Queue: still unused.
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-06-29 06:02 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
The queue is still largely useless without being able to use it in mission instances. Last time I tried using it, I ended up playing MvC3 on my nearby TV since I got tired of waiting around, and, by the time I got queued in, I didn't even feel like playing the trial anymore.
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No thanks. |
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Suggestion: Big red flashy button that tells you "CLICK HERE TO JOIN A TRIAL" and opens the LFG window. Doesn't vanish until you've joined the queue at least once. Character-based. |
The other ideas are ok though.
Always remember, we were Heroes.
Spent an hour on queue last night in the evening on Union. Nothing. 4 minutes average wait, yeah, right.
Just goes to prove that you can't force or bribe people to team together if they don't want to. They will either kick the unwanted extras or set closed leagues.
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That's how it works on Victory, except replace RWZ with Pocket D. |
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
2) I'm not entirely sure all the people who normally play Trials know how to get in the queue. It's possible some people see the process as "go to RWZ, get invited to League by some sort of wizard, the wizard does *something* and the 'enter Trial' button appears".
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Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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I'm fine with people who are finnicky about who they team with. You can make closed leagues now, and all the more power to you.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Just goes to prove that you can't force or bribe people to team together if they don't want to. They will either kick the unwanted extras or set closed leagues.
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The problem is that even the people who just want to get on a Trial, and don't particularly care who else is there - the people who, ostensibly, the LFG queue is *for* - still gather in RWZ and spam Broadcast instead of just entering the queue.
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Actually as long as league leader can open/close league I don't understand how this was ever supposed to work. You make a closed league invite who you want till league is full for trial, open league then queue for trial. You get credit for doing trial with Open league without ever actually having to have one.
Another issue is people are on my ignore list for a reason. I DON'T want to play with them. Truely Open Leagues let all the squirrelly players in.
-- Fantastic a way to make Raiding even more painful. You wait 30 minutes for league to form only to have last 2 players be ones on your ignore list. So you can wait another 30 minutes or play with idiots. And anyone wonders why Queues are unused?
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
Seems to me like a retread of the Team Seek interface. You see people begging, pleading and even crying for a team. Then you search for their name and they have no search comment and are set to "Not looking for any."
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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i was in 3 trials yesterday and we were always open leagues so we basically sat around for 5 min then popup came up, i dont think we ever had anyone from queue join us and we still got the free astral for being open league
I was on a league about to do Keyes when I crashed. Once I managed to reload I attempted to re-join but the instance could not be found.
'I know', I thought, ' I will use the queue system, mark myself as willing to join trials in progress and get in that way'.
Needless to say this didn't work and they finished with unclaimed spaces in the league
from what ive been hearing the invite to league during a trial appears to be broken which could be something thats limiting this as well
+1 on invite-on-trial-map being broke. Leader DCed from a Lambda, I ended up being leader, and I couldn't reinvite him, and apparently the option to rejoin in the LFG queue no longer works. So yeah, DC from a league right now and apparently you're just SOL.
rejoining through the LFG tab does work, i had to use it at least twice yesterday, i think that issue got fixed when they did the emergencey maintenance on the global server which is why global chat and stuff was down for a few hours
Four changes need to be made:
1. Allow people who are already queued to be invited to a League/Team.
If someone is queued, that means they WANT to run a trial. Why should they then have to un-queue just to receive and accept an invite to a trial? Allow them to receive invites and then un-queue them automatically should they accept.
2. Queuing for a Trial automatically sets your Team Search status to "Looking for Trial".
3. SHOW the number of people who are queued for each trial.
This will encourage people to queue if there are already a number of people in it. If there aren't many in the queue and it discourages them from queuing, so be it; the trial probably wasn't going to launch anytime soon anyways.
4. Allow people to see and join Trials in progress, provided the trial is not locked and has open spots.
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Makes sense. I'm still laughing about that whole little debacle, by the way.
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Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
i think that issue got fixed when they did the emergencey maintenance on the global server which is why global chat and stuff was down for a few hours
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Not quite. I've been unable to join any raid I've crashed out, even after maintenance. Though that makes me wonder: Is this Cannot Find Instance problem only happening with Keyes? I had the niggling thought that something was hooked up properly with it.|
Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
rejoining through the LFG tab does work, i had to use it at least twice yesterday, i think that issue got fixed when they did the emergencey maintenance on the global server which is why global chat and stuff was down for a few hours
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As for the queue, I still don't know why they didn't use the Arena interface for it. While it could use another coat of polish, it was pretty good at getting everybody on one screen, showing what needed to be shown, and then getting you into your instance.
I'd also still like to know why pre-formed Leagues need all their members in one zone while queued leagues, or the Arena even, do not.
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I used it last night, and it sort of worked. I queued for the new trial, and it took about 5 minutes to get in (I'm on Virtue). I'm not sure what the pop cap is for the trial yet, but there were only 18 or so of us after everyone loaded.
Then we lost 5-6 due to rage quits and crashes. :P
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The LFG Open League mechanic will not put you on a trial that includes someone on your ignore list. It has always been this way since its launch.
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Originally Posted by Ultra_Violence
Another issue is people are on my ignore list for a reason. I DON'T want to play with them. Truely Open Leagues let all the squirrelly players in.
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Yesterday evening, I crashed to desktop on the Warehouse portion of Lambda. I was able to get back in game quickly, but could not rejoin the Trial as it said it didn't exist or had been completed. But if it had been completed, then the people would have been in PD. And they weren't. There was no further option to rejoin the Trial after getting that message, it just took me to the normal LFG window.
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Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
rejoining through the LFG tab does work, i had to use it at least twice yesterday, i think that issue got fixed when they did the emergencey maintenance on the global server which is why global chat and stuff was down for a few hours
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I managed to get into a few open leagues using the LFG queue recently. But I knew there were a few "last calls" for forming trials, and I was lucky that they didn't fill. They didn't have a problem with me sneaking in, either.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Just goes to prove that you can't force or bribe people to team together if they don't want to. They will either kick the unwanted extras or set closed leagues.
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I agree that the queue needs to show how many other people are queued. If you see it growing, you're more likely to stay in it. Otherwise you end up leaving, because you'd still be waiting around for at least as long as it takes a league to fill - and of course, if a league is full for its intended trial, it doesn't matter how long you've been in the queue. They'll be queued for all of 5 seconds while you're still waiting for a trial with room to form.
I'm very surprised that you can make an "open league" join the queue even if it's at the maximum for a trial, meaning it's still a handpicked league, while getting the "open league" credit. I could have sworn that was brought up multiple times during beta as an obvious way to abuse the stated intention of the system. It's disappointing to find out it's still around.
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I really wish they'd push a fix of that Warehouse map. It makes that portion of the trial quite unenjoyable for me (in addition to regular missions using those same gargantuan rooms).
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Originally Posted by Zortel
Yesterday evening, I crashed to desktop on the Warehouse portion of Lambda.
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I'm glad I'm not the only person having probs with the system. I waited for 2 hours in Pocket D and RWZ on Virtue in the queue waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. I don't have all the time in the world to wait - and when I take solo missions can I still be in the queue? I eventually signed up with a hero tips team but had to leave the queue.
Average 2 min wait? Wha? huh?
E.
A'KO SMASH!!!
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I think that the 5 minute delay was a poor design decision on the Devs part, unfortunately the Open Beta patch notes did not actually reveal that was what it was doing (I don't know if others found out earlier, but I had no clue until the patch went live).|
Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
i was in 3 trials yesterday and we were always open leagues so we basically sat around for 5 min then popup came up, i dont think we ever had anyone from queue join us and we still got the free astral for being open league
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The problem with the 5 minute delay is that it encourages people pre-forming leagues to either make the league closed or recruit a full league in order to avoid it. This in turn means that pre-formed leagues are much less likely to pick up people from the queue. Therefore the 5 minute delay is actually making the queue situation worse. Previously I would leave a few open spots on my league in case someone was in the queue. Now I'm penalized for doing so. With that in mind I would suggest one of two solutions.
First option is to remove the 5 minute delay entirely. The "willing to join event in progress" option seems to work now (I've seen people pop into open leagues that lost people) so starting with a minimum size open league is no longer the death sentence it was before. If a league is understrength then the queue should allow other people to trickle in so it has a full complement for the AV.
The second option (which I prefer) is the intermediate method of starting an open league once either it has reached the mid-point between min and max size or 5 minutes has passed. This allows a pre-formed league to leave some spots open (4 on Lambda, 6 on BAF/Keyes) and still start the league immediately. Hopefully overtime this will become more common encouraging other people to use the queue to try and grab those spots.
The Queue was a solution to a problem that didn't exist.
So no one should be shocked that it isn't being used.
Statesmonkey Sez: Lighten up! It's a game, for Lincoln's sake!
Also: Six years of casual play begins to look an awful lot like one year of hardcore play.
If the changes in I20.5 to the queue mechanism and open/closed Leagues were meant to encourage people to form PuG Trials by entering the queue, then they failed miserably. On Virtue, at least, there was a big crowd in the RWZ all spamming "LF any trial" or "LF Keyes", just like before.
Some observations:
1) In the queue, you have no idea how many people are in the queue, and how long it might take until you can start a Trial. If you manage to join a Trial League being formed, you at least see the League growing as more people are invited, and you know the more people you see, the closer you are to starting. Unless you get stuck in the "people are leaving because they're tired of waiting so the team leader tries to recruit more people so the Trial gets delayed making people get tired and leave" infinite loop at the last minute.
Suggestion: make the queue at least list a number of people currently waiting. Either get rid of the "average wait time", or only factor in people who actually pressed the button to get in queue - that way, you count only the team leader of a pre-formed Trial.
2) I'm not entirely sure all the people who normally play Trials know how to get in the queue. It's possible some people see the process as "go to RWZ, get invited to League by some sort of wizard, the wizard does *something* and the 'enter Trial' button appears".
Suggestion: Big red flashy button that tells you "CLICK HERE TO JOIN A TRIAL" and opens the LFG window. Doesn't vanish until you've joined the queue at least once. Character-based.
3) Open Leagues are a good idea, and hopefully the queue will now actually put you into one mid-Trial as long as it's not full, but you can get the buff and extra Astral if you join the queue with a full prebuilt League. So nobody does anything differently.
Suggestion: A maximum of one team can join aiming for an Open League. If you have two teams or more, you can only start a Closed League.
Thoughts?
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