Please take Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium off the roulette.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

whining entitlement

Yes because waiting for one person when the rest of the party prefers to speedrun is totally justified. That logic is faulty as hell and shows how entitled people are nowadays. Cutscenes can be watched back at the inn, missing them in the run is not that big of a deal unless you yourself make it one, which means you're the one with the problem, not anyone else. I run duty roulette every day for my tomes and I run Prae for the Ultima fights since I enjoy them. I do not run to help out people I don't even know, but if that ends up being what I'm doing, so be it.

Additionally, most parties I end up in at least let people know it'll be a speedrun, and people have asked to be kicked because they want to watch the story. They had no problem with asking this and they did not give everyone in the party hell over not wanting to sit around waiting for them to watch cutscenes. People should learn from those guys.

[Tlamila]

Thing is: speedruns shouldn't be the norm. Through duty finder you do normal runs. If you want speedruns, Party Finder! or run with your fc/friends. Speedrun is not the normal method to run a dungeon. And you should know Sqeenix is trying everything to prevent speedruns from happening at all, so they're sure not wanted by design.

[Caraway]

I do not run to help out people I don't even know, but if that ends up being what I'm doing, so be it.

And this right here is the problem with the current generation of MMO players. "I want my tomes and I want them now. Your immersion be damned." What you don't seem to be understanding is this is someone's first time doing this. When you speed run it they aren't learning anything, they aren't understanding the content, and they're not getting to experience the story that has been crafted purposefully for them to experience as they're killing the bosses.

You are subverting the game design because you're too impatient to get a piece of gear you're going to replace in a week or two anyway.

The irony is you probably complain about people who don't know fight mechanics too.

[BobbinT]

yeah... think we need to move on though. Kinda useless debate and unrelated to main topic. lol

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

whining and assumptions

You love to assume things about me. I've already geared up my main class, I just gather philo now to slowly work on preparing for my second class, and I don't yell at people who don't know the fight due to it being their first time in there. That stuff happens and we were all there once. I run MS DR more for the fun of the fights than anything. I enjoy the runs that much.

As for immersion, I skipped cutscenes my first time despite not having to, because if you haven't noticed, CM cutscenes can happen in the middle of a fight, which is not only annoying but also dangerous for people. Doing this did not break immersion for me whatsoever, and I love to be immersed in game lore and story. But when cutscenes endanger the entire party due to going off at inopportune times, I'd much rather everyone skip them so no one dies from getting attacked. Prae is better for watching scenes, but CM is horrible for 50% of the run.

[Caraway]

As for immersion, I skipped cutscenes my first time despite not having to, because if you haven't noticed, CM cutscenes can happen in the middle of a fight, which is not only annoying but also dangerous for people. Doing this did not break immersion for me whatsoever, and I love to be immersed in game lore and story. But when cutscenes endanger the entire party due to going off at inopportune times, I'd much rather everyone skip them so no one dies from getting attacked. Prae is better for watching scenes, but CM is horrible for 50% of the run.

Just so you're aware, when you're in those cutscenes you're invulnerable. You yourself cannot die while you're watching a cutscene. The rest of the party sure as heck might if you happen to be one of the healers and the group isn't overgeared though. But that is just all the more reason for everyone to watch the scenes, especially in CM where they add a very minimal amount of time.

Obviously, I have a personal beef with people who bully others into skipping cutscenes on these dungeons regardless of whether it's their first time and it is actually because of CM.

I play this game with my partner and so we duo joined Duty Finder for pretty much all of our dungeons. I had been reading the forums before we got to CM and Prae so I knew something of what I was going to expect with regards to the attitude of people doing the runs (this was before the changes to AK and WP that moved people away from speed running the two story 8-mans). I warned her that we might get some slack from people wanting to rush through but I never expected what ended up happening.

There was little to no communication besides being told to skip the cutscenes and ignore mobs. No strats were explained as everyone rushed to do things they already knew. We had no idea what was going on, why we were doing what we where doing or where some of the events were coming from.

It was a total Charlie Foxtrot. And it ruined that dungeon for us. In fact, the caustic attitude of the people when we came out of the first cutscene and the impatience and curtness to do it the speedrun way was nearly enough for us to just give up entirely on the game (there were other factors, primarily due to our being on a server with a, in our opinions, extremely unfriendly community that added to this as well so it wasn't just this dungeon) but we decided to stick it out and tried Prae.

When we did Prae we made it perfectly clear at the beginning of the dungeon that we were new, had never done the dungeon and wanted to be able to view the cutscenes. I was playing tank and she DD. That group whinged about it so I ate the DF cooldown and we tried with a second group. While there were still some whinging players the majority were in the same group as we were and hadn't seen the cutscenes either. So we continued on. Even still, two people were impatient enough to skip cutscenes before the fight on the lift so they nearly wiped themselves until the rest of us arrived and the same thing happened after the Ultima fight.

My main issue with the speedrunners expecting people to follow in line with these particular dungeons is that they are key dungeons to the plot, and it's new players who are coming to them. These dungeons are their first toe-tip into the content at max level and for some people it could completely throw them off wanting to continue playing the game if they think the entire community is like that (it isn't, and I've been lucky enough to meet people who genuinely care about the other people they share this game with).

Maybe it would be different if speedrunners weren't (for the most part, you yourself may be different as you're expressing) jerks about it, but the vast majority are. They are impatient and force a decision on other people who are trying to experience something new and honestly amazing.

As you yourself said, the fights in Prae are awesome (especially Ultima). But they're made all the more so by knowing what's going on and having that context.

And to use the Philosophy tomestones as the excuse for sacrificing a new player's experience is a sham, because you could be doing High Level instead, getting Mythology tomes as well as Philosophy and decent dungeon drops for your alts.

Rewarding players for joining the Story Roulette is an excellent idea and will make sure that new players can find groups to complete the content with (which will otherwise gate them from experiencing pretty much everything else) but doing it with Philosophy tomes just brought back the same problem we had before AK and WP were adjusted to be more lucrative. Changing the reward to something cosmectic (when we have vanity slots anyway) may be for the better.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I was not aware cutscenes gave invulnerability, as I had seen people die from watching a cutscenes before so I assumed CM's overabundance of (slightly useless at times) cutscenes were a danger to the party. My apologies for that and I appreciate the knowledge, as now I won't have to worry about my slight load time delay when I skip them (gotta love playing on a potato).

I'm sorry to hear your first time with CM went badly. I got lucky with having most of the party be from my FC, and thus they were patient and made sure to at least explain the basics of fights/strategies to me. What you did in Prae was a better idea that you likely should have done in CM regardless of knowing how badly it could turn out, letting everyone know when you're new to a dungeon will save not only you time, but everyone else as well. Plus it'll save everyone a lot of headaches.

Honestly, I've never once bullied someone into skipping cutscenes. Usually I don't even say anything one way or the other at the beginning of a run, as usually the tank/healer always says something in regards to how the run's going to go. If someone says they don't want to miss the cutscenes, I just remind them/let them know they can watch them in the inn and that's about all I say on the matter. I usually stay quiet in parties I get into regardless of whether we're speedrunning or not. And yes, 70% of speedrunners are either jerks or so terrible at their job that they screw up the dungeon for everyone, new player or veteran alike. Especially in CM, I can't tell you how many completely inept parties I've had. I have better parties with newbies to that fight than I do people who have run it many times. Thus another reason why I prefer Praetorium.

I suppose it's probably different for everyone, but I skipped cutscenes on the Ultima fight as well since I didn't want to make my party wait (despite it being made mostly of FC members). The fight still had a huge amount of importance to me regardless, and it's one of many reasons I continue to spam Prae every day, through DR or not. I cannot get over how well-done Ultima is. It was the perfect end fight (I don't count Lahabrea as the final fight because that entire fight was boring and gimmicky to me) for the story.

However, the thing about Philo tomes is, High Level DR doesn't give the same amount of them as a daily reward, and especially not for such easy (yet fun) work. Thus why I think people prefer running MS DR, it's less work for more profit, as well as the fact a lot of people likely use it to gear up in order to take on the High Level DR. I prefer running CT for my myth, so I don't bother with HL DR all that much (also because I had 2 horrible runs of Hard Mode dungeons in a row that wiped so many times the timer reached 0).

I think what really needs to be done is just make a separate MS DR available to fresh 50s and people wanting to get their story done, that gives no Philo rewards (or if it does, the bare minimum in comparison to other runs). This would keep people who do MS for their daily philo out of the runs of new people wanting to experience the story, and would also prevent new players from having horrible first-time runs due to 90% of party members wanting to speedrun.

[Caraway]

.... Stupid forum character limit! I had a response to the above, mostly highlighting the suggestion of having a separate duty roulette for people new to the two fights and my copy of what I had posted got eaten so I'll try again.

I think that if you had a special queue only for people new to the run they would end up with the problem they had post the AK/WP reward buff; the queue times would become incredibly long and it would make those dungeons a bottle neck for new players.

When you take into account the current MMO culture that is so heavily focused on tangible rewards and the game design supporting it, it's hard to encourage altruistic behavior without opening up possibilities of harassment. Any possibility I can think of where there is an item reward (whether it's lessening it, or giving cosmetics instead, etc) would still have the same trouble of people wanting to go through as quick as they can to get their shinies and be on with their day. Which can be damaging to the community as a whole for the reasons I talked about above (jerk players will always be jerk players if given the chance, after all).

Maybe what could be done is that if you Roulette into CM/Prae any Commendations you get are multiplied. It's a reward you only get if people feel you were a good player and as far as I've seen in other content has helped to foster a kinder, gentler duty finder where people are more frequently talkative, and offer help.

[Aureliami]

And this right here is the problem with the current generation of MMO players. "I want my tomes and I want them now. Your immersion be damned." What you don't seem to be understanding is this is someone's first time doing this. When you speed run it they aren't learning anything, they aren't understanding the content, and they're not getting to experience the story that has been crafted purposefully for them to experience as they're killing the bosses.

You are subverting the game design because you're too impatient to get a piece of gear you're going to replace in a week or two anyway.

The irony is you probably complain about people who don't know fight mechanics too.

This poster right here is the problem with current generation MMO players. "I'm too much of a special snowflake to watch the cut scene in the inn, the 7 other people in my group should cater to my special needs so I can watch them in the dungeon"

You think that just because it's your first time you should get some kind of special treatment where everyone sits around wasting their time doing nothing for 10 minutes while you watch a cut scene in the middle of the dungeon. You have the option to watch them in your inn, but NO YOU HAVE TO WATCH THEM NOW and to hell with the rest of the world because your time is more important than that of anyone else.

[ruinedmirage]

Heh, despite my previous post, I just did CM and Prae for the first time with 4 other members from my FC. It was the most miserable experience I've ever had. After getting locked out of the first boss of CM, I realized it was either swallow my pride of wanting to enjoy the game or GTFO. My mates didn't want everyone in the party to wipe and suffer the endless cycle of people leaving and saying "skip cutscenes or I'm out", so one of them stayed behind to show me where to go after everyone was nearly halfway through.

I managed to get to the next boss just before the lockout, with help skipping enemies and a mate to guide me through at least. I still don't know anything about any of the fights and felt like I was carried the whole time. Same with Prae, but it was less traumatic. Skipped everything because I just wanted to get it over with. I didn't die my first time, and even got a couple commendations for being a good WHM through all the fights, but y'know what? Caraway is right. After this, I don't feel like touching end game content at all! If this is a precursor of things to come, I'll stick to crafting and gathering.

I know this is more of a personal problem, and sorry to rant about it like this. My selfishness extends to wanting to learn the fights and see the story as it happens, but that's asking way too much in this community.