Praetorium - Worst Experience Ever

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Originally Posted by Gothicshark

since it's the best XP for time, you will be running that hundred of times a month. No exaggeration either

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wat.

/10char

This was my main complaint while going through the story as well. All of the dungeon sequences in the story are so rushed and anti-climactic because you're forced to play with other people who only want to blitz through a roulette. It was a terrible idea to force group content into the story.

Most of the time it doesn't even make sense. You're about to come face to face with a primal; you're the only one can do this because you're the only one with the echo, but wait... 3-7 other echo users materialize from nothing, fight the primal with you and you never see them again. Just nonsense.

At least once you get to Shadowbringer these become solo instances you can run with AI, but that's a long ways off.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Most of the time it doesn't even make sense. You're about to come face to face with a primal; you're the only one can do this because you're the only one with the echo, but wait... 3-7 other echo users materialize from nothing, fight the primal with you and you never see them again. Just nonsense.

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IIRC in-story there's several mentions of you gathering some adventurer friends to help fend off a primal or run a dungeon whenever you need to, essentially making everyone else in the world just a regular adventurer who isn't the WoL. How this makes any sense for the first Ifrit fight, though, where you're explicitely captured and put in a cave, I don't know either.

For Ifrit, there is an NPC in the cave you're trapped in that allows you to leave to gather allies without arousing suspicion. Of course you're expected to come right back and be a model prisoner along with your newly found allies, which is more than a little silly—especially if the allies you found turned out to not have the Echo.

I found it a touch odd that we're shown to be capable of shielding normals from primal influence in 4.1, but that never seems to brought up ever again and our friends just opt to back out the next time a primal shows up.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I found it a touch odd that we're shown to be capable of shielding normals from primal influence in 4.1, but that never seems to brought up ever again and our friends just opt to back out the next time a primal shows up.

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Probably because as that one instance showed,

it's kinda hard to fight the primal while also shielding everyone (By the time of the final wave its basically impossible to attack lakshmi without letting any orbs through). All it would take is a primal figuring out a way to bind/distract/impede the WoL long enough to get a wave of aether off and any non-echo companions we have are doomed. Lakshmi almost pulls it off on Lyse & Raubahn; if her fetters were a bit stronger those two would have been doomed. Not to mention an exceptional powerful primal could easily overhwlem us with more aether waves than we could possibly deflect alone; the job would have been much harder without Arenvald in that one instance, for example. (Arenvald even says: "There's too many..we can't stop them all!" to help reinforce just how easy it'd be for a primal to overwhelm us, if two people combined can get overwhelmed.)

So rather than having to be a constant issue that the WoL would have to always be on the alert for, our allies have the common sense to not engage the primal so that way the WoL can fight without any issues hindering them. Think of it another way; a military can easily fight and unleash its full strength when there's no civilian targets in the way, but the instant Civilians come into the picture, most armies have to then be extremely careful with how they engage in battle until the at risk targets leave the battlefield.

Problem: We are killing/clearing the MSQ too fast.
Solution: Slow us down. (cap our our damage ilvl to 70-90?)

This way nobody dares to charge and pull every thing in the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by FudoMyoo

Problem: We are killing/clearing the MSQ too fast.
Solution: Slow us down. (cap our our damage ilvl to 70-90?)

This way nobody dares to charge and pull every thing in the dungeon.

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My first experience with Prae was back when i90 was the highest, I was lucky enought to see the cutscenes first time and not get kicked for it, but that also meant that I was seeing them back to back. Nothing short of i45-i65 sync would stop people from doing mass pulls (and even then I wonder if they'd do it anyway).

New players still having a bad time, even with the forced cutscenes. :eek:

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

My first experience with Prae was back when i90 was the highest, I was lucky enought to see the cutscenes first time and not get kicked for it, but that also meant that I was seeing them back to back. Nothing short of i45-i65 sync would stop people from doing mass pulls (and even then I wonder if they'd do it anyway).

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I most certainly would try.

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Originally Posted by FudoMyoo

Problem: We are killing/clearing the MSQ too fast.
Solution: Slow us down. (cap our our damage ilvl to 70-90?)

This way nobody dares to charge and pull every thing in the dungeon.

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Then nobody would run it unless they offer 2-3 levels of experience and half the tomestone cap. The problem with MSQ roulette as somebody else pointed out is that the rewards are too good to ignore. Rather this roulette is part of many players' daily chores because there's such a lack of suitable XP sources in the game particularly if you're DPS or you're trying to level a role you're not comfortable with.

The correct fix (IMO of course) involves serving that need. We need better options for levelling. Story XP is stingy enough that you'll run into a wall unless you're overlevelled at the start of the patch. PotD/HoH, leves, and FATE grinding all have issues. Kinda hard to "grind" dungeons when DPS queues are 30+ minutes.

Only then can they convert Rhytalyn, CM, and Prae into solo instances. Perhaps Square gets that and that's why addressing MSQ roulette was stated to not be part of the 5.3 adjustments.

I have no problem with how praetorium and castrum is. I run them daily for exp and moogle tomes and the cutscenes are still enjoyable to me. And i'm happy the cutscenes can't be skipped. Everyone deserve to enjoy them especially new players.

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Originally Posted by KadaRemnant

I have no problem with how praetorium and castrum is. I run them daily for exp and moogle tomes and the cutscenes are still enjoyable to me. And i'm happy the cutscenes can't be skipped. Everyone deserve to enjoy them especially new players.

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SUCH DEVASTATION...

THIS WAS NOT MY INTENTION.

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Originally Posted by KadaRemnant

I have no problem with how praetorium and castrum is. I run them daily for exp and moogle tomes and the cutscenes are still enjoyable to me. And i'm happy the cutscenes can't be skipped. Everyone deserve to enjoy them especially new players.

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I'm am a child of the 70's and these two instances are very reminiscent of the state of after school entertainment at the time. OTOH... after running the roulette daily for the better part of 18 months, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, it's unusual that I pay much attention.

It's amazing that Enix has literally bribed people with a huge chunk of exp and tomes, specifically to help the new players through these MSQ dungeons and players still refuse to do so, simply taking the bribe and leaving the new player in the dust with "lol that's Prae".

I hope you guys realize they will rework these into solo instances, remove MSQ roulette, give you nothing back to replace it and that's 100% on the playerbase. MSQ roulette is not daily exp that you are entitled to.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It's amazing that Enix has literally bribed people with a huge chunk of exp and tomes, specifically to help the new players through these MSQ dungeons and players still refuse to do so, simply taking the bribe and leaving the new player in the dust with "lol that's Prae".

I hope you guys realize they will rework these into solo instances, remove MSQ roulette, give you nothing back to replace it and that's 100% on the playerbase. MSQ roulette is not daily exp that you are entitled to.

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Frontline is the real XP goldmine people are sleeping on.

Shorter than prae, gives just as much XP.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It's amazing that Enix has literally bribed people with a huge chunk of exp and tomes, specifically to help the new players through these MSQ dungeons and players still refuse to do so, simply taking the bribe and leaving the new player in the dust with "lol that's Prae".

I hope you guys realize they will rework these into solo instances, remove MSQ roulette, give you nothing back to replace it and that's 100% on the playerbase. MSQ roulette is not daily exp that you are entitled to.

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Reminder that the roulette is there for the veterans to help new people solely with queue times, not for new people to provide veterans with Xp and tomes.

Players are entitled to whatever SE gives them because otherwise new players are stuck with dungeons that would take hours to ding. It's only a shame people don't stick to their guns and tell SE to screw themselves for ruining a perfectly fine roulette with unskippable cutscenes that can be watched on the Inn or by using PF.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I hope you guys realize they will rework these into solo instances, remove MSQ roulette, give you nothing back to replace it and that's 100% on the playerbase.

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Good, that's what they should've done from the start.

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Originally Posted by LumiBlue

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It's a shame that this happened as it ruined the experience for you. Been happening for years though, but at least SE didn't repeat the same mistake twice.

Heck, it took me 4-5 days to reach lvl 50 during ARR launch week as DRG, and by that point people were already skipping/rushing. I missed most of the boss fights in Prae because I was watching cutscenes as intended. Thankfully no one cared, and I requeued again right after to experience the fights themselves, but the dev team clearly didn't think that through.

It's a nice concept, but they failed to account for how people act when they want their tomes apparently. The forced cutscenes were a band aid fix of sorts, but I still don't think it addressed the underlying problem. They need to be solo instances, in my opinion. Period. Hopefully you will tough it out because the experience gets better, I promise. I wouldn't let one bad experience ruin what could very well be an enjoyable experience if you can move past it.

The ideal outcome is they sack MSQ roulette, make those solo duties, and distribute the XP elsewhere. A little could go into the 50/60 roulette, which some people skip since they feel it's not rewarding enough. ARR FATEs and pre-Stormblood hunt marks could also use a little love. There's places you can go to get XP that are actually fun to play that are worth highlighting and are more flattering for what FFXIV should be.

Of course, they could take out MSQ roulette and not improve XP elsewhere, though that's still the better outcome so that new players can have a much better experience.

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Originally Posted by Esmoire

Of course, they could take out MSQ roulette and not improve XP elsewhere, though that's still the better outcome so that new players can have a much better experience.

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Is it? Is player acquisition for a game this age that much more important than retention? IMO neither should trump the other. There needs to be balance. Too many games flip off their veterans while chasing "untapped demographics" that just don't exist.

Do I think the MSQ roulettes would be better off as solo instances? Unequivocally. Do I think not addressing the XP or tome farming would damage retention? Very much so.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It's amazing that Enix has literally bribed people with a huge chunk of exp and tomes, specifically to help the new players through these MSQ dungeons and players still refuse to do so, simply taking the bribe and leaving the new player in the dust with "lol that's Prae".

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we only help with queue times, we aren't there to hold anyone's hand. If you can't watch people and figure it out, you have much bigger problems than people speed running.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I hope you guys realize they will rework these into solo instances, remove MSQ roulette, give you nothing back to replace it and that's 100% on the playerbase. MSQ roulette is not daily exp that you are entitled to.

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This is what I hope happens. I hate running MSQ, but I do it for the xp. I will live a much happier life when I don't have to run that crap ever again.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It's amazing that Enix has literally bribed people with a huge chunk of exp and tomes, specifically to help the new players through these MSQ dungeons and players still refuse to do so, simply taking the bribe and leaving the new player in the dust with "lol that's Prae".

I hope you guys realize they will rework these into solo instances, remove MSQ roulette, give you nothing back to replace it and that's 100% on the playerbase. MSQ roulette is not daily exp that you are entitled to.

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People that run MSQ for exp will not care sll thst much if it gets changed to a solo instance， they will just move on to the next exp method prob frontlines.

Don't really get why veteran players would want to get rid of the MSQ roulette. It's the most efficient way to level up and farm poetics in the entire game; it's a massive loss if it's gone. If you don't like it then level up and farm tomes with the crappier tools at your disposal. Veterans should be thanking SE and new players for the MSQ roulette as it exists.

I will admit it sucks for new players, though. Everything about the experience would be 100x better if it were a solo instance, but instead new players are forced to deal with this communities nonsense if they want to progress the story.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Don't really get why veteran players would want to get rid of the MSQ roulette. It's the most efficient way to level up and farm poetics in the entire game; it's a massive loss if it's gone. If you don't like it then level up and farm tomes with the crappier tools at your disposal. Veterans should be thanking SE and new players for the MSQ roulette as it exists.

I will admit it sucks for new players, though. Everything about the experience would be 100x better if it were a solo instance, but instead new players are forced to deal with this communities nonsense if they want to progress the story.

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Come on, man. A massive loss? Nowhere near. Veteran players already know exactly where to grind tomes and levels if needed.

I definitely agree that it should be solo, but thanking that it even exist? Nah. I've got other roulettes to run if I need tomes so baldy; same with experience. It's nice, but it ain't the holy grail of roulettes there chief.

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Originally Posted by Awha

People that run MSQ for exp will not care sll thst much if it gets changed to a solo instance， they will just move on to the next exp method prob frontlines.

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Exactly.

You can remove it; make it solo or whatever. People will just move on the next thing.

And they'll probably get mad about that too.

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Originally Posted by TyrTry

Come on, man. A massive loss? Nowhere near. Veteran players already know exactly where to grind tomes and levels if needed.

I definitely agree that it should be solo, but thanking that it even exist? Nah. I've got other roulettes to run if I need tomes so baldy; same with experience. It's nice, but it ain't the holy grail of roulettes there chief.

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It's the best exp and tomes for the time invested; why wouldn't veterans appreciate it existing?

Didn't say there was no other way to get tomes or level up, but why wish away the fastest one? No benefit to doing that.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

It's the best exp and tomes for the time invested; why wouldn't veterans appreciate it existing?

Didn't say there was no other way to get tomes or level up, but why wish away the fastest one? No benefit to doing that.

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Because MSQ roulette has been inherently flawed from the beginning due to the poor design of these two dungeons - a design SE has not repeated since.

I hate MSQ roulette. I usually don't even run it for EXP except when I'm in the 50~65 range on a new job, only been running it more often lately for Moogle Tomes as an addition. The only other tomes I'll ever get from it with what I use it for are Poetics, and I'm practically drowning in those just from my other daily roulettes on a level 80.

If they get rid of it I'll consider it not only a good thing, but not much of a loss on my end. They should have turned these into solo instances with NPC assistance a long, long time ago.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

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Haven't seen anyone wishing it away. Mostly just newer players annoyed by the way the dungeon is run and veteran players hating that the cutscenes can no longer be skipped.

Would be a lot easier if people who didn't like it just didn't run it, but as you said, the rewards are just to delicious to let up!

So, now ya got players coming up with exploits to skip passed the cutscenes, leaving newer players even more behind and confused than before. Other players like myself just done want to touch it anymore. And others who's brains had fallen out their heads because they've run it so much.

The whole thing is a crapshow that Square hasn't done since. And that's what I'm thankful for.

I personally feel the best solution would be just to make the instances solo and move on from there.

As Awha said, people will find other ways to get their quick xp and stuff.

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Originally Posted by Darsien

What would you like vets to thank Square for? Is it allowing people to play and level a job without ever learning to play it? Giving the lazy players in this game a tool to hit a job's max level without having ever used a skill above level 50? No. MSQ Roulette should never of existed in its current form and I think it's one of the primary factors as to why the playerbase's general skill level is embarrassingly low.

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Nothing about leveling actually teaches you how to play your class; the max ilvl synch is so high for everything the only time dungeons are even interesting is if someone doesn't know what they're doing. I'd rather level faster then get rid of my best leveling tool just so I can act elitist.

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Originally Posted by Kaoru_Nagisa

Because MSQ roulette has been inherently flawed from the beginning due to the poor design of these two dungeons - a design SE has not repeated since.

I hate MSQ roulette. I usually don't even run it for EXP except when I'm in the 50~65 range on a new job, only been running it more often lately for Moogle Tomes as an addition. The only other tomes I'll ever get from it with what I use it for are Poetics, and I'm practically drowning in those just from my other daily roulettes on a level 80.

If they get rid of it I'll consider it not only a good thing, but not much of a loss on my end. They should have turned these into solo instances with NPC assistance a long, long time ago.

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If the main reason people would like to see it change is because the way it's currently set up sucks for new players, I guess I agree. It would suck to lose it, though. It makes leveling up alts a lot faster and the content is easy enough I can do it while working.

The problems with MSQ roulette and the reasons why vets might wanna get rid of it are multifold

1. The large exp is a doubled edge sword, as another post mentioned, it would encourage laziness as its allows players to get half a level for doing a dungeon that is capped at 50. This on its own wouldn't be a problem (I mean bad players would cap with FATEs if they have to if they're adverse to dungeons and learning, and the other roulettes combined would encourage players to do difficult content if they care about level grinding anyway) but...
2. It encourages toxic behavior and hostility to new players. Remember what happened when people could skip the cutscenes, and also know that players trying to get it over with also encourages locking out newer players who don't know where to go and slower players with subpar hardware for until the prompt starts, and there is a chance that the boss will be downed by the time the cutscene ends, the area reloads and the prompt appears. to say nothing about the people instaquitting one instance because it isn't what they wanted.
3. They are the weirdest dungeons in the game. Literally no other dungeon needed 8 players and its too shall we say, seamless to be a raid series (though that would be interesting, using a Raid to end the starting patch of an expansion) and needs too few to be an alliance raid. Prae and one Alex fight are also the only instantses that have mounts integrated into the mechanics (AFIAK)
4. It adds a sense of tedium to daily routine. The exp bonuses are as previously mentioned too good to pass up, which means that players leveling alts or bee-lining for the cap (fun fact. I did roulettes, including this during SHB MSQ and got 4-6 jobs capped by the end of 5.0) would be dedicating 1 hour per day to this roulette alone if they decide to level an alt that day. Time that could e spent towards other goals or even slightly more efficient grinding. Overall for most that do run the roulette, its removal would probably be like removing a weight off their shoulders, even if they get seemingly less exp from their daily routines

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Originally Posted by Darsien

This is my primary issue with the community right now. You want your selfish little Netflix EXP drop every day at the cost of not knowing a damn thing about how to play the game. That means that you will need to be carried in the future, burdening 3-23 other players because you want an easy path. If it's elitist to feel that people should carry their own weight, so be it. I'd rather see people understand more and do better then flail at their keyboard randomly.

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MSQ Roulette and being able to iLevel cheese into only getting the CT series are part of what's making the playerbase lazy imo.

It also is exactly why I hate both MSQ roulette and CT. It's so stupid seeing people leave CM because it isn't as much EXP for less work (as in you spend most of Prae in movie mode as opposed to moving around burning trash mobs), or leave upon getting anything in Alliance roulette that isn't CT or the first two parts of the Mhachi series.

People need to stop being afraid of doing 'hard' (read: still easy but not brainless) content because they don't want to learn how to actually play competently. People need to stop continuing to be a burden on 3-7-23 other people because they're lazy and afraid of effort.

As for MSQ roulette, though - Alliance roulette gives about (give or take) as much EXP as Castrum does. There are plenty of EXP sources in the game beyond MSQ, and some of them are actually fun to play and don't force vets and newbies to butt heads the way these two dungeons have done since 2.1 dropped. If it goes, good freaking riddance honestly. We'll all be free of the burden then - new players wanting to experience ARR's climax properly, and old players who can't stand being forced to sit and watch the same crappy cutscenes over and over that we've seen since 2.0.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

Is it? Is player acquisition for a game this age that much more important than retention? IMO neither should trump the other. There needs to be balance. Too many games flip off their veterans while chasing "untapped demographics" that just don't exist.

Do I think the MSQ roulettes would be better off as solo instances? Unequivocally. Do I think not addressing the XP or tome farming would damage retention? Very much so.

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The thing is...

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Originally Posted by Awha

People that run MSQ for exp will not care sll thst much if it gets changed to a solo instance， they will just move on to the next exp method prob frontlines.

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This. And with fewer roulettes, existing roulettes have better saturation. It's not a 1:1 thing since not everyone who did MSQ roulette will do the others (it's a popular one if people are not going to be playing the game, like watching videos or playing on their phone), though for those duties that might have slow turnover time, or for people trying to queue for a post-expansion trial a bit late, they'll get in the game faster.

Also, bear the irony of the fact you are bringing up existing players for content that is old, anyways. So what's our loss? XP, of which people who have cleared ARR already have so many great sources? Pretty minimal, especially since pixies give us so much XP now, and people at high level in general already have a greater density of roulettes to choose from, and more and more and more stuff is coming out several times a year at any moment besides now, most of it aimed at established players.

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Originally Posted by Rae88

I think Square learned from this because the Prae and the previous dungeon are as bad as it gets and it's not even close. I honestly don't know what they can do now to fix it either :(

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An option to run it with a trust/squadron. This would allow you to play at your own pace.

Yeah, happened to me the first time went there too, got confused on where to go, got killed, nobody gave a damn just rush forward, hahaha. I was so angry.

Now I always try to hang out in the back if I see someone with a sprout getting left behind so I can show them the way as fast as possible.

I hope SE will eventually introduce the opportunity of running certain old duties with the trust system and the two MSQ roulette dungeons are one of those.
The thing with Praetorium/Castrum is that their rewards are too good to pass on if you're leveling your character so players feel kinda compelled to run their roulette and this leads to those instances being rushed.
In my opinion many of the main story duties don't even feel right to complete as an 8-men party, especially because in the final cutscene you can see all the players celebrating whereas YOU're supposed to be THE warrior of light, it's just weird. But that's just a nitpick of mine.

Wierd. Sounds like I had the only good 1st time Experience.

I'm confused...

How did you miss anything when you can't skip the cutscenes? You logged off cause the group was rushing through it, so how is that on the group?

There won't be a group anywhere in this game that won't rush through Prae or Castrum especially with the moogle event going on unless it's a FC that is purposely running it slow.

Yes the devs had not completely thought it through when they created these two dungeons and they never did something like that again. I would be 100% fine if made these dungeons into NPC only runs so that anyone can enjoy it on their own pace.

But I also have to say: It was much worse back then when we had no forced cutscenes (and even though I was against these at the beginning, I now have grown to accept them) and I am not really sure why you got so confused OP. Yes people rush but most of the time the tank takes the monsters and if you stay with the group you mostly should have no problem to follow them. Only problem is, when the rest of the group either skips cutscenes (which is against the ToS) or if they have a certain language because then certain cutscenes are shorter. But as soon as another boss battle begins you are ported there and should then be able to keep up again.

I do try to wait for new people and even mark the one thing for the keys with a one but imo it should not be that much of a dealbreaker. Just wait until you are teleported with them and then you still can take part in the boss fights.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

I'm confused...

How did you miss anything when you can't skip the cutscenes? You logged off cause the group was rushing through it, so how is that on the group?

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They missed near everything in between the cutscenes. I ran into that problem a while ago when I briefly disconnected right before getting the magitek armour. As a result I was of course behind the group when I got back in, but I couldn't catch up with them for a long while because I was bombarded with cutscene after cutscene after cutscene, without seeing what triggered the cutscenes.
For me this wasn't much of a problem - I have run Praetorium plenty of times before, so I know it well enough. For a new person it wouldn't have been much fun though.