Why is duty finder wrong?

[Anienai]

... do people actually go for the "in-need" bonus? For reasons other than "well, maybe it'll pop faster"? Huh.

I'll sit with the tab up til "Tank in need" pops.

[Raltar]

The other night, I saw DPS as needed, so I queued as a tank as I normally do because I'm working on getting the mounts and it popped instantly.

[Iscah]

I think what kills me is when it says "average wait time: 10 minutes"

"Okay, I'm gonna go grab a drink real quick, maybe give my legs a bit of a stretch..."

*queue pops 30 seconds later*

It seems that it might be actually be based not on the average time but the wait time of the person who is currently at the front of the queue.

In any case, I'm a situation where you need several people of the same role, the people who queued earlier have been waiting longer. If you sign up for an alliance raid as DPS #14, it could be perfectly accurate that the average of everyone else's wait time has been ten minutes - but it will only take one more person for your personal wait to be over.

Or to put it another way, the average is going to be a mix of people who waited for ages and that one lucky person who got an instant queue.

[Rongway]

You have to remember that the AIN and average wait time are calculated across the entire roulette, not just the duties that you yourself have access to. There could be a higher level dungeon that's been waiting for a tank for twenty minutes, while all the duties that you have access to already have tanks on deck.

[Ariel_Valmont]

I think what kills me is when it says "average wait time: 10 minutes"

"Okay, I'm gonna go grab a drink real quick, maybe give my legs a bit of a stretch..."

*queue pops 30 seconds later*

Every single @&$!ing time.

[Lumivyory]

... do people actually go for the "in-need" bonus? For reasons other than "well, maybe it'll pop faster"? Huh.

The main reason to wait for "In need" bonus has always been the huge amount of extra experience for being the right role. At least for me. Why settle for less exp?

[Vyrerus]

Basically it lags behind what's going on in real time. You can use this to your advantage sometimes. Also what others have said with the DF being across all duties for all levels and such.

[MagicAura]

I started a thread awhile back asking about this and here’s a helpful reply I received. “Adventure in need is updated periodically not whenever you open the duty finder menu. Its given to whatever the roulette needs more of to balance queue times over the next period of it updates. This including every instance in its roulette, even people only queueing for a single instance. Take like puppets bunker might need 1 tank 1 healer and up to 7 dps it'll say tank because it has a higher weight because the instance needs less. But you queue as a healer and get say world of darkness instantly, it wasnt trying to balance out that as much but duty finder tries to lessen queues if a instance would be full rather then the longer waiting queues. Whenever you queue you get locked in for that bonus, even if it changes before duty finder finder a instance for you.”

This sums up my observations perfectly. Out of curiosity I've left the duty finder open to see how often it updates the window and it's seconds rather than minutes. Not sure the exact amount of seconds, could be 30 or more. Matching thousands of people, taking into account their personal limitations of what they have unlocked, their jobs, their place in the queue together with individual requests for specific dungeons, is extremely complicated and I believe the duty finder works really well for what it needs to do. The OP assessment that it's wrong is incorrect.

[Fellgon]

I think what kills me is when it says "average wait time: 10 minutes"

"Okay, I'm gonna go grab a drink real quick, maybe give my legs a bit of a stretch..."

*queue pops 30 seconds later*

true! its 30, 10 minutes i wait nothing happens. But wen i go to shower its comes in seconds and i lose!

But i still like duty finder.

[KDSilver]

... do people actually go for the "in-need" bonus? For reasons other than "well, maybe it'll pop faster"? Huh.

Yes.
Materias.