Skipping cutscenes in MSQ Roulette

[van_arn]

Again, it's not my opinion. It's the description of what being a Mentor means, and what's expected from us. You can check it on the Smiths, as I've pointed out several times now, as they insist on all that. And, as I said several times too, you're free to do as you wish, but then you have no right to complain. What you're doing is kinda like a tank saying "no one, not even SE, can tell me how to play a tank. So I'll go into duties as one but I won't tank anything. And I want my mounts!". People won't take that kindly, and they'll rightfully tell you that you're a terrible tank.

Also, no one is forcing any of you to run anything. You're doing it by yourselves. No one is misguiding you in what you'll get into, you're fully aware of what kind of duties you can get on each roulette. Will you complain, too, that the raid roulette puts you into raids? Because what you're doing is as stupid as that, and I'm not saying this trying to insult you, but this whole situation about the MSQ.

Doesn't matter what the Smiths say, either, because nobody pays attention to that anyway. Not even Square.

Mentor's just a dumb crown thing that means something different to every person. The roulette is only another roulette with high requirements, and as just another roulette you have the option to bail or votekick as you personally see fit.

You can go on and on about what you think Mentor should be based off of what Yoship wishes and hopes for, but hopes and dreams mean nothing against the practical truth of the design itself. The practical truth of dungeon and tank design means, if the tank doesn't tank then they get kicked because the healer probably just died.

That practical truth is if someone's cleared every bit of content available in the game, they're wasted on Praetorium or Castrum. The other practical truth is even if one can avoid Castrum/Praetorium by avoiding the MSQ roulette, that doesn't make these quality dungeons. Square's failed them both by overnerfing the combat encounters and requiring far too many cutscenes, and -- even if they can be avoided -- they need to be decommissioned or reworked. Increasing incentives does not magically make these poor design decisions good; they're still garbage.

Heck, if they're going to require cutscenes and provide incentives that's fine-- just restore their former difficulty. As things stand, though, it's straight trash from beginning to end, and their easiest way out is to remove them entirely.

[Yshnal]

Doesn't matter what the Smiths say, either, because nobody pays attention to that anyway. Not even Square.

Mentor's just a dumb crown thing that means something different to every person. The roulette is only another roulette with high requirements, and as just another roulette you have the option to bail or votekick as you personally see fit.

You can go on and on about what you think Mentor should be based off of what Yoship wishes and hopes for, but hopes and dreams mean nothing against the practical truth of the design itself.

That practical truth is if someone's cleared every bit of content available in the game, they're wasted on Praetorium or Castrum. The other practical truth is even if one can avoid Castrum/Praetorium by avoiding the MSQ roulette, that doesn't make these quality dungeons. Square's failed them both by overnerfing the combat encounters and requiring far too many cutscenes, and -- even if they can be avoided -- they need to be decommissioned or reworked. Increasing incentives does not magically make these poor design decisions good; they're still garbage.

That's your truth, or your opinion, if you want. I gave you examples of similar attitudes that I'm sure that even you would be against. Just because you want to play something a certain way, against it's design, it doesn't mean that everyone else has to accept it.

Also, people truly interested in using their mentorship, and not in just wearing an "honor badge", read all that text. Just because you didn't that doesn't mean that everyone else didn't, either. In fact, from what I see on the Novice Network it would seem that you're a tiny minority, thankfully.

Only truth up there is that the dungeons were badly designed... for the west. As I said years ago, SE didn't think about the cultural differences and about how selfish or self-centered the western playerbase is. That was their fault, yeah, and they learned from it (even if sometimes they still make similar mistakes related to those differences).

And about the rewards, plenty of people run the MSQ roulette because it's worth it for them to do it. They can do it while half busy, or when they want to be relaxed while still playing and advancing, and all that exactly thanks to the resons that you stated. For those people these rewards are actually more than nice. If want to play more actively, do something else.

To finish this, I'll say something: if you hate being treated like children, don't act like one. It's sad that SE has to make changes to "police" us so that we stop making other people's experience worse. Notice how all these issues are exclusive to us.

[van_arn]

That's your truth, or your opinion, if you want. I gave you examples of similar attitudes that I'm sure that even you would be against. Just because you want to play something a certain way, against it's design, it doesn't mean that everyone else has to accept it.

Also, people truly interested in using their mentorship, and not in just wearing an "honor badge", read all that text. Just because you didn't that doesn't mean that everyone else didn't, either. In fact, from what I see on the Novice Network it would seem that you're a tiny minority, thankfully.

Only truth up there is that the dungeons were badly designed... for the west. As I said years ago, SE didn't think about the cultural differences and about how selfish or self-centered the western playerbase is. That was their fault, yeah, and they learned from it (even if sometimes they still make similar mistakes related to those differences).

And about the rewards, plenty of people run the MSQ roulette because it's worth it for them to do it. They can do it while half busy, or when they want to be relaxed while still playing and advancing, and all that exactly thanks to the resons that you stated. For those people these rewards are actually more than nice. If want to play more actively, do something else.

To finish this, I'll say something: if you hate being treated like children, don't act like one. It's sad that SE has to make changes to "police" us so that we stop making other people's experience worse. Notice how all these issues are exclusive to us.

My opinion is backed up by my personal ability to bail on whatever I wish, with full confidence in Square not able to doing anything against it without harming the queues that actually need help. They could go as far as to disable the withdraw option ingame and I'd just alt+f4.

Your opinion is nothing more than a whine about what you think I should do as a mentor, and that ultimately isn't actionable.

As for East vs West, the game is marketed and released in the west so they're going to get judged by the west. That is fine. And it's great they learned from their mistakes!

What isn't acceptable is they've failed to correct their two greatest, self-admitted, mistakes for five years. That's just not acceptable, no matter where you're from. It reeks of negligence or incompetence. Wallpapering over the crap smeared on the wall with incentives doesn't fix the underlying crap smeared on the wall.

I expect them to provide a dungeon worth rerunning on its own merits. Castrum/Praetorium, but Square's own admission, are not.

[Yshnal]

My opinion is backed up by my personal ability to bail on whatever I wish, with full confidence in Square not able to doing anything against it without harming the queues that actually need help. They could go as far as to disable the withdraw option ingame and I'd just alt+f4.

Go ahead and do it, as I said repeatedly. Make SE know that you don't want to run them. But, according to what I've read, people like you are already bailing from these duties, and other ones are not even queueing. Yet the queues there aren't that terrible, aren't they? If you want to prove something, do it. Don't just make your opinions seem fact, without any actual data to prove anything.

Your opinion is nothing more than a whine about what you think I should do as a mentor, and that ultimately isn't actionable.

I'm not whining, and it's not my opinion either. I'm still waiting for you to acknowledge the tank example that I provided, because it's exactly the same case of someone taking something, and ignoring how it was intended to be used because they're such special snowflakes.

As for East vs West, the game is marketed and released in the west so they're going to get judged by the west. That is fine. And it's great they learned from their mistakes!

What isn't acceptable is they've failed to correct their two greatest, self-admitted, mistakes for five years. That's just not acceptable, no matter where you're from. It reeks of negligence or incompetence. Wallpapering over the crap smeared on the wall with incentives doesn't fix the underlying crap smeared on the wall.

I expect them to provide a dungeon worth rerunning on its own merits. Castrum/Praetorium, but Square's own admission, are not.

Yes, that was their fail, and I've been saying that for years. If they had fixed it as they should, a lot of new players wouldn't have had their experiences ruined. And we wouldn't have all this MSQ drama time and again. But, while I'm the very first one to criticize SE (I'm not happy at all about a lot of things that they do, and it's not a secret), I'm not that blind to not see that the community is at fault of a lot of things, too.

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?

EDIT:

I think, Yshnal, that you also need to step back and remember that SOME of your points in this thread are also on the side of opinion rather than that of facts. You can tell me that I'm wrong, and point me in the direction of the in-game smith npc and wax lyrical about the way in which Yoshi-P wanted the mentor system to work and how he 'expects' mentors to behave, but the truth is that if all of that was correct and a formal expectation then they would do more to ensure that mentors pick up the slack by monitoring all mentor in-game behaviour, content completion and overall conduct; with a penalty for those who don't help others, drop from low level content constantly and are rude/aggressive to sprouts by adding a penalty such as a loss of the crown/status. They don't, because they are all to aware that every single mentor is unique and different, we all have different play styles and playable time periods per day due to RL commitments and in-game commitments (raiding, FC grouping etc) and you can't expect people to spend their 2 hours per day doing nothing but help others, especially if Praetorium alone takes 45mins due to cutscenes.

No, they don't because they don't want to (or can't) devote the manpower that doing that would need. The amount of tickets that that would create would be higher than mount Fuji. That's why they rely on the community (rightfully or wrongly), and that's why we have the kick option for the NN, for example.

As someone who recently became a mentor, I do what I can to help people in the free time that I do have, and I will always help where needed, and I try to be the first to give tips and advice during content runs. I haven't done a run of MSQ since December 2017, mainly because at present I don't need the poetics tomes, so it's irrelevant to me in terms of the buffed rewards. In the 30-45-60mins one of those two MSQ dungeons can take, I can help other players who also need help to get through something else instead. I did Sohr Khai, Amdapor HM and Byakko NM today all in under one hour helping at least four new players (1 each in Sohr Khai and Amdapor HM, 2 in Byakko NM) which when I think about that vs MSQ roulette, feels like a much better usage of my time, and on some level is more productive overall. The choice to not run MSQ roulette, or dropping if gotten via mentor roulette (is this even a thing? I still have 3 trials left to clear for mentor roulette unlock so idk offhand) doesn't make someone a 'bad mentor' because we all have our limits, and I can understand someone not really wanting to spend so much time clicking through cutscenes they have either seen many times before, or have no interest in.

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.

Also, in regard to 'policing us' I wouldn't say that adding unskippable cutscenes was a way to police older players or mentors. I believe it was more an incentive for new players to form their own groups with other sprouts and to get those who don't mind/enjoy the cutscenes running that content, with a nice bonus of tomes and gil/exp for those who also want to run it. People just took it as SE reprimanding speedrunners for making sprouts skip, when truthfully no-one can make someone skip the cutscenes. They were likely aware that a good portion of the playerbase would avoid that particular roulette once unskippable cutscenes became the meta for it, and that's because the whole unskippable cutscenes thing was meant for those who enjoy that sort of thing. The only ones to blame once that content becomes truly dead are Yoshi-P and his team, its needed an overhaul for a long time now.

It was, in fact, due to how people behave in there towards newbies. So, yes, they put that restriction in the duty finder because of that. When you add to it that the devs themselves were surprised that that was happening in the NA/EU servers, it's just a matter of doing 1+1. It's similar as to why we got so many doors in the dungeons due to how some people didn't like the extreme speedruns (and that's coming from someone that misses being able to pull everything up to the boss' room when running them with friends, but I understand that it caused too much trouble in the DF sometimes).

[Fhaerron]

Yet the queues there aren't that terrible, aren't they? If you want to prove something, do it. Don't just make your opinions seem fact, without any actual data to prove anything.

I actually helped a few sprouts with giving them faster queue as a tank (they where DPS and +1 hour in queu). Yes DPS queues have always been bad but MSQ roulette has been even worse after the change most of the time, many people are not running it anymore and many people with the crown (including myself, mostly because I do not wish to associate myself with quite some mentors in this game) wish to hide that crown and do not want to use mentor roulette.

I even queues a few times as DPS during nighttime in the EU for this roulette and had been in the queue of longer then 5 hours when I eventually closed my PC and went to bed.

This is unacceptable on SE's part, even more knowing they always like to say that they have 14 million players which most of that numbers are bots and people that no longer play but for some reason they forget to mention that.
removing this MSQ for requirement to progress into game or make it solo-able would been acceptable changes. But alas they have to push more people into buying story skip pots in the mog station for more cash I guess.

[SixtyLove]

Snipple~

I've been reading both of your posts and have been trying to see both sides of your arguments, and I can, for all intents and purposes see where both of you are coming from.

I think, Yshnal, that you also need to step back and remember that SOME of your points in this thread are also on the side of opinion rather than that of facts. You can tell me that I'm wrong, and point me in the direction of the in-game smith npc and wax lyrical about the way in which Yoshi-P wanted the mentor system to work and how he 'expects' mentors to behave, but the truth is that if all of that was correct and a formal expectation then they would do more to ensure that mentors pick up the slack by monitoring all mentor in-game behaviour, content completion and overall conduct; with a penalty for those who don't help others, drop from low level content constantly and are rude/aggressive to sprouts by adding a penalty such as a loss of the crown/status. They don't, because they are all to aware that every single mentor is unique and different, we all have different play styles and playable time periods per day due to RL commitments and in-game commitments (raiding, FC grouping etc) and you can't expect people to spend their 2 hours per day doing nothing but help others, especially if Praetorium alone takes 45mins due to cutscenes.

As someone who recently became a mentor, I do what I can to help people in the free time that I do have, and I will always help where needed, and I try to be the first to give tips and advice during content runs. I haven't done a run of MSQ since December 2017, mainly because at present I don't need the poetics tomes, so it's irrelevant to me in terms of the buffed rewards. In the 30-45-60mins one of those two MSQ dungeons can take, I can help other players who also need help to get through something else instead. I did Sohr Khai, Amdapor HM and Byakko NM today all in under one hour helping at least four new players (1 each in Sohr Khai and Amdapor HM, 2 in Byakko NM) which when I think about that vs MSQ roulette, feels like a much better usage of my time, and on some level is more productive overall. The choice to not run MSQ roulette, or dropping if gotten via mentor roulette (is this even a thing? I still have 3 trials left to clear for mentor roulette unlock so idk offhand) doesn't make someone a 'bad mentor' because we all have our limits, and I can understand someone not really wanting to spend so much time clicking through cutscenes they have either seen many times before, or have no interest in.

The only 'bad mentors' are the ones who don't help people, spam the NN with rude comments/unwarrented erp and are rude and agressive towards returners and sprouts. Most mentors are doing their best with the time they have, so cut us all some slack. I don't think it's classy of you to generalise a majority of mentors as bad just because they don't like reading a bunch of boring in-duty cutscene text because it has been forced that way. A mentor who wants to use their mentorship does so by actively helping people in many different ways, not by sitting at their PC/PS4 reading cutscene text in a 5+year old duty for the 1000+ time they have run it. There are arguments both ways here, try to be a little more objective.

Also, in regard to 'policing us' I wouldn't say that adding unskippable cutscenes was a way to police older players or mentors. I believe it was more an incentive for new players to form their own groups with other sprouts and to get those who don't mind/enjoy the cutscenes running that content, with a nice bonus of tomes and gil/exp for those who also want to run it. People just took it as SE reprimanding speedrunners for making sprouts skip, when truthfully no-one can make someone skip the cutscenes. They were likely aware that a good portion of the playerbase would avoid that particular roulette once unskippable cutscenes became the meta for it, and that's because the whole unskippable cutscenes thing was meant for those who enjoy that sort of thing. The only ones to blame once that content becomes truly dead are Yoshi-P and his team, its needed an overhaul for a long time now.

I maintain what I said earlier in the year (Jan?/Feb?) that if you don't like being unable to skip the cutscenes then don't run that content, their are other ways to get exp and poetics tomes, but if you like it then go ahead and run it. I still hope that they relent and overhaul those two particular duties at some point.