Suggestion: Fix Join in Progress

Many months ago, when they added mentor and altered duty finder matching formula, they made it very difficult, if not impossible to assist friends in progress. I understand prioritizing mentor rouletters for joining in progress, but if there are none available it should pull from those who queue directly, instead the new formula does not prioritize joining in progress at all. When friends run into trouble and need reps, you can queue for that duty, with in progress checked, and duty finder will put you with a new group, or not place you at all. This means if you lose a tank of healer your going to be sitting around in a duty doing nothing, waiting forever till you have to abandon. It shouldn't be this way. You should still be able to queue in progress and be prioritized to join those over fresh groups and help you friends in struggling dutys. It absurd that you can select in progress, and your friends duty just sits there with an empty slot and duty finder refuses to offer it to you.

From another recent thread

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Originally Posted by Rongway

It does prioritize duties in progress. However, you won't be offered the spot if the group is not looking for members yet, or if someone else has the in-progress offer waiting. You could queue up immediately after your friend's group kicks someone, but as soon as it goes to looking for members, if there's already someone in queue with in-progress checked then they have 45 seconds to accept. If another duty pops during those 45 seconds, you get that one instead because your friend's in-progress group has already "found" someone--even if he hasn't accepted and entered yet.

As for how often people queue in progress, you're underestimating it by a long shot. Many people queue in progress without having been requested by friends, which would contribute to you not getting your friend's in-progress duty even though you queued when asked.

To allow people to queue only for duties in progress would be heavily abused for quick clears where people only want the last boss kill, far more abuse than the additional benefit over the current system (that is to say, the current system already finds replacements as soon as they are available, and the flaw that you are seeing is simply a side effect of the second-in-line situation described above, which is not a prioritization problem but a slow human response problem that won't be fixed by allowing only-in-progress queues).

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It USED to prioritize in progress. It does not anymore. This has happened many many many times since they changed the formula. I've seen screenshots of duties showing they are finding members, along with screenshots of people queued in progress for the duty, and df will not offer joining even after 5 minutes has passed. Or it will only offer fresh parties.

Also, I never said you should be able to queue for in progress only, I said they need to fix the formula and prioritize in progress again.

Rongway has a point though...and granted I don't know how the coding actually works, but if you are looking for a member, someone has been found and is awaiting an accept/withdraw decision, and then your friend queues up...if there's an open party that's ready to go and just needing that specific role I'd expect it to go to the new open party.

I'd agree I wish there was an easier way to help out friends that are in need, I've had good success in the past, but sometimes landed in parties that weren't theirs too. But I'd be surprised if it's a prioritization.

How do you know it used to and doesn't anymore? Was there something mentioned in patch notes? If it's observation, I'd bet it has more to do with what Rongway described than a prioritization concern.