Oh how about this:
Let people join their friend’s bosses if they want. But to get a drop, they need to have the stability as well and their stability will be spent as well. That would allow party play and wouldn’t really affect loot.
I don’t think this problem can be solved without moving the focus of the game. A lot of suggestions here are straight from MMORPGs, but MMORPGs are that for a reason. I do not seek group content in my ARPGs and this is not why I play them, but, of course, hybrids were made (Lost Ark).
For a lot of us, groups, especially groups of random players, especially groups with high performance requirements adds the sort of stress we specifically do not want in an ARPG. It then also moves all the discussions and balance focus to that. At that point, the game will cease to be what I’m looking for and I’m back to my TQ/GD/PoE.
The main purpose of ARPG MP, IMO, is to be able to play with friends. We can then agree on how meta we are and often we’re similar enough people that our builds are of similar strength. If you’re not chasing streamer performance this is not an issue. That goal has considerably more leniency and I think that one is fine even in the likes of PoE.
This should tell the whole story as to how it does actually make the game less fun for others. These players get “fat and bloated” because they are able to sell the rare loot early in the season. It changes the market for players that want to solo grind and can’t keep up with the group farming. It makes it harder for solo players to make the type of currency to get to their end builds.
A lot of the problems that arise from this are more to do with having a trade system in place. Almost any kind of trade system will be abusable.
Following this logic nothing in the current game matters.
Why do people want bastion to be nerfed? They can just not use it. The fact that it is overpowered does not directly affect them.
If MP becomes the provably optimal way of playing, a lot of players will be compelled to engage in it, even if they would prefer a social single player experience.
Those who are not willing to or are not able to approach the game optimally are likely to feel robbed of the proper game experience.
Maybe you will not experience either of this, but I probably would.
There is a fairly well known quote on the matter from the creators of civilization:
Many players cannot help approaching a game as an optimization puzzle. Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game,
one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.
All that is to say that even excluding the inevitable economic consequences, if MP becomes the de-facto optimal strategy it could ruin the game for a lot of players.
1 Like
Probably for the same reason the devs don’t want to add unrestricted trade.
I have no idea what that metaphor is meant to mean.
Yeah, you’ll be doing it with people you trust, either to get boss-specific drops that your build needs but their’s don’t or for the rarer node rewards (exalts, slot-specific uniques, etc).
Scenario 1 is also faster.
I’d assume that the journey is as important as the destination. They’re making a game to entertain us for a duration, if progression speed wasn’t a concern then why bother having relative scarcity of more powerful things?
Did you ever play PoE before they introduced loot filters?
But if a person is solo grinding they aren’t interacting with the market so that doesn’t matter.
3 Likes
But, isn’t it the same issue, just in different wrapping? The accumulation of player power? Whether through increased drops rates/quality, or through (item editor) crafting methods, it all boils down to the same issue/topic/whatever. Sure, you could argue that in a group, at least it’s still the randomness of items drops (which some feel is the core purpose of ARPGs), so it’s acceptable. But that’s being a bit disingenuous, since everything, outside of actual editors or cheats, comes with some level of randomness…
How is it any different, if I receive items via crafting over the course of a couple months, vs getting them via improved drop rates, and trading in groups, over the same course of time? Either way, I still have to play the game to get drops… either to use, to shatter for runes, and/or crafting attempts.
Or… any game without loot filters. 90%, or more, or the loot in these games is simple merchant fodder, or just there to give you the lootsplosion thrill upon killing countless hordes of trash npcs.
1 Like
Why does it matter if a solo player “can’t keep up” with a coordinated group? That’s not an equality that exists anywhere else, why should they try to enforce it here? And, how is the advantage of “split mono farming” different from all the natural advantages that come from playing in a coordinated group that a solo player also can’t keep up with? Even if something specific is done to prevent “abuse” there, playing in a group is still going to be superior. And if we’re talking about solo players, why does a change to the market affect them? They’re not engaging with the market if they’re solo. Unless you’re talking about “soft” SSF players?
Also, as I remember from recent POE happenings, when GGG torpedoed turbojuice group farming, it had a large negative impact on the market by significantly reducing the supply of items that more casual players rely on to keep prices affordable for them in trade. Wouldn’t it then be in the best interests of the more casual players to encourage coordinated group farming because it would increase supply?
So would it be fair to say you wouldn’t have a problem with “split mono farming” being advantageous over solo in an environment where there was no out-of-party trade?
Good question! I feel that’s different, but I’m not sure why. You’ve given me something to think on.
MP is already the provably optimal way of playing. It always is. Even with no trading, even with no drop or exp bonuses, even with no sharing of loot in a party, a solo player cannot compete with the power and speed of a coordinated group. So I get what you’re saying but it kind of feels like a moo point since it’s already true once MP exists.
Playing less-than-optimally makes someone feel robbed? That smells like a dysfunctional relationship to the game to me.
I’ve read this quote before, and I semi-but-not-completely agree with it. I would argue that any player who is not neuro-divergent has every ability not to approach a game as an optimization puzzle. They are just choosing to approach it that way, often because the design of the game itself encourages or even requires it. And I think there lies an unhealthy reinforcement cycle:
- Some players choose to focus excessively on optimization
- They lack the tools to do that in the game, so they make their own
- Other players see their “success”, and want to copy their methods
- Developers take notice, and start providing tools, mechanics, and incentives which support that way of engaging with the game
- This further drives more players to focus excessively on optimization
- Repeat
Maybe it’s way too late to un-ring the bell, but IMO the “protect the player from themselves” part needs to have a greater focus on helping players understand that forming an obsession with optimization in a game is unhealthy. If MP being the optimal strategy “ruins the game” for someone, then I would argue that constitutes a mental health problem on their part, not a design problem on the game’s part.
I have yet to be convinced of that.
It’s an old adage - A girl asks her mother why she cuts the ends off the ham before putting it into the oven. The mother replies that it’s how her mother did it. The girl asks the grandmother, who gives the same answer. The girl asks the great grandmother, who tells her that it’s because she had been poor and had a very small oven, so she did it to make the ham fit. It’s about doing something because it’s always been done, without understanding why, even though it’s no longer relevant, because the practice was passed down through generations.
Sort of but not really, IMO. In the “split mono farming” scenario we’re talking about, players are still engaging with the system. They’re improving their yield but still spending time killing monsters and still getting loot at random. The “item editor crafting” that some people keep asking for is not engagement with the system - it’s an attempt to bypass the random loot component completely. That’s how I see it anyway.
1 Like
People have been approaching stuff as an optimisation puzzle for thousands of years, if they hadn’t we would not be where we are (nor necessarily a good thing). If you want to just insult people as being a bit on the autistic side, just do so without having to use other terms.
Ok, but we’re talking about video games, not all innovation in all of human history.
Whoa there Huckleberry, come on back to the ranch. You’ve read a pretty extreme amount of malice into a sentence that has none. It’s not insulting anyone to acknowledge that the desire/impulse to treat a game as an optimization puzzle to one’s own detriment can be legitimately beyond the control of some people because of neuro-divergence. Should I instead have marginalized them - a group that I myself belong to - by leaving that acknowledgement out? You’re tilting at windmills with this my dude.
Yes, but the behaviour you bemoan didn’t just appear with video games, it is a key component to the human psyche. It’s like complaining that many people get fat when they presented with bountiful amounts of food.
Ok, but we’re only talking about video games. I honestly don’t understand what point you’re trying to make.
It’s really, really not.
Playing solo is different from “Solo Self-Found”. People don’t want to participate in party play but will still interact with trade if it is available.
It depends on the implementation of trade. The players view isn’t the only one though. A players goals are different from the devs goals. The devs most likely want to optimize for player longevity. If they plan to monetize from cosmetics, that would be most optimal I would think. If players are able to get all their gear so quickly, players quit playing more quickly.
At some point, sure. But players also quit if they get gear too slowly, and getting gear at a good pace can encourage experimentation with new characters and builds. Would split mono farming move the needle close enough to the breaking point, for enough players, that it must be prevented? Just because coordinated rotations can be done doesn’t mean most players actually do them, after all.
And that’s the question. Is split mono farming a real problem, and if so, on what basis? It feels to me like there isn’t any investigation into that being done here. It’s just taken as true - Advantage = Bad.
It is not that any form of advantage for MP is bad, but it is a matter of degrees.
Partying up needs to always be at better than as playing solo. Otherwise players will feel punished for wanting to play with their friends, which would be very bad.
Arguably, party play actually needs to always be quite a bit better than solo play, to compensate for the effort and logistics associated with playing with another human being.
Then, if party play needs to be better than playing solo, what matters is by how much.
Ideally, it should be such that If some of your friends are online, it is nice and beneficial to join them, however it would not be worth it to look for some stranger to play unless you are feeling very social.
What people are concerned about is that party play ends up being so beneficial that, in terms of efficiency, it does not make sense to do anything else than partying.
As an extreme example, say for instance that party play is 10 times more effective than solo play, and doing so does not require specific builds or complex coordination.
Then, it is always worth to aggressively look for a group. Even if you ended up spending half of your play session looking for a group it would still be beneficial for the enormous benefit it provides. This obviously would be a very unpleasant way of playing the game.
In POE a similar version of this happened with TFT, which was a discord server for trading, which allowed for huge economical benefits, but also significantly disrupted the gameplay loop.
The most optimal way of playing involved using it, but is was also very boring and time-consuming to do so. And people complained about it a lot despite the fact that nobody forced them to use it in the first place.
Many players are optimizers in nature (especially in this genre) so they will naturally gravitate towards what they perceive to be the most optimal play.
I know for a fact that these kind of players exist because that is how I personally play. If I perceive a certain strategy to significantly dominate the others I would most likely either employ it myself if I enjoy it (or at least tolerate it), or significantly reduce my playtime if I don’t.
1 Like
You are complaining about an aspect of human behavior that has been present since the dawn of time. It is normal. It may not always be healthy (like eating too much), but it is normal.
Who was it that was arguing that the speed of gear acquisition was irrelevant or some such?
It is, its faster, safer and with in-party trading, can have drop rates up to x4 (ish) even without any MF modifiers for mp.
People often think things are zero sum games when they aren’t, just look at all the threads “warning” EHG about the perceived perils of LE 1.0 landing around the same timeframe as D4 and PoE “2”. This is probably also evolutionary behaviour, if 2 hunter-gatherers from different tribes were “hunter-gathering” in the same are at the same time, they both wouldn’t be able to gather the same food as each other, one would get it and the other would go hungry.
Do you have any professional qualifications or statistics to make these claims here about marginalized groups of people?
As an actually neurodivergent person who doesn’t have a single video game optimization bone in my body this discussion sure has gotten unpleasant.
1 Like
I’m wondering how that is better/worse than players feeling punished for not wanting to play in groups…remember, we’re not talking about MMORPGs here. There is no inherent requirement within the genre for group play, and many people purposely pick ARPs over MMORPGs just for that reason.
It feels like you are aguing against a point that I am not making. Players feeling pushed for not wanting to play in a party is just as bad, however I was clarifying that in my opinion party play should still be more rewarding.
In an ideal world the reward structure should be such that players will not feel forced to play either modes.
So players that are adverse to party play should not feel like they are missing out on the game proper by not engaging in that form of play.
On the other hand party play should be at least a bit more rewarding than normal play to compensate for its logistical difficulties.
When you are playing with another human being it is very easy to waste a little bit of time here and there, sometimes people wander off, sometimes they want to craft something, etc.
Party coordination is a skill that can (and IMO should) be rewarded.
There is also the fact that the designers of the game can use rewards to push towards what they believe to be a more enjoyable style of play.
If EHG were to believe that party play is the superior version of the game, they could use rewards to make players more inclined to try it.
There is a sweet-spot in how rewarding something is such that you don’t feel forced to do it, but it is also worthwile to do if you happen to be in the mood for it.
Reiterating my previous point:
From your post it almost seems that you don’t believe that there could be a balance in the rewards such that party play is beneficial but not mandatory.
Party play already has inherent benefits. For people who have some necessity to interact with other people, they have someone to talk to. You have class/skill synergies that happen, simply for being in a group.
But I’m not sure why you feel that:
Partying up needs to always be at better than as playing solo.
Partying doesn’t need to be better, it just has to be a viable alternative playstyle.
1 Like