Public Quests Are Antisocial

[tazelbain]

You don't understand what I'm saying by broken.  I'm not saying that it's a car I didn't choose, I'm saying that queue times for pvp instances other than Empire/Chaos were literally 4 hours and growing.  That's not a "you chose a minivan" thats "as broken as a fucking gremlin."

Same thing for PQs, there are PQs that are flat broken.  Some are so hard to find that there are literally no one doing them, some are exploitable in serious ways to grief people, some are exploitable by AE classes to always steal the most contribution, and a few work.  Those aren't "zomg you didn't pick the minivan but it's still a valid type of car", those things are broken.  For every 5 things you find in the game, 1 works and 4 are broken.

On the scenerio queue, the only time this ever been an issue when I leveled into T2 DvG before everyone else.  The problem lasted a day.  Same problem must exist on new servers in WoW.
On PQ,  now you are switching your argument from a criticism of PQs as a concept to Nebu's some pq are bugged/griefable and need to be reexamined.  

[murdoc]

I've played nothing but Destro and I can only remember once where scenarios weren't popping fairly regularily. I only played in the evenings and weekends though, so maybe that's it?

[tazelbain]

As for PQs.  They're a return back to oldschool "open" dungeons instead of Instances, so they're going to have the exact same problems those open dungeons did.  One random asshat with grief on his mind will make life miserable for everyone involved.  "D'vinn to zone!"

The advantage of PQs is they are of smaller scope so the impact of griefing is very minor.  It's not like Lower Guk where you practically live there.

I am skepital of the "Bad Impemtation" argument.  Basically you are saying you could armchair design a better PQ System.

[Lum]

Well if you have a group of people and don't want to bother with hordes of mouth breathers coming in, taking your kills and nabbing the very nicely random loot that wouldn't have been won without your groups effort you can always go do a dungeon....oh, wait.

You missed the point completely.  In a PQ, ONE PERSON can ruin a PQ for LOTS OF PEOPLE.  This is a bad mechanic.  It's not about my group wanting all the loot or xp.  It's about one idiot making it hard for everyone to complete the PQ.

This is true. I've seen it already even in lowbie PQs in open beta - someone 6 or 7 levels above everyone else can suck up so much influence vs everyone else that it's pointless to even bother participating, and several guilds had people doing exactly that (powerlevelling guild groups, probably). The only influence I got was the stage complete bonuses - I might as well have not even bothered actually doing anything.

And yeah, it's not so much armchair design as something that should (and probably will) be fixed in live once the grief potential is demonstrated.

[Goreschach]

I've played nothing but Destro and I can only remember once where scenarios weren't popping fairly regularily. I only played in the evenings and weekends though, so maybe that's it?

As order, I found it difficult to get a scenario pop, even in order/chaos areas. This may be because the server I chose was listed as medium/full in population disparity. There just weren't a whole lot of order on most of the time.

[Nebu]

I am skepital of the "Bad Impemtation" argument.  Basically you are saying you could armchair design a better PQ System.

Any time ANY of us is critical of a system, it does suggest that we know a better way.  Often we don't.  It's easier to spot flaws than it is to offer a solution.  I'm guilty of this on occasion since I have little knowledge of coding games.  My hope is that if enough of us recognize a problem, that someone with the technical expertise will appreciate our input and apply some sort of solution.  Hell, a compromise is often as good as a solution.  

[cevik]

On the scenerio queue, the only time this ever been an issue when I leveled into T2 DvG before everyone else.  The problem lasted a day.  Same problem must exist on new servers in WoW.

I was tier 1 at the time, though in the post I original made I did posit the possibility that I was one of the few remaining teir 1 people and that was part of the problem.  Of course I also believe that there was a strong possibility of it just being a bug; however, I continue to assert that when WoW had BG queues that operated nearly identically to WARs bg queues the overpopulated side had a terribly long wait for pvp, and WAR has not in any way addressed the problem.  So I suspect that while my problem may be isolated during beta, it will be a major problem at release and an even worse problem a month out of release.

On PQ,  now you are switching your argument from a criticism of PQs as a concept to Nebu's some pq are bugged/griefable and need to be reexamined.  

No, I'm really not.  I'm saying 2 things:

1)  That PQs as a concept suck.  They are, as Merusk said above, nothing but "old school" non-instanced dungeons.  They were only designed as a "cheap" way to implement group content because WAR did not have the resources do design well thought out instances like WoW.  They look all unique and cool to you now, but in a month they will be a worthless grind that no one does.

2)  Not only is the idea shitty and the design bad, but they are poorly implemented, bugged and griefable.  So not only did they have a bad idea, they failed to implement them in a way that works.

You see, I'm not changing arguments, I'm arguing two things at once.  The idea sucks, but not only that, the implementation of the bad idea was bad.

[Lum]

Actually it would be trivially simple to tweak PQs to minimize griefing:

- normalize influence rewards, and cap out-of-level-range contributors (dampens PLing - they still contribute by making the actual encounter trivial)
- set a minimum influence award per contribution which scales on count of players in an encounter (will have some minmaxers doing one-hit-and-move-on, but will better reward casual players, and minmax behavior would move away from trying to dominate an encounter)

Those two fixes would cap most griefing that I witnessed.

Also, I disagree with Cevik. PQs are a good idea *because* they return to open-world encounters vs. instancing, while addressing many of the problems with open-world encounters. It's a fantastic way for casual players to see content normally reserved for high level groups.

[cevik]

I am skepital of the "Bad Impemtation" argument.  Basically you are saying you could armchair design a better PQ System.

This is a silly argument.  In no way am I even remotely implying I know how to fix the PQ system.  I do not in any way need to know how to fix the system in order to tell you it's currently broken.

I don't get paid to make games.  I am not required to know a better way to approach the problem in order to tell you that the current approach is not good.  Your argument lacks any merit and I honestly can't believe I've wasted this much time addressing it.

[cevik]

Also, I disagree with Cevik. PQs are a good idea *because* they return to open-world encounters vs. instancing, while addressing many of the problems with open-world encounters. It's a fantastic way for casual players to see content normally reserved for high level groups.

My main grief with the PQs that I've seen to date, which happen to all be in WAR, is that they are a cheap way of doing open-world encounters.  There is no real design, it's just

"Everyone click on 10 objects"
"GOOD JOB!"
"Okay now everyone kill 10 things"
"GOOD JOB!"
"Okay now everyone kill the big thing!"
"GOOD JOB!"

Then.. wait 2 minutes and repeat.

It's fun because it's a unique carnival atmosphere orgy of killing that we haven't seen in awhile (kinda like how Crushbone was fun the first couple of times we went there for much the same reason) but the ideas are all cheap.  There is no real nice design, it just repeats those 3 basic steps for pretty much every PQ that I've seen.  And once people get tired of those basic things and the griefing inherent in it and stop doing the PQs they will be less and less fun because they won't have that same atmosphere.

[Abelian75]

"Everyone click on 10 objects"
"GOOD JOB!"
"Okay now everyone kill 10 things"
"GOOD JOB!"
"Okay now everyone kill the big thing!"
"GOOD JOB!"

Get it straight, man.  Typically you kill ten things, and THEN click ten objects.

[rattran]

The 'Defend these X Squishies against incoming Mobs' PQs are quite fun too

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm not bashing them, i found them fun. But what i found was, they are the  manifestation of the rule "Playing alone together". So much so, that no one is doing it "For the WARRRGGG!", they are doing it for the individual rewards and completely selfish reasons (Driving what the blog was about). The "Scoring a point for our side" is a side affect, and a mask as to whats really going on,. if anything, mythic should be commended on such a clever ruse/masking of the reality.

[UnsGub]

"Everyone click on 10 objects"
"GOOD JOB!"

It an improvement from waiting, usually to long, to get the "right" group to get start some content.  One can solo the start of most PQs even.  MMOs biggest constraint is scheduling two or more people and it helps solve that problem.  Not have a "right" group does make it easier but also more accessable.  Tradeoffs are everywhere in design.  Every game\sport can be broken down into do something, get a reward, and repeat from 1 stage to N stages.  Balancing is going to come later as they need to get the content in and working enough to get from start to finish.  Many zones had broken PQs that could not even be finished a few weeks ago.  They have months of work balancing work to do which they have been blocked on.

[Draegan]

I'm not bashing them, i found them fun. But what i found was, they are the  manifestation of the rule "Playing alone together". So much so, that no one is doing it "For the WARRRGGG WAAAGH!", they are doing it for the individual rewards and completely selfish reasons (Driving what the blog was about). The "Scoring a point for our side" is a side affect, and a mask as to whats really going on,. if anything, mythic should be commended on such a clever ruse/masking of the reality.

FIFY

Also Cevik, you're being dumb.  Quite screaming at everyone.  You think the game is awful, thank you.  I think the PQ system is the best evolution in DIKU PVE since instanced raid zones.  I enjoy them for what they are.  I don't have to prep for them, or wait around for them, or search for a group with them I just show up for a while play and then move on.  That's why they're good.  I think you're playing the WOW fanboy a little strong here.  WAR deserves criticism, I agree, but it's not terribad like you say it is the you  try to convince others of that fact.

Also have you played the game since the first PW?

[cevik]

Also Cevik, you're being dumb.  Quite screaming at everyone.  You think the game is awful, thank you.  I think the PQ system is the best evolution in DIKU PVE since instanced raid zones.  I enjoy them for what they are.  I don't have to prep for them, or wait around for them, or search for a group with them I just show up for a while play and then move on.  That's why they're good.  I think you're playing the WOW fanboy a little strong here.  WAR deserves criticism, I agree, but it's not terribad like you say it is the you  try to convince others of that fact.

Also have you played the game since the first PW?

Not thinking PQs are the bees knees is dumb?

I think pretty much everything you see as being nice about PQs will be dead in a month when the newbie lands are no longer filled with people.  Sure they partially work right now, typically because there are a bunch of people trying to do them at the moment, but when everyone filters out of the starting zones I think you'll likely find that you're going to have to put together a group to do the PQs, and then you won't even have a nicely designed scenario to run through for your effort.  Instead you'll gather 10 things, kill 10 things, and kill big thing, all in the same spot, then repeat it until your tank has enough influence and drops group half way through the 3rd iteration of the PQ because he doesn't need it anymore and you all die to the champion mob spawn.

I'm sorry that I don't agree with you and that makes me dumb.

EDIT:  Even right now, in open beta, there are typically about enough people to have one PQ per area going, and the others I've found have been ghost towns.

[Ingmar]

I'm not bashing them, i found them fun. But what i found was, they are the  manifestation of the rule "Playing alone together". So much so, that no one is doing it "For the WARRRGGG!", they are doing it for the individual rewards and completely selfish reasons (Driving what the blog was about). The "Scoring a point for our side" is a side affect, and a mask as to whats really going on,. if anything, mythic should be commended on such a clever ruse/masking of the reality.

Players won't do something in ANY game without incentive.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm not bashing them, i found them fun. But what i found was, they are the  manifestation of the rule "Playing alone together". So much so, that no one is doing it "For the WARRRGGG!", they are doing it for the individual rewards and completely selfish reasons (Driving what the blog was about). The "Scoring a point for our side" is a side affect, and a mask as to whats really going on,. if anything, mythic should be commended on such a clever ruse/masking of the reality.

Players won't do something in ANY game without incentive.

Was not the point. 

[Draegan]

Also Cevik, you're being dumb.  Quite screaming at everyone.  You think the game is awful, thank you.  I think the PQ system is the best evolution in DIKU PVE since instanced raid zones.  I enjoy them for what they are.  I don't have to prep for them, or wait around for them, or search for a group with them I just show up for a while play and then move on.  That's why they're good.  I think you're playing the WOW fanboy a little strong here.  WAR deserves criticism, I agree, but it's not terribad like you say it is the you  try to convince others of that fact.

Also have you played the game since the first PW?

Not thinking PQs are the bees knees is dumb?

I think pretty much everything you see as being nice about PQs will be dead in a month when the newbie lands are no longer filled with people.  Sure they partially work right now, typically because there are a bunch of people trying to do them at the moment, but when everyone filters out of the starting zones I think you'll likely find that you're going to have to put together a group to do the PQs, and then you won't even have a nicely designed scenario to run through for your effort.

I'm sorry that I don't agree with you and that makes me dumb.

EDIT:  Even right now, in open beta, there are typically about enough people to have one PQ per area going, and the others I've found have been ghost towns.

It's not that you disagree with me but you don't shut up about it.  We know you think the game sucks, can we move on or maybe pick a new thing to hate the game about.

Also, you can't really see how the PQs will work when the game isn't live yet with working populations.  But some PQs will be empty some other won't be but your character development doesn't hinge on them being full all the time, there are other things to do.

  Instead you'll gather 10 things, kill 10 things, and kill big thing, all in the same spot, then repeat it until your tank has enough influence and drops group half way through the 3rd iteration of the PQ because he doesn't need it anymore and you all die to the champion mob spawn.

Well if you want to pick extreme cases to argue against something, fine by me.  Carry on.

[tazelbain]

No, I'm really not.  I'm saying 2 things:

1)  That PQs as a concept suck.  They are, as Merusk said above, nothing but "old school" non-instanced dungeons.  They were only designed as a "cheap" way to implement group content because WAR did not have the resources do design well thought out instances like WoW.  They look all unique and cool to you now, but in a month they will be a worthless grind that no one does.

2)  Not only is the idea shitty and the design bad, but they are poorly implemented, bugged and griefable.  So not only did they have a bad idea, they failed to implement them in a way that works.

You see, I'm not changing arguments, I'm arguing two things at once.  The idea sucks, but not only that, the implementation of the bad idea was bad.

1) Your speculation on Mythic's motives has no relationship on whether or not PQ are a good idea.  Many people don't like instances.  And if they instantized the PQs, people would be screaming about it being single player like Guild Wars. You keep mentioning "in one month".  Nobody knows how it'll take the tier 1 to empty.  It may never empty because all the alt rolling casuals are common these days.

2) Not my experience.  I have never been griefed.  It is a concern but its not a rampant problem plaguing the PQ.  As I mention if there is grieffing going its not very sever.  You are not tied to a PQ.  Bugged PQs suck but so do bugged regular quests and they will get fixed.  You point out how simplistic quest steps are but all quests can be boiled down to their kill, gather, deliver steps.  That's a knock on the concept of quests as a mechanic not just public quests.

It's okay Cevik we know you don't believe anything you say.  It's all just you killing time.

[Lum]

Also, if the PQs were instances instead, there would still be the "ghost town" issue, simply that you'd be unable to find a group to complete them instead of being able to find a mass of random people roughly equalling a group in the area.

[Ingmar]

1)  That PQs as a concept suck.  They are, as Merusk said above, nothing but "old school" non-instanced dungeons.  They were only designed as a "cheap" way to implement group content because WAR did not have the resources do design well thought out instances like WoW.  They look all unique and cool to you now, but in a month they will be a worthless grind that no one does.

How are those BRD instance groups working out for you? At least with the PQ model for this, you can accomplish *something* without a group (getting influence for the first phase mobs, etc.)

[cevik]

I said instances, for the record, not because the PQs should be instanced, but because in WoW the instances are designed chunks of game that have you traveling through a story (of sorts) and not some static location to go and stand and have mobs spawn for you to kill them.

That's my gripe with the way PQs work in WAR, they were a cheap way to make forced group content.  No real effort had to go into designing them and you can tell.  Every one has you go stand in one place for 3 iterations of waves of mobs/waves of gathering things and then you are done.

I'd like to see something like a "raid the castle" PQ.  Hell maybe one exists in the game, but I sure never saw it.  And no, I don't mean the silly greenskin PQ where you gather stuff to get a giant to spawn some waves of mobs running out of the entrance to a castle, then get a wave of boss mobs.  I mean a real, run into the castle help push through the defenses and move into the throne room and finally kill the boss.  Or maybe another one that is something more akin to the Escape from Durnholde event in WoW.

Something other than stand in one spot fighting/gathering waves of stuff.

[Lum]

Which is amusing, considering "vast amount of spawning mobs rushing at you, followed by a boss mob" defines 99% of pre-raid level WoW instances.

Given how closely Warhammer cleaved to WoW's 'inspiration', I'd be very surprised if there were not high level heavily scripted public quests that tried to replicate the scripting of high level WoW instances. Of course, since only up to level 20 is outside of NDA at the moment...

[cevik]

Which is amusing, considering "vast amount of spawning mobs rushing at you, followed by a boss mob" defines 99% of pre-raid level WoW instances.

At least in the Tank and Spank pre-raid WoW you don't just stand in one place and wait for the mobs to come to you.

That's the difference, pre-raid WoW may suck, but at least they took the time to design a dungeon around the waves of badguys.

EDIT: In WAR it's "Go stand next to those wagons, we'll send some people to meet you" over and fucking over.

[cevik]

Given how closely Warhammer cleaved to WoW's 'inspiration', I'd be very surprised if there were not high level heavily scripted public quests that tried to replicate the scripting of high level WoW instances. Of course, since only up to level 20 is outside of NDA at the moment...

We'd probably know if they'd lift that NDA now wouldn't we?

[Ingmar]

I'm not seeing a big functional difference, once you strip away all the set dressing, between "stand in one spot, waves of monsters come at you" and "move around to where waves of monsters are standing".

WoW PVE is generally better for PVE-focused play (I would bet good money they'll implement PQs or something similar anyway.) In WAR PvE is there to get you in shape for PVP, and the 'drop in and get your work done painlessly' model of the PQ is pretty ideal for that it seems to me.

[cevik]

WoW PVE is generally better for PVE-focused play (I would bet good money they'll implement PQs or something similar anyway.) In WAR PvE is there to get you in shape for PVP, and the 'drop in and get your work done painlessly' model of the PQ is pretty ideal for that it seems to me.

And I may agree with this if Mythic didn't seem so intent on keeping people out of the end game PvP and grinding PvE content.  They nerfed XP rates for PvP and raised it for questing in the most recent patch.  Not to mention that in the patch before they nerfed XP gain across the board.

They put little effort into the PvE, it's a crappy PvE game where even the dungeons are just "stand in one place and grind until you can't stand it anymore" PQs, and then they appear to be constantly trying to make it take more time to level and require PvE in the leveling process.

EDIT:  And my argument, of course, is that stripping away the set dressing is EXACTLY the problem.  They've turned dungeons into stand in one place with a group and grind.  They likely did it because it was much cheaper than designing actual dungeons, and it ends up being a boring grind fest where you don't even have cool changing scenery to look at while you grind it.  All mmogs boil down to pressing a button, but none of us want the "set dressing" stripped down to the point where there is a big button to press in the middle of the screen and a chat box.

[Draegan]

cevik so in your vast experience with Mystic's PvE/PvP design were you ever a member of the Elder server and/or have you ever made it passed rank 10?

I have access to the Elder Server so unfortunately I can't say anything about it right now, other than, perhaps they want to keep the end game sekret to the masses like a giant SPOILER tag so they get to enjoy it themselves?

[cevik]

You are right, if the answer is "there is seeeeeekrit stuff that makes it all better" then there is just nothing I can say.

I'll believe it when I see it (or at least when I read about the astounding success that is WAR!)..

P.S.:  My vast experience with Mythic at least lets me spell the name of the company correctly.

[schild]

The only reason this thread made it to 65 posts is because 1. I just posted and 2. You lot fed the troll.

[Lakov_Sanite]

He's got good points but right now war is all a waiting game and speculation. Will things feel empty after two months if you are behind the levelling push? is the content post 20 good? how slow will levelling feel when the game is really out and you are devoting many nights to it?

Some outlooks are highly optimistic and some very pessimistic but in the end all i know is i'll be buying the game to find out.

[Trippy]

Kind of a strange article.  I've noticed all the things he's mentioned, but while I was reading that I was just thinking the whole time, "that's just an implementation detail, not inherent to the idea of public quests."  But then at the end that's basically what he said as well.  At the beginning it sounded like he was going to make the case that the idea of PQ's is inherently antisocial, when in actuality he just ended up saying that WAR's PQ's have some implementation problems.  It's just kinda weird because it really doesn't invalidate any of the "singing PQ's praises" stuff he mentioned in the beginning.

Unless they change the loot bag award mechanic completely it is inherent to PQs. Everybody participating through phase 3 is in competition for a very scarce resource: the blue loot bag. That is the issue.

[Ingmar]

Kind of a strange article.  I've noticed all the things he's mentioned, but while I was reading that I was just thinking the whole time, "that's just an implementation detail, not inherent to the idea of public quests."  But then at the end that's basically what he said as well.  At the beginning it sounded like he was going to make the case that the idea of PQ's is inherently antisocial, when in actuality he just ended up saying that WAR's PQ's have some implementation problems.  It's just kinda weird because it really doesn't invalidate any of the "singing PQ's praises" stuff he mentioned in the beginning.

Unless they change the loot bag award mechanic completely it is inherent to PQs. Everybody participating through phase 3 is in competition for a very scarce resource: the blue loot bag. That is the issue.

As far as I've been able to determine, contribution and influence are not the same thing, though. The original author's points all seem to be centered around influence gain, but that's not what determines your roll bonus, your contribution (which seems to be a hidden calculation that doesn't match how influence is awarded) is - and actually those loot bags add incentive for people to stay around through the end of the fight and *not* screw it up for people, because if the encounter isn't completed sucessfully, you don't get your shot at the bag.

[Trippy]

The "anti-social" stuff I saw centered around phase 3. There is some stuff that goes on in phase 2 but that's typically a fairly short phase (assuming you have enough to even get past it). For influence farming from what I remember you get the bulk of it doing the Phase 1 stuff so while there is incentive to screw with other people in phase 2 the "bonus" from doing that sort of stuff would seem small, though I haven't played in a while so I don't know what the numbers are like now.

In phase 3 people will do things like ignore the Champions and only beat on the Hero (thinking that'll give them a better ranking), not rez other people (unless it's their only tank), and so on.