personally i find the PQ system depressing. there's never anyone around to be able to finish them and they're not solo'able. during open beta weekend when there were plenty of people to finish them, the casters couldn't be out dps'd so i'd finish the quest but never get any decent loot.

seems like a loose loose situation to me. i don't see why it's enjoyable to anyone simply because it's a different way of doing the same thing.

I think the author is confusing the Open Party system as only being a part of PQ's. While they are most frequently used there, the OP system is by no means tied only to that.  I wish MMORPG.com staffers would fact check the correspondents that have posted lately as I have seen several things that are poorly expressed or just blatantly incorrect.

To address someone else's comment, I also have seen some of the PQ's being less populated than others but I think it's more due to people running the lower ones with alts (or trying to find a main class) or playing ahead (for the folks trying to cap level). In my guild, I've seen that there are fewer overall people at my level than well below or above due to my limited play time.

While I love the PQs, they have issues.  One of the biggest in my opinion is that not all races have a tank class.

This is no problem if you are guilded or a little later in the game when there is a greater spread of classes and races across each realm, but early on it effects the playablity of some starting areas and inturn the enjoyment of those areas.

If you are guilded the PQs can be and are in most cases a blast.

I agree with the general sentiment. I've had good fun doing PQs, but it's been very hard to encounter enough people to finish them most of the time (this goes for open RvR areas as well. It just doesn't have a war or battle feeling if you're running around a big empty space with 3 toons capturing deserted control points).

I've been on the receiving end of the top contributor --> no reward issue myself a few times. Not fun. Especcially if you have been trying the PQ a few times, and finally have enough comrades to finish it. I just gave up at that point, unwilling to spend another 15 minutes of doing exactly the same thing as the last hour or so. I believe this would be called grinding ;)

Maybe it's a problem with Order, but we seem to be in the minority. Open RvR is either deserted (see above) or it's 3 dwarves against the combined forces of destruction...

One more thing that I believe hasn't been mentioned yet, is the general difficulty level of those PQs. If you happen to do other things in the general vicinity of a PQ you better hope it doesn't advance to stage 2 or beyond. Suddenly you have Champions popping up around you, sending you to the healer in no time at all.

I hope both population will balance at some point and the PQs get some polish. The suggestion with the top contibutors being guaranteed a bag of some description is great, imho.

Battle on!

Originally posted by orionite

I've been on the receiving end of the top contributor --> no reward issue myself a few times. Not fun. Especcially if you have been trying the PQ a few times, and finally have enough comrades to finish it. I just gave up at that point, unwilling to spend another 15 minutes of doing exactly the same thing as the last hour or so. I believe this would be called grinding ;)

Maybe it's a problem with Order, but we seem to be in the minority. Open RvR is either deserted (see above) or it's 3 dwarves against the combined forces of destruction...

...

I hope both population will balance at some point and the PQs get some polish. The suggestion with the top contibutors being guaranteed a bag of some description is great, imho.

Battle on!

I agree sort of with your comments, but just for being top contributor shouldn't guarantee a loot bag, or at least no guarantee on the top loot bag.

Reason being is that if you have a character that is a few levels above what the PQ requires to participate effectively, then you are going to ace the contribution everytime. I suppose there is not much reason to do this, as the loot in the bags would not be any good for you anyway, but it is a concern.

As for population balance, I agree. They did a good job on trying to do something about it though, creating seperate queues for Order and Destruction to get into the server, although, in that case, another type of population balance comes into play, and thats the Race card. You could have all the order players suited up as Chaos, and none as Dark Elves, meaning that if there is an average or above average amount of High Elves, they will usually win out the day.

Either way, in regards to the article, I love PQ's. The loot isn't too bad, and you can always take the money. There is also crafting items in the loot bags if they take your fancy. Usually, there is 1 x Armour piece, 1 x Weapon, 3/4 x crafting, 1 x Money. I think thats about the spread. Might be another one in there somewhere, but i can't think of it off the top of my head.

They also, in PQ's, give you a little stacking bonus for everytime you are in a particular PQ and don't get any loot. Might be a small comfort, but it boosts your roll the next time you finish the PQ. If you don't get any again, the bonus is given again, adding to the previous one. Meaning that eventually, you will be given the loot if you keep on participating.

I remember reading (probably here) about the scenarios and how they seemed to be a little biased to one side. I do see that a bit with High Elves vs. Dark Elves (I am High Elf and we always seem to lose). Might just be career balance issues at work here though, and they will probably be ironed out soon.

Originally posted by Terranah

PQ's are one of those things that make me scratch my head and ask, why didn't anyone else think of this?  I've played quite a few mmo's over the years and I can't recall having seen this feature before.

 

So far I think it's an awesome feature.  I love it.  I've gotten some good rewards from PQ's, both as drops and later when turning in rep to get the rally master rewards.

 

Another innovative feature, is the ability to click a tab by your avatar and a list then drops down of all groups in your region.  You can then self add yourself to a group.  That is so nice.  In other mmo's I hated to group because it took so long to get in a group, and I experienced many of the same problems grouping as the original poster.

 

And as far as T1 and T2, I think there are quite a few pve quests.  More than enough to keep me busy.  I find myself running scenarios a bit, then doing some pve quests which usually leads me across some PQ.  Then I do the pq for awhile, and then when I get tired of that, I do some rvr or just explore.  In short, I am loving this game.

 

It doesn't have the socially complex aspect of precu SWG, but in other areas WAR is so much fun.  Really, I have not had this much fun since precu SWG, and even then the fun was more spaced out.

Actually, I not scratching my head, but ArenaNet already mentioned right when they made the anouncement of Guild Wars 2 that they were going to incorperate that into the the gameplay I'm just curious as to how they are going to do this...FYI.  
 

Originally posted by ardohain

personally i find the PQ system depressing. there's never anyone around to be able to finish them and they're not solo'able. during open beta weekend when there were plenty of people to finish them, the casters couldn't be out dps'd so i'd finish the quest but never get any decent loot.

seems like a loose loose situation to me. i don't see why it's enjoyable to anyone simply because it's a different way of doing the same thing.

i have the same impression

in my career of 5 characters all to lvl 10-20 i did finish exactly 1 public quest and that was in headstart phase. most of the time there arent people around to do them.

dont get me wrong, i really love them and i think every next gen mmo should implement those but:

1. we need a better player pooling thrueout the servers for pq and szenarios. i suggest you instance pq just like szenarios but maybe hide the fact that its instanced a bit more. for example do them in a canyon, cave or otherwise narrow area where it doesnt feel strange if players "pop up". then make it possible that players from all servers can enter a pq. i would suggest that with szenarios as well to have a broader base of players to recruit from.

2. make some of them mandatory. like "this pass will open only if the pq is completed" 
this would create a bottleneck at certain levels and players have to work together to enter the next area

 Different people, different tastes.

However I agree completely with original poster and it is also my position. About PQ, they are not pefrect, but to my they are fun and mean distraction from regular questing which I really enjoy. In Mythic also succeeded in RvR camp, imo. I never liked PvP, this is the first time I enjoy. And scenarios are also great. Of course ... doing over and over same scenario for 99 times would not be interesting ... Like PQ, I would like to see also more scenarios per area.

So far War is great Game and for sure I will be subscribed for time. Only area that I really dislike is gathering and crafting.

Originally posted by Myrdek

I agree that PQs are a nice innovation but you don't seem to have reached the point where you realise that...

1- Their all the same except for the creatures to kill (huge grind first stage)

2- Most people won't be able to do 90% of them because their too hard, not enough population, no population balance across the game

3- The rewards are always the same so if you want to grind for a purple bag you'll get 10x the same green bag beforehand

Could not disagree more to points 1 and 2.

 It is only a huge grind for tier one if you are soloing it. There's a reason for that. It gives you a crack at getting influence gear without groups. A nice balance feature were i to experience the problem in point two were I not playing at 2AM. With a group it's a bit of frantic running around and  chance for me as a healer to work out who I'm gonna bother with as I see who runs to aid me when I heal-aggro before I need to worry about a boss-fight.

There's sometime been issues forming a group as people are so used to running around solo thanks to other MMO's which I normally solve by spam-inviting people. I rarely get turned down and if I do they go on my mental no-heals list. The only time I have issues getting a group for pq's are when i should have crashed but I'm finding this game so attractive... I occasionally find I'm a little tired for work first thing in the morning. But that's why the big man gave us coffee.

as to point 3, that's why they are listed as rare items. I'm not sure what you are expecting here? This isn't end-game raiding. to get the l33t items get to 40 and grind your renown. These are public quests with public rewards on both order and destro sides. Game balance dictates we have similarly good stuff more or less readily available. Otherwise you make the mistake (in my opinion) that occured in wow where the battlefield victory is dictated by gear rather than skill. WoW brought in tiering in arenas to try and balance for that. How would you suggest balancing levelling in WAR in a similar way if you want to bring in less rare epics?

PQs are a great idea and they sounded great when I heard about them.

However, it's no fun when you are playing order, we are far too few. When you start, even on day1, the starting area felt empty, only occasionally you meet people fighting in those PQs - in one area or the other. Let aside the fact that they are repetitive (Stage1 Kill 80/100 mobs -> Stage2 kill 4 champions -> Stage3 kill 1 hero), you meet 2 others with luck in one of the areas and with some more luck more people can join for the final part.

So much for the awesomeness of PQs...

If they hadn't made this many servers, the PQs would have been nice places which you visit, meet people to fight with, kill things and leave, and if you occasionally get a reward, it makes them even greater. But I am only level 5, I stil have a lot to see and hope they don't turn into grindfest

Originally posted by Lethality

PQ's are a good idea, but it's definitely "1.0" in implementation. There are massive inherent design flaws, mainly dealing with the fact that you are counting on other players to participate and if we've learned anything about MMOs this far is that you can't predict what players are going to want to do nor force them to do.

On many servers, even the high-pop ones., the PQ areas are dead in many cases. Therefore you can't complete them past the first stage. Sure, you can grind all the influence you want based on just the first stage... but is that really the intention of Mythic in the design of these things? No way.

So IMO at the moment, PQs are failing but that train of thought is a good one and I hope the find ways to improve it.

Totally agree, maybe they could change them so they scale with the number of people in the PQ area so one or two players had a chance to complete them...

i'm playing destruction and haven't finished a PQ yet. if there's more than just me, and it's rare there is more than just me, then the squishy dark elves try and time our deaths and running back from the spawn point to keep the boss agro'd. i can't say that i call this fun.

I personally am really enjoying the PQ's, though there are some of the out of the way ones that i rarley see people at. The one thing that i think needs to be addressed is the roll, or more specifically the contribution points added to the roll.

Case in point: I was heading into a new area and the first thing that i saw was a PQ. The people were taking down the 3rd stage boss so i figured i'd wait and continue my quests. One of my quest mobs happened to be next to the boss they were killing so after i dispatched the mob i decided to help them since it seemed they were struggling a bit. The boss was at about 25% health left when i started to attack. After the boss was downed i decided for laughs to see what my score would be on it. There were 6 people and my contribution was 6th out of 6 and that gave me +25 points. I happened to roll at 908 (or so cant remember exactly) and won first place prize.

Now while i was glad that i won a prize that i was able to use, it made me think of how unfair it was for something like that to happen expecially on the higer tier PQ's. You have 10 people working their butts off finishing while someone strolls by, hits the mob once, and then has a chance of getting 1st place. I think the higer contribution you have should equate to more. Exactly what i am not sure, maby have a larger roll score, or you have to contribute to at least 30% to qualify for a prize, or something to make it a bit more fair to those who did the most work.

I always give kill a couple of mobs on my way though and area containing a PQ - you never know if you might win something!

If you have rolled on a low pop server then yes your PQ's are going to be empty - consider re-rolling.

I'm order on my server and its full primetime - the majortiy of PQs are always active, the ones that are not active - well it matters not as you can find one that is that contributes to INF.

It might also be worth mentioning that you can form a group with people you meet doing your public quest, and you can continue the PQ as a traditional MMO-group, and it's also possible to convert group into a "warband" if many people want to join. As a warband, you still get XP and influence btw; mentioning this cause forming a "raid group" in LotrO means getting no XP, so this is better in WAR, definitely.

The loot rolls can be frustrating sometimes, but I think it evens out if you do a few of them.  I've placed 5th and rolled first before, and vice versa.

Sometimes they can't be done if you don't have enough people around, but you can still gain the influence for your rewards anyway.

Originally posted by Myrdek

I agree that PQs are a nice innovation but you don't seem to have reached the point where you realise that...

1- Their all the same except for the creatures to kill (huge grind first stage)

2- Most people won't be able to do 90% of them because their too hard, not enough population, no population balance across the game

3- The rewards are always the same so if you want to grind for a purple bag you'll get 10x the same green bag beforehand

This is exactly the problem I have with PQs. I really enjoy everything about the game so far, including the idea of public quests, but PQs are the one area that feel really unbalanced right now. It feels like there are either 20+ people trying to do the same one in over-populated areas/servers, making it really difficult to get enough contribution for any reward, or you have far too little people doing it and can't complete it past the first or second stage. This part of the game only really shines when you're lucky enough to get a perfect quantity of players in the area at once, typically between 5-10 players.

Maybe they'll adjust it soon if enough people are sending them feedback about it. Mythic seems to be pretty good about that sort of thing so far.

Been a little while since I last posted :)

I am personally in love with the PQ system.  I've got no clue as to why many people can't find others to work on PQs with.  I think I've completed 25+ so far and have never found a problem with finding 'random' people working on them as well.  I've got characters both on Order and Chaos as well.  (Now being on RP servers might have something to do with this)

The loot system could use a little tweaking in the scope of reducing the random number generators digits.  This would make the bonuses gained through work a lot more influential and make it harder for the random person (as I have been and done so many times) from sniping one of the prime bags from everyone elses loot.

I'm just glad that the grind in this game (beyond the first 2 levels but, this is something all MMOs can't possibly begin to solve :) ) isn't boring and provides for some good challenges.

As a side note, I see lots of people complaining about how all the PQs require you to kill something.  My question to you people is this.  Why, in an MMO (a genre where pretty much 99% of all content is to go out and kill something), are you offended by the fact that the PQs require you to kill lots of stuff?  Look at WoW and raids, you kill lots of stuff, sometimes in a particular order.  Would you prefer the only other alternative which is the standard FedEx quest?  I highly doubt that.

Regarding the PQ loot roll, it should be noted (you can see it during the roll screen) that a bonus is added to players who failed to get a reward.  Every time you complete a PQ and fail to get rewarded it adds an additional bonus which keeps building until you win something (you may not win the top reward, but you'll get something).

I agree with some of the other posters, once you find a group in your Tier, encourage them to do the other PQs as well.

Also, playing a tank myself, more than a few tanks are aware that some races have no tanks and actually go to other race's PQs to assist.  Why not, we get different rewards from different PQs, even ones at the same Tier.  Not really a problem with the PQ system as it is a problem with the 4 classes being pulled.  Having a tank and no healer is also an issue.  Level 4 Hero Mobs are deadly even to level 10s.

Having said all that T1 PQs are generally terrible to complete, people outlevel it so fast and the gear reward wouldn't be worth it once you get past level 4. I personally think they need to drop the hero boss to champion level for T1.

I've always found it easy to do the T2 PQs, helps to advertise that you're doing it by creating an open group and stand in the area.  Also use the /partynote command to add a note to your open group so people can see which one you're trying to do.