The changes to Castrum and Praetorian are excessive and unnecessary

I don't usually post on the forums, but this change has created two sides in this debate have clearly been drawn, and I'll break it down where SE really messed up and catered to a louder group of elder players and mentors who kept complaining about it over the years, until they finally caved in and all but destroyed any reason to keep doing these dungeons. When these changes was first announced, I knew without any shadow of doubt that SE would use this opportunity to nerf the exp and they did.

Castrum wasn't that bad at all, the real issues was the boss fights became a joke as expansions rolled out, ilevels increased and the difficulty became a moot point. Outside of weak bosses, the entire instance really wasn't that bad.

Praetorian suffered the most in this patch and ultimately SE has entirely destroyed it, because EVERYONE knows this is run for exp most notably to level sub jobs to make the grind more bearable because outside of daily roulette's is a slog and these once a day made it tolerable.

Praetorians only huge failure was the lack of being able to skip the excessive cut scenes, and YOU still can't skip them which makes the current dungeon basically two boring boss fights with slightly more complexity and 9/10ths less exp than you would normally get, this is an issue for players who are still levelling and for players who are levelling sub jobs, this essentially takes away a big chunk of exp earned each day, and that change is entirely unwarranted and as such, I am personally thinking about cancelling my subscription because of it until a new expansion comes out, because right now I'm using levelling sub jobs and this change just makes that longer and more protracted than ever.

In a nutshell, SE essentially saw this as an opportunity to massively nerf the exp from one of the best sources in the game. Was 45 minutes of socializing whilst watching excessive cut scenes as you wait to fight several bosses that at least provided some entertainment for the exp you earned, was it really worth risking all that for just updating the fight for a better complexity? Is it really worth to keep paying a subscription fee to keep grinding for longer periods now to make up for the daily experience lost by this change?

SE there were literally dozens of changes you could have done here that would have appeased both the vocal minority and players who continue to use these roulettes for valuable leveling, but you chose an option which literally nukes the entire instance into obscurity, for shame for shame.

The only reason Main Scenario Roulette gave so much exp to begin with is because the content is awful, but they had to get players inside somehow or else newbies could not progress the MSQ. Their solution was to give it a ridiculously stupid high amount of exp so that people would tolerate sitting through the same 40 minutes of cutscenes every day. Now that the dungeons can be done solo, there is no need to force players in to doing them, so the excessive rewards are no longer necessary.

There's no reason to reward people for content that is done 80% afk while watching youtube. Rewards are for playing the game. If you don't like leveling and just want to get exp for doing nothing then you don't like playing the game.

Having actual better dungeons to play with bosses with actual decent mechanics is a far greater win than having a place to just mindlessly get free XP for afking /thread.

You get more poetics than before, so you still get your reward going in there.

I was curious to learn that I should have been getting 17 million XP as a level 80 Gunbreaker in Praetorium yesterday, rather than the 1.7 million XP I actually received. OP is exaggerating greatly about that 9/10th XP earned, especially given the great XP leveling reduction in Endwalker. Getting 1/3 of a level's worth of XP from the instance still makes it worthwhile.

The mechanics certainly improved, the boss fights are more interesting, and Praetorium took 30 minutes to complete with cut scenes.

This was always the ultimate set of fights for ARR 2.0. I was impressed back then, and a bit ticked off that the attitude players ran with was 'hurry, hurry, skip cut scenes, watch 'em later so I can get my XP and get out of here'.

I am talking to more people with MS randoms than ever before. Which may fade with time I know. AFKers are more of a burden as some people are still thinking they can get away with it.

I haven't done a castrum 2nd half yet so cannot use that for reference, but there is a huge disparity between prae 1 against castrum 1 and prae 2. You get the same amount of exp where as you have to watch a huge amount more cutscenes. So Prae 1 is taking near 30 minutes due to unskippable cutscenes against 16 minutes on the other 2. Both give the same exp.

I will bail every time on Prae 1 from now on. Unless there is a dramatic increase in xp gain.

I totally get that some want to follow the story as they are going along. I don't mind waiting for those. But when the whole group just wants to move on then this should be an option. Keep a vote hidden same as the vote to remove a bad player. I don't think it is good to make it visible with who is holding the group back, because they want to watch what they have paid for. But when the whole group doesn't want to watch these cutscenes, then it makes no sense just annoying people. This feels like blizzard stunts to extend content for no reason.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TsukasaHiiragi

In a nutshell, SE essentially saw this as an opportunity to massively nerf the exp from one of the best sources in the game.

---

It was never intended to be free daily exp.

It's a story instance for new players. The big reward was supposed to be payment for helping new players through. People got entitled and wanted the reward as daily exp without caring about the new players, resulting in first forcing the cutscenes, then reworking the entire thing.

It's a positive change overall. It's a more enjoyable experience for new players. That's all the matters. If you miss the exp, then blame the players who couldn't behave.

There are many other and far more fun ways to earn experience than taking advantage of an exploit that’s frankly boring or allows a lot of away-from-keyboard time. I’m all for the recent dungeon and trial updates; I even did the newer trial earlier and they changed it to such a degree that I actually think it’s much better now.

They were too long for MSQ required content. The change was necessary and the MSQ roulette still gives an extremely large chunk of EXP. In fact, time invested vs exp earned is better compared to the old MSQ.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PangTong

There's no reason to reward people for content that is done 80% afk while watching youtube.

---

If SE takes this claim serious, we won´t get XP from anything anymore. Everything but EX, savage and ultimate is brain-afk 1 button spam. Even EX fights are mostly "Please follow the leader and perform your rotation atleast 75% well."

Maybe they should make it happen, so players would actually realize how dumb the most content is created. Noone would ever touch the daily-roulette without the XP or stone-rewards. Stop the "fast reward" bs and come back with fun gameplay. Heck it would force SE to finally create content with depth and more efford behind it and classes would stop being homogenized and simplified.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ssunny2008

If SE takes this claim serious, we won´t get XP from anything anymore. Everything but EX, savage and ultimate is brain-afk 1 button spam. Even EX fights are mostly "Please follow the leader and perform your rotation atleast 75% well."

---

Sure. I bet you've been hitting Bootshine over and over and over and over again the instances you run. Right? Such hyperbole isn't even fun anymore.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DPZ2

Sure. I bet you've been hitting Bootshine over and over and over and over again the instances you run. Right? Such hyperbole isn't even fun anymore.

---

It´s no hyperbole when pretty much everything but hardmode content can be cleared with 1 button spam. This is nothing but reality. Healers don´t do anything else in 90% of hard content fights too. In case of fates / dungeons SE gave you 1-3 aoe buttons to spam based on the class. Is that fun for you? Does it need any kind of skill?
The only reason why a handful of competent players use more than 1 button is to save some time, to get out of such braindead content you´ve to run for your gear / story. Meanwhile others don´t even know about Dots or how to DPS as healer...

It doesn´t really matter if a class have only 1 or 20 buttons, when pretty much every button does the same and the only reason to use the 2nd or 3rd button is some potency, you actually don´t even need. The lack of utility and stuff to care about is real and gets even worse and worse.

(And well... in case of MNK there has been a top performing DK rotation lately. 50% of the time DK spam even in savage... gg)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ssunny2008

It´s no hyperbole when pretty much everything but hardmode content can be cleared with 1 button spam. This is nothing but reality. Healers don´t do anything else in 90% of hard content fights too. In case of fates / dungeons SE gave you 1-3 aoe buttons to spam based on the class. Is that fun for you? Does it need any kind of skill?
The only reason why a handful of competent players use more than 1 button is to save some time, to get out of such braindead content you´ve to run for your gear / story. Meanwhile others don´t even know about Dots or how to DPS as healer...

It doesn´t really matter if a class have only 1 or 20 buttons, when pretty much every button does the same and the only reason to use the 2nd or 3rd button is some potency, you actually don´t even need. The lack of utility and stuff to care about is real and gets even worse and worse.

(And well... in case of MNK there has been a top performing DK rotation lately. 50% of the time DK spam even in savage... gg)

---

Why are you still here? Go play elden ring or something. You've made it perfectly clear for months you hate this game.

Not really any loss in exp as I think it takes about 20 mins now? Thats enough time to fit in two more dungeons worth of exp.

Random thoughts about the dungeons and the solo fight with lahabrea

The dungeons itself are fine for me tbh, it was a nice experience with duty support. I feel like they improved it compared to the previous experience. And this is what i wrote in my fc discord

About the new solo fight with lahabrea

I was actually shook with the near death experience our character had. Freeing themselves from the chained status but the blast was already on its way. After we literally went super sayajin blue, thanks to hydaelyn. I mean the resurrection part was not there before.

Sad part is they cut a LOT of tied in cutscenes which makes the whole experience looking as full of holes like swiss cheese.

Especially last part is what unnerved me a little.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ransu

Why are you still here? Go play elden ring or something. You've made it perfectly clear for months you hate this game.

---

And why are you still stalking me?

It´s not my issue, that you´re not able to see the difference between "hating a game" and "wanting to stop the downhill-braindead trend". You´re an obvious fanboy, whiteknight, call it however you want, and you´re not a great player. But imagine some poeple know their stuff and just don´t want to see this game becoming more and more braindead to cater players who don´t even care or SE´s own lazyness.
And imagine a second time... i´m not alone with it. There are dozens of threads across the whole board with angry poeple. Poeple who´re upset about the road the game went since SB. Less and less good content, copy & paste everywhere, homogenization of classes, pointless dungeon-designs. You must be blind af or your expectations of a games quality are so low that you seem to eat everything SE serves you.

The game has massive issues and SE´s efford is pretty much not existent. All the patches show only one thing: "Less work for SE."
Less work with balancing thx to homogenization and the removal of buffs / debuffs / utility. Less work in dungeon-design thx to wallbangs. Less work in mao and enemy-design thx to copy & paste stuff each addon.

The players deserve clearly more than this. 6.1 is just another trashpatch which killed whole job-identities, not even the need to say something about housing.

But hey, i guess you still don´t get it. No matter how many different poeple open threads about dungeons or different jobs. Fanboyism is real. Be glad there is no competition next to WoW. Otherwise this game would´ve way more issues than ignoring it´s playerbase and what they really deserve for their patience with all the bs going on here.

The duties feel now what they should've been back then, an actual end to a main story line rather then a cs train with 3min game play sections in between that virtually could not wipe you if they tried.

The exp reward for the old version of the duty was to compensate players for their stolen time.

They could take this further and have a look at the Thordan fight, which is just a giant cs that feels kind of nice but boring as a game play mechanic.

This changes are great, really enjoyed the fights and mechanics. Before was just a snooze fest

And here I'm still weeping every single time I do Prae because "Why couldn't it happen earlier?". Seriously from new player perspective the old iteration was... Bad. Having your grand finale reduced to speedrun by bored vets just wasn't fun. To make matter worse on the very first run I missed the dreaded elevator and ended up spending solid half of my first run just sitting in the first boss room.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gruntler

Having actual better dungeons to play

---

Don't really agree on that one. Too much has been removed, especially with castrum. They completely removed all the mini-cinematics, you only have the short quip at the end. No getting explosives, no shooting down the airship, and the whole part at the end with the robo-chick she just shows up out of nowhere. No prior dialogue, no buildup, not even the whole part with her robot. Feels like more than half the instance is just gone. Even Prae removed cool stuff like the cinematics with the robot. There's not even an option to run the original version. A lot of people would have been happy if they had just made the cutscenes skippable. The overall atmosphere of both instances has been nuked.

Complete removal of content with no way to revisit is never a good thing. Even the dumpster fire known as acti-blizz learned this lesson after cataclysm.

Edit: In my honest opinion, I feel like the biggest improvement is the boss fights themselves. The new mechanics were solid.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

Don't really agree on that one. Too much has been removed, especially with castrum. They completely removed all the mini-cinematics, you only have the short quip at the end. No getting explosives, no shooting down the airship, and the whole part at the end with the robo-chick she just shows up out of nowhere. No prior dialogue, no buildup, not even the whole part with her robot. Feels like more than half the instance is just gone. Even Prae removed cool stuff like the cinematics with the robot. There's not even an option to run the original version. A lot of people would have been happy if they had just made the cutscenes skippable. The overall atmosphere of both instances has been nuked.

Complete removal of content with no way to revisit is never a good thing. Even the dumpster fire known as acti-blizz learned this lesson after cataclysm.

Edit: In my honest opinion, I feel like the biggest improvement is the boss fights themselves. The new mechanics were solid.

---

Most of those cut scenes were entirely pointless. Why do we need to pause right in the middle of a pull to watch an airship fly by? Do we really need a long, dramatic entrance for each both when the first two are little more than glorified trash mobs? The whole Cid explosion stuff took forever. Even as a new player, I found a lot of these cinematics pointless and boring. I do agree with Livia showing up out of nowhere. That's probably the one cut that feels a bit off.

As for making the cut scenes skippable. They tried that... all the way up until Shadowbringers. New players were greeted by a dungeon everyone sped rushed, zerging all the bosses down in seconds while said babies were watching cinematics they had little context for. Basically, they didn't get to participate whatsoever. It was a frequent complaint for years now awful the experience was. Hence why they forced the cut scenes to begin with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Most of those cut scenes were entirely pointless. Why do we need to pause right in the middle of a pull to watch an airship fly by? Do we really need a long, dramatic entrance for each both when the first two are little more than glorified trash mobs? The whole Cid explosion stuff took forever. Even as a new player, I found a lot of these cinematics pointless and boring. I do agree with Livia showing up out of nowhere. That's probably the one cut that feels a bit off.

As for making the cut scenes skippable. They tried that... all the way up until Shadowbringers. New players were greeted by a dungeon everyone sped rushed, zerging all the bosses down in seconds while said babies were watching cinematics they had little context for. Basically, they didn't get to participate whatsoever. It was a frequent complaint for years now awful the experience was. Hence why they forced the cut scenes to begin with.

---

Even if you take the cutscenes from the argument, the complete removal of all the different mechanical sections and turning it into another corridor dungeon feels weird. It fits more or less thematically, but I maintain that the atmosphere is gone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TsukasaHiiragi

In a nutshell, SE essentially saw this as an opportunity to massively nerf the exp from one of the best sources in the game. Was 45 minutes of socializing whilst watching excessive cut scenes as you wait to fight several bosses that at least provided some entertainment for the exp you earned, was it really worth risking all that for just updating the fight for a better complexity? Is it really worth to keep paying a subscription fee to keep grinding for longer periods now to make up for the daily experience lost by this change?

---

I'm so sorry that new players will get a good experience at the finale of ARR instead of an absolute slog.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

As for making the cut scenes skippable. They tried that... all the way up until Shadowbringers. New players were greeted by a dungeon everyone sped rushed, zerging all the bosses down in seconds while said babies were watching cinematics they had little context for. Basically, they didn't get to participate whatsoever. It was a frequent complaint for years now awful the experience was. Hence why they forced the cut scenes to begin with.

---

Stormblood actually. I started around the middle of Stormblood, and it was unskippable by that point.

All the gates between trash packs in the first area of Castrum is awful. I can understand the one before the boss but the rest are just terrible. I wish they would at least change that. Rest seemed fine. Mechanics were interesting.

What am I reading...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KDSilver

What am I reading...

---

Proof the community is not a hive mind. What makes the new dungeons fun to some have ruined them for others.

Personally, I'm fine with the Praetorium revamp. It flows pretty well as it hits the high points of the original.

The Castrum revamp makes me feel like something is missing. Well, something is - half of the original dungeon. It no longer feels like breaking down the defense barrier so we could get into the Praetorium was a major task and that's ruining story impact.

Get rid of the searchlights? Check. That was by far the most annoying and useless part of the original.

Get rid of the fight against Livia's Magitek Armor? Check. Livia definitely is not the type to hide behind a machine and the fight could get annoying if players weren't handling the cannons correctly.

I miss blowing up the ceruleum pumps. That helped to make it feel like we were disabling their defenses.

I miss the third boss though not all that trash going to it. They could have removed the loop so players went straight up the road with a couple of trash packs on the way. The boss fight itself could have been reduced from three invuln periods to one, with a well placed stun by the tank (or a melee if one was in the party) allowing the invuln to be bypassed so the boss could get cleaved with the trash and die faster. No stun, then penalty to party with the fight taking longer.

Castrum in its new form makes the Garleans feel dumber and weaker. I still need to replay through the MSQ to experience all the changes as a whole. Perhaps taken altogether it's not so bad.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

I still need to replay through the MSQ to experience all the changes as a whole. Perhaps taken altogether it's not so bad.

---

I recently did this on a fresh alt (1-50). On the whole I'm liking a lot of the updated mechanics and normalization of telegraphs (stack, tank buster, etc.) and some nice atmospheric updates. Toto Rak in particular looks gorgeous. I agree with your assessment on CM, they cut a bit too much.

I'm not a fan of either the new Cape Westwind or Lahabrea fights. The first one has three tedious phases with no checkpointing. I forgot what annoyed me about the other one. Probably similar issues. That's a personal opinion of course. It's a design trend I've noticed in the late game especially the solo instances. Tedium is not challenge.

Rolled the dice on MSQ Roulette the other day since I'm trying to level a tank job and wound up with the Ultima Weapon fight. For my trouble I got between 1/4 and 1/3 of a level. IMO, not worth the bother.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Most of those cut scenes were entirely pointless. Why do we need to pause right in the middle of a pull to watch an airship fly by? Do we really need a long, dramatic entrance for each both when the first two are little more than glorified trash mobs? The whole Cid explosion stuff took forever. Even as a new player, I found a lot of these cinematics pointless and boring. I do agree with Livia showing up out of nowhere. That's probably the one cut that feels a bit off.

As for making the cut scenes skippable. They tried that... all the way up until Shadowbringers. New players were greeted by a dungeon everyone sped rushed, zerging all the bosses down in seconds while said babies were watching cinematics they had little context for. Basically, they didn't get to participate whatsoever. It was a frequent complaint for years now awful the experience was. Hence why they forced the cut scenes to begin with.

---

I mean the reason you get a cutscene at the beginning during a pull is because everyone rushed the fight.. you were suppose to defeat the adds around the light and then turn it off.. but everyone wanted to be sonic and gotta go fast to clear for them major exp gains.. but seriously a lot of the cutscenes were played out of sync with the dungeons due to the way players started running them not because that's how they were designed

When they revealed they were reworking Castrum and Praetorium I expected they'd bring them in line with other content and remove MSQ roulette entirely... obviously, that wasn't the case

I... actually agree with Jojoya, I think the changes to Castrum are kind of sad. It no longer feels like an operation to disable defenses and whatnot, it's now just a soulless corridor of "kill enemies until it's done"...

Never thought I'd be defending old MSQ Roulette...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tsiron

When they revealed they were reworking Castrum and Praetorium I expected they'd bring them in line with other content and remove MSQ roulette entirely... obviously, that wasn't the case

I... actually agree with Jojoya, I think the changes to Castrum are kind of sad. It no longer feels like an operation to disable defenses and whatnot, it's now just a soulless corridor of "kill enemies until it's done"...

Never thought I'd be defending old MSQ Roulette...

---

Sorry to say that but Frankly I never felt like the old Castrum was any operation to disable anything. From my perspective when I ran it first all nuances it might have had were reduced to "run behind the pack and don't get left behind". Ineventible outcome when you make something into 8 man Run without any cap on equipment power. Everything that could have been was reduced to run, run, run and by the end of it I was confused and torn between "What the f*** just happened?" and "Wait that was it?". Ultimately it literally felt like "kill enemies until you're done" except not even challenging.

That's an issue with the balance more than the design, though...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jaquan

Sorry to say that but Frankly I never felt like the old Castrum was any operation to disable anything. From my perspective when I ran it first all nuances it might have had were reduced to "run behind the pack and don't get left behind". Ineventible outcome when you make something into 8 man Run without any cap on equipment power. Everything that could have been was reduced to run, run, run and by the end of it I was confused and torn between "What the f*** just happened?" and "Wait that was it?". Ultimately it literally felt like "kill enemies until you're done" except not even challenging.

---

Paying attention to the cutscenes would give you a good idea of what was about to happen (we were following the plan Cid was making up as we went) though certainly I understand how chaotic the experience is the first couple of times through. Once you'd done it enough to know where the group would be rushing to next, it made it easier to follow the story elements.

The old version definitely had a feel of forcing our way through the Castrum to slowly disable the defenses. Now it feels more like "make a safe passage for Cid so he can blow a thing up". The way the original cutscenes were edited to try to tell the new story didn't really help.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

Paying attention to the cutscenes would give you a good idea of what was about to happen (we were following the plan Cid was making up as we went) though certainly I understand how chaotic the experience is the first couple of times through. Once you'd done it enough to know where the group would be rushing to next, it made it easier to follow the story elements.

The old version definitely had a feel of forcing our way through the Castrum to slowly disable the defenses. Now it feels more like "make a safe passage for Cid so he can blow a thing up". The way the original cutscenes were edited to try to tell the new story didn't really help.

---

Oh I paid attention to the cutscenes. Shame they were happening when I was miles away from the objectives because I was left behind while 5-6 people who were there just rushed forward. The feeling was lost because the narrative and the gameplay didn't line up. Same deal with Prae because someone activated the elevator before I had chance to get in on the first clear. So yeah I've seen all the cool things my character was apparently doing with next to no context all the way up to Nero.

And to be frank after that first experience I never wanted to touch those again. (And in case of Castrum I never did) They were the worst experience I had up to that point and that's including Toto-Rak which is a slog even when you know where to go.

It's crazy how people will defend the most boring stuff if it nets them more EXP.

If an activity didn't give any EXP but was a lot of fun I'd still do it. But I'm weird like that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Payadopa

It's crazy how people will defend the most boring stuff if it nets them more EXP.

If an activity didn't give any EXP but was a lot of fun I'd still do it. But I'm weird like that.

---

It may come as a shocker to you but different people are different. The have different goals and have different likes and dislikes. If you're perfectly happy to chain run AV for the joy of it, rock on. I like it well enough especially with a group that can stomp it flat. But just because I like it it is not a "good enough" excuse for me to run it on a whim and certainly not on repeat. On the flip side Moogle Tomes can be a fantastic incentive if the catalog is good and I find the right group to run with.

Come to think of it there aren't any instances in this game I'd run just to run them. That doesn't mean I don't want to run them at all but I need a better excuse than "just because". A reasonable amount of XP tends to work but only if the conditions are right. The only instances I willing play support for were 8-man CM and Praetorium and all of the sub 50 dungeons.

I just did the new MSQ roulette on an alt and the "bonus" xp was absolute crap. I won't be touching that on any role unless I'm desperate for poetics and don't have access to a better source.