Duty Finder for DD

[Ruri]

I've been getting 5-10 min ques as drg and brd. So I'm not sure if its just your data center or what.

[MurakumoMillennium]

Dzemael Darkhold? What about the queue times for it?

From personal experience, queues for DD aren't that bad regardless of you being tank, heals, or dps.

[Krr]

All MMO's are the same, Tanking is probably the most stressful role you can play and is also the first people will blame when something goes wrong.

On the other hand DPS is probably the easier role to play and has the least effect on the party unless you are facing end game content.

It's just as simple as the path of least resistance.

Which is hilarious, because tanking 4man dungeons in this game is seriously the most braindead thing I have ever done. At least as a SCH I can pretend I'm a DPS while the tank shrugs off trash mobs' attacks...

Casual players are scared of the skill floor required for tanking and healing, and serious players are driven away from tanking and healing casual content because its still ceiling is stiflingly low. The only time I tank or heal any more is when those roles are called for in serious 8mans, where those roles are actually checked for more than 'has a pulse and can press button', or when my FC wants to do premade speedruns or introduce people to content without putting up with toxic gamer bro randoms making jokes about sexual assault.

[Lafiele]

SE has done all they can to make tanks more attractive to play but just like every other game out there, people just enjoy DDs more. The only way to make queues shorter is to make DDs less pleasing to play but is that really the road you want to head to?

To the above guy, stop using casual player as a term like they are noob. Casual players aren't bad players. Contrary to popular belief, Playing casually doesn't make you a bad player but being unable to see your faults and improve upon yourself makes you a bad player. The difference between casual and hardcore is the amount of time they spend playing the game and not a gauge of skill level.

Relating back to the actual topic, tanks is still the harder class to play compared to dpsing even in 4-man content. This is because tanks usually have to manage multiple things whereas dps usually don't. If you find tanking brain dead then obviously you enjoy doing damage or healing more. But to say tanking is brain dead is a personal preference and not a fact since the same can be said for dps and healing (e.g dps just hit the same rotation over and over again on the same mob, healing just cause cure/physick repetitively).

Regardless, the community in general just prefer to be doing damage over taking damage and keeping the party alive etc.

[lxSch]

Which is hilarious, because tanking 4man dungeons in this game is seriously the most braindead thing I have ever done. At least as a SCH I can pretend I'm a DPS while the tank shrugs off trash mobs' attacks...

Casual players are scared of the skill floor required for tanking and healing, and serious players are driven away from tanking and healing casual content because its still ceiling is stiflingly low. The only time I tank or heal any more is when those roles are called for in serious 8mans, where those roles are actually checked for more than 'has a pulse and can press button', or when my FC wants to do premade speedruns or introduce people to content without putting up with toxic gamer bro randoms making jokes about sexual assault.

Games are generally easy because are meant to relax, not to be a job. Moreover online games are meant to grant social experience, which makes them even easier.
Whenever i want a game where i can think about strategy and tactics - i would play an RTS game where i have to fight against AI (which adapts to counter my strenghs and strike at weaknesses).
FFXIV has 3 types of enmity management: target with highest enmity, closest target and randon target. A good AI system would analyze the team composition and health and attack the target to hurt at most (healer revived with low hp - ffs, tanker doing low damage - ignore, dps has generally low hp - ffs), team standing close - use aoe, and etc. This would remove the repetition element and force everyone to start thinking what they are doing and what can happen.

[Krr]

To the above guy, stop using casual player as a term like they are noob.

Quoted for context; Snipped for character count.

I'm sorry if my nomenclature for playstyles offended you! Please understand, I used casual player to define a mindset preferring relaxation rather than adversity in the game.

Tanking is executionally easier. This is a fact. Tank threat rotations are 6-8 buttons long (even less for PLDs,) and managing AOE is done with a 2-3 button long AOE rotation. Positional awareness is required so the tank doesn't die. DPS rotations are 10-16 buttons long. Positional awareness is required so that the DPS doesn't die.

These factors combined drive the majority of both serious players who want a high execution job and casual players who want a low stress job away from tanking and healing. It is a flaw in the game's job and encounter design, not the mindsets of either side of the player base.

Also, I am not a guy.

[Steffie]

SE has done all they can to make tanks more attractive to play but just like every other game out there, people just enjoy DDs more. The only way to make queues shorter is to make DDs less pleasing to play but is that really the road you want to head to?

This very much. If i have a choice between playing my Paladin and Monk, i would go with my monk but sadly tank queue time is so much more better and i ended up gearing my Paladin a lot more. Yea managing your defensive buffs to prevent getting hit by burst damages from boss, watching for adds, skills to interrupt, dodging abilities, watching the threats i would say it is alot more stressful than monk who just dodge stuffs, do your rotation properly, pop cooldowns when needed. I am the lazy type, i always queue as a dps in most PF for pugs unless the PF only got tank spots left.

Tanking is executionally easier. This is a fact. Tank threat rotations are 6-8 buttons long (even less for PLDs,) and managing AOE is done with a 2-3 button long AOE rotation. Positional awareness is required so the tank doesn't die. DPS rotations are 10-16 buttons long. Positional awareness is required so that the DPS doesn't die.

Rotations's length in my opinion don't matter a lot in execution because once you do the rotation long enough, you sort of go into this automatic mode where you know how to execute it by heart, in fact a few times when i have to offtank as my pally i found myself maneuvering and pressing rotations buttons from my monk by mistakes, like moving to the flank when i am going to press 3 which is twin snake for my MNK and riot blade for my Paladin even through riot blade don't have any positional requirements to deal their full damage potency. Sure dps got a lot of rotation and damage buffs to juggle, but it is the DD's own buff they have to juggle, but when it comes to tanks, it is trying to manage the damage by using your cooldowns correctly, some boss's high damaging move could be predictable and even then the pattern probably change every phrase while some are just depending on the RNG.

[SekiShiki]

I'm thinking something very similar to what GW2 devs have decided for their game: they removed, in fact, healer class in such way, they have supplied healing capabilities to every job, so every job can put in hotbar healing skill and be the healer of the group.
In this game I would remove the tank class, giving DPS and TANK abilities to all melee classes (war,monk,drg,pld) or even to whole actual classes. In such way, the queue problem will be solved.

[Docj]

I have always thought that 6 man content would have fit the game population better. Parties would consist of: 1 tank, 1 healer, and 4 dps. To me, this seems to be about the same ratio people choose to play the roles.

I think 4 man parties seemed like a good idea for a game that doesn't have a party matching system. Finding 6 people for simple exp parties in FFxi proved time consuming; from that perspective 4 people would have been faster to find. This game has the "Duty Finder" and "Party Finder" though, so I don't see the benefit of smaller parties other than they are easier to create content for.

To sum it up as saying it's our own fault (the player base) because too many people choose dps jobs is naïve. The fact of the matter is: they (SE) could have looked at data from FFxi (their own) and other games to predict with a fair amount of accuracy how the population would choose to play.

This distribution 4:1:1 is just the way it is; there isn't any way to make someone who prefers dps magically prefer tank or healer. The roles are entirely different experiences, and some play for a particular experience (i.e. beating things up). Things like mounts, tiny bit extra gil, etc., will not change this.

I myself play all 3 roles, depending on my mood. I know before I choose to duty up as BLM, SMN, or BRD I better plan on crafting for a while or do something else to pass time until it finds me a party.

Bottom line is: a game built around 6 man content would have avoided this problem. Instead we have to deal with high queue times as a dps.

[Aegis]

Dzemael Darkhold? What about the queue times for it?

From personal experience, queues for DD aren't that bad regardless of you being tank, heals, or dps.

Not sure if serious, but in case you are:

DD = Damage Dealer/Direct Damage (depending on who you speak to).

It's a pretty well known abbreviation in MMOs. It was one of the terms used in MMOs in the earlier days. Originally, DPS was a type of DD that maintained low, constant damage, as opposed to spikers or nukers that dealt widely spaced, heavy hits. Think MNK vs DRG or BRD vs BLM. DPS gradually became the preferred term in WoW for all DD and so became the more used term in MMOs in general.

DD isn't particularly obscure though, unless you haven't played anything before the more recent MMOs.