Yes, absolutely. A bunch of my stories in the Tales From Duty Finder thread often involve me being a fill for some party of another. I usually ask what happened to the person I'm filling in for, but sometimes I forget. Usually the missing player got kicked for being an asshole.
Yeah, easy roulette rewards for half a low level dungeon most of the time. I don't often get put in parties with assholes (for lack of a better term) either as they've most likely been kicked, and even if I do get a party with assholes I can just leave or vote to kick, 30 min penalty isn't a big deal to me.
I've used it for several years now. Most times it is not clear why the person I replaced has left, and other times is glaringly obvious but not exactly bad enough where I will leave. I LOVE getting join in progress as a healer though, because I know which dungeons it could possibly be XD. Yesterday I had the shortest JIP ever, SASTASHA at the last boss lol. I literally did nothing but dps because the tank needed no healing.
Yeah, started using it last ~2months or so and haven't gone back.
The only duty I've seen "die" like you said is the Castrum MSQ roulette, because some people are just mean and have delusions that a certain other one is "better" and worth taking a penalty for. After a long delay, even that one eventually refilled with enough essential roles to continue.
I myself have queued as a tank filler for one of those ragequit Castrums some minutes in, and totally fine w/ missing the first 100k xp or so.
Sometimes I ask nicely for the reason the last person left, and most often the response I got was "an emergency". At least on my server, people are generally kind and rarely stop to votekick someone from their party -- that person would have had to do quite a lot and many times to trigger people enough to kick for troll reasons, or afk quite a while for afk reasons.
I usually always have it checked. Many times I zone it and the party is already on the last boss which is nice. Had this happen in Alliance raid and its the best.
Since realizing it was an option, I've almost always kept it on. Exceptions being when new content releases, as I want to experience it in its entirety including opening cutscenes, and during a recent event (was it moogle tomestones?) since you wouldn't get event rewards for in progress runs. As others have said, I'm often joining perfectly capable parties. Sometimes I'm told the person I'm replacing disconnected, or that they had to leave suddenly for reasons. Other times its clear I'm replacing a problem player (either someone who caused multiple wipes, or someone with a bad attitude). Very rarely am I joining a bad party, and it seems to be nearly exclusively trials when that does happen.
Yes.
But honestly, I don't get in progress duties very often.
I dont think i ever actually have tbh... maybe i should try it some time.
Probably an easy way to farm coms for mentor status since a lot of the time you're replacing a bad player, plus it also seems just like a kind thing to do: helping out stranded players to get the job done.
Never actually, though there's no real reason for it. I think I had only around 3 runs, maybe a little more, where a party member actually left in the midst of it, including one weird Castrum run where people left in swarms as soon as it started (the only Castrum roulette run where it happened xD). One was a healer who seemed to have left because he either got a missing piece of leveling gear or a required level-up and yesterday a tank who seemed to have disconnected and never came back (or force-quit the game).
The only time I've had 'join party in progress' turned off is when doing the Moogle tomestome events. I've ended up coming in as a dps in partially done dungeons multiple times.