Maybe this is a kind of misunderstanding. As flarbear mentioned: 4 times faster and 4 times the reward. This results in 16 times more bounty caches.
If you do 5 bounties solo, you will get 1 cache from Tyrael. If you do 5 bounties in a 4man group, Tyrael will return 4 caches in total but only one for each player.
Maybe yes, maybe not. The question at some point is, what comes next!? If we take a look at the changes in the past, we will see a lot of power creep. Groups already hit the maximum possible: GR150. Soloist did this, too. But with the help of some ridiculous season themes or at the very top of the ladder board.
But what if the future bringt even more power creep. The chance for that is really high. This means, groups âstuckâ at GR150 but soloists might climb the GR-Ladder a little higher. Currently, I would like to say, each class might clear GR130 solo w/o the help of some kind of season buff. But in a few seasons this âlimitâ might become GR140. This would close the gap a little bit. But note, as I said before. It is not that much necessary to make solo play a little bit more efficient than playing in groups. Power creep wouldnât ruin the game but maybe it ruins the community due to the âlossâ of group play.
Theoretically yes. But the group doesnât do what I want the whole time. The group will average at some point. At the current state of the game I canât tell you, what the difference might be. Since groups donât need 1% runs anymore, but soloist do, the gap might be greater or maybe not, b/c gems leveled in groups hit the cap.
To compare this with my experiences in S13, I would have to run GR127 1% runs solo. Well, thats not imposible. But I am not sure if it wouldnât be slighty harder than doing GR108 1% in S13.
Ok, I see, we have to take a deeper look into this topic.
1.) Magic Find Bonus
I am not 100% sure how this works. But lets say it works like expected, resulting in more legendaries or âbetterâ legendaries. These additional items you need to equip your toons for group play, even if you donât stick at one class, most group player wonât do.
But there is another point, that relevates the bonus magic find. At GR90 or GR95 - I am not sure - you will reach the maximum amount of items that may drop from a Rift Guardian. This cap is the same for solo and group. No, you wonât find more ancient or primal items, b/c their chances ar not based on magic find factors, as far as I know.
2.) More mats for craftig.
Well, if you count bounties, youâre right. But over all I think it doesnât really matter, b/c a solist is way more focussed on his class, than the average group play is allowed to do. Means, the group play - in average - has to spend more mats into crafting, b/c he has to equip more toons.
3.) Better gear on average.
Just no, b/c loot share doesnât work really well. Yes, if you have a set group, than this might work, b/c the group focusses on specified roles. But this is by far not the average.
4.) Loot sharing.
Well, there is a potential like said before. But the reality shows a difference. If you run in a META-Group you will have four different classes. This reduced the chance of being able to share loot dramatically.
Ofc, I received a few very good items from others. But over all, the vast majority of my items I had to find by myself, even if my clan knew about my solo plans.
It seems you and some others are thinking that four deamon hunters in a group will result in 4 times more and better loot for every one. Thatâs just B$ âŚ
5.) More blood shards in group.
It should be more blood shards in group - and yes there are more blood shards in group. But this instantly getting lowered by the overhead a group is confronted with.
But lets see, what I got in my example seasons:
In my solo season there were 1.964 million blood shards. The three comparable seasons I avaeraged at 2.406 million blood shards. Thatâs 25% more than playing solo! Unfair!!!
Nope it isnât. Because I wasnât able to spend all the time the shards into my favorite class. This is some kind of default issue while playing in group. Hopefully I donât have to explain this more detailed.
At the end, apart from bounties, there is no real (averaging) advantage regarding the gear while playing in groups.
Thats kind of balancing. If you lower the multiplier by an relative average, you only would move the GR-Limits, but you wonât touch the issues.
Well, if you only lower some of the multipliers that would affect the builds aka item choices, ofc. But in a system with (almost) infinite difficulty scaling you will ever find a META. This will everytime result in such issues weâre talking about.
And ofc, it would touch both, solo and group. Unlikely groups would have been hit hit harder than solo.
There is way more than just this single element of the system you have to care about. But well, it seem to be hard to realize that. There are dozens of factors affecting each other. If you alter one of them you will affect others, too.
What is the effort to be an unskills solist?
What is the effort to form an unskilled group?
What is the effort to be a skilled soloist?
What is the effort to form a skilled group?
Try to define this in plain numbers, than you might be able to start a first try naming some kind of benefcial number for group play. I you arenât able to do this, there is no need to talk to each other any longer.
The solely possibility to get some conrete data is to analyse the whole thing over a long time. Did you do this? Nope? Maybe Blizzard did some research. I donât know.
Ofc, I wonât. I donât really care about how I âhave toâ play the game, either solo or in group. The most efficient would be my choice. But I know how important the community - the other players - are, to keep me in game. If those ppl would become unimportant I am quite sure I would quit the game, as many others would do, too.
Well, it wouldnât be 1k paragon, b/c I wouldnât be able to utilize the whole group bonus all the time. Remember in the mentioned left over of 87% - from theoretically 300% and more.
But lets stick at those 1000 paragons. Even this amount of paragon would affect the pushing process way less than GRift RNG actually does. In my opinion this issue is way more important than the difference between solo and group play.
Yes, if this issue get solved, the solo vs. group difference has to be lowered as well.
The feelings are about a gap. If the gap will be closed by a buff it will have the same effect as it would closed by a nerf.
They do b/c this is the normal mode of the game and they focussing their balancing on it: âGR130 solo @ Paragon 5000â. I am quite sure that this is nothing with a seasonal focus âŚ
As i mentioned above. Just wait a few seasons, the gap will constantly be closed - step by step.