About solo queuing (The Feast)

[oLLiCS]

A friend of mine and I'm queuing for The Feast (Solo). We are both melees. I have been waiting 132mins for it to pop and he just got in while waiting only 41mins. How is that possible? I always thought it's like PvE matching where it puts you in line. Do job classes actually matter? (He's MNK. I'm DRG.) Should you just re-queue when the waiting time has pasted the estimated time?

[Kai_Lee]

Melee jobs doesn't matter, but rank does. Probably not enough players around your rank is queuing atm for you.

[oLLiCS]

I've never thought unranked and Bronze is that much of a difference :-/

[Bartleby]

Matchmaking will not create a match if there is a ranking difference greater than 2. For example, an unranked player cannot be matched with a Gold+ player. So in your case, you can only be matched with other unranked, Bronze, and Silver players. As your friend is Bronze, he can be matched with Unranked, Bronze, Silver, and Gold players (but not unranked and Gold players at the same time). My guess is that the queue does not have enough players in your ranking range to create a match while there might be enough Gold players on to create a match for your friend (e.g. maybe the only healers queueing are Gold, or something similar).

[Februs]

It probably has to do with the total number of players queuing at the time. Aside from rank restrictions, Feast queues are also somewhat hindered by strict party requirements. It's possible for someone to get left out of the queue if one role has too many people. For example, imagine that there are only 9 people queuing for Feast. You have 2 Tanks, 2 Healers, 2 ranged dps, and 3 melee dps. That's enough players for 1 full match, but one melee will be left out. That remaining melee player will be forced to wait longer than the first 2, even though they queued as the same job. Depending on how many matches are active at one time, that player may have to wait for several matches to end before they get their turn.

This is something you'll see happening specifically when queues are slow. If you see repeating faces in multiple matches, then chances are you're in a queue rut due to low activity at that time. If you're confident in your skills, I'd recommend swapping jobs to chase the more active queue at those times.