Skipping cutscenes in MSQ Roulette

[Gemina]

Hello,

I was curious why I can no longer skip cut scenes in the MSQ roulette. Some people may need to watch them, some people may have seen them before, and some may not care to see them at all. If you actually sit through the whole roulette, you would notice the cut scenes now take longer then the actual fighting (ie you are watching movies more then actually playing the game). I feel forcing us to watch content we have already seen is a waste of time.

Try creating a system where if a new player has not seen the cut scene they cannot skip it the first time so you are not punishing the rest of us with a time sink.

My .02

This is a common thing with everything. Not only in this game, but life. For simplicity sake though, I will stick with the game. It is always much tougher to get to the meat, than it is to actually eat it. As an example, when I craft, it takes me WAY longer to acquire the means and the mats to craft something difficult than it does to actually craft it. The same can be said for MSQ roulette. The battles are short and brainless, but the cutscenes are filled with story content, and that is the purpose.

Don't go into MSQ roulette expecting any kind of hard fought battle to clear. If you do, you're probably five years late to the game. This roulette is all allowing first timers experiencing the story as intended.

[van_arn]

This is a common thing with everything. Not only in this game, but life. For simplicity sake though, I will stick with the game. It is always much tougher to get to the meat, than it is to actually eat it. As an example, when I craft, it takes me WAY longer to acquire the means and the mats to craft something difficult than it does to actually craft it. The same can be said for MSQ roulette. The battles are short and brainless, but the cutscenes are filled with story content, and that is the purpose.

Don't go into MSQ roulette expecting any kind of hard fought battle to clear. If you do, you're probably five years late to the game. This roulette is all allowing first timers experiencing the story as intended.

Sorry no, the current MSQ roulette is not allowing new players to experience the story as intended. "Intended" would include some awesome, memorable, fights in Praetorium and those have been absolutely ruined.

[Aerlana]

This roulette is all allowing first timers experiencing the story as intended.

before the change : the first boss dies before the room is closed or 2-3 second after, while the firsttimer is in cutscene. He didnt see anything from the fight.

After the change : the first boss dies before the room is closed or 2-3 second after, the first timer did see the boss had a healthbar... and that he is useless as fight.


So, now it is experiencing fight as intended? the story is not only seeing cutscene + healthbar... The Nero fight is nothing now, he dies before the 3rd hand (sometime before the 2nd) you can ignore all kind of mechanics. except the begining of ultima due to the -99% damages. Before the change, when we had the "newbie bonus" we knew there was a new guy. yes he didnt see all the speed run strategies to do trashs faster, (aka PACK THEM ALL) and didnt see the boss being killed faster that the time needing to take a drink. But most of time, (all except when they were silly guys) we did wait for some specific time, like entering nero fight, gaius, ultima. or even Livia for the other dongeon. Some people made sure the newcomer find how to go after first castrum boss (staying near the thing to click on) etc. . .

What they did miss was the fights, that was a little impressiv when we were less than 50 ilvl average... (impressiv for some fight... because in castrum except livia... meeeeeh) but dont have anything to show now. They die without showing even one mechanic. Even Ultima, dont show anything of his skills... And with 7 people ilvl 110 (if i dont do mistake) it is nothing surprising... Would prefer being able to skip CS and do some trash while the newcomer watch CS and have "real" boss fight because we are ilvl 60, than what we have now... i would prefer this in the name of "experiencing the story as inteded"

I would have more fun personnally also... because raping boss like we do is nothing fun... for us old players or for the newcomer...

(and the best thing "for the newcomer to experience the story" would be having both bosssfight longer than 20 seconds AND no skipping CS. )

[Ilenya]

Before the change, when we had the "newbie bonus" we knew there was a new guy. yes he didnt see all the speed run strategies to do trashs faster, (aka PACK THEM ALL) and didnt see the boss being killed faster that the time needing to take a drink. But most of time, (all except when they were silly guys) we did wait for some specific time, like entering nero fight, gaius, ultima. or even Livia for the other dongeon. Some people made sure the newcomer find how to go after first castrum boss (staying near the thing to click on) etc. . .

Yeah, the thing is...People *didn't* wait. Back at the beginning of ARR, Praetorium was the best way to get the tomes for gear, and people were rushing newbies through it, trying to force people to skip cutscenes and complaining when a new player had the gall to not know where to go, but not bothering to *show* the right path. As time went on it was less useful than other methods for tomes, so it became less of an issue, but people still were forcing skips or just rushing bosses while new players were in cutscenes. Yes, some waited...But in my experience, a majority didn't.

Come to think of it, why isn't there a ilevel sync for the dungeon?

[van_arn]

Come to think of it, why isn't there a ilevel sync for the dungeon?

Because Square is utterly incapable of maintaining content or pivoting to the playerbase's reaction to content.

They could've fixed all of this five years ago by making them soloable, but instead spent those five years making the fights more and more trivial whilst never fixing the issue of contention: the cutscenes themselves in a 8-man party.

The issue has never actually been people telling people to skip cutscenes or watching cutscenes; that's just the symptom. The problem has always been the existence of the cutscenes breaking up 8-man content over and over.

[Berethos]

The problem has always been the existence of the cutscenes breaking up 8-man content over and over.

A phenomenon that occurs in just about 2.5% of the 8 man content currently available (or 1.5% if we count all duties available), that also sits in its own queue, and is only visited by those who are new, those in the mentor queue, and those looking to gain the boosted roulette rewards via a single laid-back duty.

Truly, a massively major issue that is grinding the game to a halt that SE should have fixed years ago.

Or maybe, just maybe, not being able to skip the scenes in such a small portion of the game is getting way overblown as an issue.

Honestly, some of ya'll are pushing really hard on this - do ya'll really want the old skippable version with the old rewards (that don't make it worth running much either) that much? Or do you actually think they'd let you skip but keep the boosted XP and tomestone reward?

[Tempest222]

I mean personally the roulette rewards are useless to me so I dontrun it and probably wouldn’t even if it was the old way either. For me, the only reason to run that roulette both now and before was for poetics.

So what was the old reward? Wasn’t it like 50 for the dungeon plus another 50 for doing the roulette plus a potential for another 100 if there was a first timer? I’d way rather spend 10 minutes there getting 100-200 poetics than potentially close to an hour for 500-600. But that’s just me. I realize, especially given time spent waiting in line that you’ll actually get more in less time now, but it’s just such an agonizingly boring experience me in those dungeons being forced to sit through all those cutscenes for the zillionth time that to me it feels about 10x longer than it is, and it’s pretty long in reality. So yeah, I would rather have the old way back with the old rewards. It would then just be something I’d run on occasion instead of being something I’ll avoid at all costs.

At the end of the day though, it really doesn’t matter what sort if any changes are made in the future in regards to these two dungeons. They will make sure they aren’t a complete roadblock for new players going through the msq, which they aren’t right now. And the rest of us can do what we want with it. It really doesn’t matter that I won’t do the roulette because it’s just such a terrible experience for me, because whatever I could get in there I could get elsewhere. Im losing nothing really.

As for people running mentor roulette. Well yeah it just stinks for them since they can’t just chose not to queue for msq and avoid it altogether. Honestly if I was doing that and landed in praetorium I would just eat the penalty and leave. Better to find something else to do for 30 mins than spend 50 mins keeping tabs on cutscene progress so I don’t accidentally afk through the 2 minutes you actually need to do stuff.

[van_arn]

A phenomenon that occurs in just about 2.5% of the 8 man content currently available (or 1.5% if we count all duties available), that also sits in its own queue, and is only visited by those who are new, those in the mentor queue, and those looking to gain the boosted roulette rewards via a single laid-back duty.

Truly, a massively major issue that is grinding the game to a halt that SE should have fixed years ago.

Or maybe, just maybe, not being able to skip the scenes in such a small portion of the game is getting way overblown as an issue.

Honestly, some of ya'll are pushing really hard on this - do ya'll really want the old skippable version with the old rewards (that don't make it worth running much either) that much? Or do you actually think they'd let you skip but keep the boosted XP and tomestone reward?

The dungeons themselves are my problem because it speaks to Square's inability to correct their self-admitted mistakes post-ARR for five years. That degree of willful incompetence at Square is what makes me angry, not the dungeon itself. I'd be perfectly content if the roulette was deleted along with the dungeons if only as a sign they're going to do their job, and yes-- maintaining their game is their job.

If nothing else, these need to be removed from mentor roulette. Mentors in particular aren't needed to help people through the post-nerf encounters, nor are 8 people necessary for these dungeons post-nerfs. The fact that Cape Westwind still requires 8 people when I can main heal (note main) through it with Eos and afk speaks volumes to just how badly these have been nerfed, and how it is a complete waste of a queue for anybody. The dungeons and their encounters are categorically trash as dungeon encounters, and so they have no legitimacy to continue to exist in their present state if at all.

Freaking Sastasha is more of a dungeon than these dungheaps, and that's only because 4 are involved with limited toolsets rather than the zerg of 8.

But I have a question for you. If they made them soloable, as even I suggested, you wouldn't have the MSQ roulette anymore. Isn't it easier to just ignore it now, as if that change was already made? Why do some people keep whining about the MSQ roulette?

I don't care if MSQ roulette goes or stays. I do care mentor roulette is linked to MSQ roulette, since they're nerfed so badly 8 people (let alone mentors) don't need to be there.

As I said, and you must've read it, they're free to drop from these duties. But they were fully aware that they could get them when they queued, so they shouldn't complain. When I'm not in the mood of doing something I just don't take the risk to maybe have to do it, and much less if I can affect someone else. I think that that's common sense.

I'm going to complain when I sit in a mentor roulette queue expecting to help someone out only to get an overnerfed cutscene gallery instead, especially when timewise it makes more sense to just bail on the cutscene gallery and eat the timeout. I don't need to queue for cutscenes. Speaking of useless overnerfed content, Guildhests need to go as well. There was a time when they were decent tutorials, but Square's incompetent nerfs shone down on them and now they can't even function as a tutorial.