New RTQ is not fair to any of the newer players

xin51

It is obvious that the game is being twisted even more to have players pay more real dollars. The new RTQ is like the new RADQ system and very unfair to newer players. The difficulty of both has moved to the silly. Attempting to complete TIC with players at the base Item Level is next to impossible. The same can be said for the new Trial.

It would appear that the developers are doing what they can to prevent players from easily getting rough AD daily without paying some serious cash outright. Sadly the trends you put into the game seem to make the game more a pay to play. Not sure how long I will be staying in the game. Our alliance used to run multiple RTQs throughout the day to include as many players as possible - with the new 40k IL limit that has been trashed.

johnnystranger

I have to agree with you on this matter concerning the Rad from RADQ and now the RTQ requirements . Makes little to no sense to me .

armadeonx

I agree that players in the 30-40k TIL range need to be able to earn the AD gained from trials - allowing them to only run the lower RQ content is a misstep by Cryptic, especially as their recent focus has been all about newer players.

This move takes things in the opposite direction.

I don't know why they couldn't have different TIL requirements on each trial - e.g. Tiamat 32k, SVA 34k etc - so people who are gearing up can still earn and unlock new trials as they improve. We've had such a thing before so it shouldn't be hard to put in place and makes a lot more sense than locking ALL trials behind the 40k requirement.

kalina311

maybe that's why they are reworking Demogorgon trial to make it even more doable for newbies..not

fritz

Can't you put the *old* Demo in the RTQ (without the new rewards ofc) and have the new one as single queue for the time being? I think those that want to run the new Demo don't use the RTQ anyway.

armadeonx

I'm cool with running it in a premade on my tank where everyone knows what to do - I really won't be doing that when queuing solo in a random team.

rikitaki

Random queues were introduced primary to help players to fill incomplete groups running whatever content needed a full group. That it became the major source of rAD was a sad and "unexpected" by-product.

The whole RQ redistribution is clearly focused on reducing the effective rAD income = shifting the rAD to players that have no need of it (those who get the rAD elsewhere anyway.) Later on they will be surprised that no-one is interested in filling incomplete groups...

I have played this game for many years, but I am yet to see a single day in which this game feels polished and homogeneous. There is always something that "will be sorted later on".

fritz

I'm a little irritated about the true purpose of random queues as well. I know it originally got introduced to give players a better solo q experience, but I think it had as much to do with not letting legacy content turn into dead pixels.

Which is why Demogorgon doesn't really fit the random queue system. It currently gets played anyway, much like VoS. So you don't need to "force" players into it. No matter how the devs envisioned the system back in the day, it has developed as farm method over the years. That's why I feel like it should only contain legacy content that's easy to manage within a PUG. On top of that you have the current "endgame" dungeons that should have sufficient rewards so that groups queue for them separately (like VoS, like Demo).

Otherwise Demo will just suffer from the "TiC" syndrome. People will just bail because it's not worth investing 30 minutes within a random queue only to walk away with nothing.

blackmagid

I want to say I agree with the OP. I would also like to say that since M21 dropped I have not run anything other than RTQ for AD as the distribution of runs within the other categories are just (imho) horrible

Thanks
Black

co2

The RTQ and RADQ is now basically dead which means 'daily AD mass income' is significant reduced which means more people are leaving the game which means the remaining smaller player base with less income will spend less AD in the AH which means EVERYONE (not just new players!) will have less AD income (players who buy now more ZEN will not compensate for that). It might lower the ZAX-Backlog but also the point of its existence. Plus: the resentment that NW is P2W has now due to those and other changes before much more substance ...

mamalion1234

"

i dont do randoms and i have 4,2m rough magic?

johnnystranger

> @mamalion1234 said:
> "
>
> i dont do randoms and i have 4,2m rough magic?

With over 3k posts , I’m sure you’ve been in NW for many years . New players will definitely struggle to gather Rad to refine to AD .
Doing the adventures will give them , iirc a little over 1m Rad . It is a start . Once Dread Ring unlocked , random skirmish, they can amass 4500/week and another 6k daily from skirmish.
Tbh , if I que RADQ , and get newer player , I’m taking 30 minute penalty every time . RTQ was main way for new players to acquire Rad . Not anymore !
They can still run the other dungeon que . But a lot of experienced players won’t waste 20 minutes on those so it most likely be mostly new players and no one to carry .

mushellka

New players should be primarily concerned with character improvement, learning the mechanics of the class they are playing, and progressing through the campaign.
I don't understand how can you imagine creating a character one day and going the dungs next. . .
What is even more interesting, these "poor and oppressed" do not want to play with themselves, but they expect that someone is going to carry them.

plasticbat

I have refused to do any RQ since the introduction of RQ. So far, I don't have problem to get rAD or enough to push me to do RQ. RQ may be an easy source of rAD but there are other source.

bomber

xin51 said:

It is obvious that the game is being twisted even more to have players pay more real dollars. The new RTQ is like the new RADQ system and very unfair to newer players. The difficulty of both has moved to the silly. Attempting to complete TIC with players at the base Item Level is next to impossible. The same can be said for the new Trial.

It would appear that the developers are doing what they can to prevent players from easily getting rough AD daily without paying some serious cash outright. Sadly the trends you put into the game seem to make the game more a pay to play. Not sure how long I will be staying in the game. Our alliance used to run multiple RTQs throughout the day to include as many players as possible - with the new 40k IL limit that has been trashed.

I agree with this 100%.
Unfortunately the changes made since mod21 that were supposed to make things easier for new players have done anything but... If anything it has made the need to buy and spend Zen easier but that's about it.

bomber

mushellka said:

New players should be primarily concerned with character improvement, learning the mechanics of the class they are playing, and progressing through the campaign.
I don't understand how can you imagine creating a character one day and going the dungs next. . .
What is even more interesting, these "poor and oppressed" do not want to play with themselves, but they expect that someone is going to carry them.

I can somewhat agree with parts of your statement.

I agree that players should strive to learn their class/role and instance mechanics.
However this game really fails on the teaching ends of things, campaigns and solo content (really any of the games content for that matter) offer little to no instruction. Also for some reason many players (new and old ) can't be bothered to do their due diligence and learn from outside sources (Google, YouTube, Reddit, Discord, Forums, etc) SMH.
So blindly into the waters it is I guess, to sink or swim.

I also agree that "New players should be primarily concerned with character improvement".
However character improvement requires large amounts of AD. AD which comes from?

[Spoiler Alert]

After adventures predominantly from running dungeons, trials, and skirmishes. AKA group content.

As far as your "these poor and oppressed do not want to play with themselves, but they expect that someone is going to carry them" nonsense goes.
To the best of my knowledge this game is still an MMORPG or MMO at the very least, playing with others and running group content is kind of the whole point of it. There is no getting away from players being carried, it's just how it is by design. There will always be weaker and stronger players, newbies and veterans shoulder to shoulder. Heck I'm certain that both of us were carried at some point and it's possible that we are still being carried on occasion lol. All we can do is offer guidance where we are able and attempt to even the playing field for us all.

I agree that some major changes definitely need to be made to the game.
However thinking that new players need to be isolated to running only solo content until they meet your personal benchmark of hours played/experience, campaign completion, or gear score is laughable.

armadeonx

The subject is a bit of a tightrope in my opinion and Cryptic can be accused of getting it wrong no matter what they do.

The best they can aim for is to be as fair as possible to as many as possible.

I do think that with the new levelling system, allowing rank 5 players into the (easy) random queue is wrong. They don't even unlock their paragon paths until rank 11 and have absolutely zero gear or stats of any worth. Also, rank 5 takes what? an hour or 2 from the start of the character? A new player will not have even memorised which button does what at that stage, let alone what their powers are actually good for.

As far as AD goes, the fastest way to earn it in the first week is to play the Adventures - they also get companions, mounts, bags, enchantments (including a weapon enchantment of their choice), companion gear & runestones etc.

Though there should also be a reasonable weapon artifact set - maybe just hand over the basic undermountain set at the completion of that campaign instead of trying to get a drop from ME's?

This doesn't mean I think they should be excluded from (the laughably called) easy queues until this point, group content is probably the biggest attraction to the game. It's all about dungeons - but with a combination of too-early entry and overly zealous scaling, a team of sub R20 players will usually fail on what is supposed to be an introduction to the later 'hard' content.

I used to run the easy stuff for a quick AD boost - up until M21. That content has now skewed the time-to-earnings ratio severely in the opposite direction, so it's no longer worth queuing for. I'm sure many other geared players no longer run them for the same reason.

As far as the new entry requirement for RTQ goes, I think 40k was a bit of a shock for many.

This is partly because the freebies from the Adventures will get a player to roughly 30-32k, after which they need to progress the old fashioned way. To this point, they've been spoon-fed gear that boosted their TIL and were probably thinking "this game is pretty easy!".

So they level up whatever artifact set they have (there are some of the older basic ones available to them for free) and maybe buy themselves a rank 8 armor enchantment if it occurs to them - but they begin to realise that ranking up the gear on themselves is barely making a dent in their item level. They've gone up maybe 2-3k by this point.

They ask for advice from their guild/alliance and are told "the majority of your stats and item level comes from your companions and mounts." and they have a "what the fudge?!" moment, as it dawns on them just how much it costs to rank up each and every companion.

Added to this epiphany: the change to RTQ - which removed one of the easiest /fastest ways for a 30k player to earn decent AD. Essentially, Cryptic locked ALL trials behind a 40k wall because SOME of the trials do actually require that as a minimum capability for success.

Not that it's going to happen any time soon even with maxed daily refining. At 100k per day / 3 million AD per month. They will need at least 4 companions at mythic and unless they buy keys or vip (both with cash) they have no access to trade bars, so paying the AD price for companion upgrades means taking roughly 3.5 months - assuming they don't spend on anything else. And so begins the relentless pursuit of companion upgrade tokens by all other means...

But it didn't have to be this way. Cryptic could still take the path of having a RTQ (30k TIL req) and an ARTQ (40k TIL req) but of course the ARTQ would need a better average award table to entice players to run it - I would also suggest removing the upper item level scaling cap.

I have asked earlier why they didn't introduce access tiers (e.g. 32k for Tiamat, 34k for SVA etc) but I know the answer. Given that the rewards are the same for all trials and the probability of success decreases with harder content - most players would remove their gear etc to deliberately reduce their TIL in order to get into an easier run. Because harder content does not deliver better rewards.

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paixnidiaris1

mushellka said:

New players should be primarily concerned with character improvement, learning the mechanics of the class they are playing, and progressing through the campaign.
I don't understand how can you imagine creating a character one day and going the dungs next. . .
What is even more interesting, these "poor and oppressed" do not want to play with themselves, but they expect that someone is going to carry them.

What a nonsense....character improvement ...with WHAT ? With peanuts ? You need astral diamonds .... how are you going to make astral diamonds in the game ...? RTQ,RAD (which are dead) skirmish 6000rad , leveling dung 2500rad....and yes new players need to get carried to learn content and earn ad's...they cant carry themselves obviously...

plasticbat

Veteran players were new players. Mod 21 provides current new player much more AD than veteran players when they were new. In addition, the game gives much more free stuff than in the past.

Free to play veteran players took more than one year to set up a system so that they could be competitive when they were new players. As a veteran player, I would say new player has an easier life than the past if they are good in planning. Dungeon, campaign, etc are a lot easier/shorter than when I started many years ago. I personally would say it was more fun but these days everyone wants to do something quick. RQ is the main fault. The fun in the past was destroyed.

The next question is: where do you spend AD? Why do you need to spend a lot of AD?
I have a lot of AD and the main reason is I don't need to spend much at all. I play the game. I got the stuff from the game.

I do not do any RQ since RQ was introduced because my personal opposition of the idea of RQ which killed a lot of fun since it was introduced. Yet, I have no shortage of rAD.

armadeonx

It's funny, because I thought the purpose behind scaling was to make carrying players unnecessary. Interesting how things turn out, isn't it.

kalina311

the true purpose/ myth "smoke screen" behind scaling was so that you downscale to play low level content with your new "Whale friends" that you brought into the game .not that they upscale them/newbs to play high level content with you lol until they are hoocked to the zen store (* cryptic only needs to convert a few % of players to do this)

no amount of "scaling will overcome a completely filled mount stable and companion bolster bonuses / insignia bonuses and boosted mount collars
because that is where most of this scaled character potential ability is locked away behind a paywall ...

mparcher

This trial is much easier than players realize. Literally just need a knowledgeable tank and its a breeze. 2 players take each portal in phase 1 and stand on opposing sides of the portal. This creates combat advantage for each player and the melt ensues. Phase 2 isn't an issue at all. Basic, easy mechanic or just avoid it all together. Doesn't matter. Phase 3 is super easy too. Players just need to use the cheapest artifacts in the game (like our first free one) and the boss will melt. I have joined many zone randoms and I see staff of flowers cast almost every run. Not sure which guide is telling players this is a good artifact, but its total garbage and a waste of diamonds. It can be done under 4 minutes. It may be the quickest trial currently in the game.

shugensha

I just see no real point on putting a 40k wall when only ONE trial is 40k. And it's not like it only group you with ppl that are looking for a group on RTQ but with anyone that is queueing outside of Random Q.. So isn't it kinda stupid? Heck, demo is only "hard" cuz most ppl either don't care to teach it or don't care to learn it. I got more empty demo instances than IC or CR combined. Heck, it doesn't even have a timer or dps check to call it hard, the only thing that makes it hard is ppl (both new and old ones).
In the topic of new players feeling "excluded", i would say it doesn't do that. They have an adventure that boost them to 30k+ for free, a lot of dungeons/skirmishs to practice their class and time to grind things to sell and get geared in other campaings to 40k+. Heck, they even had time to find a guild and think about how internet was invented to give information rather than HAMSTER if they want to find ideas about their class.
Plus, you need to think that classes like Healer needs a lot more time to learn and properly gear.

johnnystranger

> @shugensha said:
> I just see no real point on putting a 40k wall when only ONE trial is 40k. And it's not like it only group you with ppl that are looking for a group on RTQ but with anyone that is queueing outside of Random Q.. So isn't it kinda stupid? Heck, demo is only "hard" cuz most ppl either don't care to teach it or don't care to learn it. I got more empty demo instances than IC or CR combined. Heck, it doesn't even have a timer or dps check to call it hard, the only thing that makes it hard is ppl (both new and old ones).
> In the topic of new players feeling "excluded", i would say it doesn't do that. They have an adventure that boost them to 30k+ for free, a lot of dungeons/skirmishs to practice their class and time to grind things to sell and get geared in other campaings to 40k+. Heck, they even had time to find a guild and think about how internet was invented to give information rather than <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> if they want to find ideas about their class.
> Plus, you need to think that classes like Healer needs a lot more time to learn and properly gear.

Listen , if your dps is <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> , no matter how organized you are , it will fail .
There are a lot of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> dps 40k plus , a lot .
You can carry one <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> dps , maybe 2 . After that , it’s fubar imho . So that’s your dps check
I always use stone of health as dps , never , ever do I rely on heals .

shugensha

johnnystranger#5900 said:

I always use stone of health as dps , never , ever do I rely on heals .

And i think that is one perfect way to play. In my case i try to avoid my team to lost hp greater than 40% so they don't feel pressured to use them. But sadly, sometimes resources ain't enough, so you having a stone/potion in your tray it's a enourmous help for any healer. We are there to ease your gameplay or help you survive an "oopsie", not to babysit.

admiralwarlord

mparcher#3106 said:

This trial is much easier than players realize. Literally just need a knowledgeable tank and its a breeze. 2 players take each portal in phase 1 and stand on opposing sides of the portal. This creates combat advantage for each player and the melt ensues. Phase 2 isn't an issue at all. Basic, easy mechanic or just avoid it all together. Doesn't matter. Phase 3 is super easy too. Players just need to use the cheapest artifacts in the game (like our first free one) and the boss will melt. I have joined many zone randoms and I see staff of flowers cast almost every run. Not sure which guide is telling players this is a good artifact, but its total garbage and a waste of diamonds. It can be done under 4 minutes. It may be the quickest trial currently in the game.

Well, what is easy for some does not mean it will be easy for others. Yesterday while doing the Reaper's Challenge I spent 3 hours (yes, 3 unfinished hours) in CR, of which 2 hours and 20 min on the last boss. It was always the same mechanics and players with 50k+ who should have known or even recorded them after 2 hours and 20 min on the same Boss could not execute. After 3 hours passed I gave up and joined a new group which we completed with just over 1 hour where we only failed 1x on the last Boss.

As I already mentioned, this item level suggested for the "new" Demo is a deception as in my view it would be a 50k+ content mainly for DPS.

I would like to see a group with only 40k finishing both Demo and VoS.

sagakaiyume

VoS with only 40ks is possible, my alliance did so around the time it came out. Demo at least for healers at 40k if they know what to do isn't bad and a tank that knows to kite the boss. I don't know if 40k dpsers are enough for demo though unless companions they have are really hard carrying.

Or, if its 50k+ il dpsers that just remove things like collars and some insignias to hit 40k, then its kind of skewed.

mparcher

Crazy that we can complete MZC with a toon under 10k IL but we need 50k for many of the Reapers and 40k for Demogorgon. Not sure what is up with all these IL restrictions lately. All it does in encourage newer players to make <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> builds.