Your right Statesman, there is no "penality" in the math used nobody can argue with you there, I mean you see the code every day and there is no benefit to lie straight up to the community.
However, this is a big however, logistics become the problem, 5+ people become difficult to organize and move just using chat.
So the preceived penality is real but its not in the math.
I've done several groups where 2 four player 'teams' are on one formal team.
For example my sceneario
3 blasters 1 tank on a four man team.
6 blasters 2 tanks on an 8 man team.
No mention of support units because they arent
needed fighting even cons
Fighting a line of even cons 16 mobs.
After about 3 blasters a spawn dosent fall any faster. It becomes a matter of just waiting on your aoe's dot to finnish ticking.
If you have a line of 16 spawns all even con, a 4 player team will clear it just as fast as an 8 player because players do not cordinate thier attacks.
3 fire balls to an even level spawn will drop the spawn hands down, blaze and flares are used on any standing bosses/lts.
The 4th and 5th and 6th fire balls thrown by the 8 man team attacks are just wasted, the dot from the fire balls just dosent move as fast as the player. These minions are already dead even if people are shooting at them because the dot hasnt exhausted yet.
Now instead of being able to just move to the next group, all players in the 8 man team must wait on thier powers to recharge
Now if you took that same team Broken down into two groups,
Two four man teams start at opposite ends of the line. No fire balls are wasted. The group kills the line in half the time and receives the xp bonous.
The consensious in my SG that we teach all members is that +1 and +2 cons in teams of 3-4 are the best hunting xp in terms of time/risk/reward. Although its is terribly boring, +1 and +2 cons are clean and efficient. Avoid bosses because their resistance + hp + special abilities dont make them worth your time, while Paragon Protectors are using mog, Fake nemesis are using thier bubble, the list goes on, you could be killing another 6 minons worth more xp than that one kill.
Here's my suggestion to To make an 8 man team deserible, you need to open up the level spread higher, 6+ at least. Because pick up groups dont make the effort to organize them selves. Everbody is all like charge and kill while if they took 3min to orgainze themselves they would be 100% more effective
However, as I'm pretty sure your thinking, well they should take the effort to orgaize themselves.
That is true as well but how you wish to deal with that arugement is your job not mine unless I'm
getting paid to do it.
My only gripe with the purple patch is that it limits what I can hunt meaning that I have to find a path of spawns that level.
Other actual penalties to groups,
A 19, 20 21,21 are grouped together, penality, too high for boom town, too low for DA, and there is very little to hunt in talos or ip that cater to that lvl range.
B1FF, we all know who im talking about, that one guy that has total of 1 cells in his entire brain that work.
My fire energy tank can take on 8-9 spawns of equal cons 15+ spawns if they are are only fire/leathal/smashing damage. Then when thoes spawns all provoked into a corner I light them up, thus killing faster than I could in any group.
