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

[Molly_Millions]

roll a tank, farm tokens and use the tokens you farmed for your dps
???
profit

That's what I do. Use my WAR to get tomes for everything else. I like playing WAR more than anything else, so it works out great. :P

[Kazamoto]

Stuff... Things

While yes, no ratio of DD:H:T will ever always match the player population at all times.


Would you agree that 1:1:4 is more accurate to the current population than 1:1:2?

[Ralemont]

The bolded part is the part of the argument that I can really get behind and the ideal situation would be group make ups that reflected the population of the game. In reality though, the group make up of any game will never permanently hit this, so someone is always going to have to step up and play their 2nd or third or even last choice for the good of the many.

But surely improving the party ratio to better reflect population distribution is a worthwhile endeavor even if perfect balance is impossible? I mean, in my burger example 5 patties were still left uneaten. That's still better than the 15 patties we previously had.

ftr I don't think this change will ever happen. The question of number of players in a party is too central to the game structure. But I think if I was on board when ARR was just yolk in the egg I would suggest 4 or 3:1:1 instead of 2:1:1.

[CianaIezuborn]

While yes, no ratio of DD:H:T will ever always match the player population at all times.


Would you agree that 1:1:4 is more accurate to the current population than 1:1:2?

No clue, I'd say that 1:1:3 is probably more accurate if I had to throw a wild guess given the population I interact with. I'm uncomfortable going much higher than that with no real basis for an estimation. There was a live producers note that they posted numbers of populations, I'm not sure how accurate even that is though.

I do agree that raising the ratio from 1:1:2 to 1:1:4 probably wouldn't have a negative effect on DF queue time for DPS, I'm just not sure that it would have a positive effect over the long term due to the human element of the population.

[Naunet]

I don't really understand why standard party size is 4 and not, say, 5 or 6. It basically precludes having any kind of true support class in the game because there just wouldn't be room for it in a 4 person party, and increasing the party size would mean more dps would get to go per group. :/ Makes no sense.

[CianaIezuborn]

But surely improving the party ratio to better reflect population distribution is a worthwhile endeavor even if perfect balance is impossible? I mean, in my burger example 5 patties were still left uneaten. That's still better than the 15 patties we previously had.

Again, the issue is these 15 patties can magically turn into buns due to them not wanting to wait so long to be eaten.

You can't ignore the human element that effects queues and how long someone is willing to wait to play the role they want to play. As it stands, if the queue for dps is 30 minutes then I'm assuming that's because it's more important for those folks to play as a dps than it is to have a fast queue.

Worthwhile endeavor if it cost nothing, of course. But what's the cost in re-balancing of content to fit the new group make up. What's the cost in existing FCs that have structured statics around the make up. Abstract questions, but everything implemented has a cost of something else not being implemented. It's kind of a cat's out of the bag situation, it's likely more trouble to shove it back in than to let it run wild.

[CianaIezuborn]

This post has 2 likes, but don't worry, there's nothing wrong with the community >.<

I don't agree with the presentation, but I can understand the sentiment.

I played Rift previous to this, and due to the ability to change roles in the middle of a dungeon and the wildly differing requirements from encounter to encounter, you had to be adaptable for raids. Tanks had to be able to dps or heal, healers needed to be able to dps, dps needed to be able to heal, support needed to be able to do something else.

I've had to deal with raiders that refused to ever switch from their desired role to the detriment of the other 19 folks in the group. Those were the first folks that got dropped when we had over 20 raiders on. They were most often dps that didn't want to pick up a support/heal/tank role, but I ran into tanks that only wanted to be MT and healers that only wanted to tank heal.

Not being adaptable in a team based game and then complaining that you're left on the bench is essentially what they're doing. On the other hand trying to change the size of the team so more folks can play is at least positive.

[Steeled]

Again, the issue is these 15 patties can magically turn into buns due to them not wanting to wait so long to be eaten.

You can't ignore the human element that effects queues and how long someone is willing to wait to play the role they want to play. As it stands, if the queue for dps is 30 minutes then I'm assuming that's because it's more important for those folks to play as a dps than it is to have a fast queue.

Remember that this is a game, especially at the casual level 4-mans are designed for. People should be allowed to do what they want to do.

Given that, 4 man parties is just silly. It represents that no more than half the population wants to play on DPS and the two mmo's they would have gotten numbers from (XI and WoW) simply never represented those kinds of numbers. Ever.

[Tyrial]

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.

This was only the case really at end game (pre-Abyssea) for merit parties. Any sort of leveling party you needed a tank for, unless you were doing a BLM burn.

[Kazamoto]

Besides, is not the point of an MMO to have people play together? More content for more people.

How often have you done AK/WP runs with your LS/FC and had to either rotate people in, or have people not attend because they didn't fit the 1:1:2?