PvP and queue times: something's got to give.

Frontlines having an oddly long queue isn't too new of a thing, but it's something that has been exacerbated immensely by the release of 2.5. The lengths of the queues are sporadic, for no rhyme or reason, but generally tend to lean on the long side; I can go from getting matches after waiting only 5-10 minutes, to sitting in queues for over 45 minutes and getting nothing, even if I were to queue immediately after getting out of a previous match, much like I'm doing right now.

Some of these long queues make no sense either. A single slaughter match is, at maximum length, fifteen minutes. So to be in queue for over 45 minutes, means that approximately three Slaughter matches have occurred, possibly more depending on the size of one's data center. Am I really to believe that there were 216 (72*3) people in line ahead of me, and that only one game happened at a time?

To amplify this further, when the queue finally does pop (if it does pop, before I decide to just say "screw it" and do something else), there's a high chance that it's not even the 72-man frontlines that I wanted to do, and instead the abomination that is known as 24-man. 8v8v8 is not "more fun," it's more boring. I didn't wait in a queue for nearly fifty minutes to do something boring.

Getting back on track, these queues times are simply just unacceptable, there's no reason a person should have to wait such a ridiculous amount of time to get into content. I average about one game per hour, two if I'm lucky, and these games themselves only last about 10-12 minutes. The rest of the time, I'm spent doing very little else, because god knows if I afk for even a minute to take care of something, I could potentially miss the sporadically random queue pop, and then guess what? Back to the beginning of another 30+ minute wait I go!

These problems aren't unique to solo vs. premade either; I've experienced stupid long queues both by myself, and when trying to queue two or three friends.



So what causes this?

Is it lack of people?
Well, okay, that may be a possibility, but I'm inclined to think not so much because I've gone from getting lucky and getting three fast games of queue times of about 10 minutes, to then sitting for over an hour without a pop, even when queuing again directly after finishing the previous one. And this is in prime time, on a weekend, when the number of players should be at its highest.

But I'll play devil's advocate a little too, what if it is the number of players? Well, in that case, why are there data centers to begin with? Why can only certain groups of players do stuff together? It's no surprise either that this game just about dies at night (11:00pm to 6:00am, PST) since most people are asleep. Yea, sure, there's a fairly large number of nocturnal players, but not much they can do together when they're separated by said data centers. I've always thought of MMOs as something you can play 24/7, and there'll always be enough people to do stuff with, and that's just simply not the case with the game as it currently is.


Is it the split game types?
Well, that does seem more likely. With the introduction of Slaughter, we now have two possible modes for Frontlines, and that's very expectedly driven a line through the middle of the Frontlines playerbase, making a faction of those who prefer Secure, and a faction of those who prefer Slaughter. This kinda ties in a little bit with the lack-of-players bit from above, I suppose, but this basically means both types now have a smaller pool to choose from.

Is it the algorithm?
I think this is the most likely culprit; I think the design SE has put in place for matching groups is probably just wonky and convoluted as all hell. What it should be doing is laying out slots for all nine parties in a frontlines game, then grabbing from the front of the queue. "Oh, this premade of four wants in? Okay, their party now has four slots remaining. Oh, a premade of two. Well we can throw them in with the four to give them six. So we can fill them up completely with a set of two, or two solos." That kind of stuff, but instead it seems to just do something completely different.

It also doesn't help that if enough time passes it will instead try to make a 24-man instead of a 72-man to "get the ones who have been waiting" into a game. But how does it determine this length of time? Is it based on the players? If you have 24 people who have been waiting "long enough" that you make a 24-man, chances are you also have enough on the sides who are queuing and want a 72-man game, so why not just make the 72-man? It makes literally zero sense.



Whatever the case may be, this is something that seriously needs to be looked at and fixed. I know they tried with the whole Frontline Roulette, but that has honestly not done a damn thing, at all.

The GC restriction is also a part of the problem. Right now, it might depend on if certain GCs have a larger amount of players which would result in longer queue times for higher population GCs compared to being in a GC that has a lower population especially if it is heavily skewed.

A first step to alleviating some of this is to remove the GC restriction so basically anyone can be on any team to fill matches faster. They don't want to budge on it, blah blah lore integrity, etc, I'm sure they could pull something out of thin air that would make sense. Maybe add a checkbox somewhere that considers the player a mercenary that can fill any slot on any team, and being able to queue as a group of mercenaries for players that have friends but aren't in the same GC to allow them to play together.

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Originally Posted by Curia_Regis

Is it lack of people?
Well, okay, that may be a possibility

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Hate to tell you but this is most likely the asnwer. Between this and the GC restrictions there just aren't enough people interested in PVP in a PVE centric game.

the answer is simply lack of people.

There are 5 main reasons why PvP is not more populated.

1) Grand Company restriction (probably one of the biggest reasons.)
2) Lack of relevant rewards (unless you love pvp you will not do it, gear is pvp only and token rewards are subpar compared to other venues.)
3) It is a Final Fantasy Game. Comes with the turf this is just not a major pvp game the majority play FF games and mmos for the PvE aspect.
4) Front-lines requires 3 partys... and you are forced to pug, 8 person premade max (never a good idea to force pugs)
5) You end up getting put into premades that are just garbage in terms of what jobs are auto put together.

So you are running into this problem. The majority do not want to do pvp maby 2/5 max want to actually do it in this game, going off asking ppl in my FC and various linkshells. So the base is already smaller. That base is then force segregated based on GC alliance, which is seperating friends and guilds from being able to participate together. And last what is the benefit of doing PvP outside of just having fun?

I am not a huge fan of PvP in mmo, that is what mobas are for in my opinion. But This game lacks a reason to do PvP, especially for those wanting to play with groups of friends and not randoms all the time.

The GC bullshit is the problem, not the other things listed.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Hate to tell you but this is most likely the asnwer. Between this and the GC restrictions there just aren't enough people interested in PVP in a PVE centric game.

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That's never the problem in an mmo with pvp. People go online to experience a game with other people. Pvp naturally fits into the equation. It's always something other than this....like the GC, rewards, etcetera.

If they really wanted to reduce queue time, GC restrictions wold have been gone months ago. It would literally solve Queue time problems in an instant. But as it stands they're more interested in Lore than easy accessible PVP. I thought they finally understood that GC restrictions were bad when the FL population dropped to minuscule numbers after a month of release and a new mode was announced. Crossed my fingers and thought there was no GC affiliation. But alas Slaughter is still GC eccentric. They still don't have a clear understanding of the major problem that lies in this design..let alone the pvp itself..

On the note of Grand Companies, I'm not sure why they're still even in the game in general. Well no, I know why, it's because of the silly lore stuff, but really. SE has barely touched them in any way, and after 18 months, we're still capped at Second Lieutenant, the same rank that was achievable from the day the game launched.

More than likely the fault of GC limitations. Could you imagine if you could only party up with GC members for PvE as well? The queue times would definitely increase by a significant amount.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Hate to tell you but this is most likely the asnwer. Between this and the GC restrictions there just aren't enough people interested in PVP in a PVE centric game.

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Depends on your world. Tonberry has no problem getting Frontlines groups. If you are trying to queue in the morning and then complaining about not getting any groups that is your own fault though. Of course PVPers are not going to be on in the morning.

Please help SE, I'm abit disheartened with waiting 30-60min to get 200xp....really struggling with getting my rank up. Even switched GC to lessen the que times.

Im not saying OP hasnt been doing pvp for ages, he/she might have.
But its quite annoying that pvp has been in this state forever, and no one gave a damn.

Suddenly now its got some hype behind it, everyone jumps on the hate wagon.
If someone loved pvp so much, why were they not doing it before the hype? The rewards have always been a mount and decent ilvl gear.

Believe it or not pvp queues are much better than they used to be at the moment (at least in my playtime).
People seem to want the mounts with little effort, compared to people who put the effort in before the pvp hype.

my advice is if you want to pvp, wait until friday/saturday night and/or when the frontlines has bonus light. Thats the only method I used.
If you queue for 2 hours on a weekday morning, then its your own choice, dont blame the community for being at work/school.
Take up a craft and make the wait times productive.

+1ing not being interested in pvp terribly due to missing out playing with friends that chose another GC. I had to beg people to join maelstrom with me, and they didn't really want to even though they finally did due to the mount and knowing it would end up more enjoyable for everyone. Wolves Den was great in the sense that I could play with whomever I wanted to. Frontlines took that away.

I've done 5194 matches in the wolves den. Sadly it died due to the few people that did it are now doing frontlines.

I've done a mere 3 matches in frontlines. It just isn't as fun without friends. I've been hoping for a long time that they'll kill the restriction and assign you a GC to defend or represent when you enter. This hasn't been the case. ; ;

The main issues are a combonation of amount of people and GC restrictions. I had a friend in a separate GC getting 2-3 queues for every one of mine. Bassically what this tells me is that those 72 people on our datacenter were the ONLY ones queuing in their GC while our GC had more people queuing and had to wait our turn to fight them. They either need to drop the GC restrictions (which would mess up a bunch of their achivement requirements (but can alliviate this issue with simply saying things like "lead your team to 100 frontline victories" instead of making them GC specific) or pull people from more data centers into the same PvP pool.

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Originally Posted by Histoire

BLIP

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I agree, though I just love pvp too much (or loved, I don't like it since the patch before this one, I never read the patch notes but I'm dying too quick as a caster now, if one melee comes close ill be dead in seconds, before the patch I could have really fair 1 vs 1 against any class as a summoner, now I cant even get 3 dots up before im down)
But you forgot to mention something that I can't stop hating SE for. Frontlines: Roulette is only available to queue up for solo. THIS IS AN MMORPG WHERE YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH FRIENDS

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Originally Posted by Curia_Regis

Frontlines having an oddly long queue isn't too new of a thing, but it's something that has been exacerbated immensely by the release of 2.5. The lengths of the queues are sporadic, for no rhyme or reason, but generally tend to lean on the long side; I can go from getting matches after waiting only 5-10 minutes, to sitting in queues for over 45 minutes and getting nothing, even if I were to queue immediately after getting out of a previous match, much like I'm doing right now.

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45 mins? at what time are you playing? in the prime time in the evening PVP should be no problem.. and if you play on servers in your time region.


My opinion is that they should turn the group search server wide like for all other PVM duties.. at the moment its restricted to server clusters right? I think that also lenghtens the pvp queues..

Plus they should add pvp content in the future with just a maximum of 2 groups each side.. to lower queues as well.

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Originally Posted by Stihllodeing

That's never the problem in an mmo with pvp. People go online to experience a game with other people. Pvp naturally fits into the equation. It's always something other than this....like the GC, rewards, etcetera.

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Jynx is actually right, not everyone like pvp and consider it as a "mandatory activity" when it come to online games. I for one really hate pvp in this game and nothing will force me to participate in more pvp activities :p
Final Fantasy is meant to be a PVE game at start, it's only because Yoshi-P actually like pvp and that's enough of a reason why we see pvp activities here (Also it's good for SE's wallet).

On a very personal opinion (please don't flame me), I truly think that pvp in this game is actually slowing the development of other pve contents, icing on the cake it also create more additional works for the devs when it come to balancing jobs for pve and pvp contents.

Remove the GC restriction and I'd actually care enough to play pvp.

The GC restriction is definitely the number 1 issue. Hell, change the lore to something along the lines of war drills with other city states. Problem solved.
There is literally no reason to force that kind of restriction on players.

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Originally Posted by Tonkra

45 mins? at what time are you playing? in the prime time in the evening PVP should be no problem.. and if you play on servers in your time region.

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My queue times are <10 mins usually when it's peak PvP time.

Of course there isn't going to be short queue times during quiet PvP times simply because there isn't a lot of players actively looking for it (that's why it's quiet time). People seem to not see that.

GCs do have an effect on that, but it can't be that bad if I can get <10 min queues. I mean, if the other GCs weren't filling up enough, I wouldn't be in there either seeing as it requires 3 GCs to be present and accounted.

Interesting, I have noticed a decrease in queue times since 2.5 came out. Although I think a few factors might contribute to the varying length.

Server Limitations:
Like with Amdapor Keep at the beginning of 2.0, it wasnt a lack of people wanting to do it, it was actually the opposite. Too many people were trying to play and all available room for instances was taken up. So even if you had a full party to do and insta-queue, you couldn't until other groups finished what they were doing. Eventually they added more instance servers and this alleviated the queue time issue. To date, PvP has not been overly popular (although I have been enjoying it since its release) so they may not have allocated enough server space for this. With any luck (if server limitations are the issue) if people can continue to have a large interest in PvP, they will increase the server space for PvP instances.

Company Affiliation:
Not sure if this is still the case but for quite a while Maelstrom was the leaders in PvP winning. They were the winning team so everyone was switching to them so they could get wins. Well, with the way that FL is set up, you need to have X people from each Grand Company to be able to compete. Queue times for Twin Badders (err sorry, Adders) was the quickest and would sometimes go through several queue cuycles to the Maelstroms one because they were backed up. I switched to Adders and notied a big difference in queue times.

Data Center:
Also look at what data center you are on. I was on an EU data center because I had friends I played with over there and some days it was a 3 hour queue time. Those were the times where it was peak time for me to play but was like 3-4 am for them so very few people were playing over their data center. Same might go for a JP data center.

Conclusion:
These may not be all the issues or what the OP is experiencing but just a few things to consider when you are experiencing long queue times. I made a few changes, Switched GC's, moved servers, and poof! 10-15 min queue times during my peak play times. In addition, I do hope that SE will open up different PvP games and rules that do not have the GC limitation, I feel this is the biggest cause for any queue wait at all. If you can have the GC's mix for PvP (like in Wolves Den) and have a large scale, fun experience (like Secure or Slaughter) then you will see a much larger base of players doing PvP.

EDIT:
Also, there might be people not using the Duty Roulette (or only using it once for the daily bonus) and only queuing for the Slaughter mode. This could be why you see the 8v8v8 secure Frontlines. I like all modes with WD being at the bottom and Secure being at the top. Either way, if you tick (join party in progress) button and use the roulette, that should increase your chances. If you arent doing ti already or in a party of two that is. Best of luck to all you PvP'ers out there!

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Originally Posted by Atomnium

Jynx is actually right, not everyone like pvp and consider it as a "mandatory activity" when it come to online games. I for one really hate pvp in this game and nothing will force me to participate in more pvp activities :p
Final Fantasy is meant to be a PVE game at start, it's only because Yoshi-P actually like pvp and that's enough of a reason why we see pvp activities here (Also it's good for SE's wallet).

On a very personal opinion (please don't flame me), I truly think that pvp in this game is actually slowing the development of other pve contents, icing on the cake it also create more additional works for the devs when it come to balancing jobs for pve and pvp contents.

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And that's fine. If you and Jynx don't like pvp (not that Jynx actually said that) I don't hold it against you. Pvp shouldn't be forced onto anyone. I hope I didn't give you that impression.

However the abnormally long que times for pvp is not due to a lack of people willing to que pvp. It's the design....it's pretty obvious it's the design.

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Originally Posted by Accolade

my advice is if you want to pvp, wait until friday/saturday night.

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The problem is, these 30, 45, 60+ minutes queues all were from Friday and Saturday, during prime time and late evenings. There's just really no excuse for it. SE needs to removed Grand Company's involvement and restrictions in Frontlines to make the queues better, but I'm pretty sure they've dug the hole so deep, they don't know how to do that without tearing up their precious lore.

If I could queue and have fun with my FC mates who are almost uniformly Maelstrom, then I'd be interested in it again. But it's lonely when you're TA.

Regardless of winning or losing -- more fun with friends either way.

-Remove GC restriction
-Change the Duty Finder queue algorithm to include Japanese players, we can't communicate with the enemy team anyway? why limit us to only NA/EU players?

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Originally Posted by Curia_Regis

The problem is, these 30, 45, 60+ minutes queues all from Friday and Saturday,

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I can only talk from personal experience, on weekend nights, I rarely wait for 15-20min. But yes, 45+ for "Prime Time", is pretty ridiculous - and does need attention.

But theres always the detail, that PVP has been like this forever, so why is there suddenly so much bad press about the wait times. If its not been fixed in around a year, maybe we are in for a long wait.
Everyone with the pvp mounts have had much worse queue times (queues are currently faster than pre 2.5) for a months on end, and although there was some disdain, it was never taken to this magnitude. People just got on with it and have now reaped the rewards. If people expected to get max rank and a mount in under a month,im sorry.

PVP did exist before all this hype. Players used to put up with much worse queues, just because they wanted to pvp for fun, and not to (only) yield it rewards.

queue times are just fine... ( insert sarcasm here )


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