Locked out of the Duty Finder.

[OdinEon]

Maybe they should do away with DF completely and have people get social party up and run a dungeon, would that make you happier, seriously, if your having trouble gathering 3 other people to run with you, maybe your not doing it right.

[LunaHoshino]

how about you stupid healer and tanks stop complain it isnt fine for dps who dont have instant ques u got what 5mins 10 maybe 15 max seriosely SHUT THE HELL UP u dont know if its fine until you have to deal with ques no shorter than 50mins
fact is we dps already being punished for playing a job we enjoy were punished by having to wait over a hour for a single dungon and most of the time the tanks or healers troll with in the dungon

Hi, I play DPS. And guess what? I love this new feature. My queue times have gone way down because I don't have to deal with that extra 5-20 minutes of withdrawal spam on top of the queue time itself.

Don't queue up if you aren't paying attention and ready to hop in when it pops. Period. I often tab out to other windows to do other things (like post to this forum) and somehow I have managed to never miss a queue even when I'm not looking directly at the game. In fact, I'm queued up right now. It isn't hard.

[Asierid]

QQ

First MMO? DPS always have a hard time in group queues. This is common knowledge by now. The whole "I want it now" thing is kind of old.

And holy damn, use some punctuation for once. Kind of hard to make a decent argument when the whole thing reads like you have a mouth full of bread.

[polyphonica]

I'm at a complete loss. Why punish individuals for the mistakes of others, what purpose is this supposed to serve?

Because when you are in a partial party, your party's withdrawal causes the entire queue to recalculate. That one person's cancellation was a cancellation for your entire group by proxy. The benefit of partying in a group is that you get to play with friends and often have faster queues, but the drawback is that one person's cancellation causes the whole group to cancel, and repeated failures can result in this 30-minute wait. Yes, if those players were not grouped, they could individually "troll" the same amount of times on their own, but the system has more flexibility for re-juggling that responsible person in the queue (i.e. push them down the priority list) and prioritize the ready players. Because you're grouped, though, that person's failure means that many less players are available since they can't split your party.

In other words, the system considers your party a single queue entity, and has to juggle your group around as a whole. Hence the punishments have to be applied to the queue entity as a whole in order to reduce the likelihood of successive queue failures.

[Giantbane]

Because when you are in a partial party, your party's withdrawal causes the entire queue to recalculate. That one person's cancellation was a cancellation for your entire group by proxy. The benefit of partying in a group is that you get to play with friends and often have faster queues, but the drawback is that one person's cancellation causes the whole group to cancel, and repeated failures can result in this 30-minute wait. Yes, if those players were not grouped, they could individually "troll" the same amount of times on their own, but the system has more flexibility for re-juggling that responsible person in the queue (i.e. push them down the priority list) and prioritize the ready players. Because you're grouped, though, that person's failure means that many less players are available since they can't split your party.

In other words, the system considers your party a single queue entity, and has to juggle your group around as a whole. Hence the punishments have to be applied to the queue entity as a whole in order to reduce the likelihood of successive queue failures.

There is no complexity to the priorities of players in the queue. It's just a queue. The individual leaves and the individual reenters at the back of the line. The group leaves, the group reenters at the back of the line. There's no difference.

All the people who didn't withdraw or timeout are then added back to the beginning of the line and it tries to regroup them with others at or near the front of the line. Same result. The only time it's really effected is if there are just not enough people of a particular class in the queue. And it will act the same if the group has the needed class as an individual being the single class, ie: they'll get back in easily because of the needed class.

The result is a minimal behavior in queue behavior. A person will be discouraged from withdrawing because they don't want the strike. In the same way, within a group, each individual member will be discouraged from withdrawing because they *also* don't want a strike. So no, applying the punishment to everyone is not going to be very helpful in this situation and is only going to encourage more animosity between players when somebody makes a mistake that hurts everyone else. The game does not need more of that.

[polyphonica]

There is no complexity to the priorities of players in the queue. It's just a queue. The individual leaves and the individual reenters at the back of the line. The group leaves, the group reenters at the back of the line. There's no difference.

All the people who didn't withdraw or timeout are then added back to the beginning of the line and it tries to regroup them with others at or near the front of the line. Same result. The only time it's really effected is if there are just not enough people of a particular class in the queue. And it will act the same if the group has the needed class as an individual being the single class, ie: they'll get back in easily because of the needed class.

There's a huge difference. If one player goes to the back of the line, that's one less player. If a party goes back to the end of the line, that "times x" less players. The impacting queue wait for the party failure is on a different order of magnitude. If you're in a party of 8, it's no different from 8 withdrawals from the queue system's point of view. The system needs to find 8 replacements to accommodate the 16 ready players (and so on at smaller scales).

The result is a minimal behavior in queue behavior. A person will be discouraged from withdrawing because they don't want the strike. In the same way, within a group, each individual member will be discouraged from withdrawing because they *also* don't want a strike. So no, applying the punishment to everyone is not going to be very helpful in this situation and is only going to encourage more animosity between players when somebody makes a mistake that hurts everyone else. The game does not need more of that.

But this cannot work. What's going to happen when an individual in the group gets their three strikes? It will still inevitably impact the entire party because they are queueing as a group. As long as one person is locked out, you're all locked out. So you can kick that person. Okay, but you could already kick that person after the first strike to avoid the risk of a recurrence. Again, in all this time, every queue failure is multiplied by the amount of players in your group who are not able to enter the instance because of that one person's withdrawal. So the impact from the game's point of view is the same. The issue here is not the party members, who can at least control the party they're in, but the other players in the duty finder whose entry is delayed exponentially by the one person's failure to be ready.

[Giantbane]

There's a huge difference. If one player goes to the back of the line, that's one less player. If a party goes back to the end of the line, that "times x" less players. The impacting queue wait for the party failure is on a different order of magnitude. If you're in a party of 8, it's no different from 8 withdrawals from the queue system's point of view. The system needs to find 8 replacements to accommodate the 16 ready players (and so on at smaller scales).

The wait isn't any different unless it's a very small queue and there aren't enough players. At which point you, as a player clogging the queue with an over represented class, better pray that group doesn't get locked out because they're all that stands between you and other X minutes wait until the next person of needed class joins the queue.

Otherwise 1 or 7 players isn't going to make much of a difference for a matchmaker that handles thousands of players.

But this cannot work. What's going to happen when an individual in the group gets their three strikes? It will still inevitably impact the entire party because they are queueing as a group. As long as one person is locked out, you're all locked out. So you can kick that person. Okay, but you could already kick that person after the first strike to avoid the risk of a recurrence. Again, in all this time, every queue failure is multiplied by the amount of players in your group who are not able to enter the instance because of that one person's withdrawal. So the impact from the game's point of view is the same. The issue here is not the party members, who can at least control the party they're in, but the other players in the duty finder whose entry is delayed exponentially by the one person's failure to be ready.

No, it's just a single queue failure. All the ones who didn't withdraw get back in the beginning of the line, the group that did withdraw has to reenter at the end. It doesn't stress the system any more or less because 5 player were removed from the head of the queue as opposed to only 1.

But it's nice to see you advocating more reasons for groups to kick people out. That's all this game needs.

[polyphonica]

The wait isn't any different unless it's a very small queue and there aren't enough players. At which point you, as a player clogging the queue with an over represented class, better pray that group doesn't get locked out because they're all that stands between you and other X minutes wait until the next person of needed class joins the queue.

I'd rather wait then have the horrible experience that is the queue commence loop. If a party of 8 gets 16 distributed chances to have individuals withdraw before they get any sort of lockout, meanwhile rising to the top all the time because of the amount of players they have, that's a bad experience for everyone else in the queue, regardless of their class.

Otherwise 1 or 7 players isn't going to make much of a difference for a matchmaker that handles thousands of players.

If it creates an overall disincentive for withdrawals throughout the playerbase, including people who are in parties, the net effect should be faster queues with less withdrawals overall. I'm sure if the data doesn't support that this is the result, they'll tweak it to get the result they're looking for.

No, it's just a single queue failure. All the ones who didn't withdraw get back in the beginning of the line, the group that did withdraw has to reenter at the end. It doesn't stress the system any more or less because 5 player were removed from the head of the queue as opposed to only 1.

It's a single queue failure of <x> pre-set people. If the queue could manage every player individually, it could more efficiently manage failure, but a failure of a block has a compounding impact and increased likelihood of recurrence (as it's typically easier to use the group as a base and fill the gaps, compounding the likelihood that the repeat failures will impact more people).

But it's nice to see you advocating more reasons for groups to kick people out. That's all this game needs.

If their not being ready is going to be impacting the game at large, then yes, they should be kicked. Your being able to be in a group together is not worth everyone else in the duty finder growing frustrated with the endless looping.

[Giantbane]

I'd rather wait then have the horrible experience that is the queue commence loop. If a party of 8 gets 16 distributed chances to have individuals withdraw before they get any sort of lockout, meanwhile rising to the top all the time because of the amount of players they have, that's a bad experience for everyone else in the queue, regardless of their class.

You're acting as if people do this on purpose to use up all their chances in one go, and any time they withdraw they jump immediately back in the queue. Five members of a group isn't any more likely to have a member withdraw than five individuals. I'd say it's actually a little less likely on a per player basis for the group, because if they withdraw, they're not only wasting the time of some random strangers in the DF, they're wasting the time of the people in their party. So there's extra incentive for the group members to click "commence" that doesn't exist with an individual.

And because you'll be back at the head of the line, the matchmaker will probably start matching you with other people before the group queues back up again. The result is that it's probably less likely that the matchmaker will put you with the same group again, because the group it's putting together for you at the start of the line no longer has available slots to accommodate. Not to mention if the group *does* withdraw, it's probably going to take a little time to figure out and/or deal with the cause of the withdraw. Obviously it's moreso now because of the strikes involved to the whole group, but even if the penalty was applied to individuals, the group would be encouraged to double check this person was ready or risk losing that member to a lock out. This all reduces the chances you'll have to deal with the same group withdrawing again in the near future. On the other hand an individual of the needed class will take less time to sort out their individual issue (no communication between members required) and because they're queueing solo, it's easy to put them right at the head of the line.

You are far more likely to be impacted by an individual withdrawing than a group because it's more likely you'll get stuck with the same individual again.

It's a single queue failure of <x> pre-set people. If the queue could manage every player individually, it could more efficiently manage failure, but a failure of a block has a compounding impact and increased likelihood of recurrence (as it's typically easier to use the group as a base and fill the gaps, compounding the likelihood that the repeat failures will impact more people).

The queue actually more efficiently handles putting new people in the queue than it does groups. Groups that aren't full already get penalized because it's harder for the matchmaker to match them with others. Individuals are easy to match and they actually get a certain level of priority because they're easy to slot into groups at the head of the line.

Proof of this is my own experiences with DF. Certain categories at prime time have instant queues. Tanks for expert & high level dungeons for instance. I never have to wait when I play on my WAR or PLD for those categories. However, I have grouped with FC members with tank + healer + 1 dps and had to wait 5 minutes for the queue to find us a single DPS. Had I gone solo at that same period of time, my queue would be instant. So, no, groups do not get priority based on their number of members. If anything, the members they have is a hindrance because it's harder for the matchmaker to match *them* with the right number of people.

So again, because it's harder to get the group to the front of the line, even with needed players, it's much less likely that you'll get stuck with the same group again as opposed to a needed individual which is trivial for the matchmaker to stick back in the front.

If their not being ready is going to be impacting the game at large, then yes, they should be kicked. Your being able to be in a group together is not worth everyone else in the duty finder growing frustrated with the endless looping.

Unnecessary animosity generated between players is of larger detriment to this game than the nonexistent extra effect of a group withdrawing from a queue as opposed to an individual.

[polyphonica]

Proof of this is my own experiences with DF. Certain categories at prime time have instant queues. Tanks for expert & high level dungeons for instance. I never have to wait when I play on my WAR or PLD for those categories. However, I have grouped with FC members with tank + healer + 1 dps and had to wait 5 minutes for the queue to find us a single DPS. Had I gone solo at that same period of time, my queue would be instant. So, no, groups do not get priority based on their number of members. If anything, the members they have is a hindrance because it's harder for the matchmaker to match *them* with the right number of people.

Like everything else in the queue system, it depends entirely on who's in the queue and what other parties are being formed at the time. It will obviously try to queue the people who have waited the longest into the first available party. You can also see that it will start "pre-forming" tentative groups while waiting for a gap. If there were a surplus of available unassigned DPS in the queue at the time, even your party of three may get an instant queue. But if there's a healer who has been waiting longer, then it may try to reserve the available DPS for a party with the next available solo tank, resulting in a delay for your party, even though all you need is one DPS (because if they take it, and then the tank shows up, the other party would have to wait longer to get its needed DPS).

But anyway, it's clear that it's easier for the system to manage individuals than groups. But part of this configuration difficulty is why this party-based penalty for withdrawing. From a system's point of view, this still seems to me like the most equitable and fair approach, since it reinforces that if you're going to queue as a party, you should be coordinated and ready as a party. And, at the end of the day, it seems to me that the 30-minute penalty on the third strike is not so onerous or burdensome in the grand scheme of things. I suppose we may not agree.