Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

[Jellybums]

You just proved it's horribly designed that such a thing is even possible. And no, strong-arming anyone who goes in there to go through the entire experience when even a lot of newbies don't care about the cutscenes is not the way to fix this.

You've brought up the problem while ignoring it completely. No one will have that proper experience with full cutscenes if the queue doesn't pop, and the queue won't pop because no one will queue for that roulette with those changes to begin with.

Sad to say I wasn't able to experience it fully because of the player base, not the content itself. Maybe on another datacenter the outcome would have been much different, now I'll never know. We are actually talking about two different things here. You are talking along the lines of it's a bad movie, make a new one. And I'm saying I've never seen it and who knows how many times people would watch the same movie that's worth seeing anyway. Because it is a movie for its length, and you think it won't be seen at all because of queue times.

There's the problem, expecting someone to decide on spending considerable company time and money on assumptions such as yours. How do you justify a budget for revising content from assumptions? That's someone's neck on the chopping block. They at least need actual numbers because real money has very real numbers. Is it really a content issue, player issue, or a selling issue? So, no, these changes are not stupid. These changes are serious questions that need to be asked and tried especially when real money is involved.

[BillyKaplan]

Sad to say I wasn't able to experience it fully because of the player base, not the content itself.

But that's exactly my point - no content at such length should be integrated into a duty. It doesn't matter how good it is, it's the integration itself that's badly designed.

So, no, these changes are not stupid.

These changes are tone deaf. It's possible that the queues won't be hurt as badly as we say they will be, but from a development standpoint, they did the single most intrusive, violent thing they could've done. Forcing your userbase to do anything when it comes to content is the #1 biggest no-no. I'm a software engineer. You only do that sort of thing if you want your users to not use your product. A lot of people in this thread already said they'll never bother again. You yourself said you don't see the point to going in there more than the one time. And from a developer viewpoint, that's the worst outcome regardless of how bad the queues will or won't be. Because it shows your users just how deep in the sand your head is as a developer, and leaves a roulette that will see a lot less usage besides. And when they created an entire new roulette and locked a shiny mount behind 2000 runs of it because they need people to run content, I don't think that's something they could afford, really.

[Tridus]

I think you missed my point; there is a lot of story and wonder (for lack of a better word...don't we all remember when whatever mmo we were playing still had that new car smell and everything was new and exciting to see?) for us newcomers hiding in all the cutscenes, and that story is a large part of why many of us are here.

No, these are literally the only two dungeons where it's so big a problem. In all the other ones, they learned their lesson by breaking them up. Heavensward's version is two things: Aetherochemical REsearch Facility and Singularity Reactor. The big block of cutscenes is before one, between the two, and after the last one. That means everyone not there for the cutscenes can complete it and leave while the person there for the cutscenes can watch them. They don't disturb each other. When the cutscenes are done, the person can simply queue up for the second part. Ditto with Ala Mhigo and Royal Menagerie.

That's SE changing the content design to remove the problem. These two are unique in their design precisely because SE learned from them.

[Alleo]

The roulette is not there for you to get XP, it's there to help people with their story.
Sorry you have one less option, but this is an... interesting.. attempt to address all the people who wanted to experience the story but couldn't because when they DF'd the quests they got shotgunned through it.

The roulette was introduced to help the queue times for newcomers by giving veteran players an incentive to run them. This was done with exp and tomes. If the exp and tomes are not that great anymore then you take away the incentive thus taking away the reason to run this. Yes there will be people that will still run this but there was a reason why they introduced that roulette..

[Kaldaka]

I think, if the cutscenes weren't so damn long combined, it wouldn't be such a problem. Perhaps an alternative can be formulated, or maybe they can just increased the ilevel sync to make it harder, with the addition of leave the boss doorways open for longer than 15 seconds, as even when skipping a cs, the load times usually cause lock out as is.
No one will do those duties anymore, which ultimately screws new players from actually completing ARR
My only assumption for that though is that SE are perfectly aware of how anal we all are, and that they can profit from more story/level skips being purchased.

I just had a thought :/ I would tolerate MSQ for 500 tomes ONCE a week. Make it like they do with the alliance raids.

[Tridus]

I have heard that on JP servers they wait on new players watching cutscenes.

So its like on JP servers if you cant wait on new players watching cutsences, don't queue roulette for story dungeons

Be careful what you wish for, because you're about to get it. Expect queue times to go up appropriately as tanks and healers figure out they have better things to do.

[HyoMinPark]

According to another poster on here, the cutscenes are auto-advanced, non-clickable.

Here’s the thread if anyone wants to read it: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...oulette-reward
I plan to try out MSQ Roulette and see if I get decent experience for a 60 job now that the servers are (hopefully) done being broken.

UPDATE:

Just did MSQ Roulette myself—Praetorium.

Wait time: ~10 mins (DPS)
Instance time: ~50 mins (skipping/blowing through things as per usual)
Experience (level 60 job): 274,217 experience for the mobs we did kill; 1,338,681 experience for the Roulette (was not AiN).

My overall opinion? Not worth it. The experience reward doesn’t seem to be anymore than what I used to get running it beforehand.

[Alleo]

Wow 50 minutes..and you cant click them yourself? Well this at least stops trolling and we dont have to click ourself but still I am not sure if that is not even worse than just having to watch them..well around double the exp is just not worth it for me...Right now the queues might still be faster since people are trying it out or did not no about the change...I cant see how this will stay that way so waiting time will make this even worse..

[Jellybums]

But that's exactly my point - no content at such length should be integrated into a duty. It doesn't matter how good it is, it's the integration itself that's badly designed.

These changes are tone deaf. It's possible that the queues won't be hurt as badly as we say they will be, but from a development standpoint, they did the single most intrusive, violent thing they could've done. Forcing your userbase to do anything when it comes to content is the #1 biggest no-no.

I said it's just not something I would do daily. But after actually trying it today with sprouts and vets, it's not as bad as people are making it out to be. I've had longer runs in 50/60 and leveling with non-sprouts. How are these two dungeons flawed just because veterans can't do speedruns on them anymore? A lot of people in this thread won't bother with Toto-Rak either which is a staple to new characters and would rather eat penalty. Is it then flawed, too? Judging content from the standpoint of someone it's not even designed for in itself is flawed. Anyway the numbers will speak for themselves. Business decisions are based on data, stats, numbers, not just some value judgment and unsupported claims especially when real money's at stake. If the memo reads budget request for revamping old content, what is this, new toys not enough? Good luck getting money for the we think and it will. Is what you're asking for within reason and is the premise of it even sound/solid/backed by data? SE doesn't exactly have fairy godmothers on staff.

[deapee]

I left the msq duty finder after 40 minutes...after 6 people already left - and refilled, and another two had left - and i still got a 30 minute penalty.
Lesson learned. I will never queue for another msq again.