Pipe Dreams: "Safe Points" in dungeons

I'm sure everyone has a story about how they were stuck in a dungeon waiting on replacement tanks/healers/DPS with no one showing up on the queue. In the past, some of us would ask to be kicked from the group so that we can requeue after switching roles. This, of course, is a gamble and not something you can count on (I was actually just in a group that DF would not put me with for some reason...).

I've been trying to come up with something that would help with this issue, but preventing abuse of this is really difficult. Anyway, here's an idea.

Safe Points

Concept: The entrance point of every 4-man dungeon would get a safe point near the little glowy orb you interact with to leave the instance. Much like the safe spots in PvP, this allows a player to change jobs. Unlike PvP, there are certain limitations.

Safe Points work by allowing one player to switch jobs by interacting with it. That player can only interact with the Safe Point twice per dungeon run. The first to switch to a different job. The second to switch back to the job they queued as.

Only one player per dungeon group is allowed to interact with the Safe Point, and once both opportunities are "used" up, the Safe point becomes inactive and can no longer be used. At that point you have to either wait for DF to provide replacements or abandon duty and requeue.

To give you a scenario:

We have a party of four enter a dungeon via DF:

Duelle (BLM)
Tonka (PLD)
Pwnzer (DRG)
Nameless (WHM)

Nameless DCs and doesn't come back after 10 minutes. Tonka decides to drop group because he got tired of waiting. Not long after Tonka drops, a new healer joins the group, but the group is still waiting for a tank. Duelle offers to tank the dungeon, runs to the Safe Point and switches to PLD. Duty Finder thus begins looking for a DPS to complete the group, finds one shortly and the dungeon continues without a hitch.

As for the option to allow people to switch back:

Same scenario as above. Just as Duelle finalizes the switch to PLD, a DRK named Snuffy is added to the group vie Duty Finder. Since the tank spot has been filled, Duelle interacts with the Safe Point, which siwtches him back directly to BLM, allowing the dungeons continues as normal. Since the Safe Point was used twice, it can no longer be interacted with by anyone in the group.

Limitations

- Safe Points can only be interacted with if the party is below 4 members.
- Needless to say, Safe Points are no present when entering a dungeon in an undersized or minimum ilvl party.
- Only one person can interact with the Safe Point. Once a party member has interacted with it, no one else in the group can use it.
- Safe Points will only allow you to change your job to that of a different role. So if you queued as a DPS job, you can only use it to switch to a tank or healer job.
- If you interact with the Safe Point a second time, it directly changes you back to the job you queues as in Duty Finder.
- Changing jobs using a Safe Point disables the "Need" option when rolling on loot for that player.
- The party composition cannot break the mold of 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 DPS. (so if your group already has a healer, the Safe Point won't let you change into a healer job)
- The Safe Point will only allow you to use saved gear sets when switching to another job, and the gear set must meet the dungeon's average ilvl requirement.

I still think there's room for abuse, but this is the basic idea.

You don't receive a penalty for leaving a group that isn't full so there's no need to ask for a kick. You can just leave, switch jobs, and queue in progress.
I don't remember what patch it was but the DF was changed to not match people with groups they were kicked from so if you asked to be kicked that would be why you couldn't find that same group again.

Edit: As for the idea as a whole it would be nice to be able to switch within the instance to avoid the risk of getting the wrong group in progress. I don't know enough about programming to have any idea how complex this would be to implement though. The PVP modes that let you switch jobs have no role requirements whatsoever so the system doesn't need to restrict you beyond not letting you switch to a non-60/crafter/gatherer ect.

I like this idea. You covered all your bases.

You would also need to make it inaccessible to a full party, not be able to break standard party comp, and check your min ilvl on stored gear set. Also I'm sure it would have to kick you off the in dungeon df queue and you would have to relaunch it sending you to the back of the line in essence again, based on the way df currently works. Point 4 would automatically prevent your scenario 2.

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

You don't receive a penalty for leaving a group that isn't full so there's no need to ask for a kick. You can just leave, switch jobs, and queue in progress.
I don't remember what patch it was but the DF was changed to not match people with groups they were kicked from so if you asked to be kicked that would be why you couldn't find that same group again.

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That explains a lot. Thanks for mentioning this.

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Originally Posted by Lollie

You would also need to make it inaccessible to a full party

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Well, the full party thing is a given. This is strictly for 4-man dungeons and nothing else, since those are the groups that get screwed over when someone drops on a whim or DCs and doesn't return.

Quote:

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not be able to break standard party comp, and check your min ilvl on stored gear set.

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These are really good ideas. I'll amend my suggestion to include these in the limitations.

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Also I'm sure it would have to kick you off the in dungeon df queue and you would have to relaunch it sending you to the back of the line in essence again, based on the way df currently works. Point 4 would automatically prevent your scenario 2.

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Well, that works, too.

I like the idea as is. But I would add some things:

The Safe Point actually stops the duty clock if everyone is standing in the area, but only when it is active (meets OP's requirements of less than full party). This can have its own limit. But I don't see any way to exploit the duty clock, I've never seen a group be hardpressed to meet it unless it has frequent disconnects or other issues.

As well as an option to receive exp on the class you queued up for. If I'm a Ninja and queue as a DPS. But have to switch to Paladin to finish a dungeon. I'd like to be able to get exp on the Ninja (whole reason for queuing as that class). And perhaps the ability to roll on gear for the class queued initially as well. Without this, the idea proposed has holes in it. When we queue as a role or class/job, we expect the rewards on that.

Switching class/job to finish a dungeon, and getting rewards on that instead makes it seem like it'd be best to leave and requeue, making the idea proposed a bit redundant. There has to be an incentive outside finishing the dungeon for posterity. Don't get me wrong, there's been times where I've wished I could do this, even outside the reward. Especially when running with a friend or two. And I could see players running roulette for tomestones doing this (as they're already max level and geared).