MSQ Roulette Cutscene Skip

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Originally Posted by Gatygun

People here sympathise way to much with "new players' what makes you think new players want to sit in a hour long dungeon? they don't.

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Well, you're wrong. The whole reason why this system was put in place is because of new players massively complaining for years, so yes they do want to sit through the cutscenes.
And as others said, the huge xp was only put there because of the unskippable cutscenes, before that it was worth running for xp only in the 50s.

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Originally Posted by Mahoukenshi

No unskippable cutscenes = No increased rewards.

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No reward = nobody signing up for it = MSQ stuck for new players = New players not progressing
= lost subscriptions = change the quest or reward because the story and cutscenes are builded
around a game. or else it would just be a endless cutscene or book.

The reason why people rushed back in the day from what i heard is because the experience was bad so they didn't wanted to sit in there long but still wanted the limited rewards out of it which made new players feel rushed and get kicked. They changes this towards unskippable cutscenes and far more experience to give new players a better experience while rewarding older players and newer players.

However because of the experience, its not a thing u have to sit through and basically bore yourself to death every single day for a hour. Which in my vision isn't a good gameplay solution.It's bad gameplay design.

The big issue here is that one group of people are bogging down the other group of people no matter how you push it. That's why this type of concept of a main story with long cutscenes isn't working in a dungeon and is not done by any mmo even remotely. Simple tweaks in all kinds of different ways can resolve this issue perfectly fine.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

It doesn't work like that. The story and gameplay are interconnected - you move through the area, and have fights at specific points along the way because you encountered them in the story.

Would you want to watch all the "talking scenes" in an action movie first, then watch all the fight scenes separately later? That would be the equivalent of "putting the story as a cutscene first" then playing the dungeon.


The thing is, as a new player it's not "sitting in a hour-long dungeon", it's seeing the story play out for the first time. If you appreciate and are following the story, the first time through the Praetorium is an amazing experience. I willingly re-ran it the next day and was delighted to fall in with another group taking their friend through the story and watching the cutscenes.

Yes, it gets old. Yes, it's routine now. But I remember how I felt about it when it was new, and I will defend whatever measures are in place to help other people get that same experience.

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U do realize they can rewrite the story around the gameplay instead of hampering it right? What if everybody lives in pieces and there is no conflict anymore. no more final fantasy games? or will they rewrite a conflict to sell a new game towards you? exactly. Story is builded around the gameplay and not the other way around or else we would see the lore 24/7 for everything we did all day long. This is why gameplay and story are segmented and only tid bits of story are provided in group plays. Main story quests is clearly going overboard with it and it creates a unpleasant experience for most of the people doing it as. As you only have to see the cutscene ones and now u are in the other group of endless waiting.

Pacing is important in a book, in a movie and in a game and specially when it involves other players.

Why do you think the regular dungeon system doesn't have story cutscenes in between that are long and tedious and can be skippable? Because gameplay will grind to halt entirely.

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Originally Posted by Gatygun

The reason why people rushed back in the day from what i heard is because the experience was bad so they didn't wanted to sit in there long but still wanted the limited rewards out of it which made new players feel rushed and get kicked.

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No, people rushed through it for the same reason they rush through all other dungeons and raids whenever possible - because they can. For some inexplicable reason a great many players of FFXIV seem to think that the only good dungeon run is one which is done as quickly as possible.

New players rarely got kicked in the past when cutscenes could and usually would be skipped. What happened instead was that they got ignored - the rest of the party rushed ahead, leaving the new player behind, lost, confused, and not knowing where to go, and then the new player got bombarded with cutscene after cutscene without having the context for the cutscenes and without being able to take part in or even see any of the fights.

Theyve hinted, but not outright said, that if they change this again its probly going to be that castrum and praetorium become solo instances with AI partners helping new players along(which is what they should have done 2 years ago rather then the unskippable route they went). Then the unskippable cutscenes go away, because the whole roulette goes away. No more "hours of forced cutscene torture", and no more massively inflated exp and poetics rewards for doing them. There are plenty of ways to level up that dont require stepping foot in roulettes that you dont want to run - so rather then complain about these just dont do them if they bother you.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

New players rarely got kicked in the past when cutscenes could and usually would be skipped. What happened instead was that they got ignored - the rest of the party rushed ahead, leaving the new player behind, lost, confused, and not knowing where to go, and then the new player got bombarded with cutscene after cutscene without having the context for the cutscenes and without being able to take part in or even see any of the fights.

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OMG this 1000 times over. Go back about 3 years on the boards, and the threads complaining about these runs by new players who had their experience "ruined by speedrunners" are endless. The advice back then was to do these via PF, or do them with friends so you could experience the fights properly. Most people didnt get that advice until at least the castrum run was "ruined"(if not both), and the salt was endless. The quick lazy fix back then that people promoted was unskippable cutscenes. I always said they should work on new content rather then "fix" 3+ year old instances, but if they DID change them then a solo instance was the only true way to prevent more problems from occurring. The devs listened to their players and made the quick lazy fix. Then they spent a couple months tuning the rewards to be good enough that the new players didnt wait too long. And nothing has changed since. But they are working on a revamp for some ARR content for later in this expansion cycle, so we'll see what(if anything) we get this time.

but muh cutscene reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Castrum and Praetorium were a mistake. No other way to put it.

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Originally Posted by Gatygun

People here sympathise way to much with "new players' what makes you think new players want to sit in a hour long dungeon? they don't.

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I completed the main ARR story back in 2.0, and I still remember how even then it sucked because I didn't even get to see what was going on with any of the bosses because I was watching the cutscenes while everyone else just rushed through everything. I had to rerun it later on and skip the scenes with everyone else to even see most of the fights because they were over before I could even participate the first time through. I'm glad the current system is the way it is, because my experience was pure garbage, and I don't want other players to have to go through that.

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Originally Posted by FirstnameLastname

but muh cutscene reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Castrum and Praetorium were a mistake. No other way to put it.

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Which has nothing to do with the "problem" at hand, but sure go ahead and continue trolling :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Mahoukenshi

Which has nothing to do with the "problem" at hand, but sure go ahead and continue trolling :rolleyes:

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It does actually. Why are only rookies allowed to dictate their playstyle on others? Once you hit levelcap you suddenly drop in class and are not allowed to do stuff in your pace anymore, eh? 'Cause that's what I've been seeing here.

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Originally Posted by FirstnameLastname

It does actually. Why are only rookies allowed to dictate their playstyle on others? Once you hit levelcap you suddenly drop in class and are not allowed to do stuff in your pace anymore, eh? 'Cause that's what I've been seeing here.

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First, sprouts arent dictating anything. The devs listened to 3+ years of complaints on the forums and they made the decision to change the way these 2 dungeons worked(they also learned not to put excessive cutscenes in the middle of group instances so that this wouldnt be a problem going forward). Second, every other duty in the game aside from these two the group gets to decide the pacing on their own. Which usually means fast(my preferred speed), but not always. The "epic conclusion to the realm reborn storyline" being treated differently from most other content is fine. And finally, these instances werent designed with you in mind. They were supposed to be the big flashy climax to the story the game wanted to tell, and that makes people doing them the first time the target audience. The roulette with its many-times-increased rewards was always just a way to see that que times for said sprouts didnt get too overly long. So the only part of the roulette that your feedback is relevant on is whether the roulette pays out enough. It ques at roughly the frequency the devs want, so apparently the answer is yes.

Any change that gets made is gonna make someone mad. The large rewards will be gone if they make any changes to speed it up, and if it becomes a solo instance, the roulette will be gone entirely.

My experience was similar, when in 2.1 skipping everything was a must as people would start the fight without you...I actually viewed and appreciated the story after doing MSQ 20 times.

As somebody who played during ARR where you had to continually run Praetorium and Castrum to get pre-coils gear. I wish I could skip them, but I understand and agree with the reason why I can't. I'll give you guys one good example as to why cutscene skipping is rightfully not allowed. My friend who started playing the game during HW was going through Praetorium for the first time and he didn't get to participate in any fight because the group was going so fast. He also missed a whole cutscene because of it where he only saw it the 2nd run. While I get the hate for it, just do what everyone else does and AFK during them.

The thing is, the excessive XP given in MSQ roullete is just so its worth the trouble. If they ever let cut-scenes skip again, you can probably say goodbye to the xp.

I have heard that changing the language during msq can shorten the cs by a negligible amount (30s to a minute?) Unsure what language it needs to be set to though.

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Originally Posted by Nyxn607

I have heard that changing the language during msq can shorten the cs by a negligible amount (30s to a minute?) Unsure what language it needs to be set to though.

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It seems that Japanese runs slightly longer than English, for the most part - I'm usually out of cutscenes a few seconds before most of the party (playing on a JP server) and I assume this is due to the language difference. There's also one scene where I'm consistently out slower and sometimes get locked out of the room.

Even if another language was faster, you'd probably spend as much time changing your settings as you'd claim back from the cutscene length.

German cutscenes are the shortest (excluding the very last one before Lablabla or whats-the-name of the floating guy) I'm told by my friend who has the client set to german exactly for this purpose.

The issue isn’t the cut scenes, but that it’s possible to dash through a dungeon like a madman, which is ludicrous because you no longer have anything remotely resembling gameplay.

If someone is in a cut scene, then force fields need to block progress, whilst swarms of mobs continuously respawn in order to entertain those that are waiting. Fundamentally, people just need something to do.

Or instead of mobs, setup a row of those “test your strength” games from the Golden Saucer, and give a reward to the player that obtains the highest score before the cut scene ends.

SE does not seem willing to redo those two instances and their internal cutscenes - thing they admited was a mistake.
They implemented forced cutscenes to ensure, that new players are not robbed of the story.
Then they implemented super XP rewards to ensure, that new players get enough people to run the instance in first place.

If you are re-running this to reap XP for Alts as we all sometimes do, you are accepting the price - that it will be time consuming.

The only solution for this would be if SE redo it completely, or allow players to run these with Scion NPCs - like a new Trust system.

I've done each of the two MSQ roulettes dozens of times, and the cutscenes are mostly unfun. Some of the fights add nothing and could be deleted, such as the one in Prae where there's no tank aggro for a little while, boss take's zero or insignificant damage until pipes start exploding, and it takes forever for you to regain your normal damage.

You learn little tricks as you go, esp. if you're tanking, but not much helps with the weight of cutscenes peppered with the occasional trolls. At an aggressive pace, Prae's been taking about 45 minutes, including approximately 29.5 minutes of solid cutscenes. Castrum at a good clip takes about 24 minutes, assuming you don't have to LFG all over again because both your healers or both your tanks insta-left (saw this happen at least twice).

For Prae, some of the worst trolling I've seen is malicious afk -- that is, people abusing the constant in-combat of the run to purposely afk very early on and force the honest players to low-man everything. Once there were two at a time doing this. There are very brief out-of-combat moments but you'd have to yell so that no one crosses the next purple line in order to votekick. Arguably with enough afk and low-manning this could equate to a cutscene's delay of game.