PoE is stacked against the solo player

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Xavderion a écrit :

Heh, try killing Cruel Dominus in a random group at the beginning of a league. You will see people die dozens of times before Dom is eventually down ;)

What's your point with this?
If those guys die that much in a party, they would die a lot more when playing solo.

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johnKeys a écrit :

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Xavderion a écrit :

Heh, try killing Cruel Dominus in a random group at the beginning of a league. You will see people die dozens of times before Dom is eventually down ;)

you probably picked the worst party as an example here.

More like the average party, at least from my experience. I'm much better off doing him solo, it takes less longer and the screen is less cluttered.

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tinko92 a écrit :

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Xavderion a écrit :

Heh, try killing Cruel Dominus in a random group at the beginning of a league. You will see people die dozens of times before Dom is eventually down ;)

What's your point with this?
If those guys die that much in a party, they would die a lot more when playing solo.

My point is that you're better of soloing 90% of the time. You actually need a GOOD group to have an advantage toward a good solo player. Good groups are rare if you're pugging.

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Xavderion a écrit :

My point is that you're better of soloing 90% of the time. You actually need a GOOD group to have an advantage toward a good solo player. Good groups are rare if you're pugging.

Quality over quantity. Those 10% outclass 90%. Which is why people party up, it speaks for itself.

Of course than you'd need a good group if your build does good soloing. You'd need high MF and high survivability and decent clear speed to be a good solo player and to have an edge over most of parties (and even with that, the cost of maps will most likely prevail).
In groups, you don't have to have all three.

Safety in numbers is a huge thing as well as the cost of maps, which is why I've tolerated the shitty FPS in parties and dealt with all sorts of dickbags.

Piety/Dominus party farming compared to solo farming?

Really, the situation speaks for itself, no need for some lame solo play glorification.
Solo fucking sucks in efficiency compared to the party play.
It's the same as choosing a melee skill with small AoE over Spectral Throw, you (I) do it because of the preference, just like I've been soloing in Ambush, I prefer my FPS and actually looking what I'm doing, etc.

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tinko92 a écrit :

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Xavderion a écrit :

My point is that you're better of soloing 90% of the time. You actually need a GOOD group to have an advantage toward a good solo player. Good groups are rare if you're pugging.

Quality over quantity. Those 10% outclass 90%. Which is why people party up, it speaks for itself.

Of course than you'd need a good group if your build does good soloing. You'd need high MF and high survivability and decent clear speed to be a good solo player and to have an edge over most of parties (and even with that, the cost of maps will most likely prevail).
In groups, you don't have to have all three.

Safety in numbers is a huge thing as well as the cost of maps, which is why I've tolerated the shitty FPS in parties and dealt with all sorts of dickbags.

Piety/Dominus party farming compared to solo farming?

Really, the situation speaks for itself, no need for some lame solo play glorification.
Solo fucking sucks in efficiency compared to the party play.
It's the same as choosing a melee skill with small AoE over Spectral Throw, you (I) do it because of the preference, just like I've been soloing in Ambush, I prefer my FPS and actually looking what I'm doing, etc.

It is how it's supposed to be, good groups outshine solo play, but solo play far outshines bad or mediocre groups (which are the majority). Solo is defnitely viable, especially after the map drop rate buffs. So saying "solo fucking sucks" is a huge exaggeration imo. People party up because their build sucks (hence the 90% bad groups) and they need that extra safety. If you have a good solo build you're far better off just soloing.

Balancing in general is one thing GGG is still very noob at. But with all the variables that have to be carefully balanced against one another it has to be very difficult.

If parties were truly make the game easier, why do I not see any 6 player parties to kill Atziri and Uber Atziri? Everybody i know who can do it tell me it's easier solo than in a party. Parties are only better than solo when the components of the party are better than solo. I bet if you isolate all the components of the party you think has it easier, you'd find that the strong characters could just as easily solo and the weak players are just getting carried by the strong players.

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Xavderion a écrit :

It is how it's supposed to be, good groups outshine solo play, but solo play far outshines bad or mediocre groups (which are the majority). Solo is defnitely viable, especially after the map drop rate buffs. So saying "solo fucking sucks" is a huge exaggeration imo. People party up because their build sucks (hence the 90% bad groups) and they need that extra safety. If you have a good solo build you're far better off just soloing.

How do you know how it's supposed to be?

Again, no, solo play outshines bad groups. And if we talk about top level maps, there's nothing that solo has over party, any kind of party.

Solo is viable only to a certain point, and then you'd have to party up if you want to level up efficiently or level up in this life.
Again you speak of map drop buffs, I say there is no such thing in my gameplay, the ridiculous amount of RNG made our experiences far more different. Well, maybe not precisely mine and yours, since your top character is 85th level, but you get the point.

No it's not an exaggeration, solo play can only better than party until maps start to be expensive, then, no solo is better than party.
And, if you want to be better soloing than partying before the map cost... well, I've touched that in my last post, no need for repeating myself.

That's not true at all, people party up mainly for extra safety and the map cost, not the needed safety. The amount of shitty builds that absolutely require partying to stay alive is nowhere near your 90%, get real and stop glorifying solo play that badly.

Really? Good solo build is far better off just soloing? You've really lost the touch with the reality, please do inform yourself and remember that the map cost is the main reason.

I've had a great solo build, I was doing crappy in parties (exp-wise) let alone soloing.

Just stop...

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mark1030 a écrit :

If parties were truly make the game easier, why do I not see any 6 player parties to kill Atziri and Uber Atziri? Everybody i know who can do it tell me it's easier solo than in a party. Parties are only better than solo when the components of the party are better than solo. I bet if you isolate all the components of the party you think has it easier, you'd find that the strong characters could just as easily solo and the weak players are just getting carried by the strong players.

Because of the life increase, which Atziri has plenty of even solo.
Because of the loot.

Everybody told you that it's easier solo? Probably because it's a lot shorter fight.

The Atziri is not for the experience, it's for the loot.

And also, check my last two posts here, it's relevant to your post.

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tinko92 a écrit :

How do you know how it's supposed to be?

Because if good groups would have the same efficiency as a good solo player, there would be no incentive to group.

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tinko92 a écrit :

Again, no, solo play outshines bad groups. And if we talk about top level maps, there's nothing that solo has over party, any kind of party.

Maybe, but top level maps concern maybe 0.1% of the playerbase. Saying solo play sucks because it struggles at super-endgame while it's perfectly viable (and often better) for 99.9% of the time is an exaggeration.

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tinko92 a écrit :

Solo is viable only to a certain point, and then you'd have to party up if you want to level up efficiently or level up in this life.

The certain point being level 90+ which is the whole game for 99.9% of the player base.

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tinko92 a écrit :

Again you speak of map drop buffs, I say there is no such thing in my gameplay, the ridiculous amount of RNG made our experiences far more different. Well, maybe not precisely mine and yours, since your top character is 85th level, but you get the point.

Your personal RNG doesn't matter, just look at the market prices of maps (which represent the average RNG of all players) and you'll realize map drops were hugely buffed. I lol'd at your attempt to belittle my experience, while your highest Ambush character (Ambush being the league with the huge map buffs) is 79 :P

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tinko92 a écrit :

No it's not an exaggeration, solo play can only better than party until maps start to be expensive, then, no solo is better than party.
And, if you want to be better soloing than partying before the map cost... well, I've touched that in my last post, no need for repeating myself.

So this means solo is better most of the time, maps don't get expensive until you have top end maps (even then you could probably get away with alch and run or maybe using a handful of chaos), and to have better soloing than partying you need a good solo build. Who would've thought x)

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tinko92 a écrit :

That's not true at all, people party up mainly for extra safety and the map cost, not the needed safety. The amount of shitty builds that absolutely require partying to stay alive is nowhere near your 90%, get real and stop glorifying solo play that badly.

As mentioned before, due to the map drop buffs map cost is non existant most of the time.

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tinko92 a écrit :

Really? Good solo build is far better off just soloing? You've really lost the touch with the reality, please do inform yourself and remember that the map cost is the main reason.

Again, map cost mostly doesn't matter anymore.

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tinko92 a écrit :

Just stop...

No u. Your experience with end game is outdated, solo play got a huge buff in many ways and is now overall equally viable to party play.

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Xavderion a écrit :

Because if good groups would have the same efficiency as a good solo player, there would be no incentive to group.

Is this wrong? Is "grouping for the sake of grouping" not its own incentive?

I don't see why GGG feels it necessary to give incentives to group play. If people want to group, then group. If they don't, they shouldn't feel like they're missing out on incentives. The goal should be for grouping to hit parity with solo, not always be a step ahead of it.

Currently groups can split the cost of maps 6-ways which is a huge advantage. The best fix I've heard for this is a "reset portals" button in the lab which rerolls the map on every remaining portal. A solo player can run the same map 6x for the cost of one map. A team of 2 can run the same map 3x for one map. A team of 3 can run the same map for 2x for one map. A team of 6 can run the map once. Obviously this idea can be improved quite a bit (such as not hurting 4-5 man parties, assumes that the maps are free and only the currency is being spent, and not accounting for portals being used for carrying items as well), but it's a good first stab.

Separately, in combat, multiple people can juggle the enemy AI, making it much, much safer. Futher, people can specialize in roles that normally would be suicidal solo (pure support, pure ranged glass cannon, pure tank). I'm not sure these should be attempted to be fixed. This is already why enemies have more life than normal (but not more damage, curiously enough). Further changes along that same vein would be nice.

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pneuma a écrit :

Is "grouping for the sake of grouping" not its own incentive?

Judging from my MMO experience, it definitely isn't. Most modern MMOs don't incent group play outside of dungeons, thus almost nobody bothers to group up while questing. Grouping can be a hassle (finding the right people, setting the correct pace, waiting for people who go afk/need a pause etc) so imo it should be rewarded. The two major advantages groups had, safety and map cost splitting, are kind of gone. Safety is still there but isn't much needed (PoE got easier over the past months, and if you really need AI distraction you can have it with totems/skeletons), and map costs plummeted with all the buffs that happened to the drop rate.

I think solo play is in a very good place right now as long as you have a good solo build. If you want other builds to shine solo (like a dedicated culler or an aura build), I don't think that'd be possible without severly trivializing the game.