Whether they consist of random players, familiar people, friends, guild members, or unfriendly individuals, I do miss playing in such groups as often as I use to. Can someone remind me, firstly, of the incentives that existed to playing in parties, and secondly, if they are still present in the game? Also, if you chose to fly solo, what reasons would you have for it?
The only incentive that comes to mind is health sharing as I currently do not have the focus to seek more answers momentarily.
I find myself playing much worse with other players, my skill gradually decreases with each member added to the party for some reason that i do not fully understand.
When I play solo I roflstomp mostly everything that the clockworks throw at me, but in parties I get the feeling that enemies stop flinching with my sword combos and that confuses me a lot, usually when I land a full combo on monsters they flinch almost 100% of the time, but when 2 other ppl tag along that seems to not work anymore and then I start making lots of dumb mistakes, getting hit by lost bullets, walking right into traps and stuff.
The only good aspect for me of having other ppl in the party is that I can back up and let my teammates take care of things for a while if I am about to die and maybe start bombing around with my shivermist/obsidian crusher or some other bomb i always carry with me.
Can someone remind me, firstly, of the incentives that existed to playing in parties, and secondly, if they are still present in the game?
You might try reading an old version of the wiki page "Party", from before the 2013-07-30 release, such as
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/index.php?title=Party&oldid=97196
Especially read the sections toward the bottom. And then you might compare to the current version of the wiki page "Party". Just an idea.
There are quite a number of reasons to play in parties, actually.
Monsters have less HP per player the more players there are. They gain 33% per extra player, meaning that they have 1/2 the health per player with a group of four than they would if all solo'd the level. Players also have 1/4 as much aggro when with others.
There are strategies that require, or at least benefit largely from, working with others. If someone drops vortex style bombs, or uses stagger storm/venom veilor, this is a huge buff for everyone else playing. Without others, you cannot reap the benefits of using such weapons.
Energy gates pay out more. If we all solo, it costs us a total of 12 energy to get into a danger room for all of us. In a party, this costs us 3 energy. If you always open the gates, you're getting loot at 1/4 the price you think you are. In practice, a number of people don't ever open, and a number of people always open, meaning that many people get "free" loot and others get half priced loot. Another aspect of this is that playing in a party of 4 provides you with more minerals. These are the kinds of things that add up, to be sure.
More players allows you to view weapons and equipment that you don't have in action. That way, by the time you're ready to craft you have an idea of what you want to get and how good it is in practice, as well as have an idea bout what the general strategy for that particular piece of gear entails.
Spiral Knights is a cooperative + social game, as it is "Massively Multiplayer", not "Massively Singleplayer". If you disregard the party play, you're really missing out on a huge aspect of the game, and are very likely to get bored when playing as the challenge lies not in getting through content, but in mastering that content in such a way as to work with how others play... avoiding this challenge generally hinders your enjoyment of the game on the whole. Of course, your mileage may vary, but if that is the case then you probably shouldn't have picked Spiral Knights anyway.
my optimum party is me and someone else (2)
the other person helps to prevent me getting cornered (when I go berserk on Trojans (they're supposed to hav a small cool down on the sword smash, yet sometimes they can rapid fire it and I really hate that))
and its easier to keep track of how the enemies are going to move/knockback to
Now that I have come back to here, I'd like to thank y'all for the reminders as to why playing in parties can be much more enjoyable. Also credit is due to Bopp for the link as this tells why I also liked playing in parties. Sadly things like health sharing, tabbing (I never minded if I had the mist for it), and the countdown clock that served as a motivation to either wake up or be booted from whatever level you're on. And I liked that actually, gave me a GAMEOVER sort of feel to playing, which is what I do not get much now a days. Also sharing consumable items showed consideration for the knight that is closer to death than I or may have a harder time managing.
I even thought the Party Finder was a great idea until I saw how limited the choices were in this case. I will have to look back on that last statement to see further into something that I may be mistaken about. But nonetheless, the lot of the reasons mentioned were precisely why I like playing with others.
Even if the monster flinching can be confusing, it is something to be worked out only afterward. Or if everyone wants to do melee, greater benefits come with learning how to time your intervention into another person's assault; not everyone's melee attack will hit one enemy if all attacks come at the same time, if anyone has not take note. If the knock back is anticipated by either a comrade's behavior or their weapon set then it works to my advantage to know where and how to avoid such cases, such as pulsar spammers who can somehow keep you trapped in a corner full of lichen colonies. And contrary to what some may say, I tend to do a bit better, skill-wise when the need for another's safety is priority; otherwise, I would fool around and get myself killed only because there is not much to take seriously from enemies with only set responses to only what I'm doing. This is easier to handle than being a victim of an attack that was meant for someone else, too easy at times.
But I guess some of that is just me.
Well for me I usually go Solo..When nobody online or they just go Vananavanavanavana...vanva...Quit!
Mobs have less Hp easy to kill
For party if there's a glass cannon guy, I'll go to support roll(bomber)
Solo pros: Monsters have less hp, knockback and enemy movement more predictable, not limited to party's Movement speed (which is good for those who love MSI armor but hate slow teammates, or those with ancient set and don't want to burden teammates by being slow)
Solo cons: More monsters after you, limit of 4 weapons (compared to 16 max in full party)
Party pros: More weapons, teammates can rev you (with sparks), more minerals (Pffffft), monsters numbers are divided up more, greater possible damage/order
Party cons: Teammates can knock enemies towards you (I'm running from an enemy and you blast it towards me as it is attacking?), Very High chance of Chaos (and not the set)