Tokens vs Grouped

When farming for Tokens, the system in place actually discourages grouping up, and I will explain why.

To make things simple I will write this entire post based around 4 players grouped and on same difficulty.

Because you are grouped you will generate 10% more, my understanding is the amount of players doesn't effect how much bonus is generated, it's just purely 10% if in a group. Doesn't really help or change anything in the scale of things.

So there is a few situations I'd like to break down, the most common situations you will find yourself in while grouping up.

1) Your full group is together and just started taking down an Enraged Mob each player does 25% damage to that mob, and you each earn 25 tokens. This is a lower amount then what you would have earned solo on a lower/easier difficulty. Meaning instead of grouping it's better to turn your difficulty way down and go farm on your own. Same speed of killing, more tokens. Bad

2) Half your group (2 players) is engaged in combat with an Enraged Mob while the other 2 players are handling normal mobs that are enclosing on the group. The two players that kill the mob take a 50/50 cut, the two players that were providing support get nothing for their effort. Bad

3) Half your group (2 players) is engaged in combat with an Enraged Mob while the other 2 players are recovering (eating/healing) from a previous pull. The two players that kill the mob take a 50/50 cut, the two players that were recovering get nothing. Okay

4) Some of the players in your group are out of range and aren't taking part of the current Enraged Mob combat, they get nothing. Good

I think a much better system would be as follows:

1) If you are in range and taking part in combat with your group against an Enraged Mob, you and all of your group members get the normal amount of Tokens, regardless of how much damage you did. No cuts, or group % based addition, just simple and effective.

2) If you are within range of your group, say 2 chunks, killing any mob (in other words supporting your group by clearing other mobs coming in) you get tokens even if you didn't deal direct damage to the Enraged Mob. You helped your group, there is no reason to get nothing just because you were helping in another way.

3) Can't see anyway to make it better, it just sounds weird to me I guess.

4) Perfect as is, if you aren't anywhere near the group you don't get anything.

I believe this system would be better for a variety of reasons. Mainly because you don't take a huge cut in tokens for wanting to play with other people. Even if 4 players makes it faster to kill 1 mob on a higher difficulty, in the current system it's faster to earn tokens playing solo on a lower difficulty. It basically makes the difficulty and group system useless, which are huge features to just throw under the bus.

There is also the added bonus that it's extremely easy to understand and follow. If you are in a group and helping your group, you get rewarded just as you would if you played in solo. If you are in a group but aren't helping you don't get anything. Simple and effective. No cuts, or % of amounts or wondering how much damage you are doing vs the group, and so on. Kill, reward, move on.

Ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thanks for taking the time to read it all, I know it was a bit lengthy but I wanted to break it down.

Very well written and detailed suggestion.
I think any suggestion on how to improve groups and difficulty settings are welcome.

So you get a +1 from me.

I agree that you might get less tokens in a group but hunting in a group is a lot of fun, much more fun than doing it by yourself.

That's kinda the point.
Being in a group is fun, why should we all be punished by wanting to group up and have fun as a group instead of solo play.

that's my point though, I don't view it as punishment. You trade off more fun with slightly less tokens.

I'm not even quite sure what level of tokens will be needed, otherwise I might be more upset about this. I do know that you get A LOT more tokens by killing bosses than you do enraged, so if you are going to need thousands of tokens to be able to use them effectively then I'd definitely want more tokens for each enraged kill.

you might not veiw it as a punishment but i guarantee if you play on 10 you will, just one enraged skelly can break your armor pieces if you arent careful. the tradeoff for that is you get 40ish coins for doing so. go through a couple sets of armor on 10 and tell me you dont want the full tokens.

higher bonuses (scaled obviously to prevent exploitation) would promote people grouping more. you said something at some point about proximity coming into play so maybe like a baseline if within the proximity of 50 percent so some people can focus on shooting regular skellys and spiders and still get a token bonus

Yes and that was the issue mostly. When your talking about group XP share I find it to be much different because the density is way different. There is mobs every where, everyone can be killing multiple things at a time and so on. But with enraged you typically only come across one at a time and you kill it and move on to find more. It's because of that reason that makes this way different and I feel should be handled different.

I think the pooling idea is a step in the right direction and it would work for lower difficulty. Basing it off say a mob that would give 100 tokens with 60% then divided by 4 each player would get 40 tokens which is 60% loss. I think it just loops back to the point that you would probably get more playing solo again. I know it's pretty much impossible to make it 'perfect' where you earn the same token/hr solo vs grouped, but right now solo is by far the winning factor.

My understanding of groups is to get people playing together, to encourage people to go out and find someone to group up with and go gather or kill mobs. So even if in the end groups did give you more tokens/hour, what is that actually hurting? It's supporting the groups feature. It basically says; Hey even if you don't know anyone, go find someone to group up with. It encourages grouping up and meeting people, and interacting with the community. One of the huge bullet points of the suggestion is that, if I choose I want to be an active part of the community, I don't want to take a penalty for that, I want the same reward while doing what online play is all about, playing with friends and meeting new people.

Yes I get the point of the cut in tokens, and the structure behind it. If you kill something twice as fast get half the reward to level it out. However at the same time isn't that what grouping is all about? "Strength in numbers" grouping with friends to overcome seemingly impossible feats of strength and battles. I don't know maybe I am just thinking about it to literally.

Anyway back up to what I had said in the second paragraph, I think that system would work on a lower difficulty. On a higher difficulty when your gear gets eaten up in like 2 enraged mobs worth of combat, and 8+ where you start needing god apples, does it really become worth it? Just blowing through gear and apples for a 60% cut, you mind as well yet again step it down a few levels and play solo, same amount of tokens but your gear lasts longer then 5 seconds. So you would have to set a rule per difficulty level, less cut the higher you go in difficulty while in a group, and at 10 maybe have no cut? But then it starts getting back to the point where it's overly complicated for such a simple issue.

I'm sure as we get later into the afternoon more people will chime in here on there thoughts, not many people online yet. I am mainly just throwing it out there that this is a definite issue, how it's solved is more or less up to you I was just trying to move things forward.

Really looking forward to the token shop. I know nothing is final and prices you have now are subject to change, so I will ask in a different sort of way. What would you say with how you have things planned now, is a 'good' amount of tokens? Like not 'broke' or 'rich' with them, but an average amount that could get you somewhere. Or maybe just a range, like the price of the cheapest and price of the most expensive item in the shop currently, not even what they are, just the gap.

Thanks.

im doing a 24 hour solo marathon trying to get as many as possible. (minus the two marlixes i killed) ive almost made 10k but will have a more accurate number at 4 when i started

Sounds like a lot of good suggestions to consider while balancing. Not knowing what/ how much the tokens are worth makes it hard to get a good feel for fair, so it's gonna need adjusted again once a practical 'value' is announced.

a.k.a, 1000 tokens = some item, etc.

yeah, how long until we find out what the tokens are used for specifically? i spent two nights out in the wastelands killing enraged mobs and got around 300 tokens or so. would be nice to be able to gauge how much work needs to be done to be able to get something worthwhile with the tokens.

also if you need a ton of tokens to do anything nice, we might want to consider skipping enraged completely and just do group kills on bosses instead.

I meant specifics, like how many tokens would need for purchasing X amount of a given item. That way we can determine the economy of tokens.