Switching jobs while in a duty

[SamRF]

Would be nice if we could switch jobs while inside a duty. Obviously not during combat and only jobs meeting minimum duty ilvl.

Consider this being good/handy for the following scenarios:

• Bad party composition. Pretty frustrating when you get double bard or triple ninja for example.
  
• Role shortage. When tank or healer leaves your duty you'll sometimes be forced to wait until the spot gets filled again. I've had scenarios in which a dps player left the duty so they could join again as healer/tank so we could progress the instance.
  
• Fight adjustment. Say for example a party fails to meet dps check and gets wiped, a healer or tank could consider switching to dps if tanking/healing needs aren't too great. You might also consider switching to a job that you're more proficient at so further wipes may be avoided.
• Boredom. Perhaps you can't stand looking at that Broil III animation over and over again and want to switch it up to look at Glare animation instead. Would be at cost of your cooldowns/mana though.
• Immersion. From immersion perspective there should be no reason for your character to not be able to switch jobs in an instance. It's kind of a let down that you suddenly don't have the ability to do this even though your Warrior of Light trained and leveled all those alt jobs. Takes away a sense of freedom and immersion.
• ...

Example from other MMO: In WoW you can freely change your spec in a duty. Felt pretty good when your tank/healer left and you could take over their role by changing your spec.


There will be some problems of course with this ability, couple ones I can think of:

• Loot. You may switch job so you can "need" a loot item. Seems easily fixable by only allowing you to "need" loot for job you started the duty with.
  
• Queue abuse. Players queuing as a role in shortage only to switch to other role (dps) when the duty starts. Could be fixed by allowing to kick player from party as soon as they they switch their job (so you don't have to wait 5 mins.)
  
• Requests from players to switch your job. Some may get upset or refuse to cooperate because you aren't willing to switch job to one that suits party composition better. Don't really see people doing this in PUG groups. If they do, you can label it as harassment and they can be dealt with by GMs.
  
• ...
  
• +edit: Players forcing solo healing/tanking in 8-man content. Solution to this could be to only allow in-role switching for X amount of minutes.
  
  

What do you think?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yeah, no.


I don't want to waste time waiting for the ability to kick people out who are disagreeable over job situations.


This just has more problems than the solution it provides.

[SamRF]

Yeah, no.


I don't want to waste time waiting for the ability to kick people out who are disagreeable over job situations.


This just has more problems than the solution it provides.

Something else you could do when people demand you to switch is telling people that you don't have other jobs leveled or don't have appropiate weapon in your current inventory to switch. Other than that, I can't know for sure but I don't see duty finder groups getting in such problematic situations very often, especially if it would be reportable offense to disrupt gameplay that way.

It also almost never seemed to be a problem in WoW.

[SamRF]

Yeah, no.


I don't want to waste time waiting for the ability to kick people out who are disagreeable over job situations.


This just has more problems than the solution it provides.

Just realized you can only kick after 5 mins. Didn't take that into consideration. Could be fixed by allowing to kick someone before 5 mins if they switch their job.

[Liam_Harper]

Yeah, no.


I don't want to waste time waiting for the ability to kick people out who are disagreeable over job situations.

It's interesting people claim FF14 has a great community, when little things like this would cause major issues because people can't behave, but caused few issues over in WoW and on many occasions was quite useful (dps switching to a tank or heal to help finish an instance).

Same with parsers and chat in PvP and lots of other things that are actually fine in other games, where the answer here is "absolutely not, too much toxicity". FF14 must have one of the worst communities of all time if it needs to be restricted and micro-managed to such a degree.

[TheMightyMollusk]

It's interesting people claim FF14 has a great community, when little things like this would cause major issues because people can't behave, but caused few issues over in WoW and on many occasions was quite useful (dps switching to a tank or heal to help finish an instance).

Same with parsers and chat in PvP and lots of other things that are actually fine in other games, where the answer here is "absolutely not, too much toxicity". FF14 must have one of the worst communities of all time if it needs to be restricted and micro-managed to such a degree.

Reminder that in WoW, the two opposed factions are literally not allowed to speak the same in-game language because, waaaaaay back in the original beta when the Horde's Undead race spoke Common, it was used exclusively for griefing and trolling, so they made up an excuse language called Gutterspeak for the Undead to patch the problem.

[Avidria]

Reminder that in WoW, the two opposed factions are literally not allowed to speak the same in-game language because, waaaaaay back in the original beta when the Horde's Undead race spoke Common, it was used exclusively for griefing and trolling, so they made up an excuse language called Gutterspeak for the Undead to patch the problem.

I mean, people still found ways around that limit to troll, grief and... Rp sometimes actually, I think? Was usually more funny than anything but yeah. Mostly trolly.

Then again, I'm pretty sure Void Elves can still speak Thalassian. Not sure what the results of that have been, but definitely interesting to do on Blizzard's part.

PvP communities in general seem to be a more polarized mix of mostly chill cool people, and RAHHHHH SLAUGHTER THE ENEMY FACTION SCUM, and "lul these lowbies can't finish their quests cause I killed all the NPCs >:3" type people in my experience. Maybe just the extremes stand out more in that kind of competitive environment, I dunno lol

[SamRF]

It's interesting people claim FF14 has a great community, when little things like this would cause major issues because people can't behave, but caused few issues over in WoW and on many occasions was quite useful (dps switching to a tank or heal to help finish an instance).

Same with parsers and chat in PvP and lots of other things that are actually fine in other games, where the answer here is "absolutely not, too much toxicity". FF14 must have one of the worst communities of all time if it needs to be restricted and micro-managed to such a degree.

Certainly seems to be the most sensitive community.

Even if job switching feature does provide problems, part of the charm for MMOs imo or any online games for that matter is dealing with such problems. Having everything too streamlined and managed by the game kills immersion and sense of freedom imo aswell as any meaningful online interaction in PUG content. There should of course be a balance between freedom in player cooperation and streamlining to avoid conflicts and have a viable system, but this game is stream lining too much imo.

Just look at dungeon design, they don't even seem to trust players enough to be able to cooperatively do anything more complex than progress through a single hallway. It's unjustified mistrust imo since Haukke Mannor and Wanderer's Palace seem to be done just fine with PUGs.

[RayddenPrime]

Yeah i don’t think this is a great idea...the only exception maybe and it is a maybe for me, is switch a job but within the same type of job you queued in. Say you queued as a tank..and you can only switch between the tank jobs. If you dps, and switch only with a dps class, and healer ..to only switch with a healer class. And only if those class meets the level sync of the duty

[Makeda]

I'd be for this for manual party Finder as an option you could enable in the checkboxes. But NOT for the random Duty Finder due to the drama potentials noted up thread.