Castrum Meridianum is ruined.

I only got FFXIV a month before Stormblood, really enjoying the classes, dungeons and setting.

Until Castrum Meridianum.

Now I'm wondering if there's any point to me continuing.

I entered CM for the very first time, only to be left alone at the start point because the entire party is speedrunning it. I have no idea where to go and by the time I find where the party had gone, I'm locked out of the first fight. So I sit and watch for the couple of minutes it takes the rest of the party to demolish the mobs. I also have to skip all the cutscenes because, hell, I'll miss where the rest of the party goes next. Down the disposal chute we go and the tanks then pull everything and kite them to I don't-even-know-where. At which point the party wipes.

And I get the blame. "Stupid SMN, learn the ***king instance." "This is a speedrun, keep up or get out." So I got out.

Until now, I had thought that the FFXIV community was great. Obviously, it's little better than most other MMOs.

This is a well known and well covered issue. The last two instances(this one and praetorium to follow) from the ARR storyline are very cutscene intensive. Like seriously close to 30 mins worth of in-dungeon cutscene between the two. Most of the people running it are doing so via the main-scenario roulette, and have run the instances hundreds of times. They dont want to wait for a new person to watch said cutscenes, they just want to be done and claim their currency. And them blaming you for a wipe is total BS. The dungeons can be completed with 2 or 3 people missing, so your not being there isnt why they failed. It also sounds like they were abusive, which you could have reported them for.

So thats the problem, whats the solution? You have two easy choices. One, grab a friend or two from your FC or a LS and run the dungeon unsynced. This would mean you dont get any exp, but 1 or 2 level 60-70 people can easily carry you through the entire dungeon giving you time to watch the cutscenes and still participate in the fights. Option two, instead of the duty finder use the party finder. This lets you pre-form a group of like-minded people to run content(dungeons, trials, raids, whatever). Set up a PF for castrum and specify that you want to watch cutscenes and participate in the fights. Since this is your storyline clear, anyone who helps you will get a bonus for doing so(extra exp and tomes plus a khloe bonus point - they already know this). By setting up in PF you set the expectation up front, so youll get people who want to help and you dont get any of those "This is a speed run, keep up or quit" idiots.

And while this is no comfort now as you are still in the middle of the problem, there is good news. The devs learned from the problem this caused. None of the dungeons in your future beyond these two share this design. They get any "extra" cutscenes out of the way either before you que to go inside, or after the dungeon is clear. The pattern youll(mostly) see going forward is intro fly-through style cutscene, final boss appears cutscene, and good job we won lets pose cutscene. So best of luck, and i hope you stick it out. The story keeps getting better, there are some killer dungeons ahead of where youre at now, and the classes keep evolving over time.

The vast majority of groups should have no issue with you watching cutscenes while they run the rest of the dungeon. Most people won't even talk. Just don't ask, or expect, anyone to wait for you.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Hesperus

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This was the first time, and last time SE did this. You won't ever have to deal with cutscenes in a dungeon again you finish those two.

Just a heads up on cutscenes like this too, you can skip the initial playing of scene during the main story quest line so you can keep up with the group and then later go to an inn and get a room and then use the journal in room to look up the quest and rewatch the scene at anytime once it's been played the first time and yes skipping it qualifies it as played before.

Thank you all for your support and advice. I'm glad to see that it was just that one incident, not all future game content.

+1 Faith in Hyur/Elezen/Lalafell/Miqo'te/Roegadyn/Au Ra restored.

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Originally Posted by Allegresse

Cutscenes

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A followup on this one, for that particular dungeon: I personally missed out on the magitek part, since I was new and didn't know what was going on myself. Even though I skipped cutscenes to keep up, I fell behind at that point, because, wasn't aware of that one little thing I needed to do to mount up. So, having missed that little scene, that one didn't show up at the inn for me.

(and then after being left behind, someone called in chat for ARC [me] to pull the next boss that clears the LB gauge, without recognizing that I wasn't even close to the boss [and I never would've known to use the LB to pull anyway])

I get that people just want it done and all, but at least recognize when you've got a sprout that maybe hasn't run it a hundred time before.

They WIPED on a speedrun and tried to blame the new guy? Seriously? What total idiots. Obviously they shouldn't have been speedrunning it since they couldn't handle it.

As others have said, not everyone is like this and SE learned from their mistake on these two dungeons.

This is something I dread for any new player. As explained above, those two dungeons (Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium) are cutscene-heavy, but also part of a roulette that gives people tomestones, which is an endgame form of currency. As such, a lot of people don't care about the new guys, and just do it for their own profit, even though that roulette's purpose of existence was precisely to help new players get into those dungeons (rather than having endless queues since the amount of new players doing those dungeons is low). I find that deplorable, especially the fact that it is not against the rules to leave the new player behind. How about a rule of basic courtesy and common sense? Anyway...

Square-Enix got word of the fact that a cutscene-heavy dungeon is not a good idea, and never did that again. However, they never changed those, so we are stuck with this system. It sucks. I also experienced that my first time. Here's my advice (as mentioned by others): start a party finder for that dungeon, where you explicitly state that you will watch cutscenes and want people to wait for you. That way, you can get the full experience of the dungeon. Additionally, you may even have another new player or two who desire the same thing as you!

I wish you the best of luck, my friend.

Sorry to hear you met a bunch of idiots. I second the recommendation to use Party Finder; you'll find help-focused people and also people who are a bit sad they never got to run the dungeon at the correct speed, and you can put together a nice retro group to enjoy the dungeons at the correct pace if you write a good Party Finder description. I regularly join them just to help out because it's nice watching people clear the big fights.

They're also a very nice challenge minimum item level/undersized if you take a few people less than the recommended eight, incidentally :D