Why can't Dungeons be longer/harder, but more... piecework?

[linay]

That depends on your goal. If you're trying to level and want the most XP/time, you need to make use of roulettes. Without a roulette bonus, it wouldn't matter if you logged in for roulettes once a day, or just ran a bunch of dungeons at the end of the week.



Roulette rewards aren't exclusive, but that's not the problem, it's that they make one way (or schedule I guess) of obtaining those rewards better than others in terms of efficiency.


There is some flexibility, but time gating isn't contributing to that at all.

There is always a most efficient way of achieving a goal. Flexibility means you can sacrifice that efficiency if you value other things and it won't be such a detriment to your goal. If you want the most efficient method, then of course you've limited yourself to whatever is the most efficient method available.

And again, time gating is only a problem if you limit yourself to the time gated content. The only time gate you cannot overcome is the weekly tomestone cap and weekly raid drop, which has nothing to do with the roulette. You can do the roulette and supplement it with other contents if you want to continue farming whatever it is you want.

Sorry, I was using the term similarly to "If you want to do Ultimate, you are obliged to be well-geared and choose a job that isn't distinctly sub-optimal", but in this case "If one wants to grind tomes efficiently, roulettes are obligatory."
They are not strictly necessary (you can get carried even in Ultimate), but you'd certainly never be able to complain about your inability to achieve those ends if you didn't first use those means.

Looking at roulettes specifically, we are systematically encouraged to spend less time on content of our choosing as to benefit the content of others. It largely cycles back to where we all at many point have benefited from roulettes (even if we do still get the conspicuous party of all 80s doing Titan for a Trial roulette), backing it balance back while also giving us some variety.

If that were the end of it, I wouldn't see even the slightest issue. But...

• What about the people who want to random content and/or content that helps people (for them, that "random" is then still "chosen" content, in a sense)?
• And, what does the massive disparity in EXP efficiency between just doing dailies and actually progressing through content at your level do for your sense of progression when leveling a job?

Or, more simply put, why don't Roulettes just attempt to make other content just slightly more efficient than your own on your first use per day and only slightly less efficient thereafter, instead of initially far more efficient and then nearly worthless?

Would that added flexibility, by less noticeably conditioning the player or skewing their decision with the relative carrot (efficiency for doing what roulettes ask of you) and stick (inefficiency for doing what you want), be better or worse for the game?

I don't think the comparison with the requirements to do Ultimate is valid. For one, being well geared and using the right job is either a duty or a party requirement. To say that they're "not strictly necessary" would be to ignore item level requirement that the duty has as well as the attitude of many potential group recruiters. The roulette is not a requirement in that way as it's entirely a personal choice. It's an activity that gives you incentive, but doesn't require you to do it to achieve that incentive.

If all you care about is efficiency, then feel free to do the roulettes. But if you also care about something else, that you can also do that other thing in place of the roulette or in addition to the roulette. Tomestones, for example, you can cap easily if you're active at doing hunts or Eureka (in Stormblood) or even treasure maps. You're not required to do roulettes every day to cap tomestones. Or you can just do 5 expert roulettes for 5 days and not touch the other roulettes. That gives you plenty of time to do other things.