Official Feedback Thread: Queuing System Updates

rgutscheradev

Up now on Preview we have a number of improvements to queuing for dungeons, skirmishes, and trials (I’ll just say “dungeon” below, but it applies to everything).

The whole experience of queuing for a dungeon in Neverwinter is something we’ve been wanting to improve for a while. While we don’t think we’ve solved every problem, we hope we’ve removed many of the worst pain points.

Let me mention a couple of things about the existing system that are important to keep in mind:

1) Part of what makes queuing confusing is the interaction between the party (the group of 1-5 players who are adventuring together) and the queue group (the group of 1 to 25 players that all enter a queue together). Often your queue group and your party are the same (maybe you are in a party with one other person, and then both of you queue together). But it’s possible for them to be different, and that’s when things can get complicated.

2) Once the queue fires, you (and anyone you queued with) will be put into a new party, along with other people who queued for the same dungeon. (Your queue group doesn’t change, though.) Up until now, that party has persisted after you left the dungeon, which can cause confusion, so that’s one of the things we’re changing.

So what’s changing?

* Different iLevel requirements for private versus public queues
* Don’t overwrite the leader for private queues
* Don’t show leader icons in public queues (where there is no real leader)
* Put you “back in the party you were before” afterwards
* “Recently played with” list
* No auto-invites

Here are the details:
* Different iLevel requirements for private versus public queues
A bunch of friends with low iLevels trying to do a dungeon that’s really hard for them can be fun. Randomly getting people with low iLevels in your solo queue can be not so fun (and some of the queue requirements, especially for the old 1600/2000 dungeons, were way too low for solo queues). We’ve lowered the iLevel requirements for private queues and raised it for public queues so that both experiences can be good. This topic has been extensively discussed in https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1230456/official-feedback-thread-public-vs-private-queue-item-level-requirements so please take a look there if you want to know more.

* Don’t overwrite the leader for private queues
In public queues, giving full leader powers to a random person would not be good (too much potential for abuse). However, in a private queue, there’s no reason to overwrite the current leader or to take away leader controls (like loot settings). If you queue with your full party into a private queue, you’ll now keep your leader and leader settings.

* Don’t show leader icons in public queues (where there is no real leader)
Along with the above, since the “leader” in a public queue party doesn’t have any leader powers, we’ve stopped labeling them as leader. Hopefully this will make things less confusing.

* Put you “back in the party you were before” afterwards
This is the trickiest one to explain. Because parties and queue groups are different, we can’t literally put you into the party you were in before. What if you were the only person in your party that queued for a dungeon, and then the party replaced you while you were away? On the other hand, it seems pretty silly for you to be in a party with one other friend, you both queue for a dungeon, and then you come out and you’re in a party with a bunch of other random people. In the new system, when you come out, you’ll be in a party with all the people who were in both your original party and in your queue group, with the same party settings. Note for the very common case where your original party and your queue group are the same, that means you are back in your original party.

* “Recently played with” list
The old system left you in a party with all the people you had just played with. That was mostly awkward, so we’re getting rid of it (as above). But if you solo queued, and you played with some cool people, we’ve made it easy for you to invite them with a “Recently Played With” section in the queue UI.

* No auto-invites
In the old system, any time a party leader opened their queue UI (“K” menu on PC), they would auto-invite everyone in their party. This could be confusing if the party leader was just browsing, for example. In the new system, invites are never sent automatically. Someone has to decide to do it. The “Invite Your Party” button will be available to make this easy (before, you rarely saw this button, because the auto-invites would go out before it was even relevant).

Overall, the hope is that these changes make the system a bit easier to understand, and drastically reduce the amount of breaking up and re-forming parties that was constantly going on under the old system.

I know it’s hard to test queuing stuff on preview, but if anyone can pull enough people together to try it out (eg, private queuing 3 people for a dungeon) that would be great. In any case, I wanted to at least let people know what was coming!

dread4moor

Sounds interesting.
Yeah, the after-dungeon de-party moment can be awkward.

I'll be on preview alot the next two days if anyone wants to play with the queue, PM me in game.
@dread4moor

sorce

Question - if you are taking away the leader from public queues, who can change the loot settings then?

loboguild

Feedback
Overall these changes sounds like they make a lot of sense, thanks!

As I've said in the other thread my only concern is that with even lower item level requirements in private groups, guilds could run into problems. Most guilds expect members to apply private queue rules in a public environment, meaning you take everyone that can enter the dungeon. I think people might fear they have to carry too many low item levels now. The idea of the private queue is that it's onto the leader to compile a group that is able to beat the content, but rules insides guilds do not obey this intention.

I guess ultimately it's onto guilds to find a solution, but I think it's fair to point out that private groups are not used in a way that these changes assume.​​

darthtzarr

Awesome stuff! I want to note that it would also be great if the minimum member requirement were also removed for private queues. It has always been a big achievement to attempt a solo/duo dungeon. With the current queue system, you must invite 3-4 characters who will then immediately log off, or otherwise quit as the dungeon starts to attempt a solo run. It's clunky, but it works. There is a slight workaround that lets you queue for a dungeon while some of your queue members are offline, this makes the process easier if you are doing a duo, but it still quite clunky.

It would be nice if you completely allowed soloing a dungeon to be part of creating a queue. This could have an added warning, or required checking a checkbox to prevent someone from doing it on accident, but it would be a really great feature. At minimum, please do not break the old system, which allowed you to queue for a dungeon while members of your queue are offline.

beckylunatic

confusedpoof said:

Question - if you are taking away the leader from public queues, who can change the loot settings then?

I think that's a trick question. I'm not aware that anyone could ever change the default loot settings, at least not in a pug. Even if you tried to set them up prior to queuing with a group of five under the old systems, it would revert to forcing a roll on greens. The only change I've been aware of other than community efforts to train players to not loot greens was when they changed the default settings to roll only on blue or better.

I have no idea if it now behaves differently between public and private queues.

beckylunatic

darthtzarr said:

Awesome stuff! I want to note that it would also be great if the minimum member requirement were also removed for private queues.

I just want to say that removing the option to enter a normal dungeon via the door (thus enabling solo runs or smaller parties) was a real blow to quality of life with players who are very shy or anxious, or who just want a leisurely tour experience. This places the burden of forming an understanding group on a player who may already feel very uncomfortable asking for help. Odds are pretty high they just won't do it. Entering via the door was a chance to check out the situation and get more comfortable prior to attempting it in a party. It was also a way to at least scout the territory to build up to feeling brave enough to try the epic version. While I know this is no preparation for learning mechanics, even having some familiarity with the terrain would build confidence. This is speaking from experience. Between anxiety and ADD, having anyone watch me trying something I've never done before is pure hell. It doesn't really matter how much I trust them, I still don't want them observing my learning process, but it's far worse with strangers. And anyone who'd like to tell me this means I should not play a social game can eff right off. I like the experience of being around people, but opportunities to build confidence with the content are valuable. I've encountered so many players who'd like to just go run a dungeon with one friend or family member, and having to find even one other person who'll agree to leave them to run it on their own afterwards puts them off the experience.

On a related note, I know queues allowing any level to access a dungeon was supposed to address the possibility of missed achievements (which entering via the door used to do), but it has ruined the ability of lower level players to run a dungeon with a group at their level. Players can access Cloak Tower long before they are able to access the game's chat system, so new lowbies have literally no choice but keep up with the AD speedruns, like it or not. And some groups will simply kick them (disabling the ability to kick is NOT the answer, ok?). Level scaling is still horrifically unbalanced. At the very least, you could add some preferences to public queue settings for matching the player only with other players around their level.

Low-level skirmish queues are basically dead because there aren't enough players levelling (or levelling up without skipping anything that slows their speedlevel process) to get them to pop in a reasonable space of time. Even spamming chat to try to find enough players the right level doesn't appear to work very well. The lack of a CTA version of Black Lake Terror, Defend the Village, and Aberrant Assault means these are closed to anyone who missed them. CTAs are not in great shape due to level scaling problems and outdated rewards, but they're better than nothing. I'd also say they're not being scheduled frequently enough (maybe due to wanting to update them?) to provide a satisfactory make-up opportunity for players who missed them while levelling.

Not all system problems, but I wonder if some of them can be addressed via systems design.

pitshade

No CTA has been released since Oct '14 when Storm Front played the first time. Im the intervening time max level (that is to say the majority of the player base) have lost access to Aberrant Assault and Bridge Battle as regular skirmishes) Half of my chars are missing Defend the Village and a few less, Blacklake Terror. Beyond my achievement hunting, I think the game would be better with some new CTA and similar events, with better scaling and loot. (less campers though)

darthtzarr

beckylunatic said:

darthtzarr said:

Awesome stuff! I want to note that it would also be great if the minimum member requirement were also removed for private queues.

I just want to say that removing the option to enter a normal dungeon via the door (thus enabling solo runs or smaller parties) was a real blow to quality of life with players who are very shy or anxious, or who just want a leisurely tour experience.

Wait... it was removed? I never knew that existed. How long ago was that?

beckylunatic

darthtzarr said:

beckylunatic said:

darthtzarr said:

Awesome stuff! I want to note that it would also be great if the minimum member requirement were also removed for private queues.

I just want to say that removing the option to enter a normal dungeon via the door (thus enabling solo runs or smaller parties) was a real blow to quality of life with players who are very shy or anxious, or who just want a leisurely tour experience.

Wait... it was removed? I never knew that existed. How long ago was that?

They took off the door interaction as part of the level cap increase, when they completely revised how levelling dungeons would work (party of 3 instead of 5, minimum level to queue rather than a range with an upper limit). Even the three dungeons that were released with Elemental Evil had no doors. Quest trails can still direct you to those former locations, but the interact points only bring up the queue instead of the alternative option to "enter with current party" (or alone, if current party is just you).

I don't think they believed it would negatively impact player experiences, but they also apparently didn't think removing the unique loot from all the old dungeons would be a big deal. Or consider that blocking all the optional side paths might be a really bad idea when compared to just leaving them alone for speedrunners to continue ignoring and explorers to continue enjoying.

darthtzarr

beckylunatic said:

darthtzarr said:

beckylunatic said:

darthtzarr said:

Awesome stuff! I want to note that it would also be great if the minimum member requirement were also removed for private queues.

I just want to say that removing the option to enter a normal dungeon via the door (thus enabling solo runs or smaller parties) was a real blow to quality of life with players who are very shy or anxious, or who just want a leisurely tour experience.

Wait... it was removed? I never knew that existed. How long ago was that?

They took off the door interaction as part of the level cap increase, when they completely revised how levelling dungeons would work (party of 3 instead of 5, minimum level to queue rather than a range with an upper limit).

I don't think they believed it would negatively impact player experiences, but they also apparently didn't think removing the unique loot from all the old dungeons would be a big deal.

Ah, that would be why I didn't know about it. I haven't been around that long. That was mod 6 (right?), which is like two or three mods before I started.

beckylunatic

Elemental Evil, yeah. I made some edits. The entire process of revamping dungeons really wasn't handled well, and I think there are a lot of past mistakes that should be undone.

pterias

Becky's post here is so full of win and right, devs need to read this 4 or 5 times in a row.

beckylunatic said:

I just want to say that removing the option to enter a normal dungeon via the door (thus enabling solo runs or smaller parties) was a real blow to quality of life with players who are very shy or anxious, or who just want a leisurely tour experience. This places the burden of forming an understanding group on a player who may already feel very uncomfortable asking for help. Odds are pretty high they just won't do it. Entering via the door was a chance to check out the situation and get more comfortable prior to attempting it in a party. It was also a way to at least scout the territory to build up to feeling brave enough to try the epic version. While I know this is no preparation for learning mechanics, even having some familiarity with the terrain would build confidence. This is speaking from experience. Between anxiety and ADD, having anyone watch me trying something I've never done before is pure hell. It doesn't really matter how much I trust them, I still don't want them observing my learning process, but it's far worse with strangers. And anyone who'd like to tell me this means I should not play a social game can eff right off. I like the experience of being around people, but opportunities to build confidence with the content are valuable. I've encountered so many players who'd like to just go run a dungeon with one friend or family member, and having to find even one other person who'll agree to leave them to run it on their own afterwards puts them off the experience.

I totally relate to this, I have many of the same issues. I really missed being able to queue up at the door and go in to learn and explore at my own pace, IN PRIVATE. I don't like to learn at other people's expense, and when I have to and end up borking a run, it doesn't make me want to get better, it makes me want to never bother again. I've also found going alone is the only way to really EXPLORE a dungeon and really appreciate the design and look for side areas and easter eggs (which have also, sadly, been stripped from many dungeons). It took me a full year of playing to work up the courage to form a party to go run something. It still evokes a mild anxiety at times. If I can't pug it, I frequently just don't bother.

And as Becky said (in more polite language than I would be inclined to use): "And anyone who'd like to tell me this means I should not play a social game can eff right off." I like playing with other people around, it's just challenging at times and in certain contexts.

beckylunatic said:

On a related note, I know queues allowing any level to access a dungeon was supposed to address the possibility of missed achievements (which entering via the door used to do), but it has ruined the ability of lower level players to run a dungeon with a group at their level. Players can access Cloak Tower long before they are able to access the game's chat system, so new lowbies have literally no choice but keep up with the AD speedruns, like it or not. And some groups will simply kick them (disabling the ability to kick is NOT the answer, ok?). Level scaling is still horrifically unbalanced. At the very least, you could add some preferences to public queue settings for matching the player only with other players around their level.

This is messed up. When I run a low level dungeon and there is a lvl 15 in there, I feel like I'm doing something dirty. Even though I try clear everything for their sake, I'm still melting everything before they can swing a sword. I feel like all the new players are being robbed of a great experience that most of us old-timers took for granted. I'm not exactly sure what to do about it, but it makes me a sad panda.

beckylunatic said:

Low-level skirmish queues are basically dead because there aren't enough players levelling (or levelling up without skipping anything that slows their speedlevel process) to get them to pop in a reasonable space of time. Even spamming chat to try to find enough players the right level doesn't appear to work very well. The lack of a CTA version of Black Lake Terror, Defend the Village, and Aberrant Assault means these are closed to anyone who missed them. CTAs are not in great shape due to level scaling problems and outdated rewards, but they're better than nothing. I'd also say they're not being scheduled frequently enough (maybe due to wanting to update them?) to provide a satisfactory make-up opportunity for players who missed them while levelling.

Not all system problems, but I wonder if some of them can be addressed via systems design.

My main / achievement hamster is still missing Defend the Village. Even though he beat it, it bugged out and he never got the achievement. You'd be doing us completionists a solid by just throwing on the level adjustments, updating the loot tables, and throwing these out there as CTAs, even if they are a little wonky.

wintermurloc

it's really good to see updates on the queue system. I would really like if you guys would give us the option to drag and drop players within the queue group. This will be helpful setting up groups for raids.

sorce

beckylunatic said:

confusedpoof said:

Question - if you are taking away the leader from public queues, who can change the loot settings then?

I think that's a trick question. I'm not aware that anyone could ever change the default loot settings, at least not in a pug. Even if you tried to set them up prior to queuing with a group of five under the old systems, it would revert to forcing a roll on greens. The only change I've been aware of other than community efforts to train players to not loot greens was when they changed the default settings to roll only on blue or better.

I have no idea if it now behaves differently between public and private queues.

I'm 99% sure the party leader in a pug can still change the loot settings - although it's been a while since I've tested it.

ghoulz66

Prolly still got to wait a trillion years for a PUG queue to pop.

armadeonx

The above changes look good to me. I would second the calls for allowing solo entry via Private queuing as this will prevent newbies and speed-running L70's from annoying each other.

On a related note, do you have any news on the 'in party' bug where pugs often find one member is present but not in the group at the start of a run?

beckylunatic

confusedpoof said:

beckylunatic said:

confusedpoof said:

Question - if you are taking away the leader from public queues, who can change the loot settings then?

I think that's a trick question. I'm not aware that anyone could ever change the default loot settings, at least not in a pug. Even if you tried to set them up prior to queuing with a group of five under the old systems, it would revert to forcing a roll on greens. The only change I've been aware of other than community efforts to train players to not loot greens was when they changed the default settings to roll only on blue or better.

I have no idea if it now behaves differently between public and private queues.

I'm 99% sure the party leader in a pug can still change the loot settings - although it's been a while since I've tested it.

It never used to work before. Many was the time I tried to change settings to not roll on greens, all to no avail.

wintersmoke

beckylunatic said:

confusedpoof said:

beckylunatic said:

confusedpoof said:

Question - if you are taking away the leader from public queues, who can change the loot settings then?

I think that's a trick question. I'm not aware that anyone could ever change the default loot settings, at least not in a pug. Even if you tried to set them up prior to queuing with a group of five under the old systems, it would revert to forcing a roll on greens. The only change I've been aware of other than community efforts to train players to not loot greens was when they changed the default settings to roll only on blue or better.

I have no idea if it now behaves differently between public and private queues.

I'm 99% sure the party leader in a pug can still change the loot settings - although it's been a while since I've tested it.

It never used to work before. Many was the time I tried to change settings to not roll on greens, all to no avail.

Maybe I'm joining an existing party, but I almost always pug queue & most of the time greens go to whomever takes them. & I do cuz I need the gold!!!

beckylunatic

wintersmoke said:

beckylunatic said:

confusedpoof said:

beckylunatic said:

confusedpoof said:

Question - if you are taking away the leader from public queues, who can change the loot settings then?

I think that's a trick question. I'm not aware that anyone could ever change the default loot settings, at least not in a pug. Even if you tried to set them up prior to queuing with a group of five under the old systems, it would revert to forcing a roll on greens. The only change I've been aware of other than community efforts to train players to not loot greens was when they changed the default settings to roll only on blue or better.

I have no idea if it now behaves differently between public and private queues.

I'm 99% sure the party leader in a pug can still change the loot settings - although it's been a while since I've tested it.

It never used to work before. Many was the time I tried to change settings to not roll on greens, all to no avail.

Maybe I'm joining an existing party, but I almost always pug queue & most of the time greens go to whomever takes them. & I do cuz I need the gold!!!

That's a systemwide change. The default setting now only rolls on blues or better.

treesclimber

Everything seems to be working nice so far.
But @rgutscheradev now that you are addressing dungeons can you do something about the animations of the nothic (second boss of spellplague caverns), they seem very clunky and i am yet to kill that boss with tactics( because of double petrify, not giving chance to react and very hard to position against mirrors(, instead most teams burn him up as fast as possible.

adinosii

pterias said:

My main / achievement hamster is still missing Defend the Village. Even though he beat it, it bugged out and he never got the achievement. You'd be doing us completionists a solid by just throwing on the level adjustments, updating the loot tables, and throwing these out there as CTAs, even if they are a little wonky.

You are not the only one. I have almost all the achievable achievements on my main, but I'm missing the one you get for "Defend the Village" - which also means I am missing the "Arachnophile" title.

And yes, I would really love to get the missing skirmishes as CTAs. Normally players are not too thrilled about getting recycled old content, but many of us would really appreciate this.

treesclimber

@rgutscheradev there is a problem with the final boss drop, the last boss of eToS dropped a insignia but as the party was already broken apart nobody was able to pick that insignia, i don't know if this extends to other items.

asterotg

treesclimber said:

@rgutscheradev there is a problem with the final boss drop, the last boss of eToS dropped a insignia but as the party was already broken apart nobody was able to pick that insignia, i don't know if this extends to other items.

This. Furthermore, you cant see the rewards your (former) party members get, bc the party does not exist any more.

Last but not least, in most public ques I get transferred into the dungeon without the option, to decline. While I join 9/10 times anyway, it is annoying, if you do HEs or something else waiting for a que to pop and 2 seconds before finishing the HE or picking up your loot, you get transferred to the dungeon map.

Furthermore the above mentioned problem seems to make it more likely, that players leave the group instantly, bc they did not want to join atm. I did a ELOL run last WE, that ended up with 3 players. We had 2 14k+ players and had no problem finishing the dungeon, but a weaker party would not do so well.

ganzoloko

Now everytime I queue for a dungeon it automatically teleport me to the dungeon without the "Respond to queue" window appear, this is ok for privates queues but for public queues?, come on! it´s so anoying to be teleported like that without asking me if I´m ready to go or not, I´m trading, talking to somebody, in the middle of a Heroic Encounter, in a closed instance quest, DF, buying from the ZEN market, setting up my enchantments and companions, etc. and if I forgot to turn queue OFF I´m interrupted and teleport to the dungeon?, sometimes was Demogorgon and I got the 30 minutes penalty because I had a trade talk and the queue system teleport me to the dungeon but I wanted to finish my trade so it´s really affecting alot of players game, please fix this, I´m about to be really upset because of it, this has happened since the module 11 B realese on PS4,

armadeonx

Similarly to the above post I've noticed the following on XBox since the 11b launch:

Sometimes I'll hit queue and go straight into a dungeon without a pop-up accept window. This usually occurs when the queue pops almost immediately.

I've had a few occasions where the accept window comes up, everyone accepts but the timer keeps running until it expires, then the 'accept' window appears again (works on the second go).

Sometimes it works like normal. The three scenarios occur roughly equally. This is from a total of 18 runs across 8 characters.

brewald

@rgutscheradev

It seems to be really good.

But could you correct the dungeon list, precisely the skirmish one.
- The Shores of Tuern
- Kessell's Retreat
Are currently in Epic Dungeon category, and it's very confusing for a lot of players.

Thanks,

rgutscheradev

armadeonx said:

Similarly to the above post I've noticed the following on XBox since the 11b launch:

Sometimes I'll hit queue and go straight into a dungeon without a pop-up accept window. This usually occurs when the queue pops almost immediately.

I've had a few occasions where the accept window comes up, everyone accepts but the timer keeps running until it expires, then the 'accept' window appears again (works on the second go).

Sometimes it works like normal. The three scenarios occur roughly equally. This is from a total of 18 runs across 8 characters.

So I was kind of terrified of this report, because it sounded like the sort of thing that's almost impossible to track down (things that behave differently every time are a beast, because without reliable reproduction of the error it's really hard to fix). But our Extremely Clever Queue Programmer found it instantly. So a fix should be winding its way through QA and heading to you guys. Thanks for not giving up on it, and continuing to let us know it wasn't right!

rgutscheradev

brewald said:

@rgutscheradev

It seems to be really good.

But could you correct the dungeon list, precisely the skirmish one.
- The Shores of Tuern
- Kessell's Retreat
Are currently in Epic Dungeon category, and it's very confusing for a lot of players.

Thanks,

Hi Brewald,

This is on purpose -- these two queues were moved to be in the dungeon category, because it was felt they had more in common with dungeons than with other skirmishes. So they have been re-classified.

Are there any holdovers (tooltips, popups, etc.) that say they are still skirmishes? If so, we'd want to correct those -- please let us know! But the intention is that these two queues now really are Epic Dungeons.

beckylunatic

We had this conversation with Terramak as well, and player consensus is almost entirely that we find it unintuitive that skirmishes be categorized as dungeons because those two types of content pay different amounts of AD.

It's less confusing for players to find that there are a couple of skirmishes that have class role requirements in a pug party. It's barely a blip on our consciousness, particularly when alliances primarily use private queuing anyway and don't need to worry about roles. Requiring roles is what was given as a justification for classing them as dungeons.

If you want Kessell and Tuern to actually be considered dungeons by players, then you need to make them pay more. Because that's why players care about the difference between a skirmish and a dungeon. (Also seal caches, I suppose, whatever's going to happen to those when Elemental seals go bye-bye.)

brewald

Hi rgutscheradev, thx for your feedback,

Absolutly agree with @beckylunatic

Players do, for the majority, 2 dungeons and 2 skirmishs per day for ADs.
If you move these two queues in dungeons, the confusion will still the same and the issue won't be solved.

In case where you can't move them to shirmish, you need to adjust seals and ADs like a dungeon, and annonce these shirmishs are now considerated as a dungeon.