Would the community appreciate the following change to DF?

Okay I had an idea that I mentioned in a bout of devil's advocacy a recent thread about Hall of the Novice, namely turning the min ILevel option from optional to mandatory. I feel like this could help alleviate some issues regarding healer downtime and certain roulettes and up the general skill floor a little, but at the cost of making them longer/more tedious (which might still be a boon for those that feel that MSQ/alliance gives too many tomes/exp for little effort or are leech magnets [counting those that deliberately ignored unlocking the higher raids]) and there might be an issue with the gear being dropped "unusable" for the dungeon its dropped in (my answer would be to make them "keys" to the next dungeon/raid)

Making this mandatory just means those actually doing damage/putting effort will have to put even more damage/effort. Leechers will continue to leech, it's a way of life for them.

In before "would rather have my rewards with no effort" crowd appears.

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

[counting those that deliberately ignored unlocking the higher raids])

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SE doesn't require you unlock all the raids to run Alliance so how does that make it bad if people don't? Just curious.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

SE doesn't require you unlock all the raids to run Alliance so how does that make it bad if people don't? Just curious.

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I'm mainly referring to those that decided not to unlock those so that they'd only have the CT raids in their roulette for easy tomes/exp, though I also forgot to mention that it also includes a group that alters their iLevel so that they can achieve a similar end while having those unlocked.Both cases make it more difficult for people that want to do Void Ark and beyond to do so because of the queve times.

I'm not saying it bad to not want to do those specific raids in general but I am saying its bad if the reason is because they're too difficult compared to CT

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

I'm not saying it bad to not want to do those specific raids in general but I am saying its bad if the reason is because they're too difficult compared to CT

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None of the raids are difficult. Not all the raids are required and many don't bother to unlock them all and that is their choice. I'm sure lots are doing the Invalice raids now because of relic. Many never did them before. They aren't required duties and if they aren't required by SE to unlock them to run the roulette that's simply something people don't need to bother with if they so choose.

That doesn't make them leeches sorry.

There was a time when roulettes had a list of duties you needed to unlock and run before you could run the roulette but SE decided to do away with that requirement.

Seems like, at least in context of DF, heading towards 'why even have gear then'? I know some might feel that has some truth already, given an old school lens, but we've still at least some vague progression outside of toll bridge tokens lol. Speaking in terms of stats at least, obviously there is still the 'visual'. Just remove all primary and ilvl stats off gear and turn secondary / materia into flat % boosts for the awkward vestigial of choice. Unlock content = ilvl, or something lol.

Obviously in further depth gear is used as little gates, but before this change at least gear also acted like rewards in and of themselves for power within those said gates. With this change they're far more 'just gates'. Once you meet the ilvl the power reward side of the gear would be near null (due to being synced down strictly).

I don't really like it as it strips back more of the wallpaper and makes gear more of an obvious treadmill, and takes away some of the candy along the way to do it.

I think for quality of the game experience, if you had really wanted to make the game consistently challenging, you'd find more value out of horizontal gear progression. Or just by removing gear progression all together and doing something else. Costs to going horizontal, some people deem worth others not, and if you remove gear progression all together and not replace it.. then I think you've lost part of the flow/zen.. that sort of addictive growth feeling. Certainly there is the story, but that has an end lol- which is why gear is usually last treadmill to give people reason to progress. I know you didn't say to remove gear all together but turning them into strictly (near strictly) gates would take a lot of the flow out of gear growth and make it even more sour (which I think is where horizontal does well, new gear could mean a new way to interface with the game without entirely killing balance- in linear growth it's usually just gradually bigger and bigger numbers but at least it's a change).

That's not to say I don't think min ilvl should be removed or anything (it's nice it exists for PF), I just don't think it would be good to force it on. :)

I'm gonna go ahead and say no to this. Down vote.

I like the idea.. but I think it needs to be stricter... maybe add a system where the game records your highest ilevel that way people won't be able to cheat the system by removing their gear..

Might be a good idea to lock all the roulettes if you have a class that's over the level of something and you don't have it unlocked..

Say you have a lv80 GNB with ilevel 480 being your current gear..

The game should record that you've reached ilevel 480 and make sure that any roulette you join has options from that high no matter your current ilevel..

As for the locking of roulettes.. I'd say if your lv80 and don't have all the 24man unlocked the roulette would be unavailable to you.. so once your 50 you need all 3 Crystal towers unlocked to do alliance raid roulette.. once you hit 60 it locks itself again until you unlock all of the Void Ark.. 70 all of Iviliace and lv80 will be the same once Yoha is complete

why no edit button SE!!!!

Before anyone says anything about the alliance lock being a punishment its would actually help people more then anything..

The roulettes are designed to get players into them to help people unlock and clear them.. those that do the ilevel cheese are breaking the system the roulettes were designed for..

So little lalafell over there trying to get a Void Ark to pop is being punished by you ilevel cheeserz because your forcing everyone into the dam crystal tower over and over...

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

There was a time when roulettes had a list of duties you needed to unlock and run before you could run the roulette but SE decided to do away with that requirement.

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And that was wrong, they should have never went back on that. But i also die dislike how 50/60/70 and later most likely 80 get thrown together >_>

Wouldn't this make some content more difficult than they even are now? Like, I saw a thread saying Titan HM at min Ilevel was a nightmare to do, compared to how it is today with the higher ilevel allowed?

No thanks. Let's at least try to pretend to reward players who bother to better gear themselves.

There are definitely some duties without a ilvl sync that could stand to use one, though. For instance, CM/Prae are insultingly easy (as 8-mans) without a ilvl sync.

Respectfully, soft disagree. I do like the idea of raising overall player skill, but I think the game is just not meant to be that hard. I kind of think of DF content like being at Disneyland. I wait in line, we get our turn, we point at the funny pirates on our pre determined path, everyone goes home happy.

I think the players that want something harder have content they can play (albeit fairly limited) in the various ultimate/ex trials, in addition to raids when they first release and the mechanics are simply unknown.

Alllllll that said, I would not be against if at certain solo parts in the story the game were reworked and flat out told you the incoming fight is a specific check you should be expected to do at that level. Think a solo Titan fight saying “this is a mechanics check fight. You will have to learn certain specific mechanics to clear this content”, the then having to 4 man titan normal with trust members. No carry.

I would probably never queue for roulettes again, since the reward:time for everything would plummet through the floor, and hunts would be even better than they are now.

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And that was wrong, they should have never went back on that. But i also die dislike how 50/60/70 and later most likely 80 get thrown together

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Yeah, its weird, especially given that 50/60 works for certain relic steps, but 70's, in the same queue, dont count for the prevously 50/60 flagged quests and steps.

Should have kept 50/60 separate.

all this would do is make people who carry others more miserable. the kind of people this is supposed to help just leave duties they cant clear.

if failing actually taught them anything we wouldnt be needing to have a very easy option on the borderline cutscenes that are msq duties, and yet...

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Originally Posted by RVallant

Wouldn't this make some content more difficult than they even are now? Like, I saw a thread saying Titan HM at min Ilevel was a nightmare to do, compared to how it is today with the higher ilevel allowed?

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Mechanically, no. Running Titan HM right now at min ilv won't change the mechanics of the fight, only make them more punishing. If you were to record your average run of Titan HM right now and then view it, the peeps taking unnecessary damage during that encounter likely won't survive if it was min ilv. The bombs in particular you can survive so long as you don't run into the subsequent blasts and a healer brings you up before the stomps. When I did that fight at min ilv as a healer, one bomb blast did me in. So yeah, when his bombs go off, you can expect many players to die during a min ilv encounter, and it's things like that why players would avoid this option like the plague.

Minimum item level just makes you have to do more perfect execution. If anything for the goal of making healers do more it might actually hurt that as it'll require being better and punishment may be too harsh to handle. I'm honestly not sure how you could make healers do more healing as is. Maybe percentage based damage? Would keep it from being a one shot but also won't kill.

I don't think making it mandatory in general would work, but a Minimum ilv Roulette wouldn't be a bad idea.

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Originally Posted by RVallant

Like, I saw a thread saying Titan HM at min Ilevel was a nightmare to do, compared to how it is today with the higher ilevel allowed?

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It wasn't THAT bad.
What killed people were mostly landslides, which still kill people today. The difference is, apart from ofc with min ilvl the fight lasted much longer so more chances to die, people had much worse ping back then, at least all us Europeans who had to physical servers closer than beyond the ocean. And with any amount of lag, landslides were absolutely impossible to dodge, and ofc you can't be ressed from them. And back then only the most skilled/geared players could complete the fight with only one healer, so if a healer got landslided, it was a wipe. I was one of those bad ping healers (and I needed to complete it as healer for relic) and indeed that fight was in the one I hated the most in the entire history of the game and I still have trauma, I had to get someone to carry me through it in the end. But then I got a trial on a ping reducer and when I ran it for Bard relic it seemed a joke to me, so easy it was.

Bottom line: it's not the ilvl that made it an horrible fight, but certain other conditions, which we wouldn't have with min ilvl nowadays.

As for other stuff, for example alliance raids, with min ilvl people surely wouldn't be able to cheese through mechanics, for example we'd have to go back to do towers and kill the giants in Behemot (which would be hard, since back then we had 6 tanks to take care of that, now we only have 3), and heal the pots etc. Battle surely would be a lot longer.

But you know what? I'm so tired of the pointless boring life-sucking runs that CT ones are today that I'd welcome it. And maybe people would finally learn mechanics plus think twice of cheesing to only get CT/not unlocking other raids and we'd see more.

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Originally Posted by Baxcel

I like the idea.. but I think it needs to be stricter... maybe add a system where the game records your highest ilevel that way people won't be able to cheat the system by removing their gear..

Might be a good idea to lock all the roulettes if you have a class that's over the level of something and you don't have it unlocked..

Say you have a lv80 GNB with ilevel 480 being your current gear..

The game should record that you've reached ilevel 480 and make sure that any roulette you join has options from that high no matter your current ilevel..

As for the locking of roulettes.. I'd say if your lv80 and don't have all the 24man unlocked the roulette would be unavailable to you.. so once your 50 you need all 3 Crystal towers unlocked to do alliance raid roulette.. once you hit 60 it locks itself again until you unlock all of the Void Ark.. 70 all of Iviliace and lv80 will be the same once Yoha is complete

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Sounds terrible - for people with road to 70 buff this literally locks them out from using their characters in their roulette and their levels will be substantially higher due to the leveling buff when they are progressing through MSQ. It simply forces a player to go through the MSQ slog nonstop and locks them out of content for poetics and such if they go past that level without fully obtaining the proper gear. New players will be forced to progress MSQ nonstop if they want to unlock content they should've already been allowed to play, which will seem more of a grind than a reward at that point. This also doesn't consider the fact that MSQ doesn't change in levels from 2.1 to 2.5 and 3.1 to 3.5, etc. It's very punishing to say the least as they could be lv 60 by the end of ARR but just get CT raids unlocked, but can't even run the roulette since they haven't hit the next expansion.

I never thought punishing everyone for what others are doing was a good solution. I would much rather they find another solution

I like only the ilvl requirement here

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Okay I had an idea that I mentioned in a bout of devil's advocacy a recent thread about Hall of the Novice, namely turning the min ILevel option from optional to mandatory. I feel like this could help alleviate some issues regarding healer downtime and certain roulettes and up the general skill floor a little, but at the cost of making them longer/more tedious (which might still be a boon for those that feel that MSQ/alliance gives too many tomes/exp for little effort or are leech magnets [counting those that deliberately ignored unlocking the higher raids]) and there might be an issue with the gear being dropped "unusable" for the dungeon its dropped in (my answer would be to make them "keys" to the next dungeon/raid)

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There is no healer downtime when healers have the ability to DPS. You heal if heals are needed, you DPS if not.

Groups would be failing on a regular basis if min ilvl was mandatory. Players would quit over slow or total lack of progress.

Few players want to spend weeks farming gear so they'll have exactly the items they need to unlock the next dungeon, and putting such keys destroy the ability of groups to replace members who leave. There's a reason why Blizzard abandoned dungeon attunements in Burning Crusade and normal raid attunements in Wrath of the Lich King.

Making things more tedious and/or difficult doesn't encourage people to become better and more dedicated players. It just encourages them to find a different game to play.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

Sounds terrible - for people with road to 70 buff this literally locks them out from using their characters in their roulette and their levels will be substantially higher due to the leveling buff when they are progressing through MSQ. It simply forces a player to go through the MSQ slog nonstop and locks them out of content for poetics and such if they go past that level without fully obtaining the proper gear. New players will be forced to progress MSQ nonstop if they want to unlock content they should've already been allowed to play, which will seem more of a grind than a reward at that point. This also doesn't consider the fact that MSQ doesn't change in levels from 2.1 to 2.5 and 3.1 to 3.5, etc. It's very punishing to say the least as they could be lv 60 by the end of ARR but just get CT raids unlocked, but can't even run the roulette since they haven't hit the next expansion.

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I hope you read my 2nd post just below that because it covered most of this..

The new player shouldn't be using those roulettes to get exp or tomes.. those roulettes are to help players join new people looking to do those dungeons and raids for the first time..

If the player is already at lv60 or higher and not even in Heavensward they definitely shouldn't be doing roulettes that involve more exp when they could be using it on another class or making progress at getting threw the MSQ..

Once again the roulettes are made to get people into fights that new players are just now unlocking.. and those that are cheesing the system and messing with the reason they are even there.

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Originally Posted by Baxcel

IThe new player shouldn't be using those roulettes to get exp or tomes.. those roulettes are to help players join new people looking to do those dungeons and raids for the first time..

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Sorry roulettes are for leveling. They are used at all levels. I seriously doubt SE is about to change that focus.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Making things more tedious and/or difficult doesn't encourage people to become better and more dedicated players. It just encourages them to find a different game to play.

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It will discourage players that are entitled and want everything given to them, sure. So one might say this method could be used to purge a lot of toxicity from the game. And that's why the players willing to go through grinds and difficulty would be all for this decision.

I 'guess' this would drive down sales. But to be honest, this is what I am told. Not shown.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

It will discourage players that are entitled and want everything given to them, sure. So one might say this method could be used to purge a lot of toxicity from the game. And that's why the players willing to go through grinds and difficulty would be all for this decision.

I 'guess' this would drive down sales. But to be honest, this is what I am told. Not shown.

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Making things take longer Isn’t a good thing. And ultimately all this does is drag things out with little to no merit. Wanting to avoid that doesn’t make someone “entitled”.

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Originally Posted by MirronTulaxia

Making things take longer Isn’t a good thing. And ultimately all this does is drag things out with little to no merit. Wanting to avoid that doesn’t make someone “entitled”.

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Says who? You? I find that it's not making things take longer; it's making things too long. So how long is too long? What is "long" for someone might be short for me or someone else. Perspective is a very difficult curveball for the devs to hit a homerun with.

I never said this is what makes players entitled, so please don't put words in my mouth. I simply said that resorting to such methods would discourage the players that are entitled. Huge difference.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Sorry roulettes are for leveling. They are used at all levels. I seriously doubt SE is about to change that focus.

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He means that the Roulette exists to keep the queues for outdated content healthy for those levelling through that content, be they new or alt jobs/characters.

The EXP bonus is exactly that, a bonus. It exists to entice players into doing outdated content.
Take the rewards away from the Roulettes and no one would do them. Which would block or severely hinder newer players or alt jobs from being able to queue for dungeons at their level.

Imagine a newbies first attempt at Sastasha for MSQ is a multi hour queue because the vast majority of the population is well beyond needing to queue that.
Its kinda rare to get a sub level cap dungeon with a full team of players not synced down.

Or to put it another way, The Roulette is used for levelling other players, Not yourself. Its a bribe. You do it once for yourself and then go back to current level content.
It keeps the queues healthy for all levels of content without relying on a constant influx of brand new players (or brand new alts) to populate the lower levels.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

He means that the Roulette exists to keep the queues for outdated content healthy for those levelling through that content, be they new or alt jobs/characters.

The EXP bonus is exactly that, a bonus. It exists to entice players into doing outdated content.
Take the rewards away from the Roulettes and no one would do them. Which would block or severely hinder newer players or alt jobs from being able to queue for dungeons at their level.

Imagine a newbies first attempt at Sastasha for MSQ is a multi hour queue because the vast majority of the population is well beyond needing to queue that.
Its kinda rare to get a sub level cap dungeon with a full team of players not synced down.

Or to put it another way, The Roulette is used for levelling other players, Not yourself. Its a bribe. You do it once for yourself and then go back to current level content.
It keeps the queues healthy for all levels of content without relying on a constant influx of brand new players (or brand new alts) to populate the lower levels.

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Thank you, this exactly.

Imagine if they removed the Tomes an Exp bonus from MSQ roulette.. do you think anyone would sit threw an hour of cut scenes for no reward?

Doubt they would and thats what I mean by they are for keeping dungeons active and so the lock on roulettes where you don't meet the current ilevel or actual level would be trivial as if you don't have it unlocked your not aiding to the use of the roulette's designed feature.

I have a thread about this, though its specifically for preventing manipulation of the system. Making Alliance only available if you have all three raids of a tier unlocked and players to meet the minimum ilvl requirement of the raid that is equal to their level (so for lvl 50-59 that'd be LotA, lvl 60-69 Void Ark, lvl 70-79 Rabanastre, lvl 80 Copied Factory) will help curb some of it but as with anything people will find a way. I can only hope Ct raids get put in a separate roulette like I also suggested because it'd be nice to take those off the table for a bit. I like getting a variety.