Aboard this tiny ship ... For a 3H Queue

Boost the power of characters, funnel them into the same dungeons, scale the rewards.

Theoretically nothing is wrong with tiers, just the current implementation is hindered by splitting the available pool. So long as you’re stuck in queue though the rest remains moot. Assign an Equal Footing style buff so an “E1” tank could run the same dungeon as an “E3” healer and an “E4” DPS and maybe the waits will be shorter? Reward accordingly though, so the E4 gets E4 rewards, the E3 gets E3 rewards, E1 gets E1. (Or for practical purposes, maybe compress ten tiers of characters into E4, E9, and E10 dungeons. If only to simplify calculating the level of a buff needed, or mechanics you face in the dungeon, and ‘qualification’ criteria).

Summary:
Keep ten tiers to sign up, get equal footing buff, run different tier-characters through same-tier dungeons.
Reward accordingly.

Yes sometimes, kinda, it’s classical ability diversity. The problem is that they didn’t properly shaped an environment where their difference feel meaningful. That’s why I think a content revamp is much more important than an ability rework (even though some of them are clearly unbalanced).

For PvE content? No thank you, i don’t want to see the gear becoming irrelevant. I’d just opt for a reduction in the number of tiers, and of the required grind (for the latter, at least, make the upgrades applicable forever for the slot, and not for the items in the slot - a legendary 20 glyph in a head talisman should become permanently a legendary 20 glyph in the head slot, even if you end up switching the head extraordinary talisman effect and/or the signet).

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The goal of grinding those dungeons are to be more powerful.
If you put an equal footing here, you just cancelled that goal.
Why bother to even have red gears if it’s equal to green here? To gain better reward so that you can make better gears which are…just equal to green gear?

:stuck_out_tongue:

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And there are people who don’t want to waste three hours in a queue.

Or see a population drop further because nobody bothers with dungeons - see 3 hour queue.

Nevermind i pointed out a way for ‘reduction in the number of tiers’ could be done (i.e. e4/9/10) while keeping gear-inflation from running away. But i suppose what, you reduce the number of tiers and keep rewards as-is? Just out of Story Mode, tough luck to you E1 tanks and healers, the only dungeon you can access is E4 power and E4 rewards that nobody new is ever gonna bother with? And then only E4 dungeons for E4 rewards till you can suddenly hold your own in an E9 run? Good luck with that, Mr. Status-Quo-is-Fine-Unless-We-Can-Make-It-Worse-Somehow.
:stuck_out_tongue:

Equal footing buff is irrelevant to this problem. Everything was perfectly fine in TSW with 3 difficulties (counting normal mode) (not saying they should bring back only 3 difficulties, but definitely less than 10). Equal footing makes sense in a competitive environment such as PvP where players tend to prefer having a competition of skill rather than gear / grind, it has no place in PvE content where the whole concept of RPG gets butchered.

That’s Funcom’s problem. They brought us the design with 10 difficulties, up to them to change it. If they transform 10 difficulties into 5 instead, they can encompass for instance E1=E1, then E2+E3+E4 = new E2, then E5+E6 = new E3, then E7+E8+E9 = new E4, and finally E10 = new E5. They can then harmonize the IP requirements for all of them. About rewards, either take the highest reward from the given range, or the average one (or anything else, lots of ideas can exist).

If you think sarcasm usage as answer to someone who disagrees with you adds to your credibility (or brings anything to your argument), you are wrong.

Thus, we discussed your solution. If you can’t accept people disagree with your idea, why you bring it out to public?

I am doing dungeons every day, burn more than 18 keys each time. I can gather a group to do e9 dungeons within 5 minutes if I am not picky on which dps I shall bring.
What gives you the idea of “nobody” bothers with dungeons?
People with more effective methods just no longer use the inefficient queue system.

I saw this problem, the queue is flawed. Thus, I call out the fact that dependency need to be reduced. The dependency on healers, or even tanks need be reduced or removed if possible. Some people will disagree. But truth is ugly.

See point 4 and 5 here: https://forums.funcom.com/t/sustain-tank-blessing-or-bane/928/255?u=keeperoftime

I don’t like this either, the dependency was perfectly fine in TSW with the trinity roles. It’s objectively not possible to change anything about the trinity concept anymore imo, it’s too late and will required too much rework of the entire endgame content.

I’m convinced the reduction to 5 difficulties, some quality of life regarding the whole grind (like suggested previously, alongside maybe the reduction of the total XP needed for legendary quality gear) and some boss rebalances will contribute to resolve this issue.

Then we can agree to disagree.

Personally, I think nothing needs to be change as sustain tanks/ cleanse tanks are here as it is. Effectively already removed the dependency of healers.
We just need it to be recognized in queue so that nobody will need to waiting 3 hours for a healer who will jump in and discuss whether sustain tank shall exist or not during the dungeon fight.

Only to make trinity concept actually working once again needs to change quite a lot. :stuck_out_tongue:

We can agree to disagree if you want so, but objectively it won’t happen, it’s just a fact. Funcom stated in multiple of their devstreams that the sustain tanking isn’t intended, and they even already took a step once to reduce its effectiveness (mainly with Percussive Maintenance and Pulverise nerfs), although it was far from being enough. This is like leech-tanking in TSW, it probably wasn’t intended to exist at the beginning, but players just created it, it didn’t pop up as an option in the finder as a result. This kind of crossover roles is part of the sandbox theorycrafting made by players, and should stay as is, while the finder remains the tool to use for mainstream roles. What high level players / theorycrafters do in their corner to ease / “break” the game has to stay in that corner.

Also, do you really have to bring the sustain-tanking topic to the table every single time an opportunity for it can exist?

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Sustain tanking is an issue that is relevant.

Not the only one though.

I consider it as a solution to the problem that mainstream roles are struggling with the long queue time.

If it can help improving more people’s life even at the cost of healers, I will bring it out as a possibility for people’s consideration while leave people to discuss whether to accept it or not.

As by far I have almost maxed out all the gears, I could feel quite indifference to people who still struggle in dungeons. But, maybe I just don’t want to see this world fall once again.

[quote and comment removed by Mashmellow]

The player population is low , the 10 tiered dungeon queueing system is ridiculous , it should be condensed to perhaps 5 tiers.
An equal footing in dungeons should not even be considered end of story.

Why on earth would we bother gearing at all if our gear suddenly means nothing?
progression is the incentive , take that away then everyone leaves & tbh the harsh reality is i personally do not want to be in a team with players who do not know what they are doing or for whatever reason have not progressed in their learning of the dungeon.
I dont want constant wipes, had all that & actively avoid it now or to be more precise avoid certain players , i value my time & i think the majority would feel the same as i do.

That I can agree.

But, each time we get more players, we get more than 3 times more dps than tanks, healers. The demand-supply balance just broken further.

To old players who already exists in game. It is a removing.
To new players who just out of story dungeons, that’s the 2 new concepts they need to learn.
We didn’t have tanks or healers to begin with when people are new to this game.
It’s nature that people are lazy to take roles that need more efforts.
Thus, when all of sudden, they have to depend on other roles, the supply of tanks are healers can not be met.

There’s no such problem, i see it as psychological more than anything else. In TSW, you rarely had to wait more than 20 min as a DPS, nobody complained about the “roles”. The problem that makes lives of tanks and healers miserable is the balance of the game (and the UI - defensive targeting for healers), not their inherent roles by themselves. The problems are very straightforward here :

  • Dungeons aren’t popular because people are fed up of the same 5 boring dungeons with no mechanics other than a few somewhat “interesting” bosses. Lack of content and lack of interesting strats.
  • The game is artificially harder than the TSW variant, making everything just tedious and boring (since no interesting strats - see above).
  • The game is imbalanced (be it for things like 3 min enrage timer for MT, or on the player’s side, abilities and passives need work to be done).
  • Too many tiers fragment people.

Now i’d gently ask you to stop the toxicity.

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Funcoms proposed answer to this is to refer a friend & gain rewards which we will see today after downtime, again another half assed approach at filling a void that they created.

I would add to that list “you can’t pick up a new role on demand”. Normally the answer to slow queues in tsw is “learn to tank while you’re waiting” because most endgame players have the full wheel unlocked to use more diverse passives regardless where they started, so you just need to read some guides and then queue for the dungeons you’re comfortable with. In swl if you play the way you’re meant to (weapon-specific signets) and you didn’t choose a tank weapon, you’re kinda boned for playing with at-level players for several months while you grind another few thousand chests.

TSW currency also capped your gear out much quicker, I believe about 4 dungeon runs per 10.4 tali in the final currency. Here the equivalent (max epic) is like, 13 E4s, and then you have max mythic (36 E7s) and max legendary (110 E10s). For a single tali.

Of course give it another couple more years and endgame players will have multiple red gearsets to do any role they want, but right now if you’re endgame blade/pistol dps, you just can’t heal or tank no matter what.

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Exactly this point Onevia, and it joins my argument about the ridiculous grind which needs to be changed eventually.

It would be nice if there was a setting to ignore the childish community flagging nonsense. I do not like to have to click to read posts, especially when they are disappointingly tame.

On topic, the problem as I see it is more playerbase than roles. It is too small to sustain ten dungeon levels, many of which are redundant anyway. E10 is nearly unused, as is story. E1 is so simple it may as well be story, e2-4 are nice for newbies, but are effectively the same when it boils down to it. The higher E levels are not particularly different from each other, its just scaling.

Of course that scaling is done very poorly and draws attention to balance issues between the roles and incoming damage, aggro handling, and so forth. The ridiculously badly balanced HR fights are another matter too. To truly compress the tiers, these things need to be dealt with first, or it just won’t work very well.

I think, though, once that is sorted, a potential solution may be to simplify the fights a little bit, and then put in a timer on them all. Say they combine E5/6/7 into one. It feels like your regular E5 fight, but if you beat the boss in X seconds you get E7 rewards. In X+Y you get E6 rewards. If longer than that just E5.

This would generally benefit higher level people running “lower” level queues as they would speed up their time spent and their DPS would help get better rewards for everyone, while it encourages lower levels to improve gear and tactics, and not just die and be carried.

Of course, given how badly they got the Machine Tyrant timer, I’m not confident this is a good idea, and some fights a timer is nearly irrelevant due to the hurry up and wait mechanics (DW5, Pol 6), and it also would be a problem when people died mid fight, pretty much ensuring you drop out of the top tier of rewards.

Why people are mostly waiting for tanks across all 10 elite levels?
The public queue has tank’s blue icons almost all the time.

Why take away people’s freedom to queue e5/6/7 by themselves?

Kill boss fast has its own reward. By put additional reward on it, will it kill healers further in this game?
But maybe it will also help to realize a future where people all push into dps and eliminate tank/healer in the end which may be a good outcome.

It also encourage even more people to gather in private groups as it link reward with dps performance.
People want better reward will first seek better teammates.
It applies Reward = Punishment rule.
Higher dps just gather together punishing those lower dps who doesn’t have IP, to avoid they being punished by lower dps in their team to get lower reward.
How do you solve this?

Do not consider my post as an offence to you. But consider it as a quenching process.
If you can answer my questions, then your solutions will become more convincing.

Some simply failed the test. Disappointing…

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