Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

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Originally Posted by CaptainOhare

Just cancelled my sub over this. Inexcusably moronic. No justification for this whatsoever. If you wanted to watch the cutscenes, you could do that already, just let the other people clear it. This and 2.1-2.5 are huge bottlenecks in the game already. Making this old trash longer is the opposite of what they should be doing. Everyone saying this will be a nearly insurmountable obstacle in the MSQ now is completely right and it's not hyperbole. People will be sitting in queue for hours and then just log off out of frustration. Unbelievably stupid. Completely ridiculous.

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Can I have your stuff?

This only shows how little SE knows about its player base.

they could 10 fold the rewards, people will still not do it because they do not want to sit though those cs over and over again, its boring.

Only way I see it POSSIBLY working if you can cap weekly tombstones with only doing it once or twice a week. I really doubt SE wil give enough rewards for it to be worthwhile to the mass

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Originally Posted by SicariusSeven

I always wanted those cutscenes to be in the little book that we had at the Inn. It's why I skipped them the first time I went because I was under the impression I could watch them later. I was so very wrong but I never wanted to watch them in full because they made the dungeon so ABSURDLY long. This was always the main complaint and now they've gone totally backwards on the solution.

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Uhm, you can watch them in the Inn .... right? I mean, there are many tabs and drop down menus to look through, but I'm certain it is in there. If not, then will have to agree that is absurd.

Hrm ... from the preliminary patch notes for 4.2:


To ensure new players are able to enjoy the cutscenes in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium, all cutscenes in these dungeons can no longer be skipped.

Because this will increase the time required to complete these dungeons, completion rewards and Duty Roulette bonuses for these duties have been increased.

Eh ... not sure if it will be enough incentive to keep people doing them, but we'll see.

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Originally Posted by Joe777

Not that much longer than it already does, actually.

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You're delusional if you actually think this.

Why do you think it won't take longer? In what universe are the same amount of people going to queue for an hour long dungeon run compared to a ~15 minute one?

Personally I would have made it a solo instance that had various NPC's helping out, the dungeons themselves as they are now are bad and with current gear are a complete joke.

The idea of forcing you to watch cutscenes is a hilariously boneheaded idea. What if no one is new? What if new players don't want to watch the cutscenes? What if someone reading slowly doesn't finish the cutscene fast enough and gets locked out anyway? Were none of these a concern?

What were they thinking?

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

You're delusional if you actually think this.

Not only that, why do you think it won't take longer? In what universe are the same amount of people going to queue for an hour long dungeon run compared to a ~15 minute one?

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its possible that person you are quoting has a bad concept of time, not really rare with people having fun tbh.

It is very unlikely people will queue for it unless the rewards are really insane, we will see.

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Originally Posted by Tizzy_Tormentor

Personally I would have made it a solo instance that had various NPC's helping out, the dungeons themselves as they are now are bad and with current gear are a complete joke.

The idea of forcing you to watch cutscenes is a hilariously boneheaded idea. What if no one is new? What if new players don't want to watch the cutscenes? What if someone reading slowly doesn't finish the cutscene fast enough and gets locked out anyway? Were none of these a concern?

What were they thinking?

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sounds like this is good material for avgn anyway. him reviewing ffxiv would be funny im sure.

Admittedly, it's nice for new players who care for lore.. but realistically those first time players will eventually come to hate the system that enabled them to watch the scenes to begin with.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

Uhm, you can watch them in the Inn .... right? I mean, there are many tabs and drop down menus to look through, but I'm certain it is in there. If not, then will have to agree that is absurd.

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Yes, I believe the cutscenes are in a different tab of the book then like the non-dungeon MSQ scenes....but they ARE there and available to be watched whenever and however often you please.

There is one issue I see with this.

If the cutscenes are no longer skippable, yet everyone that's in MSQ Roulette has actually already done the dungeon once before... What's the point of making them unskippable?

These two dungeons should really, really just be overhauled into a lengthy solo duty, with Ultima being overhauled into an actual trial. In fact, the entire pre-Heavensward sequence should really be re-evaluated. It's getting really bad when all the general gaming enthusiast forums and websites I frequent show me that interest in the game is higher than ever (there's almost a literal army of FFXIV fans at ResetEra in particular telling people disappointed with FFXIII and FFXV to try FFXIV), but virtually everyone encouraging people to get into the game have to include a disclaimer that pre-Heavensward is poorly paced. And a lot of prospective new players are often quitting somewhere between pre-Titan and pre-Heavensward phases, and if they don't, they get super burned out after it all anyway.

Surely there's data that exists that would tell you guys exactly where subs lapse in regards to progress in the main quest.

What if you're running these dungeons unsynced? Will we be able to skip cutscenes then? I've just been running them with one or two higher-leveled friends when I go to do these with my alts.

When they said they were going to increase the reward for the roulette I was expecting a bit more than just... poetics. Something along the lines of the Alliance Roulette rewards would have been nice, but honestly I don't think I'll be touching MS now.

Re: making it a solo instance. While I agree with the idea, in practice, I think it might take more work than they'd expect to change it. As an example, think of the search lights. Will NPCs be tuned to know to turn them off? Or, will it more likely be that the player will have to be in charge of all interactions? What about all the cannons? Can NPCs figure out how to use those? What about the entire Livia fight? There's a number of "boss is effectively invincible for now" parts scattered around here, and it'll take a bit more tooling to get NPCs that know what they need to do, I think.

It won't be so easy as just "run the dungeons with NPCs." That would be either overly complicated, or, in creating the solo instance, will have to be so modified that they are disinclined to put that much work into doing so.

Making it solo sounds easy, but there's probably more effort involved in that than is immediately apparent.

It'd still be nice if they did it. As someone said a while back, once done, it would likely be the final permanent solution; no more band-aid fixes. But the evidence seems to be that they have no desire to dedicate much resources to the cause.

Heard the suggestion several times to just run it with your gc squad mates..... Well anybody yet considered that the people running these dungeons for story prop wouldnt even have a squad to begin with? much less one thats up to scratch?

This is not cool at all, some players just dont care about cutscenes or story at all, to force this into them is torture.

I already did those so im kinda fine with it, but some friends recently started, they gonna be so angry when they enter those after 5h queue and then find out they cant skip cutscenes.

Its probably reason to quit after they complete the first one, they wont do the second one.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Making it solo sounds easy, but there's probably more effort involved in that than is immediately apparent.

It'd still be nice if they did it. As someone said a while back, once done, it would likely be the final permanent solution; no more band-aid fixes. But the evidence seems to be that they have no desire to dedicate much resources to the cause.

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I think the issue is the time involved and nothing more. The two dungeons were built and made by the current dev staff. Things can be changed, mechanics reworked and whatever changes are needed to make it a solo instance. They've adjusted other fights in the past, adjusted player abilities and what not, it can be done. The issue of time being all this would require a major overhaul which could mean the next major patch could be barren. No new dungeons, no new raids, no new anything really. We already know the dev team is majorly understaffed and this maybe why they won't go back and do the overhaul. Even if it is majorly needed. The only forseeable change I can see them doing in the future with these two places are.

1) Re-enable cut scene skipping after enough sprouts complain they can't get the dungeon done because very few will touch it now.

or..

2) Create the next phase of a legendary weapon that shoehorns players into these two dungeons. For current and future legendary weapons. Like FATE grinding 2.0

I'm going to be a little optimistic and hope that near the end of the 4.x cycle, they'll have to come back around to this and actually fix it. By 5.0, they really shouldn't let this remain such a negative experience.

So looking forward to doing Castrum after the patch.
Start, pull all mobs, cut search lights. Cutscene. Everyone dies.
Continue to next area down chute., pull mobs at search light, cut scene. Everyone dies.
Continue to end area. Pull mobs at search lights/sirens, cut scene. Everyone dies.
Mechanics? We don't need no stinking mechnics ^^

Though it doesn't directly affect me (having been here for years, nor touching MSQ Roulette since pre-Heavensward), I'd greatly prefer Castrum and Praetorium be properly reworked to solo instances over half-baked novelty features like Perform and the upcoming Glamour Closet, but that's just me. It's way, way, way overdue; new players frequently end up disillusioned or simply quit over those two dungeons.

The point of MSQ roulette is to help queue times go down for the new players who need these dungeons. SE wants new players to be able to use the duty finder to queue for them and they want new players to be able to run them with cutscenes intact. MSQ roulette was not designed with the express purpose of having an easy way to gain poetics and XP; those perks were added as an incentive to get experienced players to queue. Leaving new players behind defeats to original intention of MSQ roulette. SE would rather have 7 experienced players wait for 1 new player.

Is the original design of these dungeons problematic? Yes. Will making cutscenes unskippable and increasing the MSQ roulette rewards accomplish SE'S goal? We'll see. Will queue times go up dramatically? We'll see.

If you don't have time to do Praetorium with full cutscenes then don't queue.

If not enough players are queuing for MSQ roulette after the patch, what is stopping SE from adjusting the rewards later?

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Originally Posted by FalcorPIX

This is not cool at all, some players just dont care about cutscenes or story at all, to force this into them is torture.

I already did those so im kinda fine with it, but some friends recently started, they gonna be so angry when they enter those after 5h queue and then find out they cant skip cutscenes.

Its probably reason to quit after they complete the first one, they wont do the second one.

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It can be much worse. Imagine a party of 8: 2 sprouts and 6 mentors(because only mentors will end up in this dungeon after 4.2).

One mentor will instantly leave(and take penalty), followed by 5 other mentors(for free), which leaves 2 poor sprouts alone and the "5 hours queue" repeats again.

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Originally Posted by HoodRat

Yes, exactly, punish those "speed runners" by making it so no one will run the content and new players will now complain about how they can't even get in instead of how they couldn't enjoy the cutscenes That'll show them!

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Maybe those speedrunners are thinking too much high of themselves and that without them, the game will die. Let's see when patch goes out for a reality check.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

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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Why should we queue it? Why would someone be selfish to say that they wont run a content anymore that could take hours to complete? People dont have unlimited amount of time and the main reason to run the roulette was probably the exp/tomes. Why should they still run it when this might be worse? We are not a charity. I am playing a game to have fun and if its fun to help newer players through content well then you can still do that. But a lot of time people run these things because they get something out of that. Its not our job to help people through (which I still did more than enough in my old FC) and its not our fault that they designed two main story dungeons with such a huge amount of cutscenes.

It is all on SE side. They decided to create them and they decided to use that solution instead of making it into something newer players can truly enjoy. They dont punish us with that. They just punish the newer ones. But its not our job to help them through this. Its SEs job to find a good solution and not something like that.

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Originally Posted by JasiriKhalon

So looking forward to doing Castrum after the patch.
Start, pull all mobs, cut search lights. Cutscene. Everyone dies.
Continue to next area down chute., pull mobs at search light, cut scene. Everyone dies.
Continue to end area. Pull mobs at search lights/sirens, cut scene. Everyone dies.
Mechanics? We don't need no stinking mechnics ^^

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That'll only happen if the healers are slow to start healing, since you don't take damage while watching a cutscene.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

Maybe those speedrunners are thinking too much high of themselves and that without them, the game will die. Let's see when patch goes out for a reality check.

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This.To me the fact they made this change would imply an influx of newer players.
If there's many more new players comeing a long they will be able to party up anyway to complete it.
We were all new at one point and a lot of us did this together without any players with clears helping.Its easier now anyway and im sure fc's will still help players clear it.
While a lot of players are trying to claim it will cripple new players their real gripe is not being able to use it for fast tomes and xp which was not the intent of the story roulette in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

That'll only happen if the healers are slow to start healing, since you don't take damage while watching a cutscene.

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It's almost like they designed it so that players could watch the cutscenes without that fear of being hit/dead afterward. lol
Very strange assumption to think forced cutscenes will mean everyone dies.

That said, I can see players not interested in watching tabbing out and forgetting to come back in time.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

Maybe those speedrunners are thinking too much high of themselves and that without them, the game will die. Let's see when patch goes out for a reality check.

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I don’t know, it seems like the majority of people running those dungeons are “speedrunners”. When I was doing the roulette a lot to get poetics, it really wasn’t that frequent that the group got the first timer bonus. It was usually just 8 people who had already been there before rushing to the end. People can try to paint those players in a bad light if they wish, but those are the players that are mostly in the roulette helping to make queue times manageable for newbies. Personally I doubt there are enough first time sprouts and random players also willing to sit through really long queues and a mega long dungeon to keep these two going. After all, it’s only your first time once, after that even sprouts are probably going to turn into “speedrunners” since the goal is to get in and out for the reward, not to rewatch what you’ve already seen.

Also I imagine SE agreed (at least at one point) that there weren’t enough players running these dungeons to get the first timers through and that’s why they created MSQ roulette in the first place. But now they are going back and making people not want to bother.

After the patch I really think the wait times to get into those dungeons is going to increase once everyone realizes what changes have been made and first timers will be forced to go to their FCs or to party finder for help, or possibly just get annoyed with the whole thing and quit since it’s kind of hard to continue enjoying a game that you cannot progress in.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

We were all new at one point and a lot of us did this together without any players with clears helping.Its easier now anyway and im sure fc's will still help players clear it.
While a lot of players are trying to claim it will cripple new players their real gripe is not being able to use it for fast tomes and xp which was not the intent of the story roulette in the first place.

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Players were already speedrunning/trying to get people to skip cutscenes in CM/Prae after the first few weeks of ARR (more so CM than Prae) since it was the best source of philo tomes.

If you honestly think this won't have a significant effect on queue times, then I don't know what to tell you. A good amount of people aren't going to sit into a dungeon for an extra 30 min for an extra 80 poetics.

A better incentive would be adding creation and mendacity tomes for the first daily clear.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

This.To me the fact they made this change would imply an influx of newer players.
If there's many more new players comeing a long they will be able to party up anyway to complete it.
We were all new at one point and a lot of us did this together without any players with clears helping.Its easier now anyway and im sure fc's will still help players clear it.
While a lot of players are trying to claim it will cripple new players their real gripe is not being able to use it for fast tomes and xp which was not the intent of the story roulette in the first place.

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There was someone on reddit that queued for the main story roulette this week and waited over an hour...cant have so much new players if it takes that long to even fill now when people still queue for it. I already waited a lot of time in queue as a DD when it was still ARR..only the roulette seems to have helped the queue times a bit and if people dont go into that roulette anymore we will at least get back to the old wait times if not longer...

People are just going to use other methods to farm xp and tomes (alliance roulette for example ;)). Its truly just the newer players that will be hurt by that. You will have those that dont want to watch cutscenes even if they are new and that are now forced. You will have those that will wait longer thanks to people not using that roulette anymore and I doubt that a FC is truly that willing to run each single new member through this. We tried that with our old FC where we would pull a handfull of new players through that. Even without the change and waiting for them it was getting annoying quite fast.

So no this will be bad for newer players.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

Maybe those speedrunners are thinking too much high of themselves and that without them, the game will die. Let's see when patch goes out for a reality check.

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The MSQ Roulette was made to incentivize veterans to run the content so that newbies could progress through the game’s story; the incentives were tomestones and experience—some in this thread have already mentioned that they never deemed the rewards enough to incentivize them to go back and run these two dungeons as the Roulette stands now; a lot more have said that the newer post-4.2 rewards aren’t enough to incentivize them to queue into two duties that are going to force players who have already watched the cutscenes to watch them again and again and again (or at least annoy them enough by having to rapidly tab through the dialogue). The Roulette wasn’t made for the use of newer players, but for the use of veterans because Castrum and Prae queues were horrendous beforehand (newbies cannot access the Roulette until they complete both Castrum and Prae).

Considering how the time of both Castrum and Prae are about to double (~35 minutes for Castrum, ~40-50 minutes for Prae—if not longer), if the only added rewards are 80 extra tomestones (Poetics, mind you, which do not have a lot of use for players that have a lot of jobs already max level, or who are not interested in leveling other jobs/doing older relics), a lot of veteran players won’t find the doubled time worth their time, especially if they already have limited time to play. If people aren’t queuing into the roulette, then there won’t be people to fill the queues that new players are wasting away in. The new players will get frustrated, and eventually quit if they do not have many friends/an FC to turn to because they cannot progress—you already see a lot of newer players quit during 2.xx because they want to get to Heavensward, and the Seventh Astral Era quests drag on for forever and a day.

These two duties have had issues since their inception, and the developers have blatantly ignored those issues until now—over 4 years later. And they chose the worst possible way to try and “fix” them. I really think they should consider dedicating some time and resources into turning these into an epic solo instance that new players can do with NPCs—be it the Scions or the Grand Companies or whatever. Heck, it would maybe be cool to allow a few people to pair up and do the content together, and fill in the rest of the spots with NPCs—this would be amazing for players that started playing FFXIV with a friend, and they want to experience the content together, and it removes the burden/potential of veterans wanting to speed run the duty. I’m sure that such redesign would have to wait until a large patch or maybe even an expansion, but it would still be a better solution than trying to force a particular way of play on people.

I feel like any of these solutions will remove a lot of the issues surrounding Castrum and Prae, and maybe provide an even better experience for newer players, since they will get to experience the content as it was intended to be experienced (just with NPCs/a couple friends instead of other random players).

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

Players were already speedrunning/trying to get people to skip cutscenes in CM/Prae after the first few weeks of ARR (more so CM than Prae) since it was the best source of philo tomes.

If you honestly think this won't have a significant effect on queue times, then I don't know what to tell you. A good amount of people aren't going to sit into a dungeon for an extra 30 min for an extra 80 poetics.

A better incentive would be adding creation and mendacity tomes for the first daily clear.

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Given the amount of people leveling dps and other jobs through story roulette you may also want to remember that this may make the queue times longer sometimes as i dont recall there being an algorithm that prioritises new players for the queues so for all we know to some extent it may shorten the time for new players doing it but then make it longer on off peak times.

first week, people will be confused, frustrated, some will leave, others will stick it through, thinking they can handle it. They'll handle it the first 2-3 times, and after that, will swear off this dungeon set ever again.
after first week, and during 2nd week, you'll see people asking for runs through the specific dungeons so they can get through them at all.
After 2nd week, SE will have the numbers in, and probably make a decision on either keeping things as they are, or changing them back.
You can say various things about Yoshi P, but he's not a braindead corperate minion.
Nor is he a blizz employee who thinks he knows what's best for the players. If something's wrong, he fixes it. I fully expect him TO fix this, it'll just depend upon the time frame.
My guess is, what'll end up happening is they'll make it so the entire group has to choose to skip the cutscenes before they can move on. Which can be a problem with slow clickers. Like myself.

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My guess is, what'll end up happening is they'll make it so the entire group has to choose to skip the cutscenes before they can move on. Which can be a problem with slow clickers. Like myself.

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What if they are going to change all the cutscenes in there to not clickable too?

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

Maybe those speedrunners are thinking too much high of themselves and that without them, the game will die. Let's see when patch goes out for a reality check.

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People always think of themselves in this game, and that want they want the majority wants. People often forget the forums are only reflective of a small portion of the actual player base.
Lets see how the rewards change first perhaps...

They're already going to make them not clickable. A ...compromise, would be to make it so the entire group has to skip before it'll skip. meaning one person could hold up the show if they wanted to. Also thinking about it, with this new change, will the dialouge be set as far as how fast it can be read, or can people spam clicking through it to get through faster? Lord knows nero will NOT shut up.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Why should we queue it? Why would someone be selfish to say that they wont run a content anymore that could take hours to complete?

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This is a problem beyond msq though. 50/60 queue currently offers zero incentive for many people to do it, because we have no relic making verity and poetic tomes near worthless. Stuff like Guildhests are worthless too for 70s. A lot of the reason people did older content was really the relic, since you needed an absurd level of tomes to complete it. They are going to need to look at older content overall and evaluate it, because this just increases as time passes. I see ppl in PF looking for stuff like antitower or other basic things cause they wait so long in individual queue.

"My suggestion is to just remove it from duty roulette entirely and change it into a personal instance, allowing the player better interaction with the duty." This is a great idea. So many times I've wished this was the case because left behind, cursed at, kicked, is no fun to try to watch cut scenes. I would love to go back and actually see them without the hostile attached to it. This would be great.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Lets see how the rewards change first perhaps...

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Unless they sneak in an exp increase from doing the instance, this is the only change to the rewards:
https://i.imgur.com/RIvqfd2.png

Cutscenes could be moved and redone to fit before and after the queue, not during the instance itself. Newbies enjoy at their leisure and veterans don't have to watch anything. Even when I was a newbie with people telling me to watch, I thought it was unfun. I would be casting on a tank surrounded by AOE markers and then get yanked into a cutscene about, of all things, a spotlight turning off.

Or, yeah, make it a solo instance. Both from a gameplay and a storytelling perspective, these dungeons are just strange.

Sorry SE, 200 Poetics isn't near enough to get me to run this roulette. Unless a massive EXP boost is not being mentioned, count me out of these dungeons.

I think Mentor Roulette will be picking up the slack and dumping 7 mentors into the instances so 1 sprout can run it after they wait an hour to get in. If that's not frustrating, I don't know what is. I might have to stay away from BOTH roulettes now.

As a new player to the game, the first run of Ultimate weapon I watched the first cut scene and was totally lost. The group had moved so fast I didn't get it right, mostly my fault for not paying attention. Second time I had most cut scenes done and completed the run. I definitely do not want to watch all of them again over and over. Wouldn't a better solution be to have the option to watch them at the end, sort of a recap deal? Heck almost everything in life is a rerun anyway. Being forced to do anything like this in a game is kind of resentful to me, but then again I have always been an independent Rebel.