Playing with friends?

ginn4thewin wrote: »

I posted this a bit ago on the beginner Forum and got no answers

How easy is it to play with friends who play more/less then you? I have found in most MMOs now adays that if you are not same level or on the same quest line etc it is very hard to play togather and both get EXP.

If your on Heavens Tear give me a shout i'd be more then happy to come play with you. Also it depends on the people, some have bad experiences with lower lvls asking for help with everything and it cuts into there own play time so they stick to people there own lvl.

ginn4thewin wrote: »

How easy is it to play with friends who play more/less then you? I have found in most MMOs now adays that if you are not same level or on the same quest line etc it is very hard to play togather and both get EXP.

Are you talking about real life friends or in game friends? It’s rather different.

I almost never squad with in game friends, even for BH (bounty hunt, a daily quest), since we’re almost always on different levels and have different quests. I cap my level for grinding purposes, so I can’t join them in their leveling.

As for real life friends, we play for varying amounts of length and commitment but we never really have a problem. I’ve been helping out with their alts and they get to the same level eventually. It’s largely due to the dailies available today.

ginn4thewin wrote: »

I posted this a bit ago on the beginner Forum and got no answers

It’s quite difficult to answer. Your question is somewhat vague.

Unlike another game I played that shall not be named, you are penalised for daring to go into an instance that is too far ahead of your level. While doing an FB, you can go into a place above your level, and everyone in the party will get thousands of extra EXP---but not you. On Bounty Hunter, the differance can be well over 300K experience for all 3 bosses. The differance in reward is enormous. Also, you get almost the same exp and spirit reward for killing a mob your level as one 15 levels above you but you take a lot more damage. So, the problem is not so much the low level tagging along behind you, but the low level getting almost nothing out of tagging along other than chit chatting in teamspeak or ventrilo.
At the other end, with a high level going in with low level friends drops from mobs and bosses are nerfed by having the high level in party. According to the PWI database here http://www.pwdatabase.com/pwi/drop a party member 40 levels above the mob/boss nerfs the drops to only 20% of what they would be if everyone was the "right" level. A member 11 levels above the boss cuts the drop chance to half. So, if a very high level friend drops in, the mobs die faster, but the drops are nerfed.

That being said, many groups of friends operate in the Bounty Hunter quests becasue of the 10 level groupings. If you have an alternate character or two, you and your freinds have even more chances of having a "core" group of your characters that are at the right level for Bounty Hunter (which is all about the EXP reward and not about the drops). Alternate characters may be the best answer. Somewhere in the group of characters a good fit should be found.