About new MSQ Roulette reward

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

I feel like tuning the rewards even higher won't help. We're already basically given a guaranteed level-up doing the roulette, and we currently don't have any current content that needs poetics to speed up progression (an issue marked by doing Eureka instead of a relic weapon grind.)

I also have a hard time staring at a "more than 30 minutes" queue time and not pulling out for leveling instead.

It's not just time taken to complete the dungeon, it's also the waiting and hoping you can get in.

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Maybe for you but I was glad to be able to get some nice gear on my summoner once she got to 60 or even some nice accesories when she was 50.

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Originally Posted by Hakuro89

Poetics are less than useless no matter how many it gives you.

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I don’t consider them useless. As someone who is doing multiple relics, and also using them to buy pieces for glamour. I did poetics farming a couple weeks ago strictly for glamour pieces (the Hailstorm casting/healing outfits). I’ve been farming them now to work on another Anima. I know some people that farmed them to get 260/270 Shire for fresh 60s. So they aren’t entirely useless for people that still need them/want them.

That's why I specified CURRENT content. Once you break into Stormblood, unless you're going back to grab HW or earlier items, like gear or anima grinds, you don't *need* poet for anything. There is nothing that forces me to use Poetics on a class that's level 61 or higher. I can buy gear at vendors, and we don't have a 4.0 relic grind. There is nothing benefitting my level 70s that Poetics help.

So, a huge stack of Poetics aren't going to get many high level players to get into the roulette. Creation and Mendacity, though? Absolutely, I'd run it.

Square could always add some other old rewards. Imagine if those dungeons dropped gear like what the Garleans use. I know that's asking FAR too much of course, but there are plenty of ways Square could make the old MSQ dungeons more appealing. Personally I wouldn't run them if not for the EXP boost but some days when I look at it in my roulette list I hesitate. "Is it worth it?" Some days it doesn't feel like it is.

Maybe if they gave out 300 tomes and 2k in seals, till then, its simply not worth it. We're talking about non-skippable scenes, and the potential to wipe on whats already an hour long raid. Nah, no thanks.

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Originally Posted by Vexander

Square could always add some other old rewards. Imagine if those dungeons dropped gear like what the Garleans use. I know that's asking FAR too much of course, but there are plenty of ways Square could make the old MSQ dungeons more appealing. Personally I wouldn't run them if not for the EXP boost but some days when I look at it in my roulette list I hesitate. "Is it worth it?" Some days it doesn't feel like it is.

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I honestly wouldn't mind some weekly minion drops or mounts from it. But again, we're dreaming big. If anything they'll just add more Tomes, but as it is currently, its simply not worth it.

What they should do is allow you to pick your reward. Make the rewards commensurate with the time spent of course but allow the player to choose. This way anyone working on any content in the game has a reason to run the MSQ Roulette.

Crafter/Gatherer scrips
Poetics
Top tier tomes
Second tier tomes
GC Seals
Gil
EXP
Cracked Clusters

They could even throw in FC items like Aetherial Wheel or Ceruleum Tanks.

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Originally Posted by Xandos

What they should do is allow you to pick your reward

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That's an interesting idea. They can do what they did with Khloe where you get tokens and can exchange them for whatever you want once you have enough of them. The roulette gives a base amount of tokens; depending on which of the two dungeons you get, you get a bonus because of how much longer one is over the other; and of course, Adventurer in Need bonuses.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

So, a huge stack of Poetics aren't going to get many high level players to get into the roulette. Creation and Mendacity, though? Absolutely, I'd run it.

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There is no point putting anything but poetics for MSQ because MSQ is 2.x content, and those tomes are not part of 2.0 content, and SE does not want people to farm MSQ for HW/SB content, because then people wouldn't run the hard content you get those tomes from.

All things considered equal , remember that there will be players who can not get past level 50 and will only get poetics from all queues they're allowed to do. So having level 51+ characters "helping" is really just denying them any challenge.

Really what needs to happen with MSQ is for it to be broken up like Coil/Alexander and thus go "mildly challenging trash mob sequence, mid/final-boss, cutscene, exit" Where the players can skip the cut scene and exit right away if they've seen it before. Hell, I would love it if they re-arranged the dungeons so that it's more like:

Castrum Meridianum: The Black Eft
Castrum Meridianum: Magitek Vangaurd F-1
Castrum Meridianum: Magitek Colossus Rubricatus
Castrum Meridianum: Livia sas Junius Magitek Armor
Castrum Meridianum: Livia sas Junius

The Praetorium: Mark II Magitek Colossus
The Praetorium: Nero tol Scaeva
The Praetorium: Gaius van Baelsar
The Praetorium: Magitek Factory (The armor sequence)
The Praetorium: Ultima Weapon turn 1
The Praetorium: Ultima Weapon turn 2
The Praetorium: Lahabrea

And then adjust the ilevel sync so all players are at level 50/iLevel 42-55 when a new player is in the party so there's at least more than 2 minutes of challenge to each segment. So instead of one 45 minute run/each, it's more like 3-10 minutes for each part. Sure it interrupts the pacing, but that didn't stop people from playing the Coil raids.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

There is no point putting anything but poetics for MSQ because MSQ is 2.x content

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50/60 roulette gives Creation and counts for the SB tank achievements. You can't even use the excuse you can for Leveling roulette which has the SB dungeons, 50/60 is pure pre-SB content but gives you SB awards. Roulettes are built by definition on people who have passed that content helping people who are behind, so your argument doesn't make sense.

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SE does not want people to farm MSQ for HW/SB content, because then people wouldn't run the hard content you get those tomes from.

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People will farm whatever gives them the most tomes for less time. And SE does very much want people to run MSQ roulette.

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So having level 51+ characters "helping" is really just denying them any challenge.

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The true challenge roulettes are here to solve is queue times. You can have an on-level sprout with 7 level 70s and it would still work as intended.

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Really what needs to happen with MSQ is for it to be made into solo instances

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Fixed it for you.

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Originally Posted by Xandos

What they should do is allow you to pick your reward. Make the rewards commensurate with the time spent of course but allow the player to choose. This way anyone working on any content in the game has a reason to run the MSQ Roulette.

Crafter/Gatherer scrips
Poetics
Top tier tomes
Second tier tomes
GC Seals
Gil
EXP
Cracked Clusters

They could even throw in FC items like Aetherial Wheel or Ceruleum Tanks.

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Added onto this maybe even Allied seals. So people can get mount speed in arr areas.

If they added Allied seals to this I would run it daily on my tank

They should increase the EXP reward by triple it or something xD
And give us veterans a free cluster/mhachi!!!!!

As a DPS it will never be worth doing again regardless if they up the reward. Besides most of the week having to wait more than 30mins to get in plus how long it takes to complete now, it's just not worth it. If you're leveling a tank or healer then I could see a great benefit in uping the reward as you get pops quicker but if you have limited play time I would still consider it not worth it as it is now.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

50/60 roulette gives Creation and counts for the SB tank achievements. You can't even use the excuse you can for Leveling roulette which has the SB dungeons, 50/60 is pure pre-SB content but gives you SB awards. Roulettes are built by definition on people who have passed that content helping people who are behind, so your argument doesn't make sense.

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The 50/60 roulette gives you those because they folded the 2.x+, and HW dungeons into it, thus they can't give out tomestones that aren't being used.

The point was that MSQ is content that doesn't require the expansion packs. If you are not level 70, you only get poetics from ALL roulette's that offer tomestones. Those other queues will not give a level 50 player tomes of Creation.

They can not make the MSQ into a solo instance, because it was not designed as one, which is why breaking it up makes more sense than trying to redesign it. You can't even suggest making it a command squadron thing, because the squads are not available at that point.

If they want to completely redesign it, you will instead get Pipin Extreme (remember how solo instances were broken at SB release?) as it takes too long for players to complete.

Like the only fair compromise is to turn it into a series of raids that can be roulette'd into, rather than punish players who want to help, but rarely any newbies actually show up to. Like, of the last 10 times you've done MSQ, when was the last time you saw someone get an achievement?

Which is the point. People were farming it for easy tomes when the cutscenes were skippable, which is not really what SE had intended, and came at the cost of newbies being treated like trash players by those wanting to farm things.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Which is the point. People were farming it for easy tomes when the cutscenes were skippable, which is not really what SE had intended, and came at the cost of newbies being treated like trash players by those wanting to farm things.

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As someone who used that roulette to farm tomes...it killed me to see new players being treated like absolute garbage. So, I understand and support the change. But imo, the roulette still needs to be made worthwhile if we're gonna sit through a potentially 1 hour dungeon which now includes watching cut scenes. I would happily run it every day for the right reward.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

The point was that MSQ is content that doesn't require the expansion packs.

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No, but it requires players to fill the queues, and I seriously doubt most players DON'T have HW and SB and are progressing through them if not have reached endgame.

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They can not make the MSQ into a solo instance, because it was not designed as one

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One does not imply the other. It would require they revisited old content which they hate doing, but we've seen on more than one occasion they have the technology. They can even use the dungeons as they are with arguably minimal tweaks to the enemies.They just need to decide they want to do it.

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If they want to completely redesign it, you will instead get Pipin Extreme (remember how solo instances were broken at SB release?) as it takes too long for players to complete.

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They supposedly fixed it, with the recent hiccup being due to human error rather than a system fault. Also those instances should be relatively safe until the next true Pipin Extreme in a new patch because people don't run those specific instances as violently as they do SB-MSQ-on-release-day.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

As someone who used that roulette to farm tomes...it killed me to see new players being treated like absolute garbage. So, I understand and support the change. But imo, the roulette still needs to be made worthwhile if we're gonna sit through a potentially 1 hour dungeon which now includes watching cut scenes. I would happily run it every day for the right reward.

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If it's broken up into smaller pieces to support watching the cutscenes, that solves it. For the amount of time someone spends playing MSQ, and there's no newbies most of the time, it seems the more logical thing would have been to put a "make cutscenes unskippable, unless all players skip" option instead, or maybe a more of a passive version of it where dungeons that have not been completed, default to unskippable cutscenes. Like we know this mechanic has to exist, that's how the beginning of every duty starts (where you can't leave, or cast anything on a player watching a cutscene) until a player discovers "auto-skip cutscenes already seen"

Also some of these players who never watch cutscenes and can't stand watching them, need to chill out and go grab a snack while the cutscenes play.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Also some of these players who never watch cutscenes and can't stand watching them, need to chill out and go grab a snack while the cutscenes play.

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Some of us just can't stand watch the same cutscenes every time we go in. That's what drove me farther away from it than before.

I don't mind newbies watching. I'd like them to see the story if they want to. I don't want to see it 500 times though. Unless Square wants me to nitpick everything I see wrong in it.

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Originally Posted by SourDragonfly

I got matched to Castrum Meridianum, with more than half of party as sprouts. All cutscenes are unskippable, text dialogues are also not clickable, they are forced to auto-advance mode.

Anyway as a lv 67 class I got 2.2m exp reward from roulette, with 250k x2 from clearing mobs and boss, that works out to around 30% of the exp bar at that level.

Clear time was around 30 minutes, so the whole thing seems average so far. If there's no vets running MSQ roulette then those sprouts can make a party to clear fine anyway, if not having more fun than the usual speedrun.

Feel free to share your findings if you have tried the new MSQ roulette.

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I average 4 mil experience with squadron exp scroll and food. Its worth it to me because I enjoy taking my time. Me and my friends run it daily specifically for exp on our alt classes and the tomes/gil is just added bonus.

It is unfortunate but this is the only way that people will not pressure newbies to speedrun and skip cutscenes. As it is, the mob skipping still can cause people to be left behind to die and have to find their way back to the party. I imagine that too will also be "fixed" so that skipping the trash mobs is no longer optional. Just set aside time if you plan to do it, we have tons of other duties that are less time consuming if this one is too long for our schedules.

I think this is how it should be so that new players have a less stress intro to instanced battle.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

One does not imply the other. It would require they revisited old content which they hate doing, but we've seen on more than one occasion they have the technology. They can even use the dungeons as they are with arguably minimal tweaks to the enemies.They just need to decide they want to do it.

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It would be denying new players the opportunity to play it as it was designed if it became solo. Such is the same argument that can be had for all level 50 content that can be soloed at level 60. SE kinda dropped the ball on this, and should have gated "level 50/60/70" behind completion of each MSQ, but that was defeated with the scenario skip cash shop item.

Likewise, I've played other MMORPG's that HAVE gone back and made multiplayer-mandatory story dungeons into solo dungeons, and the fun of those is greatly diminished, as they basically nerf it (eg lower the difficulty of the enemies,) while simultaneously making it harder for specific jobs (since now dieing results in failing the duty/reset of the boss room.)

Now what might be a less-irritating way to solve this is to combine the two. They have a 2 hour time limit, break those into 20 or 30 minute parts, and then have "AI party" in the menu next to "undersized party", selecting the AI party brings you to a second menu:

Slot T/T/H/H/D/D/D/D/D (yes 9, for duties that have two tanks or one tank 5 dps)
If you have a command squadron, you can place them in any of those slots they fit the role for.
If you do not have a command squadron (or none are leveled to this point,) it instead allows you to put specific NPC's (eg Alphinaud,Alisaie,Y'shtola, Thancred, Yda, Papalymo, etc) that are available at that point in the storyline (to avoid confusing cutscenes.)

So whenever you pick a non-roulette duty that you haven't completed, you can either "wait for more party members" or "play using AI party" (no tomes rewarded) just to see the cutscenes without players being obnoxiously wanting you to skip it.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

It would be denying new players the opportunity to play it as it was designed if it became solo.

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Take it from someone who's been in development for over a decade - sometimes, clinging to the way things were originally designed is the single worst thing you can do. Especially when that very design is something SE has admitted, both openly and by virtue of never once repeating it, was a very, very bad idea.

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the fun of those is greatly diminished

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Subjective. I personally enjoy the solo instances the game offers, and the idea of what these dungeons could've been makes me tingle a bit.

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So whenever you pick a non-roulette duty that you haven't completed, you can either "wait for more party members" or "play using AI party" (no tomes rewarded)

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I should hope they don't go that route in an MMORPG. And no, my advocating for two specific problematic instances to be made into solo instances in order to promote smoother completion of MSQ doesn't contradict that stance.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

It would be denying new players the opportunity to play it as it was designed if it became solo.

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And is that a bad thing? Praetorium/Castrum is considered the worst instance in the game aside from Steps of Faith.

Not to mention they're a joke even at proper gear levels.

Did it a few times, the first run was pure torture for me until I settled in and just accepted it was going to be a slow run, the auto scroll was like pulling teeth without anaesthetic, even after I had accepted the overall speed, however, it did get me the tomes I needed. Once I had farmed enough for a full augmented ironworks outfit though I never touched it again. Overall not the worst thing I ever seen in an MMO but not something I'd willingly subject myself to again.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Take it from someone who's been in development for over a decade - sometimes, clinging to the way things were originally designed is the single worst thing you can do. Especially when that very design is something SE has admitted, both openly and by virtue of never once repeating it, was a very, very bad idea.



Subjective. I personally enjoy the solo instances the game offers, and the idea of what these dungeons could've been makes me tingle a bit.



I should hope they don't go that route in an MMORPG. And no, my advocating for two specific problematic instances to be made into solo instances in order to promote smoother completion of MSQ doesn't contradict that stance.

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See that's where we differ on this. In a MMORPG, any time you change old content, you permanently erase any ability to play it as it was designed. In some cases that original design was just awful (eg, I can recall one F2P game that gated the "storyline" behind paying for service, thus you pretty much couldn't play anything but the race-specific rubbish PvP, until they got rid of that too.) But for storyline content, it has to stay the same relative difficulty, or it simply becomes content that is farmed for the reward rather than played for storyline. You only know what's missing by checking youtube from when the content was new.

Like the best real/immediate solution is to decouple the storyline if people want to just farm it. Add the "Duty Incomplete"/"Duty Complete" flag into the Duty finder, if "duty incomplete" is set, cutscenes are not skipable, if "duty complete" is set, you only get matched with other players who have "duty complete" or neither box selected (which is taken to mean "I don't care") and cutscenes are automatically skipped, even if not set in the players options. It may result in only newbies matching with each other for MSQ, but perhaps that would be the fairest way of playing it. The problem is that before MSQ roulette, this was something that took 1-3 hours for DPS to sit in. Before any of the roulette's, ALL queues were like that.

As for the Solo instances, I actually like some of the late HW solo instances, but up to that point ARR and early HW solo instances, as well as many of the job Solo's do not have equal difficulty, as you're often paired with just one or two other dumb-as-bricks AI characters, that tend to be squishy, and their entire purpose is to act as a punching bag. But most of these Solo instances are also things that don't last more than 15 minutes.

Like I'd really Square-Enix consider allowing an AI party for content that people can't get a party for (*cough*old raids*cough) that have storylines attached to them. MSQ is one of these with the unskippable cutscenes. Because the SAME problem is present with that content. Then while we're at it, give us a way to re-play old solo/storyline content, even if there is no reward for replaying it. As much as I like going back and playing another character, I'd rather just have a "replay/reset this quest" so I can re-read the text that provides the context to some of the cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

See that's where we differ on this. In a MMORPG, any time you change old content, you permanently erase any ability to play it as it was designed.

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They already nerfed all pre-SB dungeons. Furthermore, you can't possibly play it the way it was 'intended' because: 1. AST, DRK, MCH, SAM, RDM didn't exist at the time this was introduced. I'm not sure SCH and NIN did for that matter, either. 2. all jobs underwent many changes since that content was introduced. 3. power creep. You couldn't play the content the way it was 'intended' for literal years.

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But for storyline content, it has to stay the same relative difficulty, or it simply becomes content that is farmed for the reward rather than played for storyline.-

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But that's the core of the problem, the joining of story which people should rightly enjoy (or ignore) at their own leisure and pace with a dungeon. That's the conflict, the dilemma, and ultimately the paradox - because it is a dungeon, you need people to run it. Because you need people to run it, there's the roulette. Boom, there, done, you made it a source of farming rather than the pure ideal of a story-bit. In order to fully turn this into true story content, you have to turn it into a solo duty. Breaking it into numerous small raids which aren't even really worth the instance they're in (seriously, your boss fights are glorified triple trash pulls) will only make it laughable, especially for dps - you'll have to undergo the dps queue 4-8 times in order to have the experience in full. A dungeon that queue+unskippable cutscenes took you, what, two hours? Would take you that arguably that much more. It's really not worth it.

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if "duty incomplete" is set, cutscenes are not skipable, if "duty complete" is set, you only get matched with other players who have "duty complete"

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So whoever wants to farm farms it with a speed run, leaving the queues for the duty completion all the emptier. Bad idea.

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As for the Solo instances, I actually like some of the late HW solo instances, but up to that point ARR and early HW solo instances, as well as many of the job Solo's do not have equal difficulty, as you're often paired with just one or two other dumb-as-bricks AI characters, that tend to be squishy, and their entire purpose is to act as a punching bag. But most of these Solo instances are also things that don't last more than 15 minutes.

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Well they have much better technology for that sort of thing now than they did before. Look at the 4.1 solo instance - the NPCs performed mechanics much better than most pugs I run with. And if they insist on not trimming down the content to abide with 15~ minutes long instances, then this is where I'll snatch your idea and suggest they broke it into several solo duties, while you're in the overall area of the Castrums. It won't even be that immersion breaking to have other adventurers running around because lore wise you can say they're the team you brought with you and you ARE storming the place. Think Omega and the Rift, but fully embracing the fact this thing needs help with queues so it's still ultimately solo instances. I mean Delta is already dead on queues, so this?

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(*cough*old raids*cough)

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They're supposedly working on a raid roulette.

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MSQ is one of these with the unskippable cutscenes.

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It's the ONLY one with the unskippable cutscenes, and it's already dungeon-length instances on top of it all.