"Average Wait Time"

I've gotta ask something...You guys ever tried going into something and you get a short average wait time, but your elapsed time meets and exceeds the average wait time, so the AWT goes up a few minutes? It's happened to me a few times on duties. However, it happened last night while trying to get into the feast. I never try to get in anymore because its always over a 30 minute AWT. I decided wth and tried. My jaw dropped like when you see that one girl, you know that one? It was a AWT of eight minutes! So, I sat and happily waited...eight minutes passes and it goes to 12 minutes...12 minutes passes goes to 15...time keeps passing and I end up waiting for over an hour eventually forgetting I tried getting in in the first place because I joined a FC mates party to help them with something. I just wanted to know...Did I miss my chance to join in on some good ol feast fun like a prime time, or was it most likely just some trade winners or pre mades that made the time that low? I'm serious...It was like when you played pokemon years ago when G/S first came out and you see a entai or something and try to catch it and it just runs away only for you to not see it for a long time again lol...

It's happened to me, yes. Once to the tune of two hours before the queue actually popped back when T2 was still viable. The AWT lies. Or, more to the point, it's an estimation rather than a concrete time in which you'll get into the duty. Sometimes it's sooner, sometimes it's longer.

Yeah, it happens a lot. It’s a prediction, and the thing with predictions is that they’re never certain.

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Originally Posted by OMega_ARcane

I've gotta ask something...You guys ever tried going into something and you get a short average wait time, but your elapsed time meets and exceeds the average wait time, so the AWT goes up a few minutes? It's happened to me a few times on duties. However, it happened last night while trying to get into the feast. I never try to get in anymore because its always over a 30 minute AWT. I decided wth and tried. My jaw dropped like when you see that one girl, you know that one? It was a AWT of eight minutes! So, I sat and happily waited...eight minutes passes and it goes to 12 minutes...12 minutes passes goes to 15...time keeps passing and I end up waiting for over an hour eventually forgetting I tried getting in in the first place because I joined a FC mates party to help them with something. I just wanted to know...Did I miss my chance to join in on some good ol feast fun like a prime time, or was it most likely just some trade winners or pre mades that made the time that low? I'm serious...It was like when you played pokemon years ago when G/S first came out and you see a entai or something and try to catch it and it just runs away only for you to not see it for a long time again lol...

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How it works in reality: If you cross the average wait time by 2 minutes, it moves the AWT up until it hits 30 minutes, and then it just stays there. You can be in that queue for 2 hours, at that point I believe it just drops everyone.

How it works speculatively: If no needs are listed, the queue is empty. Whichever "need" listed is what the queue needs most, so in theory whatever "need" is listed should have an instant queue, but that also means that you could still be waiting since you need 2 DPS for 4-man content, and at least 4 for 8-player content and 24-player content.

In practice, the PvP queues are dead, and are always dead because of bots.

Extremely rare for me unless it's some type of raid or PvP.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

How it works in reality: If you cross the average wait time by 2 minutes, it moves the AWT up until it hits 30 minutes, and then it just stays there. You can be in that queue for 2 hours, at that point I believe it just drops everyone.

How it works speculatively: If no needs are listed, the queue is empty. Whichever "need" listed is what the queue needs most, so in theory whatever "need" is listed should have an instant queue, but that also means that you could still be waiting since you need 2 DPS for 4-man content, and at least 4 for 8-player content and 24-player content.

In practice, the PvP queues are dead, and are always dead because of bots.

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Yeah I get all of that :) I was more along the lines of wondering that since it was 8 minutes did I miss something? I can queue anytime and it'll always be a AWT of 30 minutes, but this day it was only 8...Guess "if I understand what you said" I had just missed a match that dropped the normal 30 minute queue down, is that right?

That happens to me quite frequently. Five minutes often turns into over a half hour.

Also, I guess I should have posted this in PVP threads, sorry about that guys. However, to make it "general" worthy, I often find that the AWT for normal duties is pretty close, and does anyone else think the moogle two seater mount sounds like nightmare before Christmas, and when on that mount for a long time does it look like a pair of "mountains" after a while to anyone else also? lol

Once I queued for an Expert on a tanking job and it said my wait time would be less than 5 min. I waited 5:01 minutes. Ever since then, I have refused to believe the average wait time ever again. It lies.

(edit)I figured I should throw in an obvious "I'm joking" here. For real though, PvP queues are awful and the AWT was probably from a couple parties that were running the content before you.

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Originally Posted by OMega_ARcane

Yeah I get all of that :) I was more along the lines of wondering that since it was 8 minutes did I miss something? I can queue anytime and it'll always be a AWT of 30 minutes, but this day it was only 8...Guess "if I understand what you said" I had just missed a match that dropped the normal 30 minute queue down, is that right?

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Pretty much. The "average wait time" , will only be low if the queue is being cycled quickly. This is why when I queue as a healer, it's instant, even if it says "tank" needed. However if I queue for Alliance raids as healer, sometimes it will be 20+ minutes during off-peak, because of the number of players needed. The PvP tends to always say 30+ minutes because something like Rival Wings requires 48 players. It also has a fixed 20 minute time limit. So the average wait time should always be reported as 20 minutes if there is only ever one match running. If there are two matches running (eg 96 players playing), on 10 minute windows, then it will show 10 minutes.

If you want to see an amusing wait time, queue for Diadem. I tried that a few months back just out of curiosity, and even though there was literally no one in the queue, it started the wait time at 5 minutes. Can't really blame it for being confused by a lack of data, but it's still funny.

Isn't the Average Wait Time based on the average for your last few runs of that(or similar) content, as whatever role you are queueing for? I thought I read that somewhere...but can't remember if it was here somewhere, or a discussion with FC members.

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Originally Posted by Avatre

Isn't the Average Wait Time based on the average for your last few runs of that(or similar) content, as whatever role you are queueing for? I thought I read that somewhere...but can't remember if it was here somewhere, or a discussion with FC members.

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I don't think so. What KisaiTenshi said seems to make perfect sense, and I hadn't been able to get into the feast since last season. I would usually roll a MCH, but tried as PAL, MCH, and NIN back then and it would pop less then 5 minutes, and after all the first people who sit in the top spots stopped playing it would still pop every 15 minutes or so, so I don't think that is the case. It's been a while since I could get in, and I can't imagine them holding onto everyone's individual data that way.

PvP queues are extremely high, unfortunately. Seemingly at pretty much any hour of the day. The Garo event provided a great incentive that encouraged people to queue up frequently. Limited time rewards don't have the same effect and just cull the number of players bothering.

The average wait time is determined by averaging the wait time for your role in that queue for the last hour across the data center. When you see the time start increasing like that its either because you hit that time where people are logging off for the night so queues are naturally taking longer or because you're queueing for something without much historical data to give an accurate prediction. In the later case it usually starts at 5min and keeps incrementing by a few minutes each time you pass it; in effect you're creating the base for the average wait time. You'll notice this a lot if you log in right after maint and queue for something.

average wait time is not max wait time. The average will climb if people stop queueing for certain content. Good example would be back in the light farming days. When a primal was in bonus mode, people would spam it repeatedly, creating pretty much instant queues. Once the bonus was over, people move on and average time will start to climb again.

When you get "less than five minutes" as the average wait time for a less-popular duty, it probably means that nobody else has queued for a while so the 'average' is based entirely on the one person waiting - you - and you've been in the queue for less than five minutes....

Queued for WoD, AWT was more than 30 minutes (This was back in HW) but queue popped after 10 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Yeol

Queued for WoD, AWT was more than 30 minutes (This was back in HW) but queue popped after 10 minutes.

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This case is possibly the opposite. Everyone else in the queue has been waiting forever, and you (or the next one or two queuing) were all they needed to finally get in.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

This case is possibly the opposite. Everyone else in the queue has been waiting forever, and you (or the next one or two queuing) were all they needed to finally get in.

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Me and my friend were lucky then :D

Awwwww, cute! You believe them!... Let me pat your head...

In other notices, Santa Claus its no real.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

This case is possibly the opposite. Everyone else in the queue has been waiting forever, and you (or the next one or two queuing) were all they needed to finally get in.

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Try this, when you get into the duty, ask people how long they waited. MSQ often has DPS saying they've been waiting 20+min while everyone else will say something like 2-5 minutes.

Joined 70 roulete last week and normally have to wait 1-20 minutes. This day however, I popped as soon as I hit join. Caught me so off guard I actually had a brief "OMG WHAT DO I DO HERE?" moment. I selected to continue and we were waiting on a healer to accept. I thought "Nah, it's going to fail and I'll get a 15-20 minute queue as normal. Nope. They approved and off we went. 30 seconds or so after hitting the join button I was in temple as a BLM. Probably my quickest ever duty queue ever as a DPS. dare I say it probably even put the tank queue to shame. Definetly an anomaly though.