any plans to fix DF wait times?

[ChameleonMS]

The fix is beyond obvious, and it's simply to increase number of dps per party..

So just increase the party size? or have DPS replace other key roles?
Both of these would upset the designed balance for a dungeon / raid.

Replacement option:
Yes, older content that mandates 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS without significant level caps (looking at you Praetorium, Garuda Ex) could be done these days with 1-1-6 combination.
But, older content like Copperbell Mines HM (1-1-2) cannot be done without a tank or healer. I suppose if you go slow enough, that you could do it without the tank but I still have my doubts.
New content like Expert roulette dungeons, no way possible.

Increase party size to accommodate more DPS option:
Older content, would become even more stupid easy than it already is.
New content, would lose its balance completely, it could become what HUNTS are, lets kill a boss in 8 seconds, instead of the usual 3.5 minutes, where everyone has to do the mechanics or a wipe can and does happen.
I know, I know, scale the encounter to the number of players involved.


Even if all those above were possible and executed. What would happen from a community point of view? IMO, the career DPS, that play tanks / healers just have a decent queue for daily/weekly would just stop queuing as tank/healer and excerbate the problem again.

[Callinon]

The fix is beyond obvious, and it's simply to increase number of dps per party...

So redesign all the battle content in the game.

Obviously.

[Pibz]

So just increase the party size? or have DPS replace other key roles? snip

First re-tuning content for 1-2 extra per party, as what i mean was simply increase party size to 5 or 6 players like most other MMOs, is extremely easy and as simple as passing all the game's dungeon mobs through a specific modifier and bam problem solved.
This is obviously considering we're approaching an expansion and as such the fine tuning of old content is pretty much a non issue and so they'd just have to do tune the new content for new party setup from scratch.

Second this isn't something that is even questionable, there's example in other games that this is better, You have example in this very game that this solves the issue, CT dps queues were awful, ST and WoD replaced just ONE tank to dps and bam, dps queues are way better than tanks(although if we had 10 per party with 2 extra dps it would have made dps queues better without screwing tanks queues nearly as much). The CT change isn't even close to being as drastic to simply changing the party setup standard to 5 man and adding 1 dps. It would work, and they should implement it .

So redesign all the battle content in the game.

Obviously.

Even if this would take a good amount of time it'd still be worth it, as people waiting sometimes 20m for something that takes 20m to complete is a big issue and totally not reasonable.

[KittytheSheGeek]

Don't blame the healer. If you think you can do better, then you should have picked healer as a class/job.

To be fair, I've seen some REALLY crappy healers. I did a WoD run with a Scholar who decided he would rather DPS than do his job, and we wiped on the final boss three times because of him. The other healer just couldn't keep up, especially because we had a Monk who spent most of the raid dead. So yeah... sometimes you can blame the healer. Sometimes people are just bad at the class they are playing. I don't know what the case is in this instance, but neither do you.

[Callinon]

You have example in this very game that this solves the issue, CT dps queues were awful, ST and WoD replaced just ONE tank to dps and bam, dps queues are way better than tanks(although if we had 10 per party with 2 extra dps it would have made dps queues better without screwing tanks queues nearly as much). The CT change isn't even close to being as drastic to simply changing the party setup standard to 5 man and adding 1 dps. It would work, and they should implement it .

It may not be that simple. DPS queues (at least on my data center) are great for LotA on Tuesday, and absolutely abysmal on Monday. Why? Because people are doing the weekly on Tuesday and not doing it anymore on Monday. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the change to the number of tanks in ST and WoD wasn't so much to help DPS queue timers as it was because they ran out of things for six tanks to occupy themselves with.

[Pibz]

It may not be that simple. DPS queues (at least on my data center) are great for LotA on Tuesday, and absolutely abysmal on Monday. Why? Because people are doing the weekly on Tuesday and not doing it anymore on Monday. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the change to the number of tanks in ST and WoD wasn't so much to help DPS queue timers as it was because they ran out of things for six tanks to occupy themselves with.

Except they said directly it was specifically for that.
Regardless of there being less people doing stuff on monday, dps queue is still faster than tank queue, don't even know what your point is, of course if no one is doing a particular duty it isnt going to pop fast for anyone...

This is all besides the point though, why is there any resistance even to having better queues for everyone, having one more dps per party doesn't change gameplay, it doesn't affect anything the only thing it does is make queuing as dps less annoying.

[ChameleonMS]

This is all besides the point though, why is there any resistance even to having better queues for everyone, having one more dps per party doesn't change game play, it doesn't affect anything the only thing it does is make queuing as dps less annoying.

Having better queue times for everyone is great goal. The resistance is because we have seen previous efforts laid waste with little improvement in the situation.

The underlying problem is still the same.
Not enough tank/healers bother queuing up because for the Low Level (OP situation) and Main Story Roulettes because the current reward is not enough incentive.

Now a combination of your idea, increase the DPS on 4 player with some dungeon scaling and my idea of increasing rewards for Tank / Healers to be worth it, could likely make the queues very decent.
Using myself as an example, I have not queued for the Low Roulette as a 50 character in several weeks because the value is so little to me, 100 Sol & 5 poetics.

I can earn 100 sol and 40 poetics from any expert dungeon that takes me the same amount of time.
I can earn the same SOL from ~3 A Hunts, and get 120 Allied Seals to go with it. 3 Hunts typically take about 20-25 minutes during active windows.
Why would anyone bother running a Low Level that could run an Expert or Hunt? Beyond, the sheer variety for they day, I cannot think of a reason.

While writing this, I recall another idea proposed before on these boards, allow pre-made partial groups to queue the Low Level Roulette. There are many times since stopping the roulette, I have run a low dungeon to help out an FC mate with his levelling. I would take this further and allow the roulette bonus to be applied more than once per day.

[Pibz]

Having better queue times for everyone is great goal. The resistance is because we have seen previous efforts laid waste with little improvement in the situation.

The underlying problem is still the same.
Not enough tank/healers bother queuing up because for the Low Level (OP situation) and Main Story Roulettes because the current reward is not enough incentive.

The problem isn't that there aren't enough tanks or healers queuing up, its that there waaaay more people queuing as dps than there are people queuing up as both tank and healer , yet the system assumes for some weird reason that the population of healers and tanks together is the same as of the dps, which never happens in any game.


What was done before were "incentives", changing the party setup wouldn't be an incentive it would force each tank to be put in a party with 3 dps, it's way harder to get people to do it by going "C'mon do it, i'll give you this bit of gil and tomes" than to just change the setup.

I have no doubt it would work.

As a note i don't even play dps, i play tank and healer every now and then, even though i have a few leveled up, mainly because i can't stand sitting in queue for absurd amounts of time.

But just recently, after starting to level another dps class, i couldn't help but notice that people have to wait a lot of the time 30+ min (this is not off hours, PRIME TIME) to get into a dungeon, which you NEED to clear to progress through the game, and it just makes me confused as to how they don't see the need to address this at all, as the only thing they did was create the roulette, way back, which never did much for improving queues.

[Laraul]

The game offers a small reward in Gil for completing a "Low Level Roulette" as a class that's in high demand (usually tank or healer). It's probably to small to be an incentive. Low Level dungeons are always the most time consuming thanks to "Level Sync" capping each players stats.

[Callinon]

The game offers a small reward in Gil for completing a "Low Level Roulette" as a class that's in high demand (usually tank or healer). It's probably to small to be an incentive. Low Level dungeons are always the most time consuming thanks to "Level Sync" capping each players stats.

To be fair here, that incentive is pathetic.