Group vs. Solo

[jeffd]

there are some seriously sandy vaginas in this thread.

mages can't "solo reds without heals" or "afk kill guards." give the sensationalist bullshit a rest.

[yaeger]

That's not what this thread is about. It's about discussing whether or not group and solo experience are roughly equal risk vs reward. It's also trying to discover if this is classic.

If not, what can be done to make it equal.

To use a previous example of mages, it's trying to decide at what point a mage will say "I think it would be better for me if I joined this group vs try to solo".

If that situation doesn't exist, why not? If that situation does exist, why? At what point does a group become a necessity for each and every class. At what point does each class 'balance' group vs solo, utility vs dps (for the most part it's awesome so far).

I don't want this to become a flame war, but a discussion about solo classes perhaps being overbalanced and ways to balance them out without nerfing it into obscurity.

If a class can easily achieve experience great than that of a group, that needs to be changed. The goal is that an exceptional group (constant pulls, raid geared, no downtime) will gain exp faster (even counting class penalties) than a soloer. The mantra that teamwork can achieve more.

That whole classic thing.

It seems like the same people that condemned the progression of EQ for making the live servers too easy, for trivializing content and effort are for some reason supporting the exploitation of solo classes. It doesn't make sense.

[Azazel]

Its pretty clear that mages are overpowered. This however is not in itself an issue. What the devs are concerned about is if this is classic or not.

I would disagree with them to a certain extent however. I think a significant part of the problem is the hybrid exp penalty being shared amongst the group. While this is stricly speaking classic I dont think it results in a more classic experience. From my experience it certainly makes grouping much less attractive to those classes that can solo well.

[fugazi]

Originally Posted by Azazel [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Its pretty clear that mages are overpowered. This however is not in itself an issue. What the devs are concerned about is if this is classic or not.

I would disagree with them to a certain extent however. I think a significant part of the problem is the hybrid exp penalty being shared amongst the group. While this is stricly speaking classic I dont think it results in a more classic experience. From my experience it certainly makes grouping much less attractive to those classes that can solo well.

Classic my ass, just boost group xp and motivate people to stick together and unnerf hybrids somewhat [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[odizzido]

40% shared across six people is hardly anything. Personally I don't worry about xp penalties or anything like that when forming groups. Besides, paladins/SKs can actually increase kill speed compared to a warrior due to them being able to keep agro off the casters/rogues so the 40% matters even less.

As for finding groups, you could always play two characters. The one that you want to group with, and another that can solo if you can't find/make a group.

[Estu]

Originally Posted by odizzido [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As for finding groups, you could always play two characters. The one that you want to group with, and another that can solo if you can't find/make a group.

This. A thousand times this.

[Striiker]

Originally Posted by odizzido [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As for finding groups, you could always play two characters. The one that you want to group with, and another that can solo if you can't find/make a group.

Yes, this is what I do. I have a character/characters I'd like to group with for playing when I can devote a lot of time and I have some classes which I play because I don't have a lot of time available or I can't find a group after a lot of trying..

[Azazel]

40% shared across six people is hardly anything

FYI - you often get more than one hybrid in a group

[VictoryARC]

Sorry if this has been answered before, but does the hybrid xp penalty stack with other hybrids in the group? Or is the highest penalty the only one applied? Just curious

[eqdruid76]

<Additional grossly exagerated point>