So.... Main Scenario Roulette

Yep, I know there are various posts on it already, but I just wanted (having recently returned to the game after a long hiatus) to give my 2 cents, after learning that the cutscenes have (since last I played) become a mandatory process.

Having read already several threads on this forum, with back and forth between the two camps on why there should (or shouldn't) be a case for either modifying the current situation, reverting back to the old system, or removing the roulette entirely, I came to a consensus that this roulette is by default a completely flawed system in it's current state, and I shall explain why...

Forcing people to watch cutscenes, in order to keep the dungeon process in check causes conflicting, negative, and more often than not a poor experience for the new players, in some respect even more so than when people previously could skip it and cut through the dungeon mobs to get to the next section.

I understand it completely when new players are upset because they feel like the dungeon experience is nothing more than just a series of cutscenes, and then it ends, it can be frustrating to feel that you were robbed of a dungeon experience as far as playing goes, when you have to decide between storyline cutscenes, and boss fights/level interaction.

However, having said that, this is a one time experience for new players, for the VAST majority, and by vast majority I mean everyone that isn't playing through this for the first time are having to forego several long and arduous cutscenes that bulk out, and result in a heavily disagreeable experience for the players in question, in what can only be describes as a "carrot on a string" routine as far as the rewards are concerned.

For myself, gathering poetics was important to help facilitate certain items or gear that i needed, amongst other things such as zodiac/anima weapon upgrades. The allure of getting that many poetics from a single roulette is just too much of a good deal to ignore, but at the great expense of a pretty terrible experience.

I'm sure a lot of you at this point are simply saying "Well, if you don't like it, don't do it...", and you'd be right, sort of. I mean, yes, it's an option, but it's also crazy difficult to ignore if you're after certain tomestones. How many of you reading this honestly would pass up on a good deal when you see one, even it if it involved facing a certain level of fortitude, and effort to get it. I would imagine most people would still go along with it, which furthers my point that this is why there is never any shortages for this roulette, despite the cutscene fiasco.

>> Contd.

>> Contd

To summarize my thoughts, cutscenes should be an optional thing for players to watch/do, and not mandatory. If you're a new player and you want to experience this dungeon without the confines/limitation of a skippable cutscene party, then you should seek help linkshells, or dare i say it mentor groups to put together a group of 7 people who are more than happy to run you through the dungeon, cutscenes and all. In my humble opinion it should not be something that is thrust upon (what in reality) is the vast majority of the people entering this encounter, and people that have neither the patience, or the inclination to watch the same custscenes over and over several thousand times over a period of day/weeks/years etc.

People say we should be understanding of new players, but in a majority rule, why can't people be understanding of the majority of players who don't have the wish to sit through this day in, day out.

In the absence of any movement on either end, just remove the roulette, and create a dedicated, permanent SE linkshell that optional people can join to help new players complete the dungeon, or simply link anyone looking to complete the dungeon to online mentors who can decide to accept/decline the offer to heed a new players request for assistance in a storyline quest, or something along these lines.

What we should not do is continue this path of punishing players for wanting to collect important loot.

TLDR: Just another rant about custscenes in praetorium, and another perspective on how to fix it, or reasons why we should.

i actually like getting Praetorium in msq roulette when i was levelling my melee classes to 70 - pretty much almost half the exp bar in that one run. just get to the part where you get the mount and then afk/netflix til it's over. lol

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

i actually like getting Praetorium in msq roulette when i was levelling my melee classes to 70 - pretty much almost half the exp bar in that one run. just get to the part where you get the mount and then afk/netflix til it's over. lol

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Hey man, that's cool that you enjoy it. I'm sure there are other out there that think the same, but couldn't we pool people such as yourself into one version (who aren't bothered), and others queue into another version (that are bothered). Then everyones happy.

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However, having said that, this is a one time experience for new players, for the VAST majority, and by vast majority I mean everyone that isn't playing through this for the first time are having to forego several long and arduous cutscenes that bulk out, and result in a heavily disagreeable experience for the players in question, in what can only be describes as a "carrot on a string" routine as far as the rewards are concerned.

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What we should not do is continue this path of punishing players for wanting to collect important loot.

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The MSQ roulette it's mostly intended for new players, and the rewards encourage older players to join it in order to keep the queues filled up. It's not necessary for players that have done this before to do it again, yes it was mentioned it gives lots of tomestones, but you can get this from a multitude of activities in the game, no one is forced to do the MSQ roulette to obtain them at all.

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People say we should be understanding of new players, but in a majority rule, why can't people be understanding of the majority of players who don't have the wish to sit through this day in, day out.

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You choose what you repeat in the game whether it's duties or something else, new players do not have that privilege when they need to progress the story. Every other duties majority rules and players can pull early, troll the party, do whatever the hell they want, the MSQ roulette are only two duties, no more that requires patience and not selfishness of those who want rewards over everything else. Don't queue up for it if you can't be bothered to deal with it.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

You choose what you repeat in the game whether it's duties or something else, new players do not have that privilege when they need to progress the story. Every other duties majority rules and players can pull early, troll the party, do whatever the hell they want, the MSQ roulette are only two duties, no more that requires patience and not selfishness of those who want rewards over everything else. Don't queue up for it if you can't be bothered to deal with it.

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I've seen many people take this line of approach, and it's just a flawed logic. Just because something is optional, doesn't mean it should be done poorly.

It's a poor experience for anyone who wants to queue, period. It's clear there is a majority of people who find this experience to be disagreeable, instead of saying "don't like it, don't do it", we should be exploring measures to make this a fun experience, FOR ALL. We live in a world of inclusivity. How can we be inclusive, when we're excluding a proportion of the peoples voices?

The concept of those two MSQ dungeos was horrible idea, which SE knows very well - hence they never ever repeated it.

The reason why they still didnt reworked it - only made very controversial "fix" - is probably fact, that all development effort goest to current content, and they just dont think its worth the time to rework it.

However considering the effort they are willing to spend on equaly horrible grind-sidegame like Eureka, I'm not sure about the people making decisions here.

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Originally Posted by GarrEphemeral

I've seen many people take this line of approach, and it's just a flawed logic. Just because something is optional, doesn't mean it should be done poorly.

It's a poor experience for anyone who wants to queue, period. It's clear there is a majority of people who find this experience to be disagreeable, instead of saying "don't like it, don't do it", we should be exploring measures to make this a fun experience, FOR ALL. We live in a world of inclusivity. How can we be inclusive, when we're excluding a proportion of the peoples voices?

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Put it this way, they will not do two versions of the same roulette, one with cutscenes and one without. The roulette without will return to having 40-50 tomestones for 10-15min runs as reward requiring 5-6 days to get to the 300 available now for doing one run even if it lasts 40-50 mins.

The Roulette is in the best way it can be without a complete overhaul of these duties, and resources are better spent elsewhere. Your logic is the flawed one because you are not happy you are getting everything for nearly nothing.

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Originally Posted by GarrEphemeral

I'm sure a lot of you at this point are simply saying "Well, if you don't like it, don't do it...", and you'd be right, sort of. I mean, yes, it's an option, but it's also crazy difficult to ignore if you're after certain tomestones.

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You get so many tomestones for the MSQ roulette precisely because of the forced cutscenes. They increased the rewards when making the cutscenes non-skippable, and then increased them again later.
The tomestones are there to bribe you into running the MSQ roulette despite cutscenes.
Optional cutscenes would mean lower rewards - or did you think you could both have the cake and eat it?

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Originally Posted by GarrEphemeral

In the absence of any movement on either end, just remove the roulette, and create a dedicated, permanent SE linkshell that optional people can join to help new players complete the dungeon, or simply link anyone looking to complete the dungeon to online mentors who can decide to accept/decline the offer to heed a new players request for assistance in a storyline quest, or something along these lines.

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Or get this...

They could create a dedicated, permanent Roulette that people can optionally choose to sign up for to help new players complete the dungeon.

Wouldn't that be a great idea? :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by GarrEphemeral

I'm sure a lot of you at this point are simply saying "Well, if you don't like it, don't do it...", and you'd be right, sort of. I mean, yes, it's an option, but it's also crazy difficult to ignore if you're after certain tomestones. How many of you reading this honestly would pass up on a good deal when you see one, even it if it involved facing a certain level of fortitude, and effort to get it. I would imagine most people would still go along with it, which furthers my point that this is why there is never any shortages for this roulette, despite the cutscene fiasco.

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It's honestly not "Crazy difficult to ignore". I'm personally after a TON of Poetics, but I don't do the MSQ Roulette because I don't find it fun or worth the time it takes to go through.

I have other avenues of grinding out Poetics that are more interesting that don't make me watch a bunch of cutscenes.

Literally, I can queue up to any of a number of level cap dungeons that give only Poetics instead of loot (Such as Aetherochemical Research Facility, which gives 150 Poetics per run with a bonus of 100 for having a new player which happens frequently as it is a MSQ dungeon)

I can even run dungeons like Wanderer's Palace (Hard) with Squadron for 100 poetics per run.

300 Poetics a day is not particularly special for sitting through all those cutscenes.

They're merely there to entice people to queue in order to help newbies get through their MSQ.

I use MSQ roulette to pass the time, nostalgia, help other progress with the story, get some cool rewards. Doing the roulette hits several birds with one stone, especially with "less stress" as a certain poster would say. In some rare cases, a MSQ roulette run ends up being faster than some Expert Roulette runs I've been putting up with lately (single targeting DPS, zero-dps healers, tanks who don't use defensive cooldowns, I'm looking at you.)

MSQ Roulette actually gives 500 Poetics (200 for the dungeon and 300 for the Roulette bonus) plus a newbie bonus of another 100.

So 500-600 Poetics, a butt-load of EXP, plus high amounts of the other current currencies, for 35-55min of your time.

Seems fair enough to me.

The only change on it I would be in favor of would be allowing cutscene skipping when there are NO newbies in the run (which does happen). You'd still get all the Roulette bonuses as you did offer your time, but you'd not have to waste time when everyone has already done it.

I dont have a link to source this, but ive heard that because of the way they made the change there can only be one version of these dungeons and one version of their cutscenes. Thats why even if you go to the inn to view a scene later, it still auto-advances at the same pace as in an actual run. So that probly isnt possible. It could also lead to people kicking newbies from groups so they could skip the cutscenes and get out of the run in less then half the time for the same basic reward. This change was always a mistake. The roulette should have been scrapped and the dungeons should have become solo instances. That would have fixed all the old problems without creating new ones. Im not holding my breath for an actual fix at this point.

The tome/exp bonus is worth it to me. I grab a snack or do a bit of cleaning around the house during long scenes. I never run into disgruntled players, mostly I guess because the people who dont like it dont run it. New players could put up a party finder, but because they are new, they don't know they need to do that. No one tells you the scenes cut into each other. The guides online are gameplay oriented and dont include those details. By the time they think to seek help elsewhere the experience has already been ruined. Putting newbies in a separate queue wouldn't really work either, you'd die waiting as a dps.

If I could change one thing maybe make the scenes skippable if there are no first timers.

My 2 cents to this thread.

I'm playing since ARR Beta.

I've played in this time 5 chars through the ARR MSQ. One started with the open Beta. The next 3 over the years.

With the last one I did finish both Castrums in the last 2 days.

From my point of view, these runs in the past 2 days were the most chilling runs I ever had in these 2 instances. Nobody left, nobody was toxic, people were waiting on the elevators and so on.

These changes definitively change the experience to the better.

I just ran into a problem with the MSQ roulette just a few minutes ago. I didn't even get to do 75% of the fights because there were a group of people that would close out the game, then come back and the cutscene would skip, forcing those of us that choose not to do that particular exploit, to sit through one really really really long cutscene. I for one would love to see the MSQ cutscenes become skippable again, it's irritating and pointless to force it down our throats time and time again.

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Originally Posted by Azurion

I just ran into a problem with the MSQ roulette just a few minutes ago. I didn't even get to do 75% of the fights because there were a group of people that would close out the game, then come back and the cutscene would skip, forcing those of us that choose not to do that particular exploit, to sit through one really really really long cutscene.

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That's a known exploit, and is against the TOS. Report people if they do it.

I don't mind msq. I just alt tab and write/draw/ watch youtube while the villains are monologuing my characters horns off. However it turns annoying when you've got, for example, some dude going off about how he wants to bang cid or some dude that won't stop trolling... himself. (or maybe its a woman, I have no idea, I'm just using male pronouns because) And then it gets worse when people get lazy and don't wnat to do mechanics or tanks don't wanna pull mobs and it turns what should be a breeze into a nightmare.