Question to players

[KaivaC]

Well I'm sorry, but if you ask me, the only toxicity it'll promote is from you because you're less likely to get a free ride in one singular roulette.

Is that toxic enough for you? =P

Keep up with singling me out like this, you'll see some toxicity alright.

[Alaray]

Splitting up the playerbase in a queue to find groups for PvE content is a pretty bad idea, I feel.


Already DPS queues are pretty long, cut the queued amount of people into thirds, and it makes that worse.

Bad players/poor play is kind of just a side-effect of signing up on the DF, you should go into it expecting that you might get someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Which means, if you want to make sure your runs go smoothly and quickly, it'd likely be best to ask for FC/LS/Friends to go through it with you to get it done.

That said, I haven't encountered as many bad players as others seem to. When I DPS, everything dies pretty quick, tanks are holding the mobs, healers are keeping everyone up and doing some damage as they can and so on.

When I tank, sometimes I get a player who is a bit messier in terms of damage output, but really, the runs overall, take about as long as usual -- maybe five extra minutes spent in the duty itself. (MSQ/old content is pretty face-rollable, besides for maybe the first bee pull on Qarn with new players. And then it's just "final sting hurts me real bad" and it's fixed)

When I heal, I've had more issues with paper tanks and egotistical tanks in grade-a garbage equipment expecting me to be happy with it. One slow DPS who stood in things, but again, they're an overall minority for me to run into overall.

(ex.: I had one tank the other day who claimed to have done the double bird into rock dude pull 5x with no issue in Bardam's, when... it was his only tank class, and level 65... so... math there didn't add up, and was in a mix of shisui/non-augmented shire, the shisui being in the minority for items -- like a ring and a neck... and our DPS weren't incredible for AoE, and after using my big cd's on a boss b/c he just stood in every AoE... yeah... frustrating to put up with, but not really the rule for me to deal with)


Ultimately, I just don't feel like the consequences of this system justify the reward. Most people I know are playing incorrectly are receptive to a suggestion to make them hit harder, usually when I encounter hard-casting RDM's, or if it's a mechanics thing, I just explain it and that is usually enough for them to understand what to do in the situation. *shrug*

[Sebazy]

At the risk of taking someone elses thread and running off with it:

Let's take the OP's suggestion and lay down a few firmly defined rules for it:

The ranking would be completely hidden from players, you wouldn't be able to see your own rank, let alone anyone elses.

It would apply to Expert Roulette only, storyline stuff, levelling, trials and 24 mans would be completely unaffected by it.

The odds of it actually causing you to fail your duty are next to non existent, how frequently do you fail an expert roulette?

It would only be a system of prioritisation, it's not going to segregate casuals from hardcores, in short, if there's 4 dps in the queue, it'll pair the highest ranked pair and the lowest ranked pairs together along with any corresponding healers that might be waiting. If there's only 2 DPS in the queue, they will get put together irrespective of their rank. Tanks would still end up first come first served unless a number of them queue at the same time.only

The only legitimate issues that I can see are the following:

Someone can be a 90th percentile Ninja but have no idea what they are doing on Scholar, so would they be paired with people who know what they're doing and expect others to do so as well, even if they queued up on a job they don't know how to play? That might make for unnecessary toxicity.

You could have a rank per job I suppose, but the odds are that that's just going to overcomplicate things. Frankly I'd rather lean on the fact that someone who is seriously good at one job will be more than likely to put in the effort and playing another at a fairly solid level. Even if they don't, their APM is still likely to make them above average thanks to how huge the skill gap can be at times.

• Lack of diversity. It's not that I like running with bad players, but one of the reasons I like random stuff is the wide variety of different types of people you get. Running with the same (type of) people every time, all the time, would get boring fast.

Probably the most legitimate complaint really, if you're a DPS (or healer to a lesser extent) it's likely going to reduce the variance of your expert roulettes to some degree. My thinking here is that in all honesty, unless an expert is horrifyingly bad to the extent where it's going to earn you those sweet likes in the Duty Nightmares thread, it's usually instantly forgotten once you're done. There are those occasions where you do actually meet a fresh player that's actually willing to listen and learn, but then, as 2 posts down shows, that's typically in levelling content, not Expert (you don't pay my sub!). Which leads me onto my next point.

One common view I've not addressed above is the view of it meaning that low tier players won't have the ability to learn from veterans.

I'm sorry but no, that's just garbage at least as far as Expert roulette is concerned. Few people take notice of even an especially high standard of play in Expert, especially those that are underperforming. A good portion of the time it's not because they are bad, it's just because they aren't paying much attention or simply don't care and either way, they aren't going to learn from me irrespective of how many Amazon vouchers I chalk up pulverising my Holy key into dust. People are much more likely to notice cool little tricks and quality play in more challenging content such as trials (My TitanHM landslide baiting was the stuff of legend back in the day) where they are actually going to be paying a bit more attention.

Some of these things are hard to automatically judge. Tanks using cooldowns properly, for example? How does an algorithm judge that? Does SE have to sit down and decide "you should triple pull and use Hallowed Ground here"? That seems impractical. Healing done is another one, because healing done and HPS skyrocket in a group that's taking more damage... which is not a thing you want.

IMHO It'd be best to keep it to a purely DPS related weighting. Why? At the end of the day, this is more about trying to put people together with a similar taste in dungeon speed. We're more concerned about trying to put a tank that's more likely to rush and gather up large pulls with a healer that's expecting just that. It's not about filtering out the 'goods' from the 'bads'.

Top tier players need the occasional reminder that not everyone is them and newer players need to be exposed to people who know what they're doing rather than just each other.

I do actually agree on this one. I guess my gripe is that it's very rare for the bottom rung players to actually pay any attention when they end up alongside someone good.

[Tridus]

The ranking would be completely hidden from players, you wouldn't be able to see your own rank, let alone anyone elses.

It would apply to Expert Roulette only, storyline stuff, levelling, trials and 24 mans would be completely unaffected by it.

The odds of it actually causing you to fail your duty are next to non existent, how frequently do you fail an expert roulette?

It would only be a system of prioritisation, it's not going to segregate casuals from hardcores, in short, if there's 4 dps in the queue, it'll pair the highest ranked pair and the lowest ranked pairs together along with any corresponding healers that might be waiting. If there's only 2 DPS in the queue, they will get put together irrespective of their rank. Tanks would still end up first come first served unless a number of them queue at the same time.only

So the plan is to build a system that in the end can only have the effect of maybe pairing up two similarly ranked DPS with each other, and hoping they wind up with a similar tank and healer, only in expert. That's barely doing anything at significant development cost. If anything it's going to make runs WORSE for tanks and healers because the odds of them getting a DPS group where both aren't matched well (either wanting to go too fast or both being low DPS going slow) are going to be higher than with pure randomness, because you've eliminated the "one high dps and one low dps" group composition.

No thanks. Why would SE want to spend money on that?

[Miksu]

So the plan is to build a system that in the end can only have the effect of maybe pairing up two similarly ranked DPS with each other, and hoping they wind up with a similar tank and healer, only in expert. That's barely doing anything at significant development cost. If anything it's going to make runs WORSE for tanks and healers because the odds of them getting a DPS group where both aren't matched well (either wanting to go too fast or both being low DPS going slow) are going to be higher than with pure randomness, because you've eliminated the "one high dps and one low dps" group composition.

No thanks. Why would SE want to spend money on that?

You wouldn't need this system for expert, and harder content is already pretty self-regulated by people.

Put it in the TRAAAAAAAAAAASH.

[Sebazy]

That's barely doing anything at significant development cost. If anything it's going to make runs WORSE for tanks and healers because the odds of them getting a DPS group where both aren't matched well (either wanting to go too fast or both being low DPS going slow) are going to be higher than with pure randomness, because you've eliminated the "one high dps and one low dps" group composition.

I'm confused? We have a one high dps and one low dps composition now? Isn't it just pure rng with a very slight emphasis on trying to have 1 ranged and 1 melee? Healer's have a fairly reasonable chance of being put with like minded DPS particularly at peak, whereas tanks will likely be the same lottery that we see currently. How is it actively going to make things worse?

Do note that I originally made this suggestion during HW when the DPS disparity between top and bottom tier players was significantly bigger than it is now. Your view on it being a waste of dev time is pretty fair now given how heavily gated the current dungeons are. All 3 experts only really have the potential for one properly massive pull each now, so yeah, I'll concede that point.

[Tridus]

I'm confused? We have a one high dps and one low dps composition now? Isn't it just pure rng with a very slight emphasis on trying to have 1 ranged and 1 melee?

We can. If you're lumping DPS into three categories (Gold/silver/bronze to use OP's terms), under the current system you have a bunch of possible combinations, including (but not limited to) 2 gold, 2 bronze, and gold/bronze (aka one high and one low DPS). This system eliminates the third one, increasing the chances of getting the slowest one possible: 2 bronze. That is going to make the quality of expert runs even more swingy than it is right now for whoever is most in demand and doesn't get to be paired up with equivalents.

Healer's have a fairly reasonable chance of being put with like minded DPS particularly at peak

Only if the current demographics of who is queueing as what never change, which is a significant assumption.

whereas tanks will likely be the same lottery that we see currently. How is it actively going to make things worse?

Taking gold tanks (assuming you can even judge that accurately) and pairing them up with a pair of bronze DPS more often is going to give them more frequent painfully slow runs, and taking bronze tanks and pairing them up with 2 gold DPS more often is going to lead to frustrating runs more often. As soon as you take someone out of the system and have them simply paired up with whoever needs X immediately, you've defeated the point and are making quality of life worse for that role.

[Sebazy]

This system eliminates the third one, increasing the chances of getting the slowest one possible: 2 bronze. That is going to make the quality of expert runs even more swingy than it is right now for whoever is most in demand and doesn't get to be paired up with equivalents.

Taking gold tanks (assuming you can even judge that accurately) and pairing them up with a pair of bronze DPS more often is going to give them more frequent painfully slow runs, and taking bronze tanks and pairing them up with 2 gold DPS more often is going to lead to frustrating runs more often.

I suspect that's the new best point against a system like this tbh and I certainly can't argue against that, touche

Only if the current demographics of who is queueing as what never change, which is a significant assumption.

We can live in hope =(

[Darrcyphfeid]

Meritocracies are a scam. I would be livid and would immediately cease playing if they ever considered doing something like this.

I've done thousands of dungeons and trials, with every job in this game; I'm omni-70 on two characters. I've carried innumerable groups, I've been in Doma Castle with a Mentor BLM wielding a freakin' broken i142 Halonic weapon, and I still would not want this.

Why? Because 1.) I remember when I was a baby MRD in Sastasha that didn't know what Overpower was or did, 2.) I remember the first time I entered a dungeon on something besides a tank and could see how potentially better players approached things, and 3.) I've done so many join in progress runs on tank, healer and even DPS that were awful - and learned ways to improve myself (while carrying!) quite often.

Fairness is giving everyone the same opportunities that I (we) had, whether they choose to apply themselves or not. And responsibility is knowing that when you hit up DF, you may not be getting people at your skill level. The answer to not wanting to deal with DF is to make friends, not impose asinine limits on people perceived as beneath others.

/rant

[Tridus]

Some of these things are hard to automatically judge. Tanks using cooldowns properly, for example? How does an algorithm judge that? Does SE have to sit down and decide "you should triple pull and use Hallowed Ground here"? That seems impractical. Healing done is another one, because healing done and HPS skyrocket in a group that's taking more damage... which is not a thing you want.

You wouldn't be able to apply it to levelling or anything MSQ related because those are required for all players to do the story and SE would never make it harder for weaker players to get help clearing the MSQ without also making the MSQ easier, and it's pretty clear the playerbase doesn't want that given the opposition to people asking for Shinryu nerfs at the time. That means you're talking Expert, basically, and is it really worth the effort for that and the queue time increase it'd bring?

I also tend to think it's going to promote an echo chamber effect. Gold players only pairing up with other gold players will effectively only see themselves and lose all perspective on what people who aren't at their level are capable of doing. Bronze players wouldn't see anyone better and would get the impression that both the game is a lot harder than it has to be and lose access to people who could both show them it can be done better and offer help to do it (although how often that actually happens is somewhat questionable).

IMO, it doesn't seem worth it. Top tier players need the occasional reminder that not everyone is them and newer players need to be exposed to people who know what they're doing rather than just each other. Then consider this would take development resources away from something else, as well as ongoing testing and maintenance requirements. Code isn't free.