6 men dungeon

[Ogulbuk]

It would have to be something decided before entering the dungeon and only if a member leaves as if anyone can do this at any given point of the instance would be terribly chaotic...

I have seen similar implemented in other games that have a bit more of a free form system: the player actually picks what he is willing to do in a party and flags himself accordingly.

Now, an alternate way of implementing this would be to create alternate job crystals, with just minor differences from the main job, perhaps a single-mission quest to unlock the crystal, giving every class the same advantage the Arcanist enjoys, but would only work for jobs (so, past 30)

An example:
A Marrauder could become Warrior OR Berserker (same job with just minor differences to either do damage or DPS)
A Gladiator could become Paladin or Mystic Knight (similar in scope but he enchants his sword for elemental damage procs)
A Lancer could become Dragoon or Dragon Knight, same thing, different wording just for sake of distinction: one is DPS the other has a few tools for tanking and agro management.
An Archer can become Bard or Ranger, the ranger hystorically being a druid-ish archer can easily be given a few healing spells.
Thaumatruge could be Black Mage or Time Mage, with Regen and other healing capabilities.

And so on and so forth. The advantage of this system is you lock the player to the job the que in with, but seriously, I like the free-form system where you can dynamically change roles without restrictions. After all, if you pre-form a party you are not forced to the existing conventions and can easily form a tank, archer, dragoon, arcanist 4 man party and have the arcanist serve as healer. Heck, I had one serve as tank in the Haukke Manor the other night because our tanker disconnected.

[Kaiser-Ace]

Snip.

Now I like this idea. This could add worlds more diversity to the game, make the DF less of a pain, ease the tention on Tanks and healers a bit cause they know they can have (Temporary at least) back up untill they can recover. This is almost a universal solution. All that would need to be examend is it's potential for abuse. Cause if they can use it; they will abuse it. But for the most part this combined with your priveious idea could actually be the solution to much of the game's problems.

Well Done.

[Ogulbuk]

Well the job based idea would just increase supply, you still would be locked to a role once inside the dungeon. Going for an amplified stance, like the Cleric Stance, IMO would add a much more interesting twist, and the only exploit (if we can call it so) that I can think off is players that only are willing to DPS entering the queue as tank, only so they can get in faster, but never actually being willing to fulfill the role. Adding a kick option that lets you flag the player as "unwilling to fulfill assigned role" could be combined with some flag that forbids a kicked player, with the specified reason, from queueing again for an hour under that particular role.

Dragoon says he is willing to be tank, gets picked as tank, but insist to go DPS? Kick and he wont be able to do it again for an hour. Could also even be used for a White Mage that picks Cleric Stance and refuses to turn it off in a party.

Giving it a bit more thought, another potential issue would be an abuse of stance-swapping to get through hard chunks of content. Dragoon gets agro? Turn on his tanking stance just to survive a few blows and then go back to DPS (I think some Conjurers already do this to swap into dps, cast stone, and turn it off to heal.) A solution to this could simply be that the Stance switch get a 10 minute cooldown. Once you turn it on, you are stuck in tank/healer mode for 10 minutes. Once you turn it off, you cant go back for 10 minutes. Have the game automatically activate the stance if you queue and are picked as tank or healer (so you cant change out until 10 minutes in, DPS could always turn their tank/healer stances on if they are required to do so.) Death should not clear the stance. Finally a big part of the stance could be an increase of Vitality (for tanks) and that would not do much mid fight, since equipping Vit increases your max HP but wont fill the gained max.

All melee classes could get a new single target agro building attack, or simply have agro building added to one of their rotation attacks if they are in the tanking stance.
Ranged classes may plainly need a new healing power, although Conjurers and Arcanists both already have one so its just Thaumatruge that would need being given Regen and Bard a healing song. Archer base class would be trickier. Looking at the list of archer actions, though, it seems they already get one song at level 22 even without the bard job, so it may be fair to give Archers access to Army's Paeon (FFXI's regen song, but more one-shot healing oriented and only available in healing stance)

Edit: This forum's post count per day limit is silly, I guess I cant reply again until tomorrow... even if I posted this stuff last night, I guess I posted too early in the AM, or this thing works on 24 hour timers. For now, ZaaZaa I reply to you in this edit:

I like where Ogulbuk is going, but imo, this should not be in hard content. -snip- otherwise, what would be the point of having a PLD or WAR at all

Why would you be a Paladin if you can be a Warrior tanking? Why would you be either when you can be a Dark Knight coming the expansion? Note my idea is not to just give DPS Melee a tanking mode, but also Tanking roles getting a DPS mode to counter-balance the flexibility, including giving them the ability to queue as DPS if so desired.

The fact that the Dragoon can tank in his tanking stance does not mean he will want to, though. Also, I would guess gear still takes a big part of things even with a stance that compensates. A dragoon that has the most optimized DPS gear will be at a disadvantage of a tank that is geared up for tanking, even if the stance somehow swapped some Str for Defense or other such trade, you will likely always be the most optimal with a designed-as-tank job to roll as primary tank in hard content. And finally, just getting a tanking stance would not grant the dragoon with abilities like Cover.

Overall, allowing more jobs to tank or heal would be a good thing all around, so long as the flexibility is not exclusive to current DPS classes and jobs, and also extended to heal and tanking ones.

[ZaaZaa]

Now I like this idea. This could add worlds more diversity to the game, make the DF less of a pain, ease the tention on Tanks and healers a bit cause they know they can have (Temporary at least) back up untill they can recover. This is almost a universal solution. ...

I agree, his ideas are very nice.

[ZaaZaa]

Well ...

How could you write such a long text and i am limited to 1k characters ? But that was very well said friend.

Good job.

[ZaaZaa]

I like where Ogulbuk is going, but imo, this should not be in hard content. I mean, if i understand well, the temporairy healers/tanks would have lower capacity in doing these roles and that's a good thing, otherwise, what would be the point of having a PLD or WAR at all ! One would just go DRG knowing he can tank as good as a PLD in Coil with his tanking stance.

Now, it could work well for XPing in dungoens before 50, but imo, there are alternatives, already, to get XP (fates). What i wish would be reducing the DPS queue time for endgame content, in pugs with DF (Primals and Coils).

[ZaaZaa]

Party finder is FREQUENTLY used in the nexus light grind to have 1 tank/healer, and 6 dps. Suddenly there's an even worse shortage of tanks working on the tier after nexus, then there was beforehand.

Tanks still get instant queues in ST, even now, because your method isn't working in the scenario of an even larger ratio of DPS.

1. DPS would find even much harder time getting in queue for a Nexus light grind.
2. Tanks still get instant queues YES, but DPS wait less then what it would of been with 2 tanks. I never claimed 6 men dungoen was a cure for an instant queue on DPS, i just said it would reduce the DPS queue time, and it would.
3. And my "method" is EXACTLY working in the scenario of a larger ratio DPS.. it's what it is, nothing else. Y

Altough, after what you said, this assistance from a 6 men dungeon might not be as significant as i suspect. You presented your arguments quite well there.

[Cuervo78]

How could you write such a long text and i am limited to 1k characters ? But that was very well said friend.

Good job.

If you edit your post you can bypass the 1k limit

[FranSeara]

Kaiser, the problem is people don't WANT to roll as a healer/tank. You can give all the incentives you want, but the novelties will wear off and if people don't want to go something besides DPS, then you can't exactly force them to. We can only hope Dark Knight and Astrologian are interesting enough for people to stick with them.

Agree, Playing healer,dps and some times tank, I get burnt out after about 2 -3 hours of healing/tanking. Out comes the Bard. I hope the jobs are fun and bring more balance to the Q's. but you cant make players play tanks or heals

[Kaiser-Ace]

I like where Ogulbuk is going, but imo, this should not be in hard content. I mean, if i understand well, the temporairy healers/tanks would have lower capacity in doing these roles and that's a good thing, otherwise, what would be the point of having a PLD or WAR at all ! One would just go DRG knowing he can tank as good as a PLD in Coil with his tanking stance.

Now, it could work well for XPing in dungoens before 50, but imo, there are alternatives, already, to get XP (fates). What i wish would be reducing the DPS queue time for endgame content, in pugs with DF (Primals and Coils).

Well his idea vastly out weighs yours because it's actually a fiasable solution. and he's not suggesting DPSs off tanking, he's suggestion they turn INTO TANKS under certin circumstances. And there would be less ballence risk at higher level content when it would actually become neccisarry to use such a feature in order to recover. Lets say the main tank and one of the healers eats the death cookie in T5, a dragoon activates the "Dragon Knight" crystal and a Summoner activates the..... I'm going to call it a "Geomancer" crystal since primals are simmiler to elementals, abd then they proceed to off tank and back up heal long enough for the other two to get rezed and their weakness debuff to time out. THIS is how it could be PROPERLY utalized. This idea isn't just making times easyer which it still mught not if it was implamented. This is a possible fix to player infighting in high level areas which is the CAUSE of the tank and healing shortage that plauges the DF to this day.

Treat the illness and the side effects will go away as well. Only treat the symptoms and the problem will fester into a bigger problem that's harder to fix.