Blacklisted Players in Matched Parties Feedback

[DynamoAce]

The current iteration of Blacklist definitely needs an improvement. I don't really find myself blacklisting many people but it's a huge inconvenience when a player you've blacklisted gets matched up in your party not once.... not twice.... but three times in a row.

I learned that Blacklisting a player does not actually stop them from being matched up with you in a party.

For context, the situation is a run of Pilgrim's Traverse in the Floor 70+ range going pretty bad when a PLD decides to pull nearly every enemy in giant mobs despite the rest of us asking them not to to be more careful. They insist doing it their way which nearly caused multiple wipes but we made it through that set of floors.

I decide to Blacklist assuming it would prevent us from getting matched... and we get matched on the next set of floors, where this time they DO cause a wipe, forcing us back down to the previous set of floors. Upon queing again... we are yet again matched together, except I decide to leave the duty because I really don't want to deal with continuous wipes getting paired with the same person.
To make things worse, because I've blacklisted them (the other individual I was with also blacklisted them), I'm not sure if we'd be able to see anything in party chat to communicate in content... that will require a moderate amount of communication, which sucks if we're forced to be grouped together (Correct me if I'm wrong on this)

This is clearly a difference in playstyles, and if they want to play that way and they're happy that's fine, but if it inconveniences someone who would like to not get paired up with them then it's really horrible if there is no way to prevent being matched up with someone with a playstyle that is likely to cause wipes, completely wasting an individual's time especially on content that can punish you for wiping.

I understand theres the options of going with a fixed party (but you need to find people for that on your same floor set), maybe data center traveling to avoid getting a que with that same person, or holding off on playing at all for a while in hopes you don't get matched up with that person again. These are options but it doesn't make it any less inconvenient when the function that exists in the game that is suppose to block interaction with another player.... doesn't even fully block them and leaves room for toxic interactions indirectly.

So my hopeful request is if the Devs could please improve on the current iteration of the Blacklist to prevent blacklisted players from being matched together in any content.

[Jeeqbit]

I've been matched with blacklisted players before as well, because the probability exists if you queue at the same time each day like they probably are. It was only a week after as well.

I think that the matching system matching with blacklisted players is fine for roulettes because it's overall not very likely due to the amount of people that queue for them. But for deep dungeons it's highly likely as you're progressing up the floors at the same time, and there isn't really a proper matching system that would suffer from considering blacklists like there is with roulettes because there are no role restrictions.

[Exmo]

Sounds like the problem is there's not enough people in the queue. Would you rather sit in the queue for 30+ minutes waiting for another player to hopefully join instead of being matched with this PLD?

[AvoSturmfaust]

Sounds like the problem is there's not enough people in the queue. Would you rather sit in the queue for 30+ minutes waiting for another player to hopefully join instead of being matched with this PLD?

Yes, i would rather wait 2h then getting matched yet again with someone which causes wipe over wipe

[ViinaS]

Ofc the blacklist needs improvement and another overhaul.

Will that happen tho? Unlikely.
SE is just too incompetent to make a functioning blacklist.
Remember last time they did something with it which was a huge security risk and enabled a stalking plugin cause in their infinite wisdom their garbage blacklist sent unencrypted player data to clients.

[Johners]

The role of the duty finder is to simply get people into a group as fast as possible based on your duty selection(s) and language settings. Any other criteria only dilutes the potential pool of players further, increasing queue times across the board. This isn't aided by the fact every region (excluding OCE) having multiple duty finder queues, one for each data centre. Maybe in the future when they finally make the duty finder cross-DC, we can have a few more filters that'll include your own blacklist.

[DynamoAce]

Sounds like the problem is there's not enough people in the queue. Would you rather sit in the queue for 30+ minutes waiting for another player to hopefully join instead of being matched with this PLD?

Yes because sitting 30+ minutes in a que would be slightly better than progressing 20 floors only to end up getting wiped by a specific player's horrible choices that affect the entire party's run. Not a good situation regardless and isn't fair to the player(s) trying to progress but keep getting their time wasted. There are alternative solutions like I said but they all end up putting the player in an unfair spot when this is a system that should really be fixed.

[Alicie]

The current iteration of Blacklist definitely needs an improvement. I don't really find myself blacklisting many people but it's a huge inconvenience when a player you've blacklisted gets matched up in your party not once.... not twice.... but three times in a row.

That's because game is not in it's best shape at all. Not many people are subbed, even less people are doing dead-on-arrival content with no meaningful rewards.

[Amarande]

In this situation there's not really much that can be done about it.

IIUC, the official Square Enix line is that it's not fair to the other players in queue to make them wait longer because of what, in their eyes, is a personal issue between you and the person you have blacklisted.

On the flip side, WoW's matcher DOES honor ignore lists, and I have oft wondered how much longer the queue is made especially for modes like Battlegrounds and LFR (where there are 20-40 people that all need to be matched, and respecting blocks means NO TWO of those people can have an ignore-list relationship with one another ...) as a result. A similar situation would arise with Alliance Raids in particular in FF and seeing that the less popular ARs already take long enough to pop as it is I have to agree with Yoshi that the SE decision is the lesser evil.

If the person is deliberately wiping the group then that is grounds for a report ticket for griefing, or if it seems like they might fit the definition of Lethargic Gameplay then that can be reported also, but that is up to the GMs to determine. (One may argue that the more automated WoW reporting system has points here but directly allowing players to effectively vote to have another subscriber's account actioned is nonetheless fraught and opens doors to worse abuses, especially given how Draconian SE is about nearly never removing account marks - you can literally skip out on thousands of dollars of balance on a credit card and have it come off your record sooner than an FFXIV account mark will ...)

[Astronis]

I understand why the blacklist does not work the way we wish it did...if it did, it would make matchmaking far more complex and also subject to abuse. At least blacklisting people makes it really obvious to you that you've been matched with someone you don't want to play with, so you can make a decision from there if you'd like to abandon and take the 30 minute penalty (which would probably put you out of sync with the person you blacklisted as well, making it less likely they show up in your party again).

Because man I get it, I was in a matched party last night with someone who triggered four luring traps on the 80+ set and it was really grinding my gears that this person couldn't seem to figure out how not to walk directly in the middle of rooms at that high a floor.