Duty Finder/Data Center

[Heoki]

Hello Everyone!

I don't post often but this is something that concerns me a bit. I know that they had everything split into 4 data centers before this patch and now the duty finder is split into more data centers.

My concern is that typically I wait ~45mins to get a PT as a BLM using the duty finder which isn't all that bad really but it seems like the duty finder would benefit from them finding a better solution to alleviate stress than to split the servers up into different data centers. I am not a DevOps guy so I can't comment on how difficult that may be but I wanted to see if I get people talking about it and maybe raise awareness.

I did a quick search and didn't see any topics on this but what does everyone think?

[Rivienne]

Actually previously they had 2 data centers, but duty finder was split into 3 sub groups within each of the two centers. Now they are one and the same configuration wise.

So in reality, this shouldn't change much at all, though the specific pool of worlds may have changed somewhat.

[Heoki]

Actually previously they had 2 data centers, but duty finder was split into 3 sub groups within each of the two centers. Now they are one and the same configuration wise.

So in reality, this shouldn't change much at all, though the specific pool of worlds may have changed somewhat.

Hmm, "Duty Roulette" should help with the problem too but I still feel like it would be a benefit for them to come up with a better solution than separation, especially for the story quests.

[Rivienne]

Hmm, "Duty Roulette" should help with the problem too but I still feel like it would be a benefit for them to come up with a better solution than separation, especially for the story quests.

But they have been separate for months now. They haven't changed that. They just changed it so you have to select the group your world is in before you login, so login load is distributed as well as duty finder load. Again this doesn't change duty finder behaviour at all: it works the way it has for months. And the reason they split them up is the same reason they now split up the login group: server load. The more worlds in each queue, the fewer people each world could hold, because of the extra processing each server had to do to manage the extra load.

In other words: the new "data center" setup does not change duty finder behaviour except in terms of if the worlds in the center differ from the previous duty finder group.

Regarding the story quests, even pooling the worlds together again wouldn't decrease your wait time as a DPS because you are still dealing with the same fundamental problem: not enough tanks are queuing proportional. Increasing the pool won't increase the proportion. All worlds have far fewer tanks queuing for these, than DPS. And having been playing since before they split the pools, I can honestly say, I always had that bad of a wait time. During open beta all NA servers were in the same duty finder pool and I still waited at least 45 minutes for my archer on Sastasha.

"Duty Roulette" should help a lot more then a larger pool in this case, because they are giving Tomestone rewards to low population roles, which is almost always tanks. So a lot more tanks will be using it and introducing into the pool people who otherwise wouldn't be playing those dungeons.

[Heoki]

But they have been separate for months now....

...Increasing the pool won't increase the proportion. All worlds have far fewer tanks queuing for these, than DPS. And having been playing since before they split the pools, I can honestly say, I always had that bad of a wait time. During open beta all NA servers were in the same duty finder pool and I still waited at least 45 minutes for my archer on Sastasha.

I know they've been like that for months and I'm happy to know that the split isn't more severe but it was still bothering me that they were split at all. Their are definitely better ways to handle the stress than just separating them I believe.

You do make a good point though. Having more servers to search wouldn't help all that much with the idea that tanks/healers are the minority but it takes a good 20 mins before I even see other DDs show up so I'm not so sure.