Once again screwed in a dungeon!

[Ogulbuk]

players: "Not enough people running these dungeons! Fix plz!"
SE: "Okay, now they have to run the dungeons whether they want to or not."

I keep seeing this not only in this thread but others. I am unfortunately not able to start new topics, but I think the issue is not that "not enough people are running these dungeons" but instead simply that there is too high a dps-to-tank+healer ratio. Almost all high level players I see join in are either tanks or healers. I think once I saw a dragoon. My guess is high level players are smart enough to just que in as the job that will get them a fast group, and use their rewards for whatever they need (unless they are trying to upgrade their relics something I still don't understand how that works.) This system has artificially lowered the ratio because high level players in a rush mainly que as those jobs, but that also leads to players that just want to rush through the content being in a position of power in the party.

This is where I go all crazy and propose some over-complicated change to the game:

What if the Dungeon Finder was able to dynamically resize groups? If too many DPS have been waiting in the que (lets say 5 minutes is “too long”) then the Dungeon Finder changes it’s behavior and starts attempting to put together a larger group, as large as required to accommodate as many as possible. In addition to this, the Dungeon will dynamically be buffed, every single critter in the dungeon will have an HP buff that accounts for the increase in player count. Example (I assume here that a tank does 75% the damage of a DPS, this is a number I pulled out of thin air, I don’t know the balance correlation of these class archetypes in this game yet)

4 man (1 TNK,1 HLR,2 DPS) = +0% HP
5 man (1 TNK,1 HLR,3 DPS) = +35% HP
6 man (1 TNK,1 HLR,4 DPS) = +75% HP
7 man (1 TNK,1 HLR,5 DPS) = +110% HP
8 man (1 TNK,1 HLR,6 DPS) = +145% HP

Tactic wise, for the most part, this would not change the design of any dungeon, as you still are rellying on a single tank to do his job against the same number of enemies, and a single healer keeping him standing. There may be a bit of an issue if extremely complex mechanics are used in a particular dungeon (guesswork: some boss somehow permanently holds a single DPS with the goal of halving DPS for a phase of a fight) But leveling dungeons is not where the real challenge is, the real challenge is reserved for the level 50 raids and those are already designed for 8 men (although 2 healers and 2 tanks.)

The result of this is that a single tank/healer combo could potentially “service” a much larger volume of DPS players.

Mind you, I have worked on game dev and realize that what I describe here may be one hell of a nightmare to implement, much less convince head designers it is a good idea (and even worse to convince many players that it is not a stupid idea) so just take this as rambling of a lunatic noob that does not what he is talking about :3