Grouping Favor

[Cardoor]

To encourage grouping:

-- Every 100 "Grouping Favor" point earned is worth 3 astral shards

-- Base normal favor equals Grouping Favor. If you run on hard or elite it will have no effect on your "Grouping Favor" total other than give you the same amount you would earn running normal.

-- 51 shards per life If you grouped every single quest/raid that can be grouped you would earn about 51 shards per life (this is not exact, just a quick estimate).
5100/ 3 = 1700
1700/100 = 17
17 * 3 = 51 shards

-- Grouping favor can only be earned by groups of 4 or more and each person must be present for 80% of the quest or no one earns any grouping favor (including challenges - see raids below).

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Added idea...
Raid Incentive:

-- 15 grouped raid completions is worth 5 astral shards one time per raid

-- Raid Incentive can only be earned by groups of 7 or more

-- 100 AS total (20 raids * 5) but keep in mind, would require grouping up 300 times (20 *15) to earn them all.

The reason for 15 completions (and not 20) is to give a 5 raid cushion for real life events during game play. The idea is that someone wanting the 20 completion end reward could probably still pick up the raid incentive along the way without getting tense about someone needing to leave a raid for whatever reason.

[Cardoor]

The lore/reason in game could be that whatever NPC is rewarding you for the quest is more comfortable with a party tackling the task, so they offer a grouping bonus.

[Rofaust]

Good incentive. It would be nice to have a way to consistently earn AS in game.

[TrinityTurtle]

This I think might actually motivate some people, and it's not crazy overdone amounts of reward. I like it.

[General_Gronker]

To encourage grouping:

-- Every 100 "Grouping Favor" point earned is worth 3 astral shards ).

Your idea went to **** with this first part. Astral shards shouldn't be a reward for anything. They should be removed from the game, and anyone encouraging their use and distribution needs to stop.

[Faltout]

To encourage grouping:

-- Grouping favor can only be earned by groups of 4 or more and each person must be present for 80% of the quest or no one earns any grouping favor (including raids and challenges).

This needs some attention. Multiboxing can exploit that. And multiboxing is not grouping.
Otherwise, a good idea (if you get past what I said - which I doubt you can).

[Rofaust]

This needs some attention. Multiboxing can exploit that. And multiboxing is not grouping.
Otherwise, a good idea (if you get past what I said - which I doubt you can).

Multi-boxing is harder than it sounds lol if they want to hassle with 4 toons I'd say just let them

[arkonas]

To encourage grouping:

-- Every 100 "Grouping Favor" point earned is worth 3 astral shards

-- Base normal favor equals Grouping Favor. If you run on hard or elite it will have no effect on your "Grouping Favor" total other than give you the same amount you would earn running normal.

-- 51 shards per life If you grouped every single quest/raid that can be grouped you would earn about 51 shards per life (this is not exact, just a quick estimate).
5100/ 3 = 1700
1700/100 = 17
17 * 3 = 51 shards

-- Grouping favor can only be earned by groups of 4 or more and each person must be present for 80% of the quest or no one earns any grouping favor (including raids and challenges).

this is actually a reasonable idea. not anything overboard or crazy.

[Waaye]

To encourage grouping:

If encouraging more grouping is to help retain newer players then more grouping at random may have he opposite effect and cause players to leave. For a newcomer to have an enjoyable experience in a party several factors should be matched with other players but there is no matching and scheduling tool available that I am aware of.

Without having a better way to match players for parties offering shards to encourage more grouping is a good but premature idea.

[EllisDee37]

I was all set to hate the idea reading the title, but the idea presented in the OP is pretty good.

I don't think multiboxing would be an issue because it's a massive PITA to multibox 4 characters into every quest. Few would bother, and for those few, more power to you.

Maybe skip the first 100 favor reward just to make it more of a hassle to try and game the system by constantly rolling up throw-away alts to farm up 100 favor. (3 multibox alts plus a fourth disposable one on your main account that keeps getting deleted and rerolled to get to 100 favor.)

[Uska]

Problem is multi-boxers would exploit this otherwise it's not bad

[Uska]

Multi-boxing is harder than it sounds lol if they want to hassle with 4 toons I'd say just let them

For free shards they would do,it and GG is right shards should really just go away altogether

[Rofaust]

For free shards they would do,it and GG is right shards should really just go away altogether

I'd be perfectly fine with them going away altogether, but if they're here to stay I'd like to see a way to earn them consistently in game. I'd rather live with multi-boxers having a bit of an edge than everyone else being denied the opportunity because of it lol

[Uska]

I'd be perfectly fine with them going away altogether, but if they're here to stay I'd like to see a way to earn them consistently in game. I'd rather live with multi-boxers having a bit of an edge than everyone else being denied the opportunity because of it lol

Not me not for giving the abusers even more chances to abuse the game

[MisterCanoeHead]

The hilarious part about the people asking for grouping incentives is that it's usually the same people that are complaining about how they don't like how other people play the game.

I expect the forum posts about how some evil "zerger" ruined their group to grow exponentially if anything like your suggestion was ever actually implemented.

Trying to force people to group with you will never work out the way you hope it will.

[Uska]

The hilarious part about the people asking for grouping incentives is that it's usually the same people that are complaining about how they don't like how other people play the game.

I expect the forum posts about how some evil "zerger" ruined their group to grow exponentially if anything like your suggestion was ever actually implemented.

Trying to force people to group with you will never work out the way you hope it will.

Multiboxing isn't grouping it's anti grouping

[Faltout]

If encouraging more grouping is to help retain newer players then more grouping at random may have he opposite effect and cause players to leave. For a newcomer to have an enjoyable experience in a party several factors should be matched with other players but there is no matching and scheduling tool available that I am aware of.

Without having a better way to match players for parties offering shards to encourage more grouping is a good but premature idea.

I agree. You need to encourage grouping because grouping is cool, not because of some reward. But since it's only an idea and there also exist some other ideas (*) that would make grouping fun, I'm on board with it.

(*) Like https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...pid-suggestion

[Waaye]

I agree. You need to encourage grouping because grouping is cool, not because of some reward. But since it's only an idea and there also exist some other ideas (*) that would make grouping fun, I'm on board with it.

(*) Like https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...pid-suggestion

Sorry, Faltout, but I was not talking about coolness but eliminating some of the randomness in grouping. The current tool is random and real-time which is bad.

A scheduling app, even an external one would be better than the current tool because more players would come if they knew for certain that a group was available at that time. Then to reduce randomness the app should match Language, player ability, player speed, character effective level, character classes, and alignments to name just a few criteria. All of these things must match if every player in the group is to enjoy the experience. New players with 28-point first life characters rarely enjoy grouping. Most solo until they can go no further and then leave.

Until there is some better way to match players in parties encouraging more grouping is premature and could be counterproductive. Randomness must be reduced before encouraging more players to join groups.

[Faltout]

Sorry, Faltout, but I was not talking about coolness but eliminating some of the randomness in grouping.

I know, and sorry for the formatting. It's kinda hard to explain why I believe the 2 are linked. I disagree however with what you propose for changing LFM mechanics. First off, scheduling is just awful. RL issues come first. And then, we already have class, level, difficulty and whatever the comments of the LFM as criteria for joining. And the population of the game is already spread too thin.

Introducing language, player ability, etc. would only serve to further spread the population or be ignored by most like the class selection tool. The best way to please the new players is for vets to change attitude towards them and be more forgiving. That's where my proposal about coolness factor comes in.

P.S. Sorry, post seems too blurry even for me to read. You can safely ignore it...

[Waaye]

The best way to please the new players is for vets to change attitude towards them and be more forgiving.

Lots of people believe that but in my experience veteran DDO players are pretty forgiving. There are a lot of nice people playing DDO but I amost never group with any of them. The few times I have grouped nobody ever made any unforgiving comments about my mistakes.

That was nice but I stopped joining groups anyway because my mistakes are unacceptable to me. My character Sir Diesalot would be happy questing with Sir Diesevenmore and Lady Walksoffcliffs but the current matching tool does not allow misfits to find each other.

Until it does my character will continue to solo where he can do no harm to anyone else. Offering shards to join groups will not change that.