FFXIV Has the Population to Support an ELO system for Duty Finder / Party Finder

[Zsolen]

I think this idea is a mixed bag bordering towards a bad idea, at least for PvE.

It will probably help out those that perform better overall, unless they enjoy helping others perform better.

However, it will hurt those genuinely trying to learn the game. Many casuals and sprouts could end up mixed in with people that have no intention of helping them out in any way shape or form and gameplay could be a nightmare for them.

I'd have to give it more thought for PvP, but if PvP participants don't increase much in 6.1, it definitely won't work there either.

[Lunalepsy]

This games biggest issue that there are huge differences in the playstyle of players and they are forced to group with each other unless you go in a pre-made.

What I propose is to bring in an ELO system to this game that ranks your individual performance and groups you with similar players.

• If you are an optimizer and play your job at peak performance? You get grouped with other people of the same mindset.
  
• If you are competent and can keep your GCD rolling? (and thus above average sadly) You get grouped with similar players who also do the same.
  
• If you don't care about combat and just want to play the game? You get to play with all the other people with the same mindset.

To be fair in this system everyone would start at the middle and would go up or down based on individual performance in duties per role.

After some time, the player base is sorted out and Elitists and Toxic Casuals will never have to interact with each other again.

As an extra bonus you could set your Party Finder to only allow Rank x-x to preemptively filter and make less trap parties in PF.

No thank you!

[Seymour_Rainecourt]

LOL. No. Just make friends and stick to them for the things you must queue for.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

Nah. It would increase que times.

I rather carry other players than wait forever to get in.

[AbysmalDuck]

Because none of that is happening. When you sign up for the duty finder, you sign up for its inherent randomness. And then you have fun with that or you don't. But if your fun explicitly relies on another person behaving a certain way, think about what you're actually saying.

People playing poorly in dungeons does not bring me down, because I don't care, it's life. Every run is different and the social element is part of that. Trying to figure out where to compensate based on the behavior of the party is in itself an interesting game for me.

It brings you down. Because you choose to feel brought down by it, and, subsequently, end up entitled to a specific of behavior of another. Which is kind of not OK. You don't get to assign rules on how a dungeon should run based on what would most benefit you.

You know why people often respond negatively to things like unsolicited advice and other thinly veiled attempts at controlling behavior? Boundaries.

This is one of the best responses I've read to these types of threads. I salute you for speaking up for the people who may be viewed as toxic casuals just because they don't put a DOT on every single enemy in a dungeon.

[Xuled]

Would be great but look at the replies. Too many softies not wanting to be forced grouped with each other instead of being carried lol BCBTW

[Imoen]

Let me ask you some questions.

How do you create a ranking system, where everyone can play multiple jobs at varying degrees of success? How do you make a system that determines if you are "good" or "bad"? How does a bunch of low ranking players complete a thing, if the system determines them all equally "bad"? How do you account for human factors, such as being a good team player or being flexible? How does the system rank different battle situations? At high rank do I end up with only black mages because they have been able to avoid all mechanics and do higher dps than the other casters? How does support factor in? Clutch raises? How does it deal with lower level content vs high level content?

Just because you get hit by a puddle doesn't automatically mean you're bad. Just because you cleared a fight doesn't mean you're good. Just because you have high dps doesn't mean you're good, it can, but it's only a portion of the story (Are you causing the healers undue stress by standing in bad to achieve those numbers? sacking their ranking etc...) Just because you're healing doesn't mean you're playing good. Just because you keep GCD going doesn't mean you're using the appropriate skills for the situation or playing your job well etc... The system would need to be a combination of all these factors, which then needs to be split up into role if not job, then possibly split up into specific situations and or fights etc...

If I'm a healer for example: Does the person with more healing go up? what if the healing numbers are because someone died a ton? What if I did ton of DPS but I didn't heal squat, do I go up then? What if I did good dps and had high healing but I constantly wasn't paying attention and was hit by mechanics but didn't die.. do I go up, do I go down? At what thresholds of healing/dps/damage taken happen?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not exactly easy to develop such a system that achieves the results you are looking for. Not to mention there would be weird "stuck in limbo" periods for people going up in rank and or slipping back down. That's before even getting into things such as the system needing adjustment anytime jobs/abilities/spells etc... get changed.

Even if you somehow added a ranking system, that by some miracle, was perfect and worked you would still run into bad parties. Not every group works together well and that's just unavoidable, ranking or not. Some parties click, some don't. The only way you're getting a well oiled machine is to build your own pre-made group, weed out issues and have discussions with people. There's no shortcut for it.

That's my 2 gil.

Edit: If we are just talking play style filters, I mean you can have that, but nothing stops people from jumping in the wrong one.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Having an "improved" Hall of Novice would be a good idea either way.

I wonder if having tiers would split the populations in an odd way, though. I suspect either one or the other will get the majority of players. If you plop MSQ into the Tier 1, potentially you may end up with insufficient players to run that content. You may just put it in both, and that may effectively erase the tiers. It's generally rather tough to play with populations in this manner, often goalposts just get moved aggressively.

This also doesn't really account for style of play or focus. Someone can complete the Hall of Novice training but still not execute the latest rotation or not keep up with their GCD perfectly, which I've seen referred to as "basic" by people here. One issue with expectations is that they kind of never really end. I wouldn't be surprised if such a Tier II actually became more toxic.

Well I was thinking maybe with the right rework Hall of Novice might instill better habits to at least not do stupid things. Establish a floor. I think expecting stricter rotation adherence is a different floor for a different level of play, but I don't think failing rotations is what causes widespread player frustration so much as players literally not doing their jobs. At least as far as tanks and healers go, merely doing their jobs is *mostly* DPS-independent so I wouldn't care much about them executing the latest rotation outside of Savage-level content. That still leaves DPS, but I feel like a tutorial could at least provide them *some* kind of rotation framework that, while perhaps not optimal, would prevent them from sucking too hard.

All that said, you are right about the MSQ queue populating problem. That is a flaw in a tiered design. HOWEVER, if I may put forth another idea that I and others have proposed elsewhere: just have a back-up trust/squandrons system for players to queue into. I've always felt that this should be outright implemented for Prae/Castrum and just eliminate MSQ roulette altogether, but why stop there if they already have a good trust system? I feel like *every* MSQ piece of content should be soloable in the event a player cannot find party members--the key being not allowing players to *elect* for these roulette trusts, just giving them the luck of the draw based on available queuers.

[Illmaeran]

One of the benefits of playing together should be learning from each other. It’s watching and listening to others that made me realize back around brayflox in ARR that maybe I wasn’t doing it right. Unfortunately we have a community set on keeping players stagnant at a low performance level, they may as well just auto run through content while others play for them

Please don't take my response as meaning people shouldn't do their best to learn from others. I've recently started playing PLD seriously and constantly watch co-tanks in larger group settings or the tank when I'm on DPS. I want to do the best I can and avoid pissing off the rest of the group. Unfortunately for those who expect the highest level of performance, I'll never be anything more than OK or "passable". I have my limitations and do the best I can with them and have stuck with this game as long as I have because the skill bar has been lower than contemporary games.

Brayflox really was a ball-buster back then and the introduction of positionals and timed buffs dependent on rotations/combos in HW continued that. I went from *loving* DRG (my main class) in ARR to barely enjoying it at all in HW. Complexity doesn't equate to Good and streamlined/simple doesn't equate to Bad; they're matters of preference on a continuum. It took more work than I actually enjoyed to get the hang of it all to the point where I wasn't a barely-capable Puddle of Slime, to reword the acronym. Eventually I gave up on DF and stuck to crafting and leveling alt classes on a play schedule that looked like Swiss cheese with how frequently I wasn't logging in.

That doesn't mean the XIV needs to have some sort of automatic sorting mechanism that separates the "Haves" from the "Have-Nots". Adding something like that will only serve to fracture the population unnecessarily and encourage/enforce the exclusionary attitude so common in other games today, MMO or small-group multiplayer alike.

[KariTheFox]

There's already a system in place to only do content with players of your own skill level - meeting other players and queueing up together.

If you're really a top tier optimal player, it should be easy to find other players in the same league as yourself to speedrun expert roulette.