DPS Queue Times

[MoroMurasaki]

It doesn't. Not really. We've seen that in multiple games, and here when HW came out. Once the initial shiny new period wears off, people go back to their preferred roles. Adding new tank/healer jobs appeals a lot to people who already play tanks/healers. It does little to nothing to entice people who don't want to do those roles. YoshiP talked about that before, where the overwhelming majority of DRK players were playing tanks before that, and the overwhelming majority of AST players were playing healers before that.


We've seen the same thing in reverse in Stormblood. Outside of the initial new and shiny period, queue times have largely gone back to where they were before SAM & RDM were introduced, and the old order has reasserted itself. Once queue times hit a certain length and the initial shiny period wears off, people largely migrate back to their preferred roles, with the tank & healer players encouraged to do so by not having to wait forever to do anything.

Doing something drastic like increasing group size to 5 would help because you'd get 50% more DPS through the queue for every tank and healer, but that is a HUGE undertaking, to put it kindly. That's the kind of thing you have to decide pretty early on in development and it becomes a nightmare to change it later.

(It's a good thing I like healing and don't hate tanking, because with the play time I have, I'd probably quit if I had to sit in the DPS queue constantly as spending half my time waiting just isn't very fun.)

You know if you ever wanna go DPS main I will keep you healer-queued up so you aren't waiting :P

That aside... no? I'll elaborate. I don't think I spent enough time on my prior post. When I say 'variety' it isn't just that there are more dps but rather the actual variety offered by dps gameplay.

The variety of dps roles isn't just that there are nine of them instead of 3 tanks and 3 healers it's that they all offer different gameplay. They've got definition to them that you just don't find with tanks and healers. All tanks have a threat combo, an AoE enmity generator on GCD, a ST ranged enmity generator, an immunity, tank stance, dps stance... there is serious homoginization here. All healers have a basic ST heal, stronger ST heal, basic AoE heal, stronger AoE heal, Raise not to mention almost always taking the same role actions with little exception. Let's not look too hard at AST/WHM in particular because we all know what a cookie cutter that is.

I understand why these similaraties in support roles exist but it doesn't change the fact that it contributes to them feeling very similar overall and especially when compared to their DPS brethren who rarely share anything apart from role actions and for melee the presence of combos (except MNK).

In my opinion (as someome who still consideres themselves a healer main) DPS roles in general were designed with distinct identities in mind and then had potency tweaks to bring their dps more or less in line with each other where as tanks and especially healers were designed around their utilities and core skillset and then separated at some points by little more than aesthetics.

The reason I enjoy dpsing now is that each time I do it the experience still feels fresh, probably because I've banged healer reflex memory into my skull through leveling them each to 70. There is a reason Cure/Physick/Benefic all share a button for me and for most healers. For someone who doesn't enjoy the actual healing gameplay I'd wager (much like me with tanking) the thought of leveling another job through basically the same routine seems at best daunting and at worst boring. I am quite sure this contributes in a meaningful way to the dps queue times.

Also I'm very much in favor of 5 man dungeons and I don't think it would take as much tweaking as some people think either. Obviously we would need to increase enemy HP proportionally but there are plenty of dungeons where no actual mechs would need altering.