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Random Queues and the restaurant analogy
adinosii
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,294 Arc User
I saw a post comparing Neverwinter to a restaurant, and thought it was such a great analogy that it deserved its own thread.
So here goes:
Would you continue to eat at the restaurant after those changes?
So here goes:
There is a restaurant.
It is a great little place. Sure, it may not have a Michelin star rating, but it has some really great dishes (and some that are not so great, so you only tried them once). Many other customers agree and a few of the dishes are pretty much universal favorites, although most customers try some of the other dishes for a change every now and then.
Over the years you have gotten to know many of the other regular customers. Some of them are your friends and you regularly go to the restaurant together and have some of the dishes you like.
There are a few things some people are unhappy about - a few years ago there were some good dishes that were removed from the menu, and while some of them were brought back in a simplified or reworked form, many people still miss some of their old favorites.
There are also complaints about the service - the kitchen only prepares a dish when enough people have ordered it and sometimes you have to wait quite a bit to get your order.
Still, the food is good, and people keep coming to the place.
However, the restaurant just made a big policy change:
"We have observed that our customers keep ordering the same dishes over and over, but we would like you to have a more varied experience. From now on, you will only choose the the price category of the dish, and we will bring you something from our old menu (regardless of whether you like it or not).
We have also decided we want each table to reflect our community better, so each table will seat three dark-haired customers, one red-haired and one blonde. You will be automatically seated at the first available table that has an opening for your hair color. If your hair color does not match any of those categories we will decide what your hair color should be and seat you accordingly.
This allows us to increase the portion size and speed up the service, so the average customer should be able to eat more in a shorter time.
We are sure you will love those changes.
And yes, if you still want to eat with your friends, but you have the wrong hair color combination, you can sit at the table in the corner and have some cold leftovers."
It is a great little place. Sure, it may not have a Michelin star rating, but it has some really great dishes (and some that are not so great, so you only tried them once). Many other customers agree and a few of the dishes are pretty much universal favorites, although most customers try some of the other dishes for a change every now and then.
Over the years you have gotten to know many of the other regular customers. Some of them are your friends and you regularly go to the restaurant together and have some of the dishes you like.
There are a few things some people are unhappy about - a few years ago there were some good dishes that were removed from the menu, and while some of them were brought back in a simplified or reworked form, many people still miss some of their old favorites.
There are also complaints about the service - the kitchen only prepares a dish when enough people have ordered it and sometimes you have to wait quite a bit to get your order.
Still, the food is good, and people keep coming to the place.
However, the restaurant just made a big policy change:
"We have observed that our customers keep ordering the same dishes over and over, but we would like you to have a more varied experience. From now on, you will only choose the the price category of the dish, and we will bring you something from our old menu (regardless of whether you like it or not).
We have also decided we want each table to reflect our community better, so each table will seat three dark-haired customers, one red-haired and one blonde. You will be automatically seated at the first available table that has an opening for your hair color. If your hair color does not match any of those categories we will decide what your hair color should be and seat you accordingly.
This allows us to increase the portion size and speed up the service, so the average customer should be able to eat more in a shorter time.
We are sure you will love those changes.
And yes, if you still want to eat with your friends, but you have the wrong hair color combination, you can sit at the table in the corner and have some cold leftovers."
Would you continue to eat at the restaurant after those changes?
Hoping for improvements...
14
Comments
Hold the lettuce
Special orders
Always upset us
All we ask is that you let us serve it our way
Serve it our way
Serve it our way
Serve it our way
At Burger Biggie
Nevermind, I clearly failed to make the point you get some AD for your troubles in Random Queue and that there are other ways to make AD, although many of those ways aren't free from the RNG either.
I haven't read all of @adinosii 's posts on this issue, so I'm honestly asking; what are you suggesting Cryptic should do in this situation? Go back to the old or change something?
I'm sorry that the change is giving grief to many players, but the other side of the coin is that, if this were a restaurant and if none of your friends were available at the time, you'd still need to order spider soup in the old system because otherwise you'd be waiting for a long, long time for the chefs to prepare anything else. In other words, it was difficult to find a group for anything but eToS and eSoT under the old system, unless you made your own group... and if you aren't very geared and can't find a tank or a healer, you'd have difficult time forming a successful group.
Not only were some people having to wait a while to get their order, they were often being sent him hungry at closing time.
Besides, if you want to run a particular dungeon or skirmish... If you want to "order a particular dish"... Nothing is stopping you; Queue up.
If anything, the random queue will help you get to run that dungeon that you specifically want to run that much faster.
No one is stopping you from getting the AD. They are just telling you "if you want the AD then you have to do this thing that can help us 'fill the less popular orders' ".
1) The IL for Random Epics is stupidly high to cram FBI and mSP into them. Break them into another group seems to be the easiest fix but Cryptic developers are whining that's "too hard" or "too confusing".
2) Leveling dungeons are now all reduced to being the Clock Tower. 2 11K+ players (who don't have FBI unlocked) blowing thru the dungeon while the 30-something struggles to even run to keep up. Unfortunately until #1 is addressed this is pretty much forced on the new players. Sucks to be them.
3) Guild progress ground to a halt. This seems to be addressed in the latest patch. Woo hoo! Minor victory for the players.
4) Non-standard builds are locked out of random queues. If you play a Templock, DPS GF, or other non-standard build (Healadins are handled correctly, interestingly enough) you're screwed. You're forced to have gear, pets, and a load out to accommodate the cookie cutter position some pinhead in marketing decided you should play. Simple fix: Add roles to the queue. This would also fix friends not being able to play together because they don't happen to be a pre-made 1/1/3 party.
5) Keys. Now you need to have keys for every freaking campaign's dungeon/skirmish. Who cares if you're sick to death of hearing, "WIther your limbs!", you have to grind Sharandar for gold crescents. The fix for this would be simple. Like the chest in FBI have the chests in all campaigns reward what is needed to craft a key.
These problems and solutions have been mentioned time and time and time again and the developers keep claiming "it's too hard" or "that doesn't match our goals". Which leads many players to assume the goals are to force players to buy completion tokens, wards (to upgrade gear/enchants), and legendary keys from the Zen market. In short the goal is to milk the player base for money not to address any real need of the players.
Edited for some typos, probably left several.
You leave out the part where anyone can come in the restaurant, whether you pay or not. And the part where THEY give YOU something of (some) value after you eat, regardless of your payment situation, IF you eat from the surprise menu.
Also, you use hair color, when the 'seating arrangement' is done by role (which could be worked on), but the example you give is totally disingenuous.
AND you can bring your friends to the table, choose your meal, at your leisure. You just don't get the free gift in the Jolly Meal.
IMO, this analogy does nothing to futher your cause, and may actually hurt it by adding hyberbole to the argument.
EDIT: This, of course, is aimed at the OP of the analogy.
The developers are listening to the complaints, but not understanding the real issues.
The change just described is an improvement, yes - but the whole RQ system is still broken . You are still penalizing some groups of players, discouraging others and damaging the play experience of yet others.
The reason is still the same as before and you are still taking the same, flawed approach of attempting to fix the symptoms instead of fixing the underlying causes. You say you want players to " experience more varied content", which is fine, except you take the approach of forcing players to do so, instead of making them want to do so.
That is just wrong.
Let me give you a few examples of how you could have accomplished the goals, without causing the massive dissatisfaction you are dealing with now.
Example approach 1:
Get rid of Random queues and bonus AD altogether. Use the dungeon/skirmish quests formerly given out in the stronghold - giving them a 3-4 day cooldown instead of a week, and have them give a RAD reward so that basically, if you do all the different dungeons and skirmishes you qualify for twice per week, you get the same total RAD as you would have gotten from the Bonus system. And yes, do not give L 70s RAD for doing the leveling dungeons.Example approach 2:
Get rid of random queues. Keep the bonus RAD system, but with a strict maximum per day. The first time you run specific dungeon/skirmish any given day, you get a bonus - however, you have full freedom over what you run, and when you run it. And yes, do not give L 70s Bonus RAD for doing the leveling dungeons.Example approach 2a:
A variation on the previous approach, except the bonus rewards for any particular dungeon/skirmish are dynamically adjusted, depending on their popularity. So, if very few people want to run eCC, for example, it would start to give more and more RAD, until people start running it. This would give people a choice - they could either run a few unpopular dungeons skirmishes, or multiple popular ones to reach their daily maximum RAD.Example approach 2b:
Another variation on approach 2 - instead of a daily maximum Bonus RAD, have a weekly maximum. This would be very popular with people who have limited play time on weekdays, but can play a lot more on weekends.Example approach 3:
Keep the current flawed system, but allow private groups to queue for a random dungeon even if they do not match the 1+1+3 composition. Currently you are hurting guilds that want to give everyone a chance, or groups of friends that want to run together,even if they don't fit your idea of what a group should look like.Choice is good. Give players choices.
Note that I am not suggesting implementing more tiers of random dungeons - that will not really fix anything.
I digress, bottom line AD is considered a Time currency, and it's not for nothing. If the time invested, equally traded for entertainment, that will be the point of argument. In the case of RQ, like other things, for some it's the not, for other it is.
Some think everything the devs make is god sent. Other think, and I don't want to go expletive on the devs, their capability and mental state.
There is no place for either. Everything should be looked at by it's merits, and failings, what can be improved, what are the trade offs.
The analogy is actually describing (quite correctly) an actual problem. And the sentiment that stems from the problem. Is there anything not parallel there to a subset of in-game population? I, personally, don't see an issue. It may not apply to you, and it's ok, but it applies to many others. Not having an issue shouldn't deter people from looking analytically and to consider if a system has positive and/or negative impact on various sub-groups of the population.
> The food's free, though.
>
> But it's not, we either put lots of time or real world money into this diner. And if nobody put real world money into it then it would've closed long, long ago.
Even if it was a soup kitchen or bread line they cant say certain types wait in certain lines or sit at certain tables.
4)
Give a bonus reward for any first dungeon/skirmish of the day (or a weekly maximum like in Example 2b), but keep the random queue as an option for those who feel more adventurous/bored. Like in Example 3, allow private queueing with any party composition. Both selectively queuing and random queuing give the exact same amount of AD, but the rewards are mutually exclusive, so people who dislike random queues don't feel forced to run them.
> I saw a post comparing Neverwinter to a restaurant, and thought it was such a great analogy that it deserved its own thread.
>
> So here goes:
> There is a restaurant.
>
> It is a great little place. Sure, it may not have a Michelin star rating, but it has some really great dishes (and some that are not so great, so you only tried them once). Many other customers agree and a few of the dishes are pretty much universal favorites, although most customers try some of the other dishes for a change every now and then.
>
> Over the years you have gotten to know many of the other regular customers. Some of them are your friends and you regularly go to the restaurant together and have some of the dishes you like.
>
> There are a few things some people are unhappy about - a few years ago there were some good dishes that were removed from the menu, and while some of them were brought back in a simplified or reworked form, many people still miss some of their old favorites.
>
> There are also complaints about the service - the kitchen only prepares a dish when enough people have ordered it and sometimes you have to wait quite a bit to get your order.
>
> Still, the food is good, and people keep coming to the place.
>
> However, the restaurant just made a big policy change:
>
> "We have observed that our customers keep ordering the same dishes over and over, but we would like you to have a more varied experience. From now on, you will only choose the the price category of the dish, and we will bring you something from our old menu (regardless of whether you like it or not).
>
> We have also decided we want each table to reflect our community better, so each table will seat three dark-haired customers, one red-haired and one blonde. You will be automatically seated at the first available table that has an opening for your hair color. If your hair color does not match any of those categories we will decide what your hair color should be and seat you accordingly.
>
> This allows us to increase the portion size and speed up the service, so the average customer should be able to eat more in a shorter time.
>
> We are sure you will love those changes.
>
> And yes, if you still want to eat with your friends, but you have the wrong hair color combination, you can sit at the table in the corner and have some cold leftovers."
>
>
> Would you continue to eat at the restaurant after those changes?
>
> This analogy is flawed in SO many ways.
>
> You leave out the part where anyone can come in the restaurant, whether you pay or not. And the part where THEY give YOU something of (some) value after you eat, regardless of your payment situation, IF you eat from the surprise menu.
>
> Also, you use hair color, when the 'seating arrangement' is done by role (which could be worked on), but the example you give is totally disingenuous.
>
> AND you can bring your friends to the table, choose your meal, at your leisure. You just don't get the free gift in the Jolly Meal.
>
> IMO, this analogy does nothing to futher your cause, and may actually hurt it by adding hyberbole to the argument.
>
> EDIT: This, of course, is aimed at the OP of the analogy.
No no anyone can eat, but you must buy a key for your fortune cookie and your dessert chest.
This analogy works well enough, and the answer is no: I'm not going to that restaurant, and I'm not running random queues.
*Unless you want tosit down, eat, and leave in less than two hours. If so, there is a $50.00 speed up fee.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Neverwinter/comments/78noq3/im_not_mad_im_just_disappointed/
When we asked why, the response was that it was too popular and the Chef got sick of making it so they took it off the menu . . . . . ???
Feels like cryptic have done something similar. but I have to admit that the Randon Q isn't as bad as a though it would be, I don't like it, but I don't dislike as much as I expected I would.
They need to make Random 12+ Dungeon a 2000-2900 AD reward, for mostly new players.
Add Random (Endgame) Dungeon to be 7500 Dungeon's exclusively for the 7900 ad reward with chance of decent drops if a key is used.
Make Random Epic Dungeon's equal to / higher than 8400 at the least.
I just don't like having to do mostly 7 Cloak Tower dungeon's across my various toons to earn 7900 AD. It's just a silly way to waste an hour doing something which gives no reward's or even earns end game currency toward's campaign's...
> I like the Random Skirmish very much. But honestly the 12+ Dungeon for 7900 ad really is kind of dumb; like no skill or challenge even the slightest for any end game player.
>
> They need to make Random 12+ Dungeon a 2000-2900 AD reward, for mostly new players.
>
> Add Random (Endgame) Dungeon to be 7500 Dungeon's exclusively for the 7900 ad reward with chance of decent drops if a key is used.
>
> Make Random Epic Dungeon's equal to / higher than 8400 at the least.
>
> I just don't like having to do mostly 7 Cloak Tower dungeon's across my various toons to earn 7900 AD. It's just a silly way to waste an hour doing something which gives no reward's or even earns end game currency toward's campaign's...
>
> It sounds like your problem is noting wanting to do the low level dungeons. Instead of taking AD away from low levels (they spend it pretty quickly just learning the game) just have your available queue with both a ceiling and a floor. In other words, a low level is not getting into the harder dungeons, just make it so the high levels are not queued in lower content areas. But that, of course, does not meet the "diversity" and high levels helping new player goals of the devs.
How does me one shoting everything in cloak tower despite trying not to help new players with anything besides making their daily AD.
I ran cloak tower last week with a low level from my guild and another low level because they wanted(and needed) help with it. The experience I don't think was good for any of us. They didn't seem to understand why I didn't die or even take any damage. Furthermore if I hit anything at all, even with just an at will it instantly died. I was trying to let them fight some to learn but the only way to do that was to not fight at all but then they were 2 low levels in a 3 person dungeon which hurt them instead of helped so then I was forced to 1 shot to keep them from dying. I even dismissed my air archon because HE was one shoting everything.
In hindsight I could/should have removed all my armor, rings, maybe even artifacts and ran it with just my weapons. I probably still would have been over powered even then just from my weapons and boons.