Mindblowingly new-old idea-question that would reduce queue times for DD's

[Yurikitty]

I have to admit I have hated the 4 man party system since it came out. What makes these game developers think they have to mess with standard party size and set ups? I mean does doing that really make this game so special? NO! I understand they cant change it back now, but it is the stupidest concept I have seen in games since the removing of the holy trinity.

[Reiterpallasch]

Before, in the days of the game people cant mention without massive nerd-rage.

Parties were 6.
Tank x1
Healer x1
Support x0-1
DD x3-4

To nitpick a bit, it was more along the lines of:
Tank x0-1
Healer x1
Support x2
DD x2-3

It was never ever worth replacing a support slot with a dps. A group of 2 dps, 2 support would do like triple the damage of a group with 4 dps and 0 support because of the additional haste and such.

[KhalidTheGreat]

That does make sense :O
But sadly it wont happen in this game.

[Molly_Millions]

As a tank, I love the ques the way they are now.

/trollface

[Amberion]

I made a thread about this way back. But seems some people don't understand the ratio between tanks/healers/DD.

Anyway, I also find it odd that they went with a 4 player party.

[Astarica]

Parties are small because it's exponentially harder to find a party of size X+1 than X. WoW has a party size of 5, and tanks are still the limiting factor in their group finder. EQ1 has a party size of 6, and getting the tank is again still the bottleneck. Putting more DPS slots just makes more people play as DPS, since the tank role is either too hard or irrelevent (e.g. the tank on Anantaboga could be a trained monkey) depending on which game you're playing and nobody likes either of those two roles.

[Steeled]

They would totally have to re-balance every single dungeon and instance for 6 man instead of four. While this would have been a good idea at launch, I feel it'd be way too much work to implement it now. Major balance changes to 20+ instances is a lot of work.

"Every single instance"

No they wouldn't. They might rebalance WP and AK (they should) but who honestly cares if leveling dungeons are easier. AK, you're gaining like 2x the dps so just make the HP 1.5-2x what it is, rebalance the bosses and victory.

Heck, for all leveling dungeons, make the hp 1.5x. Winner.

[Steeled]

Parties are small because it's exponentially harder to find a party of size X+1 than X. WoW has a party size of 5, and tanks are still the limiting factor in their group finder. EQ1 has a party size of 6, and getting the tank is again still the bottleneck. Putting more DPS slots just makes more people play as DPS, since the tank role is either too hard or irrelevent (e.g. the tank on Anantaboga could be a trained monkey) depending on which game you're playing and nobody likes either of those two roles.

You contradict yourself.

It is not exponentially harder to find 3 dps rather than 2 so a 6 man party party modeled and 1 tank 1 healer is not even 25% harder to find people for. It just...isn't.

[MageBlack]

I like the solution they are looking into. They are providing a reward bonus for queueing up as a role that is currently in short supply (easy to find out from the dev side of things). as long as the reward is decent, like Tomestones or gil then i think it will be a nice help.



EDIT:

There is a precedence for party's over 4 people. I think FFVI had at least 5, then there is the FF Tactics games which this already seems to take a lot of inspiration from. At this point though, they would need to retool the entire game to work with a different sized party. Even if it is a good idea, I think that ship has sailed my friend.

Changing the ratios is not a good fix IMO. What they need to do is have more methods to encourage people to make Tanks/Healers. More Tank classes would be nice. 2 tank classes and 2 healer classes for the 4-5 DPS...

[Ralemont]

Parties are small because it's exponentially harder to find a party of size X+1 than X. WoW has a party size of 5, and tanks are still the limiting factor in their group finder. EQ1 has a party size of 6, and getting the tank is again still the bottleneck. Putting more DPS slots just makes more people play as DPS, since the tank role is either too hard or irrelevent (e.g. the tank on Anantaboga could be a trained monkey) depending on which game you're playing and nobody likes either of those two roles.

Think of it in terms of cheeseburgers. You have 10 buns, 10 slices of cheese, 35 patties. With this you can make 10 double cheeseburgers...or 10 triple cheeseburgers. In the latter scenario you have the same amount of sandwiches made, but instead of having 15 patties sitting around not being eaten, now you only have 5.