Cutsence Skipping in MSQ Roulettes, by disconnecting

As the title suggests, I have noticed that people have begun to skip the cutscenes in MSQ-Roulettes again. They do so by quickly disconnecting and reconnecting to the game.

Even if one waits out bench time - aka the login queue - it is still considerably shorter than the cutscenes. If more than one person does that in a run, the boss will be dead before the cutscenes are over, allowing them to move forward faster.

It appears as if the idea of "making cutscenes unskippable in MSQ-roulette" was only a temporary solution because by now people have found a way around this "unskippability".

What do you think is a good way to deal with this?

Report of the offenders.
It does work.

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Originally Posted by Kirika-

Report of the offenders.
It does work.

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Why should someone get a report?

Castrum has always been a mess. I still don´t know why SE isn´t making solo - content out of it or create a cutszene before and after the whole dungeon. "Please watch those cutszenes" is a terrible game-design and kills the fluent gameplay. No matter if it´s 45mins castrum or 2min cutszene to watch a boss evolving like a pokemon over and over again.
In games like SWTOR you had atleast the option to skip cutszenes AND you could choose between good / bad, which changed the whole dungeon. Not to mention that they never happened mid-fight or 100 times. But the stuff here is just horrible and SE should´ve reworked castrum, when they cutted the ARR-MSQ with SHB.

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Originally Posted by Narail

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The inner castrum is shorter with a german language. If there are 3-4 ppl with this, the bosses are dead while others still watch too.

Report it. A minute isn't going to kill people.

It's an exploit that's been known for a good while.

But yeah, just report it when you see it. It's an exploit that goes against the devs' intentions here and can tarnish the experience for new players if they do something like pull a boss mid cutscene.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

The inner castrum is shorter with a german language. If there are 3-4 ppl with this, the bosses are dead while others still watch too.

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I actually didn't know that. Perhaps I never noticed because my DF language settings? Either way, the end result is the same. The story bosses and enemies are dealt with before other people finish watching their cutscenes. Now, would you say that these people with the german language setting are doing anything forbidden by engaging the enemies before everybodies' cutscenes are over? Usually, it is nice etiquette to wait for everyone to be ready. I can't remember any rule which would enforce that. Disconnecting and reconnecting is obviously not the indended way to play through the instance. I suspect that it isn't "fixable" either because it'd probably require reworking how cutscenes work.

I also don't know if SE counts it as an offense, I'm not even sure under which rule.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Why should someone get a report?

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So, its OK to break the rules then?

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Originally Posted by Narail

I actually didn't know that.

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It's significantly shorter in Japanese too.

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Originally Posted by Kirika-

So, its OK to break the rules then?

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Which rules? There are none. It´s not even a real exploit and SE can´t determine if someone disconnect on purpose or not, unless they´re writing it in the chat.
Sometimes ppl just disconnect or a leaver is getting replaced with someone else via MSQ or Mentor-roulette. Of course it would be kind to wait then, but who does that? Ppl rush castrum anyway and in 9/10 cases newbies will die on the way, because they don´t know what´s going on.

SE just needs to stop to force ppl to wait for some cutszene-watchers or that we´ve to watch cutszenes over and over again. Problem solved.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Which rules? There are none. It´s not even a real exploit and SE can´t determine if someone disconnect on purpose or not, unless they´re writing it in the chat.

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*disconnects during every cutscene

Nothing sus there.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Which rules? There are none. It´s not even a real exploit and SE can´t determine if someone disconnect on purpose or not, unless they´re writing it in the chat.
Sometimes ppl just disconnect or a leaver is getting replaced with someone else via MSQ or Mentor-roulette. Of course it would be kind to wait then, but who does that? Ppl rush castrum anyway and in 9/10 cases newbies will die on the way, because they don´t know what´s going on.

SE just needs to stop to force ppl to wait for some cutszene-watchers or that we´ve to watch cutszenes over and over again. Problem solved.

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It is a real exploit and yes people do get punished for it.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Which rules? There are none. It´s not even a real exploit and SE can´t determine if someone disconnect on purpose or not, unless they´re writing it in the chat.
Sometimes ppl just disconnect or a leaver is getting replaced with someone else via MSQ or Mentor-roulette. Of course it would be kind to wait then, but who does that? Ppl rush castrum anyway and in 9/10 cases newbies will die on the way, because they don´t know what´s going on.

SE just needs to stop to force ppl to wait for some cutszene-watchers or that we´ve to watch cutszenes over and over again. Problem solved.

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Yes, it is against the rules. That are laid out, go read them, as you do state that you did so when you signed up for the game.
Yes, they are enforced.

It is completely trivial, for both SE and anyone who has played this game long enough, to tell the difference between someone accidentally disconnecting or if it's someone using a different language and therefor getting a shorter cut scene time, and someone exploiting the game mechanics to cheat. Even easier to report said players by name and server for breaking the rules, while in game, and it only takes a minute to do.
And, yes, they DO take action against said cheaters.

The non-skip-able cut scenes are for only two MSQ instances, and are in place for the benefit of first time players of them and are compensated for in exp, gil, and tombstones at a higher rate that any other dungeon or roulette.

If you do not want to watch the cut scenes, then you do not get the rewards. If that is what you want, don't queue for them. Problem solved.

Fucking put those 2 as MSQ solo mission already, it should have been done a very long time ago and would have avoided so much salt.

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Originally Posted by Narail

As the title suggests, I have noticed that people have begun to skip the cutscenes in MSQ-Roulettes again. They do so by quickly disconnecting and reconnecting to the game.

Even if one waits out bench time - aka the login queue - it is still considerably shorter than the cutscenes. If more than one person does that in a run, the boss will be dead before the cutscenes are over, allowing them to move forward faster.

It appears as if the idea of "making cutscenes unskippable in MSQ-roulette" was only a temporary solution because by now people have found a way around this "unskippability".

What do you think is a good way to deal with this?

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I've been in a couple runs where 3 people were skipping like that and it really didn't speed things up at all. Before Nero, they'd finish the fight around the same time the cut scene ends, with Nero and Ultima they'd get about halfway through before the rest arrived but Lahabread would die before the cutscenes finished.

They had to disconnect/reconnect their internet each CS, sit through log in queues, then work harder to kill the boss, all for 2-3 minutes off the run? I think the longest time I've seen saved from that exploit was about 5 minutes. Doing all that extra unnecessary work for a few minutes? You'd have to get at least half the group to make any significant dent in the time elapsed, while I'm sure that has happened somewhere, its exceedingly rare.

I'm sure in the minds of the skippers, all that work is worth the 2 minutes saved. Meanwhile I'm just going to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

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Originally Posted by Kirika-

Yes, it is against the rules. That are laid out, go read them, as you do state that you did so when you signed up for the game.
Yes, they are enforced.

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I know the standard gaming rules, but there are none like "don´t disconnect in castrum". An exploit is something which gives you a huge advantage ingame. To skip a cutszene is no real exploit.
If someone is doing that in 3-4 cutszenes, ofc it´s super suspicious, but in the end, you might punish someone for perma dc´s caused by the provider. It´s not like you can kick such persons out of the group and all would be fine anyway.

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Originally Posted by Kirika-

And, yes, they DO take action against said cheaters.

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It´s laughable what they do there. There are so many ppl cheating, exploiting, using cheats or bots and SE just ignores it on purpose. As long as you´re no chat spamming real money trader or some badass who´s insulting others in the mainchat, you won´t get banned anyway. I´ve reported more than enough ppl who abuse different bots.
No matter if it´s something like cactbot or the farmbot, whatever. They´re still playing and have x 9999 stacks of polycrystals in the AH. And nobody can tell me, that they´ve farmed that every day, just to sell them for 10 gil or less. Not to mention all those "savage / ultimate" - carry groups who´re free to advertise themselves in the game, just to get paid with real money via discord / paypal.
But hey, i got banned once because my bank fckd up online services, so 1,50€ for a music roll from the shop didn´t got paid. Did i got a message that something went wrong from SE´s side? NO! I needed to call them, still got banned for a couple of days until they got their 1,50€, meanwhile i lost paid time from the abonnement and you noone of them is available at weekends too.

Their "ban - priorities" and customer-service is a joke.


And if we´re talking about exploits in that way, what about "Hello World"?

It´s not like SE should fix such stuff immediately, but they don´t.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

I know the standard gaming rules, but there are none like "don´t disconnect in castrum". An exploit is something which gives you a huge advantage ingame. To skip a cutszene is no real exploit.
If someone is doing that in 3-4 cutszenes, ofc it´s super suspicious, but in the end, you might punish someone for perma dc´s caused by the provider. It´s not like you can kick such persons out of the group and all would be fine anyway.

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■Behaviour that disrupts the game balance
■Misuse of flaws

https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216

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Originally Posted by Kirika-

■Behaviour that disrupts the game balance
■Misuse of flaws

https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216

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Yes and?

Why are all those botters not banned? "- Automating gameplay processes."

Why isn´t half of the players not banned for using ACT and cactbot? "- Modifying, analysing, integrating, and/or reverse engineering game software or data."

Why is the other half not banned for the housing tool? "- Creating, distributing, using, or promoting utilities that interact with the game."
(or even all the glitches)

I guess, because the game wouldn´t have any players left.


SE´s judgement about all that stuff is highly questionable. Too punish players to finish castrum faster, content which is one of the worst things in the games history, is just laughable. Even if it´s not skipped, not any newcomer will enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

Yes and?

Why are all those botters not banned? "- Automating gameplay processes."

Why isn´t half of the players not banned for using ACT and cactbot? "- Modifying, analysing, integrating, and/or reverse engineering game software or data."

Why is the other half not banned for the housing tool? "- Creating, distributing, using, or promoting utilities that interact with the game."
(or even all the glitches)

I guess, because the game wouldn´t have any players left.


SE´s judgement about all that stuff is highly questionable. Too punish players to finish castrum faster, content which is one of the worst things in the games history, is just laughable. Even if it´s not skipped, not any newcomer will enjoy it.

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So because you feel SE doesn't enforce some rules, they should add more rules to list of rules to ignore?

As for ACT, they've stated that they can't tell when someone is using it or not unless they basically put spyware on your computer to do so and they don't feel that that is right. So they ban when people mention it in chat and get reported for it. I'd imagine cactbot is along the same lines.

Bots they ban in waves to try to keep botters from figuring out what part of their bots code got them discovered.

The cut scenes in those two MSQ dungeons were made unskippable because new players before were either kicked in cut scene or would jump from cut scene to cut scene until the dungeon is finished or have no context for the fights they are fighting inside of those dungeons. Those cut scenes also make very little sense outside of the context of where you are in the dungeons so players can't just go rewatch in the inn afterward and get caught up without confusion being added.

Is it a perfect solution? No. But it is the next best solution to it being a solo duty.

And while they may be working on a solo instance version of it, it's probably something low on the priority list given the resources they have are probably better spent working on new content.

When I did these runs the first time it was not enjoyable as sprout. I did have cutscene disconnect skippers who were laughing at me and being jerks because I forgot to get the key and got left behind (for some reason it’s the only dungeon where everyone must get the key, instead of being shared like other dungeons previously and after that).

Besides for Lahabrea who has very low HP, this exploit is hardly worth it because you get 2-3 people doing it max.


Both Castrum thingies should be solo, if they persist with group content, at least let people skip it if everyone did the MSQ already.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

But hey, i got banned once because my bank fckd up online services, so 1,50€ for a music roll from the shop didn´t got paid. Did i got a message that something went wrong from SE´s side? NO! I needed to call them, still got banned for a couple of days until they got their 1,50€, meanwhile i lost paid time from the abonnement and you noone of them is available at weekends too.

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Is this real ?
How can you blame and punish a customer for something clearly outside their control, instead of talking to them as first approach or removing the item?

You can’t expect them to buy more cashshop stuff in the future with that kind of actions. Amazing, no idea who decided that but they must be bad at customer relation and sales management.

Castrum and Prem should be solo instances at the end of the day.

I hate that new players take ages to queue into them only to watch all these cut scenes introducing bosses and the bosses just MELT within seconds. It must be so anti-climatic.

It's a waste of time for everyone really.

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Originally Posted by Seera1024

So because you feel SE doesn't enforce some rules, they should add more rules to list of rules to ignore?

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Given to the circumstances, SE clearly don´t do enough against such stuff. And yes, i do know about the montly banrates, which are normally goldseller and not gamer bots / exploituser. To ban someone because of castrum is a joke combined to everything else which happens in this game pretty often.

In case of farmbots, it´s not so hard to track them and you can find their core-user-accounts pretty easily. Just check out the market board for suspicious prices / stacks and or check out the trade history.
ACT / cactbots or housing glitch users shouldn´t be hard to find too. I´m pretty sure that you don´t need dozens of spyware, when something is interacting in a pretty obvious way with the game / servers.

Such stuff is not even a single written hack or something, it´s everywhere and there are internet sides where you get it. SE don´t even make any effort to close such sides.

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Originally Posted by True-to-Caesar

Is this real ?
How can you blame and punish a customer for something clearly outside their control, instead of talking to them as first approach or removing the item?

You can’t expect them to buy more cashshop stuff in the future with that kind of actions. Amazing, no idea who decided that but they must be bad at customer relation and sales management.

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Yes this is real, it was the Answer - Reprise roll. The bill wasn´t paid on monday, so i got banned at friday. I tried to login and got the standard "you´re account bla" message. I called them and he told me, that it was not paid for whatever reason. So i called my bank and they told me, that they had issues this day, so the online-payment was deleted from their system. I called SE again and told them, that it was a bank-issue and that i´ve uploaded some crysta, so they can take those 1,50€ away there and open my account. But no, it was not possible, it takes time. So i had to wait until monday, since nobody works on weekend at SE.
At the end i´ve asked about the lost abo-time and that it was obviously not my fault / on purpose. But something like a goodwill or real customer-service doesn´t exist there.

Had another thing with a statue from the shop, which got delayed thx to corona. I haven´t recieved any new infos or something after the 2nd date it should´ve arrived here, but atleast there i got my money back after 4 months.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

I know the standard gaming rules, but there are none like "don´t disconnect in castrum". An exploit is something which gives you a huge advantage ingame. To skip a cutszene is no real exploit.
If someone is doing that in 3-4 cutszenes, ofc it´s super suspicious, but in the end, you might punish someone for perma dc´s caused by the provider. It´s not like you can kick such persons out of the group and all would be fine anyway.



It´s laughable what they do there. There are so many ppl cheating, exploiting, using cheats or bots and SE just ignores it on purpose. As long as you´re no chat spamming real money trader or some badass who´s insulting others in the mainchat, you won´t get banned anyway. I´ve reported more than enough ppl who abuse different bots.
No matter if it´s something like cactbot or the farmbot, whatever. They´re still playing and have x 9999 stacks of polycrystals in the AH. And nobody can tell me, that they´ve farmed that every day, just to sell them for 10 gil or less. Not to mention all those "savage / ultimate" - carry groups who´re free to advertise themselves in the game, just to get paid with real money via discord / paypal.
But hey, i got banned once because my bank fckd up online services, so 1,50€ for a music roll from the shop didn´t got paid. Did i got a message that something went wrong from SE´s side? NO! I needed to call them, still got banned for a couple of days until they got their 1,50€, meanwhile i lost paid time from the abonnement and you noone of them is available at weekends too.

Their "ban - priorities" and customer-service is a joke.


And if we´re talking about exploits in that way, what about "Hello World"?

It´s not like SE should fix such stuff immediately, but they don´t.

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You probably should stop defending the disconnect exploit. No one, especially SE, is buying the excuses.

If someone does accidentally disconnect and return before the cutscene is completed, the correct thing to do is to wait for the rest of the party to finish the cutscene.

By engaging the boss, you are intentionally disrupting the game experience of the other party members. That boss fight is just as much a part of the dungeon experience as the cutscenes. Such intentional disruptions are against the Terms of Service and players have been banned for cutscene skipping when reported.

Just don't do it. If you dislike having to sit through the cutscenes that much, make the adult decision and choose other content instead to earn your XP and tomestones.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Just don't do it. If you dislike having to sit through the cutscenes that much, make the adult decision and choose other content instead to earn your XP and tomestones.

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I don´t defend it that way, i judge about SE and their poorly decision-making and incompetence to fix such exploits or to recreate stuff like castrum forever. If anything, i can understand ppl abusing it, but the fault is completely on SE´s side. Even in Mentor-roulette you can get into castrum and you get pretty much nothing for it.

That ppl report others for nonsense like this, won´t go in my mind too. Inner castrum is a nightmare for every newcomer, no matter if a cutszene is skipped or not and it´s not like they can´t watch those szenes again and again. If it´s THAT big issue, SE needs to do something. Getting banned for SE´s design-flawes is still a joke. But if it´s a thing in like 1/50 runs, who cares...

And just saying... (Don´t take it too serious, but it´s atleast the other truth.)... Other ppl force me to stay in a circle in front of some bosses while watching 1-5minute cutszenes. They disrupt my game-experience and steal a bunch of my gametime per day. Should i report them or should SE finally play cutszenes BEFORE someone joins a fight and AFTER the content is finished?
(Once we even stuck 10mins at the beginning of an alex-raid, because someone dc´d while joining and the game was too dumb to handle that.)

I don´t mind to wait for newbies 10s, i don´t mind to wipe an hour in mentor-roulette to an EX-primal with newbies and to teach them permanently. But the game-design with their unlimited cutszenes is a joke. Ppl shouldn´t report others for something like this, we all should beg for a better implementation of those hand in hand.
And i´m pretty sure that everyone will come early or later to the point, that they don´t want to wait again and again on 1 person the hundreds time.

Why is MSQ a problem?
No one is forced to run it after their first run, and you can do other stuff while watching cutscenes.

It's not the end of the world if you miss MSQ when you don't have time.
Still, it's exp and gil rewards sure are alluring and it's one roulette I try to not miss.

Think about it. You work very little in this roulette. Most of the time you just stand around. I can cook a meal waiting for the big guy to finish talking lol
I don't mind having more such dungeon for the variety of it :D

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

And just saying... (Don´t take it too serious, but it´s atleast the other truth.)... Other ppl force me to stay in a circle in front of some bosses while watching 1-5minute cutszenes. They disrupt my game-experience and steal a bunch of my gametime per day. Should i report them or should SE finally play cutszenes BEFORE someone joins a fight and AFTER the content is finished?
(Once we even stuck 10mins at the beginning of an alex-raid, because someone dc´d while joining and the game was too dumb to handle that.)

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They aren't disrupting your game experience. YOU are disrupting your game experience by queuing into roulette knowing that you may need to wait for other party members to finish viewing cutscenes before the duty can officially begin.

Some players need to start accepting responsibility for the consequences that come with the choices they make. If they do not like those consequences, they need to make different choices.

If you hate waiting on cutscenes. don't queue into a roulette unless you have pre-formed a party with all members agreeing to skip the cutscenes (MSQ roulette being the one to avoid completely since you don't have a choice).

I agree that players disconnecting while in cutscenes so the party is left waiting several minutes longer than necessary before a duty can start is a problem. I don't know if that's something that SE can fix, though. Maybe they could program the barrier to drop after X amount of time (time of longest cutscene by localization plus two minutes to account for slow loading as an example) instead of tying it solely to all party members completing the cutscene.

It's pretty amusing to have a serious cutscene play in the roulette's second dungeon while a boss is randomly shouting battle cries throughout said cutscene, yet only one person attacking the boss after reconnecting won't ensure that the boss is actually killed or even moderately hurt by the time the cutscene ends... and in some cases, the one person may end up dying as well.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

They aren't disrupting your game experience. YOU are disrupting your game experience by queuing into roulette knowing that you may need to wait for other party members to finish viewing cutscenes before the duty can officially begin.

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That´s nonsense and you know it. You can even go solo into any instance and you´ve to wait 20s or so until the ring stops to arrest you there, just because of reasons...

When a cutszene takes longer than the whole bossfight, it´s serious game-issue. Watching the same cutszene 100 times again and again in savage while progging, is a serious issue too. Especially since the whole instance timer still moves on.
It´s not hard to plant those cutszenes to the moment, where you accept the quest and after you´ve finished it. It would solve a lot of issues, time and would get ride of such "exploit-abusers". We´re not playing a game to watch a film over and over again. We want to play.

Another thing is even about Loot. You´ve finished a fight and SE is like "Oh you need that? Please wait 3 minutes until everyone has finished his cutszene!". It´s not like they could set the szene AFTER the exit, no.

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

That´s nonsense and you know it. You can even go solo into any instance and you´ve to wait 20s or so until the ring stops to arrest you there, just because of reasons...

When a cutszene takes longer than the whole bossfight, it´s serious game-issue. Watching the same cutszene 100 times again and again in savage while progging, is a serious issue too. Especially since the whole instance timer still moves on.
It´s not hard to plant those cutszenes to the moment, where you accept the quest and after you´ve finished it. It would solve a lot of issues, time and would get ride of such "exploit-abusers". We´re not playing a game to watch a film over and over again. We want to play.

Another thing is even about Loot. You´ve finished a fight and SE is like "Oh you need that? Please wait 3 minutes until everyone has finished his cutszene!". It´s not like they could set the szene AFTER the exit, no.

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I agree that it's a problem when a cutscene takes longer than the boss fight but how often does that happen outside of the ARR trials, Castrum and Praetorium? SE clearly learned their lesson on that point. We don't get those 5 minute long cutscenes anymore.

Same point with the loot, how often does that happen outside of ARR? Most of the long finishing cutscenes are in duties with no loot. You're free to leave immediately unless you're trying to fish for comms.

It doesn't change that you know going into the duty/roulette what to expect and you have the ability not to queue if it bothers you that much.

I find it quite amusing that some people really have the patience to do that. Disconnecting, changing your language in order to gain seconds advantage is borderline stupid imo. It's easier to open a youtube video or netflix on the side and alt+tab instead of putting all that effort. If you're anxious to the point that you have to do that, do yourself a favor and don't queue for it. Honestly that's not even an exploit imo, have fun hitting the boss alone since you don't have patience to alt+tab for a few min I guess.

I also find that castrum&cia should be a solo instance and msq-roulette a roulette for all-msq-related dungeons, but it is what it is.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I agree that it's a problem when a cutscene takes longer than the boss fight but how often does that happen outside of the ARR trials, Castrum and Praetorium? SE clearly learned their lesson on that point. We don't get those 5 minute long cutscenes anymore.

Same point with the loot, how often does that happen outside of ARR? Most of the long finishing cutscenes are in duties with no loot. You're free to leave immediately unless you're trying to fish for comms.

It doesn't change that you know going into the duty/roulette what to expect and you have the ability not to queue if it bothers you that much.

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Only a couple of dungeons have major story right before final boss besides the two that have unskippable cut scenes in them.

Thousand Maws of Toto Rak
The Stone Vigil.

Of the two, I only think that Thousand Maws of Toto Rak will be killed during the cut scene if it gets pulled early. At least to my knowledge. Though it's also really easy to accidentally get that fight started even if you weren't meaning to.

The rest are usually just quick cut scenes with nothing of any story importance to them.