How to fix Castrum and Praetorium

[LeonBlade]

We are doing YOU a favor.

Yeah, you are doing them a favor and being rewarded for it... 30 minutes of your time could be spent getting 80+ myth tomes in other ways. If you're going to bitch about someone watching cutscenes then go speed run Brayflox for your 80 tomes. In the 30 minutes it takes you to clear the Story Roulette you would have got 225 myth tomes or so depending on your time.

Story Roulette is to help the new players, you are at their mercy. If you don't want to deal with new players... don't join the roulette... simple as that.

This isn't a hard solution, it's just a bunch of people who bitch that new people in the game exist and they want to watch cutscenes and enjoy the game as it was meant to be played. There have always been faster methods for getting tomes from the Story Roulette ever since it was added.

I always join the roulette under the assumption that someone might want to watch cutscenes. This is the same thing for all the tanks and healers that don't want to stick around for their 5000th run of Toto-Rak. Don't fucking join the roulette then. The amount of time it would take you to clear one of those dungeons could easily be spent speed running Brayflox for way more tomes than you'd get for a bonus.

If you're someone who leaves a duty because you get a dungeon you don't want in roulette or wants people to skip cutscenes, you should be banned from using the roulette.

[AthrunZolza]

Honestly it should be fixed I will admit I never got to see them :/ everyone rushed and I was lost enough as it was I didn't wanna get left behind and lost more so if anyone ever wants to run that for the cs make a pf or get up some friends who want to watch them with you if people on my df party watch I personally wait

[Amberion]

It's so sad that it's a problem. Had this been 10-15 years ago, dungeons like CM/Prae would be an absolute dream for players to run, even with the cutscenes. Chances are, those dungeons would have intentional blocks to slow player progress so that you couldn't rush through it too. It wouldn't be considered normal to SR anything... at all. The experience was going to almost always be awesome for everyone, whether you wanted to hurry through it or not.

Had this been 10-15 years ago, we would only re-run it to help people. We would not have had to rerun something like this so many times that it would have been a problem.

[Artemiz]

Story Roulette is to help the new players, you are at their mercy. If you don't want to deal with new players... don't join the roulette... simple as that.

The problem is if everyone took this advice then there wouldn't be many people helping new players clear this content. The queues would then take forever and newer players would be put off by that instead.

You have to take into account the needs of the roulette player as well as the new player if you want a solution to this problem, demanding the player base becomes more philanthropic simply wont work, that's life.

[MohammadSaeed]

As along FF fan, I can say that my first time to finish the game with these two dungeons was round because of the overgeared player and the speedrunners. SE can and should fix this since their whole game is story driven line all other FF's. the final dungeons are 8 man’s party and it should be challenging by making ilev "synic", this should solve the problem by making ever single party member needed to progress. in my personal experience I missed 2 major fights because the other tank was ilev 90 and did not need me. I just want to say for all expert and high level player please remember the thrill and in the early dungeons, I really miss it at the end.!!

[Akujin]

snip

Sadly, the problem is, a great number of people who play the game are not Final Fantasy fans. They don't really care about the stories, or the time the developers put into things. They only want shiney armor and something to amuse themselves until the next 'big' thing comes along to take their attention. Think of a bunch of cats watching a laser pointer moving around a wall. Basically that, instead of questioning the reason for the laser pointer, its origin, its purpose. They only see the shiny at the end of the tunnel and go at it narrow visioned.

Those who did enjoy their cutscenes and now demand others push through the content because they can rewatch them at the Inn are simply hypocrits, plain and simple.

It's really just an ouroboros type of thing, the snake eating itself. On one end you have people who want to play content as it was meant to be played (the new players to the experience) on the end you have those who have ran it numerous times and just want to get it over with (the old players) and they conflict, because the old players are impatient and want everyone else to cater to their way of life, rather than accepting that the game was not made specifically for their enjoyment. As others have stated, there's plenty of other alternative methods to acquire the Myth tomes that can be gained from the game, rather than rerunning these two dungeons and potentially interfering with new players who want to experience it. For one reason or another, they choose not to take those alternative routes and want to bully people into doing it their way instead.

The only way this sort of behavior ends, is if SE purposefully does something to these two dungeons that requires total party participation at all times, so that no one can be left out. Such as, one person suggested for a system check that only unlocks a boss sequence once every member is out of the cutscenes. Or, a system check that monitors player positioning as the Map does for all 8 players in the boss arena itself before the next sequence begins. The first, would only prevent people from locking out others while in a cutscene, but would do nothing to prevent people from bitching in chat and demanding others skip cutscenes. The latter, would force everyone to be in the same area, which is independent of the cutscenes. The con on that, is you're very likely to have someone (or many) who will assume that someone who isn't always promptly up their ass and ready at the same time as them are intentionally holding the progress back for one reason or another and initiate a kick.

All in all, SE can place countermeasures in, but you can't really prevent assholes from being assholes. It's who and what they are, nothing is going to change that.

[blowfin]

Sadly, the problem is, a great number of people who play the game are not Final Fantasy fans. They don't really care about the stories, or the time the developers put into things

No, the problem is that even the people who are Final Fantasy fans tire of running the same instance dozens of times. You're not exactly going to run CM and Prae multiple times and insist on watching the cutscenes in full every time, are you?!

It's really just an ouroboros type of thing, the snake eating itself. On one end you have people who want to play content as it was meant to be played (the new players to the experience) on the end you have those who have ran it numerous times and just want to get it over with (the old players) and they conflict, because the old players are impatient and want everyone else to cater to their way of life, rather than accepting that the game was not made specifically for their enjoyment. As others have stated, there's plenty of other alternative methods to acquire the Myth tomes that can be gained from the game, rather than rerunning these two dungeons and potentially interfering with new players who want to experience it. For one reason or another, they choose not to take those alternative routes and want to bully people into doing it their way instead.

I can't help but feel you're painting a quite inaccurate (and ugly) portrait of the playerbase there. That kind of thing helps nobody. You're basically saying experienced players are:
- Impatient
- Bullies
- Selfish
- Ignorant

Apart from that being a negative and destructive view, it's just not the truth for the majority of people out there. If someone wants to run Story roulette over spamming Brayflox, that's totally their choice. What kind of attitude they bring is another story though.

All in all, SE can place countermeasures in, but you can't really prevent assholes from being assholes. It's who and what they are, nothing is going to change that.

More or less that's the crux of the matter.

Both camps need to understand a few things:
- People are going to be running this dungeon for tomes. Everyone needs to be tolerant of that.
- "Speed running" is not "speed running" when you've done the instance dozens of times. To everyone else you're actually "slow running" if you're not familiar with the dungeon.
- There will be jerks who want you to skip cutscenes. There will be jerks who lock you out of fights. Jerks are a fact of life, you will come across them in CM and Prae too.
- Sometimes when people get locked out of fights it's actually an accident.
- There will be nice people who will wait around while you watch cutscenes. There will be nice people who make sure you don't get locked out of fights. There are plenty of people around like this. Be sure to thank them with a commendation or in party chat.

[Elim]

Just remove all the rewards from those two dungeons.

Negatives:

Hardly any vets will bother to run it. It will make que times extremely long. People might start selling runs to newbies who don't have FCs or friends. Some newbies will beg vets to go with them and then actually be grateful for their help instead of getting upset over the speed of the run. Others might quit the game over it.

Positives:

There will be a small chance that all-newbie runs will happen. No one will be overgeared or want to skip cutscenes if that happens. Well... the cutscene thing might not always be true.

[blowfin]

And we wont have as many complaint threads about speedrunning these dungeons.

To be fair this is the first complaint thread in many months, seems to be working fine as it is for the most part.

[Felessan]

Just remove all the rewards from those two dungeons.

This will make Praetorium into living hell. Apart from insane queue times, people seems to forget just how hard Prae is for newbies in ~50 ilvl. Just look at AV - half of newbies parties can't get it, and AV significantly easier than Ultima.
3 hours of waiting, 1 hour of wipes on Ultima - and a lot of ppl will abandon option to "ignore high level helpers" leaving it only to most hardcore fans of self-torture.

This content is already old, it shouldn't be the same hard roadblock now as it was half an year ago.
And for those who can watch CS and bosses I always give the same advice - go there twice, once as carry who'll watch every CS, but probably skip most of fights and second time to skip CS and watch bosses. It's not really nice to others to force them wait for you because you want to get both in one run.