I think one reason why random queues are such an unpleasant experience is the simple fact that they're tied to income. A vast majority of the people in those dungeons or skirms don't want to be there. They don't want to run that content, they just want their paycheck. So they afk, or play poorly. This reduces that player's enjoyment and brings down the enjoyment of anyone else in that dungeon or skirm.
Many dungeon experiences would be vastly improved if all the members of a party actually wanted to be in the dungeon.
I don't fully understand how the dungeons in this game digressed from what they once were. A fun challenge with decent rewards at the end has been reduced to a pathetic slog for a paycheck.
Neverwinter Module 6: The only MMO expansion in the history of MMO's to remove more content than it added.
@archangelzorak01 I agree that the vast majority do not want to be there. I don't really want to be there. That said, I play to the best of my ability mainly due to self-interest: It takes less of my time to play well than to play poorly.
Also, I've been giving these changes some thought this weekend and I've realized that I'll still run 8 characters through these dungeons every day, even with these changes. I want the seals and the dungeoneer's shards. If I were to go down to two or three characters per day, it would cut my dungeoneer's shards per day in half. Granted, I won't run one character through more than one queue per day, but I'll run 8 characters through one queue each per day. That's for sure.
Mostly, I stay out of skirmishes because I don't really care for them. Also, five of my characters are minimally-geared, which means that they've got no legendary or mythic gear and they gain refinement points very slowly. So it takes a while before I can upgrade artifacts or artifact equipment on them and there's no refining of enchantments happening yet. (They are all working on Leadership. So that might change in the near future.) Granted, they're all 7k to 9k item level and the true farmers aren't even that high, but I feel like they're under-geared and can't contribute sufficiently in challenging content.
Random queues are not intended to be something that you queue for only wishing to participate in a subset of the included queues. It is not intended that you queue up, don't like the queue you arrive in, then leave. Obviously, we understand life happens, and you may need to abandon for legitimate reasons. In those cases, you may need to take the leaver penalty, but generally if something is pulling you away from the game, the penalty will likely be expired by the time you return.
In the current system, because the difficulty is so widespread in a given queue, it's understandable that in many cases, you would enter a queue and feel like you received the "short end of the stick." However, with the new organization, the difficulty of the content within each queue should be closer together, so please avoid queuing for a random queue if you do not feel you are prepared for all of the content contained therein.
Oh come on. You know as well as anyone that the only reason the enormous, VAST, majority of people "choose" to join a random queue has absolutely nothing at all to do with variety, speed of access, or some noble sense of helping other people.
We went through this months ago when it was first mooted.
Its ALL about the rewards. Its a choke hold followed by a body slam designed to coral players into a new system that was badly conceived and badly implemented.
Someone's ego decided that all the changes that are now being implemented were bad ideas when suggested by many players. The problem you now have is that retrofitting the suggestions from before, such as capping epic queues to CN come alongside the derisory cap in RAD refinement, which will mean people have to run these stupid queues to stay financially viable.
You used "More RAD and Faster" as the key selling point, and guess what. People took you up on it. So despite fiscal responsibility and gradually reducing the amount of easily available RAD through such methods as dropping them from Leadership, and changing invoke rewards to bonus RADs, Moderator edited out political comment.
You got what you wanted... FBI and MSPC firing more often... but you also got all the problems you were warned about.
Don't now turn round and throw the "if you're not prepared to run ALL the content we are forcing you to run for RAD, just don't run it..." Because YOU created the situation where people feel they NEED (not WANT....NEED) to participate in Random Queues in the first place. You did it when you took rewards from what people wanted to do and put in a system where they had to run what YOU wanted them to do.
And if asking people to not just dawdle til booted is your best solution to that problem... good bloody luck mate.
All this talk about people not wanting to be in dungeons and being forced to do them for pay. Is it any different from pre-RQ days? People actually enjoyed running eToS ad nauseam? I think people are more angry about losing that option to do 2 x eToS in 10 minutes with other elites in private queue or to use trash alts and get carried for easy AD.
To me neither is fun. Pre-RQ I couldn't get into these private queue runs, but was good enough to carry four trash through eToS. I make the same AD in RQ as it took me pre-RQ.
Could developers comment on possiblity of dropping everfrost resistance? Everfrost restance would not make sense in mod 14 on any gear with seals of brave available. It is practically needed only for two dungeons now, but it puts a requirement on the entire advanced queue. Even with item that provides resistance, it is required to occupy a slot on quick bar, so I had to drop invokes.
Uh.... they've ALREADY removed everfrost resistance as a requirement to enter FBI and SVA, since the "requirement" is 28% and any character who's started the SKT campaign has a minimum of 30% without spending any gear slots at all?
If you have the IL to queue into the category, you really should already have the EF resist, or can get it by spending an hour or two in Bryn Shander.
I'm also interested to see statistics on completion/abandoning per dungeon for current random queues. From what people are saying, almost none completes MSP and FBI when they pop at random queue, so they are mostly treated as time wasters there.
I mostly play a DC and a GF, and combined with the queue bug that shows you how many people are waiting to accept, I can always tell when I'm joining a failing-but-in-progress run, which almost always means FBI or MSP.
Some people just don't join those, they decline, wait a minute, and requeue. I tend to join them because I see them as a challenge and find them fun, and the fact that I'm seeing "0/1 accepted" as a healer or tank means there's a group TRYING in there. But I'm definitely the exception in that regard, and while I'm almost never the first to abandon a group, I'll often drop out of a group where a couple of people have already dropped rather than run FBI or MSP from scratch with a random party.
FBI and MSP aren't nearly as hard as they used to be - the power level increases from Chult, particularly the *two* new top tiers of weapons available since then, make a big difference. But they're still notably longer than the rest of the dungeons in their category, and a lot of people *remember* how hard they were at first and haven't realised how much easier they've gotten.
Disclaimer: This is focusing on the first three RQ tiers and AD, but the Expert queue could benefit all the same.
After mulling all of this over for a while, I still think 1/tier/day/account is too stiff and really does stifle alting pretty dramatically. Moving to 2/tier/day/account would be too good however, you'd be able to basically cap AD with 6 runs. I'm thinking a middle ground is in order, where the 2nd run on an account gives half the rewards of the 1st run. To further promote alting, the second run could require being done on a different character than the first, the first character to run a tier would be down to the residuals. That way, it would be most efficient to run the AD RQs on a least 2 characters, but could be done on up to 6 characters before being down to the residual rewards.
The issue with that is that it encourages bringing ungeared or low-geared alts that you don't enjoy playing, in order to make money for the characters you *do* enjoy playing. That's a step in the wrong direction - the goal, as far as I can see, is to make "playing your favourite character" the most profitable thing to do, and to make "having other characters" mean the ability to change roles and switch up playstyle and entertain you, rather than be a thing you have to have AND have to stop playing your favourites, in order to make a profit.
Currently, one of the most profitable things you can do is grind lowbie dungeons and run professions on as many generic alts as you have time for. People with vast armies of spare toons and a lot of patience to "not play the game" have a HUGE advantage over people who focus on one or two characters that they find the most fun to play. Part of the purpose of this change is to make having many alts give you many different ways to play the game, not give you an advantage over someone who doesn't build a giant alt army. They're trying to reward playing the game and reaching the higher tiers over just grinding the low stuff.
All this talk about people not wanting to be in dungeons and being forced to do them for pay. Is it any different from pre-RQ days? People actually enjoyed running eToS ad nauseam? I think people are more angry about losing that option to do 2 x eToS in 10 minutes with other elites in private queue or to use trash alts and get carried for easy AD.
To me neither is fun. Pre-RQ I couldn't get into these private queue runs, but was good enough to carry four trash through eToS. I make the same AD in RQ as it took me pre-RQ.
There always existed a form of Random Queue back when they were not "a thing". You ticked the box of every dungeon and/or Skirmish you had the time/IL/inclination to participate in.
If people only chose EToS and nothing else... I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest... They mainly ended up in EToS? I always ticked three or four other queues for the "variety" I was supposed to get from RQ, and frankly saw more variation. I knew I would never end up in Shores, or FBI, or MSPC... but the choice was taken out of my hands because i apparently needed more variety along with more RAD earned at a faster rate.
How did that work out again?
I know this can't be the case because I can't believe anyone with a modicum of intelligence would condone it, but the recent decisions genuinely feel like someone listed all the possible solutions to game situations and just said, "Don't care... just run with the most drastic, sweeping, ill thought through idea in the pile. We all know that online gamers stopped playing games for fun years ago, and its now just about accumulating points and spending as little time as possible out of direct sunlight... they don't actually care in any real, human emotional way... So let's put that to the test. And if any of them do whine... pfft... wait three months then screw them harder."
Think of it: There is to date no meaningful penalty for group-quitters. Only the real players are getting hurt. I myself have lost track of not being able to complete a dungeon, or ran into a gimped skirmish... all on account of one player who disconnected from a group to avoid a random queue instance they didn't like. But implememnting my idea takes random queues out of all players hands and makes random queues actual randomly selected missions that you must complete before you can earn any AD anywhere in your account.
It is the worst. It is meant to be the worst... for group-quitters.
So someone leaving a group is the worst and deserves the worst, really? How about all these AFK min IL leechers. The result of your suggestion would be, for a legitimate player, that he can either give in to their demands and clear a dungeon solo or with whomever is willing to contribute for the AFK crowd, waste his time trying it or take the hit of a 24h penalty, bc he could not or would not do a dungeon planed for 5 players.
The costs of building a BIS char were calculated with 100 kk AD. Do you really think these players NEED these AD from RQ? Something like this would enforce the gap between new or regular players and the long time players, bc no one would risk the penalty for a quick and dirty RQ run. If they would do RQ, they would run a full premade group, leaving the rest, who would benefit from a better geared player (or even need his support), in the dust.
Chars: CW, DC, GF, GWF, HR and TR.
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
If people only chose EToS and nothing else... I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest... They mainly ended up in EToS? I always ticked three or four other queues for the "variety" I was supposed to get from RQ, and frankly saw more variation. I knew I would never end up in Shores, or FBI, or MSPC... but the choice was taken out of my hands because i apparently needed more variety along with more RAD earned at a faster rate.
As I recall one of the points of the devs was to get ALL instances to pop faster. Because you have people queuing up for unpopular stuff and waiting their entire time in game and the queue never popped. "Oh, hey, maybe it will tomorrow..." And it never did until the randoms happened.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
If people only chose EToS and nothing else... I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest... They mainly ended up in EToS? I always ticked three or four other queues for the "variety" I was supposed to get from RQ, and frankly saw more variation. I knew I would never end up in Shores, or FBI, or MSPC... but the choice was taken out of my hands because i apparently needed more variety along with more RAD earned at a faster rate.
As I recall one of the points of the devs was to get ALL instances to pop faster. Because you have people queuing up for unpopular stuff and waiting their entire time in game and the queue never popped. "Oh, hey, maybe it will tomorrow..." And it never did until the randoms happened.
Well, that wasn't really an improvement. The implementation of random queues meant that I could never queue for CN, EToS, or other epic dungeons that I used to run with guild and alliance members both for fun and for AD/salvage/other rewards. It's only been in the last month that I have a character with a high enough item level to queue for those in the random queue system. However, since my wife's character is not yet there .... I am still unable to queue for them. Instead, I'm forced to queue for lowbie dungeons which are either not fun or are only fun because of the speed at which we're able to run them. On top of that, I'm forced to put up with stupid bots that are programmed to just run through the dungeon and people running alts that are only 3k or 4k item level in a dungeon in which even my 7k to 9k alts struggle without help from at least one other 7k to 9k character being intelligently played.
Since I'm forced to choose between running random dungeons or letting my AD income slide to zero, then I choose to put up with random dungeons. Running random dungeons is a HAMSTER chore and I LUTEFISK hate it.
If people only chose EToS and nothing else... I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest... They mainly ended up in EToS? I always ticked three or four other queues for the "variety" I was supposed to get from RQ, and frankly saw more variation. I knew I would never end up in Shores, or FBI, or MSPC... but the choice was taken out of my hands because i apparently needed more variety along with more RAD earned at a faster rate.
As I recall one of the points of the devs was to get ALL instances to pop faster. Because you have people queuing up for unpopular stuff and waiting their entire time in game and the queue never popped. "Oh, hey, maybe it will tomorrow..." And it never did until the randoms happened.
Thereby taking away the responsibility of the creators to make said content more appealing and dumping it squarely on the shoulders of players who didn't want to do it. Making it a requirement of a player's ongoing development to run content that was clearly regarded as unpopular and vilifying those who vote with their feet just perpetuates the notion that it is all the fault of the "quitter" rather than undesirable content.
Which of these two situations would players who want to run a specific dungeon prefer?
1) Player lands in dungeon he/she hates and decides, "stuff this... I'm off". I'll skip to another toon and do a different queue" thereby allowing an instant "call for reinforcements" to back fill the group so that the rest can carry on.
2) Player lands in dungeon he/she hates and decides, "stuff this... if I quit I'm stuffed on all my characters... I can either be a HAMSTER here for 15 minutes and eventually get booted, or quit and lose access on all my alts for half an hour... hmmm... guess I'm going to annoy some folk." and possibly preventing the entire group from even stepping into the first encounter for over 15 minutes
If you speed up the boot clock and then impose a leaver penalty on booted players... then with the new 9k RQ, there will be a LOT of pissed off players getting booted on CN (like in the bad old days) who, to add insult to injury will have to wait half an hour before being allowed to queue again because Gear Snobs are HAMSTER heads.
The benefit of having alts is variety of game play and being able to switch to a different char if the group needs it. It should never have become a vehicle for making more AD.
Well, you do need to develop the alts if you want them to be effective when your group needs them. I use four toons and they are all high 13K to low 14K. But I am probably an exception. There are way more people who send trashy alts into queues to get carried for RAD and funnel them to their main. So I have mixed feelings about the changes.
Youre not alone man i have 5 (GWF14k and GF, HR CW and OP 13k+)
I don't do epics, so IL is irrelevant to me. I've gotten Gold with two 8Ks in ToDG while the two 12-13Ks stood beside the door the entire match. PoM's the only one of those skirmishes that's typically impossible to get Gold on without all hands on deck.
The vast majority of the disconnects and AFKs I've been stuck with these past six months are the highest ILs in the queue. Most of them AFK 'cause they're throwing a tantrum (Wiz Lair), or they think they're being efficient (PoM, ToDG). And I'm willing to bet a large number of the low ILs you're dealing with are their alts. They're a mixture of experienced players and their acolytes who've learned how not to play from lousy friends or guildmates or just from queuing with these deadbeats.
I'll keep saying it and saying it. Until we as a community can block the accounts of people who behave badly, and deny them access to the community of legitimate players - these negative experiences will only continue.
I'll keep saying it and saying it. Until we as a community can block the accounts of people who behave badly, and deny them access to the community of legitimate players - these negative experiences will only continue.
The only problem with that is that "Having A Low IL" or "Being New To This Content" may very well quickly become many people's idea of "bad behaviour". Hell, for quite a few people, "Slowing me down on MY dungeon..." would constitute bad behaviour, while for others, "Running off and leaving everyone else behind" would tick the box.
PUGs are a lottery, Random Queue PUGs are a rigged lottery... the more and more restraints, rules, behaviour modification imperatives, mandates to compliance, and flat out orders that are implemented, the more resentment players will feel toward them.
All these HAMSTER stupid ideas to whip AFK/DC/quitters into shape just make the whole experience even less enjoyable than its been since Random Queues first landed.
How about some sort of compromise? Give every account 1 daily "quit" that renews on daily tickover? One chance to dump a dungeon... Maybe +1 for a mid level VIP.
Instead of trying to HAMSTER slap players into submissive obedience, meet them halfway?
Nah... just nail 'em with heavier punishments... that'll teach them.
Reiteration: ------------------------------------------------------------- Make the boss gates accept any who are 'active' (not DCd) in game, and make it a 30 sec wait time if not all active members are in the gate area. For latecomers to the gate, do as they do for Throne of the dwarf gods and wait 30 seconds to enter. This is an easy simple solution that solves so many problems:
1 Players who want to play and not wait for the DCd can enter and play. 2 low lvl or slow players (including those with horrible connections that keep them lagging) can still get in and finish the level, without hampering the faster players 3 Any player that had DCd and came back after the other players finished the dungeon will find themselves out of the queue altogether and will have to requeue and do it all over again. This makes purposely DCing risky. 4 All players no longer have to wait on others, therefore the current 15 min kick for dung and 5 min kick for others becomes a secondary option. (still think 5 min for lvling dungeon is better)
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
Since I'm forced to choose between running random dungeons or letting my AD income slide to zero, then I choose to put up with random dungeons. Running random dungeons is a HAMSTER chore and I LUTEFISK hate it.
Then don't do it. Simple enough. If you aren't enjoying it, don't do it.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
Please consider increasing the item level requirement for Master SVA. I have never come anywhere near successful completion of Master SVA, with random players. Either allow players to re-enter after death, or raise the item level. In my opinion, 12k should be minimum item level. Even 13k is not unreasonable.
With the current IL gear, 11k can be very underdeveloped even with such gear as the Fur armor from Omu. Players tend to get IL gear to 'make the cut' to play epic dungeons when many are way out of their league. MSVA MSP FBI TONG and cradle are those that should have a very high IL requirement because they require a well developed character to compete in them. 13k IL minimum would be a proper level set. Setting these Tier 3 or 4 dungeons and trials as a separate element in the RQ would also be best, for the length of time, difficulty and rewards they get.
Why not implement a "I don't want to be in the same queue as this player anymore" even if it's a 30 days option, botters will finish together and will never finish a dungeon, AFKers, quitters the same, at least some decision power is given back to the players. my 2 cents
Since I'm forced to choose between running random dungeons or letting my AD income slide to zero, then I choose to put up with random dungeons. Running random dungeons is a HAMSTER chore and I LUTEFISK hate it.
Then don't do it. Simple enough. If you aren't enjoying it, don't do it.
Right, and reduce my AD income to near-zero each week. That's a smart idea! I don't know why I never thought of it!
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
So your AD income is important to you, but not important enough to you to deal with the situation that Tymora dropped in your lap instead of the oh, so fast and easy option you were hoping for.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
So your AD income is important to you, but not important enough to you to deal with the situation that Tymora dropped in your lap instead of the oh, so fast and easy option you were hoping for.
Which is what? To run EToS or CN for 6k in salvage per run? Yep, that definitely sounds more fun and more profitable.
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
What do you need AD for?
To purchase items and improve your character.
And for what?
To make accessible even more content that you won't have any fun running.
Sounds to me like a very vicious circle.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
To make accessible even more content that you won't have any fun running.
Sounds to me like a very vicious circle.
yeah i've contemplated this a lot.. yet i keep doing it. I've decided for me running the content isn't the game. making ad and improving my character is where I have the fun
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
And yet the content becomes necessary for said improvement.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
Helping them understand the various mindsets of the players does not count in any way as constructive? Have we at some point been impolite in our exchanges?
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
So your AD income is important to you, but not important enough to you to deal with the situation that Tymora dropped in your lap instead of the oh, so fast and easy option you were hoping for.
You're referring to the oh so fast and easy option that was the main selling point of Random Queues?
It doesn't count as hoping for something when they spend weeks telling you that "more RAD and faster" is a feature of the new Random Queue so that, even if you don't want to run the queues there's a big benefit to doing it.
If no one realised that introducing a system designed to deliver more AD at a faster would result in more AD entering the economy at a faster rate, then maybe they would like to hire my 8 yr old son to do the maths for them. He's clearly better at it and would accept Skittles and Avengers stickers as payment. My finder's fee could be negotiated. (single malt... not blended.)
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,158Arc User
There were no selling points for the randoms beyond "this is happening".
Generally it was more and faster, but gathering AD was not the main point of it. The main point of the randoms was to get all instances queued to fire faster, so that no one was sitting for a day waiting for their instance to pop.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
@greywynd The purpose of me running random dungeons now is not so that I can run more random dungeons. I'm running them to be able to afford to improve my characters' enchantments and artifacts to get their power and item levels up to the point where I can run stuff like Tomb of the Nine Gods and Cradle of the Death God. These are things that I do not yet have the item level to run. For that matter, I'm not even powerful enough to run FBI yet, either. I've also been using my AD to afford heroes and adventurers to minimize the time it takes to level Leadership and, once leveled, to minimize the time required to complete the tasks that award refinement caches. Certainly, I'm hoping that once I get to the point where I don't really need the refining stones that I'll then be able to sell them and generate some AD income from the AH, too.
I have three "main" characters where the bulk of my investment is going right now. My SW is actually THE main character with an IL of 12,165. That character recently reached L22 Leadership and has 3x R12 QM enchantments equipped. After that comes my HR with an IL of 11,7xy (I forget the exact number. I think 11745). He's L25 Leadership and I forget how many QM enchants he's got. The third one is my OP with an IL of 10,6xy. He's also L25 Leadership. The HR and OP still have artifacts to refine, while the SW is done with those. While I buy the g|s|mops I need from the WB when it's on sale, it's still an expensive proposition. Most of the AD I earn from RQ on those three characters is going to g|s|mops. The other five of my characters are running RQ for AD to buy heroes and adventurers for Leadership, and they're slowly accumulating RP and refining the occasional artifact along the way.
Comments
Many dungeon experiences would be vastly improved if all the members of a party actually wanted to be in the dungeon.
I don't fully understand how the dungeons in this game digressed from what they once were. A fun challenge with decent rewards at the end has been reduced to a pathetic slog for a paycheck.
Also, I've been giving these changes some thought this weekend and I've realized that I'll still run 8 characters through these dungeons every day, even with these changes. I want the seals and the dungeoneer's shards. If I were to go down to two or three characters per day, it would cut my dungeoneer's shards per day in half. Granted, I won't run one character through more than one queue per day, but I'll run 8 characters through one queue each per day. That's for sure.
Mostly, I stay out of skirmishes because I don't really care for them. Also, five of my characters are minimally-geared, which means that they've got no legendary or mythic gear and they gain refinement points very slowly. So it takes a while before I can upgrade artifacts or artifact equipment on them and there's no refining of enchantments happening yet. (They are all working on Leadership. So that might change in the near future.) Granted, they're all 7k to 9k item level and the true farmers aren't even that high, but I feel like they're under-geared and can't contribute sufficiently in challenging content.
You know as well as anyone that the only reason the enormous, VAST, majority of people "choose" to join a random queue has absolutely nothing at all to do with variety, speed of access, or some noble sense of helping other people.
We went through this months ago when it was first mooted.
Its ALL about the rewards. Its a choke hold followed by a body slam designed to coral players into a new system that was badly conceived and badly implemented.
Someone's ego decided that all the changes that are now being implemented were bad ideas when suggested by many players.
The problem you now have is that retrofitting the suggestions from before, such as capping epic queues to CN come alongside the derisory cap in RAD refinement, which will mean people have to run these stupid queues to stay financially viable.
You used "More RAD and Faster" as the key selling point, and guess what. People took you up on it.
So despite fiscal responsibility and gradually reducing the amount of easily available RAD through such methods as dropping them from Leadership, and changing invoke rewards to bonus RADs, Moderator edited out political comment.
You got what you wanted... FBI and MSPC firing more often... but you also got all the problems you were warned about.
Don't now turn round and throw the "if you're not prepared to run ALL the content we are forcing you to run for RAD, just don't run it..."
Because YOU created the situation where people feel they NEED (not WANT....NEED) to participate in Random Queues in the first place. You did it when you took rewards from what people wanted to do and put in a system where they had to run what YOU wanted them to do.
And if asking people to not just dawdle til booted is your best solution to that problem... good bloody luck mate.
To me neither is fun. Pre-RQ I couldn't get into these private queue runs, but was good enough to carry four trash through eToS. I make the same AD in RQ as it took me pre-RQ.
If you have the IL to queue into the category, you really should already have the EF resist, or can get it by spending an hour or two in Bryn Shander. I mostly play a DC and a GF, and combined with the queue bug that shows you how many people are waiting to accept, I can always tell when I'm joining a failing-but-in-progress run, which almost always means FBI or MSP.
Some people just don't join those, they decline, wait a minute, and requeue. I tend to join them because I see them as a challenge and find them fun, and the fact that I'm seeing "0/1 accepted" as a healer or tank means there's a group TRYING in there. But I'm definitely the exception in that regard, and while I'm almost never the first to abandon a group, I'll often drop out of a group where a couple of people have already dropped rather than run FBI or MSP from scratch with a random party.
FBI and MSP aren't nearly as hard as they used to be - the power level increases from Chult, particularly the *two* new top tiers of weapons available since then, make a big difference. But they're still notably longer than the rest of the dungeons in their category, and a lot of people *remember* how hard they were at first and haven't realised how much easier they've gotten.
Currently, one of the most profitable things you can do is grind lowbie dungeons and run professions on as many generic alts as you have time for. People with vast armies of spare toons and a lot of patience to "not play the game" have a HUGE advantage over people who focus on one or two characters that they find the most fun to play. Part of the purpose of this change is to make having many alts give you many different ways to play the game, not give you an advantage over someone who doesn't build a giant alt army. They're trying to reward playing the game and reaching the higher tiers over just grinding the low stuff.
You ticked the box of every dungeon and/or Skirmish you had the time/IL/inclination to participate in.
If people only chose EToS and nothing else... I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest... They mainly ended up in EToS?
I always ticked three or four other queues for the "variety" I was supposed to get from RQ, and frankly saw more variation.
I knew I would never end up in Shores, or FBI, or MSPC... but the choice was taken out of my hands because i apparently needed more variety along with more RAD earned at a faster rate.
How did that work out again?
I know this can't be the case because I can't believe anyone with a modicum of intelligence would condone it, but the recent decisions genuinely feel like someone listed all the possible solutions to game situations and just said, "Don't care... just run with the most drastic, sweeping, ill thought through idea in the pile. We all know that online gamers stopped playing games for fun years ago, and its now just about accumulating points and spending as little time as possible out of direct sunlight... they don't actually care in any real, human emotional way... So let's put that to the test. And if any of them do whine... pfft... wait three months then screw them harder."
The costs of building a BIS char were calculated with 100 kk AD. Do you really think these players NEED these AD from RQ? Something like this would enforce the gap between new or regular players and the long time players, bc no one would risk the penalty for a quick and dirty RQ run. If they would do RQ, they would run a full premade group, leaving the rest, who would benefit from a better geared player (or even need his support), in the dust.
Since I'm forced to choose between running random dungeons or letting my AD income slide to zero, then I choose to put up with random dungeons. Running random dungeons is a HAMSTER chore and I LUTEFISK hate it.
Which of these two situations would players who want to run a specific dungeon prefer?
1) Player lands in dungeon he/she hates and decides, "stuff this... I'm off". I'll skip to another toon and do a different queue" thereby allowing an instant "call for reinforcements" to back fill the group so that the rest can carry on.
2) Player lands in dungeon he/she hates and decides, "stuff this... if I quit I'm stuffed on all my characters... I can either be a HAMSTER here for 15 minutes and eventually get booted, or quit and lose access on all my alts for half an hour... hmmm... guess I'm going to annoy some folk." and possibly preventing the entire group from even stepping into the first encounter for over 15 minutes
If you speed up the boot clock and then impose a leaver penalty on booted players... then with the new 9k RQ, there will be a LOT of pissed off players getting booted on CN (like in the bad old days) who, to add insult to injury will have to wait half an hour before being allowed to queue again because Gear Snobs are HAMSTER heads.
The vast majority of the disconnects and AFKs I've been stuck with these past six months are the highest ILs in the queue. Most of them AFK 'cause they're throwing a tantrum (Wiz Lair), or they think they're being efficient (PoM, ToDG). And I'm willing to bet a large number of the low ILs you're dealing with are their alts. They're a mixture of experienced players and their acolytes who've learned how not to play from lousy friends or guildmates or just from queuing with these deadbeats.
I'll keep saying it and saying it. Until we as a community can block the accounts of people who behave badly, and deny them access to the community of legitimate players - these negative experiences will only continue.
Hell, for quite a few people, "Slowing me down on MY dungeon..." would constitute bad behaviour, while for others, "Running off and leaving everyone else behind" would tick the box.
PUGs are a lottery, Random Queue PUGs are a rigged lottery... the more and more restraints, rules, behaviour modification imperatives, mandates to compliance, and flat out orders that are implemented, the more resentment players will feel toward them.
All these HAMSTER stupid ideas to whip AFK/DC/quitters into shape just make the whole experience even less enjoyable than its been since Random Queues first landed.
How about some sort of compromise?
Give every account 1 daily "quit" that renews on daily tickover?
One chance to dump a dungeon...
Maybe +1 for a mid level VIP.
Instead of trying to HAMSTER slap players into submissive obedience, meet them halfway?
Nah... just nail 'em with heavier punishments... that'll teach them.
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Make the boss gates accept any who are 'active' (not DCd) in game, and make it a 30 sec wait time if not all active members are in the gate area. For latecomers to the gate, do as they do for Throne of the dwarf gods and wait 30 seconds to enter. This is an easy simple solution that solves so many problems:
1 Players who want to play and not wait for the DCd can enter and play.
2 low lvl or slow players (including those with horrible connections that keep them lagging) can still get in and finish the level, without hampering the faster players
3 Any player that had DCd and came back after the other players finished the dungeon will find themselves out of the queue altogether and will have to requeue and do it all over again. This makes purposely DCing risky.
4 All players no longer have to wait on others, therefore the current 15 min kick for dung and 5 min kick for others becomes a secondary option. (still think 5 min for lvling dungeon is better)
I have never come anywhere near successful completion of Master SVA, with random players.
Either allow players to re-enter after death, or raise the item level.
In my opinion, 12k should be minimum item level. Even 13k is not unreasonable.
To purchase items and improve your character.
And for what?
To make accessible even more content that you won't have any fun running.
Sounds to me like a very vicious circle.
yeah i've contemplated this a lot.. yet i keep doing it. I've decided for me running the content isn't the game. making ad and improving my character is where I have the fun
It doesn't count as hoping for something when they spend weeks telling you that "more RAD and faster" is a feature of the new Random Queue so that, even if you don't want to run the queues there's a big benefit to doing it.
If no one realised that introducing a system designed to deliver more AD at a faster would result in more AD entering the economy at a faster rate, then maybe they would like to hire my 8 yr old son to do the maths for them. He's clearly better at it and would accept Skittles and Avengers stickers as payment.
My finder's fee could be negotiated. (single malt... not blended.)
Generally it was more and faster, but gathering AD was not the main point of it. The main point of the randoms was to get all instances queued to fire faster, so that no one was sitting for a day waiting for their instance to pop.
I have three "main" characters where the bulk of my investment is going right now. My SW is actually THE main character with an IL of 12,165. That character recently reached L22 Leadership and has 3x R12 QM enchantments equipped. After that comes my HR with an IL of 11,7xy (I forget the exact number. I think 11745). He's L25 Leadership and I forget how many QM enchants he's got. The third one is my OP with an IL of 10,6xy. He's also L25 Leadership. The HR and OP still have artifacts to refine, while the SW is done with those. While I buy the g|s|mops I need from the WB when it's on sale, it's still an expensive proposition. Most of the AD I earn from RQ on those three characters is going to g|s|mops. The other five of my characters are running RQ for AD to buy heroes and adventurers for Leadership, and they're slowly accumulating RP and refining the occasional artifact along the way.