Adjust Castrum

[Kenka]

They could separate the queues a little.

[ ] New
[ ] Experienced

You could check a box for which group you want. Then everyone's happy

Wouldn't this lead to long queue times as soon as less and less people has this quest pending?

[BedroomRockstar01]

Besides, if you want to watch cutscenes, you should go in with friends who will wait for you, rather than inconvenience the majority of the playerbase who you know is there for a farming run.

And that's the crux of the argument. The vast majority of players running these dungeons have already completed them. Yes, it's unfortunate for new players, but the fact remains that we've already done/seen this place dozens of times. There have been several very reasonable compromises and suggested improvements to the current system. At least everyone can agree that we need something different than what we have right now.

[EmeraldSerenade]

Wouldn't this lead to long queue times as soon as less and less people has this quest pending?

Yes. You could either wait for the long queue (which you would only have to do once if you finish the instance) or pick the other option then view the Cutscenes from your Inn room.

[BoomerOU]

@angrynixon

I'm unsure how somebody could continually troll groups, after running it once they would be marked as having seen in so they wouldn't have the option to lock.

Some things SE could think about:

1.) When the new person (s) finish the scene all people are allowed to exit as they wish
2.) The reward would justify the wait, meaning the tomestone bonus could equal or beat the 'tomestones per hour' of average speedrun.
3.) Instance timer doesn't tick down when in cutscene.
4.) Cutscene has a max time allotted before people are able to bypass the lock.
Many more.

I hadn't gone into detail since these are things that would come up during player/SE testing, not really my/our job to brainstorm for them.

I personally don't like the 'checkbox' for new/experienced since it divides the pool of players who are ultimately looking to do the same run.

[AngryNixon]

@angrynixon

I'm unsure how somebody could continually troll groups, after running it once they would be marked as having seen in so they wouldn't have the option to lock.
...

Hi Boomer,

That's what I meant ya, sorry if that was missed somewhere. I was saying that if it CAN lock every time, it could be trolled. Wasn't clear to me, and that's my failing, that your solution implied being unable to lock in subsequent attempts.

AN-

[Ahlen]

Guild Wars 2 solved this one a long time ago. Square should of borrowed a page from them.

Seperate instances into "Story Mode" and "Exploration mode". Story mode would of course have sub par drops, and not drop tomes. So once people did that once they would have no reason to do it (except helping friends etc) which would keep queue integrity for the exploration mode.

Boom, problem solved.

[AlexiaKidd]

The OP makes a good suggestion. If there is no first time players in the group then there should be no cut scenes they should be auto skipped. If there is a new player then cut scenes are locked by default, as a bonus you get a 50% increase in reward for everyone by getting a first time player through it.

Seperating the instances between new and experienced is not the answer as you will just get to the point where there aren't enough new players to do the content.

[Vmage]

Wouldn't this lead to long queue times as soon as less and less people has this quest pending?

that's going to happen regardless.

people are running castrum because the instance servers only allow X of any particular instanced dungeon to be open at a time - AK has a wait time before entering even with a full party, so people do castrum.

when their next patch hits, there's 2 new level 50 dungeons being added. people will be in the new dungeons and castrum won't see nearly as many (if any) speed runners queue'ing up anymore.

the people hitting those final story dungeons for their first time are going to end up doing them with all new people, in a queue that took several hours to pop (just like the people that did them within a few days of the servers going live)

[CatholicFan]

If it's your first time in Castrum or Praetorium, and you care about cut-scenes, watch them. Nobody can force you to skip them, even if they can start fights without you. People are going to be annoyed, maybe even jerks. If you cannot handle the backlash, maybe an MMO is not for you, because those people don't go away (though hopefully some of them move on to other games).

It's worth noting, I'm a bit of a slower reader. Yet, when I did both Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium my first time, my group had lots of time left. I think we had over 40 minutes going into Ultima Weapon, and I read/watched every cut-scene. If you only have 10 minutes left by the time you're hitting Ultima, I think there might be other issues with your group besides cut-scenes.

[Swag]

1.) Lock players in cutscenes when somebody in group is doing it the first time.

Defiance--and I assume some other games--have a feature like this. Cutscenes cannot be skipped unless the entire group chooses to skip them.

Personally I wouldn't be a fan of it in FFXIV. Watchers give non-watchers a chance to chat, sort inventory, do a quick afk, etc--the kind of things many players (obsessed with speed runs) wouldn't tolerate.