Hey guys, After testing the new bonus in APQ between 15-20 times so far since the last change. I think that it was a great change having everyone not spawning together and splitting everyone around the map. How ever, with the new changes, I got several negatives with the new spawn points. 1. The new spawn points does not make it fair, as the left and right top spawn points are way worse than top middle spawn and the two in the bottom. Even if there's the same amount of boxes (referreing to the new picture in the comprehensive APQ guide). Why? Because spawning at the top left or right simply has several disandvantages. 1.1. You need to run and jump to between several different platforms. Meaning you can easily fall down and thus losing A LOT of time to get back up to start hitting boxes again. 1.2. Apples can fall down, meaning you will either have to get it later or once again, lose A LOT of time when you have to climb back up. 1.3. Since apples doesn't summon first in the boxes, you have to wait for the apples and thus losing A LOT of time. Meaning you most likely will have a hard time finishing your boxes while also needing to jump to other platforms. 2. From what I've heard from several APQ leaders (people leading it on multiple chars, multiple times a day) is that the spawn points are based on the order you are joining the party. So for exmaple, someone who joins the party late, gets top left or right spawn points while the leader always get bottom one. According to me, this is horrible for a couple of reasons. 2.1. Sometimes, us with several APQ chars, are nice enough to change chars in order to have enough attackers, br/gr or haste etc. This means that this person will get a worse spawn points (with regards to the 1.1-1.3 reference) and thus risking losing apples. 2.2. Favoritiztion can occur when leader chooses to invite their friends first in order to help them get the "better" spawn points. 2.3. In general, just because you join a party last, should you really have worse spawn point than other members of the party? What happens if you are nice enough to join a party simply because a party cannot find enough members. Should you get "punished" for this? 3. Since the last change, even though it hasn't been long, I've seen way more confusion and fights happening within the party because of stolen apples of boxes "that are supposed to be mine". Because either one member said that everyone should be following the new map structure (after the fact that the first bonus has started) pointed out in the comprehensive APQ guide or that someone did not know about the new lay out and thus refusing to give back an apple. The fact is that, not everyone reads the full guide on how to run around and hit boxes, and frankly, not all leaders prefer this either, making this very confusing for member of the party to plan their route for maximum efficiency. Furthermore, since the barrier is very low for people to join APQ (unlike CWK which has the same set boxes in bon for example), minimizing the confusion among members should be a priority in order to reduce fights for apples and increasing everyones efficiency and overall APQ game play. So, taking the above considerations, as a conclusion, I think that the change where people are not spawning at the same place are good. How ever, I think that each bonus should be completely randomized (for each bonus, and not each APQ run with 4 bonuses) in order to make it as fair as possible for everyone within the party. This would also fix several of the above mentioned bullets. /Dani EDIT: Just to point out what I'm talking about. This happened my next APQ, straight after posting this topic. And this has been happening pretty much all the time. Fair? I think not.
From what I have seen mentioned by staff previously, making the spawn points completely randomized is much harder than you would imagine it to be. It's interesting to see what the new flaws are with the new spawn locations, and I am not ignorant to the fact that the new system is not perfect. At the end of the day, everybody's average of apples should have increased. It's unfortunate if you get a bad spawn location, but I guarantee the amount of apples you'll receive exceed what you would have previously. You could argue you got more beforehand, but most likely if you did, you were 1 of 2 party members that spawned at the very top, while 4 members spawned at the bottom platform. Resulting in 2 happy members, and 4 unhappy members. It makes me think a bit about Saledor and when he claims to get 14 apples on average in 4 runs (pre change). I 100% like him as a person, but to receive 14 apples on average, he must have received good spawn 100% of the time, with no party members ever spawning around him. Which in my opinion, is not possible. Additionally, the current "organized" spawn locations, allow for you to know who will be where. Top left and right aren't the best spots. But if you're a mage, they're great. In a sense, there's probably a "meta" party composition people could try and work with.
We tried to make it randomized but it didn’t work. So we only really had these options: Old system New fixed spawn system by party order Everyone spawn in the middle Most feedback asked for fixed spawns so we went by that even if we couldn’t make it randomized. Since APQ is 4 Runs people can change orders and give everyone „better“ spawns here and there. In the end it’s still a Party Quest and people should try to work together not against each other. We will observe it more as people need to get used to it first and a real meta/strategy has to settle down.
I see, if those were the solutions you had to go with I guess this was the way to go. Thank you for that clarification Zancks. Then we can close this.
