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

[Pandastirfry]

Rather than a cheeseburger, think of an instance like a bus for a field trip.

The bus requires a driver, and a teacher to lead the trip.
Then students.

Currently we have a bus with seating for 4.
If we had seating for 6, more students could go per bus.

There is a problem with this analogy. If drivers or chaparonnes are in short supply then it doesn't matter how many seats the bus has, it's still not going anywhere.

Basically, I've played tons of MMOs with varying minimum party sizes and DFs, and everyone of them Tanks have near instant queues, healers range from near instant to at worst 10-15 mins, and DPS is can be at best 30 mins to well over an hour . Party sizes a little does little to nothing , it's all player demographics. Invariably DPS out numbers the other roles by orders of magnitude.

[Dano]

they can easily implement 6man content in future dungeons/instances, so make sure to give feedback on this issue

[Sylve]

My Paladin(30) with my WHM(30) friend, we waited 15 minutes for a Haukke run because theres no DDs in queue, in prime NA game time. we waited 10 minutes for a Maws run before that too.

The problem has always been and will ever be, more DDs in queue than Tanks and Healers combined. Even if you made it 1/1/20 for every dungeon, you'd STILL have to wait out that Tank or Healer to join.

If your DD queue is taking too long, be a part of the solution and play the Tank! You don't lose anything! (especially when you ask politely for certain drops)

[Kazamoto]

There is a problem with this analogy. If drivers or chaparonnes are in short supply then it doesn't matter how many seats the bus has, it's still not going anywhere.

Basically, I've played tons of MMOs with varying minimum party sizes and DFs, and everyone of them Tanks have near instant queues, healers range from near instant to at worst 10-15 mins, and DPS is can be at best 30 mins to well over an hour . Party sizes a little does little to nothing , it's all player demographics. Invariably DPS out numbers the other roles by orders of magnitude.

My Paladin(30) with my WHM(30) friend, we waited 15 minutes for a Haukke run because theres no DDs in queue, in prime NA game time. we waited 10 minutes for a Maws run before that too.

The problem has always been and will ever be, more DDs in queue than Tanks and Healers combined. Even if you made it 1/1/20 for every dungeon, you'd STILL have to wait out that Tank or Healer to join.

If your DD queue is taking too long, be a part of the solution and play the Tank! You don't lose anything! (especially when you ask politely for certain drops)

This is accepted, there will always be more DD's than tanks/healers. The point is, to maximize the utilization of those tanks/healers.


Why just solemnly nod saying, no matter what, dd's will outnumber tanks lets do nothing to change the situation.

When we could adjust the ratio and size of parties, get more people into events, and let more people have fun doing what they want to do?

Almost every DPS queue wahhhh thread eventually has the OP say "Why should I have to pay a fee, to play a class I do not want to play?"
And usually I snark them asking why should someone else have to play a tank(/healer) so they don't?

But the point is, not everyone wants to be a tank(/healer).
Not everyone is suited to playing a tank(/healer).

Analogy time.

At my work, there are far more employees than (convenient) parking spaces.
Do we just ignore the situation and and shrug saying "we will always have more employees than spaces, oh well".
Or, do you build bigger parking lots AND motivate people to carpool.

Tank = meatshield
meat = commodity
commodity = resource
Tank = resource

When you have limited resources, you maximize the usage of what you have AND try to create alternatives.

The status quo is making people unhappy and dissatisfied. Dissatisfied gamers don't stick around long.

[zdub303]

To everyone who thinks that no one wants to play tank you're very wrong. I really enjoy playing a tank in MMOs and there are a lot of people like me.

If you increase the party size to 1:1:100 just for example. Tanks would almost never be able to play. You would need like... 10 tanks online per server at any one time. At that point you would actually have people who would rather tank play dps instead just so they could get a slot.

So we know there is a ratio out there of people who wish to play tanks, play healers, and play dps. A good game designer would try to design his content such that party sizes emulate that ratio as close as he can.

Whatever you wanna say, 1:1:2 is just silly... period. We know for a fact that less than 25% of the population in an MMO want to tank. However... how many of you guys able to instantly find a shout group for titan? I know in RT on Coeurl, you can almost never find a tank spot for a shout group on titan, so 1:2:5 is getting closer to that ratio.

We know there are more healers than tanks out there as well, and if we could see how many DPS and Healers are in queue for any specific dungeon we could probably give a more accurate estimate (also have to consider that a lot of tanks like myself don't use the DF). Generally from past MMO experience the ratio is more like 1 Tank to 1.5-2 Healers to 5-6 DPS. DF usage is probably more like 1 : 2 : (8-10) given that many Tanks and Healers can find groups without the use of the DF.

So maybe the solution is for SE to continue forward making content that is like titan and do a full party setup with 1:2:5 instead of 2:2:5 and give melee DPS more tools to off tank adds.

[Kazamoto]

Other than expanding the size of parties to help the DPS/Tank ratio.

There is one other thing that could be done to add a huge amount of tanks to the game.

Add a new tank class. The rush to play a new class will pull people away from everything else, and balance out the game a little more.

[Astarica]

If you've been playing tank consistently in MMORPGs you'd realize there's a trend toward making tanks irrelevent which is why if you're actually good enough to play a tank back in the old days where tanking was hard, you'd gradually graviate toward another class (almost certainly DPS) once you realize your class's role is marginalized. Take the hardest 4-man DF content, AK. The hardest boss, Demon Wall, doesn't even have an aggro list (his nuking patter is random). The final boss, Anataboga, basically features the tank standing in a spot and never moving. This is because devs eventually realized that making tanking a bottleneck fails in two ways. First, you'd actually need someone good to be a tank, and second, if you've someone good at a tank, then that guy can often carry the whole group by himself and you don't want that either. This design, however, inevitably leads to a shortage in tank. Increasing the DPS to tank ratio wouldn't help much, because if you need less tanks, more tanks will realize their irrelevance and reroll as DPS and thus skewing the ratio. You can't live without tanks, but they don't need to be great players, which is why you don't have very many tanks.

[Hanabira]

I dunno if this has been mentioned, but making parties 1 tank 1 healer and the rest DD would pretty much turn battles into every other game. Where basically the tank holds the mob away, the healer spamscure on them, and the DDs just spam away. The way we have it now, you can act as 2 smaller parties with different roles and the battles can be much more creative, IE coil. (split mechanics, ADS stacking mechanics) etc

[Naunet]

I dunno if this has been mentioned, but making parties 1 tank 1 healer and the rest DD would pretty much turn battles into every other game. Where basically the tank holds the mob away, the healer spamscure on them, and the DDs just spam away. The way we have it now, you can act as 2 smaller parties with different roles and the battles can be much more creative, IE coil. (split mechanics, ADS stacking mechanics) etc

None of those mechanics are actually new, and a 5 (or 6) person standard party transformed into a 10 or 20 or 25 (or whatever) raid has led to some extremely creative mechanics in the games you've decided are nothing more than tank and spank.

[zdub303]

None of those mechanics are actually new, and a 5 (or 6) person standard party transformed into a 10 or 20 or 25 (or whatever) raid has led to some extremely creative mechanics in the games you've decided are nothing more than tank and spank.

I agree, in most other games (that i've played), the 20 man raids usually only had and/or needed 2-3 tanks anyways. In FF14 a 24 man raid will have 6 (SIX!!!) tanks. Tbh that seems a little silly.