Please fix Duty Finder issues

I don't want to get into a conversation about over played or under played classes. I have a Relic for all roles (healer, tank, ranged, melee) and a Relic +1 for 3 of the 4.

What am I complaining about, then?

If I, or my friends decide to queue as a ranged DPS class, the wait is understandably long. What ISN'T understandable is that every time another player bails on the queue, there is a chance that our entire timer seems to reset.

Could you PLEASE change duty finder so that other players leaving the queue doesn't throw everyone else back into the general pool of players?

If you want concrete examples of how bad the matching AI is, here are a few:

It is faster to queue up as 4 ranged DPS than as a single ranged dps. I assume this is because the system is forced to eliminate the melee slot restrictions.

The hardest part of getting into Crystal Tower, right now, is getting through any one of 24 players withdrawing or timing out the duty commencement. If I am queued as a healer, and the 1st tank withdraws before commencement, why would it throw me into a completely new batch of 24 players? Let me stay in the pool with the 22 others that DID accept, and only attempt to find a replacement for the one that rejected commencement. It's BEYOND frustrating to have your first prompt fail because of a tank rejecting, then the second because of a healer, then the third because of a DPS, and so on and so forth. This is compounded when you play a class that has a long queue time.

Lastly, the difference in population can't be so great that getting into a duty as a ranged dps can take a half hour and be nearly instant for a melee dps. This happens constantly CT. It happens pretty often during prime time for Trials. If Melee really are SO RARE that this is possible (which I doubt!) then please consider additional balancing changes or working to make future content more desirable to play as a melee character.

Now, I understand that there are in effect 2 queues: A player queue, and an instance queue. I am no programmer, but perhaps consider only initiating the instance queue when all players have clicked the "Commence" button?

Before the game went live Aug 27th 2013 it was said by the dev team that encounters would not require specific dps and that any random groups of tank, healer, and dps had a fair shot at completing the encounter as the next. Now we see that is not good enough. The encounter unless we prebuild the party is setup to control what jobs go into the grouping. Why can't it be truly random dps and not specific ones? I do not know. Some reason the devs have deemed that content requires both range and melee dps to complete. At least that's the case when just solo listing in DF for a dungeon queue.

None of the 4-man dungeons require any specific DPS to complete. Heck, the only content in the game I know of that absolutely requires one DPS over another is Turn 4, thanks to the Knights/Soldiers (you can do it with 4 Physical...I have yet to hear it done with 4 Magic. Don't say ADS, since SCH and PLD can Silence too...)

I'm leveling BRD. 3/4 of the time in the Roulette the other DPS is another Ranged; THM/BLM, ARC/BRD or ACN/SMN. I get a PGL/MNK or LNC/DRG about 1/4 of the time.

So...why is ranged taking so long? The game wants to balance things out; 1 tank, 1 heal, 1 melee, 1 ranged. Cover all the bases. Thanks to a shortage of melee (because so many people don't know how to play them properly, and ranged is "easier" to play), ranged are getting longer queues. But...at the same time, you still get a lot of 2-rDPS parties through the DF, which means there is a huge difference in the ratio of melee to ranged...If there wasn't, queue times would be about equal for all DPS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PArcher

So...why is ranged taking so long? The game wants to balance things out; 1 tank, 1 heal, 1 melee, 1 ranged. Cover all the bases. Thanks to a shortage of melee (because so many people don't know how to play them properly, and ranged is "easier" to play), ranged are getting longer queues. But...at the same time, you still get a lot of 2-rDPS parties through the DF, which means there is a huge difference in the ratio of melee to ranged...If there wasn't, queue times would be about equal for all DPS.

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I know I talked a lot about RDPS vs Melee DPS queue times, but honestly, the biggest problem is getting thrown back into the pool after someone declines.

As melee DPS, I still get hour-long queue times. As ranged DPS I get slightly less. I know that I would get less than that if I switched to healer or tank, but that's never going to happen because people behave like tantrum-throwing toddlers in severe need of a good spanking (and then they'll have a good reason to cry).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noshpan

As melee DPS, I still get hour-long queue times. As ranged DPS I get slightly less. I know that I would get less than that if I switched to healer or tank, but that's never going to happen because people behave like tantrum-throwing toddlers in severe need of a good spanking (and then they'll have a good reason to cry).

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What you describe is counter to what every other player describes. Are you talking about level 50 queue times? Pre-50 queue times do matter, but people are much more likely to play things for leveling than what they will play seriously at level 50.

As far as I can tell you only get tossed back in the general pool if you're in a partial premade and someone in your physical party fails to Commence or multiple people fail to Commence. Most of the time on ANY class, I just get Commence spam once it's past instance reservation. Just keeps trying to refill the abandoned slot.

As an archer, I tried the DF all day yesterday. It was easily an hour before my first one popped. Then the healer DC'd and we stood around for another half hour for someone to join. Had to quit the instance. Bleh

My parties I've been in tend to set it to ranged dps, not because melee is bad, not because melee does less damage, but because in a lot of content (I'm a healer), I find myself going "why is this mnk or drg taking SO MUCH EFFING DMG?!?!" the reasoning, they are a spammer, couldn't be bothered to finish of their gimp dmg roto to move out of attacks. Honestly not all melee are like that, if we're doing FC content, who cares what the dd is they're all good. But DF melee , and DF players in general tend to be so bad, that if my dds are bad, I'd rather not have them by the mobs taking dmg too. Heals are meant for tanks and aoe dmg not stupid melee dds. Like random dmg fine, but if you're just dying right there next to the mob, eff you, I'ma let you die and I'm not gonna raise you, and the party is doing just fine on dmg, so we're good, problem player solved ^^.

TLDR: I might be part of this problem, I'm sorry for those good dds out there, but a lot of bad melee dds give you a bad rep to the point I just avoid them entirely.