Over at Hardcore Casual, Syncaine writes about the need (mostly aimed at WAR players) to slow down and enjoy the game. One of the best points, hidden in the middle of the post, is how to “correctly” do Public Quests (“PQ’s”). Oh allow me to remember those days when I kept up with the hardcore pack, and PQs were constantly rolling over so that one could merely stand in one place and rack up the glorious influence. Now, I see ghost towns.
The key to completing PQs is to achieve a critical mass of players. This takes time, and it is very hard not to take the immediate satisfaction/rewards of scenarios. However finishing PQs can pay off. Your best bet to start the petri dish growth is to call out and party up with guild or alliance members. A simple tank/healer combo can deal with most of the early parts of the PQ easily, and if you add in a DPS-type player, Stage II will be nothing. When other players see three (oh my gosh) players hitting a PQ in the open groups panel, the decision is easy. There is now instant gratification. The PQ population will start gravitating players on its own. I have seen this time and time again playing as the initial spore for the PQ.
The best part of being the initial player to call to arms at a PQ is you can choose which PQ you want to play. In the nearly bygone days of the rampaging hardcore it was nearly impossible to snatch players away from the PQ that was closest to the rez point.
There are still a few problems with PQs. First, they are unforgiving with class balance. Not having a tank is the worst when standing against hard-hitting Hero mobs, and life is never easy without a healbot. Second, the open grouping system still needs tweaks. I think for PQ open groups, the group should be location-based (ala Meeting Stone) rather than following a free-roaming person. Many times I have searched out PQ groups only to find they were not anywhere near the PQ that the system claimed. I feel that within the year’s end we will get an update for them, but Mythic has to see what a “stable” population is doing with them.
–Ravious
As far as Open Groups go and how to find them, I’m clueless. Really there’s a lot of little features like this that could be easier to figure out. Every so often it shows up in my upper left that there are open groups in the area but then it disappears really fast. (As if to taunt me)
@Thalian: click the circle on the top left and the open party list stays open. While open, you can click on the “interested in starting an open group” toggle and you will show up on that list. Rav is right – do that after you pick a PQ and more often than not by the time you ate done the first phase you have company. Another tip is keep an open eye our for people in the area who are killing mobs but aren’t in group – chances are they don’t understand the OP system either and will gladly join up.
I play a tank (Chosen)/healer (DoK) combo with my wife and we’ve duo’ed almost every PQ through the dark elf chapters 1-15. All of chaos chapters 13-14, and was doing Greenskins 13-14 last night.
In most cases we can duo stages 1 and 2, and I just want to confirm that you are right – most times many DPS types show up to join us. The biggest problem with a tank/healer duo is that we sometimes can’t kill a particular hero fast enough before the timer runs out. So we love DPS guys.
In most cases tho the DPS guys come half way and won’t get enough influence to get on the roll table at the end, but we’re nice whenever people asks if we’d stick around for a second run we always say yes :-)
PS.
Chaos PQ for Horn of Tempest is epic.
Dark Elf PQ for Recompense is also epic (feels like a football field)
Dark Elf PQ for White Tower of Hoeth is major fail – buggy and the LORD boss at the end – stage 4 – likes to eat tanks for lunch.
Thanks, Silix. I will definitely check those out.
There are a bunch of things Mythic should do to make PQs entertaining, but first on my list is reducing the grind on them. Killing 150 mobs to start just isn’t fun, even if you’re in a massive Warband and certainly it’s too tedious if you have just a few peeps (the situation most of the time).
If they make it more fun, more people will come.
Oddly, everyone’s favourite theory is falling down for PQs, the old adage that if the loot is good, players will follow. Wrong game methinks. For WAR, if it’s tedious, it gets abandoned.