Feedback: How to fix Roulletes

I’m gonna make this concise and quick to the point:

- ARR Raids should be moved to the MSQ Roullete so the Alliance Raid Roullete can actually pop raids that aren’t Crystal Tower (please…….)

- PVP Roullete that isn’t Frontline, because outside of Crystaline Conflict it’s literally impossible to find games for the other modes

- Variant Dungeon Roullete, similar to first time completion bonus, if a player discovers a new ending, the party gets a reward.

Even if you don’t like my first suggestion, Alliance Raid Roullete needs some sort of rework, there is no way you’re supposed to get the same 3 raids when the game now has 17 (18 when 7.5 comes out)

I don’t think Variant Dungeon Roulette would work that well with the “speedrun to the end” player culture we have, but I’m personally patient with folks who are exploring. So for myself I would queue for it and let the other players set the pace. As for your other suggestions, I have no opinion on PvP, but I LOUDLY endorse folding the Crystal Tower raids into MSQ roulette. It’s so, so tiresome to keep getting them.

I don't think CT is an issue. It's an alliance raid thus in alliance roulette. Sprouts would struggle to clear it in msq roulette probably.

I think the issue with PvP doing Rival Wings is that it involves a different amount of teams, but they should not make that matter and just include it anyway. It's been baffling the whole time why they don't.

Variant roulette is much needed to keep them relevant but they'd need to adjust the NPCs to be faster and choose a path automatically.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GraceHorizon

I don’t think Variant Dungeon Roulette would work that well with the “speedrun to the end” player culture we have, but I’m personally patient with folks who are exploring. So for myself I would queue for it and let the other players set the pace. As for your other suggestions, I have no opinion on PvP, but I LOUDLY endorse folding the Crystal Tower raids into MSQ roulette. It’s so, so tiresome to keep getting them.

---

Variant roulette would be fine if it was just coded so the NPC picked the entire path each run. That would reduce the player friction to almost none.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GraceHorizon

I don’t think Variant Dungeon Roulette would work that well with the “speedrun to the end” player culture we have

---

I would bet that it would. It may settle into always taking the same route, but it would work fine. That's why the incentive to take a new route built right into the suggestion, which I also think would work, at least to some degree. Where it may fail is that it could grind to a halt if people refuse to compromise on the chosen starting route. No one gets to monopolize this decision, but if the group happens to split evenly on two routes, it would go nowhere. I don't believe that would be a frequent issue and the biggest A hole in the group would quit rather than stand their ground. Most people are in fact reasonable enough understand that someone has chosen to queue directly into that content for some reason other than a roulette bonus. If that person states their intention of a given route, I think most people would acquiesce. I don't often experience any huge level of toxicity in roulettes myself, on either side of the equation.

Here's the thing that many people fail to understand about roulettes: You don't need to do them. If you don't like CT, you don't need to do Alliance roulettes. I rarely do them and yet my poetics are always capped, my jobs all level fine and I have plenty of money. If you want to do some specific raid, you can simply queue for any raid you want to do at any time and force everybody queuing for roulettes into the raid of your choice. If you want the bonus and not choice, that's your prerogative but you don't get to have it both ways. You queue for a roulette, you forfeit the choice. That is how it works.

That said, I also think folding CT into MSQ roulette is a fine idea. That's another roulette I never queue for but people who need to run those things still find people to run them. It may even increase the number of people choosing to queue for the MSQ roulette because CT runs would likely be quicker than Castrum or Praetorium.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Korbei

Here's the thing that many people fail to understand about roulettes: You don't need to do them. If you don't like CT, you don't need to do Alliance roulettes. I rarely do them and yet my poetics are always capped, my jobs all level fine and I have plenty of money. If you want to do some specific raid, you can simply queue for any raid you want to do at any time and force everybody queuing for roulettes into the raid of your choice. If you want the bonus and not choice, that's your prerogative but you don't get to have it both ways. You queue for a roulette, you forfeit the choice. That is how it works.

That said, I also think folding CT into MSQ roulette is a fine idea. That's another roulette I never queue for but people who need to run those things still find people to run them. It may even increase the number of people choosing to queue for the MSQ roulette because CT runs would likely be quicker than Castrum or Praetorium.

---

Thing is, I like alliance raid roulette for the gameplay, except when I get Crystal Tower because it’s far too frequent compared to the others. And queueing specifically for one raid, or even five (the most you can queue for in the Duty Finder), will get you a pretty long wait if it’s not current content — most alliance raids just aren’t that commonly unlocked, or a roulette group will go to Crystal Tower and folks who queue specifically for a non-CT raid are left waiting. Putting the CT raids into MSQ roulette (which, like you, I never queue for; I’m bored to tears with those duties) makes alliance raid roulette more fun while also having no negative effect on sprouts who need to run those raids for MSQ (MSQ roulette never seemed to fail to have players, because it has good rewards to compensate for being boring).

Putting Crystal Tower into the MSQ roulette would all but likely just result in those raids never popping because putting aside how many people skip doing the MSQ roulette (some people even admitting as much in this topic), you're adding a piece of 24-man content to a thing that dings the moment it finds 4 in order to do the other fights. You'd have to reduce Crystal Tower to an 8-man MINIMUM to make it functionally possible if placed in MSQ roulette, or otherwise make a specific 4/8-man version for the MSQ roulette that allows MSQ progress while the 24-man version of Crystal Tower remains in alliance raid roulette but with changes to make it more engaging.

Dooming a bunch of new players to ARR purgatory because they literally can't get Crystal Tower done is not the game saver people think it is, it would only benefit veteran players, assuming of course you can still find enough people to do the other alliance raids because there's a reason some people actively avoid unlocking them, and it's not because they can't find them. Mhach, Ivalice, and Nier suck for different reasons (where I don't even want to finish Nier after being PVP'd in what was supposed to be PVE content), and they're the reason I stopped doing alliance raid roulettes myself the same way people avoid doing it because of Crystal Tower.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Putting Crystal Tower into the MSQ roulette would all but likely just result in those raids never popping because putting aside how many people skip doing the MSQ roulette (some people even admitting as much in this topic), you're adding a piece of 24-man content to a thing that dings the moment it finds 4 in order to do the other fights. You'd have to reduce Crystal Tower to an 8-man MINIMUM to make it functionally possible if placed in MSQ roulette, or otherwise make a specific 4/8-man version for the MSQ roulette that allows MSQ progress while the 24-man version of Crystal Tower remains in alliance raid roulette but with changes to make it more engaging.

Dooming a bunch of new players to ARR purgatory because they literally can't get Crystal Tower done is not the game saver people think it is, it would only benefit veteran players, assuming of course you can still find enough people to do the other alliance raids because there's a reason some people actively avoid unlocking them, and it's not because they can't find them. Mhach, Ivalice, and Nier suck for different reasons (where I don't even want to finish Nier after being PVP'd in what was supposed to be PVE content), and they're the reason I stopped doing alliance raid roulettes myself the same way people avoid doing it because of Crystal Tower.

---

Huh, you have a good point about the mechanics of MSQ roulette queues popping. I had never considered that, but that’s presumably why only duties with the same size and composition of party are grouped into roulettes. Very well, I withdraw my suggestion!

Counter-proposal: delete the Crystal Tower raids (we’re all tired of them anyway) and replace them with 4-player dungeons! :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GraceHorizon

Huh, you have a good point about the mechanics of MSQ roulette queues popping. I had never considered that, but that’s presumably why only duties with the same size and composition of party are grouped into roulettes. Very well, I withdraw my suggestion!

Counter-proposal: delete the Crystal Tower raids (we’re all tired of them anyway) and replace them with 4-player dungeons! :D

---

Just rollback requirement to have ARR alliance raids completed for story advancing.
"Oh no, missing some info on catboy origin! Anyway."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alicie

Just rollback requirement to have ARR alliance raids completed for story advancing.
"Oh no, missing some info on catboy origin! Anyway."

---

Oh I considered that, but it doesn’t address the problem of all the people who only unlocked those alliance raids and no others during the years they were required. So it doesn’t fully realize my goal of getting all the raids in alliance raid roulette onto the same footing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GraceHorizon

Oh I considered that, but it doesn’t address the problem of all the people who only unlocked those alliance raids and no others during the years they were required. So it doesn’t fully realize my goal of getting all the raids in alliance raid roulette onto the same footing.

---

That's easy, just re-lock access to the AR Crystal Tower community-wide after they remove the MSQ requirement/update it to be harder/make a story mode version, with a very obvious prompt to anyone coming back to the Mor Dohna NPC to unlock it again that this is a VERY different version of the one they played before and ask them if they're SURE about unlocking it again.

Anyone who doesn't want to do the AR version can happily skip it, while those WANTING the new challenge can dive right on in. I would even go so far as to say they should do it with ALL alliance raids where there's a story mode requiring less players/are soloable, and their AR versions also get locked up again to be re-opened once they've been improved upon (because let's be real, people will just start complaining about Mhach as the new "too easy/sooo boring" AR so just overhaul it now).

Could probably even make a new 4-man roulette just for the story mode ARs, maybe not as rewarding as the AR roulette obviously, but still there for those who want to take a chance in a smaller, easier version of the content.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SamanthaRuda

ARR Raids should be moved to the MSQ Roullete so the Alliance Raid Roullete can actually pop raids that aren’t Crystal Tower (please…….)

---

This will never happen, for reasons that Aidorouge already covered. I also suspect that SE considers the roulette to be working as intended, and the only thing they might fix is to not allow you to enter the roulette if you're past, say, HW MSQ and haven't unlocked the Void Ark series (and so on). I think they'd only put in the effort if there were a genuine problem with queues getting filled for higher level raids, though. People being bored with CT is likely a non-issue as long as queues get filled for whatever people are queueing for (which is mostly CT).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SamanthaRuda

PVP Roullete that isn’t Frontline, because outside of Crystaline Conflict it’s literally impossible to find games for the other modes

---

Agreed, they should probably do this, but I'm halfway convinced SE has given up on some of those other modes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SamanthaRuda

Variant Dungeon Roullete, similar to first time completion bonus, if a player discovers a new ending, the party gets a reward.

---

This is a pretty cool idea, I like it!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SamanthaRuda

Even if you don’t like my first suggestion, Alliance Raid Roullete needs some sort of rework, there is no way you’re supposed to get the same 3 raids when the game now has 17 (18 when 7.5 comes out)

---

Again, SE probably considers the boredom of players in CT a non-issue, as long as enough people are doing alliance roulette to fill the alliances for those queuing directly. If the other raids are still not getting enough people in a timely manner, they may do something, but I suspect this will not be anything close to giving people exactly what they want from the alliance roulette.

Maybe have an option thst you can enable, if youve got the expansion for it, unlock and run on roulette wihout the msq (no cutscenes, much like a normal roulette once unlocked). Cause based on personal experience, i have like 80% of my roulette run with ARR dungeons...dear Hydaelyn, i have been playing since beta and the choices it gives me on roulettes are ones ive run way too many times already its exhausting.One of the reasons i stopped running most roulettes because it almost always falls into the ARR roulette...

At least if there was an option for a new player that has bought like SB but havent done the ARR storylines, they can participate in roulettes for newer dungeons, just not spoil ex. Location or cutscenes tied.

A couple things on the Alliance Raid roulette:

-My suggestion is requiring players when they reach each new expansion's level cap (60/70/80/etc.) to unlock the Alliance raids for that expansion in order to continue queuing for Alliance Raid Roulette (the same way we need to unlock the latest dungeon to keep using Expert). It would at least reduce the portion of the ARR bloat that's due to people only having those raids unlocked.

-Nothing will ever make the raids spawn equally. It will always be a continuum with decreasing % chances of higher level raids simply because of the levels players involved have at the time. For example, when my WT book gives me ARR Raid as a requirement, I queue on a job that is between 50-59. That 100% guarantees everyone who ends up in the same queue pop as me will get an ARR raid. To generate the higher-level raids, not only does every player involved have to unlock the raids, but they also have to be actively using a job that is also sufficiently leveled. People using the Roulette to level jobs rather than get tomes will still force lower-level raids to pop.

A big issue is that they made CT part of the MSQ, which means that people can't miss it, unlike other raids/optional dungeons, you can miss them quite easily if you're just plugging along with the MSQ and not really doing side quests. If they uncoupled the MSQ from it, it would stop being chosen for the roulette so much.