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Instanced Dungeon Que SystemFollow

#1 Jan 08 2013 at 5:09 PM Rating: Default
The system where you put in your desired role and que, then keep playing until you get a message saying "Your party has been filled. Would you like to teleport to the dungeon?"

Sure, let me park my character somewhere safe and go do some group content. Then, a fun instanced dungeon run insues. At the end, it plops you back out wherever you were and you continue questing, crafting etc.

You know what's better than Level Sync? Just drop your level to any level you have previously attained and the game automatically levels your gear down and nerfs your abilites by some % (although they are all still available).

Ok, ok, not all MMO's have to be the same. But the best parts, that allow players to play with RL friends at any level, and casuals to access group content with very little time, are just way to good to leave out.

EDIT: See below for Xioe's link to the thread where Yoshi-P discusses the proposed Content Finder for FFXIV.

Edited, Jan 9th 2013 10:53am by SmashingtonWho
#2 Jan 08 2013 at 6:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that auto-grouping for instanced content is actually confirmed to be in the cards (in fact, it would work across worlds to improve results). Level sync is in too, but I'm not sure it's on a choose-your-own-level basis.

Edit: Ah, here we go. The Zam thread regarding the Playstation Blog interview where the Content Finder was brought up.
http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?forum=152&mid=13394577236471366&h=50

Edited, Jan 8th 2013 7:29pm by Xoie
#3 Jan 08 2013 at 8:57 PM Rating: Decent
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SmashingtonWho wrote:
let me park my character somewhere safe and go do some group content. Then, a fun instanced dungeon run insues. At the end, it plops you back out wherever you were


And then next to no players will ever leave the main hub town. The entire world is dead, and parties, aside from game-made auto-matching cross-server groups, cease to exist in all but the rarest cases. I don't know why MMOs do this: it ensures a multiplayer experience no more expansive than Diablo or Mass Effect.

Why am I paying a monthly fee to que up on what are essentially pre-made small-group servers (i.e. instances)? Is that ~$15 per month being used to power the auction house? I'd like that "M" in MMORPG to mean something, I'd like the game to seem like a living world -- with people roving around it and interacting with one another and everything! -- it's why I was interested in this genre above others, after all.
#4 Jan 08 2013 at 11:43 PM Rating: Excellent
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Not necessarily my preferred mechanics but they have their merit in the right time and place.

I'm not averse to games where you have to go to a physical place (e.g., a waiting room) to enter the instance, and during that time have only the company of other players, so long as there are things to do there. I think it does a lot more for the sense of community and vastness of the world while circumventing the problems of active party searching, which tends to be time consuming and boring.

I do generally like being able to scale down your own level, but I like for mechanics like these to have some sense of narrative presence. Even something as simple as labeling the menu option "Hold Back," is better than some feature which magically makes you weaker.
#5REDACTED, Posted: Jan 09 2013 at 7:37 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Level sync was a GREAT function in XI. But then again, it ruined the game in my opinion.
#6 Jan 09 2013 at 7:47 AM Rating: Excellent
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KaneKitty wrote:
SmashingtonWho wrote:
let me park my character somewhere safe and go do some group content. Then, a fun instanced dungeon run insues. At the end, it plops you back out wherever you were


And then next to no players will ever leave the main hub town. The entire world is dead, and parties, aside from game-made auto-matching cross-server groups, cease to exist in all but the rarest cases. I don't know why MMOs do this: it ensures a multiplayer experience no more expansive than Diablo or Mass Effect.


The only thing that ensures lame multi-player is poor development. If you don't design areas with events other than instanced dungeons that people will want to participate in, you won't lure people away from the main hubs.
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Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#7 Jan 09 2013 at 9:42 AM Rating: Excellent
Thank you very much Xioe! Thanks for digging that up, good news IMO. I hope it works fliudly.

Instanced dungeons and que systems do not keep people from exploring the world. The opposite is true. If I want to do party content, I do not need to limit my playtime to sticking around a single location that has the dungeon for my current level. I can que up and then explore randomly to my heart's content, which is exactly what I do.

The main reason I see that people do not explore the big open world is when it does not offer anything to find or do except grind mobs. A good game design will encourage players to explore by providing unique and creative incentives scattered throughout the world.
#8 Jan 09 2013 at 10:07 AM Rating: Excellent
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KaneKitty wrote:

And then next to no players will ever leave the main hub town. The entire world is dead, and parties, aside from game-made auto-matching cross-server groups, cease to exist in all but the rarest cases. I don't know why MMOs do this: it ensures a multiplayer experience no more expansive than Diablo or Mass Effect.


People will gather in hub towns no matter what - it happened in XI and it will happen here too. It's just a convenient and safe place to do business, chat, check out what people are selling, or wait for a group.

The alternative is server only parties manually created and job elitism ala FFXI. People flagging up for hours. People not able to get into groups because there's not enough players willing to take the time to /sea all and invite. Groups being slow to come together because the leader only wants to put together a perfect party and that PUP or whatever the equivelent ends up being is not wanted. Waiting for a bard. Waiting for a tank on your server when there's one ready to go on another server but you can't see her.

The arguments for and against have been made ad naseum for every mmo since its inception, and the answer always ends up the same. The benefits just plain outweigh the perceived consequences.
#9 Jan 09 2013 at 10:44 AM Rating: Excellent
Will the cross-server finder be "auto-group" only, or will we be able to "/sea all worlds" and manually build cross-server? I know it will still fuel the job elitism, which I'm not a fan of, but do y'all think it will be a possibility?

On the topic of job elitism... I pray that every job/class is balanced in some equal way. I hated building exp pt's in XI, seeing only a PUP LFG, and choosing to wait for something else because I knew members already in the group would leave if I invited said PUP.

SE needs to really hit this square on the head, not just in job stat/ability balance, but they also need to create gear for all jobs/classes that is equally balanced every time new stuff is released. Releasing a new expansion with 2 new jobs, new storyline, gear for all others, but then also adding in a few epic pieces for only LNC/GLD/CNJ is going to create gear-check job elitism all over again. If you see an Archer with the new expansion gear, then you see the GLD with the +10% Haste / +10 Acc / +20 Att weapon and the new +5 STR hat, which are you going to go for?
#10 Jan 09 2013 at 12:29 PM Rating: Good
IKickYoDog wrote:
Will the cross-server finder be "auto-group" only, or will we be able to "/sea all worlds" and manually build cross-server? I know it will still fuel the job elitism, which I'm not a fan of, but do y'all think it will be a possibility?

On the topic of job elitism... I pray that every job/class is balanced in some equal way. I hated building exp pt's in XI, seeing only a PUP LFG, and choosing to wait for something else because I knew members already in the group would leave if I invited said PUP.

SE needs to really hit this square on the head, not just in job stat/ability balance, but they also need to create gear for all jobs/classes that is equally balanced every time new stuff is released. Releasing a new expansion with 2 new jobs, new storyline, gear for all others, but then also adding in a few epic pieces for only LNC/GLD/CNJ is going to create gear-check job elitism all over again. If you see an Archer with the new expansion gear, then you see the GLD with the +10% Haste / +10 Acc / +20 Att weapon and the new +5 STR hat, which are you going to go for?


I think to keep things simple it will be auto group for the most part. In other words, i dont think there will be a chat channel or "find" feature where you can filter out players that you dont want. If people were fully capable of forming "manual" groups, it will only leave the "leftovers" when its all said and done.

Job elitism will be a tough one to overcome, especially with designated roles such as tank and healer. Without a doubt there will be more damage dealers than healers and tanks out there. But that has always been the tradeoff, more people want to be damage dealers which means a larger sample to choose from. Tanks and healers have less flexibility and are therefore more rare. If that is the case, then of course you will see certain jobs or even individuals boasting about how much damage they can do or what gear they have. In a way, this concept resembles capitalism vs communism. which one works better in the real world?

Job and gear balance has always been a tough one to figure out no matter how many updates and expansions are made. With every little change that makes one job better, there is another job that suffers. Think of it like your favorite sports team, when a referee calls something against your team or in favor of the other, your tendency is to cry foul no matter what right? Sorry to say this cliche but life in general isnt fair and we're all going to have to deal with it.
#11 Jan 09 2013 at 3:06 PM Rating: Excellent
The irony was that PUP could be a fantastic DD if they had really built it up. I personally knew three people who had their puppets maxed, their PUP geared to the teeth, and who know how to play the hell out of that job, In a Dynamis parse, one of them was consistantly among the top DDs, usually behind our lead BLM and our main WAR, but ahead of the scrubs.

The problem was, and still is, that PUP is a very difficult job to play to that level, and the majority of PUPs are just like those scrub DDs in Dynamis - only worse, because a poorly geared and played PUP is worse than a poorly geared and played SAM. Even a bad SAM can output some consistent low level of damage. If you don't know how to draw out the full potential of PUP, it's going to be like a back line bard thwacking the NM with a staff while in singing gear. Yeah, there's some damage, but it's not worth the TP feed...

Player perception of PUP was biased, but the bias formed for a reason, and that was all the crappy PUPs running around.
#12 Jan 09 2013 at 3:14 PM Rating: Excellent
catwho wrote:
The irony was that PUP could be a fantastic DD if they had really built it up. I personally knew three people who had their puppets maxed, their PUP geared to the teeth, and who know how to play the hell out of that job, In a Dynamis parse, one of them was consistantly among the top DDs, usually behind our lead BLM and our main WAR, but ahead of the scrubs.

The problem was, and still is, that PUP is a very difficult job to play to that level, and the majority of PUPs are just like those scrub DDs in Dynamis - only worse, because a poorly geared and played PUP is worse than a poorly geared and played SAM. Even a bad SAM can output some consistent low level of damage. If you don't know how to draw out the full potential of PUP, it's going to be like a back line bard thwacking the NM with a staff while in singing gear. Yeah, there's some damage, but it's not worth the TP feed...

Player perception of PUP was biased, but the bias formed for a reason, and that was all the crappy PUPs running around.


I completely understand where you're coming from. One of my friends was a really good PUP and I knew what they were capable of, but like you said there were way too many people who did the job a disservice. That, and the fact that the PUP really needed to be built up to be worthwhile. SAM/WAR/DRG didn't need as much time put in to equal more damage in a lot of cases.

I think PUP fell victim to the culture of min/max (which I did fuel in my time of XI.) Thing was, PUP could give you decent physical DD and healing in certain situations. It had the capability to do more than any one job by itself, just on a lower threshold in most cases. While that's great for all-aroundness, people in XI didn't want utility. They wanted maximization.
#13 Jan 09 2013 at 4:48 PM Rating: Decent
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catwho wrote:
The irony was that PUP could be a fantastic DD if they had really built it up. I personally knew three people who had their puppets maxed, their PUP geared to the teeth, and who know how to play the hell out of that job, In a Dynamis parse, one of them was consistantly among the top DDs, usually behind our lead BLM and our main WAR, but ahead of the scrubs.

The problem was, and still is, that PUP is a very difficult job to play to that level, and the majority of PUPs are just like those scrub DDs in Dynamis - only worse, because a poorly geared and played PUP is worse than a poorly geared and played SAM. Even a bad SAM can output some consistent low level of damage. If you don't know how to draw out the full potential of PUP, it's going to be like a back line bard thwacking the NM with a staff while in singing gear. Yeah, there's some damage, but it's not worth the TP feed...

Player perception of PUP was biased, but the bias formed for a reason, and that was all the crappy PUPs running around.


PUP, SMN, DRG and BST all remained behind top tier DD jobs because of their utility. A WAR will whip a pet jobs *** in a DPS race, but if you put them side by side to solo a mob, the pet jobs will shine.

I think the 'scrub DD' thing is just a mentality that comes from the way the game developed. 99% of the time there was at least 1 person carrying no matter what the event was. 1% of the time people actually cared because the content was easy enough to clear that it didn't really matter. I mean really... how many times were you in an exp group with someone you could tell had no clue what they were doing and you stayed anyway because it was better than LFG for 2 hours?
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Rinsui wrote:
Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#14 Jan 09 2013 at 5:24 PM Rating: Decent
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What's a 'que'?
#15 Jan 09 2013 at 5:28 PM Rating: Excellent
According to the scrabble dictionary, it's a tool used in print making.

However, clearly the op meant "queue" as in a line.
#16 Jan 09 2013 at 8:32 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:

The alternative is server only parties manually created and job elitism ala FFXI. People flagging up for hours. People not able to get into groups because there's not enough players willing to take the time to /sea all and invite. Groups being slow to come together because the leader only wants to put together a perfect party and that PUP or whatever the equivelent ends up being is not wanted. Waiting for a bard. Waiting for a tank on your server when there's one ready to go on another server but you can't see her.

The arguments for and against have been made ad naseum for every mmo since its inception, and the answer always ends up the same. The benefits just plain outweigh the perceived consequences.


That's really not a foregone conclusion. There are plenty of ways to ensure streamlined party play without falling on the double-edged sword of cross-server parties. Personally I don't like cross-server parties; I think it's a lazy bandaid on a gunshot wound in most situations. It might be a good solution if you're starting from a game like EQ or FFXI, but if you don't make the same mistakes those games did, you don't have the same problems.

For example, the insistence upon using a strict trinity system where healers and tanks offer more party value than damage dealers. This is a gaping design problem that, sure, could be improved upon somewhat with cross-server partying. But in a game where this trinity party dynamic is downplayed, or a different party dynamic is used altogether, it doesn't necessarily do anything but water down the sense of community.
#17 Jan 09 2013 at 11:32 PM Rating: Good
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Guild Wars 2 claimed to have done away with the trinity system... it only sort of worked.

What you ended up with were classes that could feel watered down. Nobody was really that good at anything, everybody was just kind of mediocre at everything. IMO it made the classes feel indistinct from one another.

You don't have to abandon the trinity just to try and be innovative. Just make it so playing a tank or healer solo doesn't suck, and people will do it.

There's also Rift's approach, where they added a fourth "support" role into the mix. That could work well in a Final Fantasy setting too. Using FFXI as an example, a summoner, bard, or red mage could easily fill the support role. Kind of a nebulous role whose responsibilities change depending on what class they are and what the party needs at the time, but doesn't fall squarely into a tank, healer, dps (dd) category.

Cross-server parties are for one thing, and one thing only: to make queue times not stupid. If the group finder (or whatever it ends up being called) can put groups together without ridiculous queue times, then it doesn't need to be cross-server. If it can't, then it does, and you roll with it.
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#18 Jan 09 2013 at 11:58 PM Rating: Excellent
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catwho wrote:
The irony was that PUP could be a fantastic DD if they had really built it up....


Thank you. It's been about three years since I left the game and for some reason I still get mad when people have the audacity to insult my PUP. Smiley: bah
#19 Jan 10 2013 at 12:05 AM Rating: Excellent
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@Callinon: Guild Wars 2 did away with the trinity system and introduced other party dynamics in its place. The problem wasn't with this particular decision, but that they failed to balance those party dynamics so that they were actually viable. I mean, you can shoot an arrow through a wall of fire and it turns into a flaming arrow. Cool! But, unfortunately, pretty useless. There are plenty of other games that kept the trinity and because of their failure to balance the trinity, it ended with the same problem... the party dynamics were still basically nonexistant. Moral of the story; it doesn't matter what your party dynamic is if you don't actually balance it.

You could have 100 different roles; it all depends on the foundational mechanics of the game. More roles or fewer roles aren't inherently better or worse. (I'm just pointing out that developers lazily glorify the trinity system without actually understanding it. It's not that the trinity inherently facilitates strategic party play or anything like that.) However, the more roles you require for a functioning party, the more you limit player abilities to build a functioning party. If any mishmash of roles will do, then a party finder is completely useless. My point being, if you don't create the problem, you don't need to create the solution.



Edited, Jan 9th 2013 10:07pm by Kachi
#20 Jan 10 2013 at 1:50 AM Rating: Excellent
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Kachi wrote:
My point being, if you don't create the problem, you don't need to create the solution.

My influence is spreading... muahahahahahaaaa *cough* hahahaaaa!
____________________________
Rinsui wrote:
Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#21 Jan 10 2013 at 7:23 AM Rating: Good
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Kachi wrote:
@Callinon: Guild Wars 2 did away with the trinity system and introduced other party dynamics in its place. The problem wasn't with this particular decision, but that they failed to balance those party dynamics so that they were actually viable. I mean, you can shoot an arrow through a wall of fire and it turns into a flaming arrow. Cool! But, unfortunately, pretty useless. There are plenty of other games that kept the trinity and because of their failure to balance the trinity, it ended with the same problem... the party dynamics were still basically nonexistant. Moral of the story; it doesn't matter what your party dynamic is if you don't actually balance it.

You could have 100 different roles; it all depends on the foundational mechanics of the game. More roles or fewer roles aren't inherently better or worse. (I'm just pointing out that developers lazily glorify the trinity system without actually understanding it. It's not that the trinity inherently facilitates strategic party play or anything like that.) However, the more roles you require for a functioning party, the more you limit player abilities to build a functioning party. If any mishmash of roles will do, then a party finder is completely useless. My point being, if you don't create the problem, you don't need to create the solution.



Edited, Jan 9th 2013 10:07pm by Kachi

Everything about this is correct. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome, was how much better your group was when you had certain jobs (e.g.- bard)

The reason that the trinity system tends to be so popular, is that it elminates ideal configurations while creating an environment where it's possible to tackle all content with a multitude of different party configurations.
#22 Jan 10 2013 at 9:13 AM Rating: Good
FFXI actuallly had seven distinct roles, most of which weren't used in regular party dynamics but which came into play on bigger NMs.

-Puller
-Tank
-Melee
-Nuker
-Healer
-Enfeebler
-Buffer

In a regular party those roles collapsed into the "trinity" somewhat. On larger NMs, the roles became more granular, and were often duplicated multiple times over. Consider the 75 cap standard Jailer of Love setup: A tank party, with two PLD, two whm, a rdm, and a bard. A DD party, with 4 melee, a whm, and a bard. A BLM party, with four blm, a rdm, and a brd or a smn. An external BLM party with 3-4 BLM and a RDM. JoL was technically killable by far fewer, but the overlap of buffs and healing within the main alliance meant you had a lot fewer scary moments, and putting the second BLM party external helped with hate control. (Oh, there was probably a THF in there someplace too.)

Now pit that against a standard 75 cap Dynamis Lord setup: You have a puller team with a THF and a PLD. The THF's sole job was to run the dragons as far away as they could with flee while the rest of the alliance took down the big bad. The main party was 2 PLD, a WHM or two. You have three bards doing a true bard rotation through the alliance to super buff everyone for a couple minutes, because a couple of minutes was all you had. You had as many DD in the main alliance as you could, then the bards dropped out and healers replaced them, and the bards went up to the BLMs in a separate alliance and sang ballads. And when the NM was pulled, everyone threw everything that they had at DL. When it worked, it was like NASA launching a rocket and it was beautiful. When it didn't work..... well, there were a lot of dead bodies sometimes.

Job versatility is important. I think XI's big issue for many years was that the variety of endgame content didn't permit enough job variety. We actually had a PUP who'd come to Jailor of Love, because his puppet was maxed out for nuking, and the lilttle guy provided a steady DoT of 10,000 -15,000 hate free damage over the course of the fight. The giant jellyfish would have moved if a DD did anything like that over the fight. (JoL was a rare XI fight where positioning of the players and the mobs was absolutely critical.)

Now that XI has multiple tiers of content, easy access content, hard mode content, and every flavor in between, people are more welcome to break out of the "trinity" roles and just do their own thing.
#23 Jan 10 2013 at 1:45 PM Rating: Good
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Imo you can balance jobs six ways to Sunday. Make each job completely unique, make each job perform some similar roles, or create a completely open skill shared system. At the end of the day the"Enemy design balance" dictates who gets invited to what in terms of efficiency.

Design encounters too much in one direction, enter the flavor of the month job bandwagon.
#24 Jan 10 2013 at 3:35 PM Rating: Good
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That's why as I've said recently, it's best to start with balancing jobs against one another first, then designing the monsters.
#25 Jan 10 2013 at 3:38 PM Rating: Decent
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Ok but how do you define that?

Encounter mechanics are always going to alter how a particular job performs (it'd be weird if they didn't).
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#26 Jan 10 2013 at 4:05 PM Rating: Decent
Kachi wrote:
@Callinon: Guild Wars 2 did away with the trinity system and introduced other party dynamics in its place. The problem wasn't with this particular decision, but that they failed to balance those party dynamics so that they were actually viable. I mean, you can shoot an arrow through a wall of fire and it turns into a flaming arrow. Cool! But, unfortunately, pretty useless. There are plenty of other games that kept the trinity and because of their failure to balance the trinity, it ended with the same problem... the party dynamics were still basically nonexistant. Moral of the story; it doesn't matter what your party dynamic is if you don't actually balance it.

You could have 100 different roles; it all depends on the foundational mechanics of the game. More roles or fewer roles aren't inherently better or worse. (I'm just pointing out that developers lazily glorify the trinity system without actually understanding it. It's not that the trinity inherently facilitates strategic party play or anything like that.) However, the more roles you require for a functioning party, the more you limit player abilities to build a functioning party. If any mishmash of roles will do, then a party finder is completely useless. My point being, if you don't create the problem, you don't need to create the solution.



Edited, Jan 9th 2013 10:07pm by Kachi


I dont know how you would build an RPG without defining roles such as the trinity. I've seen games that tried to do away with it like you said, but all it does is create more chaos in the grand scheme of things. Having a trinity, and every support role in between creates purpose. In a role playing sense, everyone involved in the group would like to have a special or unique purpose, hence the term "role playing game"

I tend to think of rpg battles as sort of a puzzle so to speak. If the developers design the game to where a trinity can solve it, then they will design battles accordingly. Of course, this is the most popular method of group dynamics for quite some time now and i think its mainly because of what i said earlier - everyone wants to have a meaningful purpose to their group or a "role" to play.

I think that in an rpg where there are many roles but are less definitive, you run into a situation like in Borderlands or Diablo where it almost becomes every man for himself. I'm not saying that teamwork cant come into play, but dimishes the reliance you would need for teamates. All the teamates represent at this point are more companions to finish the puzzle with. If somehow you can create some kind of reliance by needing other team members, then that would entirely something else.
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