QCF Design Community

I've found that PQI quests can be quite variable in difficulty, ranging from nightmarish to laughable. To better accommodate, I'd like to make a suggestion for PQI.

Each dungeon would receive a difficulty ranking from 1-10 for PQI purposes, with 1 being hobbler's hold and 10 being a typical vicious scenario. The majority of dungeons would fall into the 3-7 range. Each badge would be assigned a number of points, as well as the type of challenge:

Class and Race: 3 points
Monster Class: 1 point
Class only: 1 point
Race only: 1 point

Hoarder, Warmonger: 4 points
Faithless, Purist, Miser: 3 points
Unstoppable, Feeling Parched, Specialist: 2 points
Cheeky, Ding! Max: 1 point

The PQI would randomly select a difficulty value between 8 and 15, but it would weight the 10-13 sweet spot more highly. It then selects a dungeon and constraints to reach this target, using whatever weighting mechanisms it likes. This could potentially produce PQI quests which specify the player to acquire several badges, or PQI quests that specify a class but not a race due to requiring a challenging dungeon/badge combination.


So here are some examples:

PQI is looking to create a difficulty 11 quest in Slime Pit (difficulty 7 dungeon). This leaves it 4 points to select constraints. If it selects the Warmonger badge, then this leaves 0 points available for class/race constraints, and so the quest will be Warmonger Slime Pits with no other restrictions.

PQI is looking to create a difficulty 10 quest in Venture Cave (difficulty 2 dungeon). It specifies a Gnome Tinker (3 points), which leaves it 5 points to select badges with. It might select faithless (3) and unstoppable (2) to create its quest.

PQI is looking to create a difficulty 15 quest in Hard Halls of Steel (difficulty 6 dungeon). It specifies a Vampire (1 point), which leaves it 8 points select badges. So in this extreme dungeon run you might be asked to to get Warmonger (4), Purist (3), and Cheeky (1) badges all in one go.


This creates a more flexible system that can potentially assign more or fewer constraints depending on how difficult the scenario is. A Den of Danger PQI is more likely to require several badges, while a Labyrinth PQI may not require any badges at all, or else specify only a specific class without a race constraint. This would still have room for randomness, however, and once in a blue moon you might see nightmarish scenarios like Purist (3) Unstoppable (2) Parched (2) Goblin Monk (3) in Creeplight Ruins (5). Just within the realms of possibility to tempt you to try, but designed to be uncommon enough that you probably won't see something like it again any time soon.

You could also make the money based on the points. A typical 10 point scenario is 500 (50 per point), and a 15 would be 750.

That sounds like a nice system but I guess this is more for the hardcore crowd here that already has completed most of the game content.

Personally, I'm missing the part where there is incentive to try something new, as your PQI is totally random in this regard. As a player with medium skill, this is what makes the PQI we now have more interesting for me, although I agree that it would be even more fun if it wasn't always the same scheme of class,race,badge,map.

Therefore, I'd suggest that you incorporate the PQI we already have into your idea by making unused constraints (things you don't do that often) more likely so that we can have both sides of the cake.

Looks like we had the same thing in mind and it was only a misunderstanding on my part.
I understood the weighting more in terms of how much a single constraint should be worth, as this wouldn't need to be static either.

Although I wouldn't say that the PQI is intended mostly for the hardcore crowd. It shows you classes, races and badges that you don't have yet regardless of skill-level, so whether you feel up for the actual PQI or not it gives you incentive how to experiment on the dungeon.
If I can't complete the PQI, I can at least try to single out one of the three constraints race/class/badge for the given map and have fun completing that rather than choosing a dungeon at random (if only to take it from my possible future PQIs).

Most of the allure of the PQI is in the challenge, and I think it is one of the most efficient additions the devs have made.

By efficient I mean maximum replayability for a small addition. Dynamic content like this gives experienced players reason to re-tackle normal and hard dungeons.

I had a hoarder gnome tinker on venture cave the other day, and I found myself actually having to think about things. It was nice to get some mileage out of 'old' dungeons.

I think dynamic rewards are in the works, the devs just have to figure out the numbers.