I don't think this is an issue at all. Just like most students on Potterworld commit for 1 hour classes over and over and over again, a 20 to 30 minute quest shouldn't be an issue either. Going AFK during the quest is an option, taking breaks during the quest is an option. Doing that in classes isn't.
There's an extremely big difference between committing to a 1 hour class and committing to a 20-30 minute quest. Classes don't require full attention, most of the time, the notes can simply be ignored or read in a different wording from the internet in a smaller amount of time than it takes for the professor to copy-paste them. Even when writing an assignment people can easily just go to the toilet or something irl idk, whereas during a quest your teammates constantly need you.
Besides which, you're assuming that quests take 20-30 minutes for everyone, but I simply think this is not the case. Some people will require a longer period of time to come to terms with what they have to do, where they have to go, that sort of thing. What takes 20-30 minutes for you might as well take several hours for other players.
You can take your sweet time with the quest, you can try multiple times, you could explore and there would be no consequence. While in classes, (where most people glue themselves to their seats for the full hour with no problem) it's actually more of a commitment than these quests are.
Yet in every class it happens that before the class is over, a bunch of people leave. Not the majority, but still a bunch of people. You simply cannot assume that because classes exist, every single player will be able to commit to an activity that lasts around an hour, because that is simply not realistic. And again, people can go AFK during classes at any time without consequence as well. Unless it's during the AFK check, profs or helpers won't even notice, and if you're back in time for the assignment you can still get the normal amount of ACs.
Finding a "competent enough team" shouldn't be that much of an issue. Firstly, in challenges and tournaments, finding a team is almost never an issue and you can just pair up with whoever doesn't have a team. This team sticks together for the full 2 hour duration of some challenges/tournaments. I don't see how a 30 minute team quest can be an issue, as most quests can be done in wayy less time (even the graduate quests, persumably the most difficult, don't take that much time)
"Just pairing up with whoever doesn't have a team" is not at all a great strategy of actually finding a team or winning a challenge or tournament, for that matter. This is explaining how it's not difficult to find a team whereas I specifically referred to a competent enough team. It would require a huge amount of luck to find a team who is competent enough simply by looking for people who don't have a team yet.
And again, you're assuming that literally everyone can do these quests in a mere 30 minutes. Some people take longer, not everyone finds these quests equally easy. If you look around on this forum there's all sorts of people complaining about the difficulty of certain quests, how they dislike the presence of parkour. I'm not much of a parkour hater myself but I can really see where they're coming from. Adding on more layers of difficulty like having to find a competent enough team will, as I believe, only cause more people to be angry at quests, cause more such complaint posts to be made on the forums and I don't think that's a very good thing.
Finding a "competent enough team" also won't be a problem because the quests aren't overly difficult. Most of these quests can be completed easily, and for the ones that are a bit harder, you have /ch qc (quests chat) to ask, or you could use /t create if no players are able to help you.
This again does not really solve the issue of finding a competent enough team. Yes, finding teams themselves can be easy enough by just asking around but I'm really referring to teams that are able to cooperatively solve a quest. If you'd argue that such quests wouldn't have to be too difficult, then what's the point of making it team-based? Surely it feels rather anticlimactic to do a quest with a team only for that quest to be super easy? And if you'd argue that it would have certain elements of difficulty, then again it would add another element of difficulty to these quests of having to find teammates that are physically able to do the tasks that such a quest would present.
Also, perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but are you really implying that if people are unable to find a team at all, they create an in-game ticket? What does the moderation team have to do with players being unable to find a team? Surely they're busy enough as it is, reporting bugs and answering general questions to also be involved in finding a team for a player?
To conclude & sum up:
I get where you're coming from but these team quests would be equally as difficult as the regular quests (which hint, are not difficult) and it wouldn't be an issue at all to find another player who is willing to spend 20-30 minutes on an easy and fun quest with when you can just ask in quests chat or ask one of your many friends in game. Commitment wouldn't be a recurring issue since most of the players commit to one hour classes frequently with no issue.
Again, don’t assume quests are not difficult when you experienced them as such. They can be incredibly difficult for other players. And again, got nothing to do with just finding someone willing to do that quest with you, it’s finding a player who’s capable enough of finishing that quest by staying active throughout the entire duration of the quest (which can vary greatly for different players) and by having the necessary skillset (or gear set) to complete the quest.
As a class helper, I can assure you that I rarely get messages from players that want to go AFK during class, and most of the time, even new players on their first class will still be competent enough to write a decent assignment and use the /turnin and /rh command without a problem, along with interacting with the various NPCs and following class rules.
This has nothing to do with the subject at hand. The fact that you rarely see such messages in no way or form implies that players rarely go AFK throughout classes. I sometimes have to go AFK during class because I’m needed IRL, but since that is the case I don’t get time to notify the prof or CH about this. The point is that you simply cannot assume players don’t go AFK during classes when you as CH don’t see them go AFK, because quite frankly, that stuff happens in front of your nose without you even noticing.
Also being competent enough to write a decent assignment in class has nothing to do with being competent enough to do a difficult quest, it can take a lot of time and hard work to get a gear set that’s needed to fight a specific mob whereas classes don’t have any such requirements.
So the point is, commitment, difficulty, duration, and finding teammates shouldn't be too much of an issue in simple quests when none of these are an issue in 1 hour classes and 1-2 hour challenges/tournaments
So far the only thing you’ve said is that commitment will be ensured simply because players are able to attend classes (which has nothing to do with being active for a full hour, as said, players can go AFK unnoticed), quests aren’t difficult (which varies greatly throughout the playerbase and thus quests can’t simply be deemed “difficult” or “not difficult”), finding teammates is no problem (which I agree with, but again, this completely ignores the notion of finding competent enough teammates) and none of these (as pointed out between brackets) really solve the issues I listed earlier.
Yes, there will be some teammates that aren't good at the game and might go AFK on you randomly. All it takes is for you to disband the party and find another teammate and I can guarantee you that it won't be a hassle 95% of the time. These kinds of quests can get random people on the server to become friends and would actually increase the engagement between players rather than make the quests seem like a solo task, when in reality, the server regularly has hundreds of players.
What exactly do you base this guarantee off? Is there anything to support this claim? In my previous response I referred to my own experiences in a different game, where it became extremely obvious that any mission that was too difficult for some people ended up in a bunch of ragequits. After reading your response to mine I am simply still not convinced that the same won’t happen in PW, if these kinds of quests were added.
PS. Apologies for the removal of any formatting, the website was glitching out colors all over the place so I had to finish writing this reply in google docs then copy-paste it into the website again.
