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The major issue with Public Quests
Myrdek
Member Posts: 346
Most agree that Public Quests are a nice innovation on the raids by making them accessible to all. You don't have to go through the hassle of forming a group and waiting on them, you can just Jump in. But they do suffer from 1 tragic flaw which needs to be adressed before launch.
Overcrowding and Undercrowding
If you've made a new characters for the preview weekend and went to the first PQs you probably realised that it was much too overcrowded and a massive zerg. Impossible to get rewards, lag spikes were common.
On on the other hand, now I face the complete opposite on the later PQs, nobody's there. I tried with just 1 other person to do them but only managed to get to the boss before being unable to complete them. This is a flaw that cannot be fixed by any patches but there is a solution that could be implemented to solve it.
Scalability
If a certain PQ is meant to be done by 5 people and there's 20 persons there, Triple the difficulty. 3x the monsters, 3x the loot. (I say 3x and not 4x because coordinating 20 people is a lot harder than 5)
If anyone else has any idea on how to improve them or has any other issue associated with PQ that needs a solution then please don't mind sharing your thoughts on it. I would really like Mythic to take notice of this and find a proper solution
Comments
This is a good topic. Some sort of scalability could help because even the very first Chaos PQ can be very difficult or impossible without at least one chosen and one zealot present. Otherwise it becomes a graveyard rush. I don't think it will be an issue right away once the floodgates are opened to the general population, but like right now when some servers are under about 500 people playing, you kinda have to just do what you can, earn some influence and then wait for it to reset so you can grind the first part again. I see this becoming a bigger problem a couple months further out from launch as most of the players get their mains and alts into the upper tiers and there's few low level players running around.
I agree completely on the scaleability - wish i had thought of it myself.
I really hope they implement it.
Mythics solution right now are multiple PQs in each chapter. I agree that a scaleable system would be great but then I do not think we can judge the current system based on the preview weekend or beta servers.
Things might get ugly at launch but influence comes in really fast in the first PQs so people won't hang out there too long.
If you are not accustomed to eating kiwi, go slow at first.
Nice post, completely agree. Only other thing I would add is to cut the "random" part of the roll by 1/3rd or even half. I wouldnt mind it if I got first in contribution with maxed INF and didnt get loot 1/5 times. But at least for me its been the other way around, I may get a lootbag 1/5 time being top contribution with maxed inf. Even in smaller groups. Likewise there have been times I have just gotten there for the final boss (this was mostly on my tank) gotten verry low in contribution but gotten a loot bag. There should be some randomness to it (fits the PQ's imo) but not as bad as it is now.
Heh, also a good point. I was just doing that first Chaos PQ on my Zealot last evening, and out of 6 players:
1) I came in first on contribution, +400 bonus
2) I rolled a 12
After the tally, I came in 6th place-- dead last. Hardly game-breaking since it's a quick PQ and easy to gain influence at such low levels, but still. Kind of obnoxious.
On the other hand, it meant some other players who haven't leveled their class 2-3 times already, and don't know how to "work" the system also got a chance to jump in, play, and still win. So it's not entirely bad.
Yes I agree with the random roll being lowered somewhat... or increase the contribution factor. Right now the max is 400 raise it to 1000, that way if you finish first you have a high likeliness of getting something.
overcrowded: wait a few weeks after lunch until everyone levels up
undercrowded: spam LFG (insert public quest). its as easy as finding a group for an instance in WoW.
Ha Ha. Yeah. Yesterday with my 'You are first in contribution. Gain +400 to roll' and I ended up 13th in line with nothing. (Not that I minded, I really needed the INF).
In all honesty, this sort of thing evens out the score for folks that can't do as much. There will always be folks with 'better' gear 'hogging the show' so to speak. This more or less gives folks a chance to still 'win' if they contribute something.
Scaling is a good thing, but i dont think they want PQ's to be done by 5 peoples. PQ's are meant for big groups, not just a bunch of friends farming them all days long in an undercrowded zone.
Scalability is great but this isn't your instanced dungeon in WoW. Tell me, how will the game know how many people are actually doing the PQ? If it does some type of area scan when each PQ resets to determine how many people are doing it, how big do you make the area? What if someone is just passing through and doesn't really want to do it, but gets caught in the scan? The point is to avoid grouping so if it looked for how many groups are doing it, that defeats the purpose.
It's a nice idea but how would it work?
Well overcrowding can be a lot of fun, and all I can say about undercrowding is get some friends. I joined up with three people and we jumped from PQ to PQ in our zone and it was a ton of fun, and a huge challenge. We won them all, and they felt like little mini raids.
i believe they give the number of loot bags based on the difficulty of the PQ.. some later PQ's give up to 10 bags so you have a high chance of winning, others dont. also realize you are doing the PQ for influence overall.. not necessarily for the items in the chest at the end, thats just a bonus.
You obviously haven't tried getting a group in WoW for a while... you spend an hour trying to get a group and just before the first boss the tank has to go because his mom says "dinner's ready"...
Well I would assume that it's possible to create a "soft" instance, a zone where they can scan the amount of players. For people just passing through well just add a small formula to remove a certain percentage figured out by observing a couple of PQs for a couple of days. But those are a minority and the Scalability wouldn't need to be as precise as this.
Something like..
3 Persons, 6, 12, 18, 24
Tallrock: You obviously haven't played during off hours, I've been playing for the past 2 hours and I haven't seen a single other player. Been waiting on a scenario for 2 hours, went to 6 different pq, went to the first rvr area and only found one ennemy player. I took back the Order keep by myself, that was really lame.
+ the whole point of PQ was to NOT have to spam LFG, its for people like me who don't like asking for groups and being social
Mythsyin: You might be fine with getting no loot at all but many people aren't. It's frustrating.
Your problem is you probably did it like once or twice and didnt get anything. If you stay and do the PQ a bunch of times you will get loot. Yes when there is 20 people the its hard but you get the pq done in like 2 minutes.
How about 15 times before I got anything in my first pq? I even went back when I was twice the level for that place just to see what the rewards were and I couldn't get anything.
The PQs are not done 5x faster if there are 5x more people, more like 2x faster depending on the PQ. You have to wait for spawn, or time delays from many things like stage change or having to find a lost mob
Yeah I agree, I found that in the PQs where there were tons of people, it was never really an issue of damage so higher level players have no advantage, it's a matter of being in the right place at the right time to get in your hits or grab the object or whatever to get your influence. After that it's all about luck.
Oh, and no, "just do the PQ a bunch of times" is not a valid solution. They need to fix this if they expect PQs to become a major part of the game.
Uhh...is this a joke? The game already tracks which players are in the PQ, that's how it pops up the scoreboard at the end.
Experienced teh same thing. Except the overcrowding wasn't that bad. It was the undercrowding; at one point it was me trying to do a chapter 2 PQ all by my lonely self, and as you can guess it did not end well.
The early PQs are overcrowded for sure but if you get to chapter 3+ there will always be 3 different PQs per chapter. The one closest to town is usually overcrowded and the other two usually have a partial group there. Once you get a guild going these will be great for small guild groups to do.
Even if you hit one of these alone you can usually do at least the 1st stage and sometimes the 2nd stage for some pretty decent influence overall.
I would agree that some PQ's early one get swamped with players, specially the Greenskin Chap1, while others have none.
The interesting thing I noticed here is that the others from the same chapter go empty because most folks hang out and INF cap on the first one not realizing there is another just around the bend.
In beta they were all farely scarce but thats because of the limited people, however even with that.. by the time you crank thru Part-1 enough other folks happen across and join in to just be able to get past stage-2, and if yer lucky you have enough addins to take on stage-3. and if you do chances are the entire force will end up sticking around to run it once from the beginning.
Also, if done right most PQ's can be done with a single group of 6, although a little hairy at times. And chances are you'll be in a guld later and youll find lots of guild folks your level will make the trip to join in too.
But holy cow... those Chap1 PQs need to be made a little longer or just a larger amount of mobs to make them last a bit longer.
-Phid
Well... I've played some more and encountered 6 more PQs (all of them empty except 1)
I'm afraid that this is a good representation of what will happen when the game launches. A few Public Quests that are near the road will be constantly filled but all those that are a bit farther will be empty and rarely ever done. Their practically useless
Probably because everyone is swaping characters to try out as many as possible, I too have noticed that Tier2 is barron of life. Tier1 PQs are very empty right now, seems people are focusing on player creation and testing a few levels then progressing very high and spreading out.
In beta with ALOT less folks it was a nice mix at various PQ's. as they spread out at release you should notice a much better turnout.
-Phid