The only real way to solve DPS queues

[Keridwyn]

There are far, far more choices in damage-dealers than tanks and healers simply because those two "roles" are far more rarely relevant, and can in many cases be avoided outright.

A side note, as someone who's played D&D/Pathfinder/Others for various years this is misleading because those classes that cannot be built into tanks or healers can be built into something this game lacks...support. Also absolutely no DM I have ever met has run into a pure DPS party with zero healing options beyond potions and not gone 'are you sure?' Tanks are optional, healers are not.

Damage will remain the most popular "role" not just because of the aesthetic -- there are plenty of people who love the beefy plated Fighter or Paladin aesthetic -- but largely because it's the one not wastefully specialized past a certain point.

No, it's because of reaponsibility. People DO NOT WANT to be the ones constantly getting blamed for the mistakes of the whole party. DPS might be more mechanically satisfying to play but unless you are doing something so blindingly obviously wrong even people unfamiliar with the class notice, the only person who might call you out is someone more skilled/familiar with that particular DPS. Play a tank or healer though and suddenly anything that goes wrong is and will be your fault and folks who have little idea how to play your class will feel the need to give you 'advice'. It happens all the time. People don't want this and have never wanted this. It takes a certain mindset to be okay with this. That, more than 'its more fun', is the truth of it.

[Lium]

No, it's because of reaponsibility. People DO NOT WANT to be the ones constantly getting blamed for the mistakes of the whole party.

This is the primary reason I only play DPS classes in every MMO now. I used to play a healer in WoW for a couple years. This was back in vanilla WoW. But it got frustrating keeping bad groups alive and getting blamed for their mistakes. I rerolled a DPS class and haven't looked back in like 11 years.

[Shurrikhan]

No, it's because of responsibility. People DO NOT WANT to be the ones constantly getting blamed for the mistakes of the whole party. DPS might be more mechanically satisfying to play but unless you are doing something so blindingly obviously wrong even people unfamiliar with the class notice, the only person who might call you out is someone more skilled/familiar with that particular DPS. Play a tank or healer though and suddenly anything that goes wrong is and will be your fault and folks who have little idea how to play your class will feel the need to give you 'advice'. It happens all the time. People don't want this and have never wanted this. It takes a certain mindset to be okay with this. That, more than 'its more fun', is the truth of it.

Yes. Agreed. That's... what I just said....

And then there's the responsibilities. Perhaps if the responsibilities of DPS were equally visible, a bit more of the ostensible tank/healer burden taken up by DPS, then the other roles would be more attractive, at least relatively.

And until there is a way for DPS output to actually be visible, that's not going to change. Healers have short-term benchmarks -- did it kill, or did we save? Tanks have short-term, visible benchmarks -- did it kill me, or did I survive? But DPS have none of that. You'll see these very obvious fail-checks in games with CC and no meat-tanks, whereby if the DPS don't deal enough suppressing damage or time out their CC correctly, or lead the attack out, then people die. But in XIV, their only visible responsibilities are the bit in common for all jobs -- did I DDR correctly?

If you want tanks and healers not to feel more burdened with responsibility by comparsion, you need mechanics in which DPS partipate beyond simple damage dealt over the encounter. Be that through CC being returned to the game and made more meaningful, damage able to reduce enemy damage alongside better pacing control, more snap-tanking participation, or whatever else, there needs to be something more than just gradual numbers, something visible.

The problem is that many are all too eager to pass off any participation beyond damage-dealing as subverting the 'holy trinity' or reducing complexity, even though it's exactly what can make team play feel like more than role-by-role tunnel vision, and ultimately adds depth to each role.