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Should dungeon difficulty be adjusted?Follow

#1 Sep 23 2013 at 7:42 AM Rating: Decent
It occurred to me last night, that while leveling Cnj and Gla, party invites are near instantaneous while as I was leveling Thm and Acn, I would wait for an hour or more between dungeon crawls. The amount of DDs queuing into DF is too damn high!

..or is it?

I realized while doing fate parties in Aleport yesterday that the party system actually allows for eight members. Call me a noob or a dummy for not knowing this before, I'm not the type of person who reads the manual before playing an MMO. Part of the fun to me is figuring out things for myself. But, this has left me with a huge unanswerable question..

Why doesn't the dungeon finder allow for 8 man parties?

I mean, the dirth of tanks and healers has not only led to blatant elitism and trolling, but the system itself slows down progress for second jobs as a result. Do you think it would make sense to adjust the difficulty of the dungeons themselves to support 8 man parties?
#2 Sep 23 2013 at 7:48 AM Rating: Decent
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Later on there are 8-man Dungeons as well, everything endgame is 8-man (outside of one or two really). Most of them through the duty finder as well.

The amount of monsters and stuff to do in most early dungeons dont warrant 8 people to enter. It will just make things chaotic.

Even if you yourself get instant queue's now, and your party of you and the DD's have to wait for one more person. It gets terrible later on, where you are one of the rare tanks or healers, you have 4 DD and you are still waiting 20-30 minutes for three more Tank/Healer jobs.

So really, if every instance was 4-man, and designed towards 4 people, i would be happy really.
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#3 Sep 23 2013 at 8:02 AM Rating: Good
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They seem to be implementing a lot of things from other MMO's, so maybe we'll get this too...

DCUO made a system last year that allowed any 4 people to queue up together for lower tier content.... so you could get 4 DPS for instance...

If your party did not have a healer, you'd get a "Healing Buff" that does Regen on you if you drop below a certain point (50% or less I think).... if you don't have a tank you get a "Tank Buff" that increases everyone's defense, etc...

I'm not saying this is something we should have for end-game content... but it makes sense for the lower tier stuff anyways, DPS get immediate queues also this way.
#4 Sep 23 2013 at 9:41 AM Rating: Default
KojiroSoma wrote:
Later on there are 8-man Dungeons as well, everything endgame is 8-man (outside of one or two really). Most of them through the duty finder as well.

The amount of monsters and stuff to do in most early dungeons dont warrant 8 people to enter. It will just make things chaotic.

Even if you yourself get instant queue's now, and your party of you and the DD's have to wait for one more person. It gets terrible later on, where you are one of the rare tanks or healers, you have 4 DD and you are still waiting 20-30 minutes for three more Tank/Healer jobs.

So really, if every instance was 4-man, and designed towards 4 people, i would be happy really.

That's an interesting take on it. That's good to know.
#5 Sep 23 2013 at 11:45 AM Rating: Excellent
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Does the Duty Finder fill out an 8 man party as 2 tanks, 4 DD, and 2 healers?
#6 Sep 23 2013 at 11:46 AM Rating: Good
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svlyons wrote:
Does the Duty Finder fill out an 8 man party as 2 tanks, 4 DD, and 2 healers?


Yes it does.

So it's the same ratio at 4-man parties.
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#7 Sep 23 2013 at 11:50 AM Rating: Decent
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svlyons wrote:
Does the Duty Finder fill out an 8 man party as 2 tanks, 4 DD, and 2 healers?

Yes, Duty finder directly sets two slots for Tanks, 4 slots for DD's and two healers.

You can circumvent this by pre-building a party of people from your server. That way you can bring exactly what you want or need. One tank, 6 DD's and a Healer? Sure, why not. Some bosses almost scream out for such an unorthodox setup.
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#8 Sep 23 2013 at 12:06 PM Rating: Good
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Long as the DF ratio doesn't change, it really doesn't matter if the dungeon takes 4 or 8 people. I see some insisting light party status be changed to 5-6 members with the inclusion of 1-2 DDs or 1 DD and the addition of a Support classification, but the first scenario just strikes me as making life more difficult for your healers while a Support role will suffer from the same issue of lacking bodies that healers and tanks do. I also want to say the current roles do blur the line a bit into support, as a THM/BLM casting Sleep is definitely support, or a LNC/DRG using their attack that has the added slow effect. I personally find this the better dynamic as it avoids the situation RDM had in XI where the job could've been so much more with its bag of tricks, but because a couple were so overwhelmingly needed, you'd get mocked for even daring to play otherwise.

Personally, I'd rather see the level capping on dungeons get removed, or least have the option to do them without. I know some would bemoan the preservation of challenge, but the real problem is X time from now when certain content isn't being done because most others have no reason to do it. The daily DF bonus they're presenting isn't a solution, either, and risks becoming a mandatory activity depending on the rewards associated. Building such a resentment from your players is not the way to go as the simple assumption people want to help lowbies is a farce. Some like to, yes, but many don't. This doesn't even tap into the set of players who loathe dungeons in general, who at present don't really have alternative options to AF+2 to chase.

Edited, Sep 23rd 2013 2:08pm by Seriha
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#9 Sep 23 2013 at 12:08 PM Rating: Good
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Archmage Callinon wrote:
svlyons wrote:
Does the Duty Finder fill out an 8 man party as 2 tanks, 4 DD, and 2 healers?

Yes it does.

So it's the same ratio at 4-man parties.

So it sounds like changing a 4 man dungeon to be appropriate for an 8 man party instead would do absolutely nothing to reduce the Duty Finder wait time for DDs.
#10 Sep 23 2013 at 12:27 PM Rating: Good
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svlyons wrote:
Archmage Callinon wrote:
svlyons wrote:
Does the Duty Finder fill out an 8 man party as 2 tanks, 4 DD, and 2 healers?

Yes it does.

So it's the same ratio at 4-man parties.

So it sounds like changing a 4 man dungeon to be appropriate for an 8 man party instead would do absolutely nothing to reduce the Duty Finder wait time for DDs.


Indeed.

It'd probably get worse actually, since I seriously doubt people are signing up for the DF in those proportions. (In fact, I'm sure of that because of the instant queues for tanks and healers in low level dungeons.)

Blizzard "solved" this problem by giving an extra reward to the role that's under-represented in the LFG pool, usually tanks. But my feeling then, as now, is that if you have to bribe people to play your game, there's something wrong there. It could be that people just don't want to deal with tanking or healing. It could be any number of things.
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#11 Sep 23 2013 at 12:35 PM Rating: Good
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Archmage Callinon wrote:
But my feeling then, as now, is that if you have to bribe people to play your game, there's something wrong there. It could be that people just don't want to deal with tanking or healing. It could be any number of things.

Yup. Could probably call it performance anxiety for some since these two roles can be a big source of the blame game when **** goes south. For some it's also a contributing factor for why they might not dislike (forced) dungeon running. Other aspects could involve time requirements, potential personality conflicts, hardware deficiencies, and spontaneous RL complications (that nobody else gives a **** about because you're hampering their fun). And while the XIV dungeons I've stepped into so far aren't multi-hour slogs like oldschool Dynamis or Salvage was in XI, adding a 40m run on top of an hour long wait as a DPS can start blurring a line in the ease of access/time sink scale.
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#12 Sep 23 2013 at 12:37 PM Rating: Good
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Hairspray wrote:
If your party did not have a healer, you'd get a "Healing Buff" that does Regen on you if you drop below a certain point (50% or less I think).... if you don't have a tank you get a "Tank Buff" that increases everyone's defense, etc...


Oh, geez... that's so terribly watered down I don't even know what to say. How can people even stand to play games that can barely be lost?

So basically the solution to long wait times was to have the game match you up with strangers from across all servers. And now the solution to the shortened (but still inconvenient) wait times is to have the game assume responsibility for the major party roles. Instances get to be all-DD zerg fests where the players are automatically healed -- like corridor FATEs. It's like a contest to see just how mindless the MMORPG can become. Smiley: rolleyes
#13 Sep 23 2013 at 12:53 PM Rating: Good
Wait times are expected as a DPS class.
#14 Sep 23 2013 at 1:49 PM Rating: Good
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The problem is that you never have games developed with a balanced number of tank, healer and dps classes. FFXIV seems good, but realistically there's two tank classes (MRD then WAR, GLD then PLD), one pure healer class (CNJ then WHM), one healer with benefits (SCH), then everything else somewhere inbetween (feel free to correct me but this is my understanding looking up from where I sit right now, which is still very far from endgame).

I'm not saying that they need to make new classes, but when designing content, they have to realize that they will have limited healer/tank pools because people mainly gravitate to the damage classes. Therefore, the content needs to be rebalanced to either be more dynamically responsive, or able to be cleared with well-geared if not perfectly suited jobs.
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#15 Sep 23 2013 at 2:13 PM Rating: Good
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Good example is the PUG Titan HM fight, which is really meant to be a 1 tank, 3 healer fight, or whatever 5 DPS, 2 healer but definitely not a 2 tank fight.
#16 Sep 23 2013 at 2:17 PM Rating: Good
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Tank (2): WAR, PLD
Healer (2): WHM, SCH
DPS (5): BLM, BRD, MNK, DRG, SMN

It's pretty close to the 1:1:2 ratio for parties.

Thing is, the "number of classes" being balanced only matters when you have the same number of people playing all classes. This is never the case, especially with a new game.
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#17 Sep 23 2013 at 3:08 PM Rating: Decent
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There will always be instant pops for healers and tanks and long waits for the blow sh*t up classes.

If anything they need to make dungeons offer more xp so they are as efficient as FATES. I enjoy grinding dungeons with pugs so I'm not complaining but it would make dungeon grinding more viable. Although the same ratio of tanks/healers to DPS probably won't change and the DD queue times will still be long.

I honestly have no interest in doing a dungeon as anything other than a tank or healer. I haven't had to wait more than 1 minute to get in a dungeon of hest since level 16.
#18 Sep 23 2013 at 3:15 PM Rating: Decent
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Archmage Callinon wrote:
Tank (2): WAR, PLD
Healer (2): WHM, SCH
DPS (5): BLM, BRD, MNK, DRG, SMN

It's pretty close to the 1:1:2 ratio for parties.

Thing is, the "number of classes" being balanced only matters when you have the same number of people playing all classes. This is never the case, especially with a new game.

See, that's what I am saying. Most often, you will be lacking a tank or a healer, because someone has to bite the bullet and play that role. Most would rather be banging out huge numbers rather than saying "Wow, look at how little damage I am taking" or "I am so cure efficient it's insane!" There are people who are like this, but they are a lot more rare to find.
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Olorinus the Ludicrous wrote:
The idea of old school is way more interesting than the reality
#19 Sep 23 2013 at 3:23 PM Rating: Good
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I love tanking and healing.... I think it is fun knowing performing well so that my group can go all out and pew pew without worry about aggro and have fun...

I must be some sort of *********...
#20 Sep 23 2013 at 6:42 PM Rating: Good
They could just make the normal dungeons a 5 man party. 1 healer, 1 tank, 3 dps. That would probably cut wait times pretty significantly for DPS.

Edited, Sep 23rd 2013 8:42pm by DrCapricious
#21 Sep 23 2013 at 7:21 PM Rating: Good
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Just what I was going to say. Either have a 5 man party or 6 man parties like in XI.
#22 Sep 23 2013 at 7:27 PM Rating: Good
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It would require redesigning the dungeon encounters, boss encounters, and loot distribution to account for a 25% increase in party members.

Also, MMOs with 5-man parties still have atrocious queue times for dps.
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#23 Sep 23 2013 at 8:14 PM Rating: Excellent
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Perhaps SE could implement a support class that could give significant buffs to parties but that itself is relatively weak. If a single class could give, say, enhanced defense and HP, as well as help with curing, then we could see the ability to form non-traditional parties -- e.g. MNK, DRG, SMN, [Support], or WAR BLM BLM [Support], and so on.

Ultimately I think that it's downright strange that a game allowing so many cross-class skills, at its grouping core, stuffs everybody into one of three incredibly simple categories. It would have been neat if a couple PLDs could go in with a BRD and SMN and actually get some stuff done, but as it is that could never be -- one of those PLD would be assigned to a different party, the BRD isn't allowed to cure, and the rest of the group would be stuck waiting for a healer to appear.
#24 Sep 23 2013 at 9:16 PM Rating: Good
KaneKitty wrote:
Hairspray wrote:
If your party did not have a healer, you'd get a "Healing Buff" that does Regen on you if you drop below a certain point (50% or less I think).... if you don't have a tank you get a "Tank Buff" that increases everyone's defense, etc...


Oh, geez... that's so terribly watered down I don't even know what to say. How can people even stand to play games that can barely be lost?

So basically the solution to long wait times was to have the game match you up with strangers from across all servers. And now the solution to the shortened (but still inconvenient) wait times is to have the game assume responsibility for the major party roles. Instances get to be all-DD zerg fests where the players are automatically healed -- like corridor FATEs. It's like a contest to see just how mindless the MMORPG can become. Smiley: rolleyes


Beautifully said, and it saves me the time of writing something similar, so thanks!
#25 Sep 23 2013 at 10:18 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
And while the XIV dungeons I've stepped into so far aren't multi-hour slogs like oldschool Dynamis or Salvage was in XI, adding a 40m run on top of an hour long wait as a DPS can start blurring a line in the ease of access/time sink scale.


The wait time for DF is actually holding back my progress at the moment and taking a large amount of shine off the game. There's only so much distractionary crafting/gathering/other jobs I can handle. By the time I get on some nights it's not even worth queuing because I'd end up going to bed at some ungodly hour by the time the dungeon is done. The quickest option for me (as a Bard on a JP server in JP prime time) is queuing in all languages for DF. Convincing 7 people from my FC to do a run of Castrum for my clear is like pulling teeth because everyone wants to run it fast for tomes. This in itself is a massive issue, why they thought mixing people farming for gear and people doing their main quest line in the same dungeon would play out well is totally beyond me.

The thing with Salvage was you had no DF, so you would just enter with your small group which was generally ready to go. There was literally no overhead beyond occasionally farming AP, it was a much faster experience than DF. Could you imagine a DF for Salvage? What a joke, the only thing to do would have been adding party members who had a clue to your /flist so you could team with them later. Also, it was only 100 minutes, 10 minutes longer than the standard dungeons and 20 minutes shorter than Castrum.

The main issue with Dynamis (at least in my group) was starting on time. I'd expect you'd see similar problems trying to put together a group of 36 in this game. DF for 36 people? Now that is a disturbing thought.
#26 Sep 23 2013 at 10:41 PM Rating: Decent
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Ultimately I think that it's downright strange that a game allowing so many cross-class skills, at its grouping core, stuffs everybody into one of three incredibly simple categories.


Well, the classes are designed to excel in certain categories. In group play, cross class skills are meant to enhance the base functionality of theses classes and make them better at DPS/Heal/Tank. Although you can do it, the idea in group play is not for you to pick up random skills that detract from your core function. Regardless of how much fun you might have with them, that kind of thing does no favors to anyone when the content is challenging. You having slightly more fun isn't more important than playing the role for your team, unfortunately.

Ultimately this kind issue has been around ever since MMO's were invented (there's a great example already in this thread). People see a class and form an idea in their head of what they think it should be. Meanwhile the optimal role for the class isn't actually what the player wants it to be. The thing that needs to be realised is that you're more than entitled to muck around with setups out on your own, where they don't impact other people. Just for the love of god, be a team player in group content.

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