[DISCUSSION / FEEDBACK] PQ/RVR flawed reward system

[morvran2]

I really like the Idea. It also has the added benefit of reducing the clustered PQs, now that all kinds of bags matter not just gold ones. So there would be a reason to actually do non-hard PQs.

[wargrimnir]

PQs are not designed for 20 players. Hard PQ's are designed for about two groups working together. Normal for 1 group + a few randoms, and Easy for 2-3 players.

PQ's are not designed for full R40 players, they vary in level. Which means a R32 Hard PQ is going be much easier to do than a R40 PQ. Because of this, they can also represent pieces of the set that vary in level. Hardest PQ's would give a specific gold bag with that specific piece of armor.

PvE PQ's don't need time wasted on a currency system, they need time properly used making them functional, which in turn should spread out the population thus having people group up and farm them like they should.


Currently the real problem is the zerg blob arms race where everyone takes the path of least resistance and the game systems are not designed to spit out shiny loot as fast as they want them to. Hell, the systems aren't in a finished state at all, instead of entertaining that the broken content needs to spit out more loot, I think fixing the content should be a higher priority, no?

In RvR, this is a more acceptable issue, we want lots of people in RvR fighting for the scraps. We already have a currency system in place. If it needs to be tweaked, then it needs to be tweaked. However, when we drop into RvR for a couple days and grind out RvR battles for a solid 20 hours and end up hitting our metrics, it's hard to say that it's ~too slow~. RNG is what it is.

The purple bag trinkets were pretty harshly contested whether they should exist at all, and the only real reason they were left in is BECAUSE they were so rare to get.

[freshour]

PQs are not designed for 20 players. Hard PQ's are designed for about two groups working together. Normal for 1 group + a few randoms, and Easy for 2-3 players.

PQ's are not designed for full R40 players, they vary in level. Which means a R32 Hard PQ is going be much easier to do than a R40 PQ. Because of this, they can also represent pieces of the set that vary in level. Hardest PQ's would give a specific gold bag with that specific piece of armor.

PvE PQ's don't need time wasted on a currency system, they need time properly used making them functional, which in turn should spread out the population thus having people group up and farm them like they should.


Currently the real problem is the zerg blob arms race where everyone takes the path of least resistance and the game systems are not designed to spit out shiny loot as fast as they want them to. Hell, the systems aren't in a finished state at all, instead of entertaining that the broken content needs to spit out more loot, I think fixing the content should be a higher priority, no?

In RvR, this is a more acceptable issue, we want lots of people in RvR fighting for the scraps. We already have a currency system in place. If it needs to be tweaked, then it needs to be tweaked. However, when we drop into RvR for a couple days and grind out RvR battles for a solid 20 hours and end up hitting our metrics, it's hard to say that it's ~too slow~. RNG is what it is.

The purple bag trinkets were pretty harshly contested whether they should exist at all, and the only real reason they were left in is BECAUSE they were so rare to get.

Take this with a grain of salt... But don't you think they've been trying to do this the entire time? And 90% or more of them still dont' work. So rather than beat a very very very dead horse. Why not just implement a simple system that works? Then they can fix the rest of the PQ's at their own pace seeing as they are just as buggy as they were when t4 released (which is okay because rvr is more important).

Not trying to be rude, just disagreeing as they have tried what you've suggested for quite a while. Might be time for Plan B.

[th3gatekeeper]

Because the gear isnt far behind anni or merc, is BIS for tanks, a lot of people would just do a few to grab the crit shoulders and match to another set, the PQs in their current rudimentary state are effortless so there is no risk/reward factor.

The biggest issue at the moment is rolls are not getting past 1/3rd what they should which means getting high contribution is currently an overweighted factor whcih benefits some classes over others

For already simple PQs to run such a system would involve significant reworking of PQs to raise their difficulty, the hero mobs to have abilities coded onto them and for currency attained in pqs in the all but the very last chapters to be almost infinitesimal otherwise they would just be 31 PQs farmed by lvl 40s for free gear.

It comes to this, its alpha, this isnt a finished state and going off and reworking the whole system when the fundamentals are not working for simple convenience is a flawed premise.

Torque,

What do you think people are doing right now?! They are running a few PQs and if lucky literally get a piece of gear on the FIRST PQ... I have seen MANY tanks run in and SOLO farm by themselves and end up as #1 or #2 in contribution, and like you said, the roll is so bad, they pop first place and grab the bag and leave...

I would challenge this concept though Torque, lets say rolls DID go higher. In all honesty this will just make the system WORSE since its still 3 levels of RNG. Thats the ultimate flaw with the system. RNG + RNG + RNG = too much RNG for people to feel fair.

Its RNG in how contribution is awarded. No one is privy to the formula and some classes have an advantage over others. It seems tanks and aggo are HEAVILY rewarded and I have done a TON of PQs on my Mara, I have even had to tank the heros.... I have been in a 2-2-2 group where we "monopolized" the contribution in our 6 man 2-2-2 and guess who got 1st and 2nd every time... the two tanks.... Not to mention the feeling of always competing AGAINST each other since only 1-2 people get anything worth it from the PQ. We currently have a system where the bigger the **** you are, it seems the higher the contribution you get....

More RNG isnt the solution.

I actually think my proposal here would make the gear HARDER to get... You can literally scale this to whatever you feel appropriate. Maybe make the shoulders cost the MOST - just like the Chest pieces costs the most SC medallions (like 1/2 the cost of the full set).

I get its an alpha... Is there literally not an easy way to replace the "Ruin gear" with some type of "Ruin Coin" in the gold bags. isnt there a "condition" or "set of conditions" that have to already be met for Ruin gear to trigger from a gold bag in the first place?

I am not a programmer and I know nothing about what you guys do.... But it seems there are already a set of conditions that trigger a ruin piece dropping....

Would it not be possible to have it reference a DIFFERENT item in the database, a new one, called "Ruin Coin" and then change the amounts to like 5x, and then add that same reference with conditions and change that to 3x on purple bags etc etc..?

Im just asking.

[Flavorburst]

This has probably been said about 20x, and I don't want to derail the premise of the thread, but I really think there needs to be more thought on gear choices.

I agree that currencies / how loot should be distributed should be worked on, but I think we should think bigger and make currency universal and scale costs as needed.

As an example: Warrior Priest sets.

If I do SCs, I can only get a melee set. If I do PQs, I get a weird hybrid Grace set (still melee). If I want to heal, I need to a) hope that there is ORvR happening (which is hit or miss on NA times), hope that we are doing well, then hope that I win a roll for 1 token vs the 5 other people in my group 500ish times, and/or hope that I win a totally RNG roll vs 30-60+ other people.

This wouldn't even be that much of a problem if we were talking about the difference between higher level/tier 40 sets, but being relegated to a level 26-29 gear (IF you were lucky enough to obtain that many tokens in t3 while leveling up, which is much harder with the t2/t3 population being dodgy at best these days) while DPS/Tanks rolls around in 35+ gear that may not be 100% optimal with how they want to play, but still largely functional is super discouraging. I am sure that it's less noticeable to people that spent a long time in t3 (when that was the cap), and had already amassed a good set to transition to t4 with, but it is downright painful when leveling up a new toon from scratch.

SC sets already have a higher token cost, but if SCs are to be considered the "path of least resistance" (I personally don't think they are), I would gladly pay more if it means having more talent trees being represented. I also wouldn't feel penalized by participating in different activities if we are basing this off of a universal currency for SC and RvR gear. As it stands now, the more time I spend in SCs, the less time I am collecting ORvR tokens, and vice versa.

That said, my secret motive is to give myself a break from carrying Played on my DPS characters and give him a chance to shine~

[th3gatekeeper]

This has probably been said about 20x, and I don't want to derail the premise of the thread, but I really think there needs to be more thought on gear choices. + MORE

I think this is something that can more easily be done via a currency exchange. So I would like to first get a better reward system running for both PQs and RVR as a means to providing currency. Which then can fine tune the "relationship" between them.... Like 1 example: 6 SC Emblems = 1 oRVR Medallion.. Stuff like this. Which would then open up more avenues of obtaining gear.

I still go back to the suggestion I made and I dont think it requires a "rebalance" as Torque suggested.

The OTHER method of doing PQs btw, would be to create "tiers" of reward... Something like the first X places ALL get "gold contribution" at the max... so rather than 1st gets +450 2nd get +400 3rd gets +350 etc etc. It would be 1-3 get +400, 4-6 get +300 etc etc. More "evens" out contribution.

Torque, what I dont quite get is you guys found a way to incoorperate a "currency" system into the RVR purple bags... So I see a "currency item" that drops from the ORvR 'PQ' - which uses the same system as the current PQs and think.... Why cant this be scaled?

So you take that currency, say the "Genesis Remnant" and make it the ONLY currency for ALL the Genesis items... increase the amount required to BUY the item from the vendor to say 10 or something for each piece.

Then when the purple bag drops, increase its "amount" or whatever to 3x. Go into gold bags, make it 5x. Go into blue bags and make it 1x.

Now you have the system in the proposal. You get a gold bag, your 1/2 the way to 1 piece. You get a purple, your 30% of the way to 1 piece of your choice etc etc...


Why can this same thing not be done for the PQs for Ruin Gear?

[stillwaterww]

Why doesn't just everyone get 5 medals when a keep is taken? I mean yeah the free zone flipping medals was bad. But when you tie it to a keep take at least most people will have to work hard for their 5 medals.

[th3gatekeeper]

We dont need to make things easier to get at this stage because its literally end game stuff right now, everyone thinks they want everything right now but they dont, it takes away a huge amount of investment in your character and becomes meaningless.

We have no reliable metrics on gain due to the fact that the infrastructure is barely functional and in pieces

Having Ruin gear in t4 right now was a huge undertaking and a significant bonus to the playerbase, by myself who fixed all the stats, bonuses and appearances and Styrkarr who jury rigged a minimal amount of pqs to functionality. Neither of these things were easy or fast, I was doing 18 hour days prior to t4 launch and we get literally nothing for doing this.

We dont have time or manpower to invest in reinventing the wheel when the road itself hasnt been laid out.

The issue with making sweeping changes is the fact that there are always unplanned for variables, which is why we had a ruin and annihilator wipe, Im assuming no one wants this to happen again? While we certainly dont want to do wipes we will when necessary.

The concept may well be a very good one but at this point its moot, the infrastructure needs fixing and then taking stock of where we are once thats done.

All I can ask for is patience, literally all I do is make cool stuff for you all but there has to be risk/reward in its attainment and this cant be reliably measured in a broken system.

Hey I get it man... And maybe its the title of the thread that makes you think I am not grateful? I am... I had to come up with a catchy title to get interest and players to post... So its nothing against what you guys have done...

I think there is a fallacy going around though that you mention here... "everyone thinks they want everything right now"... I never said this... In fact. I ALREADY have 5/5 Merc and my SC weapon - literally farmed 1700 SC emblems and guess what... Now I get bored and am playing alts LOL. I also have already farmed 4/5 Ruin gear on my Mara as a way to level him...

The issue isnt that this will make it easier to get, which is what I dont get where you say that. I think it can make it harder. Its not "hard" to get now... its just frustrating... What I am proposing is trying to make it actually "harder" to get via time, not frustration. Some guys have RNGesus on their side and get 5/5 with like 8 gold bags... others take 40... Its the frustration I am looking to solve, NOT the rate of gain.... So please dont say I am trying to make sutff easier or what not... I am not. I want to make a HARD but clear path to the gear. Something you can reliable do and take baby steps towards the path. Right now the only "hard" thing about PQs is self control over breaking your monitor after doing 5 in a row getting 3 gold bags and getting all duplicate items... or getting +450 contribution but rolling a 008.... Thats not hard, its just frustrating.

You mention reliable metrics on gain.... I can tell you that even if you did have metrics, they would be flawed. Why? Because the gold bags being awarded and the players that have the Ruin gear, is skewed towards tanks and preamde groups who screw others out of contribution... Are these not supposed to be "public quests?" The idea being you run into the area and join another random group of guys to take on the quest? Not something to form a premade so you can screw everyone else out of gear....

So metrics wouldnt help here. If you really wanna get "metrics" take a vanilla character and get online and try and farm PQs for yourself, or have a staff do it. It takes only 1 time of doing a PQ before people whine and complain. "I got +450 contribution but rolled a 003.... FML..." Or you make a PQ group and TRY and invite the ONLY tank there... "Im solo farming bro" he says... you ask why and he doesnt respond, then you see contribution roll out and guess who is on top with +450... the solo tank.... gets the gold bag, posts his Ruin Shoulders via pure RNG which was what he wanted and he leaves... Meanwhile some poor lvl 36 healer has done 10 of these and never even seen a purple bag... let alone can THINK of a gold bag....

Or you beg a healer to heal your DPS class and he laughs at you because he WANTS you to die so he and his buddy get all the contribution for themselves... Since its based on damage dealt....

Ive seen it all. The issue is the current PQ reward system is toxic. Honestly I might even go as far as to say the previous version with ALL the moochers was almost better... Maybe not QUITE that far but I get very little enjoyment from PQs... Maybe thats the issue. its not risk/reward its the lack of fun issue... There is NO fun when only 1 person gets rewarded, based on biased contribution system and RNG... Rather than each person getting even just a SCRAP feels 100x better...

"We dont have time or manpower to invest in reinventing the wheel when the road itself hasnt been laid out." - Hey I get it man. You guys dont have capacity... So I guess its a moot point. However you may want to consider making a small adjustment or investment of time into some minor tweaks in the PQ/oRVR REWARD system because right now its a very demoralizing system (RVR) and Toxic (PQs) that create a pretty negative atmosphere... People are intentionally not doing RVR as well as people avoiding PQs like the plague and when they DO do them, people only get upset after 1-2 PQs because they havnt received anything from them and are not 1 step closer to gear...

Even if its a small bandaid fix to make an improved QOL fix... I dont care if it doubled the time it takes to get Ruin gear... it would be better than the triple RNG. Same with the Genesis Set.... This is seen by SO many as impossible to get, players dont even try to do RvR which is why RvR is not as popular as it was in T3...

The Risk/reward comment you made twice now... and I dont fully understand this... Doing SCs is a progressive gain type of grind. Which is why people dont mind doing Scs. The only small risk is you get shut out 500-0 and get no emblems, but even if you lose 500-100 you get 1 emblem which is more than you had to start... So what is the risk here that would be different about making a more "currency" path to PQs and RVR?

At the end of the day you say its moot, as you said, you dont have the time. I know you guys put in TONS of hours that probably feels like we dont appreciate it. We do very much so. So ill let it die here... But I would just encourage you to consider some of the feedback from testers who are posting here on massive QOL improvements that we have been testing so that you wont have to get "metrics" and what not to make some decisions. I think everyone would agree that if the rate of gain was lessened, but it was progressive, it would be 100x better than right now - both for RVR and PQs.

[Mael]

Well, I can't speak for the OP, but then again he speaks well enough & eloquently enough for himself.

From my perspective though, this is more about RvR than PQ's. PQ's are a bit meh, and I think we can agree they're a side show rather than the main event in this game. Right now, as others have said, RvR just seems like a gigantic exercise in futility, and I don't mean due to the content. We all appreciate the constant influx of new and exciting content, and all the work that goes into it. I think we're all trying to be constructive here and provide you guys with some feedback on a more generalised basis, and fortunately the thread hasn't been trolled yet.

I appreciate the points about fixing the content first, and also appreciate all the hard work you guys put in. However, as I've stated in a few places, oRvR can only exist properly with large numbers taking part. I am assuming that you guys want to keep the current player number levels but increase activity in T4 which seems to be pretty dead more often than not. Fixing content is very important, but is it fixing actual content or does "fixing" include incorporating all the new ideas that Az has alluded to in another popular thread? If it's the latter, then I would assume it's not going to be a quick process and may take months. The question is, will the active player base be large enough to properly make use of that facility in a few months time if the current level of declining interest in T4 persists?

Again, I appreciate that this "currency/token" idea may also not be a quick thing, but it does at least provide a tangible incentive to actually get stuck into T4, which in turn propogates the testing environment with more active testers/bodies. Instead of being a part of a 30-60 man defense or attack and then relying on a miniscule percentage chance of seeing a gold/purple bag, a token system would provide a larger spread of tangible "things" that could be awarded.

I'm also not referring to "easy mode" gear. I'd be happy if one piece of Anni gear cost 200 tokens, and on average I only earned 1 token on a normal keep defence/attack. It's not about getting the gear faster, it's about seeing something tangible towards that goal of gear for contributing most times, rather than a very vague miniscule percentage of getting one piece all at once.

The sad fact of the matter is that most of us, whether we like it or not are driven by a need to obtain reward for effort. It's human nature, and not something that can simply be switched off in pursuit of a grander theoretical master plan. A dog will return to a food bowl every day if it has a little food in it, whether the food is crap or cordon bleu. The dog won't keep returning to the bowl if there's a 1/200 chance of getting some food, even if it means a massive bowl of food. People are the same.

This thread's not about easy mode gear, it's more about dog biscuits....

[th3gatekeeper]

If you could perfect human cloning and give us 50 copies of each staff member (except Ryan, one Ryan is too many...) that would be exceptionally helpful....

Haha ok ill work on that... Let me go buy some lottery tickets as ill need the money to fund this project... Or it might just be easier at that point to buy the rights to the game, higher you a bunch of work slaves to do everything for you, while you crack the whip instead

This thread's not about easy mode gear, it's more about dog biscuits....

Well said and pretty much summarized everything. I am just passionate about PQs from personal experience being frustrated but I agree, PQs are more a side show that realistically only REALLY tanks do them for the BIS tank gear - which is kinda ok considering they have an inherent advantage in the contribution system.

My MAIN focal point here is really the RvR system, but to be brutally frank there... I actually would rather have them fix RVR first, THEN work on the rewards because what I dont want to see happen is have everyone farm all the influence and rewards now, and then they release a "more finished" version of the RVR system and less people play because they have everything...

So I dont mind "waiting" on RvR, however thats my opinion and also why I DONT do RvR. If I knew I had a reasonable "grind" (keep in mind I have 5/5 Merc + 2H so reasonable to be is somewhat hardcore for others) I would probably be farming on my Chosen as opposed to writing this LOL

Anyways Torque, cheers on the time and responses. Please keep this idea in your back pocket for when you guys rollout your new RVR system - atleast the concept of an "SC like" system rather than this all or nothing deal with the bags and how it is now. Thats all I ask