PQs are a failure in their current state

[Phunked]

In their current state, PQs are not working. This is due to several reasons which I will explain below:

1. Not enough people. PQs require, at the lowest end, at least 3 people to finish (tank healer dps) and often more. This is especially prevalent in tier 3, when you get linked champions beating your face in. Now this is okay, if there are enough people. But there are so many PQs spread across so many chapters and they take so long to finish that people just don't do them very much and very often. The open party system is great, but it is unlikely that I can find a group for even a single PQ in a given chapter at any time. This seems like it would work much better with server pops of about 10k -15k instead of 5k. Not enough people makes PQs take too long to do, which leads to people not doing them ... repeat.

2. PQs do not reward grouping. Influence division is linear, in that there seems to be no group bonus. This is probably due to avoiding groups exploiting PQs and allows each stage of a PQ to provide a set total of influence. However this creates a problem in that 2 people will not necessarily kill stuff at twice the rate, and respawn times and travel times make grouping often a less efficient method of farming influence. It is slower to grind in a group than solo. A solution to this would be to increase stage bonuses, so that getting enough to complete a stage would be the bulk of the influence, but that might lead to issues wherein someone comes in at 110/125, kill an orc and gets 5k influence. However, I think this has to happen anyways because of the next couple points.

3. Stage 1 is a terrible grind. Always. >100 mobs to kill takes a while, even with a group. There seems to be little reason to do this as the exp and gear rewards are pretty shitty compared to PvP (hi2u 1.2k exp stage completion bonus). The grind is boring, trivial and just annoying, often limited by respawn rates at unresponsive AI.

4. The loot, generally, is bad. There aren't enough blue/purple loot bags, all green bags contain the same loot each time you do the thing, not all tradeskills have representative level drops from the loot bags (hi2u talisman making) and you are not always guaranteed to get even a single blue loot bag. That's a laundry list of issues, all of which make it largely not worth the time to bother with this crap. The fact that each green bag contains the exact same (often poorly itemized) green makes it undesirable to keep trying, because green bags at the most common reward. This is made even worse by the fact that you are not always guaranteed a blue bag, so even when you do win first, you can get the same prize as the 8th person, who can RNG his way to a blue bag the very next completion (while still being 8th in contribution). The unpredictability of loot makes it too much like a grindy lottery system. The mundane repetitiveness of loot makes the lottery have a shitty payout. As a talisman maker, a profession which would have the greatest use and has the largest demand for blue level crafting crap from loot bags, I get nothing. I can't even burn the green level reward all the time, because salvaging some items is inconsistent (some belts you can, some you can't). There is no way I will usually want to grind another 125 mobs when I'm capped influence to get a shot at the same unsalvagable green item.

5. TOO MUCH OF THE SAME. Kill 125 mobs. Kill 10 champions. Kill boss. This is a great avenue for creating interesting scripted open world encounters. Where is the originality? A lot of PQs are fun, but some seem like copies of previous ones added in just to give the obligatory 3 PQs per chapter. Why are some many PQs terrible? Why are they almost always tank and spank for the bosses? The PvE system is pretty bad, so forcing you to grind it out and deal with repetitive content for the best methods of securing predictable gear upgrades (from rally masters btw) is going to highlight the glaring flaws with the PvE like nothing else. Its a PvP game, Mythic said they want PvE to be light and fun and very PvP oriented as much as possible. Sure there are a few PQs with competing order vs destruction objectives, but the vast majority are "grind 150 of these, then 10 of those then some boss". Why can't every PQ be competitive? If i want to get 23 friends and stop your 5 man group from getting past stage 1 after you have a massive headstart, I should damn well be able to. Might add some fun to the WAR IS EVERYWHERE stuff. I realize that I could have rolled open and PvPed you down, but hell, open is shit and adding some PvE tension might give some legs to the totally meh PvE experience. Yes I come from WoW, yes I like me my scripted Sunwell, no this isn't anywhere close. But I'm not asking so much for that level of PvE polish, I realize its a PvP game. That still doesn't let them provide you with turd on a stick, call it amazing and then make you suck it up and provide you with PvP gear for t3. Add to that the shitfest that is t3 renown gear, and you can see my point. And t3 is where a lot of people will have to make a choice after playing semicasually for a month about whether they want to resub. Best not to fuck with us here bitches, or you'll go broke.

In addition to bitching I actually have some suggestions on how to fix this:

1. Reduce stage 1 mobs by 50%. To compensate for lost influence, increase stage bonuses by a lot. I realize that this may make it so that people grind stage 1 over and over again, but they already do that, this will just make it less grindy (while still very grindy solo). In addition, add a larger XP gain to stage bonuses. T3 PvE grind is awful, and it would be nice to be able to get actual XP gain from PQs. Who knows, this might fix the population issue a bit by making PQs the bread and butter PvE leveling method. God knows the regular quests are derivative and boring, while some PQs are actually pretty fun, so this cannot possibly be a bad change.

2. In order to give people an incentive to finish the thing more often, by say asking for some friends to come over and help2/3 (which I think was the intent - you get to this harder stage and you start to spontaneously organize a bit and bring in friends) increase loot rewards and make the loot more predictable. Also, scale the loot somewhat to amount of participants. This might add some gear inflation, but this isn't supposed to be that gear based a game, especially in terms of leveling content. The reason I ask for loot scaling is that if I have 12 people in a small warband, it helps if more than 3 people get something (even if its just a green). Keeps them interested. But seriously, standardize the rewards. For the harder PQs (you know which ones they are, some stage 3 bosses are hard, some are just tank and spank) maybe even give 3-4 blue bags.

3. Add loot variety. Loot diversity in this game is so minimal that I sometimes wonder if the design team didn't just run it through some sort of random item creator. Willpower+initiative shields? Who the hell is going to use that. Add some variety to green bags, so that getting > 1 is actually desired. Also, for the love of christ, add talisman making stuff to the rewards, at the same level as the other tradeskills. Why this isn't in is beyond me, but its stupid.

4. Remove or redo the ones that suck. I totally understand that PvE is hardly your focus and there are a LOT of legitimate PvP issues, but if you're going to be pushing PQs as the thing that you thought of that moves the genre forward, at least do those right. Everyone can see the filler copy and paste PQs. Try to vary it up a bit. And hell, while you're at it, make the PvE just a tiny bit better hmm? Tank and spank for 40 levels? Adding even the slightest variety woudln't kill anyone, and might even make you some cash for money hats. Even the hardest core PvPers will need a chance of pace sometimes.

I realize that not all of this will go in, that there will be people who disagree and there are people who think I'm an idiot. If you feel strongly on this, one way or another, please do post, call me names and insult my intellectual capacities, but for fucks sake send them a message that there's something about this that needs fixing and needs it bad. The thing I don't understand is that I can't possibly be the first person to bring this up, and it really isn't very fun at all by anyone's standards. Does Mythic actively want to remove the fun by thinking that they know what the player wants more than the player him/herself?

[Zira]

The main reason I dont do T3 PQs is the 125 mob grind at the start. 

I think most PQs should be easily doable by a trio.  Yes, 20% of PQs should be hard, and require 1-2 full groups (the ones with a Lord at the end)....

Killing 125 with only non-DPS classes can take 40 minutes.... so... nope, dont do em.

Also the stacking +100 for missing loot should stick with your character regardless of PQ or zoning or logging in and out.

And nothing worse than crashing during stage 2 and getting no loot when you get back in.

[Hawkbit]

Some I agree with, some I don't.  I really like PQs.  They were at the top of my list that I really liked about WAR.  Or, rather, I like the idea of PQs... just not how they're implemented.  The term 'public' implies that you won't necessarily know the people you're working with prior to starting the quest.  With that assumption, PQs were obviously intended to get people working together that might not do so for other reasons.  Getting people to PUG without making them realize it??  Awesome.  It's a really novel idea that is currently broken. 

Problem:  PQs are generally empty.  Why? 

First, XP gain is better from scenarios.  As in, roughly 5-10 times better in T3.  Imo, PQs should be equivalent XP to scenarios per time spent (balance as necessary... even if scenario xp needs dropped... which it doesn't). 

Second, there's too many PQs per chapter.  Three PQs in each means 1/3 of a chance to find others working on a PQ when you complete the 'find that PQ quest' each camp has.  There's no answer to this... other than either cutting PQs (nigh impossible to get a dev to cut content) or increasing populations.

Third, Loot is terrible.  Gold/purp/blue bags are entirely too rare.  I personally have never looted more than a green bag since the game went live.  It's not going to hurt to give people decent loot for putting in the time... hell it might even <shock!> get people to do PQs!!

Fourth, PQ group balance!  Some of them can be done with three people.  Others need two full groups.  Yet there's no way to know what we need until we try the PQ.  I've had it happen multiple times where I'll stumble on one or two people in a PQ, group with them and find that we have no shot at Stage 3.  That's just no fun, man... there's no incentive to stay for more, not to mention you have to wait 10 minutes to start the whole thing over. 

Fifth, as it stands, there's no reason for a person who legitimately completes all three stages to not receive a loot bag.  Give everyone something.  Without the hard economy, it can't hurt. 

I bitch because I love... seriously.  It's a great idea that is going to be copied in future games because of it's convenience.   Sadly, it's not going to be long before someone does it a lot better.

[Sunbury]

Curious, do players use some kind of zone chat to coordinate starting PQs?   

[Hawkbit]

Generally speaking, people don't chat at all in this game.  All the PQ communications I do are through /say.  That's another mark against the chat system, really.  Without a global or tier chat, everyone is simply too isolated. 

Another problem that hinders population for PQs is that you don't want people doing scenarios in your PQs because they just poof! into thin air when their timer is up.  It's a pretty fair way to watch a PQ group dissolve. 

[schild]

Curious, do players use some kind of zone chat to coordinate starting PQs?   

Any sort of /general is dead, it's actually kind of nice, if you have a guild and people to play with.

[Typhon]

I think they can make them significantly better with minor (?) changes:

It would be nice if the map had a tooltip for the PQ that would tell you it's expected number of folks required.  It would also be nice if the difficulty had some influence on the type of loot generated

It would be even nicer if that tooltip was dynamic and would tell you the current status of that PQ, and the number of people currently gaining influence (with last min) at that PQ

I agree that experience for completing chapters needs to be boosted.  75% of the PvP rewards seems right.

On the other hand, I like that there are usually about 3 different PQs per chapter. 

[Numtini]

Well Kathy my AM hit 21st last night doing a PQ with Bat Country and that is the first PQ I have completed on that character. I think that says it all. Though I have finished one chapter by circumstance by killing enough first wave mobs to cap influence. It took my entire evening to cap inf, I won three green bags, and there's not a single thing that isn't vendor trash. The loot that I can use are two drops from mobs we killed during the PQs.

I agree with all of these points. People are spread among too many PQs and what you get for your effort is insufficient.

Loot in general is fubar. Almost everything I am wearing is a normal drop that I bought on the AH. I do quests 5 or 6 levels below me because they pay the same xp as current level ones do and I can get through them faster. I take the loot and sell it on the AH to people 5 or 6 levels below me. I then buy loot my own level from players a few levels above me who are doing the same thing. I can't remember the last time I saw anything in a PQ or the renown stores that was worth wearing. While I'm whinging, loot for AMs is horrible in general as well. It's pretty clear that elves are from Hibernia.

Despite all this, I can't wait to get home and play. I must be going daft.

[Phunked]

I'm amazed no one has commented on the shitty influence gains for most PQs.

You get 100 per mob kill/grounspawn gather in stage 1. In the earlier chapters this is huge. When you're in ch>10 and you need 17k to max, that means you have to SOLO THE ENTIRE first stage of a PQ to cap. That's captain grind on steroids with his side kick nauseating boredom. The stage completes are no where near adequate as a boost (180 influence boost = 2 mobs). If only the influence given by mobs scaled with chapters, eventually getting to... 200 per?

I'd imagine that if you do all 3 pqs from start to finish you should cap, assuming you had the appropriate group. This is not currently the case. Perhaps adding a group multiplier for influence? Increase stage bonuses?

[Nebu]

It has been said before: Closing half of the servers would help this game a lot assuming the game would still run well. 

- More people in each tier

- Shorter queues for scenarios

- more people in open pvp areas

Improving xp gains and loot would go a long way as well.  How about more random dye drops as well?  Maybe PQ bosses could drop some rare colors to encourage participation.  Then there's the issue of loot variation.  I swear that ZERO thought was put into itemization.  ZERO. 

[Mrbloodworth]

I am under the impression that mythics servers hold LESS than is typical for a MMO.

[amiable]

I think the problem with merging servers is that they are afraid of too many folks clustered together at 31-40.  World PvP is already a slideshow when fighting an every-day Six Mouths group, the engine can't handle too high of a concentraiton of folk.

[schild]

Also, I highly doubt the server will seem underpopulated when most folks hit t4 on their main.

[Nebu]

I think the problem with merging servers is that they are afraid of too many folks clustered together at 31-40.  World PvP is already a slideshow when fighting an every-day Six Mouths group, the engine can't handle too high of a concentraiton of folk.

Yeah... that's a problem.  "HAY GUYZ, we have world rvr but only 20 of you can play at a time or it becomes PowerPoint Hammer".  They really need to sort out their coding issues.  This engine isn't going to cut it for the numbers they wish to retain.  Especially with the number of people willing to use any lag exploit possible to win.  If you can't play smoothly with 50+ people on the screen, what's the point?

[Trippy]

If you can't play smoothly with 50+ people on the screen, what's the point?

What did they do in DAoC?

[slog]

When a player enters the area of a PQ, he should get a popup box that says something like

"DUDE.  YOU ARE IN A PQ AREA.!! WANT TO PARTICIPATE?  SWEET!! KILCK OK TO JOIN or CANCel to ignore.

When a player clicks yes, they are auto-grouped with everyone else doing the PQ.  leaving the PQ group means you get no PQ lewt XP.

This solves the chat issue, the DPS leaving to get more rewards issue,  the problems healers have with healing non-grouped people, and so on.

[schild]

I've been OK with 50+ people on the screen before, but it's slowed down randomly, like say, when certain runes get dropped. I didn't have a problem the first time we defended with grudge until I died a couple times and the keep wouldn't load, I daresay there were 150+ people there.

[UnSub]

I'd like it if I joined a PQ group I could auto-teleport to their location. Sometimes I've seen a PQ group open at the other side from where I am and have to add up the time taken to get there to my consideration of actually doing the PQ. Let me TP there and I'm sure more players would get involved.

[Draegan]

I had 4 warbands fighting in a T3 keep yesterday, only slowed a little bit.

[Righ]

I'll be interested to see what effect turning off the logging makes. I took a look at my logs and they don't appear to be substantial, but I've no idea how it writes them. As its Windows, its probably not very efficient. However, I imagine that some of the AoE client lag will be reduced if the disk isn't as busy, and I'm using a laptop with a single 7200 RPM drive, so I'm probably on the lower end of 'acceptable' performance with my disk.

[Phunked]

I think that the major issue has more to do with how sucky their code is than any issues with your machine. It runs terribly on machines that should be able to run multiple copies of the game in parallel with no issues. Mythic should hire say 20 more programmers and put them on fixing this shit if they want it to work. Also, I want to know what the internal QA people are using to test (settings, config options and machines), because it would appear that no one saw these problems internally before release. Unless they did see them all and didn't bother fixing them in favor of nerfing exp gain.

[Righ]

Its probably not that exactly - take a look at the credits list when you're in server/character selection. Its not the number (and unlikely the calibre) of the staff that's at fault. They have a substantial number of development staff and QA staff, many of whom are respected talents. Either there are some poor organisational issues or a number of business decisions changed things after they had already committed to a certain path. Hopefully they have the right tools for the job too - humble beginnings and all, but after EA bought them, I would expect them to spend the cash on professional software testing tools and the staff who have experience in using them. The memory leaks do suggest that something is wrong there.

[Nebu]

Also, I highly doubt the server will seem underpopulated when most folks hit t4 on their main.

How many people will make it this far before the mind-numbing grind deters them?  I'm only in my 20's and my interest is fading fast... and I consider myself reasonable when it coems to enduring the grind.  Hell, I have a 50 in CoH. 

[schild]

Hell, I have a 50 in CoH.

I could barely make it to 25 in CoH. I'm nearly maxxed in WAR. I don't consider them comparable.

[Nebu]

I could barely make it to 25 in CoH. I'm nearly maxxed in WAR. I don't consider them comparable.

Missed the point. 

Point is that I can tolerate a grind and WAR is crushing my soul.  Having to PvP with idiots is nearly as bad as PvE and I'm losing the will to continue.  You may be missing this since you don't play a support class. 

[Lantyssa]

The memory leaks do suggest that something is wrong there.

Not being able to make /ignore work, after multiple attempts, suggests something wrong.

Memory leaks shouldn't happen, especially if they have decent tools, but I doubt there's a programmer out there who hasn't caused a few even when being very careful.  And once they're there, yadda, yadda...  Not being able to get /ignore to work when the person is visible on the list?  Your coding just sucks.

[Sauced]

I installed "Don't Log Me Bro" last night to see the impact, and for my low-end machine it made a significant impact.

[Merusk]

Hay look.. a bunch of people saying what I said in Beta about PQs!

[Nebu]

Hay look.. a bunch of people saying what I said in Beta about PQs!

/backpat

[HaemishM]

PQ's have problems, the biggest one being something I said when I tried open beta - as the population levels, new players will have a bitch of a time doing any/all/most of the lower tier content. You just cannot put together a PQ PUG group in t1 after probably 1 1/2 - 2 months post-release.There just won't be enough people. Hell, I'm having that kind of trouble NOW in t2 PQ's. There's just not enough people around and it will only get worse as time goes on.

The influence gain past t1 is pretty sucky. It doesn't scale with level. At t2, getting enough influence to get the initial reward is acceptable, but beyond that it becomes a grind especially solo. If Mythic doesn't think people want to solo the things, they wouldn't have created the system in the first place, which was meant to provide solo players with ready made groups. Only there are no ready-made groups even with open parties. Something to show a PQ is active on the map would be helpful, but those rewards have got to be scaled up and yes, there needs to be a group bonus for influence, because otherwise it's actually more efficient to do them solo. Why? Because not all mobs give influence and so while you  may be more efficient with exp. gain in a group, your influence gets parsed out pretty badly in a group.

Slog's idea about auto-joining a group upon entry into the PQ is a good one - so long as there are groups to be had. See my first point.

Also, Talisman-making? It's FUCKED. The salvaging part is absolutely fucked. You either have to hump the auction boards constantly for the cheapest greens you can find to get over certain hiccup/hell levels in the curve, or you aren't going to get very far with the talisman-making. And when you find that most of your quest/class-specific gear doesn't have talisman slots, you feel a bit cheated.

[Khaldun]

I'm with Nebu (and Phunked). The failure of the PQ design at Tier 3 is really goddamn astonishing, and very much the consequence of a cut-and-paste development model. And it's only one of several things which are totally turning me off to the game. I'm mid-20s now but I cannot imagine going much further if something doesn't change in the kind of play that's available on my server. I was queued for four hours last night without a Tier 3 scenario going off; guildies report the same. There's no chatter or chat going on anywhere in the world, everything feels completely dead. Open-world RvR sparks maybe every fourth or fifth night, but there's no telling when it will. (Renown rewards start to be so poorly itemized compared to green and blue drops from ordinary PvE that it's no big deal if your faction has no Tier 3 keeps at all.)  The only thing to do most of the time is ordinary PvE questing, which is just fucking horrible at this stage of the game. The visual quality of the environments gets worse, not better. There is no interesting mob behavior, AI  or scripting that you get to see at Tier 3 for the first time.

[Merusk]

No, it's Postcount+.

But seriously, I'm amazed that what was pooh-poohed a month or two ago is now a 'srs issue.'  Yeah, pop sucks, PQs suck without pop.  It's only going to get worse and folks have tried to express this before.  Nobody wanted to listen, "it'll all work out"   "new subs and twinks will fill them out" "it's easy enough to solo a few phases then just wait for the timer to reset"

This isn't shit I'm making up, this is what folks on this very board said to those of us who pointed out that PQs not scaling was a dumb idea.  That requiring a TANK to do PQs at all was a dumb idea.  That linking PQs to the realm capture meter was a dumb idea. That PQs with such miniscule influence gains was a bad idea.  That, really, PQs were a nifty idea but just didn't belong in a PVP-centric game in the first place.   Sometimes you just have to laugh.

[HaemishM]

I installed "Don't Log Me Bro" last night to see the impact, and for my low-end machine it made a significant impact.

Link plz?

[rattran]

I find that mass pvp is fine, until Runes go down and Standards come out. Then things start slowing down.

Last night the PQ run was good fun, but some people (as usual) rolled really poorly every time, and since we kept skipping from one to another bonuses didn't accrue.

[Numtini]

If it's standards and runes, could it be the update of buffs issue? There's a mod that slows down updates of buffs/debuffs that is supposed to increase performance.