Time to address long queue times for low level players

[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 ^_^

[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.

[aisustrong]

The real question is: Why the hell is low-level roulette a 60-minute wait when WoD and expert take 5-10 minutes tops as a DPS?

There's an obvious incentive distribution problem going on when players just don't want to do LL roulette.

I saw someone suggest ll give allied seals
I usually run it as war with in progress checked, but honestl out of pity for the low level players esp dps
the tome reward is pathetic


I'd make sure to never miss a day though if it gave say 100 allied

[Stormrider]

The real question is: Why the hell is low-level roulette a 60-minute wait when WoD and expert take 5-10 minutes tops as a DPS?

There's an obvious incentive distribution problem going on when players just don't want to do LL roulette.

It is weird the sanctity of the hunt. We could also just have a weekly quest with 7 low level roulette's give a reward that gives what ever the upgrade item currently is. I used to instant que once a day on tank for LL. It is not worth it and some people think you are there slave. Some places you just want to get in and out ie. Aurum Vale.

[Kosmos992k]

They can make it so the next relic quest will involve having to do low-level roulette daily to get whatever item needed for the update.

I think they can also make it so low level dungeons can occasionally bring forth bright light or whatever

If they do that, based on what I am seeing in another thread, the net effect will be to put grumpy ass players who are only there because they have to be indungeons with players trying them,potentially for the first time. That would be a bad recipe.

Someone mentioned the short supply of tanks earlier in the thread, I thing this is a huge part of the problem. The problem is thatwhen SE added an incentive for tanks continuing to support the community by running things in DF, they utterly failed to address the problem and made the only rewarding content (in terms of the special mount reward) end-game contentwhich many tanks already have other incentives to run. From what I understand, the incentive for a veteran lvl 50 tank to run lowlevel roulette is not sufficient for the time commitment when compared to speed running something else. That is, unless that player simply wishes to help - which to be honest I do. But, the number of tanks who do that is currently insufficient for the need.

[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

[aisustrong]

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

tank is instant
on everything but ex primals, st, and wod

[Luvbunny]

The real question is: Why the hell is low-level roulette a 60-minute wait when WoD and expert take 5-10 minutes tops as a DPS? There's an obvious incentive distribution problem going on when players just don't want to do LL roulette.

This is the most pressing question that they FAIL to answer many times over... The reward for low level roulette is simply horrendous for any well geared level 50 to even bother doing it. SE should have revise the reward to 150 Soldiery and 40 Poetic. And on top of that they should add "adventure in needs" reward to additional 50 soldiery and 20 poetic plus 15k gil, 50 allied seal. To sweeten the bonus, any tanks of healer can repeat the adventure in needs bonus as many as they can. This is pretty much the same bonus as doing mid level endgame dungeons.

The benefits for this are two folds, it helps lower level players to get steady supply of healer and tanks. It also helps FRESHIE healers and tanks to gather as many currency as they need to buy gears without having to deal to run endgame dungeons with their lower level gears. Often this is the problem that fresh level 50 will have to face, adding currency to lower level dungeons as bonus for adventure in needs would help them gears faster.

Another good idea would be to implement standard 40 soldiery and 10 poetics on all lower level dungeons if you are level 50. Add extra rare mounts, crafting materials and minion from dungeons level 35, 38, 41, 44, and 47 - and suddenly you have big incentives for people to do this.