Crystal Tower queue times are just awful still.

Hit my limit at 177 minutes before ragequitting out of party finder. How about you guys? I know it's worse than what I've seen.

I'm a little frustrated at either options at this point. One is that duty finder is broken. One is that we can't scrape up 24 people across all servers on NA prime time who want to do this blasted dungeon. Or both.

Something needs to be done about both.

edit: My latest experiment.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps087fee3b.png

Crystal Tower Queue time is pretty crazy. I understand why, There just isn't enough incentive to still do CT. I tried two times today on MNK said screw it hopped on PLD and still took around 10mins. Crystal Tower Myth should have been 250 per run. People just don't want to deal with the crap. First run didn't even finish KB cause the DPS sucked, So many people at the minimum for ilvl just to spirit bond. Last run wasn't so bad, but still had some people messing up here and there.

I think the only way to fix crystal tower would be to increase myth reward to 250, Or take out Spirit Bonding in Crystal Tower.

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Originally Posted by Fatestorm

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps087fee3b.png

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Over 9 hours! I think you should log out of the game and try again. I once waited like 65mins for a 15min wait, logged out/in and I was in within 5 mins.

If you're queing up solo it's not that it can't find 24 people, it's that it can't find 6 tanks who want to go in for each set of 12 dps(there's a lot more dps than tanks queing so it takes forever, not really anything to be fixed here). Also DF does not match you with all na servers just your data center(Aether in your case)

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Originally Posted by Archulak

If you're queing up solo it's not that it can't find 24 people, it's that it can't find 6 tanks who want to go in for each set of 12 dps(there's a lot more dps than tanks queing so it takes forever, not really anything to be fixed here). Also DF does not match you with all na servers just your data center(Aether in your case)

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^

I don't think I've ever had to sit through 3hr queue times on Primal servers. Average is 30min... MAYBE 1hr, depending on day and offtimes.

I went to queue up for a CT a few hours ago, first as BLM, average wait time 30 minutes. Quit that, changed to WHM and tried again, average wait time 8 minutes. Quit that, change to WAR, average wait time less than 5 minutes, took about 1½ minutes.

Level a tank, level a healer. CT doesn't take top gear, you'll do fine in mostly darklight as long as you know the mechanics and what you're doing.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

^

I don't think I've ever had to sit through 3hr queue times on Primal servers. Average is 30min... MAYBE 1hr, depending on day and offtimes.

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Hell, I'm on Aether and I've been in queue for about 45 minutes as a tank. Granted, that was primarily due to commencement roulettes. 23/24 ready.....wait five minutes, ding, 22/24 ready, wait five minutes....

Granted, I haven't queued since I finally got the boots from CT to have the full(minus head) outfit. Tired of dealing with the idiots in it. Specifically the ones who act like asses and/or start pulls without being sure everyone's ready or understands the fight. Newbies to CT I haven't the slightest problem with as long as they listen to instructions.

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

I went to queue up for a CT a few hours ago, first as BLM, average wait time 30 minutes. Quit that, changed to WHM and tried again, average wait time 8 minutes. Quit that, change to WAR, average wait time less than 5 minutes, took about 1½ minutes.

Level a tank, level a healer. CT doesn't take top gear, you'll do fine in mostly darklight as long as you know the mechanics and what you're doing.

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Pfft, I did fine as a WAR in my AF gear, may have gotten my zenith already, and mostly green ilvl 55 accessories.

Editing to conserve posts:

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

CT is much better since 2.28, end game players are going in for myth tomes, so it's not just fresh 50's that have no clue anymore.

Weapon in actuality is about half your ilvl, even though the game only counts it as 2/13. Body and pants are also proportionality higher than the rest of the gear, with those 3 at ilvl70+ you will have an easy time with 45-50 gear in the rest of the slots.

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I'm well aware of how strong/important one's weapon is compared to the rest of the gear, that said. My upgrade path after hitting 50 was pretty much the following: Wearing AF gear -> Buy ilvl 55 accessories -> Got a green dungeon helm -> Got Legs, Gloves, Body(In that order IIRC) from CT, bought Myth Belt, accidentally bought PLD Myth Head....In short, I pretty much skipped Darklight and went straight to tome/CT gear.

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Originally Posted by Enepttastic

Granted, I haven't queued since I finally got the boots from CT to have the full(minus head) outfit. Tired of dealing with the idiots in it. Specifically the ones who act like asses and/or start pulls without being sure everyone's ready or understands the fight. Newbies to CT I haven't the slightest problem with as long as they listen to instructions.

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CT is much better since 2.28, end game players are going in for myth tomes, so it's not just fresh 50's that have no clue anymore.

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Originally Posted by Enepttastic

Pfft, I did fine as a WAR in my AF gear, may have gotten my zenith already, and mostly green ilvl 55 accessories.

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Weapon in actuality is about half your ilvl, even though the game only counts it as 2/13. Body and pants are also proportionality higher than the rest of the gear, with those 3 at ilvl70+ you will have an easy time with 45-50 gear in the rest of the slots.

Can't wait for premades up to 24.
I am damn tired of people spamming the withdraw button all day too.
I waited 45 mins to an hour once because people join, leave, join leave.
Drive's me up the wall.

I wrote this in another thread. Mythology is *NOT* a big enough incentive to get people to go back into there because the advanced players have Brayflox HM to do now which utterly eclipses practically everything else. Either they're going to have to make a Raid roulette in the future to get the advanced players back into it or they're going to have to split the older CT raids into 4/8 person parties per wing and balance the difficulty and loot accordingly. They'd essentially be quick boss runs like Coil, and I don't think too many people would be upset with that.

People above item level 80 have almost zero reason to go in there (even if they level a new class because their main can just farm myth for level 90 gear). The only people that go in there now are people new to it and/or want/need the clear, people who want vanity gear, and people who are bored. None of which amount to a large pool of players these days, which results in long queue times, even if you join party in progress. And there's no guarantee this pool of players will get to the end let alone keeping people to STAY through the whole thing. The place is inundated with trolls these days too.

CT is not a lost cause, but they really need to staunch the bleeding soon.

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Originally Posted by Rhindas

I wrote this in another thread. Mythology is *NOT* a big enough incentive to get people to go back into there because the advanced players have Brayflox HM to do now which utterly eclipses practically everything else.

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45 minutes for 150 myth, versus 160 myth for 30-40 minutes plus gathering time.

I saw someone shouting for a healer for Bray myth runs for over 20 minutes in multiple zones earlier today, god knows how long they ended up looking and how many runs they actually did, if any. I have seen countless Bray speed runs in party finder with 2 dps in them, looking for tank and healer. Just because you can do 40 myth in 6 minutes doesn't mean everyone can be online for an hour and get 400 myth in that time.

Dps are screwed either way, but with a ilvl70 tank and healer you can normally get faster tomes in CT than with a ilvl100 dps.

Sometimes up to 1.5 hours for healer on a slow day. <20 during peak times.

Am glad the tome reward has gone up, I still enjoy CT ^^ it gets mind-numbingly boring running brayflox.

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Originally Posted by Enepttastic

Pfft, I did fine as a WAR in my AF gear, may have gotten my zenith already, and mostly green ilvl 55 accessories.

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Agree here, full AF is easy done :3

I said advanced, and those are the people (including those people you mentioned waiting in Party Finder) that are explicitly not doing CT. They don't have to, and more importantly, they don't *want* to. The pool is reduced in both quantity and quality because people are specifically avoiding the place because the mythology is not worth the effort or drama. You also have to complete the bosses to get myth and if you've done CT lately you know full well how often wipes occur. If the groups even get there with the trolling. I wasn't making that part up for hyperbole's sake.

The others that may not be able to surpass CT's myth per minute ratio in Brayflox would rather try and try for Darklight/etc than suffer through CT.

So the 2/3 of elite dps would rather sit and wait for 30 minutes in party finder for 40 myth tomes and darklight gear than do a CT for 160 myth tomes in that time as a lesser geared tank or healer? That 833 GC seals is really worth more than 120 myth tomes to someone going after novus weapon?

There are more dps than tanks and healers at all levels, running CT and running Bray speed runs. If your main job is a tank or healer and you are one of those "advanced" players, then you can get faster myth from Bray runs. If you're dps, that's not necessarily the case.

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So the 2/3 of elite dps would rather sit and wait for 30 minutes in party finder for 40 myth tomes and darklight gear than do a CT for 160 myth tomes in that time as a lesser geared tank or healer? That 833 GC seals is really worth more than 120 myth tomes to someone going after novus weapon?

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Hey I can't argue with the logic that it'd make more sense on a math standpoint for some people. I'll even put this out there for you: Get a FC together that manages to work the Duty Finder to put them all together (set it to German only, rather successful) could surpass Brayflox. But you will never sway anyone by using said logic because *yes,* the DPS would rather wait in party finder to complete a sure thing than have to roll the dice and hope to be able to complete CT. You proved this just by finding DPS willing to wait those 30+ minutes in the Party Finder.

Furthermore, the DPS that may have waited 30+ minutes in party finder are likely going to do more than one run and the healer and tank that join will likely be on board to do so because of those novus requirements or just wanting myth gear. And that will eventually at the very least match or come very close to what they would've gotten in CT in the same amount of time+waiting in queue+waiting on wipes+waiting on replacements. And I brought up the darklight because a lot of it is comparable to the lv 80 stuff, and some of it (with exceptions, I don't deny it) isn't really worth the effort for a marginal upgrade. Hell some of the crafted gear can be better than myth because of overmelding. Better to just grind for the myth gear and get the darklight in between.

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Originally Posted by Fatestorm

Hit my limit at 177 minutes before ragequitting out of party finder. How about you guys? I know it's worse than what I've seen.

I'm a little frustrated at either options at this point. One is that duty finder is broken. One is that we can't scrape up 24 people across all servers on NA prime time who want to do this blasted dungeon. Or both.

Something needs to be done about both.

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The wait sucks, I agree, but the worst part in my experience is when you finally get the 24 people together. I tried running it once a week for a little while recently, and it was NOT fun. Every group took the timer down to at least half, and I remember one that nearly took it down all the way. It was just bad all around, at least for me. I'm also aware that this might just be my luck.

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Originally Posted by Rhindas

I'll even put this out there for you: Get a FC together that manages to work the Duty Finder to put them all together (set it to German only, rather successful) could surpass Brayflox.

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I'm lost on how setting to German changes anything.

I could see a FC playing the party finder by pairing up each healer with 2 dps and leaving the tank spot open, and each tank with 2 dps leaving the healer open. If enough FCs did that it would destroy the wait time for dps, and they could expect to sit for an hour in solo queue.

IF SE wants people to do Crystal towers they need to give it a decent reward.

All gear outside coil 2 is subpar... so the majority of people will only do things to work on Soldiery outside that.

Blayflox gives 40 sold. per 12mins. 400 myth per hour.

So if SE wants people to do crystal towers. Lets see it takes 50mins on a good run.

so 333 myth and 166 Soldiery min for it to be worth doing. And that is not counting the downtime to find that many people. So with increased downtime. I would say 350 myth and 175 sold. would be the min reward I see people doing it for.

Crystal tower = garbage rewards therefor the majority does not want to do it. Causing massive wait time. This is what happens when you have a design concept of constant content negation, if there is no reason to continue doing it forever... then it is just a waste of harddrive space for the masses when something better comes along.

Well reason being that German on its own isn't as used as much English or Japanese. French seems to have the same effect for some, though, so you could use it too. Note that this varies with your Data Center (in mine French is more common), but what happens is if you and your FC or LS of 24 is set up, and then puts that you only want to group with exclusively German players in the Duty Finder, then the Duty Finder tries to match that first before trying to overlap other languages and if you all queue at roughly the same time it's very likely all 24 of you will be grouped together. It's not foolproof though.

Also for what it's worth if I offended you with the word advanced it was not my intent. I didn't use it as a matter of superiority. Players with item level 80+ who know what the crap they're doing will be more advanced than people that don't. The opposite is of course true. A lv 60 could outskill a lv 90, it happens, and it happens often. Advanced players will smoke CT's efficiency in Brayflox, it's just how it is. Excluding, of course, my aforementioned FC that wants to steamroll the place. It's a lot of fun if you ever get the chance to try it. That place is a dream with no drama but good luck with that!

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

I'm lost on how setting to German changes anything.

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Get three full groups to queue at once using a language that's uncommon on your group of servers. Increases the chance that all 3 will queue into the same CT.

I waited 3 hours once. I forgot I was even in the duty finder for it :P

I waited over an hour for a que once....and the group ended up wiping 9+ times...never got past Atomos.

My WAR is more than geared enough for CT...but I don't want WAR gear....I want BRD gear...so queing as a tank lessens my chance to get that , sadly. the extra tomes for going is nice, but frankly I'd just rather not go if there's so high of a chance of wiping due to other people not knowing/not being very good.

I updated the OP with my latest attempt to get into CT. The hilarity waxes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps087fee3b.png

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

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And this is why I don't do "Speed Runs" in Party Finder. I have a ilvl90 BRD to use, But the time it takes to wait for a tank or healer is a waste of time. You might get lucky and get them pretty quick but you could also wait like 20-30mins+. So I just use MNK and do BrayFlox HM takes less than 5 mins to queue and usually 13-20mins to complete.

Another reason I don't like doing 2 bosses and leave, Is because you miss out on a lot of gil. I've gotten two Baby Opos @600k a pop, And I don't even know how much gear I've traded in for seals. Yesterday I tried CT twice on PLD cause, I figured I get 150 tomes/hr from BrayFlox so it would be about the same was just horrible.

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Originally Posted by Fatestorm

One is that we can't scrape up 24 people across all servers on NA prime time who want to do this blasted dungeon.

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I've thought of this before, not to CT, just every single other dungeon in the game lol Queue up during prime time and sit for a good while. I mean come on, with the amount of servers connected on DF, is there really not 3 other people trying to do a dungeon? lol

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Originally Posted by Fatestorm

edit: My latest experiment.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps087fee3b.png

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Jesus friggin' Christ.

http://www.gifsforum.com/images/gif/...action_gif.gif

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Originally Posted by Fatestorm

I updated the OP with my latest attempt to get into CT. The hilarity waxes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps087fee3b.png

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Working as intended? :P But seriously, that's insane.

People still run Crystal Tower..?

But seriously, there's just so few incentives to actually bother. To be honest, there weren't many incentives to begin with besides just beating the thing. In terms of getting tomes, it was always easier and faster to run dungeons and in terms of gear, no one cares much for ilvl80 when myth can get you level 90 gear in less time. People that still run it do so more for the styles than the actual stats now.

More myth in general and a bonus for the 1st run of the day might get people back in it.

I'd queue it once a day if I got a tank bonus for it :).

Edit: a rare drop that lets you upgrade an i80 CT piece to i90 or i95 (also adding the option to dye it) might help as well.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

More myth in general and a bonus for the 1st run of the day might get people back in it.

I'd queue it once a day if I got a tank bonus for it :).

Edit: a rare drop that lets you upgrade an i80 CT piece to i90 or i95 (also adding the option to dye it) might help as well.

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I think they should just make it apart of the expert/high level roulette, or possibly Main Scenario because it is somewhat tied to the storyline.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

I think they should just make it apart of the expert/high level roulette, or possibly Main Scenario because it is somewhat tied to the storyline.

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It would be more beneficial to drop it and eat the penalty. CT takes way too long to finish compared to a normal dungeon or storyline thing.


As for the other comments from a different poster about I90 upgrades from CT. Why when you can do coil and get I90 stuff. A turn in coil takes 20mins at most.. CT takes almost an hour, and you are talking about making it a rare drop.

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Originally Posted by Xatsh

It would be more beneficial to drop it and eat the penalty. CT takes way too long to finish compared to a normal dungeon or storyline thing.

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Yeah, you may be right, but it might be more incentive to get a decent amount of myth along with the daily roulette reward. CT itself isn't that hard though, and I have seen it cleared in almost 20min flat before. Never seen it before or after that, but it happened regardless. As I have said before, it's the 23 other people that tend to be the issue. Definitely not near enough in my opinion to make it worth it now, but wanted to throw something out there.

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Originally Posted by Luxx

Can't wait for premades up to 24.
I am damn tired of people spamming the withdraw button all day too.
I waited 45 mins to an hour once because people join, leave, join leave.
Drive's me up the wall.

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You think you're gonna get 23 more people interested in CT at the same time, when you're limiting the selection to just 1 server?

It's pretty much instant on a tank although at weird times of the day sometimes you have a 5 or so min queue

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Originally Posted by Zumi

It's pretty much instant on a tank although at weird times of the day sometimes you have a 5 or so min queue

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I know it USED to be instant on a tank but it really varies now. Tank friends of mine have queued at prime time and gotten 5 min queues; I've queued as tank at prime time and gotten 35 minute queues that I bail on for roulettes. It really fluctuates.

Today I queue'd for CT out of boredom and only had to wait five minutes. As heals. I was a bit shocked to see only two declines before we started.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

You think you're gonna get 23 more people interested in CT at the same time, when you're limiting the selection to just 1 server?

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Easily can do that from within my own guild.

24 man is a joke to get together. People use to get 50+ ppl together without many issues at all.

To have content most my guild can do together which is not designed to split us apart. Would be awesome.

If only I could put together a CT with everyone ilvl 105 or higher I think this would be faster myth farming then BF. You get 250 myth a run on CT now. Finding 23 other geared people to do CT just isn't going to happen.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

If only I could put together a CT with everyone ilvl 105 or higher I think this would be faster myth farming then BF. You get 250 myth a run on CT now. Finding 23 other geared people to do CT just isn't going to happen.

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What?

Crystal Tower