Square should make this a disclaimer each time someone picks a roulette.
No, they're right. If it bothers you that much, go do another roulette. Need tomes? Do the Ivalice raids or spam AV. Need XP? Deep Dungeons, beast tribes, any other roulette will get you a lot of XP. The whole reason those dungeons have such a large XP and irregular tomestone reward is because they have take longer than other dungeons due to unskippable cutscenes.
Yeah, you don't need to be in the same room... but you do need to let the whole thing play. You don't tell the kids "you can watch it but I'm fast-forwarding over all the action scenes and some of the talking so the running time is shorter for all of us". That's what you're doing from the newbie's perspective if you want to leave them watching the cutscenes while you press on with the dungeon.
Praetorium is the dungeon where you leave the cutscenes running while you walk away and do other stuff, and only come back every so often for the gameplay segments. It's not ideal, but we're stuck with it because people couldn't self-regulate and wait on the occasions where someone was actually new and watching the cutscenes. Now we have to wait every time.
It sounds like your friend already wasn't enjoying the game even before she reached Castrum and Praetorium if you were having to listen to her complaints all the way from level 1 to level 50. Being unable to skip the cutscenes merely became the excuse to quit.
This is a heavily story focused game. If someone doesn't care about the story, it's not the game for them. There are plenty of other games out there without a story focus, or with a story that they may enjoy more.
And it's not sad that it has to be a roulette. It's a good thing that it's a roulette. Roulettes are totally optional and don't offer unique bonus rewards for participating. If you don't like the roulette, you have other ways of getting those same rewards.
While its not perfect, its stil the best solution they wanted to do (as they wont make it a solo/4-man duty any time soon...)
Yes not everyone cares for the story and my persolan though about that is, sry but its the wrong game then. But even if i take a more neutral stance - you can ignore he story and fight afterwards - ppl who do care about it will miss both as they try to watch it and miss all fights, get lost, etc...
Imo they should have locked all doors in there so we have to kill all mobs but welp >_>
And you dont need to do THIS roulett ever again, especially a new player gets such absurd exp that he'll outlevel the curret story by at least some levels.
(which imo is a huge mistake as it leads ppl way too fast towards engame...)
Now, if they'd just make it so you didn't have to suffer through the cutscenes if you've seen them already. In this mode you get grouped only with players who won't see them either.
To reduce Q times for new players, offer an increased reward for experienced players if they choose to run it with new players and see the cutscenes again. Perhaps one extra tomestone if you do it the long way.