Grouping

[Hazamishi]

I've been running around with Yoshio fighting things on Kuize and I've come to realize that there is pretty much no point in grouping, the same goes with Bikku, Isamu and Gennosuke. I gain about 1/3 of what I would normally gain on Kuize by my lonesome at best, which ends up with me having to kill something like 500 NPCs to get a level, which is really annoying and irritating.

I would like to see a boost to grouping, so that it's more useful. Not a bloodtype thing or flist thing, just a general boost, that can be paired with those. I understand that leveling is "easier" and "faster" (if you're speaking in terms of killing things faster and easier only) when you're in a group because you don't have to fight the super hard things all by yourself, but when it comes down to experience gained, it's absolutely awful.

I understand with multiplay being within the rules now, people could abuse the bonus, but I think something like the recent change to make arena matches non-ranked for the same IP could be put in on grouping, where you get the non-boosted gains if you're on the same IP. A character flag could be added for people like Isamu and Ichiro who are housemates, not the same person, which would allow them to have the ranked matches and exp bonuses, as well. I'm not a coder, so that may be a lot of work, but I think it would be nice to gain roughly the same as normal when you're fighting in a group.

[Gatz]

Hrm, well the hope with grouping was to not have people group to fight the exact same NPCs they can solo, but to fight people who are more challenging.

[Hazamishi]

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but at certain level spreads you don't really have things that are more difficult, so if you don't want to do the grind by yourself, you have to fight things that are easily solo-able with your partner.

Then at the other spectrum, you have mobs that are so stupidly difficult to fight even when you're grouped that two people can barely kill two, and you have to kill twice as many to get a level still, having a third person who wrecks shit in the group makes it pointless to even group up because the small amount of exp you get is spread so thin.

Another thing that I've been thinking about - hard is fine, but when it's hard to the point of people not wanting to level anymore because of the difficulty of leveling, something needs to change. After level 150, it seems like the mud is just out to get you and keep you at a low level (conspiracy theory ho!). Isamu and Ichiro say "oh, it was easier before partial hit/dodge got fixed" and all, but that doesn't mean jack to me. I wasn't there. I'm there now, and it takes all of my stamina (2700 stamina) to get the mob down to about 25% hp most of the time, after that I just have to run away because during the 3 (4 or 5 if I'm really lucky) hits I try to make, the mob takes 1000-1250 out of 1500 of my hp away with it's auto attacks. Throw is out of the question, too, which is pretty useful when the mob will occasionally not deflect. To add insult to injury, when you die in an area that death is almost a certainty (unless you're a select few people), you have to go ALL the way back into the main village to get ryo to recover your 300+ ryo corpse because for some reason there's no bank up there.

I hate to rant like that, but cripes. I also may've gone off topic... >_>

[Gatz]

So, in this specific case, why don't you seek out a group to venture to these areas?

[Ichiro]

I'm pretty sure that:

Another thing that I've been thinking about - hard is fine, but when it's hard to the point of people not wanting to level anymore because of the difficulty of leveling, something needs to change. After level 150, it seems like the mud is just out to get you and keep you at a low level (conspiracy theory ho!). Isamu and Ichiro say "oh, it was easier before partial hit/dodge got fixed" and all, but that doesn't mean jack to me. I wasn't there. I'm there now, and it takes all of my stamina (2700 stamina) to get the mob down to about 25% hp most of the time, after that I just have to run away because during the 3 (4 or 5 if I'm really lucky) hits I try to make, the mob takes 1000-1250 out of 1500 of my hp away with it's auto attacks. Throw is out of the question, too, which is pretty useful when the mob will occasionally not deflect. To add insult to injury, when you die in an area that death is almost a certainty (unless you're a select few people), you have to go ALL the way back into the main village to get ryo to recover your 300+ ryo corpse because for some reason there's no bank up there.

is what he was talking about when he said:

Then at the other spectrum, you have mobs that are so stupidly difficult to fight even when you're grouped that two people can barely kill two, and you have to kill twice as many to get a level still, having a third person who wrecks shit in the group makes it pointless to even group up because the small amount of exp you get is spread so thin.

i.e. He can group with enough people to make the gains worthwhile, but they still die; or he can group with people who kills things fast enough for him to not die, but he gains no xp because that person does sooooo much damage/kills things way too fast.

[Gatz]

Hrm, so where is the balance needing to go then? Does grouping exp need bulked, or do NPCs need some adjustment or is this just an issue of lacking players to build more evened out teams where someone is support?

[Hanma, Gennosuke]

To stay on topic, for grouping I think a whole reworking of the system is in order. Experience should be -=shared=- between all players. Like in a 3 person group... person A uses a skill on a victim for 800 dmg, netting 600k exp, then split between person b and c, where everyone gets 200k (nice round numbers =D). I guess this might be alot of work, but I think it'd be worth it in the end.

[Gatz]

I went ahead and raised the bonus for group experience. I don't see doing the shared experience, mainly because I don't want to encourage people just sitting in a group and idling where a teammate does all the work. However, I also think we could adjust NPCs a bit in Yamayuki. I do think it'd be nice to have a mix of areas that require groups but with better item drops and areas which can be solo'd for really, really, really rare item drops.

I think that'd be the best way, but that of course, requires builders and time.