Time to address long queue times for low level players

[Kiroh]

I'm guessing the OP wasn't around for launch so I'll just say this : There is a good reason the duty finder was separated in the first place.

[aisustrong]

I'm guessing the OP wasn't around for launch so I'll just say this : There is a good reason the duty finder was separated in the first place.

that reason being?

[Kiroh]

that reason being?

A ridiculously huge amount of stress on the servers that, when they weren't crashing (constantly), caused players to have to wait over an hour or longer AFTER the Duty Finder formed a full group just to get an open instance slot.

[Sapphic]

A ridiculously huge amount of stress on the servers that, when they weren't crashing (constantly), caused players to have to wait over an hour or longer AFTER the Duty Finder formed a full group just to get an open instance slot.

Hah! I totally remember 30 min-1hr que times, with a full party!

Still egt them now on my data centre, albeit, nowhere near as long.

[Milmoko_Gemoko]

TLDR: Merge all data centres together for the Duty Finder, queue times are becoming a huge problem for DPS players, especially those of us playing during off-peak American hours (Oceanic players)

Er the Duty Finder is Cross Server, never asked anyone what world their on while in duty?

I play on Phoenix but select all world/language groups and often get parternered with US players (on US worlds), other EU worlds and yes even sometimes JP players.

I think the problem is no-one likes playing tank apart from me and i guess a few thousand other players lol.

[SecretCrowds]

Er the Duty Finder is Cross Server, never asked anyone what world their on while in duty?

I play on Phoenix but select all world/language groups and often get parternered with US players (on US worlds), other EU worlds and yes even sometimes JP players.

I think the problem is no-one likes playing tank apart from me and i guess a few thousand other players lol.

OP is asking for cross data centre, not cross server within a data centre.

If you end up with players of other language, they were playing on the same data centre. If they were of a different data centre, the ping would be horrendous.

An AUS player connecting to a JP data centre gets 150 ping. From the JP data centre to the NA data centre is about 300 ping. That would give them a total of 450 ping.

[Sapphic]

TLDR: Merge all data centres together for the Duty Finder, queue times are becoming a huge problem for DPS players, especially those of us playing during off-peak American hours (Oceanic players)

You do realise that merging the data servers would not only take the extra tanks and healers but all the DPS too?
Queues would not change, they may even get worse as the pool of DPS would increase exponentially yet still maintaining that imbalance of DPS to tanks and healers.

It is not the lack of players queing that causes long queue times for DPS is that there are too many DPSers queing for the number of players using tanks in low level.

TLDR: Your idea solves nothing ^_^

[Zfz]

The game was originally designed with everyone connecting to Japan, but the unbearable delays for the US region players during beta testing made them change the plans and create the US data center. Then at launch the login rush that happened which happens again at every maintenance made them change the lobby structure, and finally the stress on the cross-realm Dungeon Finder servers made them separate each data center into server groups.

To re-merge everything back is to throw away all that progress and delve back into chaos that we have left behind.

Personally, I don't do the low level roulette anymore on my 50PLD&WHM because the meagre 5 Poetics is a joke, and the 7500 gil role bonus isn't worth giving up the time I need to spend idling waiting for the daily mob hunt FATEs. Some FATEs would take up to 1 hour to spawn. The lack of housing plots for purchase means that 7500 gil isn't of much use to me now anyway (got 4 million gil but no S plot to buy---the system itself devalues its currency due to extremely limited supply of its biggest currency sink).

For people still leveling, the daily roulette exp bonus is good, but the role bonus simply isn't worth the time, and the frequency that level 15~17 dungeons pop is just too much to bear. So on my other battle classes, I'd rather just run FATEs than do my hundredth or so Sastasha run. When I do want some dungeon drops, I designate the highest level dungeon I can do, because anything below that would only give me rubbish anyway.

For capping Poetics for the badly geared, the low level roulettes are also a joke. Spamming Sycrus Tower is easier and faster (15 Poetics), not to mention it gives you iLv100 gear and Sands and Oils for upgrading Soldiery gear. And if you're geared, just do an Expert Roulette a day and you're done.

The root problem is simply content getting outdated. You can only force people to do old content to a certain extent, beyond that you are going to lose customers. The static nature of all content in this game means there's virtually no replay value to the content itself---not even difficulty because all the leveling dungeons are positioned as learning dungeons, tuned to be easy mode for even the average MMO player. Virtually the only reason to repeat the same content is for the rewards.

So the only solution really is the NPC party solo plan, which I guess probably will not be implemented until late 3.x or even 4.0.

[Nutz]

The proposed solution (from the OP) would actively harm the game. It would help nothing and increase lag and server stress. The problem is not the number of people trying to complete low level dungeons (though there are few at any given time). The problem is the distribution. The only way this could be changed is for the distribution of available jobs to more closely match the distribution for a 4 man dungeon (1:1:2). That's almost certainly not going to happen and would only be completely effective if you assumed equal distribution of classes played.

To lower the queue times sufficiently there would need to be a significant reward for tanks (and healers) to run low level dungeons. This reward would probably have to be unavailable to DPS, however that might not be necessary since you'd mostly be drawing the level 50 crowd where many more people are playing tanks and healers for a variety of reasons -- sometimes just for low que times.

To say that "it's time to address this issue" is also very silly since it's been a bane to anyone working on their relic weapon the extent to which SE has been (perhaps ineffectively) addressing this issue.

[Elusana_Celah]

People keep talking about long queue times but over the course of the last month and a half I took 3 chars to level 50, a bard, a scholar and a monk and I really didn't think 15-30 minutes was that bad? I just did some fates while waiting and I leveled up really dang fast. I mean I guess if you're sitting there watching the Time Expired under Duty Status it would be awful :P