The only real way to solve DPS queues

[Fyrebrand]

I completely agree.

The status quo for most MMORPGs has always been 5-player groups: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, and 3 DPS. Even then, extraordinarily long DPS queue time has consistently been an issue across the board. It's completely ridiculous that FFXIV not only failed to acknowledge or address this dilemma -- it actually made a bad situation much worse, by reducing party size to require fewer DPS roles.

I've had queues on my DPS character that exceeded 75+ minutes. After grinding FATEs and Leves ad nauseum, I'd had enough, and just logged off in disgust. I don't understand how anyone but the most dedicated and determined Final Fantasy fans play a DPS class as their main at all. Indeed, if I didn't enjoy playing Healer as a main, I probably wouldn't be here now.

It's just common sense. If one role has instant queues, one has relatively short queues, and one role has extremely long queues, then obviously the proportion of players actually playing these roles is not accurately represented in the standard party make-up. Back in World of Warcraft, anybody could tell you that more than 3/5ths of people were playing DPS at any given time. I don't know how anybody ever got the idea that "No, it's probably less that 3/5ths, it's more like half." You'd have to be high as a kite.

It's probably too late to adjust previous dungeons without a near-total redesign, but there's no reason new content going forward couldn't easily be made with 3 DPS in mind.

To me the queue times are a serious class-balancing issue -- maybe not in terms of combat mechanics, but in a foundational, "meta" way. In an online game so heavily focused on dungeon and party content, I expect the fundamental composition of those parties to be considered carefully so as to be realistic and functional. By ignoring this core aspect of their game and pretending it doesn't exist, it kind of seems like they don't take the matter seriously and value their customers' time.

[Rennies]

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I definitely wouldn't play this game if I enjoyed DPS jobs the most. I'm never in the mood to wait for 20+minutes for a single dungeon.

[Inosaska]

You have to lead every dungeon you do, since DPS or healers pulling is a very bad idea.

I just grab things and use my aoe enmity not really that hard to hold targets.

[Shurrikhan]

Eh? If the system remained similar, it would still prioritize 1 melee, 1 ranged, and 1 or 2 others. From my understanding the system tries to avoid matching with double of the same job and that should retain as the DPS queue still has a large pool of DPS players, it just lets more through the door.

Honestly if you were able to get 5-10 min queues instead of 20-30 min queues in exchange for a slight decrease in chance for picking up a piece of gear or 2 for your job that may or may not drop anyway? I would personally prefer faster queue times. The marketboard is there for "fill in" slots. You're not likely going to get fully geared out in the 6-8 runs of a dungeon anyway.. At least I am not in my current levelling climb for my off jobs. If it wasn't for stored gear for the loot I had greeded on other jobs during my climb I wouldn't have much gear at all..

RNG is always going to be RNG. Dungeon drops are a bonus but you shouldn't rely on them.

It doesn't technically have to be, though. WoW is only one example, and a later one at that, of "personal" loot, wherein each player loots from their own loot table, or "party" loot, where possible drops are limited to those that are not already possessed by each member who can use them. Similarly, there's always currency, for which we still have almost our entire "key item" space to hold, if SE would just finally transfer non-tradeable currencies to that section. Or there's internal RNG normalization, wherein your character data stores a hidden counter for loot chance, increased with each failure and decreased with each usable drop received, weighted or not according to that item's strength.

Oh I definitely don't think it's impossible (apologies if I actually said it was as I didn't mean it literally). I would be all for scaling content, and think it would be fantastic if it were fairly easy to do - however we had a very tough time getting "true" scaling FATEs when we asked for them for the "years" and still haven't recieved anything remotely close to what we wanted in my opinion. I feel like it would be another story for dungeon content as dungeons require mechanics to be scalable which may limit the ability to design some of them. Mechanics such as having to jump into a bubble when a limited number of bubbles pop in order to avoid a big AoE come to mind. I mean I am sure they could add more bubbles in this case, however it wouldn't exactly be the easiest thing to implement I imagine.

FATEs have a few disadvantages that dungeons do not. They spawn in waves, and therefore can only check player count and/or composition accordingly. Chances are, early leavers will do so at the tail of a wave, but not so quickly as to remove their contribution to the next wave's "sync". Etiquette itself does little to prevent that, but as relative party contribution required for a gold has been decreased it shouldn't be a necessary issue by any means.

Further, they provide few opportunities for assessment. You could, for instance, (this bit irrelevant to player count scaling) have a dungeon mechanic that increases in speed with each failure to damage the party and lasts until someone screws up in order to provide increased rewards, but FATEs, as with most open-world content, have tended towards a slightly more zero-sum idea of rewards. It would take time to remove those habits completely to allow for more detailed cooperative play.

And the last of course is that open world parties rarely function as such. Even in instanced 24-man raids, there's little expectation of per-party positioning coordination until they would be lethal to each other, smaller benefits be damned. This also works contrarily to the 'join freely' concept of FATEs, for which only parties have access to AoE heals, etc., making it difficult to tailor healing needs to the healer count involved, because their hps could be tripled or cut to a third just depending on whether they are in a party, and of how many people in range.

In dungeons, however, you can make benchmark assessments of DPS, etc. in order to alter later content (and its rewards) accordingly because you have a more or less set party. A portion or degree of these would have to be scrapped and returned to normal should a player abandon, and be replaced by a player of any or the same role, respectively, but on average you are free to tailor.

The only real design limiter I can imagine is that either boss arena sizes would also have to be scaled, which still has a mild additional impact on (especially melee) uptime, or player-marked AoEs and the like would have to be scaled smaller to allow for the same level of safety possible as in a 4-man party in the same limited area, which also may impact uptime.

I will address your 2nd point with my first one. Similar story - I think it would be great if we could scale them, however I think it would be more challenging to do, rather than a flat increase in the number of DPS slots.

Either way, that comes back to scaling the dungeon difficulty based on this new composition. If that were an issue then sure, it would likely be looked at in terms of balancing that difficulty.

I imagine it would be easier to balance unreleased content then it would be to go back and attempt to balance existing content with a new system like this..

Lastly, yes it is unlikely that this will happen - however it is honestly a way to improve the queue time for DPS. Not just for Stormblood but for beyond.

I truly believe any opportunity they can take to work towards a long-usable intuitive design now is entirely worth its effort, so long as they don't drop into the red, content-release-wise (and even then, if something like this refreshes enough content, such as by being temporarily framed into random daily bonus dungeons, perhaps even for different player counts, it would still absolutely pay off). Composition-based scaling, allowing for, say, greater avoidable damage and swap-mechanics in the case of an all-DPS party, as to make it highly challenging but technically survivable, or giving reason to use 2 tanks in a 5-man 2/1/2 party, may not be worth designing for the time being, but allowing at least for an inflated DPS count, with slightly increased requirements on heals and tanks indirectly atop greater mob and boss health, due count safety mechanics, targeted AoEs, etc., should be an amazingly strong QoL increase in the early days of the expansion, and with lasting benefits.

[Cylestea]

dungeons use to be 4-8 people back in 1.0...... no -_-

[RaizeGraymalkin]

People really exaggerate queue times. They really aren't that bad and I say this as a DPS. They don't need to do anything drastic.

[Belhi]

I think people vastly underestimate the time and resources it would take to actually add an extra slot to the party structure even if they didn't go back and redo every existing piece of content, which depending on how the grouping system was structured they might have to do. Yes, you can currently have 5 players in a group but its quite possible the existing tech wont let you cap a group at 5 members and its a cold day in hell that I am willing to run a dungeon with 6 random dps and one tank every day for my roulettes.

Oh and on healing challenge..

Healing challenging mechanics is enjoyable. Healing stupid isn't. Its frustrating and annoying. More players wont add much in the way of mechanical challenge. It will just add more stupid.

[AutoWhit]

I play a tank and I've never lead anything so I don't know where you get the idea that tanks have to be leaders?

Apparently you don't understand the meaning of the quotes?

[Shurrikhan]

I completely agree.

The status quo for most MMORPGs has always been 5-player groups: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, and 3 DPS. Even then, extraordinarily long DPS queue time has consistently been an issue across the board.

If DPS queues have been long despite having triple the allotable population, then consider: what do tanks and healers have that makes them less attractive queuing choices? While I'm sure those things can be framed in a variety of ways, the central idea, I'd argue, is usually the same—responsibility. In a dungeon, should a healer fail, the party dies. Should a tank fail, the party dies. Yet, can a DPS normally even fail, especially in any unique or "role-specific" way?

In Overwatch, for instance, a healer is a centerpiece of strategy. They hold the positional web, but the web in turn safeguards them. Tanks support in a closer, more by-event fashion, but must similarly know therefore how to make the most out of those they support. But so too must a damage specialist know how to make the most out of pressure, out of baiting, out of coordination, and how to shape the web for cover and focus, in addition to whatever mechanical skill is required to make the most of their own potential individually. All are capable and culpable of group outcomes.

Yet in XIV, there is only typically one—or on rare occasion where forced by specific mechanics such as buffing tethers, auras, or self AoEs, or overwhelming damage eHP burst splitable through targeting, two—central figures, and one battery that sustains it. All else is superficial acceleration. To achieving something quickly, these are paramount, but in the expectation of non-optimal performance, focused on the primary or essential requirements, these are "extras", free of any real responsibilities. And so those who fear responsibility flock to them, atop and overwhelming whosoever wants a change of perspective or to test a new toolkit style or priority system. Make all both culpable and capable of group outcomes, not just clearing speed, such that their base and optimal difficulties are more equal, and the proportions will level. Break attempts at oversimplification. Make the path of least resistance that which is situationally and mathematically sound, rather than the tunnel-vision of "roles". Finally, when the fears have passed, perhaps even allow players to queue as more than just one job. And then you'll finally have your queue times fixed.

[Brian_]

I just don't think you are ever going to be able to balance the burden of responsibility in a party -- trinity or not. There will always been leaders and followers, people who step up and perform and people who just want to get by.

Giving DPS more responsibility is not going to do anything but force everyone else to carry them harder. And, if it ever gets to the point where they can't be carried, then people just quit.

Proof? 3.0-3.3X

I don't even think the current system is that flawed. I just feel like if you're going to force players to shoulder a bigger responsibility, then you're going to need to support them appropriately.

In principle, this isn't that different from many other aspects of this game. For raiders, if you're going to ask that they invest their time and skill, then some of them are going to expect to be rewarded. We saw what happened in Savage SCoB when they weren't.

Gifting 2 of the most popular jobs in FF history to DPS is not exactly a sign of support. Not releasing a tank or healer in an expansion is not a sign of support. Many have said that they're waiting to see what changes are made to existing tanks / healers but if the changes are merely a formality, then that won't be a sign of support.

A paltry amount of bonus gil or experience is not enough. Tank / Healer exclusive mounts only last so long. Fast queues is a meaningful incentive and successfully lures people to the roles but it's clearly not enough to bring some semblance of balance to queues. Then you have this topic trying to take that incentive away from the roles and assuming it won't make the problem exponentially worse.

Just look at DRK. The role was rewarded with one of the most popular jobs in the game and queues flipped on their head for a month+. I can guarantee that if SAM was a tank, DPS and healers would again have instant queues for everything.

This is a game of carrots and sticks. It's not that complicated. Like it or not, we live in the age of instant gratification. Expecting people to change is foolish.

What you're seeing with tanks / healers starting to charge for their services is the system correcting itself.