I think the random map order workshop mod should be sanctioned. The current order for selecting new QP maps isn’t working well, with maps typically repeating either immediately or across a handful of games.
I think our record was 4 or 5 forts in a row. Just tonight we’ve had 3 pits in a row, which then caused us to immediately bail on the repeats. I get that random QP changes are in the pipeline (mentioned somewhere on reddit), but it’s already a fixed problem given this mod.
From what I can tell with how quickplay works is that it tries to find maps already in progress that needs a spot to fill.
Restricting certain maps or changing the randomness is going to end up with longer wait times or force you to host.
Which is why I think you want the mod to be sanctioned so you can host quickplay, set match to private once it starts, then collect rewards…
Except this isn’t applicable when you play with a group. I’m almost always playing with someone else.
Solo QP could be still be random choice, because as far as I know the queue would be based on the host, not the clients. Having an incentive to stay with a QP group (for less duplicate maps) would be a positive thing imo.
I’d be fine with a private QP mod being sanctioned, but no, that’s not why I want the mod in question to be sanctioned. I’m tired of repeating levels consistently and having to reform group or suicide wipe to actually play the different levels.
OP isn’t trying to game the system. He wants to ensure that the same map does not repeat when he enters into QP as host. I’ve personally had the game give me the same map in QP 3-4 times in a row. This is frustrating and most groups opt to reset by killing themselves.
The devs have confirmed – although I can’t find it now – that the maps in QP are determined based in part on how well the group has done on the maps in the past. It apparently favors maps with a lower success rate. Maybe the thought process was to help you beat ‘harder’ levels and reach achievements while not losing the QP bonus on chests. For most people playing endgame, it’s most just really irritating. This is why, if you play with a group, you tend to see the same 4-5 maps all evening – either back to back or in close proximity.
A better system would be to have it be pure random and then exclude previously played maps from the pool. That’s what the mod does already. So when you queue QP as host, it picks randomly from the 15 maps. Once you play a map, that map is excluded from the pool on the next QP – meaning that it’s choosing from a pool of 14 now. This makes the map selection random but avoids repeats back to back and near repeats (like playing the same map four times in one evening).
Honestly, I share OP’s frustration. I hate having to play the same handful of maps over and over and over – which is even worse if you play with the same group consistently.
They should just approve the mod already. Or just fix this – which probably should have happened months ago.
It’s really not a big deal. Today, I got 3 Against the Grain maps. Victorious on all three. Still got loot.
“If I don’t mind it, then the problem isn’t there at all!”
That’s ostrich mentality. It doesn’t really work that well when applied to people, though, so… yeah maybe the thing that’s causing you to put your head in the sand should be tweaked.
Lucky you enjoying more repetition then already is present, but doing the same maps three times in a row is not fun and not a incentive to play.
Personally I would like to play Screaming Bell for once without having to que for it specifically through twitchmode or otherwise.
“Let’s have a system that favours the worst maps in the game”
“Great idea, do it!”
The fix to this is also a way to future-proof problems with DLC maps. What’s the point in having a pool of 25+maps if I have to go through Fort Branstonpickle 3 times in a row?
Expanding on what @da3strikes said, I’d remove the previous 3 maps played from the pool. Also - success or failure has no impact upon the pick, as I’ve failed so hard for no reason other than AI Director rage spawning everything or some random thing happening.
Couple of days ago, running the Pit our Zealot shot long range at a globadier during a horde, Patrol spawned behind a building and stepped out in-between Zealot and Target and a shield SV took the arrow instead. Welcome to pain. The pit now appears in QP with a higher chance for something completely daft that Zealot couldn’t do anything about. When an SV sticks it’s head out from behind a building in the path of an arrow in flight it’s no-ones fault.
Quitting by suicide will also increase the chances of the map appearing in QP, so host quitting and reforming group is the only way to avoid affecting the “randomness”. Doing it the way people have mentioned here (suicide to get back to the keep) might well be making the map you hate appear even more often.
I seem to very very rarely get Righteous Stand, and spend half my life up to my knees in swamp water in War Camp. I think Fort Braksenbruke appears a lot for many people because the possibility of getting spanked into the water and inst-die is much higher and causes wipes more frequently. Certainly for me I seem to wipe quite a lot when a boss spawns along the river and someone gets punched into the water.
In conclusion, (for many reasons) Ranald needs a run-up conversion-kick to the Dongliz.
flashback of 20+ plaguemonks REEEEEE intensifies
There is some misinformation here and this post rounds up how it works and also states why the devs made the system this way:
I personally think a random or semi random rotation is fine as long as the “severe penalty” sets the chances of your last played map to 0%.
Thanks for the quote clearing up misinformation, but it doesn’t explain why this system exists, and ultimately it’s a system that isn’t addressing my problem.
I’m not quitting maps because they are hard or I don’t like them, I’m quitting them because they repeat too quickly. I typically get maps back to back or multiple times a night (of say <10 runs), regardless of whether we complete them. Even if I fail a map I don’t want to repeat it, since we probably got through a significant portion of the map.
As @Argonaut14 mentioned, I’d also be fine with a system that hard excluded the previous X maps from showing up. A mod doesn’t already exist for that though.
As Robin said, at least part of the point is to not encourage people to intentionally avoid maps in quickplay. There may be a few maps that you don’t want to play, or are harder/longer (or just perceived to be), and bailing on those maps really defeats the idea of quickplay… which my understanding is that it’s to reward people for playing all/random maps rather than repeating the same map or couple maps over and over because they are easier, faster, or more reliably beaten.
I know people hate hearing it, but you don’t have to do quickplay every time. If there are maps you don’t like, you can pick a map that you enjoy or haven’t played in a while. Yes, you don’t get the quickplay bonus of half a bar or progress towards a quickplay quest, but FatShark’s intent is to reward people that play the game how FatShark wants. However, it’s easy to see it as just penalizing players who don’t, so I’d love a better way to give the perception of rewarding vs penalizing. I also think people prioritizing getting the quickplay bonus over enjoying the gameplay is a dangerous thing to do.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect system, rather I would love to see it improved, even if it was just to entirely prevent back to back repeats rather than just weighting against it. People getting the same map over and over is frustrating to say the least, and is clearly not their goal. However, I can understand why they created this system (especially in light of V1 and Horn of Magnus). I don’t think it’s great, but not that bad either.
First, I think you’re conflating the QP bonus and the QP map selection algorithm. The former is the reason you would choose random maps over a specific run (e.g. Horn of Magnus) and a change I agree with wholeheartedly. The latter is the system I have issues with.
He explained why that latter system uses map completions, not why the rest of the system exists and why it exists in this form. Presumably this was their original take on a pseudo-random map generator. Yet you can still get maps repeating back to back, even with successful runs, so right now the system itself is the reason I reset levels.
To be absolutely clear, I want to play pseudo-random maps. I just don’t want frequently repeating maps across subsequent or a small handful of runs. To that point, it looks like you agree this system isn’t as good as it could be.
The mod I linked (using full cycle random) looks like a straight improvement, regardless of whether it should count map starts or map completions.
A data set with NO repetition is either very small or definitely is NOT random.
Choosing quickplay will give you a random match even though it sometimes repeats the same maps.
You shouldn’t even be upset about it anyways. With the addition of extra loot die in the game, you can actually now skip the quickplay bonus altogether.
Don’t do quickplay if you don’t like it. Problem solved 
I’m glad you don’t have a problem with it. Do you specifically like replaying the same map multiple times in a row?
Not using QP is not a good solution for me, with quests forcing you into the mode and there being no in-game alternative to randomly choose maps.
I get why they did it, but it’s still a bad design decision. As @fuzzydwarf said, I really only skip maps because of the repeats. But this just makes it more likely to get a repeat if I’m understanding Robin correctly…
You also don’t always get to choose not to play QP since some quests are based around QP completions now. You are also forgoing a loot bonus to avoid repeats by choosing specific maps – although this is less important now that bosses drop dice. So this is an incomplete solution.
At the end of the day, I think the way FS designed the QP queue is avoiding the underlying problem. This system seems to assume that some maps are either horribly annoying or aren’t worth the extra time/effort – so players will routinely skip them. If that’s the case, then FS should tweak the map design (so that it’s less annoying) or up the rewards (to make it worth running). In fact, that’s exactly what they did with boss maps in the past since people were skipping them (Skittergate?). Forcing repeats is a lazy and annoying solution to an incentive problem that they created in the first place.
In any event, the fix is already available in mod form and only affects a specific host queuing for multiple QPs in a row – so primarily private groups. It seems like they could just approve it in the meantime until they figure out another solution.
Sorry, they tend to go hand in hand when people discuss QP so I didn’t want to ignore that the QP map selection also has other effects.
With regard to why they went with this pseudo-randomness as opposed to a different random system? If the game doesn’t keep track of the maps you’ve played at all, you’ll just see the pure randomness – it won’t be that uncommon to see repeats with such a small numbers of maps, and you’re likely to see big disparities in the number of times you see each map. If it doesn’t weight map completions, people can bail on maps they don’t like and have a better chance of seeing a map they do like. Why they didn’t include a fail safe for preventing back to back repeats? They probably thought the system they have for weighting against recently played maps would be enough to make it not an issue.
I think the pseudo-randomness is there to (ideally) make QP deliver an equal number of map completions for each map for each player. People will see more map variety and if certain maps see a lot more failures than others, FatShark can look at the data and try to find out what is causing it to balance them (rather than if everyone just avoids the map altogether). All that being said, yes, I agree that the system could/should be better and I’m sure FatShark agrees… though they have a lot on their plate for things to improve.
This really gets to the heart of the issue and the most frustrating part. A fix for this issue already exists in mod form – and has been around for nearly two months. They just have to approve it.
I really wish they hadn’t decided to curate the mods.
I’m very very glad they do curate the mods. In fact, I bet GW have more of a hand in the mod curation than we think.
Horn of Magnus has a lot to answer for. QP is conceived to stop people running shortest map(screaming bell?) for lootz in the same way people did in VT1 with HoM.
I think the maths to figure out the average of failed maps across all 4 players recent failures is weirdly impacting everyone involved, but we’re only getting frustrated because our own experience feels like it’s repeating the same maps. No-one plays every single game with the same players every single time and this might be distorting our perceived ideas of how often we should see different results.
Possibly the algorithm is working perfectly to deliver the average of the most frequently failed map across all 4 players, even if one player has never failed a particular map. The mod might simply give individuals a better impression that it’s random.