All these threads about nerfing group play. Here is my opinion GGG

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steven0006#1294 wrote:

You can have your opinion and I can have mine that is the great part of being a human. Just because I dont know max party size doesnt mean I know nothing in regards to how broken the group system is. You say its not yet time and time again it has been proven by many people that it in fact is 100% broken. The temple exaggerated that by 1000x so you really could in fact see the brokeness of group play.

SO we can agree to disagree. My FACTS have merit, your personal experience and opinion (while valid and I appreciate it) has no merit vs FACTS.

For sure you can have your opinion didn't say otherwise. :)

You didn't really provide any facts or quantifiable metrics in your post that I can see, it looks like your general perceptions and feelings. I didn't bother trying to argue with facts either for sure, didn't want to derail the vibe of the thread. ;P

Temple is a problem in current form, never argued that either. But that's the root problem imo not parties. There are four layers of multipliers for loot quantity. When any one layer gets hyper inflated, every other layer has hyper inflated value. It's the same as how at level 1, "increased" damage, and "more" damage are functionally identical stats, but as you progress and gain a lot of one ("increased" first usually) the value of the other becomes much much higher.
If an item was released that had an obviously silly +10Trillion% "increased" damage, we wouldn't be out here complaining that the "more" damage stat is busted and should be deleted. We'd be complaining that that ridiculously huge outlier has destroyed the existing balance between the layers of multipliers.
The same concept applies here, party bonus has an outsized effect this league, because the temple adds such a huge multiplier value on the area layer, not because it's inherently a problem. When each layer is within some range, the system is balanced; when one value escapes that range the system becomes unbalanced.

Also, the party bonus for being in a 6 man party is only +51% quant and 0% rarity. It is not 6x loot at all, those 6 players would get more baseline loot by running solo. Your suggestion in point 2 is literally to change that to 6x, which would make your perceived problem worse, if the rest of your assumptions held true.

If you have a rarity bot with 500% IIR, diminishing returns puts that closer to something under 200% effective IIR from testing I could find like Farham a while back. Because rarity affects currency in PoE2, not just increasing chances for uniques, there's room for concern here, but again the root issue isn't the party bonus itself. I'd argue the root is rarity affecting currency. Though you can argue that farming T0 is functionally the same as farming currency indirectly, which I guess without evidence is the position of PoE2 designers. But then, that makes rarity affect 2 axes instead of one. Either way, that still doesn't push the bonus up to 6x they would functionally have solo.

I was more tempted to agree with the faster campaign clear time, but I can't really find good evidence either way really. Seems like at best efficient groups are only like 30 minutes faster than efficient solo players? If you find any other data on that I'd be interested.


Ultimately my point is that, I do believe your perception of the problems is real and valid, but that ultimately the problem boils down to amount of time invested, and efficiency of time invested. Imo, most of this is just a scapegoat (though Temple is genuinely effed for sure). XTheFarmerX does zero to mirrors multiple times a league, sometimes without crafting and sometimes while not streaming on an alt. Nothing is preventing you from learning strats and maximizing your efficiency to beat and even profit from inflation unless you simply don't have the desire, or the hours in the day
If you don't have the hours in the day, you're going to be behind, and that's fine. If you feel like you're 10x behind now, and you say nerfed the top by half, you're still just 5x behind. No system is ever going to make casual play more effective than grinder play, and blaming party loot bonus is just a misdirection of that feeling of being left behind imo.

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

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steven0006#1294 wrote:

You can have your opinion and I can have mine that is the great part of being a human. Just because I dont know max party size doesnt mean I know nothing in regards to how broken the group system is. You say its not yet time and time again it has been proven by many people that it in fact is 100% broken. The temple exaggerated that by 1000x so you really could in fact see the brokeness of group play.

SO we can agree to disagree. My FACTS have merit, your personal experience and opinion (while valid and I appreciate it) has no merit vs FACTS.

For sure you can have your opinion didn't say otherwise. :)

You didn't really provide any facts or quantifiable metrics in your post that I can see, it looks like your general perceptions and feelings. I didn't bother trying to argue with facts either for sure, didn't want to derail the vibe of the thread. ;P

Temple is a problem in current form, never argued that either. But that's the root problem imo not parties. There are four layers of multipliers for loot quantity. When any one layer gets hyper inflated, every other layer has hyper inflated value. It's the same as how at level 1, "increased" damage, and "more" damage are functionally identical stats, but as you progress and gain a lot of one ("increased" first usually) the value of the other becomes much much higher.
If an item was released that had an obviously silly +10Trillion% "increased" damage, we wouldn't be out here complaining that the "more" damage stat is busted and should be deleted. We'd be complaining that that ridiculously huge outlier has destroyed the existing balance between the layers of multipliers.
The same concept applies here, party bonus has an outsized effect this league, because the temple adds such a huge multiplier value on the area layer, not because it's inherently a problem. When each layer is within some range, the system is balanced; when one value escapes that range the system becomes unbalanced.

Also, the party bonus for being in a 6 man party is only +51% quant and 0% rarity. It is not 6x loot at all, those 6 players would get more baseline loot by running solo. Your suggestion in point 2 is literally to change that to 6x, which would make your perceived problem worse, if the rest of your assumptions held true.

If you have a rarity bot with 500% IIR, diminishing returns puts that closer to something under 200% effective IIR from testing I could find like Farham a while back. Because rarity affects currency in PoE2, not just increasing chances for uniques, there's room for concern here, but again the root issue isn't the party bonus itself. I'd argue the root is rarity affecting currency. Though you can argue that farming T0 is functionally the same as farming currency indirectly, which I guess without evidence is the position of PoE2 designers. But then, that makes rarity affect 2 axes instead of one. Either way, that still doesn't push the bonus up to 6x they would functionally have solo.

I was more tempted to agree with the faster campaign clear time, but I can't really find good evidence either way really. Seems like at best efficient groups are only like 30 minutes faster than efficient solo players? If you find any other data on that I'd be interested.


Ultimately my point is that, I do believe your perception of the problems is real and valid, but that ultimately the problem boils down to amount of time invested, and efficiency of time invested. Imo, most of this is just a scapegoat (though Temple is genuinely effed for sure). XTheFarmerX does zero to mirrors multiple times a league, sometimes without crafting and sometimes while not streaming on an alt. Nothing is preventing you from learning strats and maximizing your efficiency to beat and even profit from inflation unless you simply don't have the desire, or the hours in the day
If you don't have the hours in the day, you're going to be behind, and that's fine. If you feel like you're 10x behind now, and you say nerfed the top by half, you're still just 5x behind. No system is ever going to make casual play more effective than grinder play, and blaming party loot bonus is just a misdirection of that feeling of being left behind imo.

Well I did provide facts straight from poe2wiki page about the party system, now take that with a grain of salt because everything online isnt necessarily true. However, based on the table I provided you wouldnt see where I got the 600% from but if you scroll down to the section about "effect on item drops" it states:

Items dropped from monsters are increased based on the number of players nearby when the monster is killed. Currency has a higher additional drop rate per player in the party compared to equipment.

~100% more currency drops per party member.
~100% more ring/amulet drops per party member.
~28% more item drops in total per party member, with skewed distributions of item classes towards more generically useful item types.

So based on this data not the table 6 total players would be 600% more currency (maybe 500% if not counting the party leader?) so maybe this is why table says +51%? I am unsure so I can only go off what I read and research. My suggestion was to make solo and full group play be equal when it comes to drops. So whatever that number actually is they should make it global.

Just because they choose to be in a group or I choose to be solo neither one of us should have ANY benefit over the other, even if grouping causes content to be harder. That's a choice they are making to have the "aura" bots follow and the "IIR" bots follow or randoms follow.

I'm simply stating if you take away the benefit or give the same benefit to everyone then we are all on a even playing field from the start not this sick idea that because the monsters get harder they deserve more rewards. Even though some think its a hinderance and slows progress more than if just playing solo. If that was the case nobody would group but its not, it took something like the temple to fully show GGG the realization that not only is it busted for groups by offering so much more than a solo player will ever get it showed how tying currency drops to IIR% also borked the entire loot system making it almost a requirement for anyone farming to have a minimum of 200% IIR before the mentioned diminishing returns hurt more than they are worth.

Increased Item Rarity should have never be tied to currency from the start like in POE1 yet here we are seeing time and time again how it has broke POE2 economy. Currency is not and item its a currency, maybe they should add in IIC instead and put that on rings only or something like that, idk. IIQ also shouldn't add to currency drops either because it deals with item quantity (more items) and since currency is not an item its currency it should also not be affected by it. So with the combined group bonus and IIR one group of 6 man party can easily get 100s if not 1000s of divines (current version of POE2 time will tell if it stands same for 0.5) in a day while the most efficient solo player even at best will only rake in 20-100div a day without using the AH to buy and resell items to make fast profit which is just turning the gold (remind you they said "we will never have gold in POE") into actually currency.

I digress though, you state that a guy named XTheFarmerX does zero to mirrors multiple times a league. I will go watch his videos tonight but I promise you this is from him flipping items on the AH not finding the currency or items to sell to make these items. He also likely puts in a lot of hours in the game to do so which is totally fine. However the average gamer has likely 10 hours during the work week between job, family, & life to play the game and they just want to hop on kill stuff maybe find something cool or that will sell, then log off. This is a video game not a job and the streamers and the known groups that dominate every league in both POE1 & POE2 and basically set the market on fire within 2 weeks of launch is only being exacerbated by group bonus's and IIR attached to currency drops.

You asked for examples of groups going through campaign and the time it takes vs a solo player yet none of these groups have or will ever post it for us to see but solo player is 3 hours 38minutes from start to maps which is fastest time ive seen so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdIsZHbhXOY&t=1575s

With a group that is efficient this goes down to around 2hours 30minutes or less as we all see within 3 hours of launch many people are at maps already. I take about 8 hours as I am no speed running pro so already I am at a disadvantage to people like these speed runners but not everyone is that good I would say I am average at running through start to mapping.

Thanks for your opinions on it. I just think for the sake of the game nobody should have a better advantage based on party size no matter where they are at in the game flat line the rules for everyone and if someone wants to build 1000% IIR aura bot so be it thats cool but the solo players need some love too not just the elitist groups that run POE1 & POE2 every league.

Too lazy to fix the quoting on mobile, but in sections instead:

Party Bonus Value:
Those numbers on the wiki are super unclear, I agree with that. From my looking into that (notably the citation needed note on the page, and discussions on the Prohibited Library Discord), the 100% number is based on a pre-EA interview, and the table on the wiki page is based on the actual in-game number. Without any other evidence I think it's fair to trust the in-game values.

"Even playing field":
If you gave everyone a 51% bonus regardless of party size, you'd be making a 6 players party get functionally 1/6 the bonus a solo player does. Or another way, that 6 player group would get 6x the bonus if they coordinate grinding solo. Then again if it's a 0% bonus, you're saying that a party of 6 people should functionally get one sixth of the loot per player as a solo player. So by that logic, the bonus should be 100% so that each player gets the same amount of loot if they're in a party. That's functionally what your suggestion 2 actually is.

"No one would play in groups":
You keep saying that, but who is playing in groups currently? Temple farmers grabbing leechers in 0.4 is an exception caused by the area rarity multiplier getting way too high like I described, people don't go through that effort in other leagues. If you've got counter points to that share 'em. EmpyrianGaming is the only streamer I know that consistently plays in a group, even then only for the first week or two, all the other streamers play solo. People test builds on bosses with 6 man parties for the monster HP bonus, but boss Uniques aren't affected by quant or rarity so they don't farm those that way. I've never met anyone that plays in a group doing the efficient farm you're describing; it's always the casual guildies grouping for a campaign because they're friends that want to play together (and because they suck at the game, partying genuinely makes the campaign harder for them).

"IIR Affecting Currency":
I generally agree that it's not a great thing. But then again that's based more on feelings too that hard numbers, so I don't take a strong stance on it so far.

"IIQ Affecting currency":
Disagree here generally. There should be increasing rewards from increasing difficulty as a general rule, GGG has explicitly stated as much in multiple interviews. If this didn't affect Currency, you have only pack size I guess?

"IIC":
Oh god no please, not more rarity stats. Lol. I don't enjoy rarity in gear, so I'd rather that all be removed. Honestly I think that is more likely to solve the real problem you feel about parties which might be rarity bots.

"XTheFarmerX":
Most of his zero to mirror do involve trading or crafting for sure, but he has done runs with the no trading rule I think a few times now. Yes trading is still faster but that's an entirely different conversation.

"He also likely puts in a lot of hours in the game to do so which is totally fine. However the average gamer has likely 10 hours during the work week between job, family, & life to play the game and they just want to hop on kill stuff maybe find something cool or that will sell, then log off."
I 100% agree with this and believe this is the crux of the issue. Again, if you don't have the time, you're always going to be behind. Nerfing parties will not change that in any meaningful way. It wouldn't be enough and people that don't have a much time will blame the next scapegoat. Eventually what, everyone should get diminishing loot bonuses the longer they play so that it caps at 10hrs a week? But what about the game that only has 2 hrs? Why don't we just forcefully redistribute the wealth? 😅 Or say you tried a rested bonus while you're offline so you only get 2 hours of efficient farming per 24hrs. Well then people with more time will just have more accounts and rotate between them, and you'll still be just as far behind.

Speed to maps:
I bet Empy has some older league start VoDs from his stream that would be interesting to watch. Or probably other sources that they wouldn't let us post on the forum might have similar. Maybe I'll look around more. If you couldn't find a source I'm not sure how your claiming a full hour faster. Sounds like a lot of tedious coordinating to do effectively though, do we not think there should be reward for investing time into mastery?

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Party Bonus Value:
Those numbers on the wiki are super unclear, I agree with that. From my looking into that (notably the citation needed note on the page, and discussions on the Prohibited Library Discord), the 100% number is based on a pre-EA interview, and the table on the wiki page is based on the actual in-game number. Without any other evidence I think it's fair to trust the in-game values.

IDK man its really hard to trust in game numbers when they have lied to us in many ways for years in POE1 and since start of POE2. Can anyone say armor not working as intended for what 3 seasons of POE2. Like if they cant get a simple number like that right for 8 months-ish, whos to say the party bonus numbers are correct?

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"Even playing field":
If you gave everyone a 51% bonus regardless of party size, you'd be making a 6 players party get functionally 1/6 the bonus a solo player does. Or another way, that 6 player group would get 6x the bonus if they coordinate grinding solo. Then again if it's a 0% bonus, you're saying that a party of 6 people should functionally get one sixth of the loot per player as a solo player. So by that logic, the bonus should be 100% so that each player gets the same amount of loot if they're in a party. That's functionally what your suggestion 2 actually is.

I get what you are saying, the problem is the 5 others (maybe 4 others if one is aura bot) are not there helping just leaching 99% of the time and the 1% are the elitist groups that run the economy in both POE1 & POE2 every season. This bonus only helps these elitist groups and hurts everyone else.

I would be all for a solo only mode with trade enabled then we are in fact all on the same playing field. As I said before they are choosing to play in a group just like I choose to play solo. Why should either side be punished why cant it just be made fair?

Lets be honest here man you know as well as I know that nobody is running in groups in the game for fun, friendship, enjoyment, etc. They are only doing it because of the bonus granted by having more people in the party when stuff is killed. Sure giving everyone the same bonus no matter party size would essentially be 1/6th the loot of a solo player but being honest here man a 6 man group has 1 guy killing everything anyways while everyone else follows like a pet. So its still solo just with companions that just look pretty.

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Speed to maps:
I bet Empy has some older league start VoDs from his stream that would be interesting to watch. Or probably other sources that they wouldn't let us post on the forum might have similar. Maybe I'll look around more. If you couldn't find a source I'm not sure how your claiming a full hour faster. Sounds like a lot of tedious coordinating to do effectively though, do we not think there should be reward for investing time into mastery?

It is just an educated guess (and honestly its probably even faster than my guess) and the reason you wont find any videos of it is because these same elitist groups do not want the secrets out on how they do stuff where the masses will learn their tricks and they can then no longer own the economy and sell to RMT to make money on game like its a job. They essentially have a monopoly on how to run the games economy every season with no intervention by GGG.

I also dont believe a time limit should be imposed on play time because they would just account swap and cycle through them every 24hours to always have the boost like you said. At the end of the day GGG can make it fair across the board.

Just like we begged since release of POE1 for a in game auction house to sell items instead of using out of game tools and websites and we finally got it because we cried loud enough. So just like in 0.5 they are adding in game price checker because nobody wants to use 3rd party tools even though their implementation is half baked and doesn't do as good of a job as the 3rd party tools currently do, but they are headed in the right direction, FINALLY.

Disregarding any numbers that disagree with your feelings I see.

I guess you haven't watched full parties doing normal grind outside of temples. It's not 5 guys doing nothing following 1 guy, it's 5 guys with complete dedicated builds buffing a carry while also attacking for debuffs, or often a rarity an an aura bot with 4 guys all specced for DPS every time I've watched any party play. Again, Temple is a massive problem. This is not what every or even a significant portion of leagues look like.

Then you just go tinfoil hat and provide no evidence. Theme of the thread. Oh well.

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

Disregarding any numbers that disagree with your feelings I see.

I guess you haven't watched full parties doing normal grind outside of temples. It's not 5 guys doing nothing following 1 guy, it's 5 guys with complete dedicated builds buffing a carry while also attacking for debuffs, or often a rarity an an aura bot with 4 guys all specced for DPS every time I've watched any party play. Again, Temple is a massive problem. This is not what every or even a significant portion of leagues look like.

Then you just go tinfoil hat and provide no evidence. Theme of the thread. Oh well.

Nobody disregarded anything, again I provided proof that even GGG makes mistakes like the armor issues. Would you like a youtube video with timestamp when they admitted armor wasnt calculated and working correctly?

I dont need to watch full parties outside of temple you can see the parties available in the party screen that are open to people joining. Majority of them are "T15/T16 EXP carry no loot no attack". So the fact that you "think" they are all attacking is 100% invalidated. Then there is also the fact that majority of these people running the parties are using headhunter belt so when they dont get the elite kill they dont get the buffs from the elite hence why they dont want anyone attacking. If you ran groups you would also know this but im afraid you do not.

Then you bring up tinfoil hat, state no evidence, yet I did provide FACTS, websites and youtube video for solo campaign time because you will never find the group videos of full campaign runs because the elitist groups do not want their tricks known to the public. Its very simple and I am sorry we cannot agree but the truth still remains that groups have a 600% advantage over solo players. That is a fact straight from the wiki page.

Armor isn't a mistake, not all conveyed what it actually means, but the number shown is the number they intend for better or worse. Neither does it provide evidence for the topic at hand.

Again, all evidence shows that the 600% number shown on the wiki is outdated info. Even literally the wiki your referencing.

Oh well.

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

Armor isn't a mistake, not all conveyed what it actually means, but the number shown is the number they intend for better or worse. Neither does it provide evidence for the topic at hand.

Again, all evidence shows that the 600% number shown on the wiki is outdated info. Even literally the wiki your referencing.

Oh well.

This is my last reply to you because you say, "you are wrong" with 0 evidence or facts to back up why you believe I am wrong. I then respond with facts webpages videos etc. explaining each and every time in depth as to why I disagree with you. Then you rinse and repeat the same over and over. You do not see facts and try to pick them apart like stating the wiki is outdated.

"OMG guys the wiki wasn't updated since EA release and I KNOW they changed how it works so look at this guy being wrong HAHAHA."

You state its outdated info? Then provide us the correct information through patch notes, GGG livestream, you know SOMETHING tangible something that is clear evidence to back up your claim that it is wrong because it is outdated. FACT is you cant because even if it wasn't updated for 20 years if how it works never changed in any patch in last 20 years that means then that WIKI page wouldn't need to be updated nor would it be updated for any reason.

You can even go to the bottom section of the WIKI where it says "Version history" and see changes then the wiki provides after that REFRENCES! Who would have thought that they back up the wiki with FACTS! Not with "because I KNOW!" opinions.

WOW Logic at its finest! but you are not logical you wear blinders to the truth all for the need to have a broken system in the game because it benefits you. So I again appreciate your responses and I wish you the best of luck in POE2.

The 51% is literally visible in game today. Is that not tangible evidence?

The 100% number you're pointing to on that wiki page explicitly says "[confirmation needed because of Cited from Jonathan during a pre-EA inteview.]".
Neither of the two links in references state a number either way, so what references?

Why don't you go find proof of your 100% claim then, since the wiki page contradicts itself and is reasonably an unreliable resource on this topic?

You've provided exactly two links, one to that partying page at hand and one for campaign clear. I'm not sure what you're calling facts here frankly. I'm trying to show math based on the numbers we have available, all i see is you staying your perception that party play is a problem as a fact and not backing it up with numbers or hard evidence.

Don't give up guys, I feel like you were really close to a breakthrough.