Castrum Queue and the overflow lottery

[Nafreyu]

I stuck around in a map, doing everything needed while waiting for a queue to pop for CLL. Queue'd as was 18/48, I thought 'Great. I chose a poor instance anyway as had to wait closer to the full hour and must have just missed the last one'.

Only to find, that 55/48, I missed out. Most likely because of that shard priority engagement buff.

MF'rs stole my queue. I was so livid, I had to go and play something else for a bit to cool down.

Either way, point of the post is it's an interesting map, I enjoyed it, but mechanics like that where there's potential to miss out, no thanks. Not playing that part any further.

[DrWho2010]

the "Priority" buff from cluster purchase does NOT work for CLL. it's up to RNGesus if you're queuing solo if you'll get in or not. probably have more luck with a full 8 man party going in.

[Riyshn]

the "Priority" buff from cluster purchase does NOT work for CLL. it's up to RNGesus if you're queuing solo if you'll get in or not. probably have more luck with a full 8 man party going in.

Citation needed.

Literally the ONLY thing we know for sure about Priority is that the entire party has to have it for it to work. ANYTHING ELSE is speculation.

You say it doesn't work? You're working from the assumption that it's purely a pass/fail mechanic, where people with the buff will always get in before people without. Where is your source for this assumption? It could easily be something like "roll twice, take the higher number" or "roll + 50", either of which would sometimes make it look like the buff didn't work, but does still give you better odds of getting in.

[MariaArvana]

Citation needed.

Literally the ONLY thing we know for sure about Priority is that the entire party has to have it for it to work. ANYTHING ELSE is speculation.

You say it doesn't work? You're working from the assumption that it's purely a pass/fail mechanic, where people with the buff will always get in before people without. Where is your source for this assumption? It could easily be something like "roll twice, take the higher number" or "roll + 50", either of which would sometimes make it look like the buff didn't work, but does still give you better odds of getting in.

Sure, but given the buff states "Officially selected for priority deployment in critical engagements per Resistance leadership." and the fact that the other marching orders are a 100% guarantee you get into the CE, it's hard to imagine that Marching Orders is some random buff but not guaranteed mechanic, since if it wasn't guaranteed, it would fail to get you into any non-Castrum CE's at a decent rate (Since plenty of them have 60+ people queueing into them in the first zone regularly) and be well documented by now.

Even in my personal experience, I have never failed to get into a single non-Castrum CE even once with marching orders up across around a hundred or two of CE's, but have failed to get into Castrum 5x now out of 8 attempts with marching orders up. it's pretty damming evidence its ignored for Castrum.

[Riyshn]

and the fact that the other marching orders are a 100% guarantee you get into the CE

-...-

Even in my personal experience, I have never failed to get into a single non-Castrum CE even once with marching orders up across around a hundred or two of CE's

Good for you, except you can't prove a negative. Meanwhile, I have had exactly that happen, so it is possible. And since the hotfix when queues have been overflowing I've gotten into all but 2 of ~20 CLL attempts, all with Priority. RNG gonna RNG, and confirmation bias doesn't change that.

The point is we don't know. The closest thing we have to official word either way is the initial patch notes when the system was introduced, which just says "Critical Engagements". And CLL is a CE, at least according to basically all the UI elements we have access to.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Good for you, except you can't prove a negative. Meanwhile, I have had exactly that happen, so it is possible. And since the hotfix when queues have been overflowing I've gotten into all but 2 of ~20 CLL attempts, all with Priority. RNG gonna RNG, and confirmation bias doesn't change that.

The point is we don't know. The closest thing we have to official word either way is the initial patch notes when the system was introduced, which just says "Critical Engagements". And CLL is a CE, at least according to basically all the UI elements we have access to.

Except dataminers (and people who use a certain -engine- program) already confirmed long ago the buff's internal mechanism in the code showcased it's a binary flag; it guarantees the server picks you for CE's, unless there's at least 48 others who have the buff, or an equivalent 'Marching Orders' from fate-specific ones, then the game RNG's who gets in from the buff wielders alone. The thing is, Castrum isn't classified as a CE internally. Whether intentionally or as a bug, Marching Orders doesn't work on it. So a visual demonstration on how Marching Orders works on all non-Castrum CEs:

>Server checks all players who queued.
>Sorts queuers into two groups: those who have a marching buff and those who don't.
>Takes all marching buff players and adds them to 'successfully queued' array
>Checks to see if 'successfully queued' array is full.
>If no, randomly choose players from non-marching orders array till it reaches 48.
>if yes, it then checks to make sure the selected players isn't over 48.
>if they are, it randomly chooses who gets kicked out until it has 48.

Beyond that, Square is often extremely picky with their word choices for buffs. if it says 'Priority', a word that can be defined as 'the right to take precedence or to proceed before others.', it ain't hard to figure out that it's ignored on castrum when it doesn't let you in. If something isn't guaranteed, they usually word buff text to say something akin to 'increased chance'.

IIRC, Duel's aren't classified as CEs either, and Marching Orders gets nullified on those as well, so there's already precedent through visible observation in Bozja itself.

I thought people have said that it doesn't? Or possibly it has the problem of the other skirmishes where it's based on previous participation so a small group after a large group is out of luck.

Still, even if the difficulty scales, a small group is going to rattle around an arena built to be packed with 72 players, and mechanics requiring a certain amount of players to do a thing are harder. There's also probably less margin for error and more chance of a wipe simply because there are less people around.

It scales to a point. It stops scaling downward roughly at about 20-24 players, but it does scale upward all the way to 48 players.

The thing is, its scaling isn't exactly a 1:1. Theoretically, a full group of 48 players doing proper rotations, essences + lost actions would completely annihilate the bosses even compared to a group of 24 doing all the same things, since the boss HP scales around a player doing average dps for their job, well below the max output of a job's rotation.

But in practicality, the rate that the bosses die between smaller groups and larger groups will be about the same since people will be missing essences, missing lost actions, not doing proper rotations, etc. The more players mostly equates to extra ressurection power to prevent wipes.

[oblivion238]

Citation needed.

Literally the ONLY thing we know for sure about Priority is that the entire party has to have it for it to work. ANYTHING ELSE is speculation.

You say it doesn't work? You're working from the assumption that it's purely a pass/fail mechanic, where people with the buff will always get in before people without. Where is your source for this assumption? It could easily be something like "roll twice, take the higher number" or "roll + 50", either of which would sometimes make it look like the buff didn't work, but does still give you better odds of getting in.

The buff is not consumed when used for CLL, whereas it is consumed with every other CE.

[Riyshn]

The buff is not consumed when used for CLL, whereas it is consumed with every other CE.

The purchased priority buff? It's not consumed by anything. You buy it, and it lasts the full hour. The CE-specific buffs last until ~5 seconds before the start of the fight, whether you actually queue for the CE or not.

[oblivion238]

The purchased priority buff? It's not consumed by anything. You buy it, and it lasts the full hour. The CE-specific buffs last until ~5 seconds before the start of the fight, whether you actually queue for the CE or not.

I must be mistaken then, regardless, I've also gotten into CLL without the buff.

[JamieRose]

the "Priority" buff from cluster purchase does NOT work for CLL. it's up to RNGesus if you're queuing solo if you'll get in or not. probably have more luck with a full 8 man party going in.

Leaving things like this up to RNGesus is insanely dumb on Squeenix's part, just one of many reasons BSF needs a complete overhaul.