A thought I've been having about The Praetorium's progression

TL;DR
I wish to see if it's possible for The Praetorium to have the teleporters activate after all enemies in that area have been defeated, since they die pretty quickly anyway.

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So, I feel that the final dungeon of the base ARR game 2.0, The Praetorium, is a bit of a divisive ending to the game. I want to point out before I suggest what I've been thinking my stance on the dungeon when I first did it, so you can see where I am coming from. Not everyone will agree with me, nor will they likely see where I'm coming from, but nonetheless, here is where I stand.

Back when I initially did The Praetorium, I believe it was in the middle of the Stormblood patch cycle, I hated it. Being invested in the story as I was, the constant rushing to different areas and everyone skipping the cut-scenes made me feel irritated beyond belief - not that I blame them per-say, I am likely not the first person to point out the design flaws of the dungeon. This is why, to me, the removal of the ability to skip these cut-scenes, while heavily increasing the rewards for participating in the Main Scenario roulette, was a good move. Those who have the patience to wait through the cut-scenes get good incentives to do so, and new players get a less chaotic experience through the dungeon.

My concern, though, is that some people, not all to be fair, will be put off by the fact that people rush through the initial portions of the dungeon by ignoring combat with enemies as much as possible and just taking the teleporters given to them. On top of this, there is an issue with rushing which, if you've done the dungeon before you'll have likely seen it, people end up getting killed from the high amounts of confusion and it just makes the whole experience less fun.

A solution I devised, therefore, is to just disallow using the teleporters until all enemies in that area are dealt with. I want to point out that I am not a game developer, thus I have no idea what issues could be caused by this, but as for player concerns with it being problematic, I feel enemies are killed easy enough in the dungeon that this shouldn't be too much of a concern, barely any time would be wasted. This way, I feel new players will be happy with pacing more and without it being too inconvenient for returning players (since as I said the enemies shouldn't be too much of a burden).

Sorry if my writing skills are not all that, but hopefully my point was gotten across pretty well. Thanks for reading, please discuss! Also, apologies if this has already been suggested, I'm relatively new to the forums.

I'm down with this idea. There are two parts in prae that they can remove. The 5 sec walk between breaking the wall and the nero cutscene is one, and the other is the 3 sec walk between gaius' fight and the ultima weapon. They could remove those two transitions and make it mandatory to defeat all the enemies near the teleporters instead since there are already parts in prae that require you to defeat all surrounding enemies before progressing. I mean, it might take longer than the transitions, but it could solve the confusion issues of new players.

This benefits the three people who find 2.0 story interesting and harms 10 million players playing this game worldwide

It was mentioned in one of the interviews after the last live letter that they're thinking about reworking both Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium into new dungeons because trying to tweak the existing dungeons as much as they need to be would be almost the same amount of work. I don't think they've made a final decision yet, and it wouldn't be until next expansion at the earliest that we'd see the revamp if they do it.

Honestly, no one should be dying in there even with the trash skipping outside of maybe one tank in the pull to the second Magitek Terminal. If other players would let the tanks go first to get aggro and refrain from attacking/healing, everyone should be getting through without problems. Tanks have sufficient cooldowns at level 50 to stay alive without healing as they pick up the trash and everyone runs by. Once everyone else is through, the tank just need to press their menu Confirm keybind fast enough to teleport (not always successful but usually possible esp. if the tank remembers to use Arm's Length just before they try to go through).

Keep an eye out for the new player bonus message at the start and then mention what to expect in party chat if it appears since new players are the ones most likely to be confused. The information is usually appreciated (including by those who have done it before but not often enough to remember).

Were I in charge of dungeon design and was saddle with making Prae run as intended I'd do more than just gate the teleporters behind killing the mobs. Both positive and negative (from the impatient community's perspective). I'd...

• Make the protection Ultima Weapon has for most the first place a thing that all bosses have. For the benefit of people with slower connections
• Require the Reaper to even access the area beyond the Bulwalk, with those that aren't mounted being unable to use it without the shortcut. This is mainly to ensure everyone is mounted.
• Buff Lahabrea! Serious I get that Ultima is the bigger threat, but he shouldn't be a total pushover like he currently is. (also applicable to Livia sas Junes)
• A stat squish to bring it closer to the balance of say, Aumarot, which has a level sync lower than the currently available gear. (also applicable to LOTA and ST)

For Castrum:

• Same Stat squish and as a mentioned a buff to Livia.
• More substantial cutscenes, less panning to searchlights being turned off. The goal being to ensure that regardless of where you end up you are gonna spend the same amount of time there. The time would also be used to establish and remind players of certain plot points such as Nero's wiretapping in advance.

A side feature to go with the changes:

• A "average clear time" mentioned in each roulette that tells players how much time they should expect to spend in the dungeon,with MSQ specifically being listed as either 45 minuites or an hour (as a sidenote the 4 person Trials will be moved Guldhest for simialr reasons)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Morningstar1337

Were I in charge of dungeon design and was saddle with making Prae run as intended I'd do more than just gate the teleporters behind killing the mobs. Both positive and negative (from the impatient community's perspective). I'd...

• Make the protection Ultima Weapon has for most the first place a thing that all bosses have. For the benefit of people with slower connections
• Require the Reaper to even access the area beyond the Bulwalk, with those that aren't mounted being unable to use it without the shortcut. This is mainly to ensure everyone is mounted.
• Buff Lahabrea! Serious I get that Ultima is the bigger threat, but he shouldn't be a total pushover like he currently is. (also applicable to Livia sas Junes)
• A stat squish to bring it closer to the balance of say, Aumarot, which has a level sync lower than the currently available gear. (also applicable to LOTA and ST)

For Castrum:

• Same Stat squish and as a mentioned a buff to Livia.
• More substantial cutscenes, less panning to searchlights being turned off. The goal being to ensure that regardless of where you end up you are gonna spend the same amount of time there. The time would also be used to establish and remind players of certain plot points such as Nero's wiretapping in advance.

A side feature to go with the changes:

• A "average clear time" mentioned in each roulette that tells players how much time they should expect to spend in the dungeon,with MSQ specifically being listed as either 45 minuites or an hour (as a sidenote the 4 person Trials will be moved Guldhest for simialr reasons)

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"Why does it take 92 hours for my queue to pop?"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Barraind

"Why does it take 92 hours for my queue to pop?"

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This is a thread about fixing the progression of Prae, no? The changes would yield that as well as ensuring that one dungeon isn't "favored" over the other, espeicllay since more like that Castrum exp will be buffed to be more on par with Prae because of concerns of long queues making impossibl and that Prae itself would likely yield even more xp to account for the changes.

The only way these dungeons can be improved is if they made thing solo and take away all of the rewards so you do it once at your own pace and never do it again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Japooter

My concern, though, is that some people, not all to be fair, will be put off by the fact that people rush through the initial portions of the dungeon by ignoring combat with enemies as much as possible and just taking the teleporters given to them.

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This is done in some other dungeons, avoiding fights when possible to minimize the time taken.
I think it's a good thing that experienced players can learn the tricks to help others along the way.

Hopefully, they can make this a pseudo-trust thing you do with some NPC allies.
If that's nearly as hard as redoing it from scratch, then just leave it as is, cut all enemy hp and damage by 80% or so, and make it a long solo instance.

I’ve advocated for locking the teleporters until the mobs are killed as well. It wouldn’t take but a minute, and then you’re not leaving the new and unlucky players to die.

I think a bigger issue is Meridianum's cutscene-inducing searchlights. There's nothing worse than being in a fight and someone would turn off the searchlights and trigger a cutscene.

I'm sure there's a plan to change these two dungeons eventually, but in the meantime, can't we just make the searchlights not interactable until all nearby and/or engaged enemies are killed?

And maybe also lock boss arenas until the enemies are dead first because entering boss arenas also trigger cutscenes.

Wow, thanks for discussing this everyone, I didn't expect this to get much attention. I see a lot of your points are pretty good, and if it is true they plan to improve the dungeons drastically that could be a much better alternative. I still stand by what I think, and I'm glad some people agree. Whether or not you don't though, this was pretty insightful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raltar

The only way these dungeons can be improved is if they made thing solo and take away all of the rewards so you do it once at your own pace and never do it again.

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I find this idea interesting, albeit weird. If they were able to make this more understandable or whatever, I'd be down for that maybe.

Agreed. I did those two dungeons back in 2017, shortly after Stormblood had been released. They very nearly caused me to quit the game. Up to that point other players had been pretty relaxed in dungeons, letting me watch cutscenes etc. So it was very jarring to suddenly have other rushing ahead at a breakneck pace, completely leaving me in the dust. At this point cutscenes were still skippable so I soon got completely separated from the rest of the party. It took me two days to calm down enough to decide I want to keep playing. That remains the worst experience I've had in FFXIV.

Making cutscenes unskippable helped somewhat, but still the extremely poor balancing and mass pulls make for a bad experience for new players.