The Alliance roulette is unbearable

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Originally Posted by YukikoKurosawa

It's people who don't want anything fun or challenging and just want to login, collect their quick and easy rewards, then log out. They will happily ruin the game for everyone else if it means making their boring reward collecting slightly less time consuming. Why they play the game in the first place is anyone's guess.

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Because they only care about being able to brag to other people that they have something in a video game... They're probably the same ppl that keep buying gil and endgame duty clears from the RMT which keeps them around because they have customers...

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Originally Posted by Sacred-Oblivion

Please please please pray, add an ilvl requirement to this roulette that scales with the job level of the person queuing for it.

A level 90 character equipping lvl 50 gear and then queuing for this roulette to get a quick and easy LotA or CT run is not what this roulette is intended for. This is having a huge adverse impact on everyone who wants to enjoy all of the alliance raids with this roulette, especially the more recent ones. About 90% of my alliance roulette runs are one of these two raids because of people abusing this exploit and I'm going to die from boredom if this continues.

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Massive xp reward for 15m of my time. I will take it all day every day.

People leveling alts characters probably don’t even unlock the others. I know I don’t.

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Originally Posted by Nyxs

People leveling alts characters probably don’t even unlock the others. I know I don’t.

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But what about bozja? Oh wait, that's dead content now.

Man, a month ago I hated CT. I still don't like it. But now I'm also tired and bored of the other raids as well, after doing the roulette every day for leveling. I always understood that CT was faster and more efficient, but I've started paying more attention to the exact EXP values and clear times. I found that CT is literally the same EXP for half the time. Not an exaggeration, it's 15-20 minutes of time saved. It's better than some leveling dungeons even. It's obscene.

(Side note: Theoretically, you could do the ilvl cheese for trials as well, to force ARR primals. But the trials are fast enough anyways, and not worth that much EXP, so people don't bother.)

The incentives are clear and powerful. The problem will only get worse until SQEX nerfs LotA/ST (like doubling the HP of everything in there), or buffs the EXP of later raids.

I have a shred of principle left that's keeping me from doing the ilvl cheese. But I'm not annoyed when I get LotA anymore, because at least I'm saving a huge amount of time.

The problem is that these raids are required not just for MSQ but they give a fair amount of Tomes which is good for gear and they are the easiest way to have ShB relic weapon as well... I wish they adjusted this a bit. I don't get why we need to do level 50 raids for a level 80 relic weapon... even if its just a glam now.

In addition, you can trade your tomes for other items that people then sell on the market to cash in gil. And they choose these raids because its the fastest to run.

When endwalker came out it was almost always the Ivalice raids because u need to do them to unlock bozja which people used for leveling. So I did not like that either. Especially for the fact that even burger crown people sometimes dont know how Ivalice raids work...

I honestly don't know what the solution is, but I know I'm almost at the point where I don't want to run that roulette anymore because I'm sick of getting the same two raids every day. Even with the bonus gil and gear currency it just isn't worth it. There are so many raids besides these two in the game and the only way I'll get to see any of them anymore is to queue for them specifically which kind of defies the point of having a roulette in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

I honestly don't know what the solution is, but I know I'm almost at the point where I don't want to run that roulette anymore because I'm sick of getting the same two raids every day. Even with the bonus gil and gear currency it just isn't worth it. There are so many raids besides these two in the game and the only way I'll get to see any of them anymore is to queue for them specifically which kind of defies the point of having a roulette in the first place.

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The point of roulette is to fill parties who queue directly. And I assure you, more players are direct-queuing into Syrcus Tower than Puppet's Bunker.

I am so glad I get CT 9/10 times. Quick, no significant chance of fail, high rewards, minimal stress.

The Mhach raids are ok, but the super tanks of the Ivalice raids and the absolutely bonkers stupid and jarring Yorha raids can burn and I am so thankful I see them MAYBE once a month at most.

Just tossing out an idea here: What do yall think of adding a 7 day lockout to raids? So, if you get Ivalice via roulette on Monday, you won't get it again until the following Monday. Maybe it doesn't need to be 7 days, but seems like some lockout could add variety to the alliance queue.

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Originally Posted by HBill

Just tossing out an idea here: What do yall think of adding a 7 day lockout to raids? So, if you get Ivalice via roulette on Monday, you won't get it again until the following Monday. Maybe it doesn't need to be 7 days, but seems like some lockout could add variety to the alliance queue.

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So you have variety once a week and the rest of the week is CT? I don't think that sort of lock out could work. All I can think of is making it like frontlines, but instead of locking you into a single map for the day, it'd lock you into one of the raid series and you could get any of the three for that day, though that would screw over new players trying to get into the raids that aren't on the rotation for the day, so doubt that would work either.

Or kind of like how Frontline works? Rotating between all the alliance raids?

I feel like there are 2 things they could do to fix the problem:

1. Increased exp rewards from the higher level alliance raids, because the issue right now is doing CT raids are really faster and more efficient.

or

2. Move the CT raids to MSQ roulette like some suggested earlier in the thread.

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Originally Posted by Sheriyana

So you have variety once a week and the rest of the week is CT? I don't think that sort of lock out could work. All I can think of is making it like frontlines, but instead of locking you into a single map for the day, it'd lock you into one of the raid series and you could get any of the three for that day, though that would screw over new players trying to get into the raids that aren't on the rotation for the day, so doubt that would work either.

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I'm thinking more like you would have to wait X amount of days until you could get into CT via roulette again. Perhaps there could be a way to guarantee you don't get the same raid two days in a row. However, I would only implement this for daily bonus. Subsequent alliance roulette would be not effected by this limitation. Still, I'm not sure what intended consequences it would have. Would everyone get CT on reset? I do like your raid series suggestion, but definitely would cause people to lose a day if they really, really want a series.
Another idea, albeit incredibly messy, would separate alliance raid queues for each expansion. Except, that doing 1 counts for the daily bonus. So people that want something fast would always choose ARR, others would choose the others if they want something more challenging. Guess we run into the same issue though: can the demand for the raids justify a separate queue?

edit: grammar, accidental double quote

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Originally Posted by HBill

I'm thinking more like you would have to wait X amount of days until you could get into CT via roulette again. Perhaps there could be a way to guarantee you don't get the same raid two days in a row. However, I would only implement this for daily bonus. Subsequent alliance roulette would be not effected by this limitation. Still, I'm not sure what intended consequences it would have. Would everyone get CT on reset? I do like your raid series suggestion, but definitely would cause people to lose a day if they really, really want a series.
Another idea, albeit incredibly messy, would separate alliance raid queues for each expansion. Except, that doing 1 counts for the daily bonus. So people that want something fast would always choose ARR, others would choose the others if they want something more challenging. Guess we run into the same issue though: can the demand for the raids justify a separate queue?

edit: grammar, accidental double quote

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I'm not sure if it's possible with the technical side of things but I don't think anyone would be against a feature that made sure you wouldn't be able to get the same instance two days in a row through a roulette, so yes please! I'm not so sure the second idea would be doable, I imagine it would be hard for the game to connect multiple roulettes behind one reward in that way but I'm no technical expert so no idea.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

The point of roulette is to fill parties who queue directly. And I assure you, more players are direct-queuing into Syrcus Tower than Puppet's Bunker.

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Then there's one less healer in the alliance queue because I just don't care anymore. A roulette by definition is supposed to be random, and it's hardly random if you're guaranteed to get the same result every day due to poor design choices.

Moving the CT raids to MSQ roulette is absolutely not the answer unless you want a constant stream of people dropping out of the long dungeons hoping they'll get Syrcus instead.

The best solution I can think of – assuming they can't implement a scaling ilevel requirement, or surely they would have – is to split the 50/60 and 70/80 roulettes so at least you can find a bit more guaranteed variety. But perhaps that would mean there aren't so many people available to assemble into a full party for anything useful.

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Originally Posted by Bearded

They could also just not make running the CT raids mandatory in order to progress the storyline - it just adds background info after all.

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It's not "just background information" at all. It makes the difference between G'raha Tia being shut in the tower or not. The writers don't just let that sort of thing be assumed to have happened whether you participated or not – they treat it as undone until you do it. Thus it became required once it needed to have already happened before the plot can continue.

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Originally Posted by Makeda

I'm actually surprised that the Stormblood Alliance raid is NOT mandatory in the MSQ. Not running it means you're missing the context for half the lore in this game...

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I am struggling to think what this "half the lore in the game" is. Nothing in Ivalice has much bearing on the rest of events, at least not in a way that I feel like we'd be missing anything if we weren't aware of it.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

WAIT. Did they say that?? Uusally we would get the 4 lv 90 ones together and then on 6.2 we should only have the 6.1 and 6.2 Dungeon in it... right...?

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That's how Expert works, yes. There's no reason to think that it would go down to a single dungeon.

to be fair if anyone queues something specific it will populate it with people that aren't messing with equipment to get a quick kill so it's not really messing with people trying to do higher level alliance raids.
All the crystal tower stuff tends to be a complete group of rouletteers not actually helping anyone so it doesn't really matter

it is pretty boring but not hurting people looking for specific stuff so whatever i guess

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Moving the CT raids to MSQ roulette is absolutely not the answer unless you want a constant stream of people dropping out of the long dungeons hoping they'll get Syrcus instead.

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24 man raids would never fill in a queue with 8 man group options available. The roulettes fill based on making people wait as little as possible. You'll get an 8 man group together well before you have the 24 man group together. You would need enough of the right combination of players actively queuing for those roulettes in order to have any luck in getting them. And given the MSQ requirements would push the CT raids as the most likely raids that would pop if ever in roulette. It would cause a shift of the alliance raids to party finder since they would be like extremes and take forever to fill.

Which is there are 2 trials in the level queue as otherwise the 8 man trials would never fill.

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

Then there's one less healer in the alliance queue because I just don't care anymore. A roulette by definition is supposed to be random, and it's hardly random if you're guaranteed to get the same result every day due to poor design choices.

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I basically just reached the point where I instantly leave when I get a CT raid and take the 30 minute penalty. I can just work on my EW fate ranks or craft during the lockout and it certainly beats getting nothing but these god awful raids for the 3rd expansion in a row now.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

But what about bozja? Oh wait, that's dead content now.

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Pretty sure Zadnor z3 is still super busy for leveling Jobs to 90 and farming Mettle.
You even get the occasional Dalriada if the players are in a mood.


Regarding Alliance Roulette and CT - I doubt they'll change anything:

You could have a player who only did the ARR Alliance raids and a FC who runs that content with them on their daily roulette evenings, so you cannot punish the FC folks for having that player with them.
You also cannot single out that player because he only unlocked the ARR Alliance Raids and not the others, whenever by choice or is not through HW yet.

Actually you can be synced down from 570 (or whatever) to 130 with max stats and if people don't know mechanics, you'll probably still die. Item Level has nothing to do with it.

I honestly prefer to say things like... "Wait for everyone before you pull at Atomos" in LOTA or "Please always stand in a tower" for Cloud of Darkness than letting the raid run as a fiesta. You'd be surprised what short sentences like that can do for a newbie who hasn't seen some of the mechanics introduced in the tower.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

The problem is that compared to Crystal Tower, the rewards aren't worth the headache of running the older raids since their mechanics often catch unexperienced players by surprise and things drag on much longer than anyone would wish.

The Ivalice raids are a no for me these days, despite my love of them especially back when they came out. As for Void Ark due to the excessive instant-KO mechanics I actively avoided unlocking that series on my alts. It's not even that I personally mind the difficulty, it's the fact that I know other people will struggle and turn what I was hoping would be a 10 minute run into an hour long one.

If that's going to be the case, then harder raids should reward exp on par with MSQ roulette.

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DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER.

It amazes me how this flies above so many people head. If the rewards scaled appropriately to the effort needed for each raid, cheesing wouldn't be an issue. I'll take 90% of a level for Orbonne, no worries.

The other side of the issue is that you only need 1 first timer/1 guy farming for relic memories to queue directly into a CT raid to pull 23 other people with them. This will not change, that's the point of the roulette, filling parties for people queuing for a specific duty.

I've run Alliance Roulette almost every day since Endwalker dropped.
95% of the time, it's LotA, Syrcus or WoD.
And 95% of the time, there's a new player bonus for it.

Things are working as intended.

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

Move CT raids to the MSQ roulette and problem fixed.

Add MORE roulettes according to expasions or level ( Shb Roulette, SB Roulette, EW roulette or just High Dungeon Roulette [60++])
Add MORE raids roulettes so everyone can be happy and do the content they should be doing instead of 60 runs of CT per month.

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Then no one would get it done because people bail if it's not prae as it is, you think they're going to do CT more?

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Originally Posted by Saraide

But what about bozja? Oh wait, that's dead content now.

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Qute the opposite actually, it's as full now as it first launched, since it's great xp. And not just of people who unlocked it before, I've been seeing plenty of low ranks who are only unlocking it now.
That's also probably why Ivalice raids are popping so much now, people are unlocking them for bozja t mindlessly grind xp there after.

Alternatively, rework the gear syncing so the 2.0 series raids are actually challenging and comparable to the others. If they simple sync’d the raids to be equal to the gear level they drop max, they’d all feel about the same in difficulty.

I mean, do you guys even remember platform bouncing around on the 2nd boss in CT?

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Originally Posted by Jennah

Things are working as intended.

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Well... yes and no. It's working as intended inasmuch as "if there are several people queued for this specific instance, we will fill out the rest of the instance" functions properly.

However, I'd argue that it is not working as intended when someone who wants to run the Mhachi raids for the first time, having just unlocked them, queues into Void Ark and has to wait an hour for the queue to pop. Now, this is probably a result in part of the fact that -- as noted earlier in the thread -- there are many people who don't have any alliance roulettes other than Crystal Tower unlocked, but that also probably means that given, say, 37 people queued randomly who can get a bunch of different raids and then two partial parties of folks who can only get Crystal Tower, it's going to be easier for the roulette to fill out the Crystal Tower parties.

Which is great for those wanting to run Crystal Tower... somewhat less so for those trying to queue directly into any of the other alliance raid series.

I'm not sure there's an easy fix for that, though; you'd either have to do something like "okay, you can't do alliance roulette unless you have the alliance raids for any expansion you've completed unlocked" or something -- to ensure that level 80 people queuing in can be put into things other than Crystal Tower -- or you'd need to shift Crystal Tower into Main Scenario roulette.

And the latter is problematic because you can queue into Castrum or Praetorium with two tanks, but you cannot queue into alliance raids with two tanks in a party; you'd have to limit the party composition to something that could fit either. (Along with other problems.)

Put CT in their own roulette and the rest of alliance raid in their own roulette. problem solved.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

Actually you can be synced down from 570 (or whatever) to 130 with max stats and if people don't know mechanics, you'll probably still die. Item Level has nothing to do with it.

I honestly prefer to say things like... "Wait for everyone before you pull at Atomos" in LOTA or "Please always stand in a tower" for Cloud of Darkness than letting the raid run as a fiesta. You'd be surprised what short sentences like that can do for a newbie who hasn't seen some of the mechanics introduced in the tower.

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Watch me confuse an entire alliance raid by saying "all dps in" at cerberus lmao.

^That sounds more effective if all the DPS just zerg the stomach. The unknowns that spawn in there aren't really a threat. I just hold them and they are dead in seconds.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

Actually you can be synced down from 570 (or whatever) to 130 with max stats and if people don't know mechanics, you'll probably still die. Item Level has nothing to do with it.

I honestly prefer to say things like... "Wait for everyone before you pull at Atomos" in LOTA or "Please always stand in a tower" for Cloud of Darkness than letting the raid run as a fiesta. You'd be surprised what short sentences like that can do for a newbie who hasn't seen some of the mechanics introduced in the tower.

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I've had the pleasure of being the only one alive in my party and the only other people alive were B's tank and C's lone healer and the C healer was trying to pull off the biggest recovery in MMO history and that's without LB3 since it wasn't built up yet. Between all the raising and trying to 'target heal' a tank that isn't in C's party, it became too much when the adds spawns again (Angra Manyu if it's not obvious).

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Originally Posted by Quintessa

^That sounds more effective if all the DPS just zerg the stomach. The unknowns that spawn in there aren't really a threat. I just hold them and they are dead in seconds.

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It is the better strat, especially since it doesnt require the tank from C to know their exact task and the tank from A to know their exact task. Just one of the tanks has to remember there are adds outside. In the best case scenario only few of them will spawn if really all 15 dps go in because they will blaze through the stomach walls. But even if a lot of people are lost, you need like atleast 2 dps (if they are really good) to finish inside. Having atleast 2 people out of 15 potential is a bit better chances than if only 5 people at most care about it. So even if B sleeps on going in, people from other parties are already going to help out.
Of course anything that isnt exactly how it's always been done will rustle feathers in an alliance raid because the usual DF crowd absolutely refuses to use even a single braincell to even think about adapting. I have gotten some curious reactions, some of them make be believe people think that the ABC strat is the literal law and not just one available strat and that me calling all dps in is on the same level as someone else calling ABC.
I've also had it where someone from A insisted on ABC strat and no one from A dealt with adds. That was also funny.

I'm gonna add to this thread to show my support. This absolutely does happen. I saw someone naked once while queueing in to Syrcus Tower once, had someone all but admit they cheesed the ilvl requirement, and also had someone straight up admit they were ilvl cheesing when I asked them. Surely there's something the dev team can do to help prevent stuff like this from happening?
I've personally started skipping Alliance Raid roulette because I'm just sick of Crystal Tower at this point.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Every time one of these threads pops up, I'm seeing a bunch of people who are completely missing the point of rolettes. They are not there for you to experience a "variety" of content - you can just select 5 of your favorite alliance raids and do it that way, guaranteed no Sycrus Tower! The roulette is there to throw bodies with a pulse to people waiting in queues for specific duties. And logically, there is a lot more players looking to do Crystal Tower raids than Nier. If you don't like Labyrinth of the Ancients so much, don't queue for the roulette intended to fill Labyrinth of the Ancients runs.

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Doesn't really work when someone can single-handedly force it to be the same 3 raids with ilvl cheese

I'd much prefer getting CT over getting NiER every day. No matter how much people try to deny it, the stat squish has absolutely made us weaker. Running through NiER content takes an hour. Every time I have gotten it, it takes an hour. That is worse than when the raids first came out. The EXP gained is not worth the time spent.

I don't naked queue, but boy, am I grateful people do. I find every Alliance raid boring to all hell. But at least CT is the shortest so I'm bored for less time.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

... and I would not be surprised if the story-skip also unlocks them as a result...

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Correct, i bought the skip that put me into first shadowbringers quest, and it unlocks all 3 CT raids (but not the completion item quest).

Yeah I’d rather have Syrcus every day than Puppets’ Bunker. It’s 15 minutes vs almost an hour.

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Originally Posted by MaxCarnage

I'd much prefer getting CT over getting NiER every day. No matter how much people try to deny it, the stat squish has absolutely made us weaker. Running through NiER content takes an hour. Every time I have gotten it, it takes an hour. That is worse than when the raids first came out. The EXP gained is not worth the time spent.

I don't naked queue, but boy, am I grateful people do. I find every Alliance raid boring to all hell. But at least CT is the shortest so I'm bored for less time.

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If running Nier content takes you an hour, then it ain't the stat squish you should be looking at.

What you should be looking at are the players getting used to new jobs/job mechanics, a few new faces here or there, and players that just don't give a damn.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Stormblood relics are purely Eureka.

Anecdotal, but when I was running roulettes last month getting my DNC/GNB up to 70, it was kinda an even split between Crystal Tower and Mhach.

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Yes, it was split because part of the relic grind required you to do any of the ARR/HW/SB AR, as a "one time step only".

Since the ressistance relics are pretty much old content now, not many people are running those now, which is why getting HW or SB AR's is rare (you get SB AR if someone is trying to access Boz).

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Originally Posted by Conando

Yeah I’d rather have Syrcus every day than Puppets’ Bunker. It’s 15 minutes vs almost an hour.

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Eh no thanks, Syrcus every day is a pain in the ass. Farming it for the relic weapon in shb was the worst part. I'm not against doing CT tbh, but not too mutch. There's enough of it and sometimes getting something more recent and fresh is fun imo.

I wish they'd actually forbid everyone to access the roulette if the gear isn't on the correct level.

"Oh you don't want to play at lvl 80 even if your job is lvl 87 ? No roulettes for you."

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

If running Nier content takes you an hour, then it ain't the stat squish you should be looking at.

What you should be looking at are the players getting used to new jobs/job mechanics, a few new faces here or there, and players that just don't give a damn.

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We shouldn’t excuse it or dismiss it. Even after EW hit I found nier to take as long as when it first dropped. While it may not take an hour, it definitely takes longer than before the stat squish. As if I hadn’t geared up at all since day 1 of any nier raid.
While some of this may very well be attributed to new/ bad/ returning players, it is so consistent in nier specifically that I find it hard to dismiss the assumption it’s effected by the stat change. Same goes for some other content where I’ve seen some mechanics I have not seen in years. Or a few unsynced runs that take me just as long at 90 as it did at 80 in ShB