Kwill’s Quill: Longevity of Public Quests?

Written by Kwill on . Posted in Grouping, Itemization, Kwill's Quill, Live Events

The player base has started a very interesting discussion thread on how long the Public Quests will remain popular.  Currently, everyone is scrambling to get gear — raiders, non-raiders, casual players.  The PQs are packed, players are complaining no one wants to group or do anything else, and for most people who are participating, they are getting most of their gear slots filled with the best upgrades. Being nearby a successful raid seems all that is necessary.  But how long will the gearfest last?  Once everyone gets what they need, why would they continue to join the PQs?  The AA gain for choosing the AA reward is only 6-10%, and currently, the lag is bothering a lot of people, with the end result being an attitude of “get my gear and get out,” not a great formula for longevity.

Hopefully, as people bring alts up the ranks to the level where they need the gear from the PQ’s, they will continue to have enough participants to be successful.  In the March 8th hotfix, the threshold for participation scoring has been raised, so it may be that the rate of good drops will decrease drastically, effectively forcing players to keep attempting the PQs to get the gear that they need.   However, it can be a disincentive when the good loot never seems to drop, for whatever the reason.   The frustration threshold for players does reach a limit, especially when lag can kill a participation score.   It may be necessary to keep the participation scoring parameters a mystery, but the result of the vague thresholds seems to be the proliferation of rumors and speculation on exactly why certain people are getting great loot and some are getting nada.

That’s not to say that Public Quests are bad.  They are a great idea.  It brought pick-up grouping back to the game, for one thing.  The Velious expansion is difficult, so for many casual players and non-raiders, the Public Quests are their best choice to experience DoV.  A significant number of players can benefit from the PQ gear just to advance their adventuring in the rest of the Destiny of Velious expansion.

Much like the original Velious expansion in EverQuest, this game addition is not a new set of beginner zones, but one to offer a challenge to veteran players.  Velious was one of the best loved EverQuest expansions, but also one of the more difficult.  As with DoV, the idea that faction mattered made a significant impact to the original game;  for the first time, the EverQuest world required players to choose sides.  Rather than funneling all players through a monolithic series of quests, the development team has come up with an original and rewarding way to involve the player community.

The faction aspect of DoV may be its saving grace, since it takes a significant amount of playtime to achieve faction goals.  If Public Quests would drop faction items at an increased rate, that would perhaps be one way to keep the veteran players participating for those coming up the ranks.  The Public Quests are going to have to reward more than just a set of gear to keep them fresh and a viable part of the game a year from now.  Increasing the AA gained from PQs as well as changing the rewards to reflect the needs of the player community (such as making some drops heirloom) would go a long way to sustaining the momentum this expansion has created.

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Comments (25)

  • Lathaine

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    The scoring is only here for say if you have access to the difficulty of the chest, let say you doing ring war, you killed everything so cleared a difficulty 5, the chest is a difficulty 5 chest, so humming cash.
    The scoring is just here for see if you are available for get humming cash reward or if your score is not enough high then you only get pulsating (dif 4) or if your score is even lower you get dif 3 reward.
    usually you lose one level of difficulty if you miss one wave, like you arrived after the start or go LD. This is for prevent leacher, some have tryed to get reward with several toon for the same enconter.

    But getting exquisite, breastplate, weapon, adornement, is all about luck, scoring and dps are not tracked at all.
    Exquisite are about 25% of times and fabled drop are like 5% of times

    The drop rate have not changed, they just changed the scoring (so if you play the game you dont see any difference)

    I got 6 weapon, 2 chest, 1 rune, 3 master. And i have done almost all of them 😉 it’s all about luck and be participative even if you do very low dps.

    Reply

  • Tagwen

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    guessing English isn’t your first language… very hard to read

    Reply

  • Lathaine

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    yes sorry 🙁
    and i was very very bad at scool in english, it’s an Everquest english lol…

    Reply

  • Lathaine

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    scoring = eligibility for loot the chest not what inside the chest (better ?)

    Reply

  • Kruzzen

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    I disagree on the whole scoring thing. I have gone in and given full participation and still only get the consilation reward. The system does not work very well for actually rewarding those who do participate. I think the idea is good, but there are some bugs that need to be worked out bad.

    Reply

  • Lodey

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    2K faction per day makes it worth participating for the 8 minutes or even 15-20 min for SG. AA is nice and of course trying to get the runes so you don’t have to spend shards is nice. I think they will continue to remain popular. Maybe not 8 different GDs of raids full but don’t see any issue with a few full raids per hour.

    Reply

  • azzlan

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    I agree with Lodey. There are some rewards even for players who have a full set of armor. I most often do the PQs now for the faction items more than expecting to get good loot. But it really is luck. I’ve been running them since launch with 2 toons doing about 7-8 a day and never got a breastplate or weapon. Then I bring an alt on today and the first PQ he gets his weapon. Frustration and satisfaction combined into confusion.

    I don’t understand how it works but SOE will have to do something to make these things more exciting later on.

    Reply

  • Anaogi

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    If I understand Lathaine correctly, he seems mostly to have down the loot criteria–the overall effort of the raid(s)+ determines the chest, your participation determines eligibility, and the extras (Exquisite, masters, runes, bp, weapon) are pretty much random.

    Trust me, I’ve run with a defiler and a warlock–pretty well opposite ends of the encounter dps spectrum–and they both get rewarded well. (In fact, the defiler has the BP, so we can discard the ‘healers get screwed’ meme pretty decisively.)

    It’s not bad, for maybe a half hour of work total with 45 minute break in the middle. I could use a lifting on the faction token reward limit, but other than that the rewards are just fine.

    I am cutting back, though. Can’t neglect the guildies, after all… 🙂

    Reply

  • Lathaine

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    it’s all about luck, (too much)
    but dont be sad if you dont win something quick ….

    Reply

  • Seliri

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    Maybe the Eastern Wastes PQ will be difficult & require a variety of activities, rewarding Red slot loot & other quality items on a higher level of rarity.

    But who knows if they be lookin’ out…

    Reply

  • Jartal

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    Good luck surviving instances with your crit mit-less PQ gear.

    Reply

  • Anaogi

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    Actually, Jartal, I’ve been doing quite well with my sometimes-better-than-SF-raid-gear PQ gear, thank you very much… 🙂

    Reply

  • Mr_Skyfish

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    The LAG found in the zone with both Storm Gorge and the Ring War sucks and for me a paladin I’ve been playing this new Exp. a massive amount with my guildies!

    We’ve come to notice that as our guild progresses further into the instances of the Exp. we have been noticing that most of the legendary loot that drops from the instances aren’t as good as the T3 loot from the Public Quests! It’s gotten to the point where there isn’t much more for us to gain from the PQ other than actually looting the faction jewels which now we only run a few PQ and the ones we run are only the Ring War because the LAG we experience from Storm Gorge is so horrific at times with the fact that SG has a massive amount of enemies that cause the lag even so much more!

    So now we’ve been running instances and found the challenge from them to be totally rewarding even when the zone is the hot zone of the night it’s really rewarding to see multiple Fabled chests drop and there being 2 even 3 fabled jewelry pieces! I can only hope that SoE can fix the LAG issues and possibly decide to add more items to the loot table like Jewelry items or even a higher loot table with resists!

    Oh well only time will tell what they do for us in game…

    Reply

  • Melanore

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    Why is the PQ armor set the same quality as the Velium Shards set sold on Thurgadin Docks? This does not make me want to engage any effort in the shard farming missions!

    The set on Thurgadin Docks is hard to obtain, it should be really better than the PQ’s set.

    Reply

  • Lathaine

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    300 shard item should be raid quality gear T1 for sure.

    Reply

  • Lathaine

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    With Void shard gear was like 5 to 30 token by item then fabled (superior quality) at 150
    With Manaar they went up to like 15 to 100 then 150 then fabled (superior quality) at 225
    With Velious… most of item are at 300 and that’s not even quality item like you say most of instance drop or PQ gear is better…

    if we follow this pattern in next xpac we ll get treasured for 500 token each…

    Reply

  • Lathaine

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    all this for say the 300 token should be 30 token if the quality dont change.

    Reply

  • Mr_Skyfish

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    300 is too much for some of these items when I loot Fabled that’s equal or greater from instances. I agree with LATHAINE if the items don’t change what’s the point of us working for 300 shards?

    Reply

  • Yama

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    I do agree that the longevity of PQ wont be so long as wished. As soon as everyone gets what they want, chest and weapon and maybe some adorns, they eventually will quit the PQ.
    If PQ are to continue being a good sucess, first off need to fix out the massive lag, and afterwards, consider adding some new rewards to keep ppl in. Maybe make PQ the daily quest for the Primal Velium Shard, and maybe the chest have a chance to reward some Pure Primals, would help it a bit. And maybe, add some really rare loot like some mount, or some other thing. Things like this might keep ppl coming back in.

    Reply

  • Grump

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    I admit, I am addicted to the PQs! Pretty much my time outside of raid time is running quests between the PQs. I have yet to run an instance other than the Tower (for x2 access). Other than the lag, I am a fan, and with the amount of people of doing them on Butcherblock, it’s a very easy way of equipping alts with decent gear in a very short time period.

    Reply

  • Griffinhart

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    I do them for faction as well. Raid PQ’s = 4 500 faction tokens a day. 🙂

    Reply

  • Murfalad

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    I find them well worthwhile even to solo (well I end up duoing/small grouping at the least with a add-hoc organisation).

    The fact is they award AA
    They give a reward that can include a nice chunk of AA, or some other loot
    And they award a stone worth some faction

    The above is all a minimum, so while I don’t expect in 6 months time people will be going far out of their way to get the rewards, I do expect that people nearby will be doing them, with probably one or two organised raids a night trying specifically to get the gear.

    Before they launched them I thought they would be too generous on giving out the loot and it would require nerfing down, that has proven wrong. One hallmark so far of Smokejumpers design seems to be that he doesn’t just open the cookie jar and hand out the treats to everyone, everything there requires us to work for it.

    Its all too common recently to say how a MMO is being WoWified, in EQ2’s case though with DoV I don’t think DoV’s game philosophy could be more further apart from WoW’s, very healthy I think for both games!

    Reply

  • MsCats

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    I am becoming increasingly frustrated with these public quests and the lack of apparent fairness of the loot drops. I did two the other day where I out-parced most of the raid force. I was in the top six. A friend of mine didn’t even make the top 12. My friend, a shadowknight, admits that he does little damage due to his lack of gear and low number of aa’s. That friend got an exquisite humming cache while I got the humming cache. My friend got to choose from the 84% armor pieces, while I got the 77% choices. So, as far as I can tell, there is no rhyme or reason for the drops. It’s all random. And I resent that, since the level of my participation means nada.

    Reply

  • Golur

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    I just don’t like PQs. There is too much of a “Something for Nothing” feel about them. I’ve seen people sitting there AFK, maybe appearing to fire a couple of spells once, and getting a good reward. My dislikes, specifically:

    – the lag is horrendous. It’s simply not possible to play a Class to its strengths;

    – the drops are random, completely so as far as I can tell;

    – it’s pretty much ruined PUGs for Instances;

    – it’s simply not any fun!

    If this is intended as the main way to get loot to gear up Alts, then SOE may have soon lost yet another two Subs. I have enjoyed most of DoV, but this particular aspect is really, really, annoying me.

    Reply

  • Lathaine

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    The random fabled reward, is far from the PQ feast. The whole PQ is very nice and lot of player enjoy it, but the RNG … this damned rng have make lot of player very unhappy.

    Like me i runned hundred times with my guardian who was my main, i got 6 weapon and still no chest !
    I also runned a lot with my second main coercer she got 1 weapon and 1 chest, pretty happy. but took me very long to get them (i m ally with thurgadin…)
    While i geared an other alt assassin Got 2 chest in raw ! was very sad since i look for them since so long with my guardian

    Reply

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