Looking for a group for The Praetorium

Hello,

My girlfriend and I are pretty new to FFXIV, though not to MMOs in general. However, the required dungeoning here is new to us, and it was a surprisingly positive experience up until Lv 50.

Unfortunately, though our experience in dealing with the Lv 49 and 50 Full Party instances has been abysmal, with inconsiderate groups who seem intent upon blitzing the content and removing any enjoyment or epicness from it. This was painfully pronounced tonight when we queued for Castrum Meridium, where we were locked out of at least one boss fight and completely unable to watch the cutscenes, which ruined the story aspect of the dungeon entirely.

But there's not much point in just complaining about that, so instead I was hoping to put together a premade group for The Praetorium some evening this week. I'm totally fine with other first-time players or experienced players, basically anyone interested in coming as long as they wouldn't mind not speed pulling and waiting for the cutscenes to finish.

I play Paladin, my girlfriend plays Summoner, and I feel we're both competent players at the very least. While I'd prefer to get a full group together for this, at least a second tank and a healer would likely be enough to stop it from turning into the kind of experience we had tonight. If you're interested in joining or just kind enough to help, feel free to contact me here or in game (Zaekerial Stormfury) and I'll try to find a day and time that works for everyone.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and have a good evening!

Feeling this so much. During my and my boyfriend's first Castrum Meridianum run, we introduced ourselves as first-timers, so did another player, but the other five went right into speed-run mode. I know people want their tomestones and speed runs can be fun, but it's the end of the story. It's not fun for the new folks.

If you see me on, Rohiaux Hellatrond, I'd be down to go with y'all as a bard or scholar!

Oh, hey, you're on Faerie! I'll gladly help, and I can get my wife to help too :) There are other people in my FC who would also totally help and who understand the importance of watching cutscenes to new players, because it's what we wanted to do when we ran it too.

DF (the Duty Finder) is unfortunately terrible for those dungeons if you want to watch the cutscenes. People who have already finished the story are strongly encouraged to run a roulette with a daily bonus that is just those two dungeons. It gives an immense amount of bonus experience, which incentivizes people to run them... but does not incentivize them to be nice about it. Most of us have run the dungeons several dozen times and don't want to make our runs any longer than they have to be, which is fine when everyone has run the dungeon, and extremely unfortunate when someone has not. I'm totally willing to slow down and wait when there's a new player, but I'm, sadly, in the minority here.

So, look us up! I'm Neri Feralheart, and she's Jakobai Gorolai. I won't be on tonight until around 8pm EST, but she might be on before then. I think she has a meeting at 8:30pm EST tonight, so we might not both be around at the same time, but if you're running tonight, you should be able to get at least one of us! Either way, I'll look you guys up next time I'm on, even if I don't make your Praetorium run. :)

Also, if you're not familiar with it, this game has a "Party Finder" (PF) feature where you can organize a pre-formed party to run a dungeon. You can say in the PF description that you want to watch all the cutscenes (there's even a check-box for it).

I can completely understand. I run a social guild so I see first hand the frustration with CM and Prae. One thing we did to offset it is to do a event called Movie Night. Where we as a group run new players through this new content, watch all the cutscenes on the way. If you still need help by time I can get on (this weekend due to situations) I can offer you some help. I will send you a message at that time.

Hey, thanks for the replies! I very much appreciate them, and your interest.

So, tonight probably isn't the best time for Seraphia, and tomorrow night might be difficult for me--I could potentially do it early or late, but if Friday night would work for the rest of you, I think we should both be available then, after maybe 8:30 EST. She's Seraphia Dawnrose, if anyone needs to contact us and I'm not on/available.

I do know about the party finder, though I've yet to use it myself--it seems like a good feature, but it seemed safer to post here first, just testing the waters as it were, before trying it there. Maybe I'll put it up in that for a little bit on the night we try to run this?

I ran into the same issues when I cleared it just a couple months after launch, so I definitely know how you're feeling, since it's even more of a blitz now. For my part, I wandered around alone and died, then just waited for the rest of the party to clear it. XD

Party Finder is a good bet to find people, but I'll probably be around if you need another DPS/healer/bad tank. Name's Keila Loha.

Honestly, one thing that would help this situation is if the Aetherochemical Research Facility (3.0's equivalent of the Castrum/Praetorium as far as story goes) was added to the roulette. As far as I know, it isn't currently part of any roulette. Heck, move Keeper of the Lake and Snowcloak there too - those are both post-50 dungeons you have to complete for the main story, after all, and even though Snowcloak isn't really plot heavy, Keeper definitely is.

I guess they aren't doing that because those are 4-person dungeons, not 8? Still, one of the issues with Castrum/Praetorium is that with only two dungeons in the Main Story roulette, people get bored of them really fast. I feel like randoms would be more amenable to going slower if they didn't run each dungeon once every other day for over a year and had some more variety.


The vast majority of my runs of Castrum/Praetorium either has no bonus message (meaning there are no new players) and we're all just there for the roulette, so we see just how fast we can blitz through the content we're all kinda bored of for the daily bonus of ~200,000 exp (its level-scaled, but amounts to like, 5% of a level at 59, which is a lot). In the few that do have new players, a notable number of those new players volunteer to skip cutscenes or tell us it's fine to blitz if we don't care they're locked out of boss fights - they can just watch the cutscenes one after the other while we do all the fighting. If there's someone new, I always ask, ready to bully the other players into waiting before each boss if the new player wants to watch the cutscenes. But, since most decline, the few who don't get heavily discriminated against, which is bad. :(


Oh, and I'm not saying you should skip cutscenes if you don't want to (you shouldn't!) but it's good to know that you missed any story or quest cutscenes, or just want to rewatch any of those, you can do so from an inn room. The item that lets you playback the scenes is called "The Unending Journey."