"Why is my queue so long?" — Factors that influence PvP queue time

[Eorzean_username]

I would like to consolidate a list of all known or suspected factors that influence the PvP queue time, so that players frustrated with long waits might have a troubleshooting list or at least an understanding of what's wrong.

Datacenter:

• PvP is matched between all servers from a specific datacenter.
• Before asking for advice about long queues, specify your GC and Datacenter.
• You can find your datacenter at (for example) ARR Status.

Population

• PvP is a minority activity in FFXIV (as in most similar games).
• Sometimes, your queue is long simply because there aren't enough players available for a match (across all GCs).
• However, the PvP population is still large enough that (personal anecdote) my queues still pop even at odd times of day, if I mitigate the other factors discussed below.

PvP Content selected

• Possibly the single most important factor in your long queue time.
• Some content is much more popular than others. Generally, the newest content will have the most consistent and fastest queue pops, while previous content is abandoned.
• Currently, Shatter is the popular content, and Seize, Feast, and the level 50 PvP maps (Fold, Secure, Slaughter) are effectively dead queues.
• Frontline Roulette is safe to use. It has an inaccurate Average Wait Time (for many reasons) and will usually pop just as fast as queueing Shatter directly, because the Roulette will just dump you into Shatter if that's what is available.

Grand Company.

• Likely the second-most important factor in your long queue time.
• More popular Grand Companies, or GCs with a reputation for winning on your Datacenter, have more players trying to get in and thus longer queues.
• This difference can be extreme, for example the popular GC may have 1-2 hour queues while the unpopular GC may have 10-15 minute queues at the exact same time of day.

Join Party in Progress

• This is unlikely to have a significant effect on your queue speed. However, enabling 'Join Party in Progress' will still increase your chance of getting in to a match.
• You might be surprised how often players will — for whatever reason — sit through the PvP queue, load into a match, and then immediately drop out (or soon after the match begins).
• In such cases, you get to cut in line and hop straight in to a match, at nearly no penalty (the matchmaking system stops pulling players in once too much time has elapsed, so you'll still get a full or near-full game).

Language settings

• It is hypothesized by the community that selecting minority languages for your Region can place you into a dead queue.
• For example, you select JEDF and one other player in your region has also selected "D". Both of you will be placed in a D-language queue waiting for X additional players with 'D' checked, and this will take priority over the hundreds of 'E'-only queues popping in parallel.

Selecting multiple modes (unverified)

• Checking multiple boxes manually (such as Feast 4v4 and Shatter and Seize) may trap you in a dead queue.
• The hypothesis is that the PvP queue is not smart / adaptive enough to switch you into whatever match is actually ready to fill, and instead will keep stubbornly trying to fill the first map it has you queued for.
• For example: You queue Feast 4v4 and Shatter. Shatter fills 23/24 while your Feast is still 2/4 after 30 minutes. The queue will (hypothetically) not move you from the 'Feast' queue into the 'Shatter queue, instead waiting another hour to try to fill Feast.

Premades

• Premades are a party of up to 8 allied players queuing together for Frontlines.
• If a Server in your Datacenter has a group of players running a premade team, and they are in the same GC as you, it may slow down your queue by giving you fewer opportunities to get in line until the premade team is done for the day.
• You have no control over this — unless the team is from your own Server (try to join in!) or you form your own premade (which may or may not help your own queue times, due to complicated matching factors).

PvP Rank

• It is rumored (possibly confirmed?) that the PvP queue will attempt to match similarly-Ranked players together before gradually expanding out if queue times lengthen too much.
• If your PvP Rank is much higher than the average player in the queue, your queues may be getting delayed as the matchmaking algorithm waits and attempts to find a better match for you.
• You have no control over this, other than switching GC to reset your Rank (which is only a temporary solution, because you will Rank up again over time if you keep PvPing).

Your first queue of the day or night

• Some players report excessively longer queues the first time they queue up each play session, with subsequent matches popping faster.
• The hypothetical explanation is that, if a low amount of players are in the queue overall, your first queue must wait for the preexisting match to finish, and then begin the normal queue process after that (because there aren't enough players to spin up two simultaneous matches).
• It may be worth allowing extra time for your first queue pop before giving up, and then seeing if further matches pop faster.

Other poorly-understood issues with the queue system

• Sometimes, no one knows why your queue is so long.
• For as long as PvP queues have existed in FFXIV, players from the exact same Grand Company have anecdotally reported large variations in queue speed, possibly due to still-poorly-understood factors.
• Some players recommend cancelling your queue and re-queuing if your queue grows too long — I have not seen any evidence to confirm this actually makes a difference, and it might just hurt you by resetting your position in the queue without fixing whatever is actually wrong.

I appreciate any corrections to misinformation I may have here, as well as any ideas for other factors I may have missed.

[Thekk]

Some players recommend cancelling your queue and re-queuing if your queue grows too long — I have not seen any evidence to confirm this actually makes a difference, and it might just hurt you by resetting your position in the queue without fixing whatever is actually wrong.

This is just an hypothesis on my part, but if you are queued for multiple maps (or roulette), I think the system puts you in a queue for a specific one that it is trying to fill up and won't switch you around to another map unless needed. So in some cases, if it picks one that has a longer queue time, dropping and requeueing might put you in queue for another map with a faster time. Hence the impression that requeueing actually made it faster.

[auron_seifer]

Your queue is long because:

1) GC restrictions bring imbalance between all 3 GC's, leading to long queue times for every GC in the end. If there are 20 Flames, 10 Maels and 7 Adders in queue for 5 hours no one will get a pop and no one plays, even tho there are enough people for a 24 man match.

2) The queue itself is broke af. You can get skipped for hours on end while people you know in the same GC will get matches back to back. This isn't a queue, its a lottery. If you queue for more than one PvP mode at a time or PvP roulette it will be even worst.

Close the thread, nothing more needs to be said on this. We all know these are the problems, SE knows these are the problems, yet do nothing to fix either of them.

"We appreciate your feedback"...don't make me laugh SE. If you did, you'd do what we ask instead of repeatedly ignoring our requests.

REMOVE GC RESTRICTIONS!

[blooddrunk23]

maybe something like WoW's merc mode?

[auron_seifer]

maybe something like WoW's merc mode?

That would be awesome and has been suggested before plenty of times...I'm guessing we will never get any of that because "muh lore".

[Eorzean_username]

If you queue for more than one PvP mode at a time or PvP roulette it will be even worst.

I've tried queuing both Seize (when it was viable) and Shatter specifically, and compared the time against queuing Frontline Roulette at various times of day. The pop time for Roulette usually matches the pop time for Shatter, likely because the Roulette is just tossing me into the first available match (almost always Shatter).

Close the thread, nothing more needs to be said on this. We all know these are the problems, SE knows these are the problems, yet do nothing to fix either of them.

Experienced PvP players understand the issues. Newer players, or players that haven't done the research, clearly do not — as evidenced by recurring posts on the Subreddit and this Forum expressing confusion and frustration about queue times. I'm not trying to fix the problem, I'm trying to help others learn how to mitigate it, or at least lessen their confusion, if they can't mitigate it.

[LalafellDown]

Maybe people don't queue for PVP because it isn't fun in this game. I avoid it 99.9 percent of the time even when I need tomes I don't bother with it. Maybe if we had vehicles, air support, destructible environment, Germans and guns then I would play it. Perhaps if it was like a RTS with a view from above where we can build units (snipers) and tanks, kind of like company of hero's 1.

[Eorzean_username]

Updated with hypotheses about Language settings and Thekk's suggestion about getting stuck with an unfilled map.

[Nymbee]

Is there any data documented to support the language selection hypothesis?

The only conclusive evidence I can find that MAY support this, is the note SE has added under Duty Finder Settings -> Language, in which it states: "Depending on the language(s) chosen, matching times may increase. If you are experiencing overlong wait times, you may want to consider different language settings."

but despite this note/warning, it doesnt specify which language(s) may/may not affect queue timers, or even if x language could cause positive and/or y language could cause negative effects.

[Zensho]

Solo que + "join in progress" /thread