Matchmaking without the Trinity: how would you do it?

[Celef]

The only solution I see would be to re-think the dungeons and add a 5 member with a support slot like Rift did (they have 5 men team instead of 4).
Considering the amount of work it would be to balance everything I would go with

Simply put: You don't.

[Annah]

I would like to point out that the trinity system is not used for Palace of the dead and..... some of the party for the higher floors can be quite crap when its like DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS

PoTD is also VERY EASY with the mobs having next to no hitpoints or "oomf." There's only a few mobs int hat whole dungeon that hits hard or has a lot of hitpoints

[Kaurie]

PoTD is also VERY EASY with the mobs having next to no hitpoints or "oomf." There's only a few mobs int hat whole dungeon that hits hard or has a lot of hitpoints

The traps can make this a fairly big concern - when you have a trap that summons a group when you are already fighting a group.

[Annah]

What excuse do all the other dungeons have? PotD enemies have more going on than enemies in all the normal dungeons.

PotD dungeon mobs also has about 80% less hitpoints and attack power than regular dungeon trash. You can solo POTD at the matched ilvl (aether)...you cannot solo a dungeon with matched synced ilvl

[Telsyr]

The only solution I see would be to re-think the dungeons and add a 5 member with a support slot like Rift did (they have 5 men team instead of 4).
Considering the amount of work it would be to balance everything I would go with

Except that it would take even more work and time to balance everything around 5 people, including older content.. they would have to change everything to fit the new style of 5/10/30 Meaning tacking MORE HP to already over inflated bullet sponge bosses we already have. More damage from bosses means each tank class has to be re-balanced to be able stand their ground and all DPS get a nerf due to adding more roles and the fact that support increases DPS all around.

Tank, Damage, Healing, Support.

I can just smell those 1-3 hour 4-man queues now. Thats only for healers.. DPS will be worse as we'll be waiting for all those supports, that are going to be rarer than tanks, to show up.

[SaitoHikari]

To tie in with my earlier rant about what I saw in Dragon Nest before it did away with the trinity only to reinstate it in an even stronger form afterwards, the biggest community-related downside to doing away with the trinity system is essentially encouraging special snowflake types, in a game that puts very heavy emphasis on teamwork. Why work together when your class in theory can be built to do everything at once?

Even now, you already see a higher population of the more toxic players of this game gravitate towards the Warrior class especially, and there's a reason behind that.

[Connor]

I can just smell those 1-3 hour 4-man queues now. Thats only for healers.. DPS will be worse as we'll be waiting for all those supports, that are going to be rarer than tanks, to show up.

Not really sure where this assumption that a 'support' role would be played by such a tiny percentage of players that it would cause the entirety of the Duty Finder to become near-inaccessible. XIV has a pretty big playerbase and as long as they developed a support role to be fun and worthwhile I don't think it would be as bad as people assume. Not saying it wouldn't increase the wait times, but nobody can know for sure unless they actually implemented it, otherwise it's just theory. The entire thing could be circumvented by having support and dps sharing the same slot in 4/8 man parties. They've already split Melee / Ranged so it's not impossible for them to have different levels of the same slot / role.

[Welsper59]

Not really sure where this assumption that a 'support' role would be played by such a tiny percentage of players that it would cause the entirety of the Duty Finder to become near-inaccessible. XIV has a pretty big playerbase and as long as they developed a support role to be fun and worthwhile I don't think it would be as bad as people assume. Not saying it wouldn't increase the wait times, but nobody can know for sure unless they actually implemented it, otherwise it's just theory. The entire thing could be circumvented by having support and dps sharing the same slot in 4/8 man parties. They've already split Melee / Ranged so it's not impossible for them to have different levels of the same slot / role.

Support roles have a long documented history of being the least represented role in RPGs by huge degrees. Most players are about being the "hero" or the one that does a lot of damage. The trinity formula represents the most prominent roles, where even then, there's a significant difference in activity between them (tanks and healers nearly always being lowest).

Recalling my time in the earlier days of XI, purely support roles like BRD were the most sought after jobs in the game. Even if you were mediocre at it, people wanted you to join them. They were such an important role for groups to have, but they were very rare to find people willing to play it. Obviously even rarer to play it well.

Your mentioning of them taking up DPS slots is indeed likely to be the best approach on the matter. Introducing a full fledged support role to the DF is not a good idea. It's very possible to create a support job that focuses primarily on damage boosting, since "support" can reflect any role.

[Connor]

Recalling my time in the earlier days of XI, purely support roles like BRD were the most sought after jobs in the game. Even if you were mediocre at it, people wanted you to join them. They were such an important role for groups to have, but they were very rare to find people willing to play it. Obviously even rarer to play it well.

Your mentioning of them taking up DPS slots is indeed likely to be the best approach on the matter. Introducing a full fledged support role to the DF is not a good idea. It's very possible to create a support job that focuses primarily on damage boosting, since "support" can reflect any role.

I totally get why people would be incredibly wary of the addition of a full-on support role, but as an optimist I like to think that there's enough players expressing interest in it that it wouldn't significantly increase DF wait times. It's one of things where nobody could really know unless they actually done it, but naturally it'd far too much of a risk to implement a 'support' role as a distinct thing by itself.

Personally I'd love to see a job where the whole focus would be to boost the damage / survivability / etc of others instead of dps'ing, if not purely because it's be a great change of pace from the usual dps-frenzy that all current jobs/roles have in the current game.

My main problem with adding a dps/healer/etc that focuses primarily on supporting others is that I honestly don't think the developers could do it. Currently they believe this is exactly what Bard and Machinist are, 'support' jobs whose focus is to support the party. But I don't think there's a single player here who would take a great-support but middling-dps Bard/Machinist over one with high personal DPS. Not to mention the fact that they have such limited 'support' that very rarely gets touched anyway because of the damage penalties on anything that doesn't increase raid dps (the sole reason for this being because if Foe Requiem / Hypercharge had a damage penalty nobody would ever use Bard/Machinist). Both only have a single ability that can increase another's dps, but it's incredibly limited by large MP requirements or cooldowns and requires no forethough or strategic use. The entirety of their 'support' is available at the press of one button and that's all we get.

I fear that even if they added more 'support dps' they would be the exact same, dps with a single button that's somehow supposed to completely distinguishes them from normal dps. I honestly believe the only way they can implement support jobs into the game properly is if they design them as a full-on support, because in my eyes there's nothing 'support' about Bard or Machinist at all.

I know I constantly sound like a raving, deluded lunatic on these forums, but as someone who has wanted to play a support class in this game since I first levelled Bard in 1.X, their implementation of them is a constant source of disappointment. I know many probably just see my posts and think 'play a different game', but I've always loved this one since it was my first ever experience with an MMO, so I still hope that one day they can finally find some way to implement real support jobs.

[Istaru]

They could always do this:

Instance Server: Hey Duty Finder! I got an opening, find me some victims, I mean players.
Duty Finder: On It!
Duty Finder: Let's see, I need a tank, ooh, I see one! Snagged!
Duty Finder: I need a healer, I see three of those, picking the one who has waited the longest.
Duty Finder: Manual says I need 2 DP, jumping Jehosaphat! How do I pick just 2? Screw it, taking 2 at random, they'll never know the difference.
Duty Finder: I need a Support, whatever that is. Support? Support? Hell with it, have a DPS instead.
Duty Finder: Take them away Instance Server, I need to look up what a support job is.

It could default to 1-1-2-1, if it cannot find a support after a period of time it changes to 1-1-3 instead. Would make DPS happy since the population is about 1-1-3 anyway.