What can be done to encourage DM grouping?

The title speaks for itself. What can be done to encourage grouping in DM dungeons?

Running through them with a full group can be a very interesting experience if done right and even let you meet some epic mobs inside the dungeons that provide tons of challenge.

But running one solo or duo is of course a lot swifter since you just enter it and run. So how can grouping be encouraged?

One obvious reason to make people want to group is a slight increase in tokens gained from running it, and this has been suggested before.

But how about awarding a second type of token for 5-6 man groups that are running a dungeon? Elite tokens.

And let those tokens be used to buy unique spawners, house items, appearance gear, mounts or normal combat gear etc.?

These Elite Tokens wouldn't be a substitute for normal dungeon tokens and shouldn't work on the same items you buy with them.

Would be a real boon. This game would feel better with some encouragements to grouping, and DM needs some attention too, so why not combine these two needs into one?

/cheer

Good idea and easy to do i would think ...
keep them ideas coming ...maybe they can get this dead horse up and at em

Perhaps if the difficulty were more in line with the standard EQ2 dungeon, that would be a big help. Right now, mobs seem to be insanely overopwered.

Ninetail wrote:

I haven't tried it without avatars in a full group (can't find any people willing to run DM in such big groups), but when I solo, I think the mobs are too weak instead...

Would be interesting to get a full group to try once though.

With a 5-man party, mobs were one shotting players and downing the tank before heals could go off. An average hit was something like one third of the tank's HP. In short, it was totally unplayable.
We even tried the contest winning dungeons, figuring theat they were examples of how a dungeon should be done right, and were crushed by the first pull at the door.

Ninetail wrote:

Well, I did point out to the devs in a webcast that the mobs are too dangerous in a 6 man group (that was before play as yourself), some of them even become epic mobs. I like that as it provides more of a challenge. My suggestion was that since it's more difficult it should yield better rewards.

But they just shrugged it off and said "it scales so it should be similiar and have the same reward". I still don't understand that point of view because it certainly becomes harder with a full group than a non-full. And more time consuming if nothing else.

May I ask what level you are? I am level 92 and I don't have any problems, at least not when I solo. Still wanna try them out in a full group though...

I'd far rather see what can be done to encourage grouping in the rest of the world.

Freejazzlive wrote:

True. Grouping in general should be encouraged. Most groups now are guildmade non-pug groups which is sad. Most PuGs I've been in has been successful but people take for granted that all PuGs will suck, and therefore nobody wants to do it. It's a shame. I think PuGs are fun since you meet new people. Well, mostly... Depends on who you meet

Encourage DM grouping? Make the xp reward the shortest path to leveling.

Epic Quests that involve DM dungeons where they must have a full group to update the quest.
You must completly clear a dungeon with xxx rating while in full group to update
repeated for each map type ie once in a crushbone type map, once in Poets
got all these pdates?
Next step. Complete a hall of fame DM also full grouped.
Quest Reward ?

woud need ot be a choice of several items as not everyone that runs them creates them
The usual list...
Appearance items, House Items, Mounts, Spawners, Unique DM decorative items, Titles etc

I like the elite token idea for 5-6 man groups since thats when mobs become ^^^ and possibly x2. Or, barring that, a higher token reward. Scaling or not, when you make a boss encounter with stacked effects and a few adds, having it go from ^ solo to ^^^x2 in a group is indeed a difference.

I made a boss encounter with Venril and Cara next to each other with the level and tier increase and stacked the greater melee and hitpoint buffs with the arcane power and physical force combo. Solo it was easy, in a full group they smacked us around like rag dolls.

The diffulty of mobs when there are more than 2 people in a group off, so something really needs to be looked at before people are going to want to run groups there in general.
The obvious things to do to encourage people to run dungeons is to have a larger variety of rewards to purchase. Right now, most rewards are builder items for dungeon makers. There's only a couple items that might entice a high level adventurer and those can be bought in a day. And how about House Items? I know it'd draw me out of decorating a lot more to run some dungeons when there's furniture involved.

Afista wrote:

Ya. I think groups of 3-4 people and 5-6 people should either get a 25 / 50 % token increase or something similiar, OR get different tiers of tokens like I mentioned above. Elite tokens would be awesome and actually have you spend some time there instead of just soloin through it and buy everything.

The biggest problem when DM was new was that the devs put extremely high prices on dungeon building materials, and low prices on things like mounts and other non-dm stuff. They should have done the other way around because people need building tools to make something great, but if you don't make dungeons it's pointless to try and get those. You get that mount and a few more items and then you're basically done.

The mystic crates are of course nice but they are pretty cheap so if you run a 800 token dungeon, you get like 16 crates. Again, more expensive ones using elite tokens would have been nice.

Another thing to spice it up would have been to add goblin game tickets to those elite crates as random loot. Adding them to the current currency wouldn't work because of the AoE exploit people used when "play as yourself" was introduced. But now that it has been squashed, a new currency would make it legit.

These might have held people's interest longer than a week if they'd been more versatile, so that we make quests in there with objectives including things like collecting items, fixing/breaking things, releasing prisoners, herding pigs, etc. Also they should not be able to be lost like mine was when I moved, including all the quest items I used.