View Full Forums : WoW Group size


Korwyn
02-09-2004, 01:20 PM
I read on the Blizzard pages somewhere that the group size was going to be 5. I have a dedicated group of 6 and a 7th who joins in every once in a while...I sure hope they change that as 5 would actually probably make us look elsewhere since we all like to play together.

Has anyone heard if this is set in stone or might be changed...I mean DAOC had 8 and EQ has 6 I would hope they would at least have 6...but 8 would be best.

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies! :robot:

Korwyn

Ridamea
02-09-2004, 01:42 PM
From my understanding WoW is going to be more solo oriented then DAoC and EQ, so that may pick up the casual player, that is why most advancment will be done through the use of thier questing system and Instanced dungeons.

Only at the higher lvls of game play and harder quests will you be required to group with individuals to accomplish your task. If all classes are truely balanced 5 will be plenty to accomplish anything of appropriate lvl.

I see 5 people being a good number at this time but I do belive thier is a group linking system for raids and such where you can link groups together and share the xp and maintain a loot rotation.

having your 6th and 7th start a group and link with you might be your option.

With Beta many things change to enhance game play and I am sure this will be something tested and re-evaluted.

King Burgundy
02-09-2004, 07:58 PM
... but I do belive thier is a group linking system for raids and such where you can link groups together and share the xp and maintain a loot rotation.

having your 6th and 7th start a group and link with you might be your option.

With Beta many things change to enhance game play and I am sure this will be something tested and re-evaluted.

Yup.

Korwyn
02-10-2004, 09:10 AM
Linking is not an option if we are questing or trying to get experience (if the shared exp is anything like it is in EQ with the raid feature). For me the 5 man group is a deal buster....I guess it will be EQ II or DE for me unless that changes. I really hate it too as I have been waiting for WoW for years. :-(

Kerech
02-10-2004, 10:19 AM
If you get in beta, submit this as a change to the dev team. If enough people submit it, they'll reconsider it probably.

Oldoak
02-10-2004, 02:23 PM
I dunno. It is trickier than just setting a number.

How big your groups are determines what the challenge level of the encoutners should be, and affects the group experience bonuses etc.

A fair criticism of Horizons is that the groups of 10 it allows are not generally needed for any of the regular experience content (though it would be handy in events).

What I am getting at is that it isin't simply about setting a number - it is about how you tailor the entire content base of the game based on that number that matters.

Just take a simple example. Say you want the cumulative benefit for being in a full group to be a 50% experience bonus. With 5 members, that might look like:

Members Experience
1 100%
2 113%
3 125%
4 137%
5 150%

Then look at what happens with an 8 person group. You can either let a full group get an experience bonus of 87.5% (12.5% per member) or you can keep it near 150% for 8 people and the grouping bonus becomes negligible for smaller groups of 2 or 3.

I am not saying it can't be done, just that it has a lot of wide ranging ramifications on game play and content design. In a sense the bigger the group the game supports, the more game mechanics should rely on grouping.

Feldaran
02-10-2004, 03:35 PM
Of course, in EQ's view, that chart looks something like this:

Members Experience
1 100% (or was, till they nerfed solo xp)
2 85%
3 70%
4 60%
5 50%

DAOC had it much better. FFXI is the worst unless you are all exactly the same level.

Kerech
02-10-2004, 03:45 PM
Why give a group bonus at all? I know, the devs want to encourage grouping, but they can do that other ways without giving a bonus.

Why not just have everyone that groups split the xp evenly (based on levels or whatever). Their bonus will be from killing things more quickly and more efficiently than a smaller group or solo player.

Stormhaven
02-10-2004, 04:06 PM
Was that sarcastic? =|

If a solo player could kill one mob worth 5000 xp every three minutes, and a group of 6 could kill five within that same time, the solo player would still be averaging more xp per hour. That's the idea behind nerfing solo xp and group xp bonuses.

The best bet would be to not split the xp in a group at all, just give everyone the mob's worth.

Oldoak
02-10-2004, 04:20 PM
Quote:

The best bet would be to not split the xp in a group at all, just give everyone the mob's worth.



I actually thought about that, but people being what they are, that would actually encourage groups to camp easy content.

To use EQ as an example...

Rather than grouping in say Halls of Honor where mobs are harder to kill and fight back harder and so earn more experience per kill, the same group could hang out in Plane of Nightmare and earn about the same experience per hour by killing lower experience mobs much faster and with less risk.

By spreading the experience of the kill and giving a bonus, you are still encouraged to push harder to kill more challenging things so you will be at experience parity or above compared to solo kills.

While some will still pursue challenge in its own right, the game would begin to reward overcamping easy content.

Stormhaven
02-10-2004, 04:34 PM
Yeah, but in PON you couldn't get the higher level spell items, in HOH you (used to) be able too. Sometimes the harder creatures give the same or less than normal exp reward, but if done right, you can balance it with good item drops. I know back in EQ I had locations where I went to get "cash" and locations where I went to get xp. The locations with really good xp and really good loot wasn't all that common.

Oldoak
02-10-2004, 05:35 PM
True..and valid points. I tend to think only in POP terms these days and they more or less did away with any real loot or cash incentives for where you camped. Other than a few rare drops for making the rings, there was almost no reason to be anywhere other than the experience grind value.

Scooma
02-28-2004, 07:34 AM
Limit of 5 ppl to a group conerns me too...
I'm hoping that 2 groups will be able to link up if they want to without a huge xp penalty like in EQ (also with better game mechanics - ability to follow and see health of all 'raid' members for example).

Panamah
02-28-2004, 03:41 PM
Why give a group bonus at all? I know, the devs want to encourage grouping, but they can do that other ways without giving a bonus.

Why not just have everyone that groups split the xp evenly (based on levels or whatever). Their bonus will be from killing things more quickly and more efficiently than a smaller group or solo player.

That was how EQ was originally. But I think most groups don't really kill more than 6 times faster than soloists that are killing 4 mobs at a time. The advantages of soloing far outweighed grouping. You could go AFK when you wanted. You didn't have to deal with the downtime of people going AFK. You didn't have to deal with the downtime of trying to collect everyone in one spot and so on.

Now, I wouldn't mind a game being geared toward very small groups or soloing, but if a game makes certain classes dependent on groups and not others, then I think it needs to weight things in favor of the groups so that people will, in fact, want to play in groups.

Riggen
03-01-2004, 06:03 PM
people being what they are, that would actually encourage groups to camp easy content

Apply a zone (or area or whatever WoW will end up having) experience modifier for the tougher spots to make up the difference. I'm sure it'd be tricky to find just the right amount to encourage folks to look for the greater challenge without creating opportunities for abuse, but ain't that what patches are for?

Asador
05-17-2004, 11:25 PM
[B]i agree 5 is a stupid number DAOC made for a great game with its grp sizes, evens out roles so that everyone isnt overloaded in fights, blizzard has always been reasonable with that kind of stuff if enough people complain i hope they will change it

Crimson13
05-18-2004, 11:24 AM
i'm pretty sure when open beta comes that if it's limited to 5 players it'll have enough suggests to change it to a larger number. 8 seems to work quite well in CoH