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These God awful PUG queues
stuart1965
Member Posts: 691 Arc User
Consistantly everyday these PUG queues are mostly dead.
There seems to be abuse in the queues, that is when the engage signal happens,one or two players usually pull out, forcing even longer waiting times to get onto a PvE mission.
Its not the same in some fleets I know, but from what I have seen, not many players these days want to team up, so its no wonder the queues are dead.
I'm sure some players may agree with me, not all I know, There needs to be more single player PvE missions, surely whats around can eventually be modified, and with a view to scrapping these god awful PUG queues.
Its NO fun at all,having to queue up and wait ages to get on one mission. Its wasting fun time.
OK it will be like getting blood out of a stone, but is there some miracle that a Dev might read this with a view to addressing dead queues???
We live in Hope.
There seems to be abuse in the queues, that is when the engage signal happens,one or two players usually pull out, forcing even longer waiting times to get onto a PvE mission.
Its not the same in some fleets I know, but from what I have seen, not many players these days want to team up, so its no wonder the queues are dead.
I'm sure some players may agree with me, not all I know, There needs to be more single player PvE missions, surely whats around can eventually be modified, and with a view to scrapping these god awful PUG queues.
Its NO fun at all,having to queue up and wait ages to get on one mission. Its wasting fun time.
OK it will be like getting blood out of a stone, but is there some miracle that a Dev might read this with a view to addressing dead queues???
We live in Hope.
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KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
However, space would be harder to do unless they could cut back the requirements for a team from 5 to say 2? DPS is king and at times no need for a full group this day. The model is antiquated and aimed at a full occupied server capability not the modern days like today which is basically semi-inactive. Hope they would re-do the queue with a different system...or at least lower it to teams of 2 and 4 like some other MMOs in the market. Even with a full active fleet...not many want to queue up if you need to get 5 players...2 or 4 might be much better.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I'm strongly of the opinion that the best thing to do now would be a cull of the queues, get rid of the frequently dead ones (metrics must show what gets player least) and thus condense the total number open into a smaller sample size.
I would leave all queues available as privately launch-able queues for premades but cut down the public lists.
I know removing content is not good but seriously most of them are utterly dead and it's gotta be off-putting to newbie players to see so much dead content openly displayed. 10-20 well populated queues would look a lot better than 50+ with most empty.
Another thing I think really should be considered is some sort of random "queue of the week" whereby a random queue is picked to give out double rewards or something like a piece of loot with a limited time claim from said queue. Hell why not offer X amount of lobi or even lockbox keys as rewards for playing the chosen queue each week for say a month.
That could revitalize the less used ones and it could be picked based upon which ones are played least the week prior.
All that said though I do enjoy the pug queues as you get a good challenge some times. It's not always a predictable 2 min spam-fest, nor a complete disaster.
Add random events to each queue, things we can't necessarily predict to happen. Ex: Sudden appearance of a borg tactical cube, friendly ships in need of rescue, radiation hazard zones that move randomly across different parts of the map.
Nested optional objectives to make for many different mission goal outcomes depending on which randomly is paired with which in a way that makes sense logically and story wise no matter how it gets paired up.
Mission objectives that aren't all about DPS or where excess DPS results in decreased chances of success.
PvP/E mixed scenarios or battlezone-type STFs.
You don't need over the top rewards if the gameplay itself is rewarding; the queues will take care of themselves so long as rewards for gameplay time, effort required, and risk are normalized.
this. that would be awesome.
when I do the tau dewa patrols (yes, it is not a stf but ...), I don't understand why the romulans don't use their battle cloak or why the BOP are so slow and move like cruisers. In the borg stfs, the probes should be more agressive and fast; same thing for the spheres + an ability for assimalating us. the mobs should have also some abilities (buff) than we can't remove.
Been saying that for years. We are admirals after all, we need to command a fleet! You could assign boffs to other ships to command them and (unfortunately) control them like hanger pets with the basic 4 commands. Sure would beat the silly ShipDoffing fleet commanding we have now.
Gecko in a podcast interview already said as much many months ago, including running featured queues. So it's well on their radar of things to do.
Problem is some queues are the only way to get particular marks. So at the minimum you'd need one queue for every mark type, but then you'd also need 1 space and 1 ground because some people do not like or play certain queues because they're geared soley for ground or space combat. This is the sole reason CCA is still around when the Crystaline event is not on, because it's the only space queue to reward Nukara marks. Gecko admitted he'd of deleted that queue ages ago otherwise.
A queue cull is on the cards. Just a matter of dev time.
Sometimes you just want to jump into the action and this game is international so fleet members can be on at very different times so its hard to coordinate things. Besides I shouldn't have to ask people to join me all the time.
Removing queues is a wrong way to go about it. I'm still not happy with them removing the breach. Sure it wasn't often played but it was one of the more interesting queues. Mine trap wasn't that bad either but it could of used some work. Instead they should rebalance the entire queue system. So far the only difference between difficulties is the amount of hp enemies have. While ground is manageable even on elite, space adv is so so while elite is out of reach for most of us. They could increase the the chances of getting useful gear in such a way that you say play romulan queues you get romulan gear, delta queues gives vaadwaur gear and so on as well as increase rarity the higher the difficulty by including ultra rare and epic gear, maybe add a chance for some unique items if certain conditions are met, cosmetics and such. Maybe that would increase players interest
Those asking to make queues playable with boffs you do realize this is an mmo, right? The whole point of an mmo is to team up with other people and play together and have fun.
My experience with pugs has been mostly positive.
Though I do understand that, in a game where almost everyone is used to activate FAW and just press spacebar, the randomness can be scary. Before you know it, you may have to improvise and actually deal with unexpected situations.
The horror!
The random encounters in sector space may provide a solution though. The more players that are in such an encounter, the more enemies will warp in each round. Perhaps something similar could be done for some of the less populated queues: have them start if 3 people have been waiting in the queue for a few minutes, but reduce the amounts of enemies.
Only some of these points are relevant today some are more relevant for a couple months after DR release
1. Decline in player base after Delta Rising hit.
2. Autofails put people off running them (Feature now removed thank you)
3. Brickwalls of hit points and low dps players not getting anywhere. Prolonging the match and adding frustration to not being able to kill anything.
4. Some of the new PvE's don't capture the fun of the older ones so after trying them players don't enjoy them and don't run them. (I'll testify to that i don't enjoy the Iconian or Terran PvE)
5. A large percentage of pre-DR Puggers went and found private and public STF's channels and therefore left the public queues to better their chances of completing PvE which is why public queues appear to lack numbers.
6. With dil available in more areas players may farm these areas instead of PvE queues. Voth Battlezone is very generous in dil rewards.
Maybe this is it. Fill in a hypothetical new UI where you tick which currencies you want to earn, and then the alert system will generate a potential alert based off what players seem to want, and show the alert to all the matching players. If enough of them accept the alert a PUG is created, and the alert system tries to create the next PUG.
This way player can decide, on the spot, whether or not, to join a particular event, without having to queue way ahead of time and hope that the queue doesn't ding whilst they are otherwise busy.
Well even if you set up specific times its hard to get people. For instance I have set up a fleet event for every sunday evening and there are others at different times and days but interest is 0 despite our fleet being one of the more active ones. I'm surprised cryptic hasn't given us a way to set up events for the entire armada.
The fleet I am in has fleet events in the calendar. I signed up for them but there was always zero activity when they were supposed to happen so I stopped. You can't just schedule them and hope they happen. You either have a strong personality who sets about actively promoting them, or else everyone is going to be "too busy", as being the first guy to chirp up is going to make you the defacto leader. And I (certainly for one) don't want to end up leading something as thats hard work and I play games to de-stress.
That all said - perhaps whats needed is, frankly, a way for fleet events to have an associated reward. Imagine - if you will, that a fleet - based on its size - was allocated a 'budget' of Fleet loot boxes. And when creating a fleet event 'success' critera could be set, that would award fleet members who participated, one of the boxes.
This would be balanced to basically encourage players to perform at least one mission, as part of an fleet organized event, at least weekly, to get a loot box that they otherwise would not/could not get.
This would encourage fleets to hold at least one organized event a week, and perhaps kickstart a bit of an event culture - now players will not feel they are intruding on other players time.
I've been in my fleet for a while now and there's only so much you can do. I used to go online at the time set and remind people that event started and asked for teaming but barely anyone responded and if someone did its the usual suspects, meaning people I do stuff with anyway when were on. New people barely/rarely say anything. Now days I just don't care. If people want someone to run stfs/missions they have plenty of opportunity. I can't force them to participate
As for rewards. well there are contests from time to time but not many participate, have to admit me neither
My character Tsin'xing
I will definitely cast another vote in support of solo content to obtain reputation currency, however.
Not unless they find some way of moderating said players' behavior.
And if you can't carry a rough pug, go back to the drawing board yourself. Think of bad players as part of the challenge in the game, develop strategies to deal with broken strategies, rethink your own plan of attack to account for the unpredictability of others.
You will be a better player for it. IMO, there's far more satisfaction in dragging an inexperienced pug team through iga with the optional in tact, than there is in parsing the biggest dps of your life. That's the hallmark of a real elite.
PUGs are the spice of this game. If everyone knew all of the strategies and everyone executed perfectly, then every run would be about the same. Thank god the players behaviour varies to preserve the aire of variety that this game lacks anywhere else- including the public/private channels.