Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

I understand why SE made this change. It's an awful experience first time when you're watching cutscenes, everyone else runs ahead....and you get lost and actually miss out on combat.

However I disagree with this change as it's going to make players far less inclined to do it as being unable to skip cutscenes will make the instance extremely long. The queue times for it are already long as it is. They will become even longer. This is going to be a disaster.

SE should just change it to a solo duty. That would be the best fix, if they intend to keep all the cutscenes intact.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

The cutscenes do not make much sense unless you watch them in conjunction with actually playing through the whole thing.

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No they don't but the fact of the matter is people who run this daily for experience don't want to watch these cutscenes every day and spend an excessive amount of time doing the duty. That's a fact and it isn't going to change because some appear to have altruistic reasons about letting new people enjoy the cutscenes without interruption.

In my FC circle the consensus is that people are simply not going to run main scenario roulette anymore and queue times which were abysmal before will only get worse for new leafs trying to finish story. I hope we don't but probably will get threads soon with sprouts complaining they can't finish story because the duty won't pop and to please fix it.

I also suspect that SE will get the numbers pretty quickly as to how the roulette is performing and have to make adjustments accordingly.

It's somewhat unique here in that in no other MMO I've played is instance progress barred by stand in place cutscenes. Newbies in other MMOs might miss out on gawping at all the scenery in dungeons - and some of it is great - but it's nothing like missing main visual and audio elements that are part of the story they came to play out.

So as newbies we can either - as I do - refuse to be a burden or allow themselves to be carried and so we willingly escape out of every cutscene as fast as possible not to hold up the group, or we can stop for the cutscenes to actually get the flavor of the story and experience then come out of the cs having been completely left behind by the group. I miss not having seen those cutscenes in the context of the duty I'm running. There has to be a better solution, but I'll continue to skip cutscenes and continue to refuse to be carried by other players while I watch them.

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Originally Posted by Hiply

It's somewhat unique here in that in no other MMO I've played is instance progress barred by stand in place cutscenes.

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It's unique here in that even in this one, these are the only two dungeons that do it. They learned their lesson pretty quickly on why it's a bad idea.

My issue is not so much with not being able to skip the scenes (it is annoying to have to wait but if the reward is worth it then whatever). The problem I have is that the combination of these scenes across the whole instance is like watching a short episode of a show on Netflix. It could be your favorite show in the world but having to watch one of two episodes on repeat every day is going to make you hate it fast. That assumes you do the roulette every day like I used to. I will still queue up every now and then but for sure not daily.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

It's unique here in that even in this one, these are the only two dungeons that do it. They learned their lesson pretty quickly on why it's a bad idea.

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I think you missed my point; there is a lot of story and wonder (for lack of a better word...don't we all remember when whatever mmo we were playing still had that new car smell and everything was new and exciting to see?) for us newcomers hiding in all the cutscenes, and that story is a large part of why many of us are here. If it's an MSQ duty and I skip a (all) cutscene I've missed out on something and going to the fc house or youtube to see it out of context instead of in the stream of what I'm doing is not remotely the same thing. It's something a new player can't get back, ever.

I esc out of them because I refuse to hold up a group, but don't say those are the only dungeons it happens in. Those are the only dungeons that are being changed to make it impossible - there's a difference.

Without a doubt, this will absolutely hurt those that they aim to help the most: the *actual* new players.

I will continue to run my friends and their pre-MSQ alts through this just for the clear to advance the story, but that's probably the extent of my involvement with this set of content anymore. I just won't have the time and it will grate my nerves to do it if these changes are implemented.

And for anyone who says that "these forums are a vocal minority"... no, unfortunately they're not. At least not on this issue. Anyone that I talk to outside of these forums has said the same thing; either 'thank god I'm past that stage' or 'I will just run my pals through it when they need it.' And they sincerely agree that rewards will have to be upped significantly to make even the occasional PUG-run worthwhile. 80 more poetics is a fart in the wind at this point.

New players often don't have these types of support networks and friends to lean on, so they will be stuck with either the impossibly long queue or relying on help from a very gracious stranger... if they are lucky enough to find either of these things after today.

You know, if the MSQ ro would guarantee 1 complete level up, no matter what level you're currently at, I wouldn't mind sitting through the cutscenes daily for an hour.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

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Me and my friend was talking about how ages makes us see different things. Like if i would be playing this game for the first time now and see everybody else running away like way before i was out of cs and i see ppl not complaining (even if they complain i would give a fuck) i would be "oh this how ppl do this now, okey " i will probably ask some questions if im lost but i would just go and explore it alone. And que up again if i see good chunk of xp and tomes which i can use.

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Originally Posted by Akor

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If newb complain about why do we not wait for him im just going tell him this: "dont worry about it, enjoy your cs and besides you will do this dungeon a million times and u will hate it in the end". But bc theres rewards for this trial ppl will do it you cant say that speedrunning is bad. Ppl will speedrun this, even newbs bc they will happy even if the que times for this dungeon 30+mins but they can finish it in 20 mins or less bc everybody speedrunning it and its good search for xp and poe tomes if he needs it. This dungeons should have been fixed by now, but nope.

edit. over 1k -.-

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

Maybe people should learn to be more selfless instead of griping about changes that their own actions basically forced.

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I agree with this entirely.

After loving the story up to that point, my experience with those dungeons nearly killed the whole thing for me. I wanted to participate in the fights, but I also wanted to know what was going on, so I watched the scenes on YouTube. It was not at all the same, and I still found myself struggling to keep up and barely got to do anything because I still had to wait for the scenes to load up anyway since I had never seen them before.

I'm more than happy to que up for MSQ roulette now, if only to keep this from happening to others. Yes, it is an absurd amount of scenes for a group dungeon. But I say if you don't have the time or patience, don't run roulette and just tick the ones you actually like to run. What good is XP if you're going to ruin someone else's experience and aren't having fun, yourself?

People who act all high and mighty in this thread need to seriously chill. No one who's complaining is going to be majorly hurt by this. At all. You don't want us to queue? You seriously want less people going into those dungeons?
Why do you think that roulette was established in the first place? An abundance of good souls to help newbies clear ARR?

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Originally Posted by SleepyPoposa

I agree with this entirely.

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I'm more than happy to que up for MSQ roulette now, if only to keep this from happening to others. Yes, it is an absurd amount of scenes for a group dungeon. But I say if you don't have the time or patience, don't run roulette and just tick the ones you actually like to run. What good is XP if you're going to ruin someone else's experience and aren't having fun, yourself?

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Cool. Do you plan to do MSQ and only MSQ for all of your playtime so that newbies can always get in? And are you gonna make alts on other data centers too to help those sprouts as well? What happens when you're at work/class/asleep?

I have heard that on JP servers they wait on new players watching cutscenes.

So its like on JP servers if you cant wait on new players watching cutsences, don't queue roulette for story dungeons

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Originally Posted by Kuo

I have heard that on JP servers they wait on new players watching cutscenes.

So its like on JP servers if you cant wait on new players watching cutsences, don't queue roulette for story dungeons

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Fine and dandy for Japan, but this is America, Britain, Germany, France, Australia...insert literally any other country here. Just because they do it in Japan, doesn't mean it should be thrust upon the rest of the world.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Fine and dandy for Japan, but this is America, Britain, Germany, France, Australia...insert literally any other country here. Just because they do it in Japan, doesn't mean it should be thrust upon the rest of the world.

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Too bad for us this is a game that was created by Japanese developers who live in Japan... :P

I'm positive they get reports of how we've been playing the game, which is why they're making the change in the first place. But I have to wonder if they understand the fundamental differences between Japan and the west that led to this situation... their choice of solution tells me they don't seem to.

Which is also why we have different servers. The JP players in XI were horrible to do anything with. Always <English><no thanks> or using us to complete trials and then having their blm warp us out before loot could drop. So JP players aren't all squeaky clean as the more jp obsessed make them sound either. It was always JP vs NA/EU in XI because frankly they were jerks to us.

But when you have a worldwide game, cultural considerations have to be taken into account. NA players wont go for this change so it will hurt overall and they need to consider that.

I doubt ppl gonna use as much as before the MSQ roulette, since the incentive for most was the fast/free exp. Maybe if becomes an issue with newbies unable to queue due insufficient players or roles, they'll revert this or go by other solution.

Eh, the problem is that NA players are too used to being bribed to do things now. At some point you have to view things as giving back, but the problem I think is no one even gave forward in the first place. They more or less force players to act as a community through bribes, and people responded by trying to minimize the time needed till they got their shinies. But you can't force people to give forward by locking the cutscenes, and they are having issues with trying to force community actions through reward and punish gameplay.

Kind of the end of the WoW model of solo serverless play, I guess.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Which is also why we have different servers. The JP players in XI were horrible to do anything with. Always <English><no thanks> or using us to complete trials and then having their blm warp us out before loot could drop. So JP players aren't all squeaky clean as the more jp obsessed make them sound either. It was always JP vs NA/EU in XI because frankly they were jerks to us.

But when you have a worldwide game, cultural considerations have to be taken into account. NA players wont go for this change so it will hurt overall and they need to consider that.

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Hell that's why the JPONRY meme came about. My friends who played FFXI have so many stories that are similar...

I cannot believe some people in this thread literally don't have the capacity to realize why this is a bad change. the education system has seriously failed this generation, since it apparently no longer teaches any kind of basic critical thinking to those who need to be taught it.

I wasn't saying this is a bad change because of selfish reasons, i don't even do the MSQ roulette

I'm guessing a lot of the people defending it haven't actually sat through all the cut scenes?
It makes those dungeons take like an hour of waiting for chat bubbles to click through

To incentivize people to do that daily the reward would have to be way over the top incredible.
So we either have 2 incredibly easy dungeons that are way out of whack rewarding or we will have a MSQ block that will be much much worse than currently. Both situations are kind of bad imo

So, they've made it so people who want to do the MSQ and watch the cutscenes won't get forced into "wtfrudoin noob, watch on your own time" parties. People who don't care can partyfinder it and get it out of the way, possibly (in fact very likely) unsynched for extra rushy goodness.

I can see this being ... interesting.

It's also a positive that people who actively want to help others have a definite "you should do this roulette" where they KNOW the people want the help.

I cannot WAIT to revisit this in a month.

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Originally Posted by Sylvina

I cannot believe some people in this thread literally don't have the capacity to realize why this is a bad change. the education system has seriously failed this generation, since it apparently no longer teaches any kind of basic critical thinking to those who need to be taught it.

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Nice to see some people were taught to understand what a forum is.... or that people not agreeing with them isn't a sign of poor intelligence, nor that "Their Opinion" is always the correct and smart opinion. I can't understand the sub set of people who think they are always better and "right". Anyways....

I accept the change, it is a result of people doing a roulette for "main story", and telling people to skip the "main story", they brought this on themselves. I will still do the roulette, Never had an issue waiting a few minutes... considering I chose to do the "Main Story" roulette.
If anything it is a long overdue justice to those who don't even understand the roulette was made to help the new players not them.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

So, they've made it so people who want to do the MSQ and watch the cutscenes won't get forced into "wtfrudoin noob, watch on your own time" parties. People who don't care can partyfinder it and get it out of the way, possibly (in fact very likely) unsynched for extra rushy goodness.

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I've done a ton of MSQ roulette that I'm legit sick of Castrum and prae.

The discussion of cutscenes have been brought up twice, neither time being the new person, but a really irritated vet that thought us running ahead of the newbie was on the same levels of harassment as threatening their life.

So I mean, people get different experiences, but... based on mine, letting people watch cutscenes isn't an issue. Moreso people defending what doesn't need to be defended is.

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Originally Posted by Ceallach

Frankly, I love these new changes. It serves people right for just speeding through the dungeons and ruining the experience for the new players. Just the other day, my free company and I queued up with a total of seven people, and our eighth was a new player. We granted him the full experience instead of just speeding through, and he was having the time of his life.

Maybe people should learn to be more selfless instead of griping about changes that their own actions basically forced.

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Yeah...no. I'm not queuing in for a roulette that's gonna take a hour just for 80 more poetics (poetics are kinda stupid anyway at this point) and no real reward for my patience. If they offered vets more like clusters/crystals, grade 6 materia or something worth sitting through all that old crap again then "maybe" I'd give the new msq roulette a try. These new changes? Hell no. Sorry sprouts.

Continued... >_>

When I do roulettes, I want to queue in with a drink and snack at my side while doing my job. Get in, get s**t done, get my reward and gtfo as quick as possible. I do this for all the roulettes and I get them all done in about a hour or so. That's the point of the roulettes. It's meant to be speedrunned.

Honestly, prior to 4.2 msq roulette wasn't bad (rewards could've been a little better) but it was quick and easy with the skippable cutscenes. And yes, I was one of those newbies who got pissed because ppl didn't wait for me to get the cutscenes done and i ended up missing all the major fights in the last arr story dungeons but 2 years later I realize and understand why they did that. I don't want to hold up 7 other ppl when I can just view the scenes in a inn or youtube. I blame se for this more so than them because of se's bad decision to put long cutscenes in dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

I've done a ton of MSQ roulette that I'm legit sick of Castrum and prae.

The discussion of cutscenes have been brought up twice, neither time being the new person, but a really irritated vet that thought us running ahead of the newbie was on the same levels of harassment as threatening their life.

So I mean, people get different experiences, but... based on mine, letting people watch cutscenes isn't an issue. Moreso people defending what doesn't need to be defended is.

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Unarguable point now then right? You're in the queue, you watch the cutscene. You don't want that? PF.

I'm.. not...entirely sure what you're speaking to me about here though. are you talking about this thread? cause.. I'm really sorry if this is rude but I'm NOT reading all of that. I skimmed but it looked like a trash fire.

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Originally Posted by Nihility

I'm guessing a lot of the people defending it haven't actually sat through all the cut scenes?
It makes those dungeons take like an hour of waiting for chat bubbles to click through

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From what I've read, I think they have watched through all the cutscenes. I've seen some people (on the forums and on discord) talk about how they are the pinnacle of white knightiness and queue as groups just to let a newbie go through and watch the cutscenes. It's just that they seem to not be able to understand what will happen when a majority of the people who were running the roulette suddenly stop. And, judging by all the threads about this topic, I'd say they do recognize that most players only run it for quick and easy tomes/xp...they just aren't making the connection.

I really don't mind about this change... the irony is there is probably a butt-load of us (including me) who has done those dungeons 100's of times and NEVER really seen all the cutscenes together. I have waited patiently for others to do it (just have repeat cutscenes off now so don't see them anyway as they had to be skipped originally). This "problem" really is self-inflicted, though. If people weren't demanding others skip cutscenes KNOWING these people are finishing the main story, or kicking them for watching them, that's a bed they made all by themselves.

I suspect after the patch, the MSQ is going to be stuffed with people, old and new, who actually WANT to see the cutscenes in context. And the people that don't, will have to accept what they have been told for many years now - if you don't want to watch the cutscenes (or wait while others do), don't queue for the duty.

I haven't gotten to watch those cutscenes at all so I'm defo going to be one of those people jumping in MSQ roulette to check them out. Finding out whether did they buff the exp bonus along the way too.

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Originally Posted by Sylvina

I cannot believe some people in this thread literally don't have the capacity to realize why this is a bad change. the education system has seriously failed this generation, since it apparently no longer teaches any kind of basic critical thinking to those who need to be taught it.

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That's some quality self-absorption, there.

What this change means is that there will be extraordinary wait times for those needing to complete them. It also means that older players will know exactly what they're getting in to when they queue, and are doing it anyway, meaning a new player is more inclined to get someone who is patient and actually willing to help. And yeah, it sucks for the (maybe?) five people playing the game who actually queue for MSQ roulette on a regular basis, but if you're like me and you run either maybe every year and a half, it's not a quality of life breaker.

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Originally Posted by Sylvina

I cannot believe some people in this thread literally don't have the capacity to realize why this is a bad change. the education system has seriously failed this generation, since it apparently no longer teaches any kind of basic critical thinking to those who need to be taught it.

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Sorry, not understanding why this isn't the right thing to do. Why should any decision maker let two climactic MSQ dungeons in ARR be broken by players who want to farm it for tomes they can gather elsewhere? You mean to say it's better for any new player to have a faster queue to a sh|tty ride than wait it out a bit alone or form a party for a better experience? Two years ago my partner queued two hours for Prae only to get left behind for watching cutscenes. That impression sticks. These dungeons are ARR's main highlights and the devs worked hard providing quality content to make a good impression. And you actually want no one to enjoy MSQ dungeons the way they're intended to be experienced so you can farm poetics. You're free to uninvite yourself from the MSQ roulette party.

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Originally Posted by Jellybums

You mean to say it's better for any new player to have a faster queue to a sh|tty ride than wait it out a bit alone or form a party for a better experience?

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Literally no one is saying the way things are now is alright. Everyone knows those dungeons are broken and cannot be kept the way they are. We simply vehemently disagree with the way SE has chosen to go about it, there's a difference.

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devs worked hard providing quality content to make a good impression.

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Badly designed content is not the fault of the players and no amount of effort invested into development can change how good or bad content actually is. And SE agrees it is badly designed because no other piece of group content in the game after a certain point has cutscenes in the middle of it, heck at some point they moved post-content cutscenes to after you click exit instead of right after the fight (Vault vs. Keeper of the Lake, for one). The problem is fixing this the right way would take too much time and effort they would rather spend on recording trials and Perform for some reason.

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Originally Posted by XiXiQ

I really don't mind about this change... the irony is there is probably a butt-load of us (including me) who has done those dungeons 100's of times and NEVER really seen all the cutscenes together. I have waited patiently for others to do it (just have repeat cutscenes off now so don't see them anyway as they had to be skipped originally).

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And that is what happened to a friend and me. We were so excited to do those dungeons from a story standpoint, everything got ruined because You can see it in the inn anyway and nearly lost all of the fights because of speedrunning. i am one of those who is going to join up in the roulette to experience the full story mode for the first time since the game launched, so... Yeah. The worst thing is, once in the inn you already lost what was happening in there and just don't understand half of the things.

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This "problem" really is self-inflicted, though. If people weren't demanding others skip cutscenes KNOWING these people are finishing the main story, or kicking them for watching them, that's a bed they made all by themselves.

I suspect after the patch, the MSQ is going to be stuffed with people, old and new, who actually WANT to see the cutscenes in context. And the people that don't, will have to accept what they have been told for many years now - if you don't want to watch the cutscenes (or wait while others do), don't queue for the duty.

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It's not the best solution, but i guess no one is gonna admit they brought it up on themselves because of reasons.

I still think they should have made them solo instances. Hopefully the queues don't get too bad for people who need the runs.

This might not be a good fix but short of using the Squadron system to create a 'default' group of adventures for a new player to run the dungeons with, I don't see a fix that won't cost endgame content a couple of dungeons. They would have to do pretty substancial reworks to the dungeons, both story and structure wise, to fit the story in a way where it didn't involve mid dungeon cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Literally no one is saying the way things are now is alright. Everyone knows those dungeons are broken and cannot be kept the way they are. We simply vehemently disagree with the way SE has chosen to go about it, there's a difference.

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Exactly this. Theres a problem with these dungeons of course, but this is literally the stupidest way they could possibly try and "Fix" it.

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Originally Posted by Zhamkyong

It's not the best solution, but i guess no one is gonna admit they brought it up on themselves because of reasons.

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Except most people who are pointing out how flawed this 'fix' is have nothing more to gain from running that dungeon than a bit of poetics and experience. Implying they brought this choice upon themselves hints that it's a punishment for the speedrunners in your view and frankly it's anything but. They just won't run the instance anymore. It's one less daily in a swath of boring old content and more time to do other instances that can be seen as more productive. I find it odd that so many people crowing with praise for this choice seem to see it as a 'take that' to speedrunners or the average player population, when really most of us weren't happy with how things were to begin with. All this change does is ensure that there will be a lot /less/ people queuing for this instance this time around which is going to cause /ANOTHER/ set of problems.

Likewise I have to quirk a brow at people ignoring the fact that SE had several years to fix these instances and has been gone on public record disavowing their design and promising never to implement anything similar again. Yet instead of actually doing the smart thing and solo gating these instances they keep offering the solutions that take the least amount of time to implement, but always cause more problems in the long run. Back when I joined these instances weren't part of a roulette so I was forced to sit through fifty minutes or more of hell per dungeon queue before finally begging people to take me through me. Then to fix those terrible queue times they implemented the roulette, which caused more people to run it but only doubled down on the underlining issues inherent with the instances. Because let's face it if the developers honestly didn't intend those instances to be run fast then they failed in their basic design because that's precisely how it feels they were intended to be. Now we're getting the cutscenes made unskippable and we're right back to a point where the queues are likely going to be hell again. It's asinine that SE keeps taking time to make the cheapest fixes possible when they would solve this entire situation by making Prae and Castrum solo instances instead.

But no that 'takes time' and 'costs money', with the developers having 'better things to do'. If these problems with the instance are so wide spread as this fix is supposed to make me believe then SE /needs/ to actually bite the bullet and do what they should have done years ago. Actually overhaul those dungeons. Because while I empathize with those few who were harassed all SE's actions amount to is a used bandaid that's been given a fancy new varnish to hide all the dead skin cells and puss. It does /nothing/ to solve the problem and only makes me think they're throwing down said bandaid to shut a vocal minority up instead. What are they going to do when people start complaining about the queue times /again/? Add more incentives? It's not going to fix the issue at the rotting heart of these instances that is anything but player driven.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Badly designed content is not the fault of the players and no amount of effort invested into development can change how good or bad content actually is. And SE agrees it is badly designed because no other piece of group content in the game after a certain point has cutscenes in the middle of it, heck at some point they moved post-content cutscenes to after you click exit instead of right after the fight (Vault vs. Keeper of the Lake, for one). The problem is fixing this the right way would take too much time and effort they would rather spend on recording trials and Perform for some reason.

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I for one can't say it's badly designed without even experiencing it in its entirety ever. Same with most everyone, we don't have qualified opinions on them for sure. However, these dungeons don't sound like something I would do on the daily. But if it's a one time thing for everyone and they're essential to the story, they're worth a go. The queue times people are worried about, with a little creativity, they can be improved. Some folks already said their piece on how. At this point we can't all say it's a bad solution when all the host does is stop some guests from ruining the experience for other guests. And we are all guests here, are we not?