Will we ever move away from the standard party setup?

Hi gays and gals,

I have been playing a Warrior more on than off since alpha, but have spent a generous amount of time with Scholar and Dragoon, my Healer and DPS jobs of choice. My favorite activity in the game has always been dungeon crawling, even though I use the Duty Finder almost exclusively because my Free Company is rather small.

It does not need mentioning, that queue times vary depending on your role. Tanks are almost guaranteed an instant queue. Healers do see fairly short queue times and DPS... well, let's just say thank God for Netflix. No doubt this is due to demand of the role needed in queue versus the population playing those roles.

I won't go into a discussion on how the less played roles could be made more attractive to play, but rather, I would like to discuss why the old standard MMORPG party set up still exists. (Tank, Healer, DPS)

It goes without saying this has been the staple of a party setup since the beginning. You had tank classes to take the damage, Healers to heal, and DPS to do the damage. However the more I have witnessed the change in MMORPG game play over the past 12 years of playing them, this one concept seems to endure.

Now the shortage of tank and healing roles versus the over abundance of DPS roles has been just as much a part of the MMO experience as anything else. My question is why do we continue to have this as a standard?

I understand it wouldn't work without a total redesign of dungeons, but you do essentially remove queue wait times when you no longer need to have a particular role with you. Would it also require a job redesign? Or do you think it would be possible to incorporate tanks and healers without it being a DPS zerg fest?

Well, in the end, it may be easier to think of ways to make tanking and healing more desirable to the masses. But it is food for thought, if not at the very least discussion.

It would seem unlikely since all existing content would have to be re-balanced for whatever new party setup became the standard.

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My question is why do we continue to have this as a standard?

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Because doing otherwise would take time (and more importantly to SE - money) to redesign and balance the game to do otherwise.

Seems like they already tried to address this in the ST party makeup by moving it to having more DPS needed instead of two tanks. By removing predefined party parameters they run the risk of having a totally unbalanced instance where everyone just wipes and is unable to proceed. The party set up is made so that you all have to rely on one another to succeed, remove that and that above poster is correct, you'd have to redesign every instance. The PvP is really there for people who do not want to be tied to a 4 or 8 man party constraints. If they did move away from the standard party set up, it would likely be a one off fight. Though I suspect even that would be hard to balance.

I don't see the big deal in it, coming from 11 certain jobs were outright shunned and outcasted untill they reached certain levels or.. not at all unless nothing else was open. and certain jobs (like smn) never became useful for anything other then abusing 2 hour or specific burn parties.

At least here everything has a chance.

I am totally in agreement that a design change would have to be made. What would be easier.. a newly designed tier of dungeon content set for non traditional party setup or redesign of older content? Or just figuring out how to make people play tanks and healers lol.

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Originally Posted by Mags

I am totally in agreement that a design change would have to be made. What would be easier.. a newly designed tier of dungeon content set for non traditional party setup or redesign of older content? Or just figuring out how to make people play tanks and healers lol.

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Well, in the real world, sought after professionals can charge a premium, so... :)

Meh.. basically I am just tired of tanking.. my God, what a headache and a half. But I am spoiled by my queue times and... bah... at least this wasn't another thread about housing!

Okay, so how could they make Tanking more enjoyable? I am all for giving tanks less to do and/or manage in a party. It's just so exhausting!