What do people do as groups now?

Control Points used to be the group thing until they got changed. I don't know anyone who's done a control point since February. The only group things I know being done recently are sieges and trips to the Obsidian Forge in Hilt (7 mob killers and one craftsman).

A lot of people near my level that I know do lots of crafting (myself included). But, as a failure at Master Crafting or Enchanting eat so much resources, most of what we end up doing is working for more resources. Not a lot of group hunting when looking for trees to cut down.

So, what are people doing as a group that I'm not seeing? how are you handling looting since the new Artifacts have come out? Do you think CPs are still worth the effort?

 

The dragons, Matt Daemon and all the bosses are fairly popular now since artifacts came out. People actually do traditional dungeon runs more often now, which is a relief (I really disliked control points).

Our guild just takes turn looting alphabetically when fighting any boss mobs, and we almost always kill the bosses enough to do a full rotation of party members so everyone has a chance.

 

Matt Daemon? LOL.

 

The lack of a looting mechanic is a disservice to grouping in a traditional PUG sense. It also is a disservice to multiplayer.

I tried PUG'ing with none other than @Lord British at the start of R40 - seems he was checking out the Cabalists. While that was a great experience, the ninja looting by others was not. It would have been nice to have a mechanic that let those that participated in bringing down a Cabalist at least ROLL for a chance at whatever dropped. Instead I have to rely on the same old line: "There was nothing to loot." True? False? How am I to know if the system won't even generate a message telling you what was looted (other than gold)?

This affects multiplayer, as what you seem to get is people who know each other grouping in friends only mode in order to "farm". And you can trust, up to a point, those you may know or are guilded with. But this brings up another problem.

While some members in a guild may be trustworthy, what happens with that one person who loots and says there is nothing to loot? Again, true? False? There is no way to know.

This dovetails into another problem: crafters. How am I to know something truly "blew up" when I hand a crafter tons of mats, including something that is rare? I am at the mercy of trust and faith. And if I have little trust and faith in some of the people I interact with personally . . . well, you see where I am going.

Not having a looting mechanic that can eliminate the need for trust and faith is hampering group play, and likely affects multiplayer (as in, there is likely less of it because there is no such mechanic).

 

bugged.

 

In the game RIFT; there is a Roll of Dice to see who gets a loot-able item. In essence you have the choice to "Pass" or "Greed" that item to Others in that Party Group.
i.e. (if All players picked "Greed" then the Game Rolled the Dice using the proverbial "RGN" to determine who if fact got that Loot-able Item). IGC was always split evenly
to All in a Party Group.

As far as Crafting is concern when Mats are handed out to Crafter to craft a weapon and/or amour, well you got me there. Wouldn't have a clue how SoTa would implement a system whereby
the Avatar knows if it got Blown Up or not by that Crafter.

Perhaps, if the Avatar and the Crafter was in Party then in the Chat Window both could see if that Item to be crafted was in fact "Destroyed".

I failed to mention in RIFT, there is also a "Round-Robin", whereby Lootable items are given out in order to that Party Group. ie. Let's say a party of Eight, then it would take eight separate Kills for each one in that Party Group to receive One lootable Item each.

 

4 months ago I suggested a message in local chat, or a box on screen, showing what you got when you click "Claim Rewards" at the bank versus the you've got them or you got nothing and you'll like it message. 2 SOTA folks responded that's a good idea but basically said it's more complicated than it sounds. But as people are grouping for the dragons, mini-bosses or w/e, or even for crafting... that message of what was looted, what was crafted, what was enchanted or what was destroyed is still lacking. I put in a 4 month reminder on that suggestion and just the a message like from one of the SOTA folks. My guild groups for XP, the Phoenix, Trolls and related stuff. There's the random number generator where you can assign each person a number then random and loot in order from there. Hopefully there will be more dragons and such that need vanquishing from groups or even raids and we'll know what drops when they do.

 

Arcadeguy, this is a very good point. It already shows you when an item is destroyed in your own chat log when crafting, I don't know how much more difficult it would be to add this so others can see it.
And i seem to remember it USED to show me what other people were looting, but it no longer does. - even when harvesting, I used to see teammates and how many ore they were getting. Not sure why this was removed.


With regard to Alatar's original post - the game seems to be designed in a way that intentionally discourages grouping. No loot mechanic or any other group funcionality, the general awkwardness of trying to be a healer with the targetting woes, etc. The biggest downside for me is most of the time I'm getting resources and doing so in a group is counterproductive - node density is barely high enough for a solo player. You get 2-3 people in a mine or even an outdoor zone you run out of things to harvest pretty quick.

Experience group? Alright if everyone's around same power level, but every group I've been in is either me dragging someone or me being dragged, the xp split isn't really great and xp per hour solo is almost always better (unless you're being dragged...)

I suppose "killing big things" is still viable reason to group, but the lack of loot mechanics frustrates this.

 

In the Lord of the Rings Online the Leader of the group could select a number of options for looting - including round robin or a voting system which was used the most - whenever an item dropped (you could select how rare the item was to trigger the vote)- everyone got 3 options on the drop - Pass/Greed/Need. Anyone selecting Need got to roll first....if no one selected Need then the Greed players got a roll and if everyone passed the person who picked it up got it. It was a really nice system and made Dungeon Crawling with Public group really fun and fair.

 

personaly i feal wen in a grup evry one shood get loot like wen one in the party loots dragon evry one in the grup get a random draw of the stuff
i played allot of games and loot is always one of the major reasen why some feal they get left out in a grup as so many ninja looters
so bost the drop little and divide loot on how many in grup and let all get an window with some of the drop

shood not be that it is the best looter that gets all the spoils

 

You will get more wood off of killing siege engineers then all the forests you could cut lol. So for wood with groups I'd highly recommend killing city sieges. For all other crafters the dragon is great for crafting exp he gives 5000 crafting experience for skinning him each time. K'rul is great for experience in groups. I've taken many adventurers there to level. The rise still gives good exp in groups. All of these areas also have a chance to drop the rare loot. They have also added elite mobs in many level 5 areas which are great for smaller and lower level groups to train.

 

"monkey room"

 

Yes, exactly. ^^^