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.

[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

[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.

[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.

[Saccharin]

No way. Enough toxicity/selfishness as it is.

I had cutter's cry the other day and the tank and healer were wrongly geared, and didn't do their job quests. Left after four wipes on last boss. Both one shotted with the same repeated mistake each try.

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.

And in WoW you get high gear chars rolling as tank so they get quick queues, and wipes due to people queueing as healer but going as caster dps.

[SamRF]

No way. Enough toxicity/selfishness as it is.

I had cutter's cry the other day and the tank and healer were wrongly geared, and didn't do their job quests. Left after four wipes on last boss. Both one shotted with the same repeated mistake each try.

If you had the ability to switch jobs inside a duty, you could have taken matters into your own hand and switch to a healer/tank to carry the group forward instead of having to abandon the duty.

[Vahlnir]

This is one of those things where, in a world where no one trolls, it would be a great feature. However, I do not trust people not to troll others. I'm guessing the devs don't either. For everyone's sake I feel that this feature should not be implemented. Considered? Maybe. But the pros and cons need to be weighed, along with an assessment of how people treat others on the internet, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that part out.

[CazzT]

From experience in WoW, this would result in people queuing as Tank or Healer to get short queues, and then switching to their DPS job. You do not want this.

If you had the ability to switch jobs inside a duty, you could have taken matters into your own hand and switch to a healer/tank to carry the group forward instead of having to abandon the duty.

Still not worth the drama and headaches and problems this would bring.