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Updates to Random Queues

nitocris83nitocris83 Member, Cryptic Developer, Administrator Posts: 4,495 Cryptic Developer
edited November 2017 in General Discussion (PC)
We're making some initial updates to Random Queues! Check out the Developer Blog here.
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  • hustin1hustin1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,458 Arc User
    rathimar said:

    Why not just do two random skirmishes like there are two random dungeons? Skirmish and Epic Skirmish maybe? And why are Kessell's Retreat and the Shores of Teurn NOT in the "skirmish" queue at all? They were always treated as a skirmish before and this would increase the base number of skirmishes to make it more feasible to have two sets.

    Absolutely. It would also solve the problem of having missed out on achievements. How hard can it possibly be to downlevel us the same way it does for dungeons?
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  • santralafaxsantralafax Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 2,896 Arc User
    Double Epic Dungeons--that's the way
  • krsbawskrsbaws Member Posts: 28 Arc User
    With a 15.4k ilvl main I'm not adverse to these random queues...however, it's pretty annoying if FBI or even CN comes up with some party constituents.

    A definite improvement would be trying to take item level in to consideration when trying to match a group.

    Both in respect of overpowered characters getting put with low level characters in random dungeons or in respect of matching parties for harder dungeons. I haven't completed a randomly matched FBI yet...first one, we didn't even get past the first encounter!

    I don't mind about the skirmishes, though I was very surprised when my (what I would consider ery underpowered) 10k DC got thrown in to the Merchant Prince's folly!
  • krysnytekrysnyte Member Posts: 47 Arc User
    edited November 2017
    The only problem I have is that there should be more queues. Right now, over half of our alliance cannot queue for Daily Epic Dungeon because of the difference in item levels and unlocks. Why can't you have queues for each set of item level requirements? For Skirmish and Epic Dungeons. That way at least we can work in a bit more room for running Random.

    Also,

    "We’ll be monitoring the activity in that skirmish, and at some point in the future, we’ll be returning it to the random skirmish queue once everyone has had some time to adjust and increase their item level."

    Really? Dude, do you really think there is not going to be new level 70's after the current ones? Do you know something we don't?

  • pelepanspelepans Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4 Arc User
    "We want to reiterate that with a big change like this, we’re absolutely relying on all of you to provide your continued feedback."

    I don't feel that's really the case. What I've seen, repeatedly, is that players love the idea of dungeon roulette but hate that they're being forced to random queue in order to get AD. I'm feeling the pinch on it because even though I'm nearly 15k I can't queue for random trial or random epic. I've never unlocked FBI or Zoidberg because I hate SOMI and its ridiculous reputation reward/requirements. It's a massive time suck that I'm just not willing to grind through. I doubt the devs actually read these but for what it's worth, how about putting the old dungeon rewards (AD and seals) back and just award an additional 1000-1500AD for successfully completing a random queue?
  • mithrosnomoremithrosnomore Member Posts: 693 Arc User
    Put me in with the others talking about adjusting the power-level of high-level characters in low-level dungeons.

    It's not fun watching as the other two members of the party run off and leave you behind because you simply are not necessary to the run. At all.

    Going through Cloak Tower, the very first dungeon, and that was where my Paladin found himself.

    I got a couple of swings in during the first fight because it was right there. I got some swings in during the last fight because they had to wait on me to catch up to them before they could start the final encounter.

    In-between I had to fight a group of 3 mobs that wandered into the path after the other two people had already passed.

    I was worried that they might try to kick me for slowing them down, and stopping to type "sorry for slowing you down" not only shouldn't have been necessary, but doing so would have only slowed me, and them, down that much more.

    That's not fun.

    Being of no use is not fun, and make no mistake, even though I got some swings in during the first and last fights the only one where it mattered was the second fight where I was all alone, because the others were burning through enemies/the enemy far too quickly for them to be a threat to their characters.


    I'm not new. I haven't been around for a while and decided to start fresh in order to get my bearings back, but I did not think that that was a fun experience. I can not imagine too many new players would have found that first dungeon experience to be a fun dungeon experience either.

    It was suggested above; Cap stats/ranks as if the character was the appropriate level for the dungeon using gear of whatever quality.
    That is character stats, gear stats, power ranks (shouldn't be any rank 3 or 4 powers in a level 12 dungeon, for example), and even companion ranks. A high-quality companion at max rank can be overpowered for a dungeon too.

    If possible, even limit their feat progress.
    If someone wouldn't normally have access to feats at whatever level the dungeon is then turn off their feats.
    If they should have 15 points then give them their first 15 points and turn off the rest.



    I like that there is a good way for individual people to get into groups for dungeons and skirmishes, it just needs a little tuning, I think.
  • kiraskytowerkiraskytower Member Posts: 455 Arc User
    Leveling dungeons really are not for level 70s, period. Why are we rewarding people for running through content in some cases 50+ levels below them? Is it that hard to have two epic queues? One with the tier ones (Lostmauth, Valindra's Tower, Malabog, etc) and one with the other dungeons in it (Temple of the spider, Fangbreaker, etc.). Leave the leveling dungeon random queue for people who are leveling!
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  • jiubiizeekkjiubiizeekk Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 144 Arc User
    edited November 2017
    Not a great mod at all.... Random skirm and random normal dung and thats it.
    Its almost impossible to find farming runs So i have no other reason to play and progress.
    It's taken me well over a month to get River district to the point of unlocking the Dungeon, That may i add will be pointless running because the reward to time ratio is not worth it.
    Ps. It was a kick in the Butt hearing that the October bug fix was being postponed till mod 13. my scourge warlock is pitiful now.

    Edit: Over half of my guild has left. (yes yest story of each new mod) But the way its going there wont be anyone to teach and carry the new people through the hard stuff, considering they cant even reach 10k IL as they hit level 70.
  • bawkrubawkru Member Posts: 60 Arc User
    snotty said:

    I think it should be also noted that instead of wasting time and resources making a new queue system you could have just revamped and added back in the 5 remaining dungeons that were removed from the game.

    That would have given us some more dungeons to run and at the very least be an interesting change. Also if you added back in the epic versions of the leveling dungeons plus the 5 I mentioned earlier, That would add a total of 12 new-ish dungeons to run daily.

    But hey, I guess forcing players to do something they don't want to do sounded like a better idea and was probably easier.




    all of this

  • meiramimeirami Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 423 Arc User
    Oh no, I really liked having the Merchant Prince's Folly in the Random Skirmish queue... but yes, I understand why. That tyrannosaurus can be a real terror to a group that just barely meets entry requirements and doesn't get a tank.
  • anguskartanguskart Member Posts: 44 Arc User
    edited November 2017
    Thanks for the quick change on skirmishes, Im a new player and was just starting to hit 70 with my characters when the random queues started, so I was quickly locked out of skirmishes. I ended up dumping some characters and starting over so I wouldn't lose the AD.

    As for other feedback, I am still getting Illusionist's Gambit 99% of the time on any character high enough to run it. Something is seriously off with your "random" algorithm with such results.

    On the subject of IG, Ive also seen a trend lately of botters in the skirmish queue, they stand there and occasionally heal and do nothing else to contribute to the skirmish. There should be a way to kick them from the skirmish, or at the very least easily report them for botting with a click.

  • karenza#8370 karenza Member Posts: 6 Arc User
    edited November 2017
    I was really hoping that there would be a change to the dungeons & skirmishes I could do. Feeling sad & dissappointed. I've been level 70 for while & about 11K IL I can comfortably do EToS, VT, CN, ELOL, Shores of Tuern & Kessels but because I haven't completed SKT & RD I am destined to boredom running through dungeons where if I breath they die, it is NOT FUN or a challenge! or I miss out on some free AD, either way sad & dissapponted!
  • asterdahlasterdahl Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 1,258 Cryptic Developer

    Thank you for the quick changes. They will be welcome by a good segment of the player base.

    @asterdahl You didn't mention the dungeon experience for players new to Neverwinter.

    I encourage you to random queue with a pre-70 character a few times and note the experience, bearing in mind that the long-term health of Neverwinter relies on new players converting to long-term customers. I hope the mid-term plans will address the fact that 70's trivialize that queue.

    Actually, the first thing I did when Swords of Chult shipped on PC was run the Random Dungeon queue on a lower level alt. I apologize for not talking at all about this issue in the blog post, but actually we had quite a few topics that we decided to cut out to keep the post succinct.

    The leveling dungeon queue is something I've discussed a bit before, and we definitely know that the experience can be less than stellar right now. Adjustments to level scaling is something we've had on our radar for a long time now, and it's something we're looking improving. Our goal is that when you're scaled down, it won't be much different from running it at the proper level, but of course at that time we would be making other adjustments to make sure the rewards feel fine for the time invested.

    When we were looking at the timing for level scaling adjustments and random queues, we did debate on holding back random queues. However, when we looked at the data regarding the number of level 70 players already queuing for certain leveling dungeons, and then the infrequency with which other leveling dungeon queues were actually popping, we decided that it would be an improvement for leveling players to have queues popping because there was already a good chance they were going to run into a 70 anyway.

    We know that by encouraging level 70s to run the dungeon queue, one of these problems has been exacerbated, but the issue with queues not firing has been alleviated, but do know that we are looking into improvements and we appreciate your patience.
    rathimar said:

    Why not just do two random skirmishes like there are two random dungeons? Skirmish and Epic Skirmish maybe? And why are Kessell's Retreat and the Shores of Teurn NOT in the "skirmish" queue at all? They were always treated as a skirmish before and this would increase the base number of skirmishes to make it more feasible to have two sets.

    The collective answer for "why not split queue N into more queues?" is basically the following: we don't really want random queues to become the only thing everyone does when they log in. With 5 queues already, those players that can do all 5 will have to carve out a decent amount of time to get through all 5. We'd like to not create an even bigger list of checkboxes players feel like they have to get through every day to earn the top rewards.

    We'd like the random queue list to feel like it's something you could complete in a somewhat reasonable amount of time, and in a reasonably long play session you could go on to queue for individual things you'd like to run.
    lowjohn said:

    In addition to what @tripsofthrymr said: Can we please, please please, please please please please please please PLEASE PLEASE PUH-LEEZE add an option whereby instead of Random Normal Dungeon, we can run 2x Random Epic Dungeon and get the full Random Dungeon daily rewards? It's either that, or we DESPERATELY need a humongous balancing pass on the downlevelling system that's been broken since mod 6.

    (Suggestion: When joining downlevelled content, set all gear to the max IL for that content's level and reduce stats, bonuses, etc, appropriately. So when I join Cloak Tower I still have all my gear, but it all gives me bonuses as if the "level required" to wear it was 12 - and my enchants and runestones all downlevel to the same IL to match. So I'm a "BIS" level 12 character, with a full set of Rank 3 Enchants and gold-quality IL 65 Gear.)

    Fixing level scaling is something we're definitely looking into per my response to Tripsofthrymr above, and the solution we're looking into isn't too far from what you're describing. (Some of those things like ranking down enchants are a bit of a technical hurdle so we appreciate your patience!)

    However, your question about the ability to run a second epic dungeon in place of a normal dungeon is a good opportunity to answer a popular line of questioning about opening up the system to give more options. In-and-of-itself your idea is not a bad one at all. Obviously we can't open up an easier queue to replace the reward from a more difficult one, because that would be abused regularly to avoid the harder content.

    However, opening up a harder queue to reward the bonus from an easier queue would probably be fine. Enough players who were trying to get their bonus quickly would probably still queue for the standard dungeon queue to ensure queues are firing regularly.

    Right now, everything in the random queue system is more or less 1:1, there's a bonus and repeatable reward for each specific queue, and there's no pool across all the queues or anything like that. It can seem complicated if you're thinking about how to map the old bonuses to the new system, but in a vacuum everything is fairly straightforward now, and the bonus rewards are fairly easy to understand.

    We wanted to keep things simple for this initial release, and avoid complicated rules and substitutions. The other fairly straightforward approach would have been to have a maximum pool and allow you to reach that pool in any manner, however, as I mentioned before there are issues with allowing substituting something easy for something difficult, so it's not a straightforward option.

    Of course, just because allowing a substitution would be complicated, both technically and in terms of presentation, doesn't mean we would never consider it. We plan to make improvements to level scaling, and continue to watch how everyone uses the random queues.

    Hopefully this answers some of your questions! As I mentioned in the blog post, all of your feedback is valuable. There were a lot of things that I would have loved to cover in the blog post that I simply could not due to space constraints, so I will definitely be responding to more questions in this thread.
  • fingerlickngoodfingerlickngood Member Posts: 8 Arc User
    I would like to do my ad runs with karenza but as she hasn't unlocked all content its not possible. Even if she had CN would be her limit. FBI, msp isnt' for everyone. Think they should be with tong's random ad q.
    Like to see Beginner (under 70) , intermediate (70) and advanced (msp, fbi, tong)
  • jarushk#5039 jarushk Member Posts: 12 Arc User
    Thank you, thank you, thank you! *removes the little dust from all 70s and cleans the courtyard of the stronghold*

    This quick change is a big step forward to player satisfaction again. With just one minor change, the dungeon experience would be great again:
    Install gathering points before *every* boss. Right now, top-equipped 70s just run through the mobs, leaving the slower group members behind, kill the boss with (mostly) just one or two hits and rush on. More gathering points would a) force these unsocial players to wait until the party has gathered and b) enable all group members to get Seals of the Adventurer after killing the boss.

    That beside, the return to the "old" skirmish and dungeon queue is highly appreciated. I already started to create new toons to farm the shards for the guild. Thanks again!
  • agilestoagilesto Member Posts: 516 Arc User
    The change for dungeon shards will be very appreciated by the guilds.

    Skirmish change is also interesting, however I'd love to see (as another poster) the zones skirmishes into the queue, or in another queue, maybe only private as you don't want to have more random queues. This way it's a bit more content available for everyone. It's already existing, just reserved for specific zones where players out-lvl the skirmish and don't do it because it never pops. It'd be possible to get the achievements granted by the skirmishes, and would add a bit of variety of what we can do. I'm sure that people wouldn't do that everyday, but at least it'd be available.

    For the levelling experience if you're working on the scaling, I guess it'll be less of a bad experience for the new players, however this was kind of a bad idea to pop the random queues before the scale changes. For several weeks the experience of everyone concerning sub 70 dungeons will be abysmal.


    The major problem remaining is with the epic dungeons, as we still have FBI and MSP in the same queue than ELOL and VT as said before. The difference in terms of difficulty and requirements is huge that these dungeons should be separated in tiers. yes it would add more and more random queues, but if you really monitor random queues data, you have to see FBI / MSP leave and fail rate. Not speaking of premade groups that do random queues and can possibly complete all dungeons, but random groups that can't.
  • forhakenforhaken Member Posts: 6 Arc User
    edited November 2017
    can you show me Tiamat in this list? (pic from test server)


    Post edited by forhaken on
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