Castrum Queue and the overflow lottery

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Good for you, except you can't prove a negative. Meanwhile, I have had exactly that happen, so it is possible. And since the hotfix when queues have been overflowing I've gotten into all but 2 of ~20 CLL attempts, all with Priority. RNG gonna RNG, and confirmation bias doesn't change that.

The point is we don't know. The closest thing we have to official word either way is the initial patch notes when the system was introduced, which just says "Critical Engagements". And CLL is a CE, at least according to basically all the UI elements we have access to.

Except dataminers (and people who use a certain -engine- program) already confirmed long ago the buff's internal mechanism in the code showcased it's a binary flag; it guarantees the server picks you for CE's, unless there's at least 48 others who have the buff, or an equivalent 'Marching Orders' from fate-specific ones, then the game RNG's who gets in from the buff wielders alone. The thing is, Castrum isn't classified as a CE internally. Whether intentionally or as a bug, Marching Orders doesn't work on it. So a visual demonstration on how Marching Orders works on all non-Castrum CEs:

>Server checks all players who queued.
>Sorts queuers into two groups: those who have a marching buff and those who don't.
>Takes all marching buff players and adds them to 'successfully queued' array
>Checks to see if 'successfully queued' array is full.
>If no, randomly choose players from non-marching orders array till it reaches 48.
>if yes, it then checks to make sure the selected players isn't over 48.
>if they are, it randomly chooses who gets kicked out until it has 48.

Beyond that, Square is often extremely picky with their word choices for buffs. if it says 'Priority', a word that can be defined as 'the right to take precedence or to proceed before others.', it ain't hard to figure out that it's ignored on castrum when it doesn't let you in. If something isn't guaranteed, they usually word buff text to say something akin to 'increased chance'.

IIRC, Duel's aren't classified as CEs either, and Marching Orders gets nullified on those as well, so there's already precedent through visible observation in Bozja itself.

I thought people have said that it doesn't? Or possibly it has the problem of the other skirmishes where it's based on previous participation so a small group after a large group is out of luck.

Still, even if the difficulty scales, a small group is going to rattle around an arena built to be packed with 72 players, and mechanics requiring a certain amount of players to do a thing are harder. There's also probably less margin for error and more chance of a wipe simply because there are less people around.

It scales to a point. It stops scaling downward roughly at about 20-24 players, but it does scale upward all the way to 48 players.

The thing is, its scaling isn't exactly a 1:1. Theoretically, a full group of 48 players doing proper rotations, essences + lost actions would completely annihilate the bosses even compared to a group of 24 doing all the same things, since the boss HP scales around a player doing average dps for their job, well below the max output of a job's rotation.

But in practicality, the rate that the bosses die between smaller groups and larger groups will be about the same since people will be missing essences, missing lost actions, not doing proper rotations, etc. The more players mostly equates to extra ressurection power to prevent wipes.

[Riyshn]

Except dataminers (and people who use a certain -engine- program) already confirmed long ago the buff's internal mechanism in the code showcased it's a binary flag; it guarantees the server picks you for CE's, unless there's at least 48 others who have the buff, or an equivalent 'Marching Orders' from fate-specific ones, then the game RNG's who gets in from the buff wielders alone. The thing is, Castrum isn't classified as a CE internally.

Interesting. I don't suppose you have a source for this? Would definitely like to see that, and my Google Fu is failing me.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Interesting. I don't suppose you have a source for this? Would definitely like to see that, and my Google Fu is failing me.

I mean, google isn't going to help you. Dataminers don't exactly want to be found with simple google searches, given what they do.
When Bozja was first released, there were private discords dedicated to figuring out a lot of systems in it, along with figuring out things such as Marching Orders since a small group also wanted to try and World 1st the duels and Marching Orders was pretty important to that if it did work.

Statistically though, speaking purely on a math front and disregarding what I know, its also easily observable that Marching Orders isn't a % chance and is guaranteed outside of a single niche case. As Maria pointed out earlier in this topic, if it was a % chance, it would readily fail you often on every other CE on the southern front, yet despite playing a lockout of Bozja nearly nightly with marching Orders perpetually up since the beginning of this year, I have not failed to enter a single CE. Yet in the past week alone, I've failed to enter Castrum 4x. Either we have odds so far high up into the negative exponent values that I should go buy a lottery ticket, or its obvious Castrum ignores Marching Orders.

The one, single scenario where Marching orders cannot get you into a CE is if at least 48 others all have marching orders, or an equivalent buff from completing a Pre-CE skirmish, and even, the odds are small.

Think of it another way: even assuming a max full queue of 72 where the odds of not getting in are at their highest, you have a 66% chance of getting in. If Marching Orders was increasing that %, it would be making Castrum a near-guaranteed entry anyway. For it to mesh with how in interacts with non-Castrum CEs, it would need to be increasing the %chance so much to make both mine & maria's sample size of perfect several hundred+ CE's work, meaning it'd be an almost statistical impossibility you'd see anyone with Marching Orders not get into Castrum 99% of the time, yet that's clearly not the case as maria & I have demonstrated alone, discounting the tons of others that have had it happen to them.

Lots of systems in this game can be solved with simple analysis, math and observation. Also speaking as a programmer, binary systems are way infinitely easier to deal with since its just a single bit flip and a switch statement to check, instead of coding entire systems to do equations and math to achieve the same purpose.

TL: DR, your 5 clusters are being wasted if you buy it for the sole purpose of getting into Castrum.

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.

Your contribution in other skirmishes and CEs is irrelevant.

The only thing the Castrum queue cares for is that you sign up for it. Once it's initial 6-minute timer goes out, it selects a random 48 from the people who signed up. Your spot wasn't 'stolen'; you just weren't lucky. Yes, this means that the guy afking at spawn has the same equal chance as you do, and now you understand why many people instance hop to fish for Castrums that are coming up soon.