Roulette for orphaned L50 content (Extreme Trial Roulette, or similar)

Feedback from users of Mentor Roulette seems to indicate that the i135+ Sync of L50 content is adequate to brute-force most older content at this point.

Compare these two examples:

• Titan Hard is part of Trial Roulette. I regularly clear this battle either with half the party dead / Landslided, or sometimes after a wipe or two (if the party is really disoriented, or off their game).
• Ultima's Bane is not part of any roulette. When my queue for this finally popped after 2 hours, we cleared it with one wipe (following an explanation about Aetherial Booms and Tank LB).

As a new player coming from L1-50 MSQ progression, it was counter-intuitive and very frustrating to be given a new quest ("Go kill Ultima again", "Go kill Garuda Extreme"), told by the quest explicitly to use Duty Finder, and then wait 2-3+ hours for a pop (if ever).

I would like to see an 'Extreme Trial Roulette' or similar, that would include Extreme Trials and other previously-difficult content that has now reached a point of being reliably brute-forced due to iLevels, Echo buffs, and community familiarity.

Examples of currently-orphaned content (ie, long queues and reliance on unsynced PF carries):

• Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima's Bane
• Howling Eye (Extreme)
• Navel (Extreme)
• Bowl of Embers (Extreme)
• Thornmarch (Extreme)
• Whorleater (Extreme)
• Striking Tree (Extreme)
• Ahk Afah Amphitheatre (Extreme)
• Urth's Fount

As for the Coils of Bahamut, which are also orphaned, I believe that may be crossing a threshold for Duty Finder random groups without some modifications to 1-shot and partywide-wipe mechanics.

Has been often requested:
Duty Roulette: Trials EX
Duty Roulette: 8 man raids level 50
Duty Roulette: 24 man raids
Duty Roulette: 8 man raids level 60
Duty Roulette: 8 man raids

But Mentor roulette does take all the DFable content into it so you can get coils and other stuff in there I believe.

When I get the extreme trials for mentor roulette I cringe, and I've been getting them fairly often. Most of the time people are barely geared enough to get into the instance and they don't know the fight. I would say failure rate for the extremes I've gotten has been 50% or more. The clears have been gratifying, but I really think people should do PF for learning these fights at the synced level.

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

When I get the extreme trials for mentor roulette I cringe, and I've been getting them fairly often. Most of the time people are barely geared enough to get into the instance and they don't know the fight. I would say failure rate for the extremes I've gotten has been 50% or more. The clears have been gratifying, but I really think people should do PF for learning these fights at the synced level.

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Not to mention that the majority of those runs end up with people who refuse to listen to advice or are just flat out ignoring anything typed into party chat. Nothing like Titan EX where half the raid is off the edge prior to heart phase (or taking a swim on Levi). Even after thoroughly explaining the fights, you still have the same people doing the same mistakes over and over again.

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

When I get the extreme trials for mentor roulette I cringe, and I've been getting them fairly often. Most of the time people are barely geared enough to get into the instance and they don't know the fight. I would say failure rate for the extremes I've gotten has been 50% or more. The clears have been gratifying, but I really think people should do PF for learning these fights at the synced level.

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Well that's the bullet a mentor bites when choose to become a mentor and run mentor roulette's. They or you are there not just for yourself in those as a mentor, you are there to help others so no they should not just stick to PF for learning them. Your/their job as a mentor in that roulette is to teach and to help. No offense intended but if your running mentor roulette's as a mentor but only for yourself and do not want to teach people how to do it then you should stop being a mentor. As for people not listening, such is life...will always be a few bad apples once in a while. As for the OP's suggestion, I agree that would be nice to have an additional non-mentor and by proxy non-learning/teaching version of EX trial roulette's on top of what we have at the moment.

Ironically, I talked with more players after posting this, and the previous "It's not so bad!" feedback began to be edged out by more and more "Huh? Oh god no, don't make me think about Mentor Roulette'ing into EX Trials".

However, I think part of the problem with the older EX Trials right now is that the player segment running them is starkly-divided:

Most players who know better (or are taught) don't even try to DF EX Trials, they run it Unsync / L60 / i230, and either never learn the intended mechanics, or just go numb and stop caring after the 20th consecutive hour of Pony Farm.

That leaves naïve and wide-eyed players that don't realize that when FFXIV says, "Use the Duty Finder to enter Ahk Afah Amphitheatre (Extreme)", it actually means "Please do not use the Duty Finder to queue for Ahk Afah Amphitheatre (Extreme), open Party Finder instead".

And then there's a handful of Mentors that get tossed into the latter group.

So it's hard for a general knowledge and understanding of mechanics to disperse into the population, because the players with that knowledge keep dwindling relative to the newly-joining players that never get to learn it.

Like what I mean is, take Titan HM for example:

Parties still wipe on this because, for example, someone baits a Landslide on top of the MT, or both Healers eat 5 Weights at the same time right after Heart phase.

But in general, Trial Roulette Titan HM clears after usually zero, sometimes 1, maybe 2 wipes because:

• i130+ Sync
• Echo
• It's part of Trial Roulette, so many players of all backgrounds and skill levels are regularly exposed to it

I think the 3rd point is the most important one. Because so many players are exposed to the battle regularly, even when you get totally-inexperienced players in the group, enough of a majority usually know the fight to carry things through.

For a Mentor getting dumped into an EX Trial, though, the chances are higher that it's the inverse of a Titan HM: inexperience will outnumber experience, and that's difficult to just brute-force or carry through.

But I've also seen feedback about many successful Mentor Roulette clears, parties that actually did listen and learn. So it's not totally hopeless, either.

Right now, it's so difficult to do these Trials at all (as a newer player, queue times were 2-3 hours or more until I learned how to use Party Finder). I think if more players were actually exposed to the content in its vaguely-natural form (if you can call it that, with i130+ and Echo), then after a period of time enough general familiarity would develop that runs would begin to succeed more often than not.

This is also where the Roulette aspect is important: By tempting experienced players to keep doing it with a suitable bribe, it increases the chance of getting a 'Carry Capable' group.

As a newer player, I have a lot of fun with this 'outdated' content — That's my motivation for requesting a Roulette for it. I'd enjoy having a legit way to do it without utterly annihilating it (i230 L60 Unsync), or queuing for 2-3+ hours and praying, or trying to convince PF players to voluntarily do it Synced.

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

When I get the extreme trials for mentor roulette I cringe, and I've been getting them fairly often. Most of the time people are barely geared enough to get into the instance and they don't know the fight. I would say failure rate for the extremes I've gotten has been 50% or more. The clears have been gratifying, but I really think people should do PF for learning these fights at the synced level.

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what do you call clearly under geared? Most of the X trials are the old ARR trials, meaning we did them while wearing old coil (t1-5) and/or myth gear, upgrading to soldiery gear was amazing even a mix and match out of i90 gear was better than the stupid tome stone gear. I could go on but the point is, everything you get is better than that. Don't matter if you're sync'd nowadays or not it's still better compared to the times this content was actual relevant. On top of that SE added lots and lots of echo to each of these trials as well as nerfed couple of mechanics or dmg in/output taken/shared etc. So yea clearly not a lack of gear that people can't beat the content.

(sorry for delayed response, trying to catch up on old posts)

Honestly, it doesn't even need to be yet another Roulette. It could be a Weekly Quest, or something new.

All I want is incentive to motivate players to voluntarily run older content, and especially, voluntarily do it Sync'd. Older content shouldn't necessarily replace or compete with current content, but I think a lot of L50 content (EX and Coil, etc) is well-designed and deserves a better fate than just either being obliterated Unsync'd, or avoided entirely.

Right now there's the Orchestrion rolls and Crafting materials, but these are niche motivations that require fishing for volunteers in Party Finder. Something a little more straightforward (like the CT Weekly Quest giving Relic Oil) would be appreciated.

My experience from trying to run old ex primals synced is that putting it in PF doesn't work, and the only chance to even enter the place is to queue in DF and pray.
It's very simple, there is a chance that on the data center there are some people around that solo queue for an ex primal, and because you can't queue for unsync, it has to be a synced run that way. But putting it in the PF, you're stuck with the server you're on, and then you'd need people that specifically want to run it synced, rather than take the easy approach and go unsync.

Makes me think they just shouldn't drop ponies unsynced :P

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

When I get the extreme trials for mentor roulette I cringe, and I've been getting them fairly often. Most of the time people are barely geared enough to get into the instance and they don't know the fight. I would say failure rate for the extremes I've gotten has been 50% or more. The clears have been gratifying, but I really think people should do PF for learning these fights at the synced level.

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err excuse me but Mentor roulette is for new people and the Mentor there to help those new people. They are not barely geared for that dungeon tehy are geared appropriatedly for that dungeon, those new people doing the Mentor roulette do it to progress and be helped by someone with knowledge, overgeared obviously, to progrees. They are not in the wrong place at all, but maybe you shouldnt run the Mentor roulette ify ou expect people in there to know the fight when is not the purpose at all of that place.
You really dont deserve that crown in my opinion

For me: I've been on Hyperion long since I can remember, but been PF for Levithan Clear Bonus New for the longest time and people just don't willingly join. I've never beat Levi, and have beaten content like Weeping City/ Savage etc but still Levithan Ex - nope never. Queue for DF is 40 mins then someone immediately drops. If they could add a roulette for EX non mentors that would be nice. Maybe the people on other servers can help progress where my server limits.

Added for FML:
https://images-1.discordapp.net/.eJw...yPyF35yNGg.png

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Originally Posted by Mirakumi

For me: I've been on Hyperion long since I can remember, but been PF for Levithan Clear Bonus New for the longest time and people just don't willingly join.

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Sorry I missed this post (also how does an entire month pass this quickly?)

It's too bad that Hyperion is part of the Primal datacenter, if you were on Aether, I'd offer to queue up (Tank) to see if we could get a pop. Levi EX is a fairly forgiving trial, even if synced down to L50 / i130.

You would also probably have better luck on a more populated server; on Gilgamesh, for example, just writing 'bonus' would be enough to have Leviathan EX done within 15-20 minutes of listing. (Once the party stops killing itself by doing too much DPS)

Or, if you can hold out until Patch 3.5 (Late 2016? Early 2017?), there's tentative plans for the release of Cross-Server Party Finder — that should also allow you (and others in your position) to have much better chances of getting orphaned content cleared (or even farmed).

That said, as my perspective in FFXIV continues to evolve, I'm not sure an 'EX Roulette' is actually needed; the 'Roulette' design is becoming over-saturated and threatening to reach the point of being a burden (just too many Daily queues to churn through). I think more diverse or innovative systems for keeping old content populated are a better direction for the devs to explore.

Further, I don't think EX Roulette would actually give me (personally) what I was looking for when I proposed this idea originally. I now realize that even i130 Sync is enough to make many older trials a pale shadow of its intended design, and I think incentivizing Minimum Item Level (combined with X-Server PF) is a better path to letting players continue to (optionally) appreciate outdated content.

I think "max item level when the content was introduced" (shorten it to whatever you like) would be a lot better than "minimum item level" just because a lot of content at minimum item level has very little if any room for error. If you're intending to do this with random people it's going to be tense as hell when there can't be a slip up here and there. Doing, say, Binding Coil or the original Extremes at i90 is still a pretty tough challenge.

There's really no reason to demonize people doing it unsynced either, not that you are doing that but I just want to give some perspective I guess. My FC did their dues learning a ton of the older fights and now it's nice to go back for fun and have an enjoyable time where one person screwing up doesn't mean we have to start the fight over. That and just murdering the everloving crap out of the nightmare that was Titan EX at release is really really satisfying.

Also FYI Hyperion has always been one of the most populated Legacy servers, as far as I know. Frequently has the character creation restriction.

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Originally Posted by MeiUshu

err excuse me but Mentor roulette is for new people and the Mentor there to help those new people....

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Strictly it is not for helping new people, it is for helping fill party member slots. ^^;

Duty Roulette: Mentor

Mentors will also gain access to Duty Roulette: Mentor, which assigns players to duties that are struggling to fill party member slots.
* With the exception of parties actively seeking members for an ongoing duty, Duty Roulette: Mentor will not match together a full party of mentors.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...2b5a39c#mentor

It still prioritizes putting you in duties with new people so that person's point still stands. And well, it's kind of the reason Mentors exist in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Estellios

It still prioritizes putting you in duties with new people so that person's point still stands. And well, it's kind of the reason Mentors exist in the first place.

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Where did you see above "new people" priority?
Did you mean all non-mentors are new people? ^^;

I would also like to see an EX Roulette. Have it set up like lvl 50 and 60 roulettes where you have to clear all of them to unlock. And make it so your roulette is used up even if the duty ends in failure; preventing players from rage quitting til they get the one they want.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

x

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Thanks for this. I managed to clear Levithan EX and Ramuh Ex after posting on PF for weeks. Bishmark clear in DF. WOW awesome party <3. Ravana / Sephiroth / Etc. Maybe some time soon.

Hyperion may be the most populated but it is one of the more difficult populations to work around. I have an FC now but - still a bitterness of knowing In order to progress I have to DF content. I've been unsuccessful on Ravana but maybe someeeeeeeeeeday. lol Thanks for your input. <3

:( titan ex at i80 even...dear god no. no more please, im still twitching from years ago.. i70 garuda ex in df? no problem, fail dps check? yup thats a wipe. Of course, these are memories from a time long ago, when the content was cutting edge... frustration abound/ Tried mentor roullette got titan ex, had anything change? nope wipe 5 times then vote abandon. IDK how i feel about an ex trials roullette people who farmed the content till they got sick of it, who have no problem clearing it with a competant party will probably still prefer to unsync it. On the other hand, if im aware thats what im walking into, unlike mentor(yeah i know should expect anything) it might not be so bad...

As a 2+ year player I feel bad for people trying to do old primals. If there was a roulette for it I would totally be in. I like to help (when people listen!) and having an excuse to go through them and possibly Coil again would be great! I'm not really interested in Orchestrion stuff or farming for mounts but helping people do my favorite fights would be neat. :)

If they expanded Trial roulettes to include extremes, it would end up being very frustrating for a majority of players.

Something like 10% of all players at 60 actually clear extreme content while it's current. Throwing a DF group together into an extreme encounter is almost guaranteed to end in a mudflinging shitfest.