Castrum Queue and the overflow lottery

[SecretIsland]

I stuck around in a map, doing everything needed while waiting for a queue to pop for CLL. Queue'd as was 18/48, I thought 'Great. I chose a poor instance anyway as had to wait closer to the full hour and must have just missed the last one'.

Only to find, that 55/48, I missed out. Most likely because of that shard priority engagement buff.

MF'rs stole my queue. I was so livid, I had to go and play something else for a bit to cool down.

Either way, point of the post is it's an interesting map, I enjoyed it, but mechanics like that where there's potential to miss out, no thanks. Not playing that part any further.

Is this an alliance raid? (Didn’t know there are 48-man ones!) That happens to me sometimes. It will tell me there are 10/15 Dps queuing and I’m in the #1 position on the queue. Then suddenly everyone disappears and I’m suddenly 1/15 DPS. Just have to be patient, I typically only wait for a few minutes. Maybe queuing during prime time will help?

[Catwho]

Is this an alliance raid? (Didn’t know there are 48-man ones!) That happens to me sometimes. It will tell me there are 10/15 Dps queuing and I’m in the #1 position on the queue. Then suddenly everyone disappears and I’m suddenly 1/15 DPS. Just have to be patient, I typically only wait for a few minutes. Maybe queuing during prime time will help?

This particular one is not an alliance raid, but something more akin to a FATE that only pops once an hour. If you miss it, you miss it, and your options are to try for another instance, or wait another hour. Either way, you're gonna be rolling the dice again.

Regarding the Marching Orders: If more than 48+ people have on priority, then it goes back to pure RNG again. We've had half a party get excluded in one of our group runs, despite having on marching orders, simply because there were almost 60 people queued up for it.

The entire thing should be pulled out to Duty Finder like Delibrum was, but I imagine it was not something they could fix in a 2 week sprint once it became obvious how few people wanted to clear it. Now they caused the opposite problem, turning it into the most popular content in Bozja.

If anything, the best compromise for now could be to give double priority access to anyone who hasn't cleared it yet, when EVERYONE has priority access in the queue.

Hopefully by 5.5 they'll have a more permanent solution that doesn't leave people in the cold.

[Dhayze]

Is this an alliance raid? (Didn’t know there are 48-man ones!) That happens to me sometimes. It will tell me there are 10/15 Dps queuing and I’m in the #1 position on the queue. Then suddenly everyone disappears and I’m suddenly 1/15 DPS. Just have to be patient, I typically only wait for a few minutes. Maybe queuing during prime time will help?

This is separate from the Duty Finder. This is Castrum Lacus Litore which is locked behind the Bozjan Southern Front. CLL is required for part of the ShB relic which means that a lot of people are forced to do Bozja.

The problem is that once you're in a Bozja instance, CLL probably isn't going to be available right away unless you're really lucky. If it's a new instance, it'll be exactly 1 hour before the Castrum queue starts. CLL itself has a max of 48 players out of the 72 total players in the instance (as long as they are above Rank 10). So you could end up waiting an entire hour for the queue to start only for it to fill past capacity forcing players out. At this point, you could either wait another hour in this instance, or try to get a different instance and hope the Castrum queue is a bit sooner. The worst part is you could wait another hour and get kicked out of the queue again. This could potentially lead to you waiting several hours just to clear one run of CLL.

It wasn't this bad before. Until the recent hotfix that buffed the rewards from it, it was rare to get more than 20-30 people to queue for Castrum. but now that it speeds up one of the relic steps considerably, instances constantly fill up and everyone that's able to is queuing for Castrum.

[Seraphor]

This is separate from the Duty Finder. This is Castrum Lacus Litore which is locked behind the Bozjan Southern Front. CLL is required for part of the ShB relic which means that a lot of people are forced to do Bozja.

The problem is that once you're in a Bozja instance, CLL probably isn't going to be available right away unless you're really lucky. If it's a new instance, it'll be exactly 1 hour before the Castrum queue starts. CLL itself has a max of 48 players out of the 72 total players in the instance (as long as they are above Rank 10). So you could end up waiting an entire hour for the queue to start only for it to fill past capacity forcing players out. At this point, you could either wait another hour in this instance, or try to get a different instance and hope the Castrum queue is a bit sooner. The worst part is you could wait another hour and get kicked out of the queue again. This could potentially lead to you waiting several hours just to clear one run of CLL.

It wasn't this bad before. Until the recent hotfix that buffed the rewards from it, it was rare to get more than 20-30 people to queue for Castrum. but now that it speeds up one of the relic steps considerably, instances constantly fill up and everyone that's able to is queuing for Castrum.

It was worse before. Every single CLL instance would get around 16 participants who would all abandon because there weren't enough players.
At least now 48 players get in instead of no one.

[Feronar]

They should convert Castrum Lacus Litore to a queued raid, like Delubrum Reginae. This duty-within-a-duty thing is needlessly awkward and clunky.

[technole]

I stuck around in a map, doing everything needed while waiting for a queue to pop for CLL. Queue'd as was 18/48, I thought 'Great. I chose a poor instance anyway as had to wait closer to the full hour and must have just missed the last one'.

Only to find, that 55/48, I missed out. Most likely because of that shard priority engagement buff.

MF'rs stole my queue. I was so livid, I had to go and play something else for a bit to cool down.

Either way, point of the post is it's an interesting map, I enjoyed it, but mechanics like that where there's potential to miss out, no thanks. Not playing that part any further.

Nothing was stolen from you, it was like this on day one. The highest contributors get in, going around the map and doing the most CEs. That weighs much more than the priority clusters.

[Nafreyu]

Nothing was stolen from you, it was like this on day one. The highest contributors get in, going around the map and doing the most CEs. That weighs much more than the priority clusters.

Yeah, I did a full hour of every C.E as a tank getting Gold rating on each. As a tank, you'll understand enmity puts you at top for completion..

I queued as 18 out of 48, and I didn't get in.

So actually, my spot was stolen because I made sure to be active and participate and be in the first few to register.

That's what this entire post of mine is about.

[Iscah]

I queued as 18 out of 48, and I didn't get in.

It's a lottery. You were one of the 55 people to enter it. If being #18 mattered then they'd just stop recruiting once it hit 48/48.

And are you certain that simply participating in other CEs gets you some kind of priority? The only time I've gotten priority for a CE was the one following the Unicorn Flakes skirmish, specifically from completing that skirmish. That's happened to me twice.

Perhaps I haven't spent long enough in one session to see it, but that doesn't seem to be the same mechanism as general participation.

[Mavrias]

Yeah, I did a full hour of every C.E as a tank getting Gold rating on each. As a tank, you'll understand enmity puts you at top for completion..

I queued as 18 out of 48, and I didn't get in.

So actually, my spot was stolen because I made sure to be active and participate and be in the first few to register.

That's what this entire post of mine is about.

spots can't be stolen. it chooses randomly from registrants. what number you registered as is inconsequential.

[Vaern]

It was quite worst before to the point where you could hardly run Castrum without a premade group, or happening to be in the same instance as said group.

The lottery in itself isn't very attractive for sure and that's even more true for Duels imo. The bright side is that you have more chances to get picked for CEs/Castrum than not, even in the worst case scenario of 72 people queuing for it.

Funny little screenshot taken by a friend after the last hotfix making Castrum way more interesting reward-wise. Not only for the relic but also now gives way more coins, xp and mettle upon completion.