The only real way to solve DPS queues

[Altena]

Look I am not gonna pretend I've read the whole thread on this, is 8 pages and I just need to point out one thing:
In WoW you have 3 DPS 1 tank 1 healer for dungeon and the DPS ques might be even longer than they are here, and in WoW you can Que as multiple roles.
Adding 1 DPs spot is not going to make things faster.

I mean that is WoW. The ratio of Tank: Healer: DPS players is probably different. DPS queues currently are roughly 10-20 mins peak, and 20-30 mins off peak on my server. Adding another DPS slot would flat out reduce the time based on those numbers - even if you account for the new people that would queue as DPS because queues don't take as long..

The only situation where this would not reduce time is if an equal number of Tanks decided to jump the queue train back to DPS as there were slots - which would honestly be very unlikely.

Queue system doesnt always work like that. There have been plenty of times where I have got 2 SMN or when HW released 2MCH in a group. The system looks for 1 melee and 1 ranged but if it cant find that it will pair 2 melee or 2 ranged given the circumstance.

No, not always. But there is an algorithm that prioritizes this. You will occasionally get duplicate roles, or duplicate jobs.. However this is considered rare compared to when you get a Melee / Caster.

This generally happens more on off-peak times, or when you have some heavily oversaturation of jobs (NIN being solo released was an example of this, and you likely got more double MCH during early HW as well).

I think they need to remove the holy trinity. They should add a cross ability for classes like what healers have to swap stats. Rip Str and add it to Vit so a dps can tank etc. Let them learn a variety of play styles and such. Then you can have 4 dps, 4 healers, 4 tanks etc all with the ability to drop out of their comfort zone and do what needs to be done to succeed.

Always wondered why healers were the only ones that had to deal with the pita that is juggling between 2 roles.

I am yet to play a game where the removal of the holy trinity truly worked. Guild Wars 2 tried this and to be honest it was a complete failure in my eyes.

I mean if they pulled it off, sure however I would be more inclined to go for a spec tree system, which allowed a job to spec into one role or the other. However this is just flat out too much work for this game in my opinion. You would also have optimal build paths and you would likely end up in a similar situation to what we have now.

[Shurrikhan]

I am yet to play a game where the removal of the holy trinity truly worked. Guild Wars 2 tried this and to be honest it was a complete failure in my eyes.

I mean if they pulled it off, sure however I would be more inclined to go for a spec tree system, which allowed a job to spec into one role or the other. However this is just flat out too much work for this game in my opinion. You would also have optimal build paths and you would likely end up in a similar situation to what we have now.

Honestly, you don't even have to remove the Holy Trinity in order to avoid its stagnation to some extent, especially its contribution to tunnel vision and toolkit waste. You just need to adjust certain underlying mechanics, such as through reforms to mechanics like enmity (and/or to mob AI); perhaps by expanding mechanics like damage splitting, interception, or active dodging; and to add certain mechanics that can place soft windowed or situational limitations to a tank's uptime such as natural vulnerability stacking (e.g. XIII's "chain gauge" as able to affect players as well, and likely stacking slower on tanks than dps, allowing DPS to tank briefly without being overly independent or powerful generally and tanks to still make use of some DPS "snap-tanking"); or rebalance versatility in regards to simultaneous output (mitigation and damage) or functionality (survival and damage-dealing) in a different way, such as damage-based interruption (towards both enemies and allies, making DPS more capable and culpable in regards to survival) and resistance to interruption (probably significantly higher in tanks than melee than ranged than casters, such that a DPS doesn't necessarily have to be one- or two-shot by a mob for a tank to be worthwhile, as the cost can also be in part its damage-dealing).

As for the implications on dungeon-running, this need only extend a bit further—adjusting AoE formulas, as not to so soon or so effectively habituate massive pulls.

[Altena]

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I quit GW2 for a reason.

What you're explaining literally sounds to me like GW2.. Obviously with a few more fluffy bits.. But the concept of "DPS can tank" is GW2 all over again.

It became a bunch of spammy mess at the best of times. If you like that "no well defined roles" style of play then maybe you would like games like GW2. However please keep that kind of stuff out of this game. I much prefer the standard trinity system. I want my Tank to hold a mob while a DPS zergs it and a healer heals.. Call me old fashioned but that's what I subscribe to this game to play.

[Shurrikhan]

I quit GW2 for a reason.

What you're explaining literally sounds to me like GW2.. Obviously with a few more fluffy bits.. But the concept of "DPS can tank" is GW2 all over again.

It became a bunch of spammy mess at the best of times. If you like that "no well defined roles" style of play then maybe you would like games like GW2. However please keep that kind of stuff out of this game. I much prefer the standard trinity system. I want my Tank to hold a mob while a DPS zergs it and a healer heals.. Call me old fashioned but that's what I subscribe to this game to play.

This is immensely reductive.

Why do people assume that when someone says "X can be done without Y", that they're looking for Y? I have played GW2. What I suggested, is nothing like GW2. I have also played several other MMOs that had no permanent tanks, but in no case has that necessarily meant "no well defined roles". It meant only that responsibility was not left to a small portion of the party, unless the MMO failed (as with GW2) to give their players a means of conducting those roles.

The "spammy mess" you speak of in GW2 is a lack of "role" toolkit among those alleged "non-roles", making it impossible to fill those functions for which (a portion of) Trinity roles would be responsible. But that does not mean that you suddenly need specialists for the role, or that there should only ever be two levels of role capacity (the role, and the non-role). You can have multiple shades and styles of capability, so long as you embed reasons for which they cannot take that role with permanent uptime.

Imagine if tanks had no bonus enmity for instance—that is the source of your "spammy mess" in GW2. But the issue isn't not having "tanks". The issue is not having enmity skills. The difference in design, should such toolkits actually exist, is that anyone could participate in tanking, not just taking threat and then dying, and would be responsible for managing that responsibility (saving the current target) with their personal survival and output, in light of incoming raid damage and outgoing raid healing, etc. So you could have a Monk splitting damage during whatever period he is able least affected by positional bonuses, a Dragoon just before Life Surge, etc., along with alternate utilities such as a Bard drawing off enemies slowed by a Miasma II for a brief kite and position them for a Freeze or Tri-bind (because, gasp, we allowed those skills to work again). That ends up highly timeable, sync-able, by-event, quite the opposite of a "spammy mess" (in my opinion, a term better fit to the meat-shielding and tunnel-visioned DPS or mass pulls of 'unadulterated' Holy Trinity play).

Tthis thread is about improving DPS queue times in the system we currently have - simply by increasing the number of slots in a 4-man dungeon to 5-6. Please don't derail it.

So any solution presented to (more fully) mitigate DPS queue times outside of your "only real way" is thread derailment? Really? In that case, what's to talk about? Should I just say "you idea would help, but would be ultimately insufficient" and end flatly, since a counter-suggestion would be taboo?

[Altena]

snip

Orrrr they could just leave it as is...

And up the DPS slots in 4-mans...

It sounds to me like your suggestion or pipedream is worth another thread - rather than this one which is about improving DPS queues by simply changing party composition.

Personally I think this game's system is fine. Albeit some of the jobs are a little binary and could use a bit of a tweak, however the core system we have at the moment is fine.
Again, I would prefer my tanks to tank, my dps to focus on damage and healers to heal.

What you're suggesting is practically flipping the system on its head. And no, I am not down for that.

As I said, feel free to go ahead and create your own thread for this - but this thread is about improving DPS queue times in the system we currently have - simply by increasing the number of slots in a 4-man dungeon to 5-6. Please don't derail it.

[Zojha]

I am yet to play a game where the removal of the holy trinity truly worked.

Surprising, considering that every mechanic where you have to do something other than tank and spank is independent of the trinity. And our fights in FFXIV are loaded with such - stack, spread, stand in position X, don't stand in the fire/telegraph, don't move, don't attack, bring two tethers apart, bring them together, hide behind X, use items (Cannons, Generators etc), step on traps, bait AoEs, react to buffs/debuffs, kill adds on a certain location (Quarn Plates), don't face the boss, count balls over your head and stack with the right amount of people, divebombs...none of these mechanics need the trinity.

On the flipside, the mechanics that do need the Trinity are: Arbitrary unavoidable damage (The one and only healer mechanic). Tank Swap. And the latter is just the first except tanks have to deal with it, not healers.
DPS checks/Enrages are a grey area, but I'd list them under trinity mechanics because they're only necessary when healers are so strong that they'd be able to drag the fight on forever.

Could it be that the non-trinity games you played simply had bad fight design? Because the trinity as such is actually very shallow design - All it adds is non-gameplay in form of unavoidable damage and then limited gameplay to deal with that damage.