Suggestions: Remove Castrum and The Praetorium from the Mentor Roulettes

Heres some reasons:

• They already have main scenario roulette for these two dungeons.
  
• A 35-40 minutes brain dead instance with cutscenes is way too long, I rather spend a full hour in an extreme fight teaching to 7 sprouts.
  
• The bonus reward for Praetorium/Castrum in the mentor roulette is way too small for this, it should at least match the main scenario compensation (gils) if you get the same dungeons.

I already did Praetorium + Castrum 5 TIMES today that's about 2 hours of my gameplay for 4 points towards the mount achievement. I think that's not reasonable, maybe make sure the same duties cannot be rolled multiple times in a row? If you can tract the contact list with the people and instances, surely that can be used to not send people to the same instances over and over, that way its keeping the experience fresh and entertaining.


Also.

I think the mentor roulette could benefit from a special point system where long/hard instance would value more point toward the total completion amount for the achievement, something like.

Guildheist: 1 point.
Hard mode trial / 8 men easy raid : 1 point.
Dongeons: 2 points.
24 men raid: 3 points.
Extreme Fights: 3 points.
Castrum/Praetorium 3 to 5 points. (Or remove them from the mentor roulette because thats way too long)

Edit:

Also I noted a lot of new tanks in extreme fights (Ramuh, Shiva) with lvl 35/45 weapons that cant hold aggro.. or do any damage, They got the ilvl130 armors to compensate the Item level requirement but they are virtually useless in the content because they do no damage. I don't know how that happened, their only answers were "I don't have anything better". How can we respond to that? They came unprepared to extreme trials, its like coming armed with a spaghetti noodle in a gun fight. So maybe have a gear check for sprout so all their pieces are above the min ilvl?.

Also also maybe have a special check for sprouts to have their equipment condition above 50% in order to queue a duty, I had a scholar with broken equipment that couldnt survive any form of aoes from a boss.

Better yet, rework them into actual 4-man dungeons (and a normal trial for UW) and fit the story in around them. It can't be THAT hard to do right?

I 100% agree that the DR:MS duties should not also be in DR:Mentor because DR:Mentor is just not necessary to fill those duties when DR:MS is available, and those duties are only worth doing in DR:MS because DR:MS gives an absurd bonus for doing them.

But the real problem isn't that the DR:MS duties are in DR:Mentor. The problem is how Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium are designed. Removing them from DR:Mentor needs to happen, but it would just a bandaid over a compound fracture. The dev team needs to devote some time to converting the 2.0 finale to to be the same format as the rest of the expansion finales so that there isn't a need for DR:MS either, and newbies' experiences aren't ruined by the format of the 2.0 finale.

I agree with what you are saying. Personally do not care about the point system changing unless I'm continued to be forced to get almost nothing but MSQ in mentor roulette, in which case I would agree that adopting a new system would provide some incentive to actually queue for this roulette. The gear thing is also a reasonable concern, how can I mentor a person who dies instantly outside of "leave the instance and do not make the same mistake again"? At least let me repair their gear for them in the instance, if nothing else. Having a min ilvl req that checks the weapon specifically would also help as you mentioned.

I queued for mentor roulette actually wanting to do some ex primal or savage content or anything that isn't me tabbing out during cutscenes.
Why have them be part of mentor roulette when these duties have never, even back in later ARR (people do more damage and have even better gear now typically, even on their first time) from what I remember, been a problem?

Like I did the MSQ roulette duties a lot back before the unskippable cutscenes, and a decent amount after for the relics and for mogtomes, none of those times was any instruction required due to how overgeared everyone was.
If I'm going to be put in MSQ from mentor roulette, AND I'm not going to get any meaningful incentive to do it, at least have it be with 7 new people or something so I can pretend like my being there matter.

edit: I got into castrum again. ONE new player.

Unfortunately, Mentor Roulette is treated as a "fill in the needed role" more then "these people need advice or help with mechanics".

I whole heartedly agree for Castrum and Praetorium to be removed from MR (and this is coming from a person who is done with the Astrope grid; I simply just like to help out). Out of the many times I've done them over the years I can only say, perhaps, two hand-fulls of people needed help. Most of those where people who had gotten lost, but now that we have teleports to boss rooms there is even less reason to worry about it.

At least when I do an EX, even if it goes into a full lock-out, I feel like my time isn't completely wasted. I may have parted some mechanic and role tips that they will hopefully pass on to the next group. But at the end of the day MS Dungeons give me nothing. There is no EXP to be had, or any drops for crafting, or even glamour. May be one can argue the poetics could be good for something, but for someone like me no longer in need of older items or working on old relics, poetics are useless.

As for the purposed point system, I don't have a strong opinion of it one way or the other. In theory it seems fairly sound to have a "weight" system to duty types. As for players being under-geared...well that is a song as old as time. I still vividly remember a DRK back in SB wearing nothing but unaugmented Shire, one accessory from Bardam's Mettle, and a crafted great sword...in Castrum Albania. I wonder if there is a way where they would take the individual item's level into a account instead of the total score. Perhaps that would cause some sort of trouble though with persons unable to advance through MSQ...

I was really surprised when i got that the first time, but beared with it, next time ill just leave.

I'd rather wipe my ass off on some HW trial than sitting through cutscenes for 45 minutes again.