knutliott 41 Posted October 31, 2020 (edited) I see people complain about how inaccurate the queue waiting times are, and it's almost always because they don't understand what those numbers actually are. There are a couple of key things about them that people might not realize. 1. That's historical data, not a prediction of how long you're going to have to wait. In other words, that's the average amount of time that people had to wait for some number of games prior to yours. And as they say in the stock market, past performance is not an indicator of future gains. 2. Since the last person to join your team gets in instantly*, that number actually underrepresents the wait time for most of the people on the team. So if it's saying a 4 minute wait, that's for 5 people or 20 total "wait minutes". But those 20 total "wait minutes" were actually only shared amongst 4 of the 5 players, so the average is really 5 minutes for those who have to wait, not 4. 3. It doesn't take into consideration the mission you're on. If you're queuing for Spec Ops, that's just the average time that people have waited for Spec Ops in general. If there's no one else queuing for your mission, you're going to sit there a lot longer than that average wait time. 4. And lastly, it ignores people who wait 10 minutes and give up. Those 10 minutes waited just disappear... they don't get added into the average. * this is usually the case. Sometimes the last person had to wait for a search restriction to relax, in which case the last person also added to the total. But usually the last person gets in instantly. Edited October 31, 2020 by knutliott (see edit history) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
knutliott 41 Posted November 3, 2020 Could we get this split into 2 topics? The original topic that I created, which was meant to educate people about what the queue times actually means (so that they hopefully don't get quite so annoyed about it), and then a new topic for the discussion about this event? I don't feel like the discussion of this event has anything to do with the topic I created, but it is a valid topic so deserves its own thread. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Haswell 295 Posted November 4, 2020 (edited) This is going to be difficult, seeing how the discussion went directly into the Spec Ops event. Let me see... Edit: too hard, the only post actually staying to the original topic is your first post. You might as well make a new thread on your own with the original topic. >.> Edited November 4, 2020 by Haswell (see edit history) Quote Spoiler Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Haswell 295 Posted November 4, 2020 There, I split the thread. It's so empty now. :c 1 Quote Spoiler Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
knutliott 41 Posted November 4, 2020 Yeah I didn't really think there would be a lot of discussion in this thread unless other people also knew tidbits about how the queue works. It's mostly intended to be information to help people understand that those numbers a) don't mean what people seem to think they mean, and b) are typically pretty optimistic. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dfnce 28 Posted November 6, 2020 Per queue management - if one is waiting about 2 minutes for SO (normal or weekends), it is faster sometimes to quit queue and enter again. There is some issue or behavior in PvE matchmaker which can keep a player forever in futile attempt to assemble impossible team (sort of). 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites