New Player - Duty Finder regularly taking 30 to 60 to even 2+ hours !!!!

[sephrok1]

I am very discouraged to play as I cannot get through Main Story or good quests because the duty finder just doesnt work for me!

I am currently at 90 minutes on one to finish my Relic quest or Main Story quest..

Sometimes it takes 30 , sometimes it has gone to 2 hours and i just give up

Feeling like i'm just not welcome in this game.

[Espritduo]

1. Select all languages in the DF options.
2. Select join in progress.
3. If you're a high enough level, select to unsync it and just solo the content.
4. Put a Party Finder up and advertise you're a new player. It will fill much faster than DF.
5. Make sure you are not trying to queue up during the dead hours of the night for whatever time zone your datacenter is predominantly in.

If it takes 2 hours to queue up for anything required for the MSQ, then you are doing something wrong. SE has heavily incentivized MSQ-required content to ensure there is always a healthy amount of players doing them for various reasons.

[Vidu]

You're saying your're at 90 minutes queue right now? As in: The time you're posting this? Do you play during this time regulary?

I'm not surprised you're not getting into dungeons in this case - you're playing on Excalibur, which is a server on the Primal-datacenter. Primal is a datacenter for North America - and right now its early in the morning there, ranging from about 4 am to 7 am (depending which part of the USA we're talking about). Thats not a time a lot of people are online, playing an MMO.
If this is your normal time to play the game, you should look for a sever on a different datacenter.

Light and Chaos are european datacenters - its currently midday in europe, so its better but not ideal (at least not during the week, weekends might be fine).

Elemental, Gaia and Mana are japanese datacenters - its currently evening there, so the times would match, but there might be strong language barrier, aka: if you dont speak japanese, you might run into trouble later. Tonberry is the inofficial english server on japanese datacenters, so you could try your luck there.

[DarkMasamune]

Also, I feel like I need to add that unfortunately, DPS takes quite a while longer than tanks or healers to get into dungeons. According to your profile, you play an archer, so that's probably not helping you a lot

Don't worry, it's not a matter of not being welcome on the game. It's quite normal (althought 2+ hours isn't, but 15-20 minutes can be normal if you play DPS to be fair).

[Mykll]

There are just some places where nobody is running in DF.

[RicaRuin]

There are just some places where nobody is running in DF.

Extreme Trials and Savage Raids (the ones you linked fall in those categories) aren't run via DF on the NA or EU Data Centre, here we use PF for that kind of content.

[kiagenwa]

Extreme Trials and Savage Raids (the ones you linked fall in those categories) aren't run via DF on the NA or EU Data Centre, here we use PF for that kind of content.

Bad news for me.
Hope no MSQ requires these duties.

I'm planning to learn Japanese and find JP friends & FC after I reached ShB content (or my 90 days exp buff runs out) :/
If it needs that much teamwork then communication is key I guess.

[Iscah]

Bad news for me.
Hope no MSQ requires these duties.

I'm planning to learn Japanese and find JP friends & FC after I reached ShB content (or my 90 days exp buff runs out) :/
If it needs that much teamwork then communication is key I guess.

Why is that bad news? It's organised through PF. You have access to PF.

Runs are organised via PF on the Japanese servers too. Or you can start your own.

[kiagenwa]

Why is that bad news? It's organised through PF. You have access to PF.

Runs are organised via PF on the Japanese servers too. Or you can start your own.

not that kind of bad news.
I thought extreme trials were like hard but tougher, didn't think about those mech.
Just that some quests will be abandon until I can complete it :/

[Vidu]

Bad news for me.
Hope no MSQ requires these duties.

I'm planning to learn Japanese and find JP friends & FC after I reached ShB content (or my 90 days exp buff runs out) :/
If it needs that much teamwork then communication is key I guess.

Good news for you: As I mentioned, extreme trials are nothing more than more difficult version of the storymode-fight, same goes for Savage raids.
Their deal is basically this: You complete the storyline around the trial or raid in question (mainquest or storyheavy sidequest). After that you have the option to pick up another quest that is not required to continue with your mainquest, the sidequest or anything, really and it goes something like this:
For ARR: "Oh no! They summoned their primal again! Only more powerful this time! You have to defeat it! Again." -quest jinggle plays- "You unlocked [Primal] Extreme"
Past ARR: You talk to Yoshida, pardon "The Wanderin Ministrel" and tell him all about your fight. He'll make up a song/story about it, which is supposed to be extreme version of the fight, with the idea that hes greatly exxagerating who dangerous and difficult the fight truely was. You get to read a little poem and under 10 speach bubbles you've unlocked your new extreme trial or savage raid.
I want to add that thats it. Theres nothing beyond that quest to unlock those trials. The quest is completed after you unlocked the duty in question, you dont need to finish the fight. Any "story" related to extreme and savage is packed into the quest to unlock them.

There are a few exceptions:
Coil - the ARR-raid is not part of the mainquest and there is no need to complete it to progress in the game. But its very story and lore heavy - actually the reason we got storymodes for all raids going forward: People wanted to experience the story, but didnt had the time/skill/motivation to clear content of that difficulty.

Miseria Memoria - there is no real storymode to this fight, its something completely new. Its by no means required to progress during a story-questline, though. Like the usual EX-trials its an addition.

Second phases/true form - by this I mean that some Savage raids (usually the last one of each tier - so 4, 8 and 12) have a second phase during their battle that shows their "true form". One could interpret that as a storydetail that you wont see if you only play through the storymode.

But all in all: There is no story locked behind the difficult non-DF content - except for Coil. And no mainstory requires clearing any of that.