[2020] Dauntless Reforged: Solo Queues

Originally posted by Cpt_Maelstrom

In the past 2,5 years i was playing in solo in 90% of the time.
After testing it on Experimental I have no objection if you guys dont make a solo mode. Kills are faster, and you get full xp for it, even if u just joined at the end.
And max 6 players can be present on the same islands, and about 3 behe, so if the instance isnt crowded you can still solo behes.

Originally posted by MrFrettz

First, I think we're all thankful for the continued transparency from the dev team and the willingness to communicate and share. Please keep it up!

Second, this post feels, to a large extent, like I am being told how to feel. Personally, despite having filled out that survey myself on the Experimental survey, I didn't feel that my reason was on it. I wished there had been another option: "to relax and play in a low-stress environment free from social pressures." I honestly believe that people advocating for a solo mode feel this way.

Another aspect I think is getting lost here are small private queues. I mostly play with a good friend of mine, and we like to goof around and do silly stuff sometimes. Other players can get in the way of that, so we frequently queue up without them.

Maybe this feature will hit live and it'll work out fine, and I just need to play it for a while to "get" it.

Ultimately, if this is the design vision for Dauntless, then it is what it is. Queue health is absolutely a big deal. You guys are in charge and it's your playground, and I absolutely love playing in it! It's just that sometimes I enjoy sitting on the swing by myself, and will enjoy the playground less if my swing is taken away.

EDIT: grammar etc.

Originally posted by Moontalon

I've only done private hunts for quite some time now, and none of the answers in the survey really hit the right reason for it (saving time was the closest, but I imagine not for quite the reason the team thought of when making the survey).

The reason I avoid public hunts is because, while they're fine when you get a team who knows what they're doing, they turn very frustrating very quickly when you don't. So many times, I would end up effectively soloing a damage sponge of a Behemoth. They were scaled up to 4 players, but because the other Slayers on the team spent so much time Downed, I was either spending all my time reviving them or just trying my best to solo a behemoth that had much more HP than is intended for a single effective combatant.

That's my primary concern with no private queue for Hunting Grounds. It's going to get very old, very quickly, if every hunt turns into me just beating up a massive HP sponge of a behemoth while everyone else on the island ends up getting downed repeatedly.

I haven't been able to try the mode out myself yet, so maybe my concerns are totally groundless and the tuning will be done in such a way that it won't be a major problem. I hope that's the case. Either way, I'm pretty excited by 1.5.0 as a whole!

Originally posted by CaptainQmak

What is the problem exactly with adding solo que to the hunting grounds? why not just add it instead of making excuses? I do not enjoy playing with strangers, never have, never will, and if dauntless didn't have that option so far I wouldn't be playing until this point. Please PL, don't make me stop enjoying this game...

Originally posted by Riother

The whole "it's not easy to do solo hunts" just sounds like an excuse. I don't like being forced to play with others. For the most part my experiences with matchmaking are not good. Lots of players run around aimlessly, excessively hit already broken parts so you miss out on breaks, get downed and stay downed until you pick them up even though you have several self revives, get in the way of combos, etc... To top it off, all the times I've tried chatting with them they don't reply so I don't see the point in even having them be there.

Originally posted by Meirnon

I disagree when it's appropriate. I try to be fair with critique, and in many cases, PHXL has made decisions that even if I don't personally agree, at least had decent reasons behind it. This is most specifically not the case this time, where their goal-setting is so completely out of line with the needs of the community and where perceived pain-points are being taken far too literally in their solutions instead of analyzing why and how pain points players present exist and how to synthesize that information into a solution.

Originally posted by Akashura

I really dont like that this reads like "We've heard your complaints and decided you're wrong, and here's why", why are you asking people if they want a solo option if you're gonna dismiss them anyways.
Sometimes i just wanna hunt something alone without some rando running in, and no i dont wanna do trials, which btw you guys said thats its not in a good state.
Just give us a solo mode

Originally posted by outdoors_in_Canada

The survey totals add up to 100%, which means you gave respondents only one choice from the options. That is a poor survey design choice. Knowingly or otherwise, the way you choose to ask questions affects the quality of the data you get. It should be blindingly obvious that people have multiple reasons for doing solo queues, and by not allowing that feedback you are ignoring important parts of peoples opinions and nudging the survey findings towards the results you wanted in the first place.

Originally posted by MegaAlphaVulcan

I use solo because I can't rely on other people to carry their own weight. Too many people that frequently queue public instead of solo are egotistic and if they get downed, they expect to be picked up by someone else instead of using the very convenient stims that they've been given.

On the topic of unreliable people in public hunts, too often I see players that are significantly lower level than I am meaning that behemoth fights take much longer than if I just fought the behemoth solo.

A very easy solution to this I think is assessing the slayer level/skill when the queue and place them in instances with players of similar skill levels as this would help newer players to hopefully not get completely carried and experienced players don't have to worry about carrying more than their own weight. An option for this when queuing would be cool so as to work well with people of different skill levels in the same party.

Next, I don't want to be forced to being social and working together. Including the reasons listed above, I don't want to have to work with others to slay something I can quite easily do alone. Sometimes, and fairly frequently for my introverted self, it's exhausting. Of course, when with my good friends, I'm happy to play with them but it's good in general to have the option to do things alone.

I personally think solo-queuing is an essential piece that should not be removed.

Originally posted by EmmerichVibiana

When I answered "saving time" I meant I don't want to fight a health-scaled behemoth with 3 bad teammates. Removing pursuit and patrols seems like a really bad idea.

Originally posted by Satyrox

Forced co-op from fresh new players with no gear to maxed veterans, this is tooootally not going to lead to any kind of toxicity.

Originally posted by Koshaibloom

I am a solo player, i have no problem with playing with people, i don't do solo hunt just to make run faster, i do it because i like doing things alone time to time.

No solo hunting grounds is not the only thing that i don't like about this update, there is also the new progression system that looks a bit too grindy, being forced to nerf yourself to get an end-game material is not something i like ( I am not going to reforge my weapon classes and weak myself, please add another way to get aetherheart ).

Now there is another problem, i have a golden crown and you know what happen when you have one in ramsgate?, rando rando in coming with FRIEND REQUEST, so imagine in hunting grounds, i can already see myslelf BEING STALKED EVERYWHERE I GO. And thats something i deeply want to avoid.

Originally posted by Vozu_

Got it, that makes sense. To touch on the point about 3 bad teammates - Hunting Grounds will have a rebalance of multiplayer scaling so that hunting with people will feel better than it has.

As a person whose preferred way of hunting has always been to have 2-4 man private party of close friends, I am a little worried that there are too many variables here to account for.

If you make the scaling too generous (to make bad teammates not pose a problem), then an isolated squad of good players will face even less challenge than before -- and we are hurting for enjoyable challenge already. But if the scaling isn't generous enough, then yes, the added random teammates will be worse to have.

This is a complex issue, just as everything around the topic of private matchmaking is.

Originally posted by Akashura

Sorry that my response isnt the most thought out, theres definitely better ones in this thread, but i just wanted to get my feelings about this out.
I just think that Solo/Private play is JUST as important as Free play with randoms.
As an example, i used to play tons of Warframe back then. I had some amazing Public experiences, sometimes just sitting with randoms in a survival mission for an hour straight just having a GREAT time (and i hope i will have times like that in the hunting grounds aswell).
But there were just as many times where i wanted to play solo or with a friend or two for various reasons that honestly dont matter, the thing is that i WANTED to do them alone/with friends.
I will use public hunt in the hunting grounds a lot, yes, but i also KNOW that i will want to be alone or with a friend there, without some random person running in and ruining my/ our experience.

Originally posted by Zhengas_Khan

I have seen many times that the dev team wants to make this game a more "social" game.

The problem I see is that they are overlooking an existing aspect of the game that could have already been utilized to make the game more social. I am referring to the in-game guilds.

By their very nature, and in virtually every other game on the market, guilds are the social element of the game. However, in the case of Dauntless, the dev team has put a 100 member cap on their membership and has not given any tools to the Guild Leader / Officers to monitor their guild.

By "tools", I mean things like the ability to see which guild members have been in-game in the last day, 7 days, 14 days, etc... We can "sometimes" see when a guild member or a friend is "online" but with most PC players logging in via the EPIC Games portal, that does not mean that they are playing Dauntless. Too many times, people will join a guild, but then go days without playing the game, or worse still, quit playing the game altogether, and that player is still holding a spot in the in-game guild that could potentially go to someone else that would be more active. This problem is compounded by the fact that this is a global game and in-game guilds can have members from around the world that are in-game at different times of the day. A guild leader can't spend 24 hours a day monitoring the little window on the screen that says "_____ has come online", so they have no way of really knowing when someone is playing or not.

Another tool would be the ability to see which guild members have gone up in Slayer Level or Behemoth Mastery level... so that their guildmates could congratulate them on their achievement.

Additionally, an in-game guild message board could be helpful in communicating with other guild members about events, team-ups, or even just as a "roll call" function.

Setting aside the idea of guilds for now. The in-game chat function is also somewhat limited.

You can send whisper messages to individuals that are in-game. You can send a broadcast message to anyone in your guild that happens to be in-game at the time of the message. You can broadcast a message to anyone that happens to be in the same "Ramsgate instance" as you, but for some reason, you can't send a broadcast message to your entire friend list. Why is that? How is that function different than sending a broadcast message to guild members?

Originally posted by Boldee

Could you elaborate? How are you making less-skilled players useful? The game revolves around damage, how is someone who shoots behemoths at max range with a repeater going to be useful?

Originally posted by Hellrider_28

I think you guys misunderstood the "to save time" argument. It's not the loading screen. It's random ass people with 0 skill slowing down kill times because they have no idea what they're doing. And I, as a veteran, endgame player, just want to kill fast and gather resources in the most efficient way possible. I don't need to be grinding for this one weapon and have either newbies or leechers on my back just doing nothing.

Sure I'm sounding like a moron but that's the truth. If you want to reinforce coop play, then you gotta do some serious reworks to behemoths, cells and the overall meta. In a game where you can literally take 0 damage, relying on others isn't as needed, as you can just power through anything yourself. Builds need more diversity and behemoths need to be a bigger threat if we want to enforce coop play. Hyped for H escalations, hoping that getting picked up becomes more of a trend in it.

As a side note, to drift away from all the negativity, I want to thank you for your transparency. This is a huge rework and a lot of stuff needs to be taken care of. It fills me with excitement to know that our dev team is listening to the players, since it's us the ones that know what we want. Thank you and I'm hoping for the best for 1.5.0! You guys got this.

Originally posted by spinosaurs

This is.... kinda shit if I'm being honest and is the kind of response I would expect from Bungie of "we hear you. but tbh we don't really give a shit and might change something in a year"

In-case you didn't know, OCE is pretty dead during the day, even in the evening finding a group for something you want to run take upwards of 5 minutes, or it just out right times out and tells you to try again.

forcing out a main playstyle ain't it chief...

Originally posted by Lysander_TG

I suggest to add more options to matchmaking, and I mean, to choose the power level of the players to matchmake with. This is because a recurrent problem with late game players, who wish to save time trough private hunts, are concerned about the forced public matchmake: that it will increase their hunt times considerably, due to having to carry multiple players at once. Choosing who to matchmake before joining Hunting Grounds would be a possible fix to this issue.

Edit for clarification: lower power lvl players shouldn't be able to matchmake with high level players until they hit that specific gear score

Originally posted by drewey09

Why not leave Patrols and Pursuits in the game but make them private only? Meaning you can only do them as a private queue. Then just add the hunting grounds as is. Then both parties get what they want and all play styles are supported. This makes everyone happy.

Originally posted by AbyssAzi

Just make sure your aware, you "WILL" lose a sizable chunk of the playerbase as a result of this.decision to force multiplayer on everyone. I can't say the percentage, but I'd wager it creeps into the double digits at the least. I myself will definitely play a lot less as a result, but likely won't quit, so I don't claim to be one of them. (Unless the new gamemode is just awful or something.)

Edit: To clarify why I personally would play less, its because of the game's scaling of behemoth HP based on players present. I can kill behemoths in under 30 seconds solo typically, but add in a few random players and suddenly it takes much much longer to kill things. Basically other players are a hindrance, not a help with how the game is balanced. Now if you did some form of match-making to where I was always placed into matches with nearly equally skilled and geared players, that would be a WHOLE different situation. As suddenly things get faster rather than MUCH slower.

Originally posted by Ragnaniak

If I may give few other reasons why I solo/private hunt, besides the ones given in your post:

• Learn a Behemoth and improve myself. There is not such things as "taunt" on Dauntless. Which means, the only way to get full attention of a Behemoth is being in a 1v1 combat. This way you can truly experience the moves of a Behemoth, learn the dodge timings, learn his morphololy. I wonder how this learning will be truly possible in a fight with 6 players, where some of them may just cross the combat field to go somewhere else. It's sometimes already the case in a 4 player group, where the Behemoth never focuses you.
• Teach new players things about Dauntless. A bit like the point above, when I want to show and teach mechanics to a new player, I always bring them in private hunt. Now with the training grounds, they can learn weapon moves in an adequate place, but dodging, booping, move learning, needs to be done against a real Behemoth. And once again, the easiest way to control the behavior of a Behemoth is to reduced the number of Slayers around it. I'm pretty sure I will never be able to boop myself an Embermane 5 times in a row in a 6 players group, as the Embermane will switch target everytime.
• Try out specific builds and set ups. Some friends and I recently made videos where we tried to reach the highest part damage in a 3 player group, on regular hunt. This was only possible because we were able to choose the Behemoth we hunted, and able to set up the fight the way we wanted to. I can't imagine this being possible anymore on Hunting Grounds. Same would be for people speedrunning hunts, or play with whatever playstyle that would require almost "full control" on the hunt.

I hope you understand our concerns! Still very hyped for Dauntless Reforged!! Thank you

Originally posted by Lolly_Gags

Even if u cant add solo per say.... How about make so only friends are able to show up in your instance. Whether it be by invite only (more then just the host of it should also be able to invite people till it caps) or them just being thrown in when they queue up. This game is overly infuriating when u play with randoms that just want to leech, or so ill equipped that they get danger up and except a free carry.

What we doing about the afk farming people? what are we doing with the people that refuse to use stims? what are we doing to keep veterans sane from people being completely incompetent at the game to a infuriating degree?

Originally posted by Pseudolatry

You know, when I saw this thread, I thought it said "Solo Queens".

I imagined the next hunt pass was going to be all about strong, independent, female Slayers that don't take nonsense from either men or behemoths. Woe to the fool who invokes their wrath.

Now I'm disappointed. I don't play solo very frequently, except to grind parts, but now all I can thing about is "Solo Queens".

Originally posted by QuartzNova

Finally, wanting to avoid strangers is a concern for some, and we understand that. Some players just don’t want to interact with new people. We want to remind players of the mute function in our game, just in case. And if you’re worried about an unpracticed team scaring away a Behemoth, they no longer flee to another area, which means you’ll no longer have to chase down your target twice.

This misses one key aspect. Avoiding strangers isn't just to mute unpleasant people or because of scaring away a behemoth. It's also that the people who've been at this a really long time don't want to get stuck in a situation where they're "hard carrying" an "unpracticed team" that simply wants all of the rewards without having to participate. Are there any plans to address that portion of the concern?

Originally posted by Cpt_Maelstrom

In the past 2,5 years i was playing in solo in 90% of the time.
After testing it on Experimental I have no objection if you guys dont make a solo mode. Kills are faster, and you get full xp for it, even if u just joined at the end.
And max 6 players can be present on the same islands, and about 3 behe, so if the instance isnt crowded you can still solo behes.

Originally posted by C0NS0L3_PL3B

So how is health scaling going to work? If I'm the only one fighting a behemoth in a lobby of 10 people... Will I get so person healthed behemoth?

Originally posted by Johnny_Kaotic

What if you want to team up with a friend? So a private Duo? Or Trio?

Originally posted by Scorpio_of_Hell

So will it be where there are multiple squads in a hunting ground and you can split up and see other squads? Or will one squad have its own hunting ground?

Originally posted by MissMarra

Ok yeah, I might be really super sad to see Dauntless go co-op-only, BUT still really proud of PHXLabs and had a blast watching this game grow! Fingers and toes crossed this transition goes smoothly for you guys, so smooth that you can bring back solo queues ASAP ;]

Cheers,

Marrakobra

Originally posted by DistinctiveFox

Firstly, thank you very much for taking the time go put some serious thought into the feedback people have been giving. I just want you to know that even though some feedback might not be what you expect or were hoping for. Overall, I love Dauntless and will continue to play it so please remember it's not all doom and gloom! :)

However - that being said. From reading the responses I can confidently assume you've misinterpreted your poll. The "saving time" aspect is actually a combined factor. It could be about saving time from the matchmaking system, yes, but I feel the primary reason for saving time is to avoid having to fight a behemoth with 2x health with players who are scratching their balls or lying dead on the sidewalk. That is what saves time.

I've thought long and hard about this and I think I actually do genuinely buy into your ethos of wanting to stick to co-op and keep things multiplayer. So I am actually going out on a limb here to say, yes, agree with removing solo hunts. My reasoning for this is based on the fact the primary problems with people wanting solo could be fixed in other ways. Like you've said - you want to create an environment where everyone is an asset, or at the very least, not a detriment.

To do this you need to look at your core design a little more as the way you've designed Dauntless up until now is the reason why people play solo, you've made the game far to challenging when playing with random people, like others have said there are a lot of issues here; people getting in the way of your attacks (frustrating), people dying constantly requiring revives and refusing to use their self-revives (frustrating), having builds that do little damage (you've designed a game where support builds are not required or even remotely useful and it's all about the deeps and quick kills) and finally, the way you scale health when more people join.

I think you need to remove the health scaling completely. One of the things I liked about Monster Hunter was the co-op version doesn't change whether you're solo or not. This needs to happen. It also fixes the problem of veteran players killing behemoths in seconds. I'd be totally up for behemoths taking longer to kill, taking minutes and not seconds. But to do this you need to remove scaling completely. That way if a random joins you and isn't contributing much, it's not a detriment to me in terms of how much health I have to get through.

Address the issue of people bumping into each other - this is another really frustrating thing, it's not so bad in a pre-made group as you can communicate your preference of where you want to attack, what part to focus etc. You need to address two issues here - make clipping/bumping into each other more lenient so half your attacks are not missed/interrupted. You then need to make it easier for us to communicate to random people what are preferences are. Yes you've added the quick response messages, but I find it too tricky/not as easy to do. It would be good if there was a way for us to "set" our preference while in a hunt grounds so when new people join in they will see a message stating what we want - part breaks, quick kills, gathering etc. It's great you're adding one area you don't have to leave and can do lots of different things in - but without setting some kind of preference, it's going to be a massive cluster**** if people each doing random things.

Consider your revive system - I would be in favor of making it more harsh, so if you die, you re spawn at the start of the island instantly and have to run back to join the fight. This will do a few things. It will promote new players to be more careful and give them a gentle nudge to try do better rather than wait for a revive from a friend. I guess you could add a time limited or craftable consumable (revive-stim) that you can make, but it has cost and therefore is a limited resource. But take away the option of people being able to revive you, at least during a fight. You can keep revives once a behemoth is down.

Finally - you suggested yourselves you'd like to make other players assets, even if they are new, have no experience or not aligned to your fighting style and not generally doing very well. The only way I can see this working is if you make a behemoth WEAKER by adding additional players into the fight, that or buffing players themselves. You could go either way with this, but instead of people feeling generally negative about wanting to have people play with them, you'll immediately see a change in perception. The game's design will become... "Okay, I do actually WANT people to join me, as I can kill this behemoth quicker due to the increased damage, or lower behemoth health by having multiple people involved." It doesn't need to be a lot - 5% per player?

You could also consider the loot tables and drop rates or experience earned. If you have more slayers in the group - you get more loot, more experience than if you played solo giving us more incentive and something to enjoy out of the experience of having to carry or play with someone we don't know.

Either way with all of the above addressed - you'll give people an incentive to play together. Currently the only incentive for multiplayer is for new/less skilled players as they can get carried by veteran players. There is NOTHING you're adding for veteran slayers as any kind of incentive.

I hope you take my feedback as constructive as I love this Dauntless and don't intend to stop playing. You seem to be trying really hard to listen to what the community is saying so please keep that up, but also don't fall into the confirmation bias trap and misunderstand what people are really asking for. I do understand you're kind of committed now with Reforged and there isn't much wiggle room but if you can confirm that you'll address these issues in a future update it should be fine? :)