True enough. Sometimes you just have to do it yourself... but then you get tanks who single pull, and/or healers who can't heal. Literally can't win. :p
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I have to agree. I main AST and do min ilvl trials/raids and it's mad fun. But the second I use Duty Roulette as healer I'm boooooored out of my mind. To the point where I barely do roulettes anymore. These days I see it more like a waste of time that's not enjoyable. So that's one healer main alienated by the system. Not sure how others feel, though.
While I don't doubt it may be malicious from time to time (I told a tank I was a brand-new healer, and he said ok then did a wall-to-wall pull and used no mitigation) I didn't know what doton was until I played NIN myself, and thought it was a mob AOE, and would move out of it.
As a tank, I only ever do trial and raid roulettes. Wish they'd add in an Extreme roulette so I could do that too, but eh...
(From your initial post) "What blows my mind, is Square Enix looked at all the other MMORPGs that came before" sure looks like an argument based on "tradition".
My first response was an answer to why it wasn't a party of 5, which you rejected because mentioning smaller parties (of any size) didn't fit your narrative of "Parties of 5=Good", "Parties of 4=bad bad bad".
Would adding another DPS to the party decrease queue times? A little, perhaps. But this would be at the expense of content as the entire battle system would have to be redesigned. Argue as you will, FFXIV current battle designs are for multiples of 4 players.
IMO I don't see them making tank or healer more fun for a majority of the players that only play DPS without invalidating the DPS role entirely. The reason being is a majority of the DPS only players play that role because they want to be the one doing big damage numbers. It's pretty much the same issue on any MMO. Tank and healer don't output as much damage. Healer can loose damage output further if they have to heal frequently. The only part that makes this humorous is the amount of DPS that stand in stuff and die because they're doing 0 damage while faceplanted into the floor.
I'd like to see Duty Roulettes offer more than just 1 bonus/day for each category.
The reason is simple: that *will* incentivize more tanks, healers, *and* DPS players when there is a need to fill corresponding slots in parties forming up.
I play a tank main and a couple DPS alts, I've got a healer started but have not gone far with him because I've never played a healer and am still hesitant to dip my toes in that pond - for fear of drowning and failing spectacularly.
Every day I look at the Duty Roulettes and decide in what capacity(ies) I would participate. On some days I feel like really going out and doing some tanking, on others I want to work on my DPS alts. Yet the 1 per day bonuses invariably put an abrupt stop to that feeling, once I've collected the bonuses I want. I just move on to doing other things, taking the roulettes completely out of my mind. That is a loss to the playing teams that are trying to form, definitely. They'll have to wait longer for their group. When I have to wait for more than 10 minutes, I withdraw and go do something else. When I started playing the game, back in April, I didn't mind doing the MSQ Roulettes. Now I almost never do - why? Because they just take too darn long. Time is in short supply, IRL as well as in my gaming - why wait, when you can have fun doing other things?
So the OP's idea is good. Help more players participate in the group activities by giving them more bonuses. Don't gate them behind arbitrary limits. So what if they accumulate more Gils, or other currencies, or XP? Let them have their fun, that's how you keep them playing longer, after all.
Just my 2 Gils. :-)
I am the worst healer in the history of MMO's. I've even had an entire 24player raid load in dead before the start ring dropped and the timer started. I also somehow killed a past FC leader in gold saucer... Yet I got them all to lvl cap on the blood and tears of... other ppl >.> so yeah just roll with it :3
People will play what is fun for them to play. Tanks and healers do have a bit more "responsibility" to the survival of a group, and may cause some anxiety and therefore less attraction to a more "casual" player. I don't think SE can tweak tanks and healers to change this - if they did, it'd no longer be fun to play the classes, because there would be no differentiation between them and the DPS ones.
IMO the best game design philosophy is to make things fun for the players. Give them more incentive to play - and that includes roulettes. Ergo, offer more roulette incentives: more bonuses, better bonuses, bonuses more often, whatever it takes.