Option to re-lock duties

Once you have a duty unlocked in the game you have access to it forever moving forward, and there's no option to disable something you don't want unlocked other than to not unlock it in the first place, leading to situations where it's advantageous to not unlock certain pieces of content- in the olden times this was true of Expert dungeons like Pharos Sirius, but now we have people with only access to the Crystal Tower series of 24-man raids or only Alexander's Arm and Cuff of the Father, leading to disproportionately high representation of them in otherwise random roulettes (among other factors- someone queuing for alliance raid roulette with a job between 50 to 59 inexorably brings 23 others into a level 50 raid just because of how it works).

That's kind of dissonant, isn't it?

My proposal is that you should be able to *re-*lock duties after completion to prevent them from appearing in your roulette, under the following provisions:

1) solo queue only, and of course does not function for mentor or MSQ roulettes
2) it still needs to be a roulette, so you can't lock all but one duty, or lock all but Syrcus Tower and Void Ark then queue as a level 55 samurai to ensure Syrcus
3) using the duty finder option to only select from a curated list of duties slashes EXP and tomestones gained from the roulette down by 20%, to 80% of their normal value, and prevents the receipt of adventurer in need bonuses

This way everyone wins. Taking only the example of alliance raid roulette, anyone who doesn't want to do crystal tower doesn't need to do crystal tower while still enjoying the benefits of their roulette, and those who only want LotA/Syrcus can simply enable those and run a roulette with other like-minded individuals. It has side benefits for other content, too, while the 20% penalty to rewards keeps it from being too appealing for general use. Pre-made parties of course still need to actually do said roulette to its full extent.

Q) "But roulettes are to fill queues!"
A) Yes, but the disproportionate skewing of said roulettes due to level differences or iLv sync cheese means that they're not sufficiently filling the role of filling said queues. Allowing the option for skilled players to 'opt out' of easy content like LotA/Syrcus in exchange for higher level duties will put more players where they're actually needed. (They should also raise the base EXP for non-Crystal Tower raids and trials/normal raids with a longer run time, but that's a separate topic.)

Q) "But what if everyone blocks X dungeon?"
A) The 20% penalty to rewards gained would keep it from being an appealing option to all players, and obscure duties would still fill with help from partial pre-made parties or mentor roulette. As it is, this is a reversal of the current problem we have, where it's fine that you never get Kugane Ohashi or The Great Hunt in roulette since not everyone has them unlocked.

Thoughts?

Hard to say if it's a good idea or not odds are people will opt to lock the hardest content in a roulette like if I min/max and had to choose 3 it would probably be World of Darkness, Orbonne Monastery and Dun Scaith or for trials would simply block all of the newer ones. Since mentor roulette exists it should prove possible to create a roulette for varied group compositions specifically for the less desirable content from a min/max perspective that might be the move provided more varied gameplay to veterans and shorter queues to beginners unlocking stuff but it would need a solid reward structure and likely some minor but regular dev resources to adjust the pool around player habits.

The funny thing about this proposal is that it won't actually destroy sync cheese, because cheesers are already limiting themselves to 2 duties (LotA and Circus Tower) for 100% of the usual rewards and enabling players to "re-lock" duties in exchange for a 20% penalty won't do anything to prevent that. Players like me, on the other hand, who would willingly re-lock LotA and Circus because we actually WANT non-braindead content, would be taking a 20% PENALTY to our rewards in exchange for a HARDER Alliance Raid roulette experience overall.

I'm on board with the direction you want to go but this is NOT the way to get there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ArchlordPie

The funny thing about this proposal is that it won't actually destroy sync cheese, because cheesers are already limiting themselves to 2 duties (LotA and Circus Tower) for 100% of the usual rewards and enabling players to "re-lock" duties in exchange for a 20% penalty won't do anything to prevent that. Players like me, on the other hand, who would willingly re-lock LotA and Circus because we actually WANT non-braindead content, would be taking a 20% PENALTY to our rewards in exchange for a HARDER Alliance Raid roulette experience overall.

I'm on board with the direction you want to go but this is NOT the way to get there.

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Yeah, my whole thing is like, in the grand scheme of thing 20% really isn't THAT much, but I guess it goes hand in hand with 'duties with more difficult mechanics or with a longer run time should give more EXP from roulette too,' the way you currently get more from Praetorium than from Castrum, or in leveling roulette the 4-man ARR trials give less proportionately than getting a dungeon. If they made that change too, and so you got higher EXP for Dun Scaith or Orbonne than you did for LotA or Syrcus, I'd gladly take the 20% off of the higher intrinsic amount just to actually get to do gameplay in my roulette.

As it stands, I just kinda don't do alliance raid roulette since the risk of getting LotA/Syrcus is too high as to be unacceptable, so me and others like me just don't contribute to the goal of getting players into those (or any!) duties. I don't think the 20% penalty is all THAT important, but it kind of feels like the thing where there should be a limitation of some kind to its use.

I've been having issues filling some lesser run content lately, and I wouldn't want this at all. It's already hard enough to get into certain duties that you can see over an hour on some queues. I'd rather not let people make those even longer just because they want to pick and choose only the easier or faster duties.