Locked out of the Duty Finder.

[Giantbane]

Thank you for all of your feedback regarding the new Duty Finder withdraw penalty system. I have been compiling your feedback and sending it off to the dev. team since its implementation. As others have suggested, we would like to encourage you to use the Ready Check tool before queuing up for a duty, especially when in a light party.

As a countermeasure for accidentally pressing the withdraw button once you've been matched with the Duty Finder, we are looking into adding a confirmation box that is displayed upon clicking withdraw, similar to that of when you receive a raise. While the implementation date is still undecided, I wanted to let you know the current status.

Would it be too much to ask why the dev team felt that they need to give a strike to every member of a partial party when only one member withdraws?

Ya I don't think a confirmation box is going to fix this, why not add in a feature like this.

When queuing up for a duty and say nature calls, for some especially if you want to wash your hands and not run back to the bathroom it takes longer than a minute to finish it all up.

What about adding in a feature that grants a 5 min auto-confirm duty when queuing up so that say you have to use the bathroom, and been queuing up for 30+ mins you don't have to run frantically back to make sure you don't miss it rather you put that auto-confirm toggle on and for those next 5 mins it will auto-confirm entry into the duty you are looking to get into. During that 5 min time frame I think offers a fair enough buffer to allow people not to miss out on a duty because of something they have to call to or do and the unluckiness of missing that 1 min window.

Rather you offer 5 mins, then when that time expires and no duty has been set to ready the player has to wait maybe 10-15 mins before they can do it again so that it can't be exploited in some way.

this would actually be pretty awesome

[Asheilin]

I like the idea of a auto accept

As to this penalty annoyance, any chance you could not start the countdown if someone is in a loading screen? I've not, personally, had it happen since 2.4 because i've not been doing alot of queues, but I'd be auto-withdrawn because of being stuck in a loading screen or quest CS that you can't skip.
One of my FC mates had this happen today (and they usually load far faster then I) zone changes, CS skip loading back to game, some people have huge lag on those (like me, when most of the game runs fine all other times) I've been in a loading screen for 2 min just chatting with FC and laughing at how long it was taking me to zone.

[Wobble]

I think a confirmation box is a fantastic fix for those that are having an issue.

[LalaRu]

The confirmation box confirmes that is has been decided a withdrawal will strike all members of an incomplete light party. You know it, you live with it.

[Giantbane]

The confirmation box confirmes that is has been decided a withdrawal will strike all members of an incomplete light party. You know it, you live with it.

I don't think that's what he said. They're adding a conformation box if you withdraw from an active queue.

The only thing he said about groups is that he also encourages you to use the already existing Ready Check feature before queuing up. I did not read this as a final say, but rather how best to deal with the "feature" as it currently exists.

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

I also agree that an auto-commenced option would be very helpful. Worst case scenario the person remains afk even once inside the instance. In that case the person has 5mins to return before the party can vote kick them.

[PetiteMalFleur]

Please don't give us a confirmation box when withdrawing. The problem is people afk and timing out from accepting then having the entire party hit with a penalty.

[Tiggy]

I also agree that an auto-commenced option would be very helpful. Worst case scenario the person remains afk even once inside the instance. In that case the person has 5mins to return before the party can vote kick them.

That's a pretty crappy worst case scenario and if all the failed queues are any indication honestly would happen more than you think.

[Niamh_Rillemaugh]

Great, another confirmation box and nothing is actually going to be changed.

I realize the withdrawal penalty was to punish people fishing for in-progress duties and annoying withdrawals with larger duties, such as Frontlines and the Crystal Tower raids, but the three strike penalty itself is too strict and is locking out players who never engaged in those kinds of activities. It was a mistake to introduce the system during a major patch when everybody is leveling a new class or doing major story or side-story quests. Nobody wants to choose between skipping the new (extremely long) Hildibrand cutscenes or finally get their Rogue into a dungeon they've been queuing for for an hour. If this system was introduced at a different time there might not be such a problem, since people would have had time to get used to it. But since it was introduced, I will submit my own suggestion for how it should be changed.

Why not introduce a system where the strikes can go away, on at a time, over a period. Say every 3-6 hours or so. So if you've got 3 strikes, you still get the initial 30 minute lockout every time you withdraw, but if you're good for 3 hours or so, you're back down to 2 strikes. And then 1 strike after the next three hours. It's not perfect, but it's more realistic than expecting a 3-strike per 24 hours system to satisfy everybody.

[Souljacker]

Would it be too much to ask why the dev team felt that they need to give a strike to every member of a partial party when only one member withdraws?

I'd go one step further and ask why a punishment at all was the decided-upon answer. There's other ways to deal with issues like queue fishing and I understand that SE wants to set themselves apart from the competition by not being a clone... But things like this aren't setting them apart in a positive way. Now we are just going to get ANOTHER confirmation box, in a game already full of obnoxious and redundant confirmation boxes. That's just what we needed here.

Please consult with some industry veterans before implementing large scale "features" like this. Only in the SE microcosm of a development team would something like this even make it out of the brainstorming stage, much less into full production.

This game could really, REALLY benefit from a test server so the players can help you find what works and what doesn't. I strongly suggest you compile yet another suggestion for a test server into your report.