A plea for further refinement of the Duty Roulette algorithm

[Rockette]

While I understand the need for keeping ARR dungeons accessible to new players...

As a vet player since beta I have HAD IT with daily ARR dungeons in my leveling roulette, especially when at level 60+. I feel like we can never use our new skills gained because its back to 1, 2, no aoe, Sastasha again. All those beautiful dungeons from Heavensward I literally never see, let alone any from Stormblood.

If this meant I have to wait an extra 15 minutes to get a dungeon closer to my level, I'm ok with that. I want to try out my new skills and rotations when I get them as I level.

Even queuing as a 4 man party, everyone over level 65+, we get put into an ARR dungeon. Why? Copperbell mines, AGAIN, all level 60s.

Level 50/60 roulette needs an exp boost for one. But the same thing applies, if everyone is over level 60, can't it prioritize a 60 dungeon?

Yes, we have to include the new players. But hell, show your vet players some mercy too. 6 years of the same old dungeons is a LOT.

[Lambdafish]

It is statistically more likely for 2 reasons,

A) there are simply more ARR levelling dungeons, with ARR having 11 dungeons (I think) and HW and SB having 10 combined. This means that negating other factors, you still have more than 50% chance to get an ARR dungeon

B) Due to the way that the roulette works, you only get dungeons from your current level and below. This means that every single person in the queue would have access to sastasha and tam tara, and less and less people would have access to particular dungeons the further up you go. This means that you are statistically more likely to get an ARR dungeon due to more people queuing for them.

They could change the algorithm to make you more likely to get the dungeon at your appropriate level, but that wouldn't make it a roulette. Their solution is to give you equivalent XP for all dungeons, allowing you to level the same no matter the dungeon you get. And as more expansions come out, we should see slightly more variety as the % of levelling dungeons being ARR decreases

[SerLuke]

I remember the last time they tried adjusting the DF algorithm it actually made que times worse and they had to revert, probably best to keep it as is.

[Rongway]

When queuing an incomplete party, you're first filling spots for someone who queued for a specific dungeon that nobody is queuing for. As Fish points out, more people have access to and are queuing for lower level dungeons, which increases the probability that you'll end up in an early dungeon. Then, there will probably be more people queuing for Stormblood dungeons than for Heavensward dungeons, due in part to Stormblood being the current expansion, and because people can choose to skip to Lv60 if they want.


If you queue a complete party or end up matched with all roulette runners, random is random.

[SerLuke]

When queuing an incomplete party, you're first filling spots for someone who queued for a specific dungeon that nobody is queuing for. As Fish points out, more people have access to and are queuing for lower level dungeons, which increases the probability that you'll end up in an early dungeon. Then, there will probably be more people queuing for Stormblood dungeons than for Heavensward dungeons, due in part to Stormblood being the current expansion, and because people can choose to skip to Lv60 if they want.


If you queue a complete party or end up matched with all roulette runners, random is random.

Exactly, if the OP wants to test their current skills in actual combat they should que for a dungeon their level, using roullete for that purpose is pointless because even if you got a dungeon your level the amount of exp you'd get from the roullete bonus would be so small you would have been better off just quing for the dungeon itself.

Also the purpose of roulette isn't primarily for the person queing for the roulette its to fill in the gaps for people who are queing for specific dungeons, the exp/tomes bonus is there to give incentive.

[Shurrikhan]

When queuing an incomplete party, you're first filling spots for someone who queued for a specific dungeon that nobody is queuing for. As Fish points out, more people have access to and are queuing for lower level dungeons, which increases the probability that you'll end up in an early dungeon. Then, there will probably be more people queuing for Stormblood dungeons than for Heavensward dungeons, due in part to Stormblood being the current expansion, and because people can choose to skip to Lv60 if they want.


If you queue a complete party or end up matched with all roulette runners, random is random.

Though true, this is also irrelevant. The request here is that the roulette, quite simply, not be random. If 4 players are grouped together merely due to ticket position, rather than aiding anyone else's specific queue, then perhaps it should limit the roulette to dungeons within, say, 10 levels of them, or at least disproportionately favor the probability tables for dungeons nearer in level to each of said party members?

Then it begs the issue, what would be the point of Roulettes such as 50/60, 70 and Expert where you don't actually lose that many levels queuing up for them, as opposed to using Leveling roulette and getting something like Sastasha which creates a big difference in min/max levels. Like I get what people are saying, though we may have groups purposely going through the PF recruiting high level players to influence getting a duty no less than 10 levels difference, while the players who actually need the duties (for MSQ) could suffer longer queue times as a result of those bypassing to use PF before the DF.

I'd be fine with that, honestly. When doing Leveling Roulette daily for Cracked Clusters, less than one run per week had even a single member under level 50 (usually quite a bit greater), despite continuously sending me through Copperbell Mines. My one and only first-time completion bonus run (the Aery, for one of the DPS) over a couple months of gathering materia was nice, but frankly, past those first completions necessary for MSQ, I wouldn't be that bothered by some players making PF runs instead so long the bonus also convenienced non-PFers enough to make it seem worth queuing up for Leveling Roulette at all, where they previously wouldn't have. And I suspect it would.

Heck, you can even provide a consolation prize for "dungeons in need", similar to first-time completion bonuses. "This was a dungeon in need. You will receive an additional <X number> of <Y currency> at the completion of the instance."

[Kurando]

snip

Then it begs the issue, what would be the point of Roulettes such as 50/60, 70 and Expert where you don't actually lose that many levels queuing up for them, as opposed to using Leveling roulette and getting something like Sastasha which creates a big difference in min/max levels. Like I get what people are saying, though we may have groups purposely going through the PF recruiting high level players to influence getting a duty no less than 10 levels difference, while the players who actually need the duties (for MSQ) could suffer longer queue times as a result of those bypassing to use PF before the DF.

[Rongway]

Though true, this is also irrelevant. The request here is that the roulette, quite simply, not be random.

It is relevant. It's a roulette. Adding bias will allow abuses such as this:

we may have groups purposely going through the PF recruiting high level players to influence getting a duty no less than 10 levels difference, while the players who actually need the duties (for MSQ) could suffer longer queue times as a result of those bypassing to use PF before the DF.

Assume that the people who queue up as complete parties will still queue up as complete parties regardless. That means even if they are more likely to queue up, it won't help any additional people needing fills. However, such a change could reduce the number of incomplete parties queuing up, as people who are not currently queuing as complete parties might start queuing up as complete parties in order to bias their roulettes toward more current dungeons. Therefore adding a bias to the roulette would be a bad thing.

Roulettes aren't there to serve the needs of complete parties. Any accommodations added to roulettes should be for the benefit of the people who need them; not the people who want to run them without contributing to the people they're meant to help.

[Risvertasashi]

Level sync sucks pretty hard, yeah.

I wish they'd just give us access to our abilities. Even if the potency is reduced to a tiny amount when sync'd down, at least we'd have access to our rotations (and avoid cases like sastasha where we're spamming one ability over and over and over and over again...)

[Lemuel81]

Level sync sucks pretty hard, yeah.

I wish they'd just give us access to our abilities. Even if the potency is reduced to a tiny amount when sync'd down, at least we'd have access to our rotations (and avoid cases like sastasha where we're spamming one ability over and over and over and over again...)

I was thinking about this earlier but I do think one of the main reasons is, class balancing for synced players. I mean look at World of warcraft syncing, let's forget the fact it is impossible to balance out 30- something specs but the balance in synced mode will NEVER be anything but a big huge mess because abilities stay the same just lowered.

I do agree with you though, something should be done because going into a dungeon and losing most of my abilities that even make the job fun, feels real bad. Because of it, I do not even enjoy doing lower level dungeons unless it gives a huge chunk of experience. I do think that the dev team has done what imo is the best class balancing in any mmo I played, they could keep all abilities but scale down numbers. They just might not want to deal with it and this current system is just a whole lot easier.