Please do something about duty finder queues...

[Althea]

Then even less people would make tanks/healers, in 2 months you have the same issue.

You'd probably see a little bit of that, but not enough to make it as unbalanced as it is now. It'd still help later down the road. I don't think that a large majority of the people who are playing tanks or healers are only playing them for fast queues.

[Cinicus]

Release a 3rd tank and a 3rd healer and musketeer and lets go from there. People will want to play all of those and it would increase the tank/healer to dps ratio.

[Jyoeru]

Oh, also telling people to "just roll a tank" is kind of invalid ideology. Telling people to play something they don't want to is certainly not a good way to try and keep a game afloat.

Not really. It's an MMO. Telling people to roll a tank to help with the short supply of tanks is like telling people in your neighborhood to shovel their part of the sidewalk so everyone can enjoy it. It may not be what you want to do, but if most people don't want to do it, then I guess they will have to just wait until those who are can accommodate their group.

There are other fixes, but someone is going to get burned for it, or the game will become completely over-the-top easy. Perhaps you'd like AI tanks and healers? Perhaps you'd like self-heals and the ability to tank all the things. WOW hasn't figured it out in 10 years, SE isn't likely to find a solution either. This is a player base problem.

Why don't people want to tank? It's not much different than doing DPS.

[Althea]

Telling people to roll a tank to help with the short supply of tanks is like telling people in your neighborhood to shovel their part of the sidewalk so everyone can enjoy it. It may not be what you want to do, but if most people don't want to do it, then I guess they will have to just wait until those who are can accommodate their group.

It sounds good on paper, and I'm sure there will be a few good, decent people who will do their part to try and help; however I think we're really talking about a handful among an ocean you know?

I think for most people (judging by forum posts/news/my own personal beliefs), that it's just easier to quit and find something new to play, or to go back to something they already enjoyed. An MMORPG is a product, and you have to properly sell that product. There's no such thing as a perfect product, but it's in the company's best interests to continually evolve that product to better suit the customers.

I always hate bringing this subject up because it generally becomes a flame war, but I've always really commended Blizzard on how they handled certain aspects with World of Warcraft. They understood that their game was a product - one that's mutually beneficial for them, and the consumers. They are, and always have been, very transparent with their customers and have always tried to evolve their game to better suit the customers - as a whole. I know people will disagree with me, and I understand that Warcraft wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but their numbers just don't lie.

I had such high hopes for this game. This was literally the only MMO I truly had my eye on, and I still feel like it could be amazing; but SE's lack of transparency, and willingness to appeal to more than a niche group of gamers is really holding it back.

Why don't people want to tank? It's not much different than doing DPS.

This, I don't really know. For me, in Warcraft, it was just because it was too monotonous. In raiding it was generally taunt off the other tank at X number of stacks, whereas DPS had fire to dodge, tail swipes to stay out of, adds to switch to, specific mobs to prioritize, along with actual DPS requirements to get content down. I also really enjoy healing. But that's just me.

[Jyoeru]

This, I don't really know. For me, in Warcraft, it was just because it was too monotonous. In raiding it was generally taunt off the other tank at X number of stacks, whereas DPS had fire to dodge, tail swipes to stay out of, adds to switch to, specific mobs to prioritize, along with actual DPS requirements to get content down. I also really enjoy healing. But that's just me.

Okay, I will meet you in the middle here. I don't think many people enjoy tanking over DPS because they don't get as many mechanics they have to overcome compared to the rest of the players, and because the only thing exciting that usually happens in tanking is having to scramble to recapture threat, which usually ends up with a lot of nasty things being said to said tank. I, personally, hate tanking. It's fairly boring, and when it's exciting is usually because someone else screwed up and I need to fix it. That doesn't happen too often, and most of tanking is tied up to the gear. I'd rather not tank, but I don't want to DPS (especially with the queues they have to deal with). A lot of the mechanics they have to overcome are really for healers, such as Titan's table flip. We can convert tank roles to pure DPS and drop tanks. We could increase map mechanics and healing danger and give each class a set of either healing or avoidance or absorption abilities they would have to use smartly. You can't get rid of healing, however, because I think a lot of people who heal--like me--love that role over a DPS rotation (when it's done right).

But judging by what I have seen and still see with fights like Titan HM, I'd say this would be even more frustrating because people would have a hard time overcoming additional mechanics and the responsibility of health management. Might be worth a try at least. I don't think the queue times are anywhere near as dependent on healers as they are on DD. Add a few more healing classes with some diversity, remove tanks, and perhaps that will eliminate this issue.

Let's be real honest here. If you're a monster with a taste for blood, you are going to eat anything before you. Something yelling at you probably isn't going to do it. If so, perhaps there are fight mechanics where something like a bard has to kite the boss, or other players have to CC the boss at the right time. Perhaps the concept of just dpsing hard and tanking well aren't enough to give the game adequate replayability and cater to the larger audience.

Yeah, I rather like that idea now that I think about it. But if the assumptions about most people who play DD are true--and I think they frequently are having seen the MMOs from all three roles--the parties won't work out as well, and healers might be more inclined to throw their computer at the cat and quit the game for lack of advancing.

There are plenty of mechanics that could be employed to make this viable. The only reason we have tanks now is because developers make other people squishy. The more powerful the role, usually the more squishy. Perhaps we can add pure support classes too (like a geomancer--I would play the crap out of a true geomancer who had to use abilities based on terrain rules in a multi-terrain environment). They won't be required, but the run will be way better with them involved.

Yes, that's it. Add true and pure support classes that are optional but ideal to take along. Remove tanks. Split tank support and some healing among all players who have to use those abilities at the right times to survive, and perhaps we will all win then. What MMOs lack are true tactics. War: the original MMO(ffline).

[Althea]

We can convert tank roles to pure DPS and drop tanks. We could increase map mechanics and healing danger and give each class a set of either healing or avoidance or absorption abilities they would have to use smartly.

I believe they actually did this for Guild Wars 2. I haven't played it, so I'm going off just what I heard on this one. Apparently there are no tanks - everybody just kind of does their own thing to survive and have a lot of self heals or ways to avoid/mitigate damage. Interesting concept.

[Jyoeru]

I believe they actually did this for Guild Wars 2. I haven't played it, so I'm going off just what I heard on this one. Apparently there are no tanks - everybody just kind of does their own thing to survive and have a lot of self heals or ways to avoid/mitigate damage. Interesting concept.

I should probably check out guild wars tbh. I am already bored of the grind of this game. I don't feel about it as I did WOW. I am like you, I really want to love it and have it be everything I ever wanted, but it isn't. And I doubt it ever will be.

[Wolfhammer]

Thank you for your continued feedback to this issue.

The development team is aware of the long wait times that players are experiencing with the duty finder and are checking on the causes and ways to make improvements moving forward.

Im fairly certain a lot of the wait times are due to server capacity rather than the availability of players queued. In other words we're not sat waiting for players in some cases, but instead waiting for a group to finish freeing up a server slot.

[Bluevann]

I wouldn't mind queuing as tank if at least I could set duty finder to allow me to Need as the class I'd prefer playing instead (BLM).

[ApolloGenX]

Well, if the game was set up to actually have community consequences and wasn't an anti-social lobby game, then playing tanks would be more rewarding. You could do a good job and become known as a good player.

Instead, it is anonymous spam runs and people screaming and being abusive to tanks for any little mess up, or even for gear. It's not any fun. I ran an instance yesterday and told them it was my first time in the instance, and they said that I wasn't being payed to be a "mentally challenged" (used the r-word) player and to waste people's time.. so why did I insist on doing just that?

One player (the healer) was very nice and said I was doing great... and asked why they were being rude, and they said "Because I am not claiming to be a tank, but doesn't know what I am supposed to do"... FFS, I never lost agro, no one was dying... but that is what DF gets you as a tank...

Gee, I wonder why groups have to wait for tanks...

Of course healers and tanks are less represented... the game is set up so that people can be abusive and rude, so the roles with the most visible responsibilities have a giant target painted on their foreheads.