I don't think this random queue change was intended to drive new players away or make life better for existing players. I think it was intended to sell more campaign buyouts by severely cutting down how much RAD you can get unless you finish the right campaigns to join random epic queues. You can either slog through the necessary campaigns, or you can take the easy way and pay for campaign buyouts. They're counting on people just giving up and paying for it. Speaking for myself, I won't be coerced that way. It's just too much work for me to bother with.
There do seem to be reasons to be cynical about the motive for this change. The way it harms guilds means they'll likely get people buying Stronghold items from the Zen market. I know our guild is planning on doing that to make up for the lost shards. As you point out, selling campaign completion tokens for Storm King's and Cloaked Ascendency seems like another motive. Then there's the need to upgrade your 11K toon to actually complete the new content. More Zen sales for wards, etc. to upgrade all that equipment. In another thread I commented this release needs to be called something more appropriate. "Swords of Cash", "Raiders of the Lost Zen", or "Quest for Astral Diamonds" seem like better names.
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arcanjo86Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,093Arc User
I don't think this random queue change was intended to drive new players away or make life better for existing players. I think it was intended to sell more campaign buyouts by severely cutting down how much RAD you can get unless you finish the right campaigns to join random epic queues. You can either slog through the necessary campaigns, or you can take the easy way and pay for campaign buyouts. They're counting on people just giving up and paying for it. Speaking for myself, I won't be coerced that way. It's just too much work for me to bother with.
buy campaign token completion or buy zen to exchange for ad, they want money and that money is never gonna be used to fix problems in the game is being redirected/given to other projects in development for the company, start opening your eyes everyone.
I don't think this random queue change was intended to drive new players away or make life better for existing players. I think it was intended to sell more campaign buyouts by severely cutting down how much RAD you can get unless you finish the right campaigns to join random epic queues. You can either slog through the necessary campaigns, or you can take the easy way and pay for campaign buyouts. They're counting on people just giving up and paying for it. Speaking for myself, I won't be coerced that way. It's just too much work for me to bother with.
If they'd dropped the "Cloaked Ascendency Campaign Completion Pack" at 3.5 or 4 K Zen, then I'd probably agree.
But I still think the main aim is to get FBI and possibly MSP firing more often, with little regard for the quality of runs.
I believe that someone somewhere at C/PWE has looked at a spreadsheet with the numbers of how many times each dungeon fires. Now, they probably couldn't care less if ECC or VT are seeing low numbers, but the new content... FBI... MSP... they expect that stuff to be getting more attention than EToS.
So I don't know if its vanity, job security, or future funding that's the issue, but I cannot fathom any genuine logical reason beyond that for this whole thing to be the mighty dog's breakfast that it has turned out to be, when the simplest solution is to remove FBI and MSP from the "Epic" list, and rather than having Heroes Accord being ONLY the highest Gateway content at any given time, with everything below dropping down into Epic making entry reqs even more ridiculous; make it a hard line in the sand for elevation to genuine end game status.
Because the reason given, that high end players getting a full quotient of Seals of The Brave in one dungeon run is too important, is just nonsense compared to the amount of resentment being created in the lower tier of character levels by the current model.
Hi everyone! Just popping in to say that we are listening to feedback and also comparing it to the numbers we see on our end of random queue engagement/usage. I don't have any updates or follow ups but I did want to say that feedback isn't falling on deaf ears.
Hi everyone! Just popping in to say that we are listening to feedback and also comparing it to the numbers we see on our end of random queue engagement/usage. I don't have any updates or follow ups but I did want to say that feedback isn't falling on deaf ears.
Just remember to take into account the fact that despite people not liking this idea or how it works, people are basically FORCED to participate if they can. So the numbers need to take into account that currently, random queues are the only source of AD from dungeons.
My suggestion is to rework the random queues to just grab 5 people, check what dungeons they have access to, and then pick one. Instead of locking them out of it up front, just don't pick something thats unlocked. This seems simple enough and does not lock out anyone who qualifies for at least 1 dungeon. But there are many good ideas in this thread too.
Hi everyone! Just popping in to say that we are listening to feedback and also comparing it to the numbers we see on our end of random queue engagement/usage. I don't have any updates or follow ups but I did want to say that feedback isn't falling on deaf ears.
Listening to feedback is a far cry from utilizing the feedback. No offense but there was an onslaught of feedback before the RQs went live and it did indeed fall upon deaf ears. I can save you all the trouble of waiting for feedback to pour in and just say go back and reread the pages upon pages upon of feedback on the RQ system in the preview shard. The complaints are still the exact same complaints that were brought forward at that point.
And as @oldbaldyone says, you can't force someone into a system and then determine it's success based off of it's usage. That's the kind of statistical nonsense that makes people seethe when data points are brought forward.
Consider this scenario. • I develop a new street in a town. It is a shoddy, rundown, barely paved street with potholes everywhere. • I then block off one direction of the old main street that everyone used. This main street was smoothly paved and incident free for years. • I force all traffic to use my pothole ridden nightmare road. • I run statistics on the usage of my new road versus the old road. • I tell everyone that the new road is a success because, lo and behold, there is more traffic on it. • I shut down the old main street because according to my data it's not used as much anymore. • Everyone throws their hands up in disgust upon realizing that, yet again, their pleas to have the old smoothly paved street fell on deaf ears.
Summary: Please don't shut down our smooth streets for this sad sham of a road you refer to as the Random Queue. We had a street that allowed for most traffic to flow smoothly.
I had a golden rule for PuG runs. Dont que PuG for a dungeon, that you cant, basically, run solo.
Random que, with min IL as it is, is a fail, in my opinion. I did get MSP, ETOS, VT and EGWD in random epic que. While VT and ETOS were as easy as ever, MSP and EGWD were an epic fail.
MSP, the group had decent gear, but without DC or GF the dps was lackluster.
EGWD, one of the players was AFK most of the time. The tank was onehitted and the DC did run AC with crappy gear instead of DO. I asked him for his rotation. He said, that he would play with DG and BTS, but somehow I never saw the buffs. ALL of them had 9-11k IL. ALL of them complained about the other players being to weak.
That being said, getting rid of ALL requirements for random epic que would be the worst move EVER. It would force you, to run random epic ques FULL PREMADE, if you dont want to fail and this would destroy the idea of RANDOM ques at its core.
Comments
But I still think the main aim is to get FBI and possibly MSP firing more often, with little regard for the quality of runs.
I believe that someone somewhere at C/PWE has looked at a spreadsheet with the numbers of how many times each dungeon fires.
Now, they probably couldn't care less if ECC or VT are seeing low numbers, but the new content... FBI... MSP... they expect that stuff to be getting more attention than EToS.
So I don't know if its vanity, job security, or future funding that's the issue, but I cannot fathom any genuine logical reason beyond that for this whole thing to be the mighty dog's breakfast that it has turned out to be, when the simplest solution is to remove FBI and MSP from the "Epic" list, and rather than having Heroes Accord being ONLY the highest Gateway content at any given time, with everything below dropping down into Epic making entry reqs even more ridiculous; make it a hard line in the sand for elevation to genuine end game status.
Because the reason given, that high end players getting a full quotient of Seals of The Brave in one dungeon run is too important, is just nonsense compared to the amount of resentment being created in the lower tier of character levels by the current model.
My suggestion is to rework the random queues to just grab 5 people, check what dungeons they have access to, and then pick one. Instead of locking them out of it up front, just don't pick something thats unlocked. This seems simple enough and does not lock out anyone who qualifies for at least 1 dungeon. But there are many good ideas in this thread too.
And as @oldbaldyone says, you can't force someone into a system and then determine it's success based off of it's usage. That's the kind of statistical nonsense that makes people seethe when data points are brought forward.
Consider this scenario.
• I develop a new street in a town. It is a shoddy, rundown, barely paved street with potholes everywhere.
• I then block off one direction of the old main street that everyone used. This main street was smoothly paved and incident free for years.
• I force all traffic to use my pothole ridden nightmare road.
• I run statistics on the usage of my new road versus the old road.
• I tell everyone that the new road is a success because, lo and behold, there is more traffic on it.
• I shut down the old main street because according to my data it's not used as much anymore.
• Everyone throws their hands up in disgust upon realizing that, yet again, their pleas to have the old smoothly paved street fell on deaf ears.
Summary: Please don't shut down our smooth streets for this sad sham of a road you refer to as the Random Queue. We had a street that allowed for most traffic to flow smoothly.
Random que, with min IL as it is, is a fail, in my opinion. I did get MSP, ETOS, VT and EGWD in random epic que. While VT and ETOS were as easy as ever, MSP and EGWD were an epic fail.
MSP, the group had decent gear, but without DC or GF the dps was lackluster.
EGWD, one of the players was AFK most of the time. The tank was onehitted and the DC did run AC with crappy gear instead of DO. I asked him for his rotation. He said, that he would play with DG and BTS, but somehow I never saw the buffs. ALL of them had 9-11k IL. ALL of them complained about the other players being to weak.
That being said, getting rid of ALL requirements for random epic que would be the worst move EVER. It would force you, to run random epic ques FULL PREMADE, if you dont want to fail and this would destroy the idea of RANDOM ques at its core.