Since Stormblood is bringing new players: can we please get a warning on Castrum/Prae

[ideamonster]

(...)
With that said, SB might not bring as many new players as we might think. Not when they will have to endure over 418 main quests (as of this post) JUST to enter the expansion, plus another 100 to just do the endgame.
Will be interesting to see what happens for sure.

They are thinking about introducing a story-skip potion that boosts you to level 50. I think it is already confirmed for Korea but not sure about the source. I personally think that's a good idea. Even only catching up to HW after my FFXIV break took forever... and it's very discouraging.

[Zojha]

They are thinking about introducing a story-skip potion that boosts you to level 50. I think it is already confirmed for Korea but not sure about the source. I personally think that's a good idea. Even only catching up to HW after my FFXIV break took forever... and it's very discouraging.

More correctly: They have already confirmed that there will be two potions: One that skips the story and a separate one to skip the leveling. Neither of them is included in Stormblood - They will be implemented sometime after its launch and rumor has it that this is done because competitors of FFXIV set the precedent to include one such potion with the expansion.
They already exist in China and Korea.

Personally? I can't see a great many actual new players come for Stormblood here. If the expansion is what lures you, you're looking at like 90 quid total to get to it ASAP (about 50 for the expansion itself plus 40 for the two potions). And you won't get the option at release either, you gotta drag your feet until the potions are released. Or...subject yourself to the MSQ grind in the meantime. Either way, if you wanna see the thing that lured you in the first place, you're gonna have to pay - either a good chunk of money or a good chunk of your sanity. I can't see too many new players being enticed by such a prospect.

[Voltyblast]

They are thinking about introducing a story-skip potion that boosts you to level 50. I think it is already confirmed for Korea but not sure about the source. I personally think that's a good idea. Even only catching up to HW after my FFXIV break took forever... and it's very discouraging.

Oh they are and let me say that, it's a pretty bad idea: all they had to do was to make the HW story disconnected from SB and make it start from there, making sure that as soon as a new player reaches 60 they would go to whatever-zone and start from there. Nope, instead of actually fixing a problem that many new players will eventually go into (as most of the people I know didn't bother because of the long boring story), they turned said problem into a possible cash grab by selling the potion.
What, are they going to tell me that the story is so sacred that changing some parts was totally impossible? Give me a break...

Unless you like the story, this might not be an issue but if those new players know that they have such a big wall to climb, SE can kiss their 15 dollars/13 euros goodbye.
Afterall, HW already saw a drastic drop in subscriber (more or less half of what we had in ARR but it's nothing official). What's next, a quarter? A tenth? Another shutdown for A realm reborn again?

[LaylaTsarra]

Do away with Main Scenario roulette and offer the bonus poetics in another venue. The idea of forcing players to revisit these cutscenes on a daily basis as they do their roulettes is unreasonable. What is the status quo at the moment is understandable and I doubt seriously anyone would do the roulette if they were forced to watch the cutscenes each day.

There is the real issue however if they remove the roulette there won't be enough people queuing for the dungeons which could be a problem for players trying to finish story.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I always try and warn people about these if I happen to notice someone getting close to them.
That said, it would be great if SE would try and fix the actual problem of their design...

I think making them single player would help greatly.

[The_NPC]

can't say I've seen many ppl straight up laugh at a newbee before for those 2 place's, have seen 1 a-hole belittle them during a boss fight (btw after that the A'hole never got a heal from eather healer after & he was a Tank, I has DPS at the time)

As for solutions tuining it into a solo-instance (but still unlocking the dungeon as a "here's u'r 2 choices for quest completetion") sounds like the best answer but harder Dev-time route the OP's sujestion is the simplist & easyer dev-time route (thou it would rely more on faith that ppl would be nice & help more then a DF pug group would when using PF)

[Gemina]

I was also ran over during these two instances despite letting everyone know I was going to skip the cutscenes. I got lost when I couldn't activate the magiteck armor, and had no idea why I couldn't. Both tanks died at one point since the other healer was also new, and just as lost as I was. We got blamed for slowing things down, and it was just a nightmare. I was relieved when it was over and skipped the final scene as well despite knowing it wouldn't hold anyone up because everything, including my feelings were just total shit.

I told myself I would come back and repeat the instance when I was strong enough to run it undersized and unsynced. Nearly a year later, I still have not watched those scenes and how ARR concluded. The desire to do so just isn't there. I'm sure Gaius had some final words during his last breaths, and maybe one day I'll hear them.

I don't know how to fix it. I don't think you can for players like myself who won't even touch Castrum and Prae, but making it a solo instance or four-man might work for those who are new to these instances.

[Jeykama]

The reaction to Castrum/Prae by new players ever since the 2.0 honeymoon period has always been so incredibly bad that I feel it would be worth the dev time to go back and convert the cutscenes into real-time events (like Cid when he blasts the door with the reaper).

Story skip potion or no, it's been a PF/unsync-or-nothing complaint since forever.

[Serilda]

I saw a PF for Praetorium (no cutscene skipping) this evening so I joined it and they found a full party of helpers within 5 minutes. We ran it at the normal sync and everyone had a good, relaxed run with no drama or carrying. At 4am Japan time, on the quieter of the two Japanese datacentres. People will definitely still queue for it if newbies are directed to Party Finder, I'm sure of it.

[Finnfinite]

What hardware are you running that skipping the cut scenes put you that far behind? (snip).

At the time, I was on a laptop with absolute minimum specs. I was usually the last one to load in in any given content, but it had never been TOO much of an issue because mid-dungeon loading is usually light.