As more and more onerous “slacker detection code” has been added to Public Quests, healers have felt the burn, and repeatedly asked if they are being left behind due to a lack of DPS. Windslasher has always reassured us that healers get counted too. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. Take a look at his advice and it may just improve your chances at getting better gear, if you can find someone in need of healing on a Public Quest that is.
An invitation is never required to find reason to complain about the occurrence of loot drops in EQ2, but Public Quests have earned a special place for frustration in this regard. Several players have multiple weapons or chestpieces which they cannot trade to alts, while others have never seen them.
The math on how loot in a Public Quest is actually rather simple, but vexingly random. The best result you can get from a Public Quest by pure effort (excluding luck) is a Humming Cache. There is a 50% chance this will get bumped to an Exquisite Humming Cache. And there is yet another roll/chance (less than 1%) to get a Weapon or Chestpiece appropriate for your class.
After the jump, some commentary from Windslasher, Public Quest guru and creator of the Dragon Ring and Wizard Spire rebuilding events which will be taking place in Eastern Wastes at a future date. Those have been described by testers we’ve asked as a whole lot more fun (and more rewarding) even than the Public Quests .
One of the problems that the developers have been working on lately is to make sure that non-participants or “slackers” don’t get rewarded in Public Quests. In the original version of the Public Quests, which started out with an arbitrary threshold of acceptable spell casting or DPS, too many AFK players were getting chest drops, at least in the eyes of other players, who expressed their concerns to developers.
For Dev Gninja, this was an unacceptable situation that needed to be rectified. He was mad about it. So back to the drawing board he went, increasing the threshold yet again in the metric that records participation. The result? Storm Gorge PQs are not rewarding the people who are giving their fair share — probably not the outcome he expected.
A lot of development time was focused on being punitive to — most likely– a small minority of people who wanted something for nothing.
The Storm Gorge Public Quests are currently denying eligible participants the ability to loot a chest, apparently as a result of the recent changes to weed out PQ slackers. Gninja has acknowledged today there is a problem:
We are aware of the problem and are working to fix it.
In the meantime, players are reporting lag and the possibility you will not get to loot a chest even if you are participating fully.
After today’s update, players have been checking out the re-structured Storm Gorge to see how the fights have changed, and how server lag has been reduced.
Players generally reported improvements in lag, and also shared their strategies on dealing with the changes in the fight, which in some cases make it more challenging and interesting.
Windslasher‘s response:
It’s great to hear that the latest lag fixes worked! With that game-breaking issue mostly solved, I can now turn more my attention to other important issues.
For example: Goredeth Maulhammer has always had the ability to heal himself while enraged. His fight is certainly not “impossible to win” but I’ll take a good hard look and see if it needs to be tweaked.
I’m also going to try and optimize performance on the Ring War a little more, and take care of some uncommon but serious glitches that many of you have reported. Thanks!
SOE is looking for your feedback on two recent changes that went in on Tuesday. From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:
Today’s hotfix introduced a couple of fixes and I’d be interested to hear how it has affected you.
First, we’ve made some changes to improve the performance for public quests. We still expect them to contribute towards a higher level of lag than other types of content due to the sheer number of people that participate, and we are working to make them even better. However, you should hopefully notice an improvement after today’s hotfix.
Let’s Be Honest…
Public Quests completed even at the highest “x4 raid” level demand neither the coordination nor the discipline of any of the raid content in the last 3 expansions. Storm Gorge requires a little more focus than Ring War, but generally speaking, 24-40 players standing in the right place, killing the right mobs, in the right order, stand to inherit a wagonload of Legendary gear with Yellow adornment slots, all without such challenges as timing AOEs, switching to an Off-Tank, agro-juggling, or any complex strategy. The biggest enemy encountered is usually Server Lag.
Public Quests offer a speedy alternate route to gearing up for players who largely skipped Sentinel’s Fate, are gearing up alts, or just aren’t interested in more solo questing (although as we found, the Othmir questline writing, structure, and payoff are all above average and keep the obvious time sinks to a minimum).
So what’s to stop players from logging in alts, parking them near the scene of a Public Quest, and going to get a coffee while their toon “earns” amazing gear? Apparently not enough. While we have taken issue with certain players who spend an awful lot of time critiquing how others play the game and all the ways in which those methods are unfair or unbalancing, even we would be foolish to defend standing around AFK in a Public Quest all while earning Legendary or Fabled gear. We believe its in everyone’s interest that your favored MMO have a long-term plan besides “More dungeons and more lootz in the next Game Update!” Gameplay that allows leapfrogging most of the content progression is disruptive for the game. Velious has got to last us the next year, and as robust as the Game Updates may end up being, the end of the treadmill should never be visible.
Zatozia has posted our update notes for Thursday, March 17, 2011. They include numerous tweaks and fixes to Velious instances and Public Quests.
Public Quests have been keeping Windslasher rather busy and he had posted some detailed answers about just how Public Quests difficulty are set. The Ring War seems fairly straightforward, but the Storm Gorge PQ (which will possibly see some changes in the next few days) has sufficient complexity to worth a more in-depth analysis.
From Windslasher on the EQ2 Forums:
Loot is not totally and completely random. It is only partially random. I posted a complete breakdown of the baseline loot at this link:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=30&topic_id=495127#5512456
Whether you get a humming, pulsating etc. cache is not random, but whether you get exquisite is. In addition, the fabled items have a fixed rare drop rate, but only for players who qualify to get a humming cache.
In response to players asking why Storm Gorge PQ lag fixes can’t be implemented ASAP, Windslasher had these responses on the EQ2 Forums:
There are multiple lag sources, some of which are obvious and unavoidable (Large numbers of players in combat at the same time = lag), some of which are interesting and somewhat fixable (30 players vs. 30 encounters is worse than 60 players vs. 1 encounter) and some which are too subtle & complicated to describe in one sentence without using jargon (There are scripts & abilities that load up the server at O(n^2)).
I’m going through all of these issues slowly & carefully so as not to break anything. The next hotfix will bring some improvements, and as I dig deeper there will be more.
EQ2 Designer Windslasher is working on the lag issues in the Storm Gorge public quests, but apparently it’s not an easy problem to solve:
I am working on changes to reduce lag. I’m very aware of how bad it is, and I consider that the #1 problem to fix. It also happens to be the hardest, which is why the going is slow. That is all.
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.
Not getting any Public Quest loot? It may be your personal loot settings if you’ve got Auto-Loot or Auto-Decline enabled. urgthock responded to a player who was unable to access the loot in a Public Quest chest.
Make sure you don’t have auto greed or auto decline turned on. Since you keep saying “access to”, I am guessing you are probably getting the red message saying you are not entitled to any of the treasure, but just in case you are simply not getting anything instead… make sure auto greed or auto decline are not turned on.
From Windslasher:
I’ve been reading a lot of /bug reports describing exactly this issue. If you were in there the whole fight and nothing happens upon clicking the public chest (Nothing at all, no red popup or anything), then open up your options -> group options and check your Default Auto Loot Mode at the bottom of that section.
I’m going to get a UI error message put in to tell you when your auto loot setting prevents you from clicking a chest, but it might be a while before that kind of change can be pushed onto the live servers. Thanks for pointing that out here.
The March 8th Game Update Notes contain an interesting item:
The anti-slacker threshold has been raised on all PQ’s [Public Quests].
The Developers are serious about this! Windslasher said:
Freeloading was not part of the public quest design and will not be allowed. I’m approaching the problem slowly and carefully, to avoid denying loot to players who deserve it, but measures are being taken to tighten up the participation requirements.
The next hotfix [March 8] will make a slight change to address the problem, and depending on the response, I may take progressively stronger measures.
We reported earlier this week that some players were already complaining about missing out on chest drops due to healing and buffing, or even lag problems, as opposed to doing straight damage during an encounter. Surprisingly, it seems that a significant number of players are actually getting unfairly rewarded, since Windslasher found it necessary to raise the threshhold on the participation calculations.
It will be interesting to see what this change will do to support classes, as well as traditional damage dealers. It is still unclear what the parameters are for “participation scoring,” so it’s anyone’s guess what the new threshholds will be.
Players have been surprised by a change in Thursday’s Game Update affecting the Critical Mitigation of Fighter armor received from Public Quests.
As we know, both Public Quests award armor upgrades for hands (gloves) and legs. Storm Gorge PQ’s also award armor for head and feet (boots), while Ring War PQs award armor for shoulders and wrists. There are also rare drops from these events, including Fabled chest pieces and Weapons.
During Beta, Othmir solo quest givers offered a full set of armor which was essentially Sentinel’s Fate Tier 1 raid armor minus adornment slots. After Beta concluded, this was changed to be more of a progression from Sentinel’s Fate heroic gear. You’ll recall that we were cautioned that Critical Mitigation would be necessary to participate in Velious, even when killing solo mobs.
Although there are many things we can do on our end to reduce poor performance when playing EQ2, Public Quests have really pushed things to the limit both on the client and AND the server end. Especially in Storm Gorge which has some 60 combatants in the highest difficulty setting. In the past, there have been some tit-for-tat arguments about people’s slow computers vs. issues on the EQ2 servers themselves. While there is a lot players can do to reduce graphics performance aka “client lag”, it is up to the EQ2 devs to tackle any issues on the SOE servers.
Fortunately, Rothgar has stepped up and posted this about Public Quests performance (ironically the thread started on the topic of Gazebo placement griefing):
We are lowering the hard population cap on Great Divide to keep people from working around the soft limit. We may also change the group teleport mechanic to use the soft cap limits in the near future to keep people from circumventing these limits.
As far as the lag goes in Great Divide, its definitely server lag and isn’t caused by mounts, pets or gazebos. These things might contribute to your client FPS, but changing your visual settings to a lower option should more than make up it.
We are working on several angles to improve the lag situation in these zones but for this weekend the only thing we’re able to do is reduce the population cap. We’ve also tweaked the load-balancing settings on this zone so it should get a larger percentage of server resources.
The rewards from public quests have been a hot topic on the community forums lately, with a few players wondering if just healing or playing a support role results in a lesser chest than all out DPS. As the rumor that only good dps’ers would get the best loot swept the community, some support classes have resorted to dealing out pure dps and not healing, which doesn’t make for a very successful raid.
We may yet hear from the Devs on this issue, but until then, the only information available is from the core design of public quests. Our understanding of the dynamics of public quests is that rewards are awarded to stop players from hitting the bad guys a couple of times and then going AFK, and to reward those people who participate fully. Instead of the normal loot drop system, public quests use “participation scoring” to determine what reward each player gets at the end of the encounter. The game keeps track of everything a player does during the encounter, which includes contributing to a kill, spells cast, and noncombat interactions. The players with the most activity get the best loot. It’s not competitive, either, so if everyone contributed equally, everyone gets a good individual reward.
Great news if you have been running Public Quests and been rather puzzled at Legendary (or Fabled) gear with Yellow adornment slots, yet receiving Red adornments (which only go on Raid gear). Now, you will get a select window/choice for Yellow or Red, and it’s based on archetype.
After the jump, your update notes for March 4, 2011:
We heard about this in Beta, but Windslasher intends to add more Public Quests in future updates, possibly even to older zones. From the EQ2 Forums:
The Eastern Wastes public quests were pulled from the expansion for use in game updates. I can’t reveal what I’ve created for Pit of the Awakened yet. Sorry!
Also, Gninja has heard our pleas and will be adding zone portals near the Public Quests allowing players to join each other in the same zone for PQs, as well as our personal preference: spreading out into different instances of the Great Divide.
I will be adding a portal in the Othmir area and the Thurgadin docks area in Great Divide and the spires area in Eastern Wastes. Keep an eye on the patch notes for this to be coming to the live servers.
There’s nothing sadder than being part of 60 people unable to complete a Public Quest at Difficulty #5 (x4 raid) because of 8 second casting lag. Folks, FAN OUT into other zones please. As long as you have 24 players smoothly and quickly killing mobs, you’ll get the good loot!
This is not the picture of success:
It’s one week since the launch of Destiny of Velious and there are always bugs and issues that make it through from the Beta. Today’s update tackles many of them. With today’s update, many of these issues are fixed.
Tradeskillers can now equip their Boreal or Frost Gryphon as a flying mount at level 85 tradeskill. Freebloods who have completed their Cloud of Bats quests can now use it. And the Collector’s Edition (still available as a $25 upgrade today until 10am PST [18:00 GMT] ) Stormfeather Brood Guardian is now usable by 85 tradeskill and 85 adventurer.
The Coldain Ring War and Storm Gorge Public Quests were a lot of fun this weekend, however several issues plagued both, making it difficult or impossible, even with a full raid of 24 players, to reach difficulty #4 or #5 to get the better rewards (including Legendary armor with yellow adornment slots). The Ring War PQ kept scaling down to solo difficulty, and the Storm Gorge PQ seemed to start at maximum difficulty, steamrolling everyone present, rather than ramping up.
We also see bug fixes in various quests, including both the group and raid versions of the Tower of Frozen Shadow.
A syndrome that I think many people who write about MMOs experience is that find ourselves actually PLAYING the game less and less. I’m certainly guilty of this myself. We get interested in a game, start writing about it based on our experience, and next thing you know we aren’t catching groups or raids anymore. So with Velious I made a commitment to get back in the game.
So one of my first experiences has been getting into Public Quests, which spawned the article yesterday. The concept certainly makes for an interesting type of content, one that was popular in Warhammer and is a huge draw for the new Rift. So far, I have heard feedback from quite a few players who have checked out Public Quests and have gotten mixed results.
Public Quests provide different kinds of rewards than we’ve seen in the past. Right now there are 2 Public Quests: Storm Gorge which is Southeast of Thurgadin and the Ring War which is Northeast of Thurgadin. There are plans to add several more Public Quests as we heard about in Beta (possibly the Sleeper!).
When do the Public Quests (live events that any player, from solo to a full raid of 24, can participate in) run?
From Windslasher:
Storm Gorge runs at even hours — noon, 2, 4, 6 etc. while Ring War starts on odd hours. So one of them starts every hour on the hour.
Destiny of Velious introduces Public Quests. These are interactive battles between NPCs that players can join in and receive a variety of rewards. Drawing inspiration from Warhammer (and possibly Rift, although we don’t know the creative timeline here), these are the opposite of Contested content because everyone who participates receives a reward. If your gear is really limited, then you can even click on NPCs and coordinate fighting with them and use their abilities instead. All those present and participating in the battle gain access to a Loot Chest which can contain a piece of armor commeasurate with the level of the encounter when it was completed, as well as other items including:
At the end of each battle, players will also see green shinies which can be harvested for rewards.
There are two Public Quests going live with Destiny of Velious:
When you wander into the active area, you will be automatically offered a quest in your Quest Journal which does not count towards your quest total. The quest will show a timer of when the next Public Quest is going to begin and you can stick around (or go do other things and then come back at the appropriate time) and then jump into the battle.