My solution to the Alliance Raid Roulette problem

[Feronar]

The Problem:
The Alliance Raid roulette almost always selects from the Crystal Tower series, especially Labyrinth of the Ancients. The only way to have a reasonable shot at getting a newer raid is to queue for it directly, forfeiting any roulette bonuses, and even then there are very long waits to get a full group.

The roulette bonus is the same regardless of which raid you get, so players are motivated to cheese the item level to get the quicker and easier Crystal Tower raids ad nauseum. The problem will only get worse as more raids are released, spreading the player base wide and thin, making it even harder to get into non-CT raids.

The Solution:
Expanding on an idea I posted here:

Replace the Alliance Raid Roulette with a daily challenge that rotates each day, cycling through all the alliance raids in the order in which they were released, selecting only the current raid of the day. For example it would start with Labyrinth of the Ancients, the next day would be Syrcus Tower, and so on until reaching Orbonne Monastery, after which it would loop back to Labyrinth of the Ancients, and the cycle would continue. When the next expansion is released, the YoRHa raid series will be added to the rotation.

To encourage players to do the longer, harder raids when they are up, those raids would provide greater rewards, i.e. Orbonne Monastery could grant 200 poetics, 200 goetia, and 100 phantasmagoria, while Labyrinth of the Ancients could grant 50 poetics, 50 goetia, and 25 phantasmagoria.

Possible Drawbacks:
The main drawback I can think of is that new players wanting to unlock a given raid and progress progress the raid's storyline (And also players who just want to experience a specific raid) would have to wait until the raid they need is up for the day, which would take anywhere from 0 to 8 days (11 after the YoRHa series gets added to the rotation). However I still think that would be better than players wanting to do an Ivalice or Mhach raid (New players included) having to sit in a very slow queue and hope enough people queue up for it.

Another possible drawback would be that if you are using it to level, you would be deprived of it if you are below the level of the raid that is currently up. I.e. if you are between levels 50-59, you will be deprived of the challenge 6 days out of 9. This could be mitigated by increasing the experience reward for lower level players to make up for only being able to raid 3 days (6 days if you are level 60-69) out of every 9. It is also mitigated by the fact that there are lots of other sources of XP.

[Mhaeric]

snip

The only thing they need to do is have a tiered minimum ilevel entry requirement equal to the minimum ilevel requirement for highest raid you can queue for so people can't cheese their ilevel to force the CT raids by lowering below the SB requirements. I.e.:

Level 50-59: no minimum ilevel needed (enough to always include all ARR raids in the queue, this is also the current situation across all levels)
Level 60-69: minimum ilevel 235 needed to join alliance raid queue (enough to always include all HW raids as a possibility in the queue)
Level 70+: minimum ilevel 365 needed to join alliance raid queue (enough to always include all SB raids as a possibility in the queue)

It would still skew towards the CT raids due to population distribution, but it wouldn't be nearly as heavily skewed as it is now.

[Feronar]

The only thing they need to do is have a tiered minimum ilevel entry requirement equal to the minimum ilevel requirement for highest raid you can queue for so people can't cheese their ilevel to force the CT raids by lowering below the SB requirements. I.e.:

Level 50-59: no minimum ilevel needed (enough to always include all ARR raids in the queue, this is also the current situation across all levels)
Level 60-69: minimum ilevel 235 needed to join alliance raid queue (enough to always include all HW raids as a possibility in the queue)
Level 70+: minimum ilevel 365 needed to join alliance raid queue (enough to always include all SB raids as a possibility in the queue)

It would still skew towards the CT raids due to population distribution, but it wouldn't be nearly as heavily skewed as it is now.

That would help, and it is one idea I seriously considered suggesting. However, it would still leave a couple major problems unsolved:

- Some raids are much harder and longer than others, i.e. Orbonne Monastery vs Labyrinth of the Ancients. The speedrunners will still want LotA, and if they get OM they might simply drop instead, and players who are sick of the Crystal Tower series might drop if they get a Crystal Tower raid. There will be still be serious friction between these groups of players. With my solution, if a raid you don't like is up, you can simply choose not to run the daily raid challenge that day, and the harder raids will have greater rewards, ensuring players will be willing to queue for those raids.
- While your solution will help by getting more people out of CT and into the newer raids, as more raids get released, the player population will still get spread wide and thin, making it harder to get into any one specific rid you want, even if you queue for that raid directly. With the daily challenge, everyone will be funneled into the one raid that's up on any given day.

[JWag12787]

I disagree. They pop up because they are the most common. If people were able to control the roulette based on iLvL, then the lower-level raids wouldn't pop anywhere near as often, and these few that need it would wait forever.... So we need to find the solution to them, while finding one for us.

[Mhaeric]

I disagree. They pop up because they are the most common. If people were able to control the roulette based on iLvL, then the lower-level raids wouldn't pop anywhere near as often, and these few that need it would wait forever.... So we need to find the solution to them, while finding one for us.

I don't think you are understanding the suggestion. People already do control the roulette based on ilevel which is exactly why you see the lower level raids almost all of the time. Players equip themselves with ilevels lower than the minimum for the void ark raids when queuing so that they guarantee themselves the CT raids when queuing alliance roulette. My suggestion isn't allowing players control over the ilevel of the raids in roulette, it is taking it away. Having a tiered ilevel requirement doesn't remove the lower level raids from the higher level player queues, it just makes it so the higher level players cannot remove the higher level raids from their roulette queues. Everyone who queues for alliance roulette would still have CT raids in their queue possibility even with a higher ilevel requirement due to their level, so it would still skew to those, but not nearly as much as it does now when a large number of people are artificially forcing their queue to it.

[Frizze]

The only thing they need to do is have a tiered minimum ilevel entry requirement equal to the minimum ilevel requirement for highest raid you can queue for...

People purposefully not unlocking raids would still be an issue. Solution could be either forcing people to unlock at least the first one of the higher level sets to que for roulette, or possibly removing the requirement to have a raid unlocked for it to show up via roulette.

[Nutshell]

If your level 80 gear can be synced down why can't they just make it so your under leveled gear (or no gear at all) is synced up to the minimum iLVL of the raid? This way the game doesn't have to care what iLVL you are while queuing you for your roulette. If you have it unlocked you can be a put into that raid.

I also think the issue has to do with how matchmaking works, or at least how I think it works. Right now it takes WAY TOO LONG to get a party for anything besides the first three raids. I feel like matchmaking in this game cares more about getting people into a raid as fast as possible instead of making sure those people who are queued for a certain raid are getting the players they need. I wouldn't be surprised if the game had 23 people for Rabanastre one person was queuing for and then remove 22 of them because they could do Sycrus Tower RIGHT NOW instead of waiting on that one more player.

[Jimmymagic]

in order to unlock Alliance roulette you have to unlock all of them and have max ilevel for each set....

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

The Problem:

This is not a bad idea (except for the drawbacks you listed). I made a post about this as well and the easiest fix is to sync participation to your current level. So if you are level 80, then you must meet the minimum requirement for Copied Factory to participate. I realize Copied isn\\'t in the line up yet so atm the lvl 80 requirement should be the minimum for Orbonne.

Also, as someone else mentioned (and I mentioned in my post), there should be a requirement to unlock all the raids in a single tier to be eligible for Alliance. So all of CT for lvl 50, all of CT and Void for lvl 60 and so on. This will make it so people can\\'t control the pool by simple ommission.

My radical idea to address getting CT purely by RNG was to make it a separate Roulette. MSQ Alliance. Same rewards/EXP. That way people can go the easy route if they want AND people can do one for leveling and the other for tomes (or both for either or--because I\\'m tired of having to chose between tomes and exp).

I think we\\'re all in agreement that something needs to be done.

[Frizze]

The more i think about this... do you think we could solve the issue just using exp? People cheat the system because the first two raids are significantly shorter and easier, thus making them a great deal more efficient for leveling. That sounds to me like they must be paying out too much. So lets cut the exp specifically for LotA and Syrcus by about 25-50%(and maybe reduce tomes). You can set WoD and Void Ark right about where the rewards are now. If the roulette sends you to either of the other two lvl 60 raids(weeping city or dun scaith) increase the exp by 25-50%(probly achieved most easily by adding a bonus - if you wanted to add bonus tomes as well i wouldnt argue). Then if the roulette sends you to one of the Ivalice raids the bonus can go up another 25-50%. The rewards for LotA and Syrcus would still be good for the time and effort required by those runs, but the increasing bonus for the harder runs would make people want them more(and hopefully avoid them less).