I'd Really Like a Dev To Answer... Why Does It Take So Long For Random Queues to "Pop"?

chidion · March 2023

For several months (if not years) it seems Neverwinter Developers have been playing around with Random Dungeon queues in an attempt to improve them... From what I can tell, other than keeping the same content and making it more difficult, (with the exception of the Temple of the Spider) the wait time to queue a Random Dungeon seems to have been ridiculously extended. What used to be an average wait of a couple of minutes now claims it will queue in 5 minutes which usually turns out to be 10-12 minutes...

Why are random queues taking so long to pop?

pitshade · March 2023

Tanks and healers are rarer than DPS and also don't solo queue as much.

autumnwitch · March 2023

It's because there are not enough tanks and healers. Sadly, they make it very hard to play tanks/healers as well as levelling them and getting good gear can be very problematic especially for people creating new ones. Add to that, that in PUGS when new healers & tanks learn the ropes they are met with heavy toxicity from other players that will often turn them off from playing. In addition, unlike DPS players there is no practice areas for tank and healers to hone their play before they actually play with others. This makes it very stressful for them to learn how to heal and tank correctly.

IMO if a game doesn't give you the tools to "get good" within the game it's a sad situation. Telling players they need to go watch YT vids and/or read up is a cop out. There should be an easier way in game to become a good healer and/or tank within the actual game alone.

plasticbat · March 2023

Random skirmish which does not have role restriction does not take long to pop. So, it is not RQ programming issue but rather as mentioned, role requirement issue.

greywynd · March 2023

The changes the game made to healing and tanking mods ago made me bench mine outside of working for Sybella in DPS mode.

Healing/tanking stopped being fun.

rockster · March 2023

I've noticed of late that the 'estimated' time of waiting figure might say 2 mins, but I can wait 20 or more and it doesn't change from 2 or 3. It used to be much more responsive and move around more. Lately it's been just staying on a couple of minutes and not moving for ages.

And yea, it's usually no tanks. As a healer I can sometimes still wait for a fair while for it to pop, but since I started playing tank it's very fast.

chidion · March 2023

I don't make a habit of doing it myself but out of curiosity a few times I lingered in a random queue after it was completed, there are some who appear to just hang out there after it's all over... Counting their loot, rearraigning their inventory, buffing their nails - whatever.

I can't say with any authority this is part of the problem but it might be worth someone looking into once in a while.

arazith07 · March 2023

rockster#6227 said:
I've noticed of late that the 'estimated' time of waiting figure might say 2 mins, but I can wait 20 or more and it doesn't change from 2 or 3. It used to be much more responsive and move around more. Lately it's been just staying on a couple of minutes and not moving for ages.

And yea, it's usually no tanks. As a healer I can sometimes still wait for a fair while for it to pop, but since I started playing tank it's very fast.

It's not an estimate of whatever role you are, it's the combined estimate. A group of 4 with a Tank and Healer queue up, instantly gaining that 3rd DPS who waited 20+ minutes...that average time is more weighted towards the 4 that insta' queued than the last member's wait. Now expand that out to all the other combinations of possible queueing combos and you get the number you see. The number not changing a lot just means that the population is stable and that there is not as much changing.

rockster · March 2023

arazith07 said:

rockster#6227 said:
I've noticed of late that the 'estimated' time of waiting figure might say 2 mins, but I can wait 20 or more and it doesn't change from 2 or 3. It used to be much more responsive and move around more. Lately it's been just staying on a couple of minutes and not moving for ages.

And yea, it's usually no tanks. As a healer I can sometimes still wait for a fair while for it to pop, but since I started playing tank it's very fast.
It's not an estimate of whatever role you are, it's the combined estimate. A group of 4 with a Tank and Healer queue up, instantly gaining that 3rd DPS who waited 20+ minutes...that average time is more weighted towards the 4 that insta' queued than the last member's wait. Now expand that out to all the other combinations of possible queueing combos and you get the number you see. The number not changing a lot just means that the population is stable and that there is not as much changing.

What I meant was until very recently, the estimated number would chop and change, go up and down according to who had joined the queue. It was dynamic. But recently sometimes it's been sitting on the same number and not moving at all, often 2 or 3 mins or thereabouts, but the wait time can be 20 or more.

plasticbat · March 2023

That estimation means nothing. It used what happened to "predict" what may happen. That is hardly reliable or trustworthy. It basically is if the future is the same as what has happened recently, it will be that X minutes of wait time. It is like buying mutual fund based of its past performance. It can be better, worse or the same. Basically, means nothing.

rockster · March 2023

You're not listening to what I'm saying. It used to move around, now it doesn't. It used to reflect (somewhat roughly) the amount of time you needed to wait. Now it often doesn't. It can sit there and say 2 mins and be 20, it never used to.

rockster · March 2023

It's behaving atm.

mparcher · March 2023

Imagine public queuing for randoms in 2023...

mparcher · March 2023

I demand to speak to a manager!

froger · March 2023

I expect PC and Xbox are similar when it comes to random queues. On my DPS, which I rarely play for queues, because it takes forever to pop. If I switch to tank or healer, whichever the role bonus is for, it pops almost instantly. But the trouble with solo queueing is I have no idea what I will get, little is more frustrating than a group that can’t complete ancient content.

To speed getting into queue many choose to build groups in PE. As a support I can generally hop in a premade group quickly, survey the players to get an idea of what I’m getting, hopefully bettering my chances of a smooth run.

I suppose others may think like me. Making queues take longer because we aren't solo queueing to fill those roles.

tchefi · March 2023

Multiple factors.

As many mentionned, tank and healer roles aren't played as much as dps (there are far not 1 tank and 1 healer for every 3 dps), because it is usually considered not as fun as dps. Many players still develop a "pocket" tank/healer, but it is mainly to be able to provide the lacking role for guild/ally premades (so you won't see them in full random party).

I would add that the dps role flatters our individualistic and competitive mindset while the tank and healer roles lean toward our altruistic penchant. But in general, we are far more individualistic than altruistic, and in a video game situation, even on a MMORPG, we want to be the hero, the one who ultimately kills the big baddy, the one who defeat the most formidable foes. We don't want to be the sidekick whose actions created the situation that allowed the hero to deal the ending blow.
Which is quite an irony because in fact, in Neverwinter, the healer and the tank have a much greater responsability in the fail/success/consummable economy in a dungeon run than any individual dps.
But you know, players who want to take the most responsability aren't the most prominent population in any MMORPG, you just have to look at how many players lead/coordinate/organize/guide/accompany and spend time for others rather than mostly for themselves in the average guild/ally, and you will have an idea of the ratio. Most of us just want to have fun, not make it so others can have fun.

callumf · March 2023

tchefi#6735 said:
Multiple factors.

As many mentionned, tank and healer roles aren't played as much as dps (there are far not 1 tank and 1 healer for every 3 dps), because it is usually considered not as fun as dps. Many players still develop a "pocket" tank/healer, but it is mainly to be able to provide the lacking role for guild/ally premades (so you won't see them in full random party).

I would add that the dps role flatters our individualistic and competitive mindset while the tank and healer roles lean toward our altruistic penchant. But in general, we are far more individualistic than altruistic, and in a video game situation, even on a MMORPG, we want to be the hero, the one who ultimately kills the big baddy, the one who defeat the most formidable foes. We don't want to be the sidekick whose actions created the situation that allowed the hero to deal the ending blow.
Which is quite an irony because in fact, in Neverwinter, the healer and the tank have a much greater responsability in the fail/success/consummable economy in a dungeon run than any individual dps.
But you know, players who want to take the most responsability aren't the most prominent population in any MMORPG, you just have to look at how many players lead/coordinate/organize/guide/accompany and spend time for others rather than mostly for themselves in the average guild/ally, and you will have an idea of the ratio. Most of us just want to have fun, not make it so others can have fun.

Great post and so true.

I have returned to Tanking and its a lot more fun than button mashing as a DPS by rolling my face across the keyboard and holding down the left mouse button

But it means that in solo content my DPS loadout is pretty weak to say the least.

Back on topic yeah, if you PUG as a Tank or Heal you almost instantly get in a q, or as already stated, go to PE and ask to join a q there. Its mostly fun and you get to play with some great players!

irene · April 2023

I think the dragon gears have divide the community of old and new players.

Experienced players will fight dragon at low item level to obtain mythics, so naturally they look for strong friends to run ancient as priority. Since they add each other for dragon hunts, they naturally invite each other for fast rtq / radq / rc runs.

fritz · April 2023

The system purposely fools players into believing that there's a working match making system in place. In reality, the random queues primarily got introduced to not invalidate outdated content by forcing players into a random dungeon.

I think what I'd like to see is moving the Heist, Fangbreaker, and ToS into RADQ and let Skirmish and RDQ be run with 3-4 DPS, and 1-2 Healer/Tanks. None of the remaining dungeons really requires the holy trinity because it's just killing mobs without serious mechanics. You could probably also say 3-4 DPS, 1 Healer and 0-1 Tanks because the healer is more important.

We have a similar issue in the RTQ where Cradle, Svardborg, and CoK are pushovers and the other three considerably harder due to mechanics. So I think Tiamat, Gzemnid, and Demo need to get tuned down, especially since RTQ doesn't give that many RADs any longer.

That way you have fast queue times for easy content and can consider making RADQ premade-only to show that you have to know your stuff to be able to complete that queue.

luffyhaki123 · April 2023

well , the player base isnt that big at all, so the random que wont pop that fast, anyone who tells you , well dps you will take forever to find a que! dont know anything about mmos and never has played many mmos, world of warcraft has a huge player base, so even as a dps u can find a que pretty fast in a matter of 2-5 mins. this game just doesnt have the player base for it, which also means very little tanks and healer due to smaller player base and most will be dps.

rockster · April 2023

It's behaving atm.

fritz#8093 said:
The system purposely fools players into believing that there's a working match making system in place. In reality, the random queues primarily got introduced to not invalidate outdated content by forcing players into a random dungeon.

I think what I'd like to see is moving the Heist, Fangbreaker, and ToS into RADQ and let Skirmish and RDQ be run with 3-4 DPS, and 1-2 Healer/Tanks. None of the remaining dungeons really requires the holy trinity because it's just killing mobs without serious mechanics. You could probably also say 3-4 DPS, 1 Healer and 0-1 Tanks because the healer is more important.

We have a similar issue in the RTQ where Cradle, Svardborg, and CoK are pushovers and the other three considerably harder due to mechanics. So I think Tiamat, Gzemnid, and Demo need to get tuned down, especially since RTQ doesn't give that many RADs any longer.

That way you have fast queue times for easy content and can consider making RADQ premade-only to show that you have to know your stuff to be able to complete that queue.

Yea, the difficulty level is all over the place and doesn't match in what is supposed to be the same class of content. It's a huge problem. There are only two trials I would be happy doing, two other ones I'm not interested in playing and the rest I resent because they were fine originally and nothing wrong with them (and I used to really enjoy doing them) but were torn apart and now aren't worth doing because they're too stressful. So I boycott RTQ completely each day and just take the penalty of not getting seals as fast.

gamgzy · April 2023

Does the rise and rise of private channels not impact on public queues?

rockster · April 2023

Yes they do. I'm sure people are running MToS for example but the queue is always dead and who knows how to find the private channels to join.

fritz · April 2023

gamgzy#8454 said:
Does the rise and rise of private channels not impact on public queues?

It's the same on consoles, which so not have private channels. Folks run stuff through their guilds and alliances I guess.

Private channels are the direct consequence of an imperfect queue system that suggests item levels way below what you need to complete the dungeon. Or let's say it suggests items levels at which players usually lack the experience to complete more difficult content.

MTOS is endgame. You can't just pug into it and expect to complete it. It's one of those dungeons that you shouldn't be able to publicly queue for, just within a premade. Because not only do you need the item level, you need an actual build. Same for VOS and the Master Trials.

I think channels should be search-able via the social tab just like guilds etc. and their operators should be publicly listed so that you can pm or mail them to get in. I took a hiatus a few years back and tried to get into VOS Completed. It was such a pain because people are so hush-hush that you have trouble even finding someone to connect you to an operator unless you're in the right guild or alliance. If you get in early when these channels are being advertised on zone, it's going to be an uphill battle.

cracklepants · April 2023

I think it is an issue with healers being ignored and/or nerfed in prior "rebalancing." I run randoms with my tank alt and don't have to wait too long. I do see a lot of healers in the 32-39K range which tell me they are new. I quit using my alt healer (cleric) at 45K, as it was a pain to keep up due to the divinity mechanics. Tried to heal with my bard alt, but it was even worse. I am enjoying my fighter tanking right now, but know barb and pally tanks still need work.

ncognito1959 · April 2023

Maybe a good time for them to remove random ques and go back to Salvage system. That way players can run the dungeon the like instead of possibly being forced into something they don't like.

gamgzy · April 2023

So, are Private Channels just legitimised power levelling where low ILs can be carried?
Personally, and i know it's not a popular idea, i'd have the whole playerbase in one queue system.

cracklepants · April 2023

I only queue on my main in a private group. We can usually carry a couple depending on who is in the party. The only players I will not carry are those that ignore tips on mechanics or refuse to communicate.

I'd Really Like a Dev To Answer... Why Does It Take So Long For Random Queues to "Pop"?

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