MSQ Roulette Cutscene Skip

[Tlamila]

People here sympathise way to much with "new players' what makes you think new players want to sit in a hour long dungeon? they don't.

Well, you're wrong. The whole reason why this system was put in place is because of new players massively complaining for years, so yes they do want to sit through the cutscenes.
And as others said, the huge xp was only put there because of the unskippable cutscenes, before that it was worth running for xp only in the 50s.

[Gatygun]

No unskippable cutscenes = No increased rewards.

No reward = nobody signing up for it = MSQ stuck for new players = New players not progressing
= lost subscriptions = change the quest or reward because the story and cutscenes are builded
around a game. or else it would just be a endless cutscene or book.

The reason why people rushed back in the day from what i heard is because the experience was bad so they didn't wanted to sit in there long but still wanted the limited rewards out of it which made new players feel rushed and get kicked. They changes this towards unskippable cutscenes and far more experience to give new players a better experience while rewarding older players and newer players.

However because of the experience, its not a thing u have to sit through and basically bore yourself to death every single day for a hour. Which in my vision isn't a good gameplay solution.It's bad gameplay design.

The big issue here is that one group of people are bogging down the other group of people no matter how you push it. That's why this type of concept of a main story with long cutscenes isn't working in a dungeon and is not done by any mmo even remotely. Simple tweaks in all kinds of different ways can resolve this issue perfectly fine.

[Gatygun]

It doesn't work like that. The story and gameplay are interconnected - you move through the area, and have fights at specific points along the way because you encountered them in the story.

Would you want to watch all the "talking scenes" in an action movie first, then watch all the fight scenes separately later? That would be the equivalent of "putting the story as a cutscene first" then playing the dungeon.


The thing is, as a new player it's not "sitting in a hour-long dungeon", it's seeing the story play out for the first time. If you appreciate and are following the story, the first time through the Praetorium is an amazing experience. I willingly re-ran it the next day and was delighted to fall in with another group taking their friend through the story and watching the cutscenes.

Yes, it gets old. Yes, it's routine now. But I remember how I felt about it when it was new, and I will defend whatever measures are in place to help other people get that same experience.

U do realize they can rewrite the story around the gameplay instead of hampering it right? What if everybody lives in pieces and there is no conflict anymore. no more final fantasy games? or will they rewrite a conflict to sell a new game towards you? exactly. Story is builded around the gameplay and not the other way around or else we would see the lore 24/7 for everything we did all day long. This is why gameplay and story are segmented and only tid bits of story are provided in group plays. Main story quests is clearly going overboard with it and it creates a unpleasant experience for most of the people doing it as. As you only have to see the cutscene ones and now u are in the other group of endless waiting.

Pacing is important in a book, in a movie and in a game and specially when it involves other players.

Why do you think the regular dungeon system doesn't have story cutscenes in between that are long and tedious and can be skippable? Because gameplay will grind to halt entirely.

[MistakeNot]

The reason why people rushed back in the day from what i heard is because the experience was bad so they didn't wanted to sit in there long but still wanted the limited rewards out of it which made new players feel rushed and get kicked.

No, people rushed through it for the same reason they rush through all other dungeons and raids whenever possible - because they can. For some inexplicable reason a great many players of FFXIV seem to think that the only good dungeon run is one which is done as quickly as possible.

New players rarely got kicked in the past when cutscenes could and usually would be skipped. What happened instead was that they got ignored - the rest of the party rushed ahead, leaving the new player behind, lost, confused, and not knowing where to go, and then the new player got bombarded with cutscene after cutscene without having the context for the cutscenes and without being able to take part in or even see any of the fights.

[Frizze]

Theyve hinted, but not outright said, that if they change this again its probly going to be that castrum and praetorium become solo instances with AI partners helping new players along(which is what they should have done 2 years ago rather then the unskippable route they went). Then the unskippable cutscenes go away, because the whole roulette goes away. No more "hours of forced cutscene torture", and no more massively inflated exp and poetics rewards for doing them. There are plenty of ways to level up that dont require stepping foot in roulettes that you dont want to run - so rather then complain about these just dont do them if they bother you.

New players rarely got kicked in the past when cutscenes could and usually would be skipped. What happened instead was that they got ignored - the rest of the party rushed ahead, leaving the new player behind, lost, confused, and not knowing where to go, and then the new player got bombarded with cutscene after cutscene without having the context for the cutscenes and without being able to take part in or even see any of the fights.

OMG this 1000 times over. Go back about 3 years on the boards, and the threads complaining about these runs by new players who had their experience "ruined by speedrunners" are endless. The advice back then was to do these via PF, or do them with friends so you could experience the fights properly. Most people didnt get that advice until at least the castrum run was "ruined"(if not both), and the salt was endless. The quick lazy fix back then that people promoted was unskippable cutscenes. I always said they should work on new content rather then "fix" 3+ year old instances, but if they DID change them then a solo instance was the only true way to prevent more problems from occurring. The devs listened to their players and made the quick lazy fix. Then they spent a couple months tuning the rewards to be good enough that the new players didnt wait too long. And nothing has changed since. But they are working on a revamp for some ARR content for later in this expansion cycle, so we'll see what(if anything) we get this time.

[FirstnameLastname]

but muh cutscene reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Castrum and Praetorium were a mistake. No other way to put it.

[WrenElessedil]

People here sympathise way to much with "new players' what makes you think new players want to sit in a hour long dungeon? they don't.

I completed the main ARR story back in 2.0, and I still remember how even then it sucked because I didn't even get to see what was going on with any of the bosses because I was watching the cutscenes while everyone else just rushed through everything. I had to rerun it later on and skip the scenes with everyone else to even see most of the fights because they were over before I could even participate the first time through. I'm glad the current system is the way it is, because my experience was pure garbage, and I don't want other players to have to go through that.

[Mahoukenshi]

but muh cutscene reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Castrum and Praetorium were a mistake. No other way to put it.

Which has nothing to do with the "problem" at hand, but sure go ahead and continue trolling

[FirstnameLastname]

Which has nothing to do with the "problem" at hand, but sure go ahead and continue trolling

It does actually. Why are only rookies allowed to dictate their playstyle on others? Once you hit levelcap you suddenly drop in class and are not allowed to do stuff in your pace anymore, eh? 'Cause that's what I've been seeing here.

[Frizze]

It does actually. Why are only rookies allowed to dictate their playstyle on others? Once you hit levelcap you suddenly drop in class and are not allowed to do stuff in your pace anymore, eh? 'Cause that's what I've been seeing here.

First, sprouts arent dictating anything. The devs listened to 3+ years of complaints on the forums and they made the decision to change the way these 2 dungeons worked(they also learned not to put excessive cutscenes in the middle of group instances so that this wouldnt be a problem going forward). Second, every other duty in the game aside from these two the group gets to decide the pacing on their own. Which usually means fast(my preferred speed), but not always. The "epic conclusion to the realm reborn storyline" being treated differently from most other content is fine. And finally, these instances werent designed with you in mind. They were supposed to be the big flashy climax to the story the game wanted to tell, and that makes people doing them the first time the target audience. The roulette with its many-times-increased rewards was always just a way to see that que times for said sprouts didnt get too overly long. So the only part of the roulette that your feedback is relevant on is whether the roulette pays out enough. It ques at roughly the frequency the devs want, so apparently the answer is yes.