Confirmation bias or trend: players who join In-Progress are better, on average

Hello! I've noticed what I think could be a trend, and I was hoping for some input. I've had a lot of people leave or get kicked in DF. Everyone has. But, it seems like all the players who join In-Progress to fill the gap are better than the average DF player.

In-Progress DPS always shoot to the top of the parse
In-Progress Healers weave in Cleric Stance no problem
In-Progress Tanks pull big and don't lose hate

Am I crazy? Or is this, for some reason, a thing?

Welcome to final fantasy XIV.

Hmmm intriguing. I almost always queue in progress because .. reasons? It's nice getting plopped into an EXR on occasion that's at the last boss.

On this front I can say that regardless of in-progress or not I always try my best with either healing or DPS. To me that means:
-Stance dancing with my healer, keeping everyone topped up, and tossing cards when applicable

-Doing as much dps as possible (BLM) and using short cooldowns where available without dropping Enochian. (Except that ARF last night, I'm so sorry to those people I botched everything, I was so tired lol)

It's hard to say really, I've never had a bad experience with someone joining in progress, so it could very well be a trend.

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Originally Posted by dragonseth07

Hello! I've noticed what I think could be a trend, and I was hoping for some input. I've had a lot of people leave or get kicked in DF. Everyone has. But, it seems like all the players who join In-Progress to fill the gap are better than the average DF player.

In-Progress DPS always shoot to the top of the parse
In-Progress Healers weave in Cleric Stance no problem
In-Progress Tanks pull big and don't lose hate

Am I crazy? Or is this, for some reason, a thing?

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most of the time, the people who join in progress are people who really intend to help (or were called by a friend in their LS/FC to help out) :)

I would agree that in general people that queue in-progress tend to be more experienced. I always queue in-progress on Tank/Healer jobs but rarely on DPS as you end up with a never-ending cycle of DPS dipping in and out of a dead party. It's always a roll of the dice, you might get a queue right at the final boss on an ExRoulette or you may find yourself in the party going nowhere fast and struggle all the way to the end. Only a certain kind of player is up to the task when it comes down to it.

Yeah people who queu in progress have the heroine/hero mentality so most of them are actually really good. This is a really nice observation I didn't think about but it's really interesting and people should definitely appreciate those that queu in progress :)

From personal experience this community really doesn't like to kick bad players so I imagine anyone that replaces someone so bad that they actually got the boot would probably seem awesome in comparison. They'd probably have to go AFK at the entrance to be worse (which I've actually had happen).

:x Couldn't tell you. Usually, I'm one of those people that always has Duty in Progress selected.

It all comes down to confidence. If i have time before i go to bed i always check for in progress runs of Aurum Vale, Stone Vigil, The Vault, Aery, Gubal Library, Sunkern Temple and Cutters Cry (As a healer) because im so confident as a healer that i can pull any group through to the end, more often that not without a tank or sometimes missing a DPS.

I think, especially since SE decided it was a good idea to hide the option, more experienced players know about the option than inexperienced ones.

Sometimes people ask in their linkshells or free company to queue in progress for a rep if someone bails or they kick someone and no one fills in a reasonable amount of time. Might have something to do with it.

I'm guessing it's neither an inherent trend nor bias—just statistical average. Well, maybe some bias. If you had a below average player, chances are that when you mulligan the outcome will improve. And if you got at all used to that guy, even average will seem a bit above average.

I join in-progress occasionally hoping for an easy, faster clear. A lot of times it ends up being that someone got kicked or left for a reason....as in the group was clueless and wasn't doing their jobs adequately and the person I replaced left due to that.

So I've stopped queuing in progress mostly since there's a big risk for wasted time.

Interesting... (despite my apparent seniority on this account) I have been playing since October 2013, after 2.0 dropped, and I can't remember ever getting a backfiller who was not better than the person who DC'd or left (I have yet to be in a group who kicked anyone). The back-filled person has always been good enough, we were able to complete without further adieu.

I wonder if this could be an example of the "Always Switch Doors" scenario in Game Theory?

I'd like to add something I have been noticing lately. My 3 friends and I try to do our Dunscaith run together once a week. As usual, sometimes a wipe will happen (people still aren't getting these mechanics) and sometimes around 1/4 or 1/2 of the raid group will leave with a "you guys all suck" departure. We wait a little and get replacements and the rest of the raid will go on fine. This has caused me to take on the motto: "It's the bad ones who leave." :cool:;)

Confirmation bias - you've just suffered through a terrible player so even an 'average' player seems wonderful. Many people who queue 'in-progress' are highly confident in their game play & as a result appear better than the majority of the playerbase.

I have to agree, they seem to be a whole lot better than the person that got replaced.
I've seen it happening many times.

I was also figuring that it must be due to the fact that many newer players probably dont even know about the "Join in progress" feature, as someone already had mentioned.

I have noticed this too. I think it's partly due to confirmation bias but also a hero mentality making the new person more driven and being under more scrutiny due to popping in by themselves.

I usually join in progress for a friend/FC buddy it's rare that I que in progress solo. However when I have it's usually new people or a group that has qued together and the timers almost up and they're at the last boss. It's not a problem for the most part since I can coach em but I hate getting lvl 60 content and having to coach ilvl 250+ people about their rotations, and why they can't make the Nidhogg story enrage timer.

I dunno about confirmation bias, but I started queuing in progress as a tank because I had some runs where we never got a tank and a party member said "yeah they never queue in progress" So I started doing it. Then I began doing it for the other roles as well, and I've rarely had a bad experience. In fact, usually the group was very happy to see me and it was a problem free run from the point I joined.

Idk about my dps but I am a healer who stance dances and a tank who pulls appropriately for the dungeon and doesn't lose hate.

unless I'm with my friend as my heal/tank (I'm usually vise-versa) I alway have that in-prog button on... only bias I have seen on my end is I almost never get an in-prog as my Tank class, like 5% are in-prog but 95% are normal, which has made me a bit schechy on SE's qurry system for DF (its even more rare I leave a group as DPS & return to the same group as a Tank... like 1/1000 odds, DF just gives me a norm start group instead)

Now on the topic of "the in-prog replacement is always better" all thou the concept is subjective based on view point I do see some merit to the idea as any time I get a replacement thats the same class as that which left they always out preform (even if near identical ilv)

It's possible that since joining in-progress is not enabled by default that people are more likely to enable it when they're more experienced with the game.

It's also possible that if someone leaves a group for a reason other than getting kicked for DCing or AFKing for too long, it's likely due to performance issues and therefore "better" is a very low bar to meet.

In either case, I can't say I've really noticed that, but I also rarely need to fill spots in active runs.