So after having played through OBT and the new dungeon finder feature, I'd like to share some of my experiences. I played to 32, on 2 servers one as a Warrior and the other as a Lancer. I queued for SM starting at around 27 and used it all the way to 32, did about 30+ runs. I ran with many party configurations and queued with one, two and three others to check queue times and results.

Solo queue:
Seems to result in slightly longer wait times, 10ish min queues. However, when queueing as a warrior, I would be kicked from the group as soon as a entered more often that not if the people who entered were 4 guildies. The only party configuration the dungeon finder looked for when queued as a "DPS" class (since dungeon finder doesn't let warriors queue as tanks) is a Lancer, Mystic/Priest, and one of the other "DPS" classes. Since the two other DPS classes also use leather, leather users may experience kicking more often. The dungeon is easy enough to duo/three man and they are there specifically for loot so there is no reason not to kick the 4th player.

When queing as a solo Lancer, the queue times were INSTANT so i thought this was a good sign for solo tanks. I figured hey if they kick me now they might have a tank so it's going to occur less often right? Wrong. Many 4 man groups that queue kick the Lancer because they brought a competent Warrior. While most groups will do so at the start and not leave a reset timer, MULTIPLE times I had a group kick just tap the first mob and then maliciously kick OR more commonly, wait till the right before the last boss just so they can be guarenteed the gold drops.

If you queue with a 4 man and have a competent Warrior, no reason not to kick the lancer (at least be nice and do it at the start).

Duo Queues:
Queue times were shorter than solo queues for the Warrior, at most 3 mins. Fastest queues were as a Lancer/Healer combo, instant or near instant. The kicking in this situation was negligible, the dungeon finder seemed to give priority when we selected "willing to be party leader" as opposed to solo queue.

Three-man Queues:
Same or similar experience to the duo queues.

Four-man Queues:
Queue times were short, under a min/instant during prime time. Here is the issue, Out of ten completed runs of queueing with four, we maybe finished one or two runs where we didn't end up kicking the random. For the most part, it wasn't personal and we did it right as we got in so they didn't get the timer.

I remember one run when our random was a Lancer (I was on my Warrior), we let him stay because we had no other plate user. The lancer would pull EVERY room, only 2 or 3 mobs at a time and slowed the run considerably, we ending up just pulling and tanking everything ourselves. We get to the final boss and guess what it drops? A lance and plate gold for the useless lancer, awesome. Tried another run with the same set-up, Lancer was slightly better however, the last boss dropped plate again and another weapon for class not in group, Lancer won both.

Why am I letting this random player stay if they slow things down and end up potentially taking all the loot we specifically came here for. Needless to say, we never let the random player stay ever again. This seemed to be how most of my guild and many other people I spoke to (who ran with small groups) felt.

Self-made 5 mans:
1 hour reset timer, enough said.

TL:DR - Why does the dungeon finder give this bonus again? It's not because PUG's taking 30 mins longer. It's just [explicative] solo players by incentivizing four man groups to use it and then kick.

Maybe I should stick to one line posts, they seem to be much more effective.

I like how the forum gets up in arms over the smallest things. The rewards for doing LFD are literally nothing, and uneducated opinions managed to force them to change it anyways.

The cooldown reduction is there for a reason, and that is that parties have a possibility of failing. Lockout in Tera occurs the moment you enter the instance, not after a boss death as it is in some other games. That means that if you enter LFD, and the party is disbanded or fails to run properly, you're basically 100% screwed, even if you did not properly run the dungeon. The reduced cooldown I'm certain is partially to deal with the heightened rate of failure of random grouped parties over regularly organized ones.

the LFD system just means they will pull out the good o'l nerf bat and apply it to the instances. cross server LFD is fail that way.

I think the 50% cooldown reduction for using the LFD tool is ok, cuz some people are dicks, kick other players, are terrible, whatever, and it was random pick of players, so it helps people feel less "punished" for getting a failed group.

My only concern is, why even have the long cooldowns on the dungeons? If people want to run them back to back, let them.

But I guess since the end game has five dungeons, it probably won't matter, since you can just do all of the available dungeons, and by time you do them all you're probably done playing for the day, or sick of PVEing, OR maybe the 1st dungeon is getting ready to come off cooldown ( I think I read Hard Mode dungeons will have 6 hour cooldown, so 5 hard modes with that kind of cooldown should allow for non-stop dungeon crawling if you want to play that many hours in one day)

I'm sure it won't be a big deal.

The only circumstance where you should kick another player is if they're simply not participating or following instructions. The op seems to be complaining that he was kicked from groups when he entered solo, but then continued with the kicking trend himself when he entered with a 4-man group. Way to show the love for your fellow players..

Anyhow, if the LFD tool continues, it must be changed to have absolutely no benefit over normal grouping, so that only those that are having troubles finding a group normally will use it.

Here are some solutions that come to mind after reading some of the complaints on this issue:

-Modify the LFD system to allow 5 man groups.

People can now play with their buddies/guild mates while picking up the LFD bonuses. Going by the forums, a lot of people only dislike these bonuses because it forces them to run with a PUG. Allow 5 man groups to queue and that issue disappears. Players who are solo-queued would also be kicked less because those looking to make room for friends/guildies would already be in their 5 man LFD premade.

-Modify the LFD system to allow a party size limit of 2-4.

Pretty much the same as above, but this also accommodates those who would rather run with smaller groups. Less solo players being booted while giving smaller groups the LFD bonuses as well.

I'm pretty optimistic about this company listening to the community and fixing the bigger issues, but IMO, we really need to start thinking about what we're complaining about. Instead of saying "remove LFD bonsues!" just because you don't like the requirements for them, why not just ask for a change to the requirements? This way, unless I'm missing something, most parties are happy.

Fix this stupid [filtered]. The cooldown should be 1hr always. Dont turn this into 100% a lobby game.

Dont turn this into a lobby game.

You ask why people using LFD get cooldown reduction then you go ahead and explain what goes on when you use LFD.
You pretty much answered it yourself.
You don't need cooldown reduction when you run it with your guildies. you can finish your run usually faster without any troubles and after you're done can farm bams till the cooldown is off.

The way i see it 4man LFD ques should be removed.Keeping the cooldown reduction of course.

That way it can be abused less :)