What if light parties had 3 DPS instead of two?

Wouldn't this allow us to pick one of each type of DPS (physical ranged, caster, melee) instead of 2 out of three?

Feels more balanced IMO to have one of each and then compare each job within it's own role than trying to balance their effectiveness with jobs outside of the role.
Not that it would stop a most powerful comp group forming, but at least it's a job from each role?
Wouldn't it leave less people out of the group?

I dunno was just a thought. I know it would be a massive headache to implement and balance but has this been brought up before?

For reference FFXIV is my first MMO so I'm sorry if I'm being incredibly ignorant/naive. Just been on my brain so I thought I'd ask people who know better :)

SE doesn't differ ranged into physical and magical for party composition, they only use tank, heal, melee and ranged.

True, but they could. Maybe that's the core of the issue?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Legion88

SE doesn't differ ranged into physical and magical for party composition, they only use tank, heal, melee and ranged.

---

Te-echnically... they do differentiate in Raid Finder. Or, at least they did during the Alexander days. Without a full premade, you needed a melee, a physical ranged, a magical ranged and a random filler to enter.

For regular duties, they don't really differentiate at all - You can even get the same job twice in your roulette. At the start of SB, I had some trial groups with 2 PLD, 2 AST and 4 RDM lol.

From a battle content perspective, it makes far more sense for 5 man dungeons to be 1 tank, 2 healer, 2 DPS. This is because it gives the devs far more freedom when it comes to dungeon difficulty, because 4man parties put a huge strain on the single healer.

Maybe 6man content is the answer, 1 tank, 2 healers, 3 dps

As people say the system currently doesn't try to balance the 2 dps. It would also make queue potentially longer for no reason assuming your dps catégorie is currently highly played.

Also, assuming no shift into the player base, it would shift the long waiting queue from dps to tank/heal. According to data before 4.0, something like ~45% of the player base are heal/tank. Which ends up being a a good balanced since half the group are heal tank and the other half dps. If you'd make light party 5 man, you'd need 20%heal,20%tank and 60% dps which isn't the current pool.
Consider how long the queue would be if we went from ~5% missing to ~15%.

In HW tank complained about this for raids since those group already have 3 dps.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sylvain

As people say the system currently doesn't try to balance the 2 dps. It would also make queue potentially longer for no reason assuming your dps catégorie is currently highly played.

Also, assuming no shift into the player base, it would shift the long waiting queue from dps to tank/heal. According to data before 4.0, something like ~45% of the player base are heal/tank. Which ends up being a a good balanced since half the group are heal tank and the other half dps. If you'd make light party 5 man, you'd need 20%heal,20%tank and 60% dps which isn't the current pool.
Consider how long the queue would be if we went from ~5% missing to ~15%.

In HW tank complained about this for raids since those group already have 3 dps.

---

Hmm that is an insightful point... But still, I'd rather wait a little longer for a more complete party. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad having to wait for 1 more dps if it means another persons que popped and they get to play too?

/shrug

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lambdafish

From a battle content perspective, it makes far more sense for 5 man dungeons to be 1 tank, 2 healer, 2 DPS. This is because it gives the devs far more freedom when it comes to dungeon difficulty, because 4man parties put a huge strain on the single healer.

Maybe 6man content is the answer, 1 tank, 2 healers, 3 dps

---

I know my friend who mains white mage wouldn't mind another helping hand, and it would make good use of their offensive spells.

Dungeon monsters would have to be made way stronger. I think it could be fun. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lambdafish

This is because it gives the devs far more freedom when it comes to dungeon difficulty [...]

---

You 'do' realize that the only thing you achieve by adding another healer is to trivialize non-lethal attacks and mechanics further? It doesn't give the devs "more freedom with difficulty", it simply makes each and every content easier by allowing one healer to fail and thus forces them to make every dungeon considerably harder to achieve the same overall intended difficulty, which puts more strain on EVERYONE in the group.

And "harder" equals more punishing in that context. Healers already trivialize almost every non-lethal damage, hence why vulnerability debuffs are used everywhere nowadays (Even in freaking Skalla!) - it's the only way to scale difficulty for them at this point. Since non-lethal damage equals trivial damage, mechanics need to one-shot to matter. But if everything did one-shot right away, that would make things far more difficult than intended. Vulnerability debuffs allow you to fail X amount of times before you get one-shot and thus present the only way they can create a middle-ground in terms of difficulty. This is already an ongoing trend, putting more healing power on top, either by adding another healer or buffing healers further, is only going to exacerbate it. It's a corner they have already designed themselves into.

And worse, adding a healer without having an increase of healer population and popularity only artificially increases queues for everyone else.

But I could go on to rant over healers as a design for years - It would only lead off topic. I'll leave it here.

Okay, maybe 2 Healers is too many.

With a guaranteed ranged support and a caster we can hopefully make their life a little easier at least...

Do you think having an extra person to heal would make healing too tough? Or would it balance it?

Played with a few formats over the years. Couple of popular ones as examples:

5 person ala WoW: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 3 dps
6 person ala Aion: 1 Tank. 1 Healer, 4 dps - or one of the dps could be a support class (Chanter for example) - which was the intended ideal group at launch.

Aion does have the option of letting the group organizer decide what they want in the group. It is completely flexible and doesn't dictate which class roles should be in it.
I think this works very well, but of course would require a massive amount of dungeon re-work for it to appear here.

They've needed to increase the number of DPS in a light party for a long time due to queue times.

I'm all for 3 dps in a dungeon group. 5 is a nice number and it would help DPS queues more than anything else they could possibly do in the game.

A while back, I had this same discussion with my FC and someone brought up a very good point. There are a percentage of tanks and healers that play those classes because of the shorter queue times they get for doing it. Now, if you shift the party make-up to include more dps, then the dps get shorter queue times while the tanks and healers get a longer queue. How long will it be before those people playing tank or healer classes shift to dps classes and put us into the exact same situation that we have now?

From a technical standpoint, increasing the number of dps in a party would require all of the current dungeons to be redesigned. Additionally, many healers use the time when they aren't healing to help dps. If they suddenly have another dps player's health to keep track of and keep alive, then their play style would likely see a large shift to more pure healing.

In the end, adding an extra dps player to light dungeon parties would only help the dps players have shorter queues while making life worse for the tanks and healers. If it is difficult to get people to play a tank or healer now, do you think they will stick around when one of the main benefits to playing one is taken away or their entire style of play has to shift? I main red mage now, but I do have paladin and white mage leveled and decently geared for daily dungeon runs if I want faster queue time or a change of pace. Without those faster queue times, I would just stick with my red mage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RBlackshield

Stuff .

---

It would need to be a decently sized wait like dps do with sometimes 30minutes being probably average. If we do the change and tanks and healers only have to wait 5mins that may not persuade them to change. I go healer i que when I realize I'm waiting probably waiting 40 minutes

If dps que is instant, and tank had to wait 10, and they switch to dps. Then they are helping everyone's que. Same as now, people switching to tank and healer are helping que times, people switching just for the run is not a bad thing

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lambdafish

because 4man parties put a huge strain on the single healer.

---

I don't know....maybe learn your job?

I don't even main healer and when I run 4 man dungeons 50% of my time is spent dpsing, as are many healers. There is literally no reason to add another healer to the mix. As faceroll as 4 man dungeons are 1 healer can easily keep up unless they are severly undergeared or underskilled. And by lvl 70, heck even 30, if you cannot keep up because you are lacking skill that is on you. You have plenty of time to learn your job on the road from 1-70.

3 dps would be wonderful just to lower that queue time for dps. 20-40 minute waits are what turns a lot of people off. I know plenty of people in the local gamer groups here that unsubbed because they spend more time waiting on queues than playing the game.

I like current 8 man raid content because mechanics works very well between 8 players imo. And more players = more players messing up and more wipes.

1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dos would work well. As a healer, it wouldn't be hard because most of our healing is either single target on the tank or AOE for the whole party, so it doesn't matter if it's 4 or 5 people. Light party content has lower party AOE damage than Full Party content does to compensate for the number of healers.

There are more people playing Tank/Healer who would rather play DPS than there are DPS who would rather play Tank/Healer, especially in casual 4-man content. When you get to more advanced stuff, I feel like there are a higher percentage that main Tank/Healer than in the casual realm.

The biggest issue is that everything is designed and balanced for 4-man. Changing it to a 5-man format would require adjusting a lot of stuff. Changing numbers around (more HP for enemies, etc) wouldn't necessarily be too difficult, but there are other mechanics and things designed for 4 players that would not be so easily adjusted.

There is no good reason to add a 3rd dps.... 2 dps already can mow down everything in dungeons with little effort... dungeon wipes as is come from tanks pulling more than a healer can heal... I have never been in any light duty where one dps was needed over another so class balance is a non issue...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Okamimaru

There is no good reason to add a 3rd dps....

---

Reduction in dps queue times, found one!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Okamimaru

tanks pulling more than a healer can heal....

---

This is why they put in artificial blocks, there are very few pulls nowadays a healer cannot heal through unless they are undergeared or just plain underskilled. Whoops happen but if you are constantly having issues of not being able to heal through pulls it doesn't sound like a tank issue. 99.9% of dungeons I pug have large to maximum pulls which the healers handle with ease, sometimes even dpsing during. If it is a skill or gear issue, talk to your tank and request smaller pulls, read your tool tips and learn how to utilize your abilities instead of placing blame on someone else.

5 man parties sounds fine to me, but I think there are many other much bigger issues to address with the game at the moment, particularly job balance at endgame. Furthermore, SE seems to be departing from dungeons being such a focus in favor of other content, like Eureka to come soon, seeing as how they only gave us one this major patch.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lambdafish

snip

---

They would have to drastically increase the amount of incoming damage to warrant 2 healers in light party content. Most non-raid based content in mmo's is always 1 Tank, 3 DPS and 1 Healer. There isn't any reason to have 2 healers taking care of 5 people, even if you wanted one healer more focused on healer while the other one primarily puts out damage while occasionally throwing off-heals, it would be a incredibly wasted spot when you could just fill it with another dps if that's your goal. The current meta of 4 people "works" but they could improve on it by at least adding another dps slot and re-tuning the dungeons around another dps in the group. IMO.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Okamimaru

There is no good reason to add a 3rd dps....

---

Do you think it's acceptable for this game to waste 30 minutes of your time before being able to enter an instance? Because I don't. YoshiP would have addressed this already if he valued his customers' time.

If they did do 5 man dungeons it would most likely be a new type of dungeon instead of going back and rebalancing all the old dungeons.

Also I wonder how much that would affect tank and healer players. Put more or less stress on them

Then you're more likely to have even worse dps. If you play dps and there's 2 dps then you can sort of carry the other dps but if content was tuned for 3 dps and the other 2 dps were trash, then you're boned.

The more people you put into a party, the more likely you will have garbage players. This is why 24 mans are painful because when you have 24 people, you're bound to have several dead weight players that drag everybody else down.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RydiaFey

I dunno was just a thought. I know it would be a massive headache to implement and balance but has this been brought up before?

For reference FFXIV is my first MMO so I'm sorry if I'm being incredibly ignorant/naive. Just been on my brain so I thought I'd ask people who know better :)

---

It's not a silly suggestion but you're right, a headache to implement. I think it's big enough of a headache that it can't ever happen, as we've got years worth of content designed around 4 players so the resources required to make the change are too great. Yes it has been suggested before, mainly for faster dps queue reasons.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

Then you're more likely to have even worse dps. If you play dps and there's 2 dps then you can sort of carry the other dps but if content was tuned for 3 dps and the other 2 dps were trash, then you're boned.

The more people you put into a party, the more likely you will have garbage players. This is why 24 mans are painful because when you have 24 people, you're bound to have several dead weight players that drag everybody else down.

---

I don't really think this is a big concern. Expert roulette already has "garbage players," and I spent all of Heavensward being paired most of the time with DPS players who wouldn't AoE trash. I don't think you can really go too much lower since expert roulette has been designed with the LCD player in mind already. The only reason 24 mans are painful is because there is a harsher punishment for failing mechanics, unlike expert roulette.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NovaLevossida

Do you think it's acceptable for this game to waste 30 minutes of your time before being able to enter an instance? Because I don't. YoshiP would have addressed this already if he valued his customers' time.

---

You do realize that the shorter dps queue mentality will then draw even more people to queue as a dps... half the reason people queue as tank and healer is for the shorter queues... so it will just balance back out to longer dps times again but with fewer tanks and healers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NovaLevossida

Do you think it's acceptable for this game to waste 30 minutes of your time before being able to enter an instance? Because I don't. YoshiP would have addressed this already if he valued his customers' time.

---

Make friends with people and that problem ceases to exist.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mavrias

Make friends with people and that problem ceases to exist.

---

That's a workaround and not a solution to the underlying problem. What exactly is it you're advocating there? No friend / FC mate wants to run leveling at the moment, so just don't bother leveling?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Okamimaru

You do realize that the shorter dps queue mentality will then draw even more people to queue as a dps... half the reason people queue as tank and healer is for the shorter queues... so it will just balance back out to longer dps times again but with fewer tanks and healers

---

That's not entirely true as evidenced by the precedence of content that includes more DPS players. However, it completely didn't help that SE allowed for materia removal on gear which undercut the incentive for people to be the adventurer in need for leveling roulette.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mavrias

Make friends with people and that problem ceases to exist.

---

Except it doesn't, just like poverty doesn't stop existing just because you marry a rich guy. Even if every DPS were to make friends with a tank/healer, there would still be a massive overhead of DPS left out and the tanks/healers would have to pull overtime to compensate, because the numbers simply don't add up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NovaLevossida

That's a workaround and not a solution to the underlying problem. What exactly is it you're advocating there? No friend / FC mate wants to run leveling at the moment, so just don't bother leveling?

---

There is no solution to the problem of there being an overabundance of dps players. Everything suggested is a "workaround." Your friends dont wanna do leveling roulette right now? Wait til later or queue solo, not that hard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mavrias

There is no solution to the problem of there being an overabundance of dps players. Everything suggested is a "workaround." Your friends dont wanna do leveling roulette right now? Wait til later or queue solo, not that hard.

---

You know that "there is no solution" is blatantly false when it comes to reducing queue times, so I don't think there's anything to be gained in further discussion when you have no imagination for how a developer could solve a basic problem such as this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NovaLevossida

You know that "there is no solution" is blatantly false when it comes to reducing queue times, so I don't think there's anything to be gained in further discussion when you have no imagination for how a developer could solve a basic problem such as this.

---

/eyeroll
theres no reasonable solution to reducing dps queue times. 3 dps per dungeon is not going to reduce queue time by any substantial amount and most people would rather dev time go to new content rather than rebalancing old dungeons.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zojha

Except it doesn't, just like poverty doesn't stop existing just because you marry a rich guy. Even if every DPS were to make friends with a tank/healer, there would still be a massive overhead of DPS left out and the tanks/healers would have to pull overtime to compensate, because the numbers simply don't add up.

---

Poverty is solved however by proper payment to workers, and redistribution of wealth to systems that need it among other things. And, as foolish as comparing real world economics to queue times in a video games is, theres no way to "redistribute" time, so your analogy falls flat.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mavrias

Poverty is solved however by proper payment to workers, and redistribution of wealth to systems that need it among other things.

---

More precisely, the underlying issue of poverty is the constraint of resources - You can only procure so many goods from the planet and distribute them. And if some people are taking more goods in that distribution, others naturally will have less to compensate. Thus, poverty comes to be.

And that is the exact same issue with queue times. We have a constraint of role slots in a party. Tanks and Healers take a disproportionate large place in them, which leaves DPS yearning for slots. Thus queue times happen.

The difference lies in the fact that role slots do not have to be limited and thus, overpopulation is not an issue you need to concern yourself with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zojha

And that is the exact same issue with queue times. We have a constraint of role slots in a party. Tanks and Healers take a disproportionate large place in them, which leaves DPS yearning for slots. Thus queue times happen.

The difference lies in the fact that role slots do not have to be limited and thus, overpopulation is not an issue you need to concern yourself with.

---

First of all, the underlying issue of poverty is greed.
Role slots is not the limiting factor here, but rather dev time. Theyve made it abundantly clear that for every bit of "something new/ drastic changes" something else has to be sacrificed. This is why there was only one dungeon this patch.

Rebalancing mechanics, outgoing damage, mob health, etc for, what, 50+ dungeons, is not just an hours worth of work. So what would you trade off to get it?

Real world poverty is a pretty big discussion that probably doesn't belong on this thread.

Back to the topic at hand, queues are better discussed using more basic economic concepts of supply and demand. Supply of DPS in 4-man content currently exceeds demand. Economics dictates one of two things will happen:
A. Price decreases until market reaches equilibrium.
B. Excess supply creates a surplus of unsold units.

Since FF14 doesn't really have mechanisms equivalent to "price" in economics, that leaves outcome B as the only result. This means DPS waiting in queue. The wasted time in queue is akin to surplus product going unsold in economics.

"Supply" is how many players queue into a specific role. Supply is determined by the players' choices. It is possible to influence supply with incentives, game design, classes made available to players (anyone remember DPS queues going to heck when Ninja was introduced?). The supply side is tricky to change and it is where most efforts have been focused.

"Demand" is an interaction between the Supply of all three Roles. On the one hand, demand for each role is based on supply of the other two roles. On the other hand, the formula for that interaction is set by the Devs: 1 Tank = 1 Healer = 2 DPS. If the devs were to change the formula to 3 DPS, they would be increasing the demand for DPS.

You can argue that it's not feasible to change the 4-man composition to a 5-man or that the current setup is better, but to say that it wouldn't make any difference on queue times is simply not correct.