Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

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Originally Posted by illgot

Can't you watch the cut scenes in the inn?

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Yes. With about the same enjoyment as a watered down soda.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Yes. With about the same enjoyment as a watered down soda.

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It's going to be a lot more enjoyable with everyone grumbling at each other the whole run yeah? /s

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Originally Posted by Braneric

While it would definitely be better if SE actually took the time to redesign these two dungeons, I wonder how many people would be willing to see 4.3 delayed by three months in order for this to happen.

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To be blunt, if their dev team is stretched that tightly that they'd need to delay it to fix them, it's not a good vote of confidence for the game's health overall. And anyways, this problem has been occuring for years; they had plenty of time to budget a solution.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

The speed runners were the only ones willing to actually queue. You commend SE yet aren't willing to help the newbies who will now be waiting potentially hours for queues? Bit hypocritical.

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When did I say I wouldn't help newbies? Here, let me back track a bit. I will no longer be queuing up for this for selfish reasons. Is that better?

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Originally Posted by Spiriel_Basanda

I'll admit, I'm interested in running MSQ roulette on the patch day JUST to see what happens after 4 or 5 hours in the queue. The chat would have to be a lot of raging, right? Interested enough that I'd do it? I dunno, but I think it'd be hilarious.

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I feel bad for those who don't frequent the forums / keep up on patch notes. lol. That's gonna be a surprise for them when they queue up. Hopefully SE had the foresight to have a pop-up or warning with the changes.

My solution? Work my fuzzy purple tail off to make Mentor, organize a group of Mentors willing to dp PF MSQ runs for the sprouts and take them through on a weekly basis until SE finds a better solution.

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Originally Posted by Spiriel_Basanda

I'll admit, I'm interested in running MSQ roulette on the patch day JUST to see what happens after 4 or 5 hours in the queue. The chat would have to be a lot of raging, right? Interested enough that I'd do it? I dunno, but I think it'd be hilarious.

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I was thinking that too.

Like someone else said, the people who don't read the patch notes/go on the forums will be in for surprise. I feel bad for the sprouts who would be delayed in their progress because of the wait time ( especially if they are a DPS ) and have the possibility of dealing with an irritated group of people. Being in a party with grumpy members is no fun and they gotta stick with it or else they'll be waiting even longer.

Anyway why not just lock the dungeon to ilvl 50 with that sprouts can enjoy the content. :D Bc they first experince was ruined. :(

I wouldn't mind these two dungeons getting a large-scale remake on a major patch even if it has to delay something else to a later patch. If they were redone at max effort it essentially becomes the fun new content of the patch for everybody old and new.

The new versions could have different enemy patterns, a more direct route to the end, better boss mechanics, gear/minion rewards, shorter versions of the old cutscenes and many of them removed entirely like the ones for searchlights.

Could add many teleporter devices along the way like in alliance raids which activate when somebody passes one, so anyone left behind has quick access in their locality to jumping to the rest of the party.

They could really go to town on the remake. Nero fight uses a Duty Action jammer (given by Cid) to make the magitek claw turn on him and stun him. Use it to interrupt his big charge attack which would otherwise knockback all party into the electric field and do moderate damage.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

This isn't an eff up on SEs part. This is SEs deliberate eff u to speed runners of an instance that for years now, does not get run as intended. These instances, especially Prae, are a nightmare for new players who aren't even allowed to see which direction faces up.

I commend SE for sticking to their guns with this. It doesn't mean I'lol be queueing up for it unless I want the full experience I was denied two years ago.

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But now it will be far harder for newbies to clear the MSQ. If you had to choose, which would you choose? Either having to wait possibly an hour to queue into a dungeon you HAVE to complete (assuming you are not in a FC or not one willing to help) or get in within 20ish minutes but have to possibly miss the story or fights?

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Originally Posted by Okamimaru

They should remove all cutscenes from these dungeons and just have like a 2 hour long text speech from the scions detailing everything that happened inside... problem solved

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You mean like the second disc of Xenogears? Remember how well that turned out...

And, FYI, sarcasm doesn't work well in print...

I honestly stopped doing MSQ Roulette ages ago when I stopped needing Poetics. Unless you absolutely want to help people get through those instances there was never a good reason to run that Roulette over doing anything else, like PotD for example, after getting all your Roulette Daily Bonuses for the day. That said, this ultimately should not impact anything in a negative way. If anything, it'll make people who used the Roulette solely for the sake of farming EXP and Poetics realize there are better ways by making them stop queueing for it, and those that actually want to watch cutscenes are no longer forced to skip them as people that have already done those instances and continue to queue for them accept the cutscene viewing.

In the end, everyone will get something out of this.

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Originally Posted by Joe777

In the end, everyone will get something out of this.

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Yes, new players will be getting a lot out of this, a lot of time sitting on a queue.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

This isn't an eff up on SEs part. This is SEs deliberate eff u to speed runners of an instance that for years now, does not get run as intended. These instances, especially Prae, are a nightmare for new players who aren't even allowed to see which direction faces up.

I commend SE for sticking to their guns with this. It doesn't mean I'lol be queueing up for it unless I want the full experience I was denied two years ago.

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No, this is a mess up by SE.

They have admitted time and time again that Prae and CM were failures, which is why they are the only two dungeons like them in the game. They learned from that mess up and have not made dungeons like that since. So for them to do something stupid like this is infuriating.

It's no players fault that they paced these dungeons badly. You cannot blame people for not wanting to sit and watch someone watch cut scenes for an hour.

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Originally Posted by Jatoi

and have the possibility of dealing with an irritated group of people. Being in a party with grumpy members is no fun and they gotta stick with it or else they'll be waiting even longer.

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Or worse if others take their frustrations to the extreme. There was a thread a while back from a sprout who was in one of these dungeons and one person in the party was so irate over them watching cut scenes. Said player then proceeded to bring up nearly every single major plot point spoiler in 2.0, 3.0 and some of 4.0 to them.

I think people are also forgetting that not all newbies /want/ to dedicate two full hours to both those instances and their cutscenes. I certainly didn't, I was happier watching them later using the Inn function and then Youtube for the ones that weren't there. This sort of change hurts them the most and essentially acts as yet another wall, though a quite fitting one given the hell that is 2.1 to 2.55 that they're about to endure. It was fine before. People who wanted to skip /could/ and people who didn't could put up a PF or ask their guildmates for help. This is just SE creating far more problems.

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Originally Posted by Aylis

Or worse if others take their frustrations to the extreme. There was a thread a while back from a sprout who was in one of these dungeons and one person in the party was so irate over them watching cut scenes. Said player then proceeded to bring up nearly every single major plot point spoiler in 2.0, 3.0 and some of 4.0 to them.

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That's awful!

I like the idea of it being a solo-able instance or separated into different dungeons somehow. That way, things like that won't happen. This "fix" to CM and Prae hurts so much more than it helps...

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Originally Posted by Jatoi

That's awful!

I like the idea of it being a solo-able instance or separated into different dungeons somehow. That way, things like that won't happen. This "fix" to CM and Prae hurts so much more than it helps...

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It really does hurt more then it helps. They took places that despite being a powder keg ready to blow for the most part worked. Now they went and lite the fuse. I do agree making it an entirely solo instance would have been a better choice if not for maintaining the peace alone and so sprouts can watch their cut scenes in peace. Then put the final battle with Ultima as its own thing as an 8 player trial.

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Originally Posted by Anarnee

No, this is a mess up by SE.

They have admitted time and time again that Prae and CM were failures, which is why they are the only two dungeons like them in the game. They learned from that mess up and have not made dungeons like that since. So for them to do something stupid like this is infuriating.

It's no players fault that they paced these dungeons badly. You cannot blame people for not wanting to sit and watch someone watch cut scenes for an hour.

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Indeed. This is the biggest screw up (and possibly the only major screw up) I've ever seen SE do so far. as such it stands out horribly and I thought they were smarter than this. This is literal "a 10 year old could do better" territory.

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Originally Posted by Joe777

If anything, it'll make people who used the Roulette solely for the sake of farming EXP and Poetics realize there are better ways by making them stop queueing for it

In the end, everyone will get something out of this.

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A few weeks ago I did these on an alt with my GF. We had a tank. The queue was 12 minutes. WITH A TANK!

Imagine how much longer it'll take once people, like you said, "notice it's not worth the time."

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Originally Posted by Laerune

MSQ daily should have been removed and turned into a dungeon where the player can take his/her grand company npc group with them.

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That's actually a very good idea.

I'm curious if they plan to lock the bosses. If they don't, people are just going to speed through the dialogue and rush the dungeon all over again.

They trying to sell more skip potions by killing the roullete

Let me start by saying that I agree that these changes are far from ideal and will most likely result in fewer people doing the roulette and longer queues for those who need the content for story completion. That said, I can't help but consider the following:


It may be the dev team's intention to reduce the number of people queuing for this content. At the very least, to have fewer folks that queue for the roulette with the primary goal of XP and Poetics, and not mainly to help newer players clear the content. I can understand that seems counter intuitive, but consider that many of the frustrations with the content come as a result of players with different objectives (experiencing the story vs. clearing as fast as possible for the reward) are forced to mix. Well, truly the root cause was trying to make group content like this in an MMO, but my former statement is the expected result of that issue. Thankfully the devs seem to have learned their lesson in that regard, as evidenced by ARF and AM.

Let's first consider another way they could have attacked this issue, including modifications that account for some folk's concern (being forced to watch the cut scene whether you've seen it or not, and regardless if there's no one in the party that's actually new to the content). One option would be to still allow folks to skip the cut scenes, and only let progress to the next section once everyone was out. This would solve the issue of being locked into a cut scene regardless of player completion status, and still allow for faster runs if you're with a group that had no new players. They could even include better rewards to account to the potential for longer dungeon clear times. Here's the issue though: by giving players the potential to still move faster than the cut scenes allow, you create a scenario where players will still be trying to pressure the new players to skip the cut scenes so that the rewards come faster. And considering that you take away the option for the rest of the group to leave the cut scene folks behind, I would be surprised if that pressure to skip didn't become more pronounced. Especially if there are larger rewards to be gained potentially in the same clear time before the implemented changes. This isn't a great solution.

Let's consider a solution discussed in the OP: using the squadron tech to allow people to run these instances solo. This is definitely an interesting idea, but there are a few issues. First and foremost, players can't start a squadron before completing this part of the story. So the developers would need to implement a work around (perhaps have your character given a squad of generic GC soldiers to fight with you, dependent on your role). But then we face the issue of the player having never encountered this kind of system before, so you'll need to make sure they can figure out how the command system work. A duty maybe to lead the soldiers on a patrol and give the players a brief tutorial on how to use the squad could help, but it's something else to implement. Then there's ensuring the AI can function in the dungeons. The Squad AI isn't like SCH/SMN pets of chocobo companions. They're intended to be able to function with respect to the instance's mechanics, hence why there's a limited set of dungeons we can actually run. Considering that there are some unique mechanics to deal with in these instances (the cannons for the trash and Livia in CM, the magitek segment in Prae), this would require a bit of engineering to manage. The point I'm trying to get at is this: these kinds of fixes require a non-negligible level of investment of development time and resources. I'm not suggesting it would push back a patch by months, but it still would have to compete with development of other things. And considering that these two instances only really account for 1.5-2 hours of a player's time, it comes down to a question of whether or not that time is worth it.

So let's go back to my original point: they're de-incentivizing the queue with the express purpose of getting fewer people to queue for the roulette. When we consider this as an option, we should consider that the game has changed a lot since the MSQ roulette was originally added. This includes:

- The ability to run dungeons with an unsync'd group with fewer players than required. Players who, I might add, now obliterate both the character level and item level these instances were designed for.
- The mentor roulette (not be a mentor myself, I'm assuming that the mentor roulette can feed into MSQ...especially if apparently the mentor roulette can put you into a guild hest) to help supplement rosters with players who ideally should be there to help other folks complete content.
- Data center wide party finders, allowing for a wider net from which to create preformed parties.
-A bigger player base than the days of 2.0, including new players coming into their own.

Players have a lot more resources at their disposal than they did back during ARR launch. This may be the developer's attempt to test the waters, and see if the roulette is actually necessary to get through the content in the first place, especially when the roulette is only advantageous from the perspective of getting people in the door quickly, as opposed to ensuring a good experience.

So yeah, the queues will probably be longer, but this may encourage new players to explore other ways of getting into content outside of using the duty finder, which has been their main way of entering the content up to this point. If the duty finder is failing them, they might be more encouraged to reach out to friends to help them queue (and going unsync'd, they'd only need 1 or 2 at lvl 70). Or they put together a party in PF of people that want to be there for the content. Or they wait out the duty finder queue and at the very least are more likely teamed up with other new players and/or mentors who are there with the aim of helping them getting through the content. Yeah, the time to get into the content goes up, but the quality of the experience does stand to improve.

And I'll admit, I could be completely wrong on this, but I do think it's an interesting idea to explore. And the good thing is their change didn't take a lot of time to implement, and it certainly won't take a lot of time to remove if it ultimately fails.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

This isn't an eff up on SEs part. This is SEs deliberate eff u to speed runners of an instance that for years now, does not get run as intended. These instances, especially Prae, are a nightmare for new players who aren't even allowed to see which direction faces up.

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I mean, this is a band-aid fix for two poorly designed instances. The poor design is the fault of SE, and, by extension, so is this band-aid fix. In no way is it going to make the experience more pleasant for new players.

Since week one of ARR launch, these two instances weren’t being run the way SE are trying to force players to run them 4 years later. They learned from the design mistake and never did something like this again, but they are still at fault for not taking any initiatives to remedy the situation surrounding Prae and Castrum. Well, until now. And their “remedy” is definitely not the best one they could have chosen.

The remedy is not to force players to watch cutscenes. These duties should have been transformed into an extensive solo instance a long time ago.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

I'm curious if they plan to lock the bosses. If they don't, people are just going to speed through the dialogue and rush the dungeon all over again.

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Agreed, if it doesn't have gates then it will just slow groups down but not really address the issue they want to and just annoy people who used it as a roulette. It will be 'interesting' to see how this plays out.

Literally last week I got an alt through 2.0. As a dps it took 45 min for prae to pop, and I knew what wait I was getting myself into. A poor noob is going to be sitting pretty for an hour during prime time, and god help them if they play in off hours. What a mess.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

Agreed, if it doesn't have gates then it will just slow groups down but not really address the issue they want to and just annoy people who used it as a roulette. It will be 'interesting' to see how this plays out.

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And if they have gates, one person can hold the entire group hostage by simply not advancing the cutscene.

Also, it IS a roulette, how else you want people to use it?

All I see happening here is players avoiding msq roulette like the plague and new players leaving after not being able to pass that quest for an extended period of time.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Modify that idea slightly. Instead of taking your squadron with you, the 3 grand companies join together and throw a squadron your way. Melee/ranged DPS will be provided by the Adders, tanks will be provided by the Maelstrom, healers/casters will be provided by the Immortal Flames (playing into the supposed specialities of each GC).

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Seems you got that mixed up. Adders should be healers.

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Originally Posted by ErryK

Experience? You don't get experience at 70 though?

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Let us bank xp on capped jobs to give to lower jobs.

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Originally Posted by Pyroxene

All I see happening here is players avoiding msq roulette like the plague and new players leaving after not being able to pass that quest for an extended period of time.

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Thats the saddest part, imo. Players who were running it for exp have tons of ways to level up, so to them this change is just one less daily. New players, however, need to get through those 2 dungeons to progress and they're the ones that will be stuck dealing with the lack of players running it.

I really dont understand the whole "Make cutscenes unskippable so newbies can enjoy them". With that mindset why make ANY cutscenes skippable then? Lets make the cutscene before normal Ifrit unskippable then (the whole damn like 15 minute long video....) so newbies can enjoy it. I know it sounds harsh but yeah.....there's the book at the inn! The ONLY thing that the player misses out on using the book is that they are the only one in the video instead of it showing like 7 other people around them. That's it. An extra 80 tomes does not "accomodate" for an extra 30-40 minutes probably that a run will take now....not to mention Im sure a lot of people will simply refuse to do them....so then you have the additional issue of increased queue times for it for the ones who HAVE to do it. Seriously, between this and some of the things with the glamour wardrobe I get the feeling that SE really isn't thinking some of the changes through for 4.2

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Originally Posted by TheAngelneer

Yes, new players will be getting a lot out of this, a lot of time sitting on a queue.

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You think that's any different than it is now? Because it's not. And if you think literally no one will queue to help new players out then you are wrong. There will always be people out there willing to help people get through a dungeon if they ask for help, happens all the time in Novice Network. Besides, everyone knows the hype and complaints are overdone before a new patch so watch and see, it won't be nearly as bad as you think it will be.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

A few weeks ago I did these on an alt with my GF. We had a tank. The queue was 12 minutes. WITH A TANK!

Imagine how much longer it'll take once people, like you said, "notice it's not worth the time."

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Not that much longer than it already does, actually.

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Originally Posted by Skitz470

I really dont understand the whole "Make cutscenes unskippable so newbies can enjoy them". With that mindset why make ANY cutscenes skippable then? Lets make the cutscene before normal Ifrit unskippable then (the whole damn like 15 minute long video....) so newbies can enjoy it. I know it sounds harsh but yeah.....there's the book at the inn! The ONLY thing that the player misses out on using the book is that they are the only one in the video instead of it showing like 7 other people around them. That's it. An extra 80 tomes does not "accomodate" for an extra 30-40 minutes probably that a run will take now....not to mention Im sure a lot of people will simply refuse to do them....so then you have the additional issue of increased queue times for it for the ones who HAVE to do it. Seriously, between this and some of the things with the glamour wardrobe I get the feeling that SE really isn't thinking some of the changes through for 4.2

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Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium are basically the only instances in the game where you pretty much walk through a theater. In the case of cutscenes elsewhere it's mainly boss entrances and cutscenes before an instance commences, in which you're locked in a circle of light anyway.

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Originally Posted by Joe777

Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium are basically the only instances in the game where you pretty much walk through a theater. In the case of cutscenes elsewhere it's mainly boss entrances and cutscenes before an instance commences, in which you're locked in a circle of light anyway.

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True, but my point was that newbies can and do skip those cutscenes so that they dont keep the rest of the group sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Yeah the dungeon intro's arent that bad, but again, some dungeons (ifrit, the final boss of thousand maws) if someone is there for the MSQ there are some pretty lengthy cutscenes. Also, what if the newbie(s) themselves want to skip the cutscenes? Say they wanted to do it before they have to leave for work or something then watch the cutscenes when they get home and can enjoy them. Nope, going to have to hold off on doing that because you dont have an entire hour available to (as the quote puts it) go on a theater ride.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Would you feel the same way when you queue and get the dreaded: "Average wait time: More than 30 minutes"? Because that will inevitably happen now.

You can harp on people not being selfless but these cut scenes are upwards of an hour long. You can't reasonably expect a group of random strangers to just wait around that long while you watch cut scenes.

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I get that all the time as a DPS ... I just watch You Tube or read a book until my turn comes up .... heck I've waited over 80 minutes and no one wanted to do Urth's Fount with me /cries

I haven’t read the whole thread but are they also disabling the chat box? If not then people may just get harassed to click faster through the dialogue.

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Originally Posted by MuseTraveller

The thing is, you can't just go alt-tab for a bit, look at video or something cause you have to click the cutscene dialogue, nor you can just be idle and do a little silly dance or check inventory or anything really.
I do help MSQ runs in PF when I see such but watching these cutscenes over and over every time will be bit too much. :(

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There is an option if you hit .. Spacebar I believe (don't know on console) to have the text auto run for you ... meaning after a certain amount of time with the moving circle countdown, it goes to the next section. So Alt+Tab or whatever as it runs though. Still .. unskippable is a dumb idea.

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Originally Posted by Skitz470

True, but my point was that newbies can and do skip those cutscenes so that they dont keep the rest of the group sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Yeah the dungeon intro's arent that bad, but again, some dungeons (ifrit, the final boss of thousand maws) if someone is there for the MSQ there are some pretty lengthy cutscenes. Also, what if the newbie(s) themselves want to skip the cutscenes? Say they wanted to do it before they have to leave for work or something then watch the cutscenes when they get home and can enjoy them. Nope, going to have to hold off on doing that because you dont have an entire hour available to (as the quote puts it) go on a theater ride.

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It's pretty much always been all or nothing when it comes to these 2 instances though. SE is just removing the "nothing". Sure they'll forever be a great source of torment for many and a blight upon FF14's group instances in regards to clearing places quickly but until the day SE decides it shall no longer be a thing you do with other players or decides to remove the cutscenes or just plain integrate the cutscenes into part of the duty whuddyagunnado?

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

They're still going to be yelled at to spam through the CS like everyone else and will get vote kicked when they don't.

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This is the player toxcicity someone was talking about. The players of the game are the ones who took it upon themselves to tell new sprouts to skip the CSs and watch in an Inn or be kicked.

Sorry, but that would stop me more from playing a game than having SE make me wait a bit longer for queue times.

And yes, I am one of those people who will continue to do MSQ roulettes, cause this doesn't bother me at all.