Are there MSQ cutscenes in dungeons after Toto-Rak that conflict with the action?

Hi everyone,

As a first-time player (started about two weeks ago) I'm currently working through the MSQ and following along with the great story. As you know, every so often the MSQ sends you to a dungeon to team up with others.

I'm usually scrambling just to keep up with the others who have obviously been through the dungeon multiple times before. It's not the most fun since the initial excitement of exploring a new dungeon, solving puzzles, etc. is lost. But I haven't minded that part too much.

Last night, however, I made it to The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak. It was a good run and by now I'm used to just running to keep up. We made it to the last room and the MSQ cutscene started. It included voice acting, so it took even longer to watch since I didn't want to just skim and click (although it wasn't all that long). As I'm watching the cutscene I see a couple messages on the screen that seem to be combat messages. The cutscene ends with a big reveal of the final boss, then immediately shows a cutscene of the same final boss dying. I'm brought back into the game world and I'm standing alone in a big room with just an exit portal available.

Soooo... that's pretty disappointing. I missed the entire last boss fight and I left my three teammates to fight without me. It probably wouldn't take all that long to queue up and do the entire dungeon again to see the last boss, but I shouldn't have to.

So my question: does this continue to happen throughout the game, where I need to choose between watching a MSQ cutscene or actually participating in a boss fight? The story is one of the main selling points so far for me, but I also don't want to be a terrible teammate. Should I let my party know that I'm on the MSQ? Would that have allowed them to delay starting the last fight (assuming they actually waited)? I'm mainly just curious if this will continue to happen or if this was a fluke of questionable design on a single dungeon.

Thanks!

What happened is your party skipped through a cutscene they'd already seen and just started the boss without waiting for you.
Most people are courteous (or at least wanna go into a boss with the full squad) so it IS uncommon, and usually it's an accident.

Thanks. I figured that's what happened. Just wondering if this will continue to come up in future dungeons. If so, it sounds like maybe I should let everyone know that it's my first time through and ask them to please not skip the cutscenes. Although from a design standpoint it seems like they should make everyone wait until the other party members are ready before continuing... Maybe with an "are you sure?" warning if you decide to continue while someone else is still in the cutscene (for all I know that is how it works and my party just left me behind!).

People can generally tell it's your first time through if you're watching the cutscenes, but saying something might not be a bad idea.
You can even use the auto translate feature to make sure your message is understood.
Have fun yo.

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Originally Posted by Xurahl

So my question: does this continue to happen throughout the game, where I need to choose between watching a MSQ cutscene or actually participating in a boss fight? The story is one of the main selling points so far for me, but I also don't want to be a terrible teammate. Should I let my party know that I'm on the MSQ? Would that have allowed them to delay starting the last fight (assuming they actually waited)? I'm mainly just curious if this will continue to happen or if this was a fluke of questionable design on a single dungeon.

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I think every single dungeon in the game has a cutscene just before the last boss. The one in Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak is a bit longer than most though.
The other people in your party can see when you are in a cutscene, so that they didn't wait was because of impatience or because they weren't paying attention.

Ok, thanks. Sounds like in general this should not be a big problem, but it might still be good to give the party a heads up going in that I'm a first-timer and that I plan to watch the cutscenes. Also good to know that my team could tell I was in the cutscene and not just standing there AFK.

And outside of, like, The Stone Vigil, The Aery, and maybe one other one, they pretty much stopped putting the long cutscenes BEFORE the boss.
There are very few duties where you'll have this problem. Even if the party wanted to just charge in without you 99% of the duties don't have long enough pre-boss cutscenes that you could miss the whole fight.

The Stone Vigil is the only one like Toto-Rak with a long story cutscene before the final boss.

There are also the two MSQ finale dungeons which have enforced cutscenes for everyone.

Jumping in with a lot of whats already been said. Every dungeon has 3 cutscenes(and a couple have more). The fly-through at the start(everyone is locked inside a gate, so no head starts), the victory pose when the final boss dies(dungeon is over, so if the others are skipping or not doesnt matter), and final boss appears. Most of the time the final boss appears scene is short, and most final bosses are long enough fights that you wont miss much or hard enough fights that your teammates are more likely to wait for you.

To the ones with a long cutscene before last boss, I'll also add Keeper of the lake. For the rest, what others said. Many trials also have a long cutscene first, but in that case the fight can't start at all until you're done watching.
People sometimes jump in even if the healer is watching a cutscene (and wipe), but in any case don't feel compelled to skip, people should be patient and wait for first timers to watch cutscenes, I know I always do.

Keeper of the Lake's boss cutscene isn't anywhere near as long as I remembered it being, after warning my party that I was going to watch it when I was on a story replay. Maybe longer than the average "boss appears and roars" but not that bad. There's a long scene after the end of the dungeon and I think that blurred in memory.

I wanna say the last dungeon that has any serious cutscenes is the final dungeon of base HW

A way you can lower the chance of people engaging while you're watching cutscenes is to run dungeons first time as tank or healer. They're less likely to jump in, and then, if they do, they're liable to die.

What you described almost happened to my Let's Play alt. The only reason they didn't kill it, is because they didn't break its tail, and when I got out of the cutscene, it was at 20% with the entire arena covered in poison that it places with its tail heh.

I've since level DRK on this alt, and if I know a dungeon has a lengthy boss CS, I play it on tank to prevent missing out on showing the fight.

Unfortunately it does happen, if I see someone watching a cutscene I will wait with them regardless, this doesn't become as much of problem as you go through the game the expansions fix this by putting cutscenes at the start and the end, or they just do an extremely quick one to introduce the boss.