Locked out of the Duty Finder.

[Fynlar]

Well, then the real thing to rework is that one party member's withdrawal should not trump the whole rest of the group being ready, because right now that one person's behaviour does count exactly the same is if you yourself hit the withdraw button. Perhaps they should just make it so that the whole decision resides with the party leader. When the queue pops, the Party Leader decides whether to accept or not (up to them if they want to do a ready check or whatever), and if they accept, everyone else has the remaining time to either agree, or be booted from the party. This could result in more "gaps" to be filled by in-progress, but in that scenario it would make total sense for the lockout to only apply to the person who withdrew, because then rest of the party was allowed to commence anyway. It reduces queue failures in favour of more partial-parties.

I don't really know everything of what you just said but it all sounds way more complicated than simply giving the strike to the person who withdraws / waits out the whole 45 seconds

The issue with doing this is you are now giving parties the ability to fish simply by having each member click "Withdraw" in turn, one after the other. So instead of 3 strikes and you're out, it's now 12 strikes. For a full party of 8, that's 24 strikes. This means we'll be going back to the days of waiting though 15 withdraws before you get into CT/ST.

It's far more likely that a party of people looking to troll CT/ST would just enter the instance itself to troll it, really. Bring enough people and there's no way for anyone to kick them from the group

[polyphonica]

I don't really know everything of what you just said but it all sounds way more complicated than simply giving the strike to the person who withdraws / waits out the whole 45 seconds

It is more complicated, because otherwise it can be abused by just telling your friends in the party to withdraw on your behalf, thus multiplying the amount of strikes a given person effectively gets ("punishment splitting"). Being in a party would thus be a way of bypassing the strike rule. But, since people don't like the whole party getting the penalty, your main alternatives are either that the person who withdraws gets booted so that everyone else gets in (thus no group penalty needed), or you give the group some other sort of disincentive (like a group penalty that's separate from the individual penalty, or some other penalty for the party leader that encourages them to ensure their party is ready before queuing).

The whole thing is you don't want to punish honest people for someone else's mistakes, while also not allowing dishonest people to use whatever system you come up with to bypass the rules and inconvenience others. The current implementation arguably leans too strongly to the latter side.

Auto-withdraw from your party if you withdraw from a queue that the rest of your party accepts might not be a bad idea, but it seems like it would still be a queue failure. Someone withdrew and so you didn't have a full party formed. DF would keep trying to fill the open spot, the same as if they'd queued individually and withdrawn. The difference would be that the rest of the party isn't knocked out of the queue at the same time, (which is a problem regardless of whether there are additional penalties involved or not).

The key to making that work would be that you'd start the instance with gaps to be filled, as happens for Frontlines now. Obviously there'd have to be a limit to how many withdrawals it could overcome though. In theory, you could probably make it so that within the first minute of an instance starting, those don't count as "partial queues", thus allowing those spaces to be filled really quickly by anyone waiting (assuming they're in the right role).

[Fynlar]

It is more complicated, because otherwise it can be abused by just telling your friends in the party to withdraw on your behalf, thus multiplying the amount of strikes a given person effectively gets ("punishment splitting"). Being in a party would thus be a way of bypassing the strike rule.

Pro-tip: Most people who were repeatedly queueing and withdrawing before were trying to fish for in-progress runs, not just trying to troll other people. Which is something you already can't do in a party anyway.

I really don't think NOT penalizing the whole party would result in a bunch of trolls returning to the DF queue with an army of other people just so that they can keep withdraw spamming.

[Starvald]

I really don't think NOT penalizing the whole party would result in a bunch of trolls returning to the DF queue with an army of other people just so that they can keep withdraw spamming.

You would be surprised what is possible these days. My experience is that if there is a possibility to troll or exploit something you always find people who do exactly that. It is a sad thing that we have to take this into account when designing something for a game but that's just the state of things. I do agree though with some posters here that adding the progress in the commencement window was a mistake in the first place. but as SE doesn't seem to be willing to remove that, there is not much else we can do.

And yet, none of those times are you given a restriction on when you can play/try again unless you personally made the decision to abandon your (full) group. Not really the same thing.

It is your decision to queue up with people that are for whatever reason not able to commence. Same as it is your decision to enter a dungeon to play with other people. If you don't like the outcome (waste of time because you wipe 20 times in a row on a trash group which can easily sum up to more than 30 min, 30 min penalty because you leave, or one strike out of three on a 24 hour basis) then take precautions. Either only queue with people you know, use the ready check, don't queue at all or just deal with it.

[Nyalia]

those are reasons to extend the commencement window to say 60 sec. Nothing to do with getting locked out. All you are saying is you need more time to accept, not that you need more times to whiff it.

If I'm cuing in nin for 2 hrs and miss the button, I'm mad I wasted 2 hrs in cue for nothing. Not that I'm 1/3rd the way to a 30 min penalty.

I agree completely. I was arguing for a 60 sec window, not more tries. I'm just trying to point out here that there are perfectly legitimate times that you can be unable to click commence for 45 seconds.

[NyarukoW]

.... I'm just trying to point out here that there are perfectly legitimate times that you can be unable to click commence for 45 seconds.

Make it a priority to be ready to click commence not impose a another 15 secs delay X the whole player base and generally slow down the queue. You do not need that HQ craft, that extra, fate, mob, etc. Don't take the time of other players on the DF for granted, do the waiting and not expect others to wait for you. This should be common courtesy and the default. It is not like I do NOT DF as a DPS and have to wait, and I do other stuff while waiting, like Ixal dailies etc., but I do it in such a way that when the queue pops I click commence in under 15 secs or less. Be ready, and do NOT be greedy.

You should NOT expect to do everything you want while waiting on the DF queue. Anything you get done should be thought of as a bonus and NOT guaranteed or expected. The withdraw button is not for the player withdrawing, it to avoid keeping others waiting when you know you want something else instead of the DF, which really means you should not have been queuing on the DF the in the first place.

[KaedrianLiang]

Unfortunately, the reality of it is that if you could withdraw without penalty in a group, thne you can bet that some people would group up as a Tank+Heal and then queue/withdraw all day long.

SE punishing the whole population because of the actions of not even 0.1% of the population.

I hit withdraw when the DF came up at annoying times. Like in-out inventory/retainer management, putting items up for sale, popping up just milliseconds before i hit an unspoiled DoL node, affixing materia, in the middle of that FATE that takes 1-2hours to pop, about to finish a FATE you spent 10minutes soloing because the FATE was completed by 20+ players last time it was up.

You've been waiting for 30+ minutes, you get up and leave to use the toilet in a rush, you are gone for 50 seconds, come back and youve guessed it, "participation could not be confirmed" here's a 30 minute lock out.

The dev's could have offered a far more refined option like a system that puts you on hold until you hit the "im back" button then it puts you at the front of line. THEN if this happens 2 times in a row where the player hits the "im back button" but didnt accept the duty, then slam them with a 1 week lock out for all i care. After hitting the "im back" button the player is no longer eligible for duty in progress until he or she completely removes themselves from the que and joins again.

No, they went with the easy fix that does more harm than good, more pissed off players than happy.

Yeah them Full party and raid confirmation windows dont last for 20minutes AS OFTEN AS THEY DID BEFORE, but at the cost of victims, both for the player hitting accept, and the ones performing necessary bodily functions such as toilet and quick refreshements.

No, the dev team want you to stay at the keyboard from when you que to when the duty is finished.

[Izsha]

Again everyone is focused on the principle and theoretical instead of the practical. SE has ALREADY accounted for the random crap that goes wrong. That's why you have 3 withdraws instead of 0 and it's 24 hour reset. That IS the solution. I have never been locked out for 30 min. My friends I've asked haven't yet been locked out. Just because there's some rare outlier situations where someone inadvertently gets locked out once in a blue moon is not enough to revamp the entire system and add huge amounts of complexity. The system works in the vast majority of cases and has the desired effect of removing the excessive fishing. It is a practical solution that is proving to work but we have 44 pages of QQ about every imaginable what if scenario and hypothetical nonsense because it might, rarely, hit someone that didn't deserve it, maybe, if the evil stars align. So we have to tear down the entire system because it is technically possible that it will have a 30 min collateral damage on an innocent person in the most extreme cland unorthidox cases.

Stop focusing on the what ifs and realize the system is simple, and solved the problem. It's practical, so just let the theoretical worst cases alone.

[Niwashi]

The key to making that work would be that you'd start the instance with gaps to be filled, as happens for Frontlines now. Obviously there'd have to be a limit to how many withdrawals it could overcome though. In theory, you could probably make it so that within the first minute of an instance starting, those don't count as "partial queues", thus allowing those spaces to be filled really quickly by anyone waiting (assuming they're in the right role).

That happens with Frontlines because it can have up to 72 players in an instance, and getting all 72 to confirm at the same time was too problematic.

With dungeon content, the DF should still keep trying to match people until it has a full group and only start the instance once that's achieved. Your pattern would lead to an exploit where a DPS would pair with a tank or healer just to get their near-instant queue, even though the tank/healer had no intention of running the dungeon and could just withdraw, leaving the DPS in an open (but only partially filled) instance. The open instance would give that DPS priority for getting the next tank/healer to come in, while meanwhile making the other players he/she was paired with have to wait it out with him in the instance rather than continuing what they'd been doing until a group was ready.

It's better for the DF to continue until it puts together a complete ready group, just like it does now, but have the player who withdrew be the only one withdrawn, rather than forcing the "withdraw" on whoever else he was grouped with as well. That means if someone Withdraws while his teammates Commence, the one withdrawing would be knocked out of the party, and the ones entering would be partied with whoever else the DF finds as a replacement.

[Nyalia]

You should NOT expect to do everything you want while waiting on the DF queue. Anything you get done should be thought of as a bonus and NOT guaranteed or expected. The withdraw button is not for the player withdrawing, it to avoid keeping others waiting when you know you want something else instead of the DF, which really means you should not have been queuing on the DF the in the first place.

Because, clearly, your 15 seconds are more important than my two hours? Talk about impatient... You know what? Forget it. Arguing with someone like you just isn't worth it.