Duty Finder DPS Queue Time Solution

[XRuecian]

It's no secret that queue times in FFXIV, and mostly any MMO using the Trinity system, is directly linked to the availability of Tanks and Healers, while DPS have to just sit around and wait for them.
Is it that there are just not enough people playing Tanks and Healers? I don't think that's it.

The problem is that most people in FFXIV play MANY classes. And this, by its nature, means that you are likely leveling more DPS classes than tanks/healers.
This means that there will ALWAYS be a much higher amount of DPS in queue without enough tanks or healers to go around: because those tanks and healers are not "exclusively" playing tanks and healers. Most tanks and healers also play DPS, but a lot of DPS rarely/never play tank or healer.

So for example, lets say you are a tank main. And you usually play tank. But today you queue for DPS for some reason, perhaps you are just leveling a DPS today. Thats one less tank queueing for multiple roulettes today. Spread this likely event over hundreds of players and suddenly there are hundreds or thousands of potential tanks not in the queue. And its not the players fault, the system just forces you to choose only one role per duty per day.

This problem is then made even worse by the fact that most of the time when you ARE queuing for roulettes as a tank or healer, you are likely going with a premade group to carry some of your FC mates through the queue.

An easy solution to this is to add two NEW Duty roulettes to the daily system:
A Healer Roulette and a Tank Roulette.
These roulettes would have their own, separate rewards. And you can only queue for these SOLO. This would inject way more tanks and healers into the duty finder in a way that is rewarding for them; and it would likely reduce queue times for DPS at any level by a gigantic margin.
And because these roulettes are seperate alongside normal roulettes, it shouldn't INCREASE queue times for tanks or healers realistically, either. There would only be benefits by adding this into the game.

[Jojoya]

An easy solution to this is to add two NEW Duty roulettes to the daily system:
A Healer Roulette and a Tank Roulette.
These roulettes would have their own, separate rewards. And you can only queue for these SOLO. This would inject way more tanks and healers into the duty finder in a way that is rewarding for them; and it would likely reduce queue times for DPS at any level by a gigantic margin.
And because these roulettes are seperate alongside normal roulettes, it shouldn't INCREASE queue times for tanks or healers realistically, either. There would only be benefits by adding this into the game.

How would this be effectively better than the Adventurer In Need bonus we already have? If you're thinking in terms of improved rewards, wouldn't it just be better to improve the rewards for Adventurer in Need?

Roulettes tend to match players either queueing for the same roulette or direct queueing for a duty covered by that roulette. If it's all healers or all tanks queuing into these special roulettes, it's taking those roles away from the other roulettes while making it difficult to do matchmaking due to the lack of DPS and tanks or healers in the same roulette queue.

As you said, it's not the reward or lack of one that's going to stop me from using a tank or healer in duty queues. It's because I want to be leveling one of my other jobs. If I'm only going after tomestones, I'll use whatever role is Adventurer in Need. But there's a lot more to the game than dungeon grinding and I'm far more likely to be doing that other content than sitting in a queue for a dungeon I've already done over and over.

Also, we're not limited to one role per duty per day. We can queue for a duty as many times as we want and mix up the roles we choose. What we don't get is the roulette bonus on subsequent replays of the duty the same day. We still get the standard rewards for completing the duty.

[NekoMataMata]

And you can only queue for these SOLO.

All of the daily Duty Finder Roulettes should be solo(maybe duo to be generous) only anyways. There's too many people doing their dailies with a whole team of friends and while it is a MMO and you're supposed to make friends of course, it defeats the entire purpose of it. Too many people hide away in their own friend groups, refusing to interact with the rest of the game's population. And if we're being honest, this is probably one of the bigger issues. Healer/Tanks are very quick queues and many people want to queue with their healer/tank friends to take advantage of that. If we restricted roulettes to people queueing up in parties of two at most, that would ensure that at least one DPS spot isn't stolen by someone queueing with their healer/tank friend.

Agree with what the other person said though. Actual healer/tank queues are literally just a better adventurer in need. Unless you add some insane rewards to it, you won't increase the amount of healers/tanks queueing, you'll just increase the rewards people who play those roles regularly receive. And even assuming you make the rewards insane enough to make other people play those roles, you might just tilt the queues in the other direction.

[Doozer]

All of the daily Duty Finder Roulettes should be solo(maybe duo to be generous) only anyways. There's too many people doing their dailies with a whole team of friends and while it is a MMO and you're supposed to make friends of course, it defeats the entire purpose of it. Too many people hide away in their own friend groups, refusing to interact with the rest of the game's population.

So people whine about not being able to do Crystalline Conflict with friends, and now you want to take away a very popular aspect of playing from groups of people? That all sounds like you have your own issues that you don't need to take out on everyone else. What's the harm in me and my partner doing roulettes together? That doesn't stop us from interacting with other people. Sounds like a you problem.

[NekoMataMata]

So people whine about not being able to do Crystalline Conflict with friends, and now you want to take away a very popular aspect of playing from groups of people? That all sounds like you have your own issues that you don't need to take out on everyone else. What's the harm in me and my partner doing roulettes together? That doesn't stop us from interacting with other people. Sounds like a you problem.

Crystalline Conflict is different from daily roulettes.

Daily Roulettes are intended to help people by filling in party slots in exchange for offering a boosted reward. When you queue up as a full team, you're earning that reward while not doing the intended job.

But sure, jump the idea that I have "issues" and that I'm "taking them out on other people." Fantastic argument. I mean I main healers, I don't even have this issue, I just want to see fair treatment here.

[Doozer]

Crystalline Conflict is different from daily roulettes.

Daily Roulettes are intended to help people by filling in party slots in exchange for offering a boosted reward. When you queue up as a full team, you're earning that reward while not doing the intended job.

But sure, jump the idea that I have "issues" and that I'm "taking them out on other people." Fantastic argument. I mean I main healers, I don't even have this issue, I just want to see fair treatment here.

My point is that people complain that they're not allowed to play with friends, even in casual, and now you're advocating for further restrictions in an MMO. I think people cheesing their ilevels is a much greater blight on roulettes than people playing together like they're supposed to. I think you're also taking it to the very extreme and acting like everyone doing roulettes together is a fully 4- or 8-person party. I seriously doubt that happens as often as you think. I also don't think DPS queue times are exclusively affected by 2 or more people playing together.

The fair treatment is that you can group with a tank or healer friend as well. Unless you don't have friends, but that's not the game's fault.

[NekoMataMata]

My point is that people complain that they're not allowed to play with friends, even in casual, and now you're advocating for further restrictions in an MMO. I think people cheesing their ilevels is a much greater blight on roulettes than people playing together like they're supposed to. I think you're also taking it to the very extreme and acting like everyone doing roulettes together is a fully 4- or 8-person party. I seriously doubt that happens as often as you think. I also don't think DPS queue times are exclusively affected by 2 or more people playing together.

The fair treatment is that you can group with a tank or healer friend as well. Unless you don't have friends, but that's not the game's fault.

I don't think it needs to be restricted completely but I see no issues with restricting it to duo only.

And people cheesing their ilvls does nothing to affect the availability of positions in queues. You might not get the queue that you want, but lowering your ilvl is not going to do anything besides restrict that person's available options in the roulette. Also, I think you're taking it to the extreme by suggesting that there aren't a lot of people doing full DF Roulette queues. No, it's not everyone, of course it's not everyone and you know that. There certainly are a lot of people that do though.

And sure, people are free to group with others but it shouldn't be a necessity to speed up their own queues. Would you really tell newer players that don't have a lot of friends in-game yet that it's their problem? We're lucky that the rest of this community doesn't think like you do.

[Jojoya]

All of the daily Duty Finder Roulettes should be solo(maybe duo to be generous) only anyways. There's too many people doing their dailies with a whole team of friends and while it is a MMO and you're supposed to make friends of course, it defeats the entire purpose of it. Too many people hide away in their own friend groups, refusing to interact with the rest of the game's population. And if we're being honest, this is probably one of the bigger issues. Healer/Tanks are very quick queues and many people want to queue with their healer/tank friends to take advantage of that. If we restricted roulettes to people queueing up in parties of two at most, that would ensure that at least one DPS spot isn't stolen by someone queueing with their healer/tank friend.

Agree with what the other person said though. Actual healer/tank queues are literally just a better adventurer in need. Unless you add some insane rewards to it, you won't increase the amount of healers/tanks queueing, you'll just increase the rewards people who play those roles regularly receive. And even assuming you make the rewards insane enough to make other people play those roles, you might just tilt the queues in the other direction.

It sounds like what you're saying is "I can't make friends to do content with me so you need to force other players to abandon their friends so people will fill queues for my benefit".

No.

The purpose of a MMO isn't to make friends. It's to play with others, including your friends. Games tend to build their populations by friends recruiting friends to come play with them. Prevent friends from playing with friends and you end up with declining populations, making the problem worse.

Edit: I probably should add that I can't think any of friends I made in the game while doing roulettes. I made friends by meeting people my other friends knew. I made friends being part of an active FC. I made friends by being a generally helpful person when I ran into someone looking for help. I made friends doing FATE farms. I made friends by being active in the Hunt community.

It's the extended or repeat experiences that lead to friends, not a 10 minute roulette.

[LeonKeyh]

Come on guys, stop being intellectually dishonest.

The roulettes are designed to fill in groups for people who are queuing for a specific dungeon. The whole entire point is so I don't have to wait for 3 other people to queue into specifically Cutter's Cry since it fills in with people running roulettes. Doing a full party roulette is invalidating the reasons why roulettes were created and why you're given rewards to run it. Clearly it's not a big issue otherwise they would have already done something about it. Limiting it to solo/duos would "fix" the issue that the OP brought up by throwing more people into the queue. Let's not act like you don't realize all of this, and let's not think that because someone mentioned it SE is going to do it now. If they cared about full party roulette runners, they wouldn't have allowed you to limit the dungeons based on the lowest player in the party.

How would this be effectively better than the Adventurer In Need bonus we already have?

TBF, the AiN bonus is pretty meh outside of Leveling and...Alliance ? I think (whichever ones give the clusters). The better way of handling this would definitely be to increase the AiN bonus though.