PUG incentives

Disclaimer: I haven't completely thought this through, so there may be facets to this with some issues.

What do you guys think about adding incentives for Pick-Up Groups? Static groups are nice and all, and they tend to have their own advantages built in with voice com and class synergies, and just from the people knowing each other. But static groups are also often kind of insular to a point where they might not even pick up new temporary members, if some in the group are out sick or something.

My idea is basically this: If you group with a new character you have never grouped with before, you get +5% experience, up to +35% experience for a full group of 7 new people. This only lasts 24 hours, and only while the people are in the group with you. This added experience goes on top of the usual group XP modifiers. For example, WoW has +40% XP for a full group of 5.

This gives people without static groups a leg up when out XP'ing, and it hopefully gives a little incentive for static groups to fill the last one or two slots they have for an extra 5-10% XP.

If the same people like each other and continue grouping in the future they don't get the XP bonus anymore, but at least they will have made some new friends.

I see it as one of several building blocks to help create and strengthen ingame communities.

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Comments

Ludullu

Put this into guilds instead of pugs - and I'm all for it. Because guilds are already the incentive to PUG. You can have your constant party within the guild, but there's always at least a few solos in the guild for one reason or the other, and you can pick them if one of your members is missing.

I'd be totally fine if this applies to guild alliances as well, cause this would lead to "pvp guild + casual guild" alliances and I'm all for those and they have been really successful in my experience.

Songcaller

Sounds exploitable to me. You would just run with tons of alts on rotation and farm the xp. Or I would at least. I used to partake/run pugs in other games and the incentive was the loot. Also, when you have people from multiple guilds involved you have a lot of leeway and less chance of being attacked.

Noaani

I'd rather see an incentive to group up with the same people over and over, rather than an incentive to group up with different people every day.

From my experience, the best thing to keep people in an MMORPG is for them to have close connections with people - and so to me, this is what should be encounraged.

Giving people a real reason to not group with someone they have already grouped with seems to me to go against what an MMORPG should be.

daveywavey

Margaret said it in the latest stream: "Make some friends!"

Songcaller

Best way to make friends is to run a pug group.

TheHiddenDaggerInn

Yes, you can make some great friends through pick up groups, I would suggest your guild first, though sometimes people have weird hours and depending on the size of the guild options may be limited. So either a lfg node chat, or even posting on the bulletin board to help people meet other people and do content.

Azherae

Heavily opposed, overall.

Percimes

PUGs are my main grouping "strategy". In my mind, the best incentive to promote these spontaneous or temporary alliances (even if for hours) is more about having content requiring different size of groups near each others. Solo and small groups; small groups and full group, full group and multi-group/raid.

Any extra rewards would encourage some to game the system, it always does.

Flanker

Not a fan of it, to be honest. Watch the latest stream, Steven gains level 17 from 15 relatively fast, XPing definitely doesn't need another boost (of course, the XP speed may not be 100% accurate, but something tells me it's not far from the real speed)

Songcaller

Flanker wrote: »

Not a fan of it, to be honest. Watch the latest stream, Steven gains level 17 from 15 relatively fast, XPing definitely doesn't need another boost (of course, the XP speed may not be 100% accurate, but something tells me it's not far from the real speed)

yes. from the latest footage it does appear that grinding is a valid method of levelling.

Nerror

Flanker wrote: »

Not a fan of it, to be honest. Watch the latest stream, Steven gains level 17 from 15 relatively fast, XPing definitely doesn't need another boost (of course, the XP speed may not be 100% accurate, but something tells me it's not far from the real speed)

Specifically about that, they made a cut in the video at some point, where he had gained close to a level in the meantime. So the actual gain we saw was much smaller. I also noticed that the quest XP was disappointingly small in terms of moving the XP bar.

Nerror

Azherae wrote: »

Heavily opposed, overall.

Can you share why? Even if just as a headline.

Percimes

Nerror wrote: »

Flanker wrote: »

Not a fan of it, to be honest. Watch the latest stream, Steven gains level 17 from 15 relatively fast, XPing definitely doesn't need another boost (of course, the XP speed may not be 100% accurate, but something tells me it's not far from the real speed)

Specifically about that, they made a cut in the video at some point, where he had gained close to a level in the meantime. So the actual gain we saw was much smaller. I also noticed that the quest XP was disappointingly small in terms of moving the XP bar.

I don't think we can take the XP gain rate at face value at this stage. Just like during the commissions dev update no one really realized they were fighting mobs level 8-9 with characters level 15-16, can't judge mana efficiency in those conditions, yet people were.

We tend to read too much between the lines. Often what's there is only a rough draft.

Azherae

Nerror wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Heavily opposed, overall.

Can you share why? Even if just as a headline.

Percimes wrote: »

In my mind, the best incentive to promote these spontaneous or temporary alliances (even if for hours) is more about having content requiring different size of groups near each others. Solo and small groups; small groups and full group, full group and multi-group/raid.

Any extra rewards would encourage some to game the system, it always does.

Azherae

Ok, to expand now that I have the flow for it @Nerror.

I think Percimes is right twice over, but ofc this is probably huge bias.

If Ashes can't manage to be an organic experience before endgame/node loyalties kick in, then I consider it a failed product. Therefore I'm strongly against anything that leads to potential for gaming any system, that isn't a hard requirement of its design or Steven's wishes.

I honestly believe that no matter how many people are attracted to, or made happy by, an incentive system, that as soon as it can be gamed by someone trying to get ahead 'harder than those people', you've poisoned the well yourself.

There are a lot of systems like this that I don't say anything about, ofc, because who wants to argue with the people who will be made happy by such things? People like what they like. But I can at least give that much clarity. This is the sort of thing where just the micromanagement required by Intrepid, to block the micromanagement of a megaguild who try to squeeze every last drop of exp out of it, wouldn't be worth it.

Which would probably lead to 'them not doing that'. And then the efficiency-toxicity spiral begins.

Songcaller

Once, there was a ganker guild and no one would raid with them. Some of their raiders used to join my pug raids. We had a lot of alts in the pug raids too. People used to condemn those raiders and state they wouldn't partake in the pug raids whilst the ganker guild was present. I iterated that PvE and PvP are different game modes and that all those present in the pug were allied against the raids. It calmed the waters and we had free passage to all raid locations with the ganker guild bowing and saluting as we walked past.

Liniker

in a game with harsh death penalties, I would never, ever do content with a PUG, that works for theme park PVE games like WoW or FF14 that you can "give ir a try" and worst case scenario you lost a few minutes, but I simply cant see why people would play with random players that might cause them to die and lose progress, I wouldnt do it, I would just join a guild or make one myself

Songcaller

Liniker wrote: »

in a game with harsh death penalties, I would never, ever do content with a PUG, that works for theme park PVE games like WoW or FF14 that you can "give ir a try" and worst case scenario you lost a few minutes, but I simply cant see why people with play with random players that might cause them to die and lose progress, I wouldnt do it, I would just join a guild or make one myself

Harsh death penalties? I don't see the death penalties as harsh at all...

Liniker

Songcaller wrote: »

Harsh death penalties? I don't see the death penalties as harsh at all...

up to 4% of your level XP which can take hours to grind it back, durability that requires materials that are very expensive if you have good gear, 30% of your gatherables,

now die 4~5 times... if you dont think thats harsh I'd say you are up to a big surprise..

Songcaller

Clerics can give back some xp loss through resurrection. I also wouldn't be raiding for Legendaries if I already had Legendaries. I wouldn't take gatherables to a raid either. You'd have to go prepared. Anyway, attunement is more important that overall stats. So, I'd rather take mid gear tuned to the raid than legendary gear tuned to nought.

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