DF withdrawl has become the new "Fatigue" system

[RyuDragnier]

The mere title alone to this thread...you're comparing a "if you forget 3 times you get a penalty" to a system where you have an actual LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME PLAYING BEFORE YOU GET NOTHING. The wording is horrible, and if you get the penalty, it's usually on you...except for that ridiculous glitch they need to fix. Think up a better wording for the first post, you could play the game for 24 hours and maybe get only a 30 minute penalty for withdrawing compared to the 8 hours and then nothing system.

I'm not convinced that the DF lockout is working. In theory, it is meant to lessen wait time in DF queues. But in practice, I'm not sure it actually is doing that. Queues are as long as they have ever been, and people are failing to click Commence when it pops just as much as before. It just seems to be punishing innocent people for making easy mistakes, stepping away from the game for a minute to go to the bathroom, or partying with someone who failed to click in time. Like, if I queue for a dungeon with an FC buddy, and 30 minutes later he is AFK at that exact moment and fails to click Commence, I get penalized for it. No matter how you look at it, that is pretty ridiculous.

A couple of DPS who miss their queue have already waited 30-60 minutes for their dungeon. And if they even want to re-queue, they will have to wait just as long again. That is punishment enough. But if a tank and healer queue up, and one of them isn't ready or has to take care of something, now you're preventing much-needed roles from re-queuing if they get enough strikes. DF is worse off without them, even if they do fail to catch their queues a few times.

People who fail to click Commence are not why DF queues are so long. It is, and has always been, because parties require a balance of roles, but certain roles are far less played than others. Perhaps the greatest contributor to the problem was SE's boneheaded decision to make Light Parties with only 2 DPS. But rather than do the hard work it would take to address the real issue, we have a penalty system that points fingers at a scapegoat, and blames the players for problems in the game's foundations. I wouldn't call it "the new Fatigue system," but I would certainly call it a system that needlessly punishes players for having real lives and not really doing anything wrong.

It was put in place to stop the constant amount of queue trolling you'd see at endgame. Tanks purposefully entering and exiting queue constantly for CT and ST just to get people angry, and people trying to queue up for roulettes with friends and continually resetting when they didn't get the same queue. It was to stop both of these, it was never in place to lessen the queue times. Not to mention with the addition of a new class the queues have been completely thrown off due to the overabundance of people trying to level Rogue and Ninja.

[RaideDuku]

Now we're being punished for trying to participate in an instance!

If you miss the queue 3 times in a single day, you either aren't participating as well as you think you are, or you need to group with people that aren't jackasses.

And I see no evidence this has had any impact on the number of withdrawls...

Someone hasn't done ST since this went live.

[AdamFyi]

I would certainly call it a system that needlessly punishes players for having real lives and not really doing anything wrong.

You are given 3 strikes every day before the game starts penalizing you. If you know that you are going to be away from the game for more than ten minutes (lesser for tanks and healers), then you shouldn't be queuing for a duty in the first place. If you were called off for something that takes a reasonable amount of time to do, open the DF window and remove yourself from the queue. It saves you a strike, and it saves you from accidental events like being away when a queue pops. This also applies to your buddies that go AFK without any warning. They should be alerting you if they have to go do something, in which point you can either take yourself off the queue, or accept the fact that there is a chance that the queue may pop up while he was away.

[Fyrebrand]

It was put in place to stop the constant amount of queue trolling you'd see at endgame. Tanks purposefully entering and exiting queue constantly for CT and ST just to get people angry, and people trying to queue up for roulettes with friends and continually resetting when they didn't get the same queue. It was to stop both of these, it was never in place to lessen the queue times.

Sure, but there is a difference between someone who fails to click "Commence" in time and someone who clicks it, enters a dungeon, and then abandons. If they wanted to penalize people who abandoned a dungeon, then they should have just done that. What they have implemented does not target trolling tanks. It doesn't target people who just didn't like the dungeon/group they got. It is a blanket penalty for everyone, and therefore it targets no one. The only people affected by it are just those who have been in a queue for 30-60+ minutes and failed to click a button within a one-minute window, which I don't think it actually heinous or damaging behaviour. Penalizing them does not improve the game for anyone. It's a pretend solution to a real problem.

If you know that you are going to be away from the game for more than ten minutes (lesser for tanks and healers), then you shouldn't be queuing for a duty in the first place.

Ten minutes? Is that how long you think a DF queue is? For DPS, you can expect to be waiting for anywhere from half an hour to an hour, or more. I have had more than one occasion, leveling my NIN, where the queue exceeded 75 minutes. As ready as anyone feels when they initially queue up, they can not tell you that in 75 minutes they will definitely not have to go to the bathroom, or get an important phone call, or grab a snack, or let the dog out, or whatever.

If you were called off for something that takes a reasonable amount of time to do, open the DF window and remove yourself from the queue.

If I know I won't be able to play, then I will remove myself from the queue. But when you've been in a damn queue for over an hour, and all you want to do is grab a drink or something without it costing another effin' hour of waiting, you are not going to click Withdraw.

This also applies to your buddies that go AFK without any warning. They should be alerting you if they have to go do something, in which point you can either take yourself off the queue, or accept the fact that there is a chance that the queue may pop up while he was away.

That is a load of BS. If I queued with an FC mate, and after 40 mins to an hour he says "brb," I am not going to withdraw us from the queue on the off chance DF will pop in the next minute. And if you're claiming you would, that is BS too.

Realistically, I have not been penalized for withdrawing 3 times in a day. I don't think a lot of people do, but those who do are not guilty of anything aside from being a little disorganized or having bad luck. They did not do something bad, which needs punishment. They are not the problem. And the penalty is not going to change their behaviour anyway, because it's not something they intend to do in the first place.

[polyphonica]

I'm not convinced that the DF lockout is working. In theory, it is meant to lessen wait time in DF queues. But in practice, I'm not sure it actually is doing that. Queues are as long as they have ever been, and people are failing to click Commence when it pops just as much as before.

I don't think it's only to lessen wait times, but also to reduce annoyance. Of course anecdotal evidence is what it is, but I will say that I personally noted a significant reduction in the amount of queue failures as a result of the change. Certainly, for the 24-player raids, the amount of subsequent/repeated failures has dropped. But either way, I should think that SE should have data to support or deny this claim. (It also makes the people waiting in the queue and constantly clicking commence at least feel that something is being done about the people who withdraw and cause them the annoyance and delay.)

I think the length of queue times at this time is more likely impacted by the influx of new DPS characters. We can only theorize if it would have been even worse if not for this change.

I also don't think that, generally speaking, the individual player is very likely to run into this problem. Where the odds do get a little higher is in parties, and that's discussed in the other thread.

The only people affected by it are just those who have been in a queue for 30-60+ minutes and failed to click a button within a one-minute window

...who have done this three times in a given 24-hour period. And their punishment is only that they have to wait 30 minutes before queueing again, to hopefully remind them that they should really be ready this time.

Again, this is aside the party issue, which is a bit more complicated.

[Amelia_Pond_Behemoth]

I'm amazed to even see DPS be the ones to withdraw. With queues the way they are, you'd think they'd be more careful about losing out on the queue they waited an hour for.

[Fyrebrand]

And their punishment is only that they have to wait 30 minutes before queueing again, to hopefully remind them that they should really be ready this time.

Wait, what? The penalty is only 30 minutes? I thought if they got 3 strikes, they were basically banned from DF for 24 hours. If that's the case, I don't know what to think about it. On the one hand, that is not nearly as harsh as I thought it was. But on the other hand, it just highlights what a microscopic impact this has on anything at all.

[Felis]

I'm not convinced that the DF lockout is working. In theory, it is meant to lessen wait time in DF queues. But in practice, I'm not sure it actually is doing that. Queues are as long as they have ever been, and people are failing to click Commence when it pops just as much as before.

It was never mean to lessen the queue time. It was meant to lessen the amount of withdrawals after a queue, that would start a new queue. And the amount of withdrawals is now really lesser.

[Volsung]

Personally, I love the change. From personal experience, I have dealt with less people fishing for
in progress runs.

[polyphonica]

Wait, what? The penalty is only 30 minutes? I thought if they got 3 strikes, they were basically banned from DF for 24 hours. If that's the case, I don't know what to think about it. On the one hand, that is not nearly as harsh as I thought it was. But on the other hand, it just highlights what a microscopic impact this has on anything at all.

The impact is to prevent repeat offenders from essentially trolling the duty finder queue. The biggest impact, outside of people who were fishing, is mostly that it's going to make people more socially aware. If people understand there can be a punishment for something, they're less likely to do it for that reason alone. I would say that it has actually had a material impact on reducing queue failures in my experience, but it's not going to be night-and-day at a personal level. It's a subtle shift, not a land-slide.

(The main people I've seen who find it less than subtle are those who end up with the penalty because someone else in their party withdraws, which is a problem from the queue system perspective, but perhaps the punishment seems a bit unfair if there was not much/anything you could have done to prevent it. But that's also why the punishment wasn't designed to be so very overwhelming; more of an annoyance.)