Frontlines queue is broken.

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Originally Posted by Altena

As mentioned, "average wait time" may be 20 mins, but when 3 people are sitting there for 40+ (even closer to 60 on some occasions), then the "average" wait time is not very average is it?

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You still don't get how averages work. If one GC is in demand, the queue times will be longer while those in a GC of lesser demand will have shorter queues. Also, the last person to queue will have an instant pop anyway and likely the few people before him. Although I do suspect that the system won't take into account your queue time if you withdraw your registration which would explain why average queue times would be a lot shorter in other cases where queues are 2hours+

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Originally Posted by Altena

there were still an additional 3 slots unfilled.

I find it extremely hard to believe that it took 5 mins of constant withdraws for the queue to finally hit me.

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You really can't tell what other people are doing across several servers who are queued for the same GC. There is a tendency to AFK while in a queue for almost any instance, that explain why there are players missing from the start of a match. Players might also be in the middle of a craft and intentionally withdraw or allow the clock to run down, in cut scenes, or may have to afk just because of an emergency, door, food etc. Just because queues aren't popping for you right away, you can't say that the system is broken.

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Originally Posted by Codek

The average time tracker doesn't take consideration on what GC your joining as (it was originally built for a jobs based comparison). For every 1 Immortal Flame 1 hour queue, there is 4 Twin Adder 15 minute queue's. Average wait time for all players = 24 minutes.

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That would make a reasonable amount of sense.

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This oversight is becoming more clear and skewed each passing week as more players jump ship from TA...

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This is another issue that I didn't bring up because it's not really something that can be fixed.
Why did they have to make Frontlines bound by GC? If it was simply because of lore, then it was a pretty poor design choice.

It was inevitable for one GC to be weaker then another - which causes more people to switch, obviously affecting queue times. In addition to this, it breaks up FC's that have many different GC's, and does not allow them to play in the same party. A simple fix that would solve a lot of queue issues would be to remove the GC pre-reqs, and simply have 3 different "sides". However it seems lore is more important then function.

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Originally Posted by Altena

Did you not read my OP at all?

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I did - Once again welcome to DPS queues. With Frontlines there's a huge amount of people on Maelstrom and second to Flames, meaning tons of DPS trying to get into x amount of slots = long times. This happened even early on when Frontlines were released, it was quicker because it was fairly balanced, now that the balance is skewed I've seen long times even as tank/healer.

Something that says 'Estimated' 'or 'Average' doesn't mean "Approximately."

You are reading too much into the average time. It's more of an estimated time. Even then, nothing can guarantee that you will meet that estimated time. It's not like your queue is time dependant. Your queue is player dependant. If you need 1 more player from TA to complete the queue, the system would probably show 5 mins estimated. However, if no player from TA chooses to queue for the next 3 hours, you aren't going to get any queue.

The "average" time they show is just a rough estimate based on how many slots are yet to be filled. However, it is definitely not accurate as no one can predict who is going to queue and when they choose to do so.

It's not broken. That's how it's meant to be. You just read too much into the words "average", when no mathematical formula or computer code can accurately predict who is going to queue and when they will decide to do so.

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Originally Posted by Barboron

You still don't get how averages work. If one GC is in demand, the queue times will be longer while those in a GC of lesser demand will have shorter queues. Also, the last person to queue will have an instant pop anyway and likely the few people before him. Although I do suspect that the system won't take into account your queue time if you withdraw your registration which would explain why average queue times would be a lot shorter in other cases where queues are 2hours+

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Yes I didn't know that the estimated wait times were shared among GC's.

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You really can't tell what other people are doing across several servers who are queued for the same GC. There is a tendency to AFK while in a queue for almost any instance, that explain why there are players missing from the start of a match. Players might also be in the middle of a craft and intentionally withdraw or allow the clock to run down, in cut scenes, or may have to afk just because of an emergency, door, food etc. Just because queues aren't popping for you right away, you can't say that the system is broken.

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I do understand how the "withdraw" system works. It was actually included in a hotfix at the launch of Frontlines (because originally 72 people had to accept before a match would actually go through which was aggravating). I welcome the change, however the major reason I am saying they aren't functioning correctly is:

Player A signs up for duty.
Player B signs up for duty 5 mins later.
Player B gets a pop 10 mins later.
Player A is still waiting for 5+ mins.

This is not an uncommon occurrence. In fact we were spending the whole day and this would be true half the time. I will also add that both players (there was actually a third but I am keeping it at 2 for a simpler explanation) were all queued on the same class.

This is just one example of how the priority system is failing.

Is there a rank matching system in place as well?

Exactly why they need to allow us to queue by FC GC affiliation too, whichever is faster in queue would take priority speeding things up tremendously.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

I did - Once again welcome to DPS queues. With Frontlines there's a huge amount of people on Maelstrom and second to Flames, meaning tons of DPS trying to get into x amount of slots = long times. This happened even early on when Frontlines were released, it was quicker because it was fairly balanced, now that the balance is skewed I've seen long times even as tank/healer.

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Please then explain to me how full parties often have literally no healers. If there was a working job priority system, this sort of thing should not happen to begin with.

There are also often matches where Alliance A (as an example) has 4 healers, when alliance C has none.

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Originally Posted by Parz3val

Exactly why they need to allow us to queue by FC GC affiliation too, whichever is faster in queue would take priority speeding things up tremendously.

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But I love my Twin Adder queue time.

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Originally Posted by Parz3val

Exactly why they need to allow us to queue by FC GC affiliation too, whichever is faster in queue would take priority speeding things up tremendously.

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Basically this, and probably should have been the way it was done originally, while those without an FC get defaulted to their GC.

Consider how many individual players have jumped ship to Maelstrom, why would FC-based quees be any different?