Castrum Queue and the overflow lottery

[Riyshn]

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 doesn't scale linearly - a full group (should) still have an easier time than a small group. But it's also a matter of people being prepared. A group of 13 (the smallest party I know to have cleared it) bringing full DPS essences and action will likely have an easier time than a group of 30+ who don't bring anything.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.