Skipping cutscenes in MSQ Roulette

[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.

[Fynlar]

You can pull the ethernet cord out of your PC and plug it back in, you get a DC, log back in and voila no cut scene and you can continue.

Too much of a pain in the ass, especially to do it multiple times in one dungeon.

I'm not lecturing you, I'm telling you the facts. Mentorship is not for that, period,

I don't really care what you think it's for. I'm not saddling myself with a bunch of long ass cutscenes I've already seen, period. I'm also not going to just stop doing the roulette just because there is a remote chance I'll get one of these two dungeons.


If SE sees what I do as a problem, it's their responsibility to fix it.

[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.

[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).

[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?

[Fynlar]

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?

I don't really give a rat's ass what they do to MSQ roulette at this point (I did it only rarely before, I never do it anymore), but that roulette is not the only one these dungeons appear in, and therefore I still have a stake in the matter.

[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.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

You can no longer skip cutscenes because new players were rushed through them, left out of fights alltogether and found themself alone in certain parts of the dungeon with all bosses cleared and the group already on their way out.

There were countless complains from people who wanted to enjoy the final dungeon of the game, but couldnt because its poorly designed and people arent willing to wait for the new person, even if they get compensated with bonus tomes.

If you consider watching the cutscenes a waste of time, I'd advice you to stay out of the Mainstory-Roulette alltogether. You get compensated for the time spent there with tomes or exp and if you dont feel that you get enough for your time: Dont do it.
The only thing that I could see "working" is that you're allowed to skip the cutscene, so you dont have to watch it again, but get put into some sort of "freeze" that prevents you to continue with the dungeon until everyone has finished their cutscene, like bossrooms being locked or something like that.

If a new player doesnt want to watch the cutscenes... well, I suppose they just gonna have to sit down through them once and then never again.

You have an option to skip the cutscenes: Skip the roulette.

Pretty much nailed it.

Tho recently some people found an exploit where if you DCed and came back to the MSQ roullete you were in....you can skip the cutscenes.

someone in the party I was in during roullette did it and he alongside 4 other people fought Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea while half of the team were still watching

In fairness tho,there is a reason endgame encounters in HW and SB are no longer 8 player dungeons with cutscenes as they got cut to 4 player dungeons and one last trial boss