Locked out of the Duty Finder.

[polyphonica]

It's not in the slightest. The withdrawal of one group has the same impact as one person withdrawing: 1 failed queue for everyone involved.

If there are enough replacements, the non party members are instantly reformed into a group. If there are not enough replacements, then it's a non issue, because the non party members would have never gotten the commencement window in the first place without the group.

It is. The party configuration is more likely to pop in most cases (depending on the configuration) due to having less gaps to fill. A group will get pushed up if it means some people that have been waiting a long time no longer have to wait. At that point, the odds of actual queue failure in the system increases if there punishment does not have a group impact, particularly when you consider the potential for players to use other players to exceed their personal limit. ("Hey, I'm still doing this 3-star craft; can you withdraw and requeue for me, since I already have two strikes?") So when you combine that with the innate party incentive (for honest parties) to want to queue quickly and not wait (the "social pressure" part of your previous post), the two together should reduce queue failures and prevent "punishment splitting".

As I said, though, maybe the solution to all this is to come up with a different angle for the group to discourage the negative potential, but one that isn't quite as blunt a force as the three strikes. But a solution that's entirely punishing only the one that withdraws isn't balanced either, even when you consider that the typical party would already feel punished having to wait again (but they'd still have incentive to stay in the party rather than leave, because it's still probably going to be faster in most cases, and it's almost always better to play with people you know).

Anyway, it's all about finding balance. I'm not saying that this system is perfect, but I don't think the opposite is quite right either.