Mindblowingly new-old idea-question that would reduce queue times for DD's

[Astarica]

Parties are small because it's exponentially harder to find a party of size X+1 than X. WoW has a party size of 5, and tanks are still the limiting factor in their group finder. EQ1 has a party size of 6, and getting the tank is again still the bottleneck. Putting more DPS slots just makes more people play as DPS, since the tank role is either too hard or irrelevent (e.g. the tank on Anantaboga could be a trained monkey) depending on which game you're playing and nobody likes either of those two roles.

[Steeled]

Parties are small because it's exponentially harder to find a party of size X+1 than X. WoW has a party size of 5, and tanks are still the limiting factor in their group finder. EQ1 has a party size of 6, and getting the tank is again still the bottleneck. Putting more DPS slots just makes more people play as DPS, since the tank role is either too hard or irrelevent (e.g. the tank on Anantaboga could be a trained monkey) depending on which game you're playing and nobody likes either of those two roles.

You contradict yourself.

It is not exponentially harder to find 3 dps rather than 2 so a 6 man party party modeled and 1 tank 1 healer is not even 25% harder to find people for. It just...isn't.

[Ralemont]

Parties are small because it's exponentially harder to find a party of size X+1 than X. WoW has a party size of 5, and tanks are still the limiting factor in their group finder. EQ1 has a party size of 6, and getting the tank is again still the bottleneck. Putting more DPS slots just makes more people play as DPS, since the tank role is either too hard or irrelevent (e.g. the tank on Anantaboga could be a trained monkey) depending on which game you're playing and nobody likes either of those two roles.

Think of it in terms of cheeseburgers. You have 10 buns, 10 slices of cheese, 35 patties. With this you can make 10 double cheeseburgers...or 10 triple cheeseburgers. In the latter scenario you have the same amount of sandwiches made, but instead of having 15 patties sitting around not being eaten, now you only have 5.

[CianaIezuborn]

Think of it in terms of cheeseburgers. You have 10 buns, 10 slices of cheese, 35 patties. With this you can make 10 double cheeseburgers...or 10 triple cheeseburgers. In the latter scenario you have the same amount of sandwiches made, but instead of having 15 patties sitting around not being eaten, now you only have 5.

This analogy works great for dead pieces of meat, not so much for people.

People that came to this game intending to tank rolled a tank.

People that switched to a tank at a later point were likely either:
1. Tired of long queues
2. Tired of bad tanks
3. Pressured into tanking by FC mates/friends

Larger group sizes aren't going to do much for this. I've tanked in games with 4/5/6 man groups and it's always quick groups for tanks, medium speed for heals, and slow groups for dps.

Small groups fill faster (I don't think anyone can argue it's faster to pull 4 people together than 6 people). They require a bigger percentage of responsibility from each member, especially dps. They're also better for smaller sets of friends and guilds.

It doesn't matter how large a force you're trying to put together, if you're smart about it you'll always gather the pivot roles first then fill in with the less key positions(usually dps) after filling those roles.

[Ralemont]

This analogy works great for dead pieces of meat, not so much for people.

People that came to this game intending to tank rolled a tank.

Larger group sizes aren't going to do much for this. I've tanked in games with 4/5/6 man groups and it's always quick groups for tanks, medium speed for heals, and slow groups for dps.

Small groups fill faster (I don't think anyone can argue it's faster to pull 4 people together than 6 people). They require a bigger percentage of responsibility from each member, especially dps. They're also better for smaller sets of friends and guilds.

Small groups (4) are going to fill no faster than larger groups (6) if you're adding 2 DPS slots and there are a backlog of queue'd DPS, which was the point of the analogy. The analogy works with a set population for all three roles, and shows how expanding the party can satisfy a larger % of the population.

The only party that could possibly see longer gather time is the last one if the DPS population gets exhausted, which I'm pretty sure isn't going to happen even with a 4:1:1 ratio.

[CianaIezuborn]

Small groups (4) are going to fill no faster than larger groups (6) if you're adding 2 DPS slots and there are a backlog of queue'd DPS, which was the point of the analogy. The analogy works with a set population for all three roles, and shows how expanding the party can satisfy a larger % of the population.

The only party that could possibly see longer gather time is the last one if the DPS population gets exhausted, which I'm pretty sure isn't going to happen even with a 4:1:1 ratio.

And my argument is that a large influence on how many people switch from dps to tanks/heals is based on scarcity of tanks/heals.

This is always a problem in every game, the only solution is to tank/heal yourself or get a friend to tank/heal.

Edit: I'm also assuming you're putting together a group yourself. I'll concede that queue times would most likely drop for dps if there were more slots per tank/healer in an auto-filled group.

[Ralemont]

And my argument is that a large influence on how many people switch from dps to tanks/heals is based on scarcity of tanks/heals.

This is always a problem in every game, the only solution is to tank/heal yourself or get a friend to tank/heal.

Edit: I'm also assuming you're putting together a group yourself. I'll concede that queue times would most likely drop for dps if there were more slots per tank/healer in an auto-filled group.

But those people who would prefer to DPS but switched to tank/healer to get parties now might not have to, because the ratio of DPS to healer/tank in a party is closer to the ratio of the overall population. Isn't that preferable to someone who hates tanking, tanking because they want to do the content?

And I assumed this thread was about DF because of the "queue" discussion. For shout groups it might take longer, but I doubt by very much.

[CianaIezuborn]

But those people who would prefer to DPS but switched to tank/healer to get parties now might not have to, because the ratio of DPS to healer/tank in a party is closer to the ratio of the overall population. Isn't that preferable to someone who hates tanking, tanking because they want to do the content?

And for every 2 DPS that didn't switch over to tank/healer you'd have 4 dps in the population that weren't able to be supported in the 6 party system. My point being is that due to the human factor of the population involved, simply reducing the ratio of tank/healer to dps guarantees nothing.

The bolded part is the part of the argument that I can really get behind and the ideal situation would be group make ups that reflected the population of the game. In reality though, the group make up of any game will never permanently hit this, so someone is always going to have to step up and play their 2nd or third or even last choice for the good of the many.

That's the crux of a team game that is MMORPGs.

On a personal level, if your playing a class that has less demand than other classes, you either deal with the lesser demand or you switch to a class with higher demand.
On a team level, if no one can fill a pivot role, someone has to switch to that pivot role or no one gets to play.