Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

[JaakRoot]

I love how people justify that a majority are complaining about the change with the number of page this thread has. Most of this thread pages are made by 3 people discussing and arguing. As someone who are still in HW and have not unlock many 50+ 60+ dungeon or raid, I did not find any better ratio time/xp than this MSQ roulette for now so I did it pretty much everyday to nearly take a lvl each time I finished the roulette ( 50 min). I now also know when I can go to the kitchen cooking too ( Nero and Gaius ultra long talking haha).

[Aurturia]

With resources being the reason SE doesn't want to give this a more meaningful fix, would it be possible to reduce them down to the cut scenes with a little filler added to tie them together? I've never felt like they were the epic experience they were meant to be so if they really are nothing but a headache at this point why not just scrap them?

[Anarnee]

I love how people justify that a majority are complaining about the change with the number of page this thread has. Most of this thread pages are made by 3 people discussing and arguing. As someone who are still in HW and have not unlock many 50+ 60+ dungeon or raid, I did not find any better ratio time/xp than this MSQ roulette for now so I did it pretty much everyday to nearly take a lvl each time I finished the roulette ( 50 min). I now also know when I can go to the kitchen cooking too ( Nero and Gaius ultra long talking haha).

I've seen maybe one or two people bring up the number of pages on the thread as a reason and I don't recall any being recent, why even bring that up? But if we are gonna talk about yes, there are a few keeping the conversation strong, and a handful that come and go. This topic also has a lot of views, more than most of the topics that have been brought up since patch. While a lot of the conversations have died off, even the housing threads, though I blame that on those threads being moved to the housing forums and no one bothering with anything other than the general discussion.

XD I'm pretty sure lvling rou gives the same amount of EXP and will usually be less time and not to mention Labyrinth of the Ancients roulette- I mean Alliance Roulette.

[JaakRoot]

snip

It gives more than leveling roulette for sure. By how much, I am not sure. But it is still the best source of XP I found with the daily roulette bonus for a first character without armory bonus and without all the dungeon unlocked.

I guess I am a different kind of Vets, the vets that are still not lvl 70 with all MSQ done and all raid/dungeon unlocked: Half-vets XD.

[Dualblade]

With resources being the reason SE doesn't want to give this a more meaningful fix, would it be possible to reduce them down to the cut scenes with a little filler added to tie them together? I've never felt like they were the epic experience they were meant to be so if they really are nothing but a headache at this point why not just scrap them?

This is atleast slightly the fault of how much everyone overgears it, level sync is 110 which is WAY too much for dungeons ment for people to be able to reasonably run around i50. It certainly felt more epic when gear levels were closer to that, atleast when I ran it way back when. Though certainly I would love them to take some time to look into change some thing (like making them atleast 4 player dungeons instead) this currently seems like an okay band-aid.

[Alleo]

I love how people justify that a majority are complaining about the change with the number of page this thread has. Most of this thread pages are made by 3 people discussing and arguing. .

There are certainly more than just three people discussing this. Also please dont forget that a lot of people are already playing the game for a longer time, have much more options to chose from and maybe have run those two dungeons a lot too. Its nice that its great for you, but I do kinda question if you will stick with that forever too? Because they need people doing that as long as the game exist because its so vital for the story. Will you be going into this in the future too if there are better options, or if you have your necessary jobs on 70? There will always be new people coming but the question remains if there will be enough that will stick with it for so long or if more will just not do it.

[Yunuen]

snip

Thank you for bringing this up! I've recently been running MSQ once on the weekends, and I've run into the issue of the delay after existing he cutscenes. In a situation where I would normally have no problems keeping up, despite lag, I've been put severely behind. At one point getting yelled at by someone for summoning the elevator before they got off when I couldn't see them. I purposefully avoid playing certain parts of this game because I don't want to deal with lag and I don't want to drag down my party, and while it makes less of an impact in MSQ compared to a raid, it's still a bit frustrating.

[Vhailor]

All valid concerns and useful suggestions. I've said before it's unlikely they'd put in the resources to actually rework the 2.0 MSQ dungeons but this doesn't mean I don't think they should.
As you've said it's a general consensus in the forums that SE will outright refuse to do anything extensive on old content. The reasons for this have never truly been disclosed or defined other than we know they operate on "limited resources". Now whether or not that means manpower, budget, or time nobody here knows. It could even possibly just be a cop out and they have other reasons entirely they do not wish to disclose, but I'd like to think we're not there.

Lets say this current situation is because they have limited manpower as an example though. Knowing this, and knowing that they'd have to divert some of this to rework the MSQ into a solo instance with NPC's with appropriate waypoints, tactics and prompts, would you support a delay in current content to get this done? Or are you of the mind that since they're pulling in money at all , more should be spent on expanding the resources available to the FFXIV team to make this kind of change happen? As in the sacrifice here needs to be wholly absorbed by the company.

I ask this a lot because I hear many people say "oh they just need to.. " but once you propose a cost for that to happen they immediately balk and say how it "just needs to get done and should have been done long ago. ". Personally I don't think we're "owed" anything since the game has been and continues to be worth the subscription I pay, but I suppose others do not see it that way.

I'll try to keep my response organized, but it's likely to be lengthy.

(1) I'd happily accept multiple entirely missed content cycles in order to have many of FFXIV's long-standing problems and server limitations resolved. I have two lines of reasoning for this.

The first is that I believe FFXIV isn't even close to living up to its potential. Just looking at the MSQ, we can see issues with the Main Scenario Roulette dungeons; we can see issues with the horrific 2.x quest slog; we can see issues arising from the sequential nature of the main storyline (people having to play through ARR and Heavensward before even touching new expansion content, or feeling compelled to purchase an item to fix it). That's not even touching on the catastrophe that is the Glamour system, the badly limited Housing system, the general whiffs on outside-the-box content (Diadem, Diadem 2.0, hopefully not Eureka...), the ongoing and ridiculous limitations like not being able to send /tells in dungeons, etc.

I want to see SE fix all of this.

The second reason I'd accept missed content cycles is that, really, 75% of each update cycle is a one or two new dungeons that simply change scenery for the Expert Roulette, a new Raid of some sort, some Glamours, and an iLevel increase. There isn't much actually there, generally. I mean, has anyone really felt like 4.2 added much? A few new instances, sure, but once the mechanics are mastered, doesn't it drop down to the same old grind as before, only aiming for Mendacity instead of Creation?

It's worth the sacrifice, in my mind.

(2) Having said all that, I'm also of the mind that SE should be expanding the development team, and should absorb the costs of doing so.

Let's consider: SE has put in a cash shop alongside a P2P model, so that they could milk more profit from the title. They've charged $40 for expansions instead of the more standard $30. They charge monthly fee additions for Retainers and extra characters, something no other MMO does to my knowledge. Despite all of this, they've actually cut down on the content typically offered in each patch cycle; Raids barely have trash monsters anymore, they're just a series of bosses. The Relic weapon is still not here, roughly 8 months after the release of Stormblood.

So, where is the money going, exactly? SE is opening up more revenue streams on the back of their flagship MMO than they've ever had before, while cutting back (or at best holding roughly steady) on content. Unless the development team was chronically underpaid and is now being generously compensated for their sacrifice, I fail to see much excuse for this.

I don't feel this way, incidentally, because I feel 'owed' something by SE. FFXIV is still tremendously good value for the money. However, increased revenue streams should translate to improved content. Look at Netflix as an example; they upped their rates a bit, and all of a sudden started churning out huge numbers of in-house films and TV shows, many of which are quite good. As a consumer, I see a benefit to paying more money for their service. That helps justify the fee increase to me. What I see from SE is the opposite, and giving a company more money for worse, or equivalent, content, just grates on me the wrong way.

I'm also curious if you're on the "revert the change , too much negative impact was made" side or do you think even with the negatives at least some progress was made that warrants keeping the change around? Barring people who like to argue and flap away everything said as a labeled argument fallacy I really do want to hear an opinion. You seem like you've put a lot of thought into it, what's your take?

I'm not sure, honestly. If the queue times worsen to the point where it's no longer a tenable situation, I'd rather see the change reverted than the rewards increased again. Bribing people to do brutally tedious content is likely to help queue times, but these dungeons right now generate a very real sense of annoyance at the game, and that's not a healthy feeling to be instilling in the player base.

More than anything, I think this change was, in addition to everything else, very poorly timed. We're 8 months into an expansion cycle, and therefore the influx of new players is almost certainly less than it was even six months ago. To me, this solution would have been a lot more acceptable if it was a temporary measure introduced for, say, the first two patch cycles of each expansion, maybe preceding an expansion by a month. At that point, it's unpleasant for veterans in some sense, but the queue timers are (in theory) manageable because of the large number of incoming new players.

Alright, I think that's it. I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, too!

[ShanXiv]

So, where is the money going, exactly? SE is opening up more revenue streams on the back of their flagship MMO than they've ever had before, while cutting back (or at best holding roughly steady) on content. Unless the development team was chronically underpaid and is now being generously compensated for their sacrifice, I fail to see much excuse for this.

I don't feel this way, incidentally, because I feel 'owed' something by SE. FFXIV is still tremendously good value for the money. However, increased revenue streams should translate to improved content. Look at Netflix as an example; they upped their rates a bit, and all of a sudden started churning out huge numbers of in-house films and TV shows, many of which are quite good. As a consumer, I see a benefit to paying more money for their service. That helps justify the fee increase to me. What I see from SE is the opposite, and giving a company more money for worse, or equivalent, content, just grates on me the wrong way.

Compare to 2.0, 4.0 has better graphic quality, better CG movies, better story quests.
better music, better sounds, larger maps.
the overall quality of 4.0 is better than 2.0.
The Royal City of Rabanastre is currently the best 24man dungeon.
And I really like the FF5/6 bosses in Deltascape.

The problem is not money, they have more resources than FFXI,FFXIV1.1x-1.2x team

Look at the luxury FFXV,chapter 13 is a mess. FFXIII?meh...
Tales of Berseria,The Legend of Heroes VI series are better RPG IMO
The Nier Automata is more impressive than those costly AAA FPS games.

The problem is the resource allocation,the speed of content consumption,the direction of the game,the lack of longevity,
and the lack of MMO development experience(Yoshida and his team should play some FFXI, not WOW..)

[KaivaC]

snip .

A vet of what?! MMOs? That's fair, but a Vet of FFXIV, you are certainly not. Hell, I've been here for 10-11 months, and I don't believe I would be considered a vet. On your main response, I've gotten about 3mil experience for a run on the Praetorium. It is definitely not something I'd run more once a month, if that, because of the cutscenes. On your ratio/time, below level 60, POTD outshines MSQ roulette due to queues (if you are a DPS), but unless it's an alt, the main story will usually give you the most experience per time.