We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

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Kythana
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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Kythana » Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:36 pm

Babylon System is the Vampire wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 6:27 pm
Kythana wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 4:37 pm

And it would help combat some of the ridiculous speculator market pricing on runes.

I saw this and wanted to highlight it because I think while a common train of thought this is wrong. More doesn't mean better pricing, because demand is what drives prices.

What? How is increasing the supply of runes not going to affect the prices? You understand that 'demand' is one part of supply and demand, yes?

And making runes easier to get for groups, on a more frequent basis increases the supply.

Rune prices used to be even more absurd, and, as we saw with buffed sailing content through pirate chests, more runes entered the market, and thus, over time, lowered the price.

One of the ways that the admins could control the prices of runes- and I'm actually not convinced that's something they want to do- Is set the value by selling it through a npc for x price. That would require everyone to sell beneath that threshold and will help the next six months or so of transition.

Absolutely terrible idea. Price checking like this should be an IC thing.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by AstralUniverse » Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:40 pm

You cant really balance pve for all these classes simultaneously.

We've reached a point that even if you design a dungeon for a proper optimal party so it's difficult enough that in theory it cannot be soloed, you'd end up getting a lot of feedback that even for a party it is too hard (because you've designed it against an optimal party but most parties arent optimal at all and there are new players to consider etc etc), then you need to nerf the dungeon a bit, but then some builds can suddenly solo it and you then need to also nerf the loot.

The soloing capability difference between classes is freaking HUGE right now.
The skill difference between a new player and the average player is also quite larger than people realize.

There will never be a good enough incentive to group (when you're a average skill player, playing a normal min-maxed build) in the current state of things.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by The GrumpyCat » Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:55 pm

A thought: I kinda feel there are two strands being disussed here.

1) Leveling
2) Getting Gold.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm absolutly not against the idea of encouraging grouping for levleing - but I don't feel that that's the... issue as much? (Please correct me if I'm wrong!) And I think punishing this side of dungoneering is probably more... problematic and also less useful?

The other side is epic level pcs going out to grab runic chest/high level gear/gold/addy/whatever. This I think is the more fruitful part to explore? And narrows the criteria down. We're looking at epic level dungeons, we're looking at awards that arn't xp besed, and we're considering options that won't neccesarly effect writs/leveling for lower level pcs.

Again also - I know my main suggestion has perhaps been more on the 'punishing' end of things some would argue, but truthfully I - like most of you - would prefer the reward spectrum. I'm just not sure what without adding gold/power creep.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Security_Blanket » Fri Mar 29, 2024 8:01 pm

Kythana wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:36 pm

What? How is increasing the supply of runes not going to affect the prices? You understand that 'demand' is one part of supply and demand, yes?

That's not what I'm seeing when I look at player-run stores with a lot of runic materials and other high-end materials. Another part of "supply and demand" is when people hoard for the sole purpose of keeping the prices high. In the real world we see that with gold, with diamonds, among other things, and in Arelith we see it with high-end materials.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Ironsides » Fri Mar 29, 2024 8:39 pm

The GrumpyCat wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:55 pm

A thought: I kinda feel there are two strands being disussed here.

1) Leveling
2) Getting Gold.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm absolutly not against the idea of encouraging grouping for levleing - but I don't feel that that's the... issue as much? (Please correct me if I'm wrong!) And I think punishing this side of dungoneering is probably more... problematic and also less useful?

The other side is epic level pcs going out to grab runic chest/high level gear/gold/addy/whatever. This I think is the more fruitful part to explore? And narrows the criteria down. We're looking at epic level dungeons, we're looking at awards that arn't xp besed, and we're considering options that won't neccesarly effect writs/leveling for lower level pcs.

Again also - I know my main suggestion has perhaps been more on the 'punishing' end of things some would argue, but truthfully I - like most of you - would prefer the reward spectrum. I'm just not sure what without adding gold/power creep.

Perhaps a small "bonus" to the loot roll for quality of the runic item / amount of adamantine ore mineable based on party size? (Probably capped at 4-5).

Assuming that the way it works now is something like

Open Chest: Roll 1d100

1-90: Blueleaf Extract
91-99: Some random other runic item
100: Perfect Theurglass or something else truly valuable

Then maybe if you have another person in your party, that chart is instead the Perfect Theurglass on a 99-100. And if you have four people, it's 98-100.

Maybe if you're alone there's a small malus to that roll, making the best quality stuff a bit harder (but not impossible) to get. But ultimately the new "party" bonus would make for a slightly better chance of getting good items than now, so that it is a net boost rather than a "stick" when it goes in.

Could also add a little script that checks the number of people in the area when they enter the level of the dungeon with the runic chest, to prevent someone trying to cheese it by running the dungeon and then -yoinking over a party for the chest opening.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Eyeliner » Fri Mar 29, 2024 8:51 pm

AstralUniverse wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:40 pm

The soloing capability difference between classes is freaking HUGE right now.
The skill difference between a new player and the average player is also quite larger than people realize.

There will never be a good enough incentive to group (when you're a average skill player, playing a normal min-maxed build) in the current state of things.

Yeah the "difficulty" in this game primarily consists of figuring out what to do in a dungeon and vs enemies. Once you figure out how to beat something there's almost no randomness so you can beat it again over and over. Experienced players will always figure out how to win a PVE fight (if it's winnable at all) and be able to keep doing that unless the static nature of dungeons changes and I can't imagine how that would ever happen.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Paint » Fri Mar 29, 2024 8:52 pm

Eyeliner wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:21 pm
Paint wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 6:57 pm

I just want to dip in here real quick and mention that I don't think that making the solo experience more painful is necessarily a good way to incentivize group play, but it sure is the easiest.

I could tolerate some added pain but making it unviable isn’t going to do much to force grouping up when there’s no one around to group up with. Even if 100 players are on at peak-ish time it’s pretty easy to narrow that pool down to a handful who’d even be suitable, and if you’re on at non peak hours (like me, often) even Cordor or Anundor can be a ghost town.

This really is the trouble. Sometimes I just want to do some mindless grinding and maybe run into some PCs out in the weald. It's really difficult to do that if you're already with a group, you know? I dislike the idea of making solo dungeoneering so painful that people avoid it, because then you lose those chances and that aspect of arelith gameplay.

If that aspect of Arelith gameplay doesn't have any value to the powers that be though, what can you do, right?

Personally, my take is that if you increase the drop chances significantly for better runes based on the number of members in your party up to a given threshold, people'll want to party in epic dungeons more, even if they don't get more runes for their trouble, because they're likely to get -better- runes instead.

Do the same thing for other desirable lootmatrix items, and you've got a pretty nice formula for encouraging group play without punishing solo players.

Edit:
As a side-effect, this'd cut into the the market for hoarding runes, driving the value down eventually.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Anomandaris » Fri Mar 29, 2024 9:20 pm

AstralUniverse wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:40 pm

You cant really balance pve for all these classes simultaneously.

We've reached a point that even if you design a dungeon for a proper optimal party so it's difficult enough that in theory it cannot be soloed, you'd end up getting a lot of feedback that even for a party it is too hard (because you've designed it against an optimal party but most parties arent optimal at all and there are new players to consider etc etc), then you need to nerf the dungeon a bit, but then some builds can suddenly solo it and you then need to also nerf the loot.

The soloing capability difference between classes is freaking HUGE right now.
The skill difference between a new player and the average player is also quite larger than people realize.

There will never be a good enough incentive to group (when you're a average skill player, playing a normal min-maxed build) in the current state of things.

This is a good post but I’d say there’s no reason every PC or even group needs to/ should be able to do a tuned up dungeon. In fact if they want they can just never do a single runic period and make coin crafting. Add some incentive for hard core players to do it in terms of loot quality, and let folks figure it out for themselves.

I guess I’m saying is we don’t need to balance the dungeons for an unbalanced player character build and player skill set. We don’t need equality nor can we achieve it.

Just increase loot quality for really gnarly dungeons and players who want that challenge can pursue it. And players who don’t can still get good loot, albeit at slightly lower drop rates from easier runics like today.

The issue IMO is we have a flat reward scheme and a variable challenge rating. So there’s no incentive other than joy of challenge/limit testing to go to bastille for example. That said maybe he numbers already skew different for tougher dungeons, I’m not in the dev team so have no idea.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Fri Mar 29, 2024 9:50 pm

Kythana wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:36 pm
Babylon System is the Vampire wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 6:27 pm
Kythana wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 4:37 pm

And it would help combat some of the ridiculous speculator market pricing on runes.

I saw this and wanted to highlight it because I think while a common train of thought this is wrong. More doesn't mean better pricing, because demand is what drives prices.

What? How is increasing the supply of runes not going to affect the prices? You understand that 'demand' is one part of supply and demand, yes?

And making runes easier to get for groups, on a more frequent basis increases the supply.

Rune prices used to be even more absurd, and, as we saw with buffed sailing content through pirate chests, more runes entered the market, and thus, over time, lowered the price.

One of the ways that the admins could control the prices of runes- and I'm actually not convinced that's something they want to do- Is set the value by selling it through a npc for x price. That would require everyone to sell beneath that threshold and will help the next six months or so of transition.

Absolutely terrible idea. Price checking like this should be an IC thing.

Let's do some basic math with some arbitrary timeframes. Let's say I could lower the price of a rune to 100 thousand coins because I have 15 of them, and at that price they would go once a month. But if I raise the price to 500 thousand, and now they only sell once every three months, in 15 months I'm going to have the same amount of gold. But even better? I still have 12 runes left, so I never have to go runic hunting again because for however long my character lives I will be getting 500 thousand every three months. And even better still? My buddy who just started a new character a few weeks back and just found his first rune of the same kind will get 500k for his, because that's what the market sets it at.

This is why economics is a four-year degree, and not just a stamp that says "supply and demand" on your diploma after watching Captain Kangaroo for 4 years. Prices fluctuate based on both supply and demand with "elastic products", which are products that are easily replaceable or not necessary at all. Gas is an elastic product because the guy across the street is selling it too. That Ashton Kutcher bobblehead on your desk is also elastic, because it's completely unnecessary.

Rune's, in particular the good ones, are not an elastic product. They could be if everyone had the skill, time, and patience for tedium to grind the rng, but I suspect that level of commitment to all three of those things is a lot rarer than one might think. But since the people who don't have that level of commitment all still want runes, those that do have a non-elastic product whose price is only defined by what people are willing to pay for it. And since the price was initially defined in a time where even new pcs were a lot richer, it's going to take a long time for it to shift from that.

As for my absolutely terrible idea, I don't see much of a difference between the admins setting the price via a npc or trying to set the price by flooding the market, save for one thing. My idea would work, the flooding bit wouldn't. That being said I don't personally think that's the way to go either, I was just going under the assumption that you were that the admins wanted the runes to be cheaper (again, not sure thats accurate) and was giving the cleanest solution to the hypothetical dilemma.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by TroubledWaters » Fri Mar 29, 2024 9:52 pm

Probably the simplest thing to do to incentivize group travel, as well as the most fun, would be for DMs to place more priority on adding extra spice and flavor to group travels they observe actually RPing and not speedrunning.

Not every DM event has to be a massive plot, and I suspect players enjoy the little things more. It takes just a few minutes of having that Blood Moon Orc talk back when he charges, or adding an upscaled orc to a fight, to make a party experience memorable and incentivize players to model more constructive RP behaviors.

I also feel like this approach to DMing would be a lot less work and coordination for the DM team to handle and would probably be more fun and engaging for them.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:32 pm

The GrumpyCat wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:55 pm

A thought: I kinda feel there are two strands being disussed here.

1) Leveling
2) Getting Gold.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm absolutly not against the idea of encouraging grouping for levleing - but I don't feel that that's the... issue as much? (Please correct me if I'm wrong!) And I think punishing this side of dungoneering is probably more... problematic and also less useful?

The other side is epic level pcs going out to grab runic chest/high level gear/gold/addy/whatever. This I think is the more fruitful part to explore? And narrows the criteria down. We're looking at epic level dungeons, we're looking at awards that arn't xp besed, and we're considering options that won't neccesarly effect writs/leveling for lower level pcs.

Again also - I know my main suggestion has perhaps been more on the 'punishing' end of things some would argue, but truthfully I - like most of you - would prefer the reward spectrum. I'm just not sure what without adding gold/power creep.

If I'm getting what you are saying here, and I think I am, the biggest issue from the admin perspective is solo grinding runes. So based on that assumption, I'm going to give a rough outline of a three-step process that I think could help things out. 2 are easy, 1 will take some work but its the kind of work that I know at least Two Hands enjoys or enjoyed.

Step one, have runes spawn in regular dungeons. Not often, rarer than even mithril dust if possible, but enough where it randomly pops up from time to time.

Step two, remove all runic chests. Make every dungeon that didn't have a runic chest beforehand impossible to enter at level 30. Make those that did hard but not impossible for level 30s with decent rewards at the end that don't resemble runes. Some customizations for lower-level dungeons would be good too, IE blood moons no pcs over 15 can enter (ect) but this can be a slower process since it will take some time for people to start gaming the new system.

Step three, add dungeons similar to the last bastion for level 30s with rewards at the end that resemble the initial treasure chests (I don't know for sure, but I'm certain they have been nerfed all the same since I last saw one). You could really just start with two, one surface one underdark, and build from there. You could even layer it, where one level will get you a treasure chest, doing all three will get you three...but take you a few hours and massive amounts of consumables.

I was going to finish with a ramble about how and why these three steps would be good for everyone involved, but the more I think about it you either see it or you don't, and I probably couldn't phrase it in a way to change one's mind one way or the other. So, I will just leave it as is after explaining how I am going to leave it as is.

Also, Grumpy, any you's in here are not directed toward you, I know this isn't your department. You just gave the best hope of actually understanding what the mission statement is behind all these changes, so I quoted you for that. Thanks, as always, for being the one who engages with these threads.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Amateur Hour » Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:48 pm

Babylon System is the Vampire wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:32 pm

Step one, have runes spawn in regular dungeons. Not often, rarer than even mithril dust if possible, but enough where it randomly pops up from time to time.

Step two, remove all runic chests. Make every dungeon that didn't have a runic chest beforehand impossible to enter at level 30. Make those that did hard but not impossible for level 30s with decent rewards at the end that don't resemble runes. Some customizations for lower-level dungeons would be good too, IE blood moons no pcs over 15 can enter (ect) but this can be a slower process since it will take some time for people to start gaming the new system.

Step three, add dungeons similar to the last bastion for level 30s with rewards at the end that resemble the initial treasure chests (I don't know for sure, but I'm certain they have been nerfed all the same since I last saw one). You could really just start with two, one surface one underdark, and build from there. You could even layer it, where one level will get you a treasure chest, doing all three will get you three...but take you a few hours and massive amounts of consumables.

So to make sure I'm understanding you correctly...

With this system, once you hit level 30 the only dungeons you can enter, at all, for any reason, are the ones that require groups of 4+ characters to run?

If that were the case, I'd honestly be tempted to remain level 29 forever if it meant I could go into Glorag Maur for metal and ore and not be completely barred from those zones unless I make a new character.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Rubricae » Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:53 pm

The GrumpyCat wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 1:35 pm

So I suppose my suggestion to incentivise it would be to make it so that if you respawn all your jewlery and scrolls (with exception of maybe some naturally red listed ones, like ressurection scrolls) vanish from your jewlery box/scroll case. This means that soloing is a bit more risky.

i would politely ask that this not be the final solution.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by AlonelyBard » Sat Mar 30, 2024 12:01 am

Personally, I have time issues with Arelith. I enjoy the game and the RP it provides, but I work odd hours and have an inconsistent schedule. Part of the issue with grouping is my own distaste for "RP" that is simply someone just saying "writ?" and inviting you to a group. You both wordlessly go through the dungeon and part ways without a single word. None of this is helpful to creating a living world and just leads people to clustering in the major hubs without much exploration.

I think part of the issue with this mentality does stem from buffs, a lot of people need to remember that buffs aren't infinite. Personally, I'd like to see similar care given to the size of the areas that have been added lately. Most new dungeons have insane Tardis level expansive maps on the inside, some of which can easily take an hour to simply go through, let alone the possible time it might take to find a party, travel there, and return. Because of this it can easily put a strain on people. No one's here hoping to spend three hours in a dungeon fighting the same 3 troglodyte spawns throughout a dungeon bigger than most runic dungeons combined.
I think the best way to incentivizing player would be to bring back some of the old writ systems, allow players to take writs multiple times. This will see an influx of people in the common writ spots and will easily bring back some of the life that we used to see across the server. As it is right now, we all do a writ once and never return unless it's the best place to circle grind. If there are concerns about writ xp exploding because of this, adjust some of the writs so that the ones that take the least amount of time get lowered XP, and those with the longest clear times should get buffed at least somewhat.

I believe most people really do want to do fun RP during writs, I know I find it a million times more enjoyable than lazing around the hub/cordor square and acting like the rest of the world doesn't exist. I just think that most of the issues just stem from our current writ system, and I do think that they deserve to be looked at again. Incentivizing group play will take more than just boosting gold or runic drop rates for parties, and more than just increasing the percentage of bonus XP for parties.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Sat Mar 30, 2024 1:03 am

Amateur Hour wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:48 pm
Babylon System is the Vampire wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:32 pm

Step one, have runes spawn in regular dungeons. Not often, rarer than even mithril dust if possible, but enough where it randomly pops up from time to time.

Step two, remove all runic chests. Make every dungeon that didn't have a runic chest beforehand impossible to enter at level 30. Make those that did hard but not impossible for level 30s with decent rewards at the end that don't resemble runes. Some customizations for lower-level dungeons would be good too, IE blood moons no pcs over 15 can enter (ect) but this can be a slower process since it will take some time for people to start gaming the new system.

Step three, add dungeons similar to the last bastion for level 30s with rewards at the end that resemble the initial treasure chests (I don't know for sure, but I'm certain they have been nerfed all the same since I last saw one). You could really just start with two, one surface one underdark, and build from there. You could even layer it, where one level will get you a treasure chest, doing all three will get you three...but take you a few hours and massive amounts of consumables.

So to make sure I'm understanding you correctly...

With this system, once you hit level 30 the only dungeons you can enter, at all, for any reason, are the ones that require groups of 4+ characters to run?

If that were the case, I'd honestly be tempted to remain level 29 forever if it meant I could go into Glorag Maur for metal and ore and not be completely barred from those zones unless I make a new character.

No. I mentioned what are now runic dungeons as exceptions, and that could easily be expanded. It was just a rough draft of an idea really, and I do think it's important that a bored level 30 has something to do while they wait for their buddies to log in or whatever. The only reason I had that clause at all was because step one had runics appearing very rarely in other dungeons, and you really don't want level 30s spamming say the blood moons because they know there is a very small chance they could get a medium rune or something. That's not a solution at all, that's actually making the problem worse lol.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by RedGiant » Sat Mar 30, 2024 1:11 am

Current dungeon rewards are fine.

There used to be a system that scaled gold and rewards based on party size, but it seemed to have a set limit. A limit that players immediately discerned and thus groups of four and four only would go out.

So, it was rolled back and you got what we have now. Which is, solo a dungeon, it will be harder/slower/no raises, you get all the loot. Group a dungeon, it will be easier/faster/raises, you must split the loot.

In other words, current dungeon rewards are fine.

If anything, bring back regular drops on the random yellow Captain spawns, instead of the seeming every-other drop we get now.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Security_Blanket » Sat Mar 30, 2024 1:27 am

Scaling the dungeons based on party size may be the way to go, you end up with more xp, more loot, and more difficulty. A party of 6 30s going into the Deep Wells will be in for a rough time, in a way it makes sense as a larger party attracts more attention where a single person can slip by unnoticed by the majority.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by RedGiant » Sat Mar 30, 2024 1:40 am

Security_Blanket wrote:
Sat Mar 30, 2024 1:27 am

Scaling the dungeons based on party size may be the way to go, you end up with more xp, more loot, and more difficulty. A party of 6 30s going into the Deep Wells will be in for a rough time, in a way it makes sense as a larger party attracts more attention where a single person can slip by unnoticed by the majority.

Hrm. Hadn't considered this. The old system seemed flawed because of the cap.

So, you are saying we should use some variant of the old system, but without the cap?

I'd be interested to hear why there was a cap originally. Are there cons to massive raiding parties? Did it have to do with performance? Dungeon ease? Etc.?

Would otherwise seem like an easy win, this.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Irongron » Sat Mar 30, 2024 2:48 am

This is something I already have plans for, but as someone that solos much of th time, and often prefer to (mostly due to odd/limited play time) I definitely do not want to force people into it.

In the meantime Skal remains an excellent choice for those wishing to party for such trips, as do locations with a closely knit playerbase like Brogendenstein.

Also sailing of course, which very directly rewards (indeed often requires) party play.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by silverpheonix » Sat Mar 30, 2024 4:05 am

Irongron wrote:
Sat Mar 30, 2024 2:48 am

This is something I already have plans for, but as someone that solos much of th time, and often prefer to (mostly due to odd/limited play time) I definitely do not want to force people into it.

In the meantime Skal remains an excellent choice for those wishing to party for such trips, as do locations with a closely knit playerbase like Brogendenstein.

Also sailing of course, which very directly rewards (indeed often requires) party play.

I understand wanting to solo or circumstance leaning towards soloing for various reasons. I think from reading this thread that the general consensus is that soloing shouldn't be punished. After all - many of the ways to do that hurts non-optimal builds.

Hell, parts of the Deep Wells can still be rough for a party of six. The Long March or whatever it's called came to mind. I think we had two deaths in that stretch when the Arcanum ran it a while back.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by AstralUniverse » Sat Mar 30, 2024 6:26 am

Security_Blanket wrote:
Sat Mar 30, 2024 1:27 am

Scaling the dungeons based on party size may be the way to go, you end up with more xp, more loot, and more difficulty. A party of 6 30s going into the Deep Wells will be in for a rough time, in a way it makes sense as a larger party attracts more attention where a single person can slip by unnoticed by the majority.

It's already kind of the case right now. You do spawn more mobs when you're either in party or if your level is simply very high for the dungeon. Not sure what the math here is exactly but I notice it all the time. Maybe you're suggesting to make it a bit more extreme, which is actually a considerable idea imo.

The GrumpyCat wrote:
Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:55 pm

A thought: I kinda feel there are two strands being disussed here.

1) Leveling
2) Getting Gold.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm absolutly not against the idea of encouraging grouping for levleing - but I don't feel that that's the... issue as much? (Please correct me if I'm wrong!) And I think punishing this side of dungoneering is probably more... problematic and also less useful?

The other side is epic level pcs going out to grab runic chest/high level gear/gold/addy/whatever. This I think is the more fruitful part to explore? And narrows the criteria down. We're looking at epic level dungeons, we're looking at awards that arn't xp besed, and we're considering options that won't neccesarly effect writs/leveling for lower level pcs.

Again also - I know my main suggestion has perhaps been more on the 'punishing' end of things some would argue, but truthfully I - like most of you - would prefer the reward spectrum. I'm just not sure what without adding gold/power creep.

Lets get a few things out of the way shall we...

We're absolutely not talking about grinding EXP/writs, I'm pretty sure. It's already worth grouping for leveling because it does indeed makes things much faster. The majority of your exp is from adventure exp ticks and writs, not the direct exp from killing monsters (unless you really dungeon many many hours a day on top of doing writs), so the faster you finish your writs and explore more screens/portals/etc the better. There's even bonus exp for grouping up to 4 PCs, and then it starts dropping. It's still worth grouping as 6 instead of soloing exp-wise, assuming everyone is same level. And most importantly, getting to 30 is fast and not particularly relevant. You dont need runes to get to lvl 30, so lets just get the leveling out of the way here.

We're definitely talking about the economic income from deungeoning, and the lack of proportion between difficulty and rewards, which means people just rather solo. A problem as ancient as time honestly.

The last time I recall in Arelith that it was worth grouping was back in 2009 when all classes were much weaker, and had very obvious exploitable flaws you couldnt cover up with skill dips or ridiculously good gear like we have today. You simply HAD to group. Summons were bad, fighters had no chance alone vs mage mobs with CC, clerics would need to rest every 5 spawns to get their divine power casts back... everyone were just weak and mobs were critting hard. That's how I recall it anyway...


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MissEvelyn
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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by MissEvelyn » Sat Mar 30, 2024 6:58 am

Given how degraded wilderness and dungeon roleplay has sadly become, I agree with not punishing or penalizing solo-play. However, I am in agreement witrh those who want to see group play incentived with better rewards.

One place to start could be individualized loot, so that everyone gets something when a corpse is looted. Sure it's gamey, but it's far more rewarding than getting a sad split of a cut at the end, while the looter ended up with all the potions and consumables.

I also very much like the epic token writ system described above 👏🏻

And yes +1 to scaling enemies/encounters! One of the saddest parts of grouping up with 6 or more people is that otherwise dangerous locations become trivialized by the horde of over-buffed adventurers. It just feels wrong and anticlimactic to go through.

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chris a gogo
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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by chris a gogo » Sat Mar 30, 2024 9:24 am

by MissEvelyn » 30 Mar 2024 06:58

Given how degraded wilderness and dungeon roleplay has sadly become

6-8 months ago i was playing a PM/Necromancer on the surface which required lots of hiding the fact, but I had lots of groups for dungeons which were done at walking pace with a lot of role play, so I disagree with this statement.

My current character is soloing a lot not because people are rushing around not role playing and not because I get more gold and gear for going solo but because it's quite difficult to find characters of similar level to them, mostly because of the speed which you level up these days, I have been playing the character for 2 and a bit weeks and it's level 27 and I'm a casual player.
It's not so much the rewards that stops groups forming, it's finding characters of around the same level, most "groups" form up while doing sewer rats and the like then they meet up again day after day doing new writs together.
I did it with my last gnome, had the same core group every day, if you don't meet up with anyone then you end up solo and due the the speed of leveling often your stuck that way until epic dungeons where everyone catches up because 30 is where it stops.


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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Security_Blanket » Sat Mar 30, 2024 12:32 pm

That's another issue, even if you want to find a party to do a writ or explore a dungeon, how do you find other players that are interested and in level range? Sometimes you see people standing around with a handwritten note at their feet indicating they're willing to do writs in one place or another. With something like that in mind, could we setup an official IC mechanic for other likeminded adventurers to team up? Like a separate special noticeboard that clears all messages on it based on a timer the player can set, messages are automatically deleted after 12 hours.

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Re: We need better rewards for grouping for dungeons

Post by Wethrinea » Sat Mar 30, 2024 10:56 pm

One way to have an IC "LFG" function could be to utilize the exisiting speedy messenger service by adding the option to announce /view that you are looking for people/those who are looking for people.

A kind of classified ads for murder hobos.

Ivar Ferdamann - Mercenary turned Marshall

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