Developer, please consider adding more incentives to some of the Trials Duty Finder

I was just wondering if you can add better incentives to encourage more players to do some of these trials on duty finder that is absolutely necessary to progress to the main story. For example: Cape Westwind, Leviathan Hard Mode, Ramuh Hard Mode, and Battle on the Bridge, plus Labyrinth of the Ancients. These are outdated contents that are no longer popular, they do not drop anything at all that players consider worthwhile to do it over and over. Worse of all, any new players or newly created alts MUST clear these to progress.

Could you add a few worthwhile drops to these trials? Perhaps 1-2 new crafting materials (similar to what you did for Coil V1), or gear level 100 and accessories, perhaps minions or mounts, furniture etc. It should have 3 slots that drops random rewards. All the other primals are needed for relic weapon path, or they drop weapons and mount which players deemed worth to do. This is extremely annoying because as the game progress, less and less people will bother to do these, and more people cannot complete this.

I had several new members in FC that could not complete Cape Westwind for over a month due to sheer frustration having to wait for hours in the Duty Finder. Thanks in advance.

What would you suggest they add to make it more desirable?

Isn't that what trial roulette is for?

The trial roulette requires you clear all the trials, if you are new players, you cannot even do this. Some of these primal trial missions are crucial to progress into main stories to access Snowcloak, which is required if you need to do Expert Mode Roulette. In patch 2.1-2.3 you can skip the entire main mission and can do expert roulette since none of the dungeons is part of the main story.

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Originally Posted by HulveinBlitz

What would you suggest they add to make it more desirable?

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They can add 1 slot that drop random "new" craft materials similar to what they did with Bahamut Coil V1. They can add another slot that drops random gears lvl 90-100 for glamours. They can add barding, or minions, or mounts. They can also add some exclusive things that you can only loot as need if you are tanks to encourage more tanks do these trials. Cape Westwind is so crucial for ANY new players or new alts, its not even funny how long the DF can be for these. You can wait for 2-3 hours, as healer or any job for that matter because there is simple nobody wants to do it. Battle on The Bridge is another classic example. It drops ZERO items, but needed to do the next Ultros trial.

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

The trial roulette requires you clear all the trials, if you are new players, you cannot even do this. Some of these primal trial missions are crucial to progress into main stories to access Snowcloak, which is required if you need to do Expert Mode Roulette. In patch 2.1-2.3 you can skip the entire main mission and can do expert roulette since none of the dungeons is part of the main story.

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The trial roulettes get cleared players into a trial where other players are queuing. You know, players who haven't cleared. Thats how you get the soldiery bonus message in trial roulettes every now and then.

I think it was poor design for SE to not include an achievement for tanks (and maybe healers?) that rewards them for going into low level roulette's similar to the ex/coil tank achievement. For example; if you do 200 low level dr runs you get a mount or item or armor, just something that says here's a little something for you to work towards other than more gil. Which atm is quite useless with extremely polarized market prices and undercutting so bad it would make any market analyst want to hang themselves.

If you need further proof of this simply look at all the threads crying out about long queue times and ask yourself why is it so?

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Originally Posted by Marxam

I think it was poor design for SE to not include an achievement for tanks (and maybe healers?) that rewards them for going into low level roulette's similar to the ex/coil tank achievement.

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Can't run a dungeon without DPS either, the rewards should be matched to any role needed to complete the dungeon.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

If you need further proof of this simply look at all the threads crying out about long queue times and ask yourself why is it so?

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Because healing and tank classes can't put out the big numbers.
Because they require a different thought process than DPS.
Because if someone fails, it's the tank or healer's fault. There's not a lot of incentive to play a role that gets abuse.
Because there are only two tank and two healer classes, but six DPS classes.
Because unlike DPS, your playstyle completely changes going from solo content to group content, which is ALSO much different (though this is more for healers than tanks.) Consider that tanks are one of the only roles in the game that carries around multiple gear sets for the same job.

Trial roulette helps them, its just some trails have low priority in the roulette.
Or.. queue with your fc mates as tank/healer.. A month and not getting cape westwind done? Whats your whole fc doing?

What WOULD be nice, if you ask me, is if Levi HM, Ramuh HM, Gilgamesh, chimera, hydra, Cape westwind, and Shiva HM actually dropped something.
Anything. Crafting materials, a minion, barding, a friggin SANDWICH.
Just give us something to look forward to other than a paltry amount of tomes. Maybe have things with no loot table provide more Light for the nexus upgrade.

At least Shiva/Ramuh/Leviathan rarely drop materials worth good money (No, really, Leviathan's barb sells for about 200k on my server last I checked). As mentioned, Gilgamesh and Cape Westwind have nothing.

Labyrinth of the Ancients could be solved through the implementation of a Crystal Tower Roulette that prioritizes LotA if someone is attempting to queue for it.

Trials issues will probably just get worse when Heavensward hits too.

There are enough places to farm, and new players are being handled by roulette.
No need to incentivate you do them, imho.

There is only so much your FC can do to help other members to clear. When you are able to gather a healer, a tank, and a dps and still has to deal with over an hour wait, there is something clearly WRONG with the design. Remember people respond to INCENTIVE, big time!! There is a reason why everyone is spamming Syrcus Tower now, it is THE BEST reward to get any of your alt jobs for gears level 100 and items to take it to 110, on top of that, 50 soldiery and 15 poetic. 30 minutes run yields the most reward. It is not the best way to get poetic rewards, but surely the fastest way to gear any of your other jobs that are not your main with a base of level 100.

Old outdated musty trials that are UNAVOIDABLE to progress need better rewards. IF Labyrinth of Ancients last boss drops 2 oils and 2 sand of time, people will do it a bit more, you may not get level 100 gears, but the 100 tomes are decent plus it drops items that can take your soldiery gears to 110. You can't try to get new players when the game is not helping them to clear contents they need to advance. Let's face it, people only do things if the rewards is worthwhile enough. Case point, The Hunt in 2.3 vs The Hunt in 2.4, simply changing the rewards, and you see a big drop in participation. It's still popular, but it is no longer THE BEST way to farm everything in one go.

Trust me, if Cape Westwind give your 35 soldiery tome and 5 poetic reward, EVERYONE will spam the bejesus of this. The same goes to Battle on the Bridge, simply make it 35 soldiery tome and 8 poetic will draw more participation from players. Leviathan, Ramuh and Shivah hard mode, will be spammed to death if you add the same amount of poetic. Throw in 10 allied seals for completion, and any new players will never have any problem completing these "no drops" trials.

Everyday I queue for four trials where "nobody will ever go" (hoping I will get a new person's bonus) and for Syrcus Tower on the Duty Roulette, you can easily guess which one pops the most, without fail, every single time.

The same can be said to Duty Roulette adventure in need's bonus. Right now, its only a paltry gil and grand company seal, which nobody NEEDS badly. Unless we are talking about 20k gil bonus you can spam every single time. But if you slightly change the reward into 10 soldiery, 5 poetics, and 10 allied seal, plus money and grand company seal - and you can spam these indefinitely (pretty much making it slightly easier to farm tome as tank or healer) then you can bet the waiting time for any DPS will drops considerably. If you play DPS, you DO WANT tanks and healers get rewarded with some bonus, because this means you can do more dungeons as DPS and LESS WAITING. Everybody wins....

Better Light Reward would be nice.

Also added them to the achieve for Bear/Lion Mounts.

Also - I don't understand why they don't flat out upgrade ALL the drops from outdated content. For example, you could exchange Ifrit Weapon Level 60 + 10k Grand Company Seal for a level 80 weapons, and upgrade it again for additional 20k GC Seal for level 90 weapons, and finally trade the Ifrit Weapon +2 with original level 60 weapon and 30k GC seal, for lvl 100 weapon. And make sure each has slightly different bonus, for example Ifrit weapon can have more STR overall on ALL his weapons for all jobs. Garuda can have more DEX or CRIT, Titan with VIT and Parry, etc.....

This will make Grand Company seals more relevant, at the same time let casual players to have level 100 weapon that are quite decent to do most content in the game. As well as making old outdated content somewhat desirable. They should also upgrade those lvl 80-90 accessories from Primal Extreme and make it to be 110, it will still be inferior compared to the poetic gears, but it makes outdated content suddenly become semi relevant again.

Dear SE please do something about these story mode trial mission that everyone has to do to progress, but yet no one wants to do, especially the tanks, simply because there is ZERO benefits to do this other than once a day for your DF Roulette Trials..... It is extremely frustrating when you cannot progress because half of these so called trials are worthless, while the fews are being spammed to death because they drop something worthwhile.

Not sure how many more incentives you need...

All that content is useful for Light gathering for Nexus and CT right now is the highest soldiery count in one place.

I've queued as a healer for ALL of these things either for my Nexus or just the need for soldiery and the wait time hasn't been anything more than the average 5-10 for trials and 20-30 at most for CT.

Hell, when people go into CT and there's the new bonus, people are happy and rejoice.

SE needs to up the rewards for old content and content that drops nothing. Add a mount, crafting mats, a minion and a decent number of the current tomes. I hit the trials, high lvl and some times the expert roulette for tomes but that is once a day. Other than that I am in snowcloak or ST. As a healer, I am burned out on St and am close to done with that for some time. I would rather be in CT but nothing needed comes from there to get a party going and I go solo as a healer in progress but it is rare that I ever get in. Would love to do more ex but they have become high end pony parties that I don't need, so there are few ex that I am current with passing. The i90 stuff needs to be bumped up or toss us more tomes. I hate to say it but there are two things I chase in this patch, crafting mats and tomes for crafting. If the roulettes would be more than once, keep decent tome levels or add crafting mats I would keep hitting them up.

Achievements and one time rewards won't cut it. I have been running Shiva, Leviathan, and Ramuh HM more recently simply for the music. But generally, I don't do it because it's not worth my time. Trying to get in to find a new player takes a few tries but it's the best thing there for tomes really after hitting the roulettes.

CT...biggest waste of my time so far. Good for desynth, if you get VERY lucky with the drops. Dungeon is too long to be worth getting desynth and/or tomes. I can it for glamour before 2.4 but as a MNK (guess which glamour I was going for).

The best thing to do, I think, is add a consistent tome bonus to in-demand content. Sure, certain tomes are going to start raining into the game like crazy but it will be getting people through content. Plus, I want tomes!



In reply to a number of these posts:

Minions and crafting gear won't work so well simply because when someone gets them, why go back? With tomes, there's always something to aim for, alexandrite, weapons, armour, glamours, crafting mats. So perhaps put new items into the tome list and give these trials or the duty roulette a consistent bonus tome to the adventurer in need.

Light simply won't be good enough. It didn't seem like it worked too much when it first came out simply because there were private parties made to farm. Yes, there were people going into the DF to get their light but a lot of DPS were doing it, so that doesn't help the situation. We need to encourage the adventurer in need, hence giving them a consistent bonus. Although the adventurer in need would need to update more frequently. Many a time I have queued as a tank after seeing it as in need and then end up waiting on healers and find out they, later, become in need.

If they could just add 2-3 crafting materials drop on those trials that drops ZERO items, it would revitalize it and everyone will do these more. Right now, these very important trials, are dead as doornails. There is zero reasons to redo them unless you like waiting for over an hour or longer for the group. People respond to incentives, and the path with least resistance. Right now, everyone is clustering Syrcus Tower and Snowcloak because those two are the easiest activities with the most decent reward for your time. Just look at Hunt in 2.3 vs Hunt in 2.4..... a change in incentives is all it takes to make Hunt playable for all.

But the main problem is this, why tying Snowcloak with the main mission, if you can do this as quest for access, then everyone who does not do any main mission story can still access it easily and do their Expert Duty Roulette.... Similar to how it works in 2.3 with Hullbreaker Isle. I hate to imagine how things are going to be for people who join in 2.5 or 3.0, and stuck on things they have to do to progress further.

People want tomes, craft materials, allied seals, lights for their relic, etc... why not add these to these really outdated content to incentivize more people to do it and help new players getting their clear. The first three primal hard mode (and moogle) are very needed for anyone making a Relic, as well as dropping weapons that you can desynth, hence they are quite popular. The last three primal hard mode however, drops nothing, and Cape Westwind rewards you with no tomes at all.

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Originally Posted by Barboron

Achievements and one time rewards won't cut it. I have been running Shiva, Leviathan, and Ramuh HM more recently simply for the music. But generally, I don't do it because it's not worth my time. The best thing to do, I think, is add a consistent tome bonus to in-demand content. Sure, certain tomes are going to start raining into the game like crazy but it will be getting people through content. Plus, I want tomes!

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They really DO need to add tomes or allied seal to adventure in need bonus, even if it is only 10 Soldiery and 5 Poetic, or throw in 10 Allied Seal (these are not game breaking rewards) but suddenly doing these dead as doornails trials become decent to farm extra tomes. And please add 10 Soldiery Tomes to Cape Westwind and put this as main story duty roulette.

I mean lets take a look at several things shall we,

- Binding Coil 1, turn 1, turn 2, and turn 4: all three are doable in less than 15 mnts, rewards you with lvl 90 gears (good for other alts or new players with alts), 10 soldiery, 5 poetic, and new desirable crafting materials that cost 9000 GC Seals. You can spam these to your heart's desire. Turn 4 is great for materia creation.
- Wanderer Palace: 15-20 mnts run, drops 10 soldiery, 5 poetic, if you are lucky, extra 3600 GC seals if you win lots on all the gears.
- Ifrit, Garuda, Titan Hard mode: 5-10 mnts run, drops 9-12 soldiery, 5-6 poetic, and weapon level 60-80 that you can desynth to sell the materia for decent amount of gil, plus primal crafting materials.
- All other trials that drops ZERO item: 10-15 mnts run, 8-12 soldiery, 4-6 poetic, ZERO items
- Syrcus Tower: 30 mnts run, 50 soldiery, 15 poetics, 4 chances at gears lvl 100, 4 chances at items that convert your lvl 100 gears to 110

Rather easy to decide which are these worth your time....

Not that I'm looking for Likes, but...okay, I'm looking for Llkes and it's relevant to this thread. It's my post regarding these queues asking for more incentive.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2581741

LOL you should get more likes to that questions since this problem is just going to get even worse as more new things are added. And developers seem to not understand what incentives means.... Old outdated musty contents = more incentives of things people need in general (aka tomes or crafting materials or allied seals) so people do more. New Shiny Contents = new things as incentives.

Another option, off the top of my head. Is to make more roulettes. Split the story trials into another section. Put Cape westwind into main scenarion roulette, more would run that for the chance of getting westwind with the same bonuses as the other 2. Less dungeons or trials per roullete the less players are split, meaning higher chance of the one players are gated on popping more frequently.

Cape Westwind should be part of main story mission roulette for sure!! This will encourage more people doing it - on the off chance getting easy 100 tomes for 5 mnts work. They could also add category of all the "important" trials for main story that are neglected, and put a bonus of 50 tomes and 10 poetic here to encourage more people do it. Or just fold ANY trials needed for main story progression to the main story duty roulette? Because right now, if you try to progress into main mission and stuck on Cape Westwind, Leviathan, Ramuh, (or the optional Battle on The Bridge), then you are bound to wait over 30 mnts long, even if you drag 2-3 members from your free company. Unless you get 2 tanks and 2 healers...

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

LOL you should get more likes to that questions since this problem is just going to get even worse as more new things are added. And developers seem to not understand what incentives means.... Old outdated musty contents = more incentives of things people need in general (aka tomes or crafting materials or allied seals) so people do more. New Shiny Contents = new things as incentives.

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I did go back and add a bit about what kind of incentives we'd want to see.

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Originally Posted by Violyre

I did go back and add a bit about what kind of incentives we'd want to see.

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Thanks, seems like overall, people need tomes to buy various things to upgrade their characters, crafter need materials, relic weapon's holder could use some lights (or alexandrite), some people want glamour gears, and finally trivial items like mount, minions, housing furnitures. Spreading these rewards around to contents which currently has zero drops would revitalize them as viable activities to do.

Rewards for trial roulette are great. It's one of the few roulettes I do daily any more because it's almost always a quick one and done affair.

However, I feel the *problem* with trial roulette is that they changed it so that you have to have ALL of the roulettes unlocked or you can't do it at all. It used to be that trial roulette worked like the low level dungeon & guildhest roulettes work now (will only put you in dungeons/hests you've unlocked), but they changed that a while back. The problem it creates is when a new patch hits, you lose a lot of people that would otherwise be running that roulette until they unlock all the trials for themselves again. It's worse this patch because you need to complete *both* the new story and new hildebrand questlines before you get that back. I'm sure it's taking a while for a lot of the more casual players (who would be more inclined to run quick dailies like the trial roulette) to unlock it again. I think they should consider changing the trial roulette back to work like it used to (like low level & guildhest roulettes currently work) in order to keep a steady level of players available to match for new players to run westwind, or whatever.

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

Thanks, seems like overall, people need tomes to buy various things to upgrade their characters, crafter need materials, relic weapon's holder could use some lights (or alexandrite), some people want glamour gears, and finally trivial items like mount, minions, housing furnitures. Spreading these rewards around to contents which currently has zero drops would revitalize them as viable activities to do.

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I'm going to flesh out a few more things in it, or try to streamline things. I dunno if you want to, may consider putting it in the OP.

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

Can't run a dungeon without DPS either, the rewards should be matched to any role needed to complete the dungeon.

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Supply and demand, really. There are umpteen million DPS ready to go compared to the very few tanks or healers. Any hang-ups I have ever had in the queue were from lack of Tanks/Healers or because someone was afk when it was time to go in.

The problem with old outdated content not being updated with some rewards that are worthwhile.. even if you do want to help your friends, unless you can gather 2 tanks and 2 healer, the waiting queue can be 20 mnts longer, or even over an hour. So now, not only the new player is getting punished, but everyone else who wants to helps is also being punished.

it's more than some trial have no reward at all... then people have no real reason to do them.

leviathan hm, shiva hm, gilgamesh hm and ramuh hm have no loot at all! i still recall yoshida saying that they must give a reason for the raider to do them raid. that nice, but outside raid, most content have poorly designed reason for be done. the best example is the last set of new dungeon... myth gear only? no new skin from them? i can understand that new player will need them... but personally, like a lot of player there for month (or since the release) outside the ninja myth armor, we often own already most of them. why they didn't add new skin for this dungeon? why i have the feeling that only raid get a decent attention from them and the rest get what they can.

so far the game can be resume to this on one side you do have raid and on the other you have the rest that often ask more work and give often less interessant reward. (craft and relic are a fair example)

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

it's more than some trial have no reward at all... people have no real reason to do them.

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This is indeed true!! That's why I think the developer really needs to learn about incentives. Right now, there is no real reasons to do Wanderer Palace, unless you get unlucky on your roulette. Garuda Hard Mode is much faster to do and rewards you the same amount of tomes (plus weapon you can desynth). The 3 new dungeons at least designed for people who want to cap poetic fast (since you get 75 a day with roulette on expert mode). Adding new crafting materials to older outdated dungeons are a great solution. Crafters are happy because more materials are available, and everyone else benefits because new crafted items does not cost millions.

To be honest, the three new dungeons should drop level 100 gears, and very rare occasion the last boss drop weathered gears (which you can upgrade). The level 90 relic token instead can be spread around the rest of the dungeons, as a guaranteed drop from final boss. This will make lower level dungeons mildly useful and at the same time making the new dungeons a decent alternative to Syrcus Tower gears.

IMHO- they should keep the tomestones of Myth and even Philosophy.

For the lower dungeons (and even quests) they should reward those. Basically any dungeons level 40+ should reward some very minimal philosophy (which was used for iLVL70 Darklight). All the 50 non-HMs should drop (in addition to current tomes) an amount of Myth.

My point being that any player upon just reaching 50 should be able to get 1 or 2 i70s right off (jewelry). Then, soon after clearing the main story, they should be able to afford 1-2 myth items..basically enough iLVL to get them into LoTA.

As it is, and I'm sorry for doing it..., whenever I get a new class to 50, I immediately put on my 110 paladin jewelry and do Syrcus Tower because anything else is just stupid impractical for time or reward.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

My point being that any player upon just reaching 50 should be able to get 1 or 2 i70s right off (jewelry). Then, soon after clearing the main story, they should be able to afford 1-2 myth items..basically enough iLVL to get them into LoTA. As it is, and I'm sorry for doing it..., whenever I get a new class to 50, I immediately put on my 110 paladin jewelry and do Syrcus Tower because anything else is just stupid impractical for time or reward.

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This is pretty much the problem for every new players. SE wants you to follow gear progression by doing lower level dungeons slowly. But it is dumb and impractical because you can just buy gears from AH to bump your level, and do a few LotA so that you meet minimum for Syrcus Tower and just spam that for level 100 gears. Pre-level 50s players are able to get current tomes by doing beast men quest though at 30 tomes a day, around level 41, you probably won't get much by the time you are level 50.

All the dungeons from level 32-47 should reward 5-10 tomes (not poetics). If they do it, by the time you hit 50 with first job, you should have around 700-1000 enough to buy 1-2 gears, or close for 3 accessories. Grand Companies items do sorely need updates big time though. They should at least let new players get level 55 accessories as well, so you can be at the minimum level 55 by buying GC gears. These lower difficulty dungeons at 50 are easy for veteran or anyone with level 90 and above gears. But if you are new, with your lvl 50-55 gears, these are by no means easy dungeons, especially for tanks and healers.