DPS Queue Times

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Remember when Yoshi said DPS queues wouldn't be a problem even though they're adding only two new DPS to expansion?

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And they're back to where they were, now. They could add 50 new tank classes next expansion and the DPS queue would STILL be the longest one.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

You know if you ever wanna go DPS main I will keep you healer-queued up so you aren't waiting :P

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And lose our regular game of "who is going to get stuck DPSing this expert?" :D

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That aside... no? I'll elaborate. I don't think I spent enough time on my prior post. When I say 'variety' it isn't just that there are more dps but rather the actual variety offered by dps gameplay.

The variety of dps roles isn't just that there are nine of them instead of 3 tanks and 3 healers it's that they all offer different gameplay. They've got definition to them that you just don't find with tanks and healers. All tanks have a threat combo, an AoE enmity generator on GCD, a ST ranged enmity generator, an immunity, tank stance, dps stance... there is serious homoginization here. All healers have a basic ST heal, stronger ST heal, basic AoE heal, stronger AoE heal, Raise not to mention almost always taking the same role actions with little exception. Let's not look too hard at AST/WHM in particular because we all know what a cookie cutter that is.

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That wraps around to the "can they even add another healer?" thread. And yes, that's a problem. Fundamentally, a DPS job has to be able to put out X DPS in personal DPS and group utility to be viable. How it does that isn't relevant. So you can come up with distinct playstyles more easily.

Healing is not that. Putting out X HPS is meaningless, because healing requirements in this game are bursty. You need a big shield and lots of burst healing at one moment, and then little to nothing for a while. That means any healer they add MUST have that burst potential in order to be viable, which immediately kills concepts like a healer that does steady healing via damage dealing (because most of it would be overheal and you'd need to have a way to burst heal). They only really have three cast speeds on spells: instant, GCD length, and "Raise". So without changing that, concepts that play with spell speed for fast & small/slow & large heals don't work.

Tanks are similar in that they all need a certain amount of on demand mitigation due to how encounters are designed, they all need threat builders, etc. There might be a bit more room for variety there, but in general these two roles have requirements far more specific in nature than "do damage". That greatly narrows the options for making them unique. AST is the shining example of the problem, but I don't think it's easily fixable without changing how encounters are designed and opening up more spell cast time options, among other things.

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I understand why these similaraties in support roles exist but it doesn't change the fact that it contributes to them feeling very similar overall and especially when compared to their DPS brethren who rarely share anything apart from role actions and for melee the presence of combos (except MNK).

In my opinion (as someome who still consideres themselves a healer main) DPS roles in general were designed with distinct identities in mind and then had potency tweaks to bring their dps more or less in line with each other where as tanks and especially healers were designed around their utilities and core skillset and then separated at some points by little more than aesthetics.

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Yep.

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The reason I enjoy dpsing now is that each time I do it the experience still feels fresh, probably because I've banged healer reflex memory into my skull through leveling them each to 70. There is a reason Cure/Physick/Benefic all share a button for me and for most healers. For someone who doesn't enjoy the actual healing gameplay I'd wager (much like me with tanking) the thought of leveling another job through basically the same routine seems at best daunting and at worst boring. I am quite sure this contributes in a meaningful way to the dps queue times.

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That'd be why PLD is the only tank I have past 30. I have no incentive to go do those ARR dungeons again on the other two.

But if you look at other games, the same imbalances exist even where the tanks & healers are more distinct, like WoW was. Fundamentally, the people who actually want to do those roles are a clear minority. Making another job doesn't change that. You cannot take someone who doesn't want to be responsible for keeping the party alive and get them to play a healing class, no matter how many of them you add. The roles are not balanced on responsibility, how publicly obvious your failures are (ESPECIALLY in a game that bans parsers), and how much you have to pay attention to what the rest of the group is doing. No amount of classes will change that imbalance, and that's a major factor for a lot of people.

In a trinity game, it's a problem that is very hard to solve.

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Also I'm very much in favor of 5 man dungeons and I don't think it would take as much tweaking as some people think either. Obviously we would need to increase enemy HP proportionally but there are plenty of dungeons where no actual mechs would need altering.

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Tuning every encounter in the game to account for the DPS and more people on mechanics is the obvious cost. While it's substantial, it's not the biggest hurdle. There are two other major things:

1. Anywhere in the code where someone made the assumption that a party size is X (4/8) is suspect, becauase if they used a hardcoded number instead of a constant for the maximum, increasing it will break and probably cause a crash bug. That includes many places in the UI, network code, and so on. Much of that code will be very old, likely from 2.0 and possibly from 1.0 if it was carried forward. Going through all of that is a big deal.

2. Network load. While it looks like you're simply adding one person to a group of 4, or a 25% increase, what you're actually doing is far more impactful on the network. When the server is talking to clients in a party, it has to tell every client what every other client is doing, in addition to various system statuses and what the NPCs are doing. System status/NPCs are fixed cost, they don't change based on party size. The cost to tell a client about the other clients is exponential with party size, and for simplicity purpose we're leaving out the server having to tell your client about itself:

in a party of 2, the server tells 2 clients what 1 client is doing, for a total cost of 2*1 = 2
in a party of 3, the server tells 3 clients what 2 clients are doing for a total cost of 3*2=6
in a party of 4, the server tells 4 clients what 3 clients are doing for a total cost of 4*3=12
in a party of 5, the server tells 5 clients what 4 clients are doing for a total cost of 5*4=20

in a party of 8, the server tells 8 clients what 7 clients are doing for a total cost of 8*7=56
in a party of 10, the server tells 10 clients what 9 clients are doing for a total cost of 3*2=90

in a party of 24, the server tells 24 clients what 23 clients are doing for a total cost of 24*23=552 (these numbers being so large is why Alliance raids tend to be janky with things like raid wide damage taking so long to hit everyone, as the server works its way through each person and tells every client. It's also why world zones are limited to a certain size, because 1000 people showing up at the same FATE would create overwhelming load, although there's various techniques to mitigate this)
in a party of 30, the server tells 30 clients what 29 clients are doing for a total cost of 30*29=870


As you can see, boosting party sizes significantly increases the cost of keeping clients in sync on what the other clients are doing. That's a manageable thing, of course, but it's a much bigger deal than simply having the encounter design team boost the HP on everything and call it a day. You also have to multiply those increases by all the groups playing, which won't particularly change because the number of tanks & healers likely won't change a ton (it may go down a bit if queue times decrease). Total load goes up as a result of the change.

As a programmer, I'd argue that the encounter design is the easiest part. While it's certainly a major undertaking, it's fundamentally data manipulation primarily and is a known workload quantity that doesn't impact anything else the same way the network load changes do.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

And they're back to where they were, now. They could add 50 new tank classes next expansion and the DPS queue would STILL be the longest one.

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Sure but not as long as now.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

I think you're still painting with too broad a brush. I'd argue DRK specifically stands out as a notoriously made fun of job, look no further than the linkin park music overlay and 'edgelord' title.

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Hey! I represent that remark!

In all seriousness, every game with the trinity mechanic suffers from the Tank/ Healer stigma. It's not only that DPS are deigned to be more fun to play, they are more fun to play because they are not loaded with the responsibilities the others seem to be saddled with. Speaking as merely a casual i cannot say for certain, but i have seldom heard of Healers DPS being integral for completion in everything from pug dungeon runs to endgame progression. The same could be said for the DPS meta minded push for Tanks to do their jobs out of defense stances to push higher DPS for faster completion. Both are not things tailored to the roles but have now seemed to have become expected, regardless of the fine line between success and failure that comes from risk/reward game play styles.

Some do not want and cannot thrive in that situation, couple this with the current imbalance of the shear numbers DPS to other roles and the issue was certain to come yet again to a head (something that was certainly not helped with Samurai being made a DPS).

What ever is released next (job wise) must contend with many issues right out of the gate, and how the community will dictate how it is used in content.

Leveling advice? Make a play list of videos/ music on repeat and Palace of The Dead until you're sick of it... Then do it again a million times. You'll hate it but you'll be level 70 and have no idea what your doing with your job like many others.

"~Crawling in my skin..."

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Originally Posted by DamianTenbe

Sure but not as long as now.

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DPS queue's were still an issue in ARR. They chose to do 1 healer, 1 tank, and 1 dps. The tank is a very loved type of job (DRK) and the dps that came out is still statistically the least played dps in the game (MCH)

Yet after 2 weeks, the queue barely changed in time. It only sped up for people leveling in the 30-60 range because people wanted to try out the tank. Then, they stopped. I even remember reading that Square said most of the people that stuck with DRK already played a PLD or WAR, so it didn't really change the amount of played tanks.

As pointed out once the "no tank or healer in SB debate", we keep begging for a new tank, but would you play that new tank?

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

As pointed out once the "no tank or healer in SB debate", we keep begging for a new tank, but would you play that new tank?

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I'd say that depends. I know I for one did play DRK fairly regularly in dungeons up until Stormblood, even if I didn't main it - It wasn't my favorite, but I liked it more than waiting. Then they changed it and I can't even bear leveling it all the way to 70 now, much less use it afterward. I'd do the same with any other potential "new" tank that might suit my fancy. I'd also play DRK again if it was reverted, but let's be realistic here <.<'

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

As pointed out once the "no tank or healer in SB debate", we keep begging for a new tank, but would you play that new tank?

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OK buddy. Sit down, get some hot chocolate and read my long and desperate post of why I think we need more Tank jobs and why I think you are not right. I will include few quoted posts in my post. Pls note I can't edit since I'm on mobile device. As for grammar mistakes and typos, I'm sorry. English isn't my native language.

As for your quoted question It depends. If new tanking job would be bad in its job, uninteresting and unfun I would say no. In fact it would have a negative effect or maybe none at all and such job would be ignored. As a tank main with limited time to play I don't want to play a job if its not worth it/rewarding/fun. In fact I don't like to dps at all. Heaving only 3 classes that are related to your favorite play style seems very little compared to 9 dps jobs.

So my argument nr 1:

"Build Job diversity is key to player retention, I think. It keeps things fresh enough that players won't get bored as easily as they would by playing the same cookie class jobs builds." - so pls have in mind that we tanks want some brand new jobs to play as well. Fact that dps are more favorable than other jobs shouldn't be an argument to not give us more tanking jobs.

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Argument nr 2:

"Tanks are the most abused class in any MMO. Everything gets blamed on the tank. And if you did not spend an hour studying the encounter prior to queuing prepare to get booted from the group or verbally abused for the next 30 minutes or so. The MMO community caused this problem." - so it's not a badly designed job or unfun job/class but the expectations that are made by the community for the community. While I don't have any ideas how to resolve the problem of studying for the test and hope to pass it, in terms of raiding, dungeons and etc. I don't think that not encouraging tanking by adding more tanking jobs is a right solution either.

Argument 3:

If we are to approach the moment where tanks jobs will remain untoched and unaddressed. We will see the process to bribe the player method. Special mounts, free materia, unique titles. It will be a free chicken method and we will have players to do it just for the reward and then abandon the tank job. It's ok I guess but why not try to balance them around and keep adding additions as of new tanking jobs to the game to have permanent tank players.

I'm really not used to make such long posts so I hope I did somewhat good showing my side of a look at the things. Thanks for reading! Ps Man its really bad to post here on mobile device D: .

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Originally Posted by Rinuko

10-20 min isnt that bad. That's normal lol

Come back when you're in queue for 60+ min

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I am only reminded of when rogue first came out. Wait times were two hours or more...I think that’s when I picked up tanking.
On the of chance I do go in as dps ( without a friend) I always end up forgetting I’m waiting for something.

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Originally Posted by DamianTenbe

Argument 3:

If we are to approach the moment where tanks jobs will remain untoched and unaddressed. We will see the process to bribe the player method. Special mounts, free materia, unique titles. It will be a free chicken method and we will have players to do it just for the reward and then abandon the tank job. It's ok I guess but why not try to balance them around and keep adding additions as of new tanking jobs to the game to have permanent tank players.

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The reason to have incentives like that is to get people who wouldn't try tanking to try it for the reward, in the hope that some of them wind up liking it and sticking around (also to get existing tanks into the queue more often for the shiny thing).

It's pretty questionable how often that works, but a lot of people consider tanking scary because of how visible and up front it is compared to DPS, and they need a nudge to try it at all.

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Originally Posted by DamianTenbe

Argument nr 2:

"Tanks are the most abused class in any MMO. Everything gets blamed on the tank.

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Healer mains are laughing right now. ;)

Do tanks get blame they don't deserve? Yes. Do tanks cast blame on others undeserved? Yep. Healers are in the same boat. The unfortunate nature of a job like either of them is that you get people who haven't done them and have no clue what they're talking about pointing fingers. It's unfortunate, especially when those same players then bitch and moan about how long the DPS queue is, as if these two things are in no way related.

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And if you did not spend an hour studying the encounter prior to queuing prepare to get booted from the group or verbally abused for the next 30 minutes or so. The MMO community caused this problem." - so it's not a badly designed job or unfun job/class but the expectations that are made by the community for the community. While I don't have any ideas how to resolve the problem of studying for the test and hope to pass it, in terms of raiding, dungeons and etc. I don't think that not encouraging tanking by adding more tanking jobs is a right solution either.

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But these two things have nothing to do with each other. Players being jerks will be exactly the same if you have 3 tank jobs or 30 tank jobs.

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Originally Posted by DamianTenbe

So my argument nr 1:

"Build Job diversity is key to player retention, I think. It keeps things fresh enough that players won't get bored as easily as they would by playing the same cookie class jobs builds." - so pls have in mind that we tanks want some brand new jobs to play as well. Fact that dps are more favorable than other jobs shouldn't be an argument to not give us more tanking jobs.

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As I already mentioned in another post, it's much easier to create meaningful differences in gameplay in DPS jobs. Healers have this even worse than tanks do, but "more jobs" is not a panacea. The jobs need to be meaningfully distinct in gameplay, otherwise it's the same thing with a different coat of paint on it.

(Honestly, unless then can so how they're going to make it distinct, I don't even want another healer job added. It took more than a full expansion to make the three we have now into some semblance of a balanced state, and the third one plays very similarly to the first two except it also has cards. A fourth one of those isn't helping anyone.)

And we've already seen that adding more jobs doesn't increase the tank pool significantly. People who like tanking will keep doing it if you add new jobs or not. People who hate it will not do it no matter how many new jobs you add.

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I'm really not used to make such long posts so I hope I did somewhat good showing my side of a look at the things. Thanks for reading! Ps Man its really bad to post here on mobile device D: .

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You can edit a post to add more stuff. That's the easiest way, as the size limit doesn't apply to an edit.

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Originally Posted by DamianTenbe

As a tank main with limited time to play I don't want to play a job if its not worth it/rewarding/fun.

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So I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna read the rest. My statement you quoted, "Would you play the new tank" wasn't meant for you then.

I put that for a simple reason. Most people that went DRK and stayed with it ALREADY were PLD and WAR, so it didn't make a difference. The question is if a dps main, if we release a tank, would they play it? Would they main it over their DPS counterpart? if the answer is no, there isn't much of a point.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

So I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna read the rest. My statement you quoted, "Would you play the new tank" wasn't meant for you then.

I put that for a simple reason. Most people that went DRK and stayed with it ALREADY were PLD and WAR, so it didn't make a difference. The question is if a dps main, if we release a tank, would they play it? Would they main it over their DPS counterpart? if the answer is no, there isn't much of a point.

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There is a point. To stop those people that play paladin, warrior and/or dark knight from going to DPS to spice up their game time or quitting altogether. This alone is worth it.

If we'd use the logic you and Tridus use, we shouldn't have ever gotten Samurai or Red Mage. What was the point?! If someone wanted a DPS, they had DPS to choose from already. Melee, magic, ranged. All grounds covered.
However, what you conveniently ignore is the fact that these classes add a different way of achieving the same thing, even if the differences are not all that large since ultimately you do the same thing anyway. Use several skills in a more or less specific order and follow them with cooldowns at appropriate times.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

There is a point. To stop those people that play paladin, warrior and/or dark knight from going to DPS to spice up their game time or quitting altogether. This alone is worth it.

If we'd use the logic you and Tridus use, we shouldn't have ever gotten Samurai or Red Mage. What was the point?! If someone wanted a DPS, they had DPS to choose from already. Melee, magic, ranged. All grounds covered.
However, what you conveniently ignore is the fact that these classes add a different way of achieving the same thing, even if the differences are not all that large since ultimately you do the same thing anyway. Use several skills in a more or less specific order and follow them with cooldowns at appropriate times.

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My question still stands: If we bring a new tank, will DPS and Healers change to play that tank, enough of them to improve the queue times. Now that time has passed, the queue time's for dps are back to where they were in HW around this time, despite getting 2 dps jobs and nothing else.

As for the "achieving same things in different ways" that's maybe a reason why people don't like the tank options, because the basic bare bones effective playstyle is pressing 1-2-3 for all the tanks. Maybe if we had more interesting tanks people would start doing it more.

Also, DPS are popular because they have the least responsibility. BOTH tanks and healers have to deal with harassment over things they had no control over. My main is an AST, and my alt is a DRK, so I get it enough as it is. I can't say what a DPS did wrong though in chance of being called an elitist parser. I had an FC member actually reported and talked to because he made his shield invisible on his PLD. I can see why people wouldn't want to play a role that gets treatment like that.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

My question still stands: If we bring a new tank, will DPS and Healers change to play that tank, enough of them to improve the queue times.

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I won't bother discussing this in depth since no matter what I will say it won't change your opinion, if for no reason then just because developers claim that it didn't change a thing. The fact that they used a single instance and not particularly attractive outside of the lore as the source for that data no one cares about. I assure you if it was Warrior that was added while Dark Knight and Paladin would have been already in the game, the results of that "study" would have been different.


However, you're asking about players starting to play tanks over DPS. But I'm talking about the other way around. There ARE players that moved AWAY from tanking and healing TO DPS with Samurai and Red Mage. And as DPS are typically more attractive to players in general outside of the queue times, these players that move are much more likely to stay a DPS unlike those that try a new tank or healer.

It doesn't matter how many people you pull in into tanking and healing if these players won't cover for those that STOP tanking and healing. Either moving to DPS or quitting cause they're bored having only 3 classes they might like (and in healers case, three very similar classes to boot) when DPS have nine and prospects are for DPS being catered to while tanks/healers not.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

Now that time has passed, the queue time's for dps are back to where they were in HW around this time, despite getting 2 dps jobs and nothing else.

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And how many times did that happen?! Once. Do you know what qualifies as research?! Doing the same thing over and over again and comparing all the results.

Things that are based on players preferences, moods and personal availability/situation are muddled up even more. You say that the queues are the same as they were in heavensward around the same time, but why?! You don't know. And I'm sure that the developers don't pry deep enough either.

There are many reasons why such a thing could have occurred. More DPS players leaving the game than tanks/healers. More of the tanking/healing group players buying the game and starting to play. More DPS players taking a break from the game than for tanks and healers.

Since there are more DPS players than tanks AND healers combined, all those "more DPS" is statistically the scenario for whatever we're discussing. If 10% of every jobs mains would take a break, far more DPS would go on a break than tanks and healers combined, not only because it's 10% out of nine classes instead of six, but more importantly because those nine classes in total have more individual people than tanks and healers combined.

For all we know, if there would be a tank and a healer, the queues could have been BETTER at this time. Hence there is no sufficient data to amount to anything more than hearsay or speculations. And it's the same for developers, except their guesses are more educated and have a higher chance of being correct. It's just that there are too many variables to accurately pin-point a single cause as the major 'player'.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

As for the "achieving same things in different ways" that's maybe a reason why people don't like the tank options, because the basic bare bones effective playstyle is pressing 1-2-3 for all the tanks. Maybe if we had more interesting tanks people would start doing it more.

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...And for that, we need new tanks...you know. People have been complaining about tanks and healers having their core kit pretty much copy/pasted since I started playing this game about fourteen months ago. And there were added balance issues on top of that. Square Enix needs to get out of the "comfort zone" and put some work into variety among tanks and healers. But they follow the yells of the DPS crowds and spend more time creating engaging DPS classes while tanks and healers are an afterthought. And you expect the population to be even remotely balanced?! What classes changed gameplay-wise with stormblood the most?! DPS. Summoner, bard, machinist and black mage are completely different from what they were. And tanks?!...Yeah. They just lost tools and had potency changes, and that's the biggest change. Of course, there came new skills, but those are a given. Then there are the latched-on gauges, which really, matter only for a warrior (the most DPS'y of the tanks...). They feel forced on dark knight and paladin, and feel more like just another form of cooldown than anything.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Snippy

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You are right, people moved from tanking and healing to dps for RDM and SAM. New jobs aren't always the cause though. I dropped ast for a time in 3.1 simply because I was getting runs so painfully slow that the total run time was somehow faster for me to go BLM and wait a queue than go AST or WAR and get instantly. People change for all kinds of reasons.

Also, the dps doing different things doesn't mean there's more variety to a player. I HATE playing MCH and I can somewhat take Bard. I HATE playing SMN. Looking at healers, I don't like WHM. I like Diurnal AST, but I can't stand WHM's boring playstyle. I actually like how all 3 tanks play, but I hate playing them unless I'm in a party with people I know. It's not just about the playstyle.

Also, technically it happened twice. One time they released both a new tank and healer, as well as what's still apprently the least played dps (MCH) and after some time the queue's went back to normal. Same here, 2 brand new super hyped dps jobs, some time passes, queue's back to normal. They already saw what happened with DRK, which in case you forgot, already had it's niche of being the magical tank that made it get taken into raid over Paladin since Paladin had less magical mitigation than Dark Knight, plus less dps. So not only did the tank % not really change by the end of the day, but having just that type of uniqueness in mitigation caused Paladin to get pushed out. Kind of like how Samurai's are saying the same thing right now.

Also, BLM barely changed. They got Foul and a super swiftcast. Their rotation stayed roughly the same, just instead you fill the downtime with Foul instead of standing there doing nothing, and you get 2 more Fire IV's that I've seen BLM's complain about the existence of since it came out since your entire rotation circles around this button. Paladin gets to be a spellcaster and Warrior gets useful aoe utility.

If you WANT to give an idea of a brand new type of tank that isn't a dodge tank that makes or breaks the game, please help out. I always here dodge tank even though that'd destroy balance even moreso than it is right now.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

Also, BLM barely changed. They got Foul and a super swiftcast. Their rotation stayed roughly the same, just instead you fill the downtime with Foul instead of standing there doing nothing, and you get 2 more Fire IV's that I've seen BLM's complain about the existence of since it came out since your entire rotation circles around this button. Paladin gets to be a spellcaster and Warrior gets useful aoe utility.

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I don't count the skills/traits past 60, since they are additions, not changes. Hence paladins spellcasting, warriors new shiny toys and black mages foul/'superswiftcast' don't matter.
In black mages case, I honestly didn't really check up on it that much. I did play it twice, and that at lvl50, so I honestly cannot really go by anything more than the snips I remember from the change logs. Guess I remembered wrong. Though, didn't their thunder line change entirely for one?! Well, no matter. There are still at least two (and probably more) DPS that were changed far more than any of the tanks/healers.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

If you WANT to give an idea of a brand new type of tank that isn't a dodge tank that makes or breaks the game, please help out. I always here dodge tank even though that'd destroy balance even moreso than it is right now.

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I tried doing that for healer, dancer, making skills and all, posting a thread. Majority of responses were about how it won't work because it's different than what we have now. I realize that the developers wouldn't care one bit bout one players ideas on a forum, especially Japanese developers on english section of the forum, but I did it for discussion with other players, for fun. But what's fun if the class itself is not even discussed, just dismissed for doing the same thing differently, or having strong support focus and being compared to astrologian despite being completely different from it?!

So yeah, I won't bother with that anymore.

I m leveling my dps jobs in pvp. In frontline I can even heal and once match is gonna end i can press return and change my job.