofaname wrote:

Party in this game is a braindead faceroll. If you are having problems in parties then you are bad.

I don't think anyone is arguing against party being stupid easy from a survival standpoint. However, assuming you have a decent build and aren't in terrible risk of dying in the first place, the concern isn't whether you live or not — you got that shit on lock — but instead loot per unit time, and XP per unit time. These are completely different concepts, and very much under contention.

But, yes, party is safer. No doubt. Which is why I'd make it a little more challenging if I was in charge. Reposting this to get some comments:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

By the way, this is what I'd do with party bonuses if I was king of the castle.

All monsters

• 40% increased IIR per add'l player (not IIQ)
• 40% specialized IIQ per add'l player; this would apply only to currency and gems
• 4% "link quality" per add'l player; this means items are dropped as if 20% quality Jeweler's, then 20% quality Fusing, when dropped in a six-man group. More sockets, more links, but not more screen clutter. :)

Non-unique monsters

• 40% increased health per add'l player
• 20% increased mob density per add'l player. This would be treated as a % chance to double, with the double appearing immediately next to the original mob; at 6 players this would be capped at a guaranteed 100% chance. Doubled blue or yellow monsters would have their affixes rerolled so as to not be exact clones, but would still come in pairs.

Unique monsters

• 80% increased health per add'l player
• 20% (full) IIQ per add'l player; for currency and gems, stacks multiplicatively with pre-existing bonus
• 10% increased attack/move/cast speed per add'l player

Against non-unique monsters, a 6-man group would have to fight twice as many monsters with 3 times the health, for a total health pool of six times as much. In return they'd get 3 times as many rare items, uniques, currency, and gems per monster, which is 6 times once you consider twice as many monsters.

Uniques would have 5 times as much health, but drop 6 times as much rare items, uniques, currency, and gems. They'd also present more of a threat to the group, essentially feeling like their Turbo race equivalent.

Poorjoy's Asylum is a challenging map:

(140 to 160)% increased Monster Life
(140 to 160)% increased Monster Damage
25% increased Monster Movement Speed
25% increased Monster Attack Speed
25% increased Monster Cast Speed

Mostly because of this:

(140 to 160)% increased Monster Damage
25% increased Monster Movement Speed
25% increased Monster Attack Speed
25% increased Monster Cast Speed

I'd focus on these stats instead of monster health, if challenging is the goal. Imo, more monster health only make gameplay tedious after a certain point.

Mob density, when done as I described, is a form of increased damage. And increased attack speed can be very scary on certain uniques; Dominus' Touch of God comes to mind.

Also, the idea isn't to make group play punishingly difficult. It's intended to have groups run Poorjay's itself, for example; you wouldn't want the difficulty of a map like that squared.

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Nephalim wrote:

Short of having several people with top tier builds or a single person abusing the shit out of shavs and crown, there is almost no way for a 6 man group (even a solid one) to clear faster than a single top tier build solo.

2-3 man group is actually much more feasible because there is less 'overload' damage and less chance of duplicate un-synergistic builds.

6 man groups are mind crushingly slow but magnitudes safer than solo.

But since groups can much more easily run higher level maps ( and more important : they can sustain them ) than solo, solos fall far behind for most of them in term of xp gain past some point.

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Nephalim wrote:

Short of having several people with top tier builds or a single person abusing the shit out of shavs and crown, there is almost no way for a 6 man group (even a solid one) to clear faster than a single top tier build solo.

2-3 man group is actually much more feasible because there is less 'overload' damage and less chance of duplicate un-synergistic builds.

6 man groups are mind crushingly slow but magnitudes safer than solo.

Agreed, was thinking of ways to word it, but this was perfect :D