Regarding Duty Finder Penalties

I recently ran Palace of the Dead with a matched party, as I frequently do to level from 50-60 in what I would consider a more reasonable amount of time than simply running roulettes. As is commonplace in both Palace of the Dead and Heaven-on-High, there was one member of the group who was simply finding the portal and standing on it while everyone else did all the work. The player's lack of participation resulted in multiple party member deaths, including my own. The same player also griped about how long everyone was taking as they resurrected one another as a result of his inaction. This, however, is not the major issue.

The real problem arises when it comes to doing something about it.

It is impossible to handle this situation with any efficacy on a player-to-player level. As the offending player, he/she clearly does not understand that their poor participation is resulting in a lack of enjoyment or decrease therein. As the offended player, it is impossible to make this clear to them without causing some manner of hostility. The most common civil responses given are along the lines of "everyone's play style being different", which is both an answer and non-answer at once. However, if one would rather just avoid the conflict altogether (we ARE supposed to be a TEAM after all), one is forced to leave the group, resulting in a 30-minute suspension from Duty Finder activities.

This practice is encouraging bad behavior. The offending player gets to continue on as though they're king of the world, while the offended player either has to experience a less enjoyable version of the game, or suffer a 30-minute penalty as a result of someone else's lack of consideration. In other words, I was just trying to enjoy my time playing your game, some D-bag comes along and ruins my fun by screwing off, and I'M somehow the one who gets penalized for being the bigger person and just walking away.

In case anyone's thinking of saying 30 minutes isn't that long to have to wait, allow me to address it in advance: I ran around for another 5 minutes, registered my SE forum account, searched high and low for a way to contact someone over this (your contact link is broken, by the way), typed this thing up, and still have ten minutes left over before I can run again.

This is not acceptable from a paid service, Square Enix. I would like to enjoy my game. Your punishment of those of us who are polite and courteous is making that difficult. Please do something about this.

If someone is disrupting your game, report them that's all you need to do. Despite the situation no one is forcing you to leave the duty, because regardless of what is happening the party is still being left down a member and that's generally the same across most matchmaking activities. Anyway it's potd, many players go in and just want to get out as soon as possible, everyone has their own targets for being in there so perhaps don't try to push your own expectations on other players, you'll only be disappointed.

Did you try a vote kick on the player? If you did and it didn’t go through then I guess the others were ok with how things were going. Regardless of how the chips fall in a situation like that, someone is going to have their gameplay interrupted. It is what it is tbh. I don’t think people should just get out of having a leaver’s penalty just because they feel they are more aggrieved than someone else. The penalty is there for a reason.

I recently chose to take a penalty during an ex roulette where I ended up in a group with the healer and other dps both wearing 290 weapons and a bunch of 300-315 pieces. The run was slow and at the end we just couldn’t get through the last boss. I tried a vote abandon after 4 wipes where we got no where close to victory. I assumed it wouldn’t pass, but I figured I’d give it a go before taking the penalty. And it didn’t, so I chose to leave. Point is, sometimes bad runs happen and you end up having wasted your time, but the occasional bad run doesn’t warrant abolishing the leaver penalty imo.

Honestly, if I'm really not meshing with a party, I do leave. Yes, the 30 minute penalty can seem like forever if you want to get back into another duty straight away.

But step away from FF entirely and the time goes by quick. Load up another game, do some housekeeping, grab some food. Anything really.

There's always going to be some parties with different values/playstyles and SE can't really do anything about that.