Alliance roulette changes is needed

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Originally Posted by kingskye

then what is the point of creating 24 man content if you want to run them based on your selfish desires? both sides in this are just being selfish one side wants it for the easy tomes and the other side wants just to do other dungeons and reroute how alliance raids work...honestly the latter to fix requirement for alliance is better but they should be adjusted per time spent, lol

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24 man content is created to either fill the gaps between raid tiers, or provide alternative venues for people who don't, or can't, do savage to progress even a little bit. It's not added to the roulette until some time after its release. You can manually queue for any of the alliance raids you want, the roulette isn't the only way to do them. The issue at hand is that some people are pinning the blame for the dramatically large chance to get CT solely on the small percentage of users who swap their gear out, rather than the far more likely scenarios of people leveling alternate classes, since CT will be the alliance roulette for you from 50-60, or simply not having bothered to unlock any of the other alliance raids since they're all optional and the game has had a huge influx of new players trying to rush the story. It sucks that people are bored of CT, but it's not going to go away from the alliance roulette any time soon. Especially not since it's mandatory for the story and so there'll always be parties in need for it.

My suggestion they just do away with all roulettes since all ones do is complain about them. It's selfish to try force your desires on to everyone because you just don't like something.

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Originally Posted by Dewslam

24 man content is created to either fill the gaps between raid tiers, or provide alternative venues for people who don't, or can't, do savage to progress even a little bit. It's not added to the roulette until some time after its release. You can manually queue for any of the alliance raids you want, the roulette isn't the only way to do them. The issue at hand is that some people are pinning the blame for the dramatically large chance to get CT solely on the small percentage of users who swap their gear out, rather than the far more likely scenarios of people leveling alternate classes, since CT will be the alliance roulette for you from 50-60, or simply not having bothered to unlock any of the other alliance raids since they're all optional and the game has had a huge influx of new players trying to rush the story. It sucks that people are bored of CT, but it's not going to go away from the alliance roulette any time soon. Especially not since it's mandatory for the story and so there'll always be parties in need for it.

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Oh please share your data that proves the frequency of CT raids in the roulette is more likely a result of lvl 50-60s queuing rather than people nerfing their ilvl. I'll wait.

In the meantime, I'll share my anecdotes. Every time I get a CT raid I will call out ilvl nerfers in raid chat about it, and almost every time I get a reaction from someone who admits doing it. The last run I did someone justified their reasoning for doing it because they didn't want to do "orbonne with a bunch of wow refugees". What a pathetic excuse. These people are babies who can't handle challenging raids where things might go wrong, and so they force 23 other people with them into the easiest and most boring raid tier. If a scaling ilvl requirement on the alliance roulette causes these people to no longer queue for it, then that would be a bonus improvement to this roulette.

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Originally Posted by Sacred-Oblivion

Oh please share your data that proves the frequency of CT raids in the roulette is more likely a result of lvl 50-60s queuing rather than people nerfing their ilvl. I'll wait.

In the meantime, I'll share my anecdotes. Every time I get a CT raid I will call out ilvl nerfers in raid chat about it, and almost every time I get a reaction from someone who admits doing it. The last run I did someone justified their reasoning for doing it because they didn't want to do "orbonne with a bunch of wow refugees". What a pathetic excuse. These people are babies who can't handle challenging raids where things might go wrong, and so they force 23 other people with them into the easiest and most boring raid tier. If a scaling ilvl requirement on the alliance roulette causes these people to no longer queue for it, then that would be a bonus improvement to this roulette.

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Honestly, the situation is getting really bad. Today I got Puppet, which made me super excited, both because it's my favorite AR, and because after weeeks of only CT over and over I feel sick as soon as I see it.
But others were complaining instead. Someone said they were dressed for CT, not for Bunker (I guess undergeared but still not enough not to be put there?), someone else was complainng the whole run about how long the place is and then asked in alliance who was responsable of making us end up there/who queued for it, like a sort of witch hunt.

It's awful and it only gets worse. Like getting that crappy place over and over (with people getting more and mroe resistant to actually doing mechs in it) wasn't bad enough, now we get even people who think they're entitled to have the whole roulette equal CT or it's the end of the world.

Its always the same though, players already fish in msq roulette and toss if they get castrum. If the reward is about the same, why work hard then the minimum.
If the reward is not the same, why not fish for the one that's more effective.

There is changes that could help, like let you sign up for each roulette once per day, rather then as many times as you'd like. Now sure you could technically do it multiple times at this moment but, lets be real no one does the roulette twice. (except for mentor but that's an entirely different can or worms)

This ensures that you could at least stop fishing, the next problem is why is the 50 raids always popping so much. Well ... theres multiple reasons.

- Its the only required raid
- Its the easiest exp/effort
- You can force its with Ilv.
- Due to how our Ally raids scale, everyone that's signs up for roulette is able to run CT, but perhaps due to lv not the other ones ... so it will ALWAYS be bottom heavy.

We don't have info on how the duty finder work it could be trying to fill a party from the bottom or the top, or perhaps it looks at the person who has been in queue the longest and then picks a random raid.

The community is torn here, you have 2 sides ... one is in to get out asap with as much as exp as possible and the other which try to get a random raid to see those raids they have not seen in a while.

If ST takes about 15 min (i could be wrong) and Orobonne could take 30 and has potential wipes (good ol thundergod), but the reward is the same. You can not blame players to ilv cheese if they just want some exp.

My soultion for this would be.

- Harsher ilv scaling in Crystal tower
- Allow players to queue once for an ally raid per day
- Sorting df, to run roulettes at a even split. You might need to remove the highest level raids from roulette for this, because most ppl queue for ally roulette to level ... not to get tomes and yes this would mean that you eventually have to wait for your roulette if your lv 51, and the duty finder is currently trying to fill copied factory for sample.

... Or we move on and accept it is what it is.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

Funny you should say that. I DO read patch notes, and i dont remember that being mentioned. I just spent a couple mins with the 5.1 notes, and "find in page" is unable to find any reference to this. I tried about a dozen searches i thought might work(roulette, item level, syrcus, etc) along with a full reading of the known and resolved issues. So please, enlighten us. Where precisely is this said? Be specific. If this is something we're all wrong about, allow us to learn.

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His post is worded poorly.

Point: Everyone has CT unlocked as it is part of the MSQ.
Counterpoint: The thirsty players who see 2B thighboots will immediately rush to run it.

One thing to note: if anyone likes the Nier raids, it's in their active interest to roll "Need" on the 2B pack at the end of Copied Factory, ensuring further runs of it.

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Originally Posted by WhimsicalPacifist

His post is worded poorly.

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There are currently 5 points making CT runs the most common. People leveling classes below 60, people doing their required one CT series for story, none of the other alliance raids being required, people who never unlock the other alliance raids, and people cheating via ilvl(and yes, there can be overlap between those categories). Theres nothing to be done about people below level 60(this alone is probly enough to ensure a bottom-heavy distribution). First-timer runs will always be a thing, but they are the minority. They arent likely to push any of the other alliance raids into the MSQ requirement category(and thus, people who never unlock them either due to disinterest or to purposefully keep them out of the roulette will always be a thing). But can they fix the ilvl issue? They should be able to. Id love to know how big a difference it would make.

The person i quoted, however, literally said that ilvl isnt a thing. That the issue was "fixed" in patch 5.1(so over 2 years ago). And that apparently, none of the people arguing the other side were informed because he reads patch notes and no one else does. As i pointed out, i do read patch notes and couldnt find his supposed fix when i went back to look for it. If there actually was a fix, id like to see the documentation for it. If im wrong, id like to correct that. Which is why i asked for the specific citation. He never did respond, so im forced to assume that im still right that the issue was never taken care of.

I’ve given it some thought, and there’s a fair countermeasure that would punish people undergearing on purpose, but not people leveling a new job (including people who’ve just unlocked the latest alliance raid dungeon but don’t quite have the iLvl yet). It essentially goes like this:

1. Disregard alliance dungeons that are above your current job level (don’t want to penalize people who are leveling or haven’t unlocked everything)
2. Take the highest elligible dungeon based on level, and look at its item level requirement
3. If player’s iLvl is more than 60 lower than this, apply a penalty to DR rewards, regardless of which dungeon pops (prompt warning when joining queue)

you could go one step further and apply a debuff to the offending player for all to see, but that’s kinda nasty. SHAME.

Why 60? it’s a pretty good sweet spot to establish “doing it on purpose”. There’s a 70 ilvl difference between Orbone Monastery and The Copied Factory, for example (last one from Stormblood and first one from Shadowbringers, the range will be similar from pne expansion to another) and there’s a 60 ilvl difference between The Copied Factory and the Tower at Paradigm’s Breach. There is 100% zero reason you should not easily get somewhere in-between the moment you reach max level by the time the final alliance raid is released, there’s just SO much crafted gear and dungeon gear that will let you clear that requirement with no effort and minimal costs at that stage.

Sure, people could still queue under the latest alliance raid’s iLvl requirement to skip just THAT set, or arrange their iLvl to only satisfy the first of the latest batch, and that’d be acceptable. It would raise a red flag when they aim for level 50 raids, or anything from past expansions when the new raids get released. Players leveling a job will always be certain to get full rewards (again, unless they’re SEVERELY undergeared, which really there’s no excuse for with all the freebies in old content), and players who are just shy of being able to get into the latest content. Give these people a break, they’re not the ones to blame.

It’s just my two cents.

I’d REALLY love to get solething other than Syrcus Tower for once.

EDIT: another thing that could be introduced in the Duty Finder pairing mechanism is to favour party formation around first-time players for higher-level dungeons first. If someone needs the Nier Automata raids for the first time, have that party be priority formation over someone needing the Ivalice dungeons for the first time. Players undergearing on purpose will likely sit longer as punishment. This can’t be a 100% shift either though, as the Crystal Tower raids are a story requirements and new players need to push through at some point. just make the higher dungeons weigh a little heavier in the balance.

I really do agree with you when it comes down to making changes; but I am a little shaky on the method as to how to actually fix it.


Why the current system is a problem:

The best way to actually enjoy content is to not spam it or feel forced to do it. If the Crystal Tower raids were not 90% of probability in Alliance Rolo; then I believe the content can be more appreciated. If anyone sat back and actually look at the environment of the raids; the artwork of the CT raids is absolutely stunning regardless being older content. The lore of the CT is very important to the MSQ. (I won't share spoilers here.) Any actual new sprout can be in awe from it all if they take the game in at a good pace. However I learned even a sprout can't really sit back at times in alliance rolos because everyone is trying to get through the raids asap. Many tanks pull with people watching cut scenes, not much communication is going on, or that people are just rude in general because they have to deal with the crystal tower raids so much that its ruining everyone's experience. This also applies to the higher level alliance raids that don't give extra experience, and its so much longer to get through. It just makes people grumpy because its all unbalanced.

My take on the solution:

I think dealing with ilvl stuff isn't the right course of action here. Recently they put in a "Limited Leveling Roulette" for dungeons if your party is homemade. (Meaning it doesn't work with random players.) That would basically limit which dungeon you'll get thrown into by 10 levels based on the lowest level person in your group. However this method would not really work with alliance raids since it requires 24 people.

I propose since they CAN restrict content; is to have an "opt out option". Meaning any player can choose if they want to do CT or not in rolos. However there would have to be a rule so sprouts don't get left in the dust. If there is a new player in need to do a alliance raid to progress through the story; that would be the only reason why players would get a CT raid even if they chose to opt out. It would never be a CT raid full of end game players unless the player did not choose to opt out of it.

As for the higher alliance raids; they can boost the experience for each of them enough where its worth going through it. Any alliance raid in rolos will get the same base tomes and experience for completion; but each boss fight can reward more tomes and exp based on the level of the raid.

This would be a win win situation for all groups. For those who do not want to be spammed with the same raid over and over again, for those looking for a quick alliance rolo to plow through, for those who want to be rewarded better on higher end content, and for the sprouts who need to progress.

Please let me know if you think this would be good or not. I been thinking about this solution for a while but never expressed it. :)

Regarding whether or not iLVL cheese is a problem, there's a way to find out definitively:

On FFXIVCollect there are 98% of people tracked with World of Darkness unlocked; the same percentage as Labyrinth of the Ancients. Only 86% of people have unlocked Copied Factory. Copied Factory should therefore pop at a lower rate than the ARR raids. However what should pop at a roughly equivalent rate is World of Darkness compared to Labyrinth of the Ancients.

Hypothesis: Labyrinth of the Ancients pops at a statistically higher rate than World of Darkness as there is a lower min cheesable iLVL for LOA compared to WOD.