An Allegory of Random Queue Manipulation

veywiil

Preface: If you are wondering why Burnadin guide hasn't gotten changes this might be part of the reason. This example is purely fictitious, all people and actions are for example only, I don't support exploiting. Etc...


Meet John. John just had a stressful day at work, and he comes home to relax by playing Neverwinter. John has recently adapted his daily play based off of some Random Queue changes. John has five characters and runs both a Random Normal Dungeon and Random Normal Skirmish on all of them every day. He logs on his first character "MoreDPSThanU", and gets in queue for a Dungeon. It pops quickly but someone didn't accept, and John had to wait 60 seconds. He is automatically re-entered into the queue and it pops again quickly.

John ended up in a Cragmire Crypts, which is fine no big deal. John starts running the content normally and ends up fighting the trash mobs before the last boss. It is at this time he notices a player named "NOT-A-BOT" hasn't moved since the beginning of the dungeon. John along with the third player named "XxWolfFangsxX" wait at the last boss with the never seen before message "You must gather your party before..." "NOT-A-BOT" begins moving at this time, but seems to stop at regular intervals to fight mobs left behind, and has some... rather bizarre pathing. John is rather disappointed and tries to start a vote to kick "NOT-A-BOT". He is prompted that a player is only allowed to kick once every 4 hours, and John understands this and continues. However upon bringing up the kick menu there is no option to kick someone for being a bot. He chooses 'Away From Keyboard' instead as that seems to be the closest result. The vote kick succeeds! The dungeon finishes with no more interruptions, although there only two people in the party on the last boss.

John queues for a skirmish and gets in a Throne (ToTDg). John starts and realizes that there is a CW who is new to the group named "Control_Resist_Is_Broken" and dropping Icy Terrain on the Thoon Hulks. John takes a second to question how they got underscores in their name before attempting to explain that CC'ing the hulks is bad. However "Control_Resist_Is_Broken" doesn't seem to be listening. Another player starts a vote to kick "Control_Resist_Is_Broken", but there are enough No votes. The group gets silver on the first phase due to the hulks not being aimed correctly, and being frozen by Icy Terrains, a lot. Throne finishes without any other incidents, but John doesn't get any salvage which is disappointing.

John finished playing "MoreDPSThanU", and logs on with his next character "LessDPSThanMe". He queues for a dungeon and once again is greeted by the all too familiar cobblestone floor of the Cloak Tower. He smirks, should be an easy run! John rushes through the content as fast as he can, clearing out trash and taking terrain shortcuts like the fallen bookcase. He gets to just before the last boss and behold a player named "AFK4Days" is back at the beginning and isn't moving. John tries to vote kick "AFK4Days" but is unable to as 5 minutes hasn't passed. He brings up the Scoreboard and sees the time in the dungeon so far is 4:20. He only has to wait around 40 seconds before he can kick. John waits along with the other player "AllAboutMeAD". Once the message "You must gather your party before..." popups "AFK4Days" starts moving towards the end of the dungeon. After nearly a minute he tries to vote kick "AFK4Days" but is unable to. At this point John remembers he cannot start a vote kick because he has previously kicked "NOT-A-BOT". John starts singing aloud "Hello Darkness my old friend" while waiting for "AFK4Days." The dungeon finally finishes after a total of 10 minutes.

John queues for a Skirmish on his second character. He gets into an Illusionist Gambit and asks if everyone can vote for bronze as he is here for just the AD. He gets no response. John completes the first round and when it is time to vote, he votes no. Everyone else however voted to stay. This is very frustrating for him, and he logs off of the character.

John moves onto his third character "TonsOfDPS". He queues for a skirmish and gets Master of the Hunt. He finishes the skirmish in under 4 minutes, and it was a great run. He logs off again and back onto character #2 "LessDPSThanMe". He finds that he is still in gambit and even better the group is ready to vote once again. John votes no, but three people in the group have voted to stay. This make John question the motives of the player who wanted to get Silver? What is that guy thinking?!?!?

John logs off again and back onto "TonsOfDPS". He queues for a dungeon and gets put in Cloak Tower again. As soon as possible, he checks player names and finds that the two other players are named "GottaGoFast" and "FreeRidePlease" respectively. "GottaGoFast" quickly runs ahead and avoids clearing mobs, while "FreeRidePlease" can be seen looking for a place to use that nature kit he just picked up. "GottaGoFast" starts making comments like "WHY U SO SLOW?" John does his best to keep up but isn't able too, and has to clear the trash mobs. While John is doing this an alliance member is mentioning something about "The fitness gram pacer test is a..."

John knows he will get auto kicked after 5 minutes of disconnection, so after 4 minutes he logs off and back onto "LessDPSThanMe" who is still in gambit. They are on the last boss before Lukan spawns who is still spouting some nonsense about the "Far Realm". Gambit is quickly cleared and gold is achieved, and John didn't get any +4 gear. He logs out and back onto character #3 "TonsOfDPS" and finishes the Cloak Tower run.

John logs onto his fourth character "AllBoutDatDPS" and queues for a random dungeon. After a suspenseful queue and loading screen, he is greeted with the giant bolded words in the middle of his screen "CAVERNS OF KARRANDUX". John goes through a grueling 25 minutes of him clearing the long long long dungeon run out. He gets to the final boss, and is greeted by a loading screen. John was kicked out of the group, and no explanation as to why. John literally did nothing wrong in the run or in chat. John begins to wonder if quitting Neverwinter would be the best...

• Why does John have to wait 60 seconds for someone to choose whether to accept or decline a 3 man queue?
  
• Why can't John vote to kick a bot for... Botting?
  
• Why isn't NOT-A-BOT automatically replaced by the queue system when kicked?
  
• Why can't John kick before 5 minutes in a dungeon where you are already at the last boss?
  
• Why is John penalized for kicking "NOT-A-BOT" (4 hour timer)?
  
• Why can John run other queues while one of his other characters is already in a queue?
  
• Why can John avoid being automatically kicked while disconnected on a queued instanced character?
  
• Why can't you kick a charcter that is disconnected in the party before 5 minutes?
  
• Why does John have an infatuation with DPS characters? >:)
  

dupeks

With the disappearance of inventory management due to the RP changes, this game lacked a micromanagement meta.

In comes the RQ multi-char juggling meta. The keenest adventurers know how to squeeze delicious efficiency out of every second of hilariously long and ill-timed built-in time delays during adventures.

To go fast when you have to go slow, you have to get creative.

mebengalsfan

What is needed here is a reduction in kick timer, 30-60 minutes would be more acceptable. Also the timer for leaving a q should be reduced down to 5 minutes and not 30 minutes.

The timers we have remind me of the crazy timers DCUO use to have. Please adjust the timers down to something more reasonable.

greywynd

Logging into another character on that account should automatically remove any other characters on that account from any and all instances immediately, invoking the leaver penalty if appropriate.

And personally, they could kick the leaver penalty up to 24 hours. Might stop the behavior.

asterotg

greywynd said:

Logging into another character on that account should automatically remove any other characters on that account from any and all instances immediately, invoking the leaver penalty if appropriate.

And personally, they could kick the leaver penalty up to 24 hours. Might stop the behavior.

Did I get you right? If I am qued with a bot and 3 friends on their 500 IL alts I have to finish the dungeon for them, so I can play this character again in the next 24h?

You want to FORCE ppl to keep playing with a bunch of exploiters, bc leaving a que group is 'bad'?

If your raised penalty is just for ppl who change character, I get the reasoning, but it would just be viable for random que, bc now and then you will have to change to another character, while you run a dungeon. For eyample, there is a bug in TONG, where you cant continue, unless a TR clears the next respawn point. Instead of doing half of the duneon again, I did switch to my TR. More common are the chases, when somebody did forget his weapon enchant, keys, scroll etc on another char.

greywynd

Report the botters, the AFKers, but yes, my target are those that switch characters leaving the party hanging out to dry.

mebengalsfan

greywynd said:

Report the botters, the AFKers, but yes, my target are those that switch characters leaving the party hanging out to dry.

Here is the new rumor mill about changing character. Players go in between characters and play instances on each character. The result is they have multiple characters running through content to gain AD but are not helping the group complete the content. I have seen this on PS4 where one player shows disconnected in the begging of the run, exactly like the story analogy states. Than they start to move forward when it state your group is waiting for you. Due to how quick some content is we cannot kick said player. The kick timer is also quite frustrating and annoying as it limits those of us who play the game as intended and favors the botters.

I hate kick timers but I also dislike the kick feature. It is hard to balance both out.

I would do this instead. Leave the kick timer as is.

Update how the game works for removing a player from the group. Any form of disconnection, such as changing characters will automatically remove you from the group. This way, botters who are changing character won't be able to collect AD without actually playing the game.

Right now there is a 30 minute penalty if you leave the instance. Make it a minute.

Another feature I would add is if the player does not move their character after 5 minutes in a dungeon or skirmish he or she will be automatically kicked.

These updates would make it easier on player who end up in bad groups in a variety of content and it would reduce some botting in the game.

greywynd

30 minutes is a minor inconvenience. Especially to someone that has multiple characters.

One minute isn't even a blip worth worrying about.

namelesshero347

There needs to be a penalty. Otherwise everyone will leave RQ skirmishes that doesn't end in MotH or DL, and RQ epics that doesn't end in eSoT, KR, or eToS. There needs to be some pressure for people to stay for the other dungeons. Ofc people with multiple toons to go though will still leave.

It's pretty obvious that the number of disconnects to reduce penalty down to 5 minutes, or worst, to leech reward of the backs of other people's efforts is overwhelming the number of legitimate disconnects. I'd say disconnect should result in a leave. And the penalty applied after that point. So people who disconnect will end up with a 35 minute penalty.

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greywynd

Doing what the other guy is doing to counter them isn't any more acceptable than what is being done in the first place.

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greywynd

Fair point, but the "how" is the same. And "how" always matters more than "why".

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greywynd

The end never justifies the means.

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greywynd

Try "morals and ethics".

preechr

I think you are both more right than wrong, at least within the range of acceptable or at least easily predictable human behavior patterns, but if ultimately I believe greywynd wins the high ground for his commitment to doing no harm to others, I also think spunkmeister is only (justifiably) doing what he feels is the best he can in a bad situation

The bad situation was not only entirely foreseeable but often predicted and warned about in the months between the announcement of the new RQ system and its release, though it seems to have turned out even worse than we imagined

Unfortunately, its really very obvious at this point that both of these guys are well in the minority, as a lot of players are not really even taking a moment to consider their actions, instead just doing whatever nets them the most with the least amount of effort

In that respect, I guess the devs that gave us RQ are fairly well in line with the player base

I suppose we can only hold out hope that a lesson in integrity can be learned by all involved here, but only a few of us are able to commit code to the game

The rest of us just have to deal with it as best we can

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trinity706

Switching characters needs to at LEAST drop the previous character from the queue group. Applying the leaver penalty as well wouldn't be out of the way because the player is essentially leaving the group.

Repeat reports and VK's (vote-kicks) for the same offenses need to flag those accounts for investigation, what good is the report and VK system if nothing further comes from it other than a VK timeout for the initiator and possible removal from the group for the "offender" if the VK passes? If repeat "false reports" (trolling) is reasonably determined take negative action against the account(s) that filed the reports/VK's.

If CS can extensively investigate accounts of legitimate players and somehow take negative action against them SURELY the players that are ACTUALLY and CLEARLY doing wrong could easily be picked out and warranted action be taken against them. The current disciplinary measures are essentially heavy against positive players and very light against negative players.

Personally not really agreeing with reducing/increasing the leaver penalty, for one not to punish legitimate disconnects too, too harshly and two not to give negative players more freedom than they already have although if CS policed repeat reports and VK's against accounts it wouldn't really be necessary to adjust the timer because it would essentially lead to those accounts being unable to play for a period of time/indefinitely which would free the positive player base from those particular negative behaviors from the offending accounts.

asterotg

trinity706#8838 said:

Switching characters needs to at LEAST drop the previous character from the queue group. Applying the leaver penalty as well wouldn't be out of the way because the player is essentially leaving the group.

Repeat reports and VK's (vote-kicks) for the same offenses need to flag those accounts for investigation, what good is the report and VK system if nothing further comes from it other than a VK timeout for the initiator and possible removal from the group for the "offender" if the VK passes? If repeat "false reports" (trolling) is reasonably determined take negative action against the account(s) that filed the reports/VK's.

If CS can extensively investigate accounts of legitimate players and somehow take negative action against them SURELY the players that are ACTUALLY and CLEARLY doing wrong could easily be picked out and warranted action be taken against them. The current disciplinary measures are essentially heavy against positive players and very light against negative players.

Personally not really agreeing with reducing/increasing the leaver penalty, for one not to punish legitimate disconnects too, too harshly and two not to give negative players more freedom than they already have although if CS policed repeat reports and VK's against accounts it wouldn't really be necessary to adjust the timer because it would essentially lead to those accounts being unable to play for a period of time/indefinitely which would free the positive player base from those particular negative behaviors from the offending accounts.

You know, what will happen? The same as now with more name calling and rage. Why? Bc you cant 'force' a player, to run dungeon XY with a random group. Before I stopped using RQs, I was grouped with an 11k player and 3 8k players I see as 'carry me alts/ noobs' in CN.

The 11k player stated, 'I will not waste my time with you guys, kick me'. I told him, that he should inspect my char (17k IL near BIS gear) and might try running the dungeon, it would be faster, then waiting for the kick option to 'kick in'. He refused that and after a few choice words from both sides I left the group, bc I did not want to waste any more of my time.

As it is I see more abusers (running with a char, that has no chance in hell, to complete a dungeon and forcing the others to carry you is as much an abuse as AFKing and changing your character. All of the above is possible and I am quite sure, that none of it is WAI) and as long as there are no changes made RQ is dead for me and most geared players I know.

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greywynd

You can't play in the dungeon because you haven't finished the campaign for the first time. Campaigns are generally time gated to be about one month in length.