Praetorium - Worst Experience Ever

[Morningstar1337]

The problems with MSQ roulette and the reasons why vets might wanna get rid of it are multifold

1. The large exp is a doubled edge sword, as another post mentioned, it would encourage laziness as its allows players to get half a level for doing a dungeon that is capped at 50. This on its own wouldn't be a problem (I mean bad players would cap with FATEs if they have to if they're adverse to dungeons and learning, and the other roulettes combined would encourage players to do difficult content if they care about level grinding anyway) but...
2. It encourages toxic behavior and hostility to new players. Remember what happened when people could skip the cutscenes, and also know that players trying to get it over with also encourages locking out newer players who don't know where to go and slower players with subpar hardware for until the prompt starts, and there is a chance that the boss will be downed by the time the cutscene ends, the area reloads and the prompt appears. to say nothing about the people instaquitting one instance because it isn't what they wanted.
3. They are the weirdest dungeons in the game. Literally no other dungeon needed 8 players and its too shall we say, seamless to be a raid series (though that would be interesting, using a Raid to end the starting patch of an expansion) and needs too few to be an alliance raid. Prae and one Alex fight are also the only instantses that have mounts integrated into the mechanics (AFIAK)
4. It adds a sense of tedium to daily routine. The exp bonuses are as previously mentioned too good to pass up, which means that players leveling alts or bee-lining for the cap (fun fact. I did roulettes, including this during SHB MSQ and got 4-6 jobs capped by the end of 5.0) would be dedicating 1 hour per day to this roulette alone if they decide to level an alt that day. Time that could e spent towards other goals or even slightly more efficient grinding. Overall for most that do run the roulette, its removal would probably be like removing a weight off their shoulders, even if they get seemingly less exp from their daily routines

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

This is my primary issue with the community right now. You want your selfish little Netflix EXP drop every day at the cost of not knowing a damn thing about how to play the game. That means that you will need to be carried in the future, burdening 3-23 other players because you want an easy path. If it's elitist to feel that people should carry their own weight, so be it. I'd rather see people understand more and do better then flail at their keyboard randomly.

MSQ Roulette and being able to iLevel cheese into only getting the CT series are part of what's making the playerbase lazy imo.

It also is exactly why I hate both MSQ roulette and CT. It's so stupid seeing people leave CM because it isn't as much EXP for less work (as in you spend most of Prae in movie mode as opposed to moving around burning trash mobs), or leave upon getting anything in Alliance roulette that isn't CT or the first two parts of the Mhachi series.

People need to stop being afraid of doing 'hard' (read: still easy but not brainless) content because they don't want to learn how to actually play competently. People need to stop continuing to be a burden on 3-7-23 other people because they're lazy and afraid of effort.

As for MSQ roulette, though - Alliance roulette gives about (give or take) as much EXP as Castrum does. There are plenty of EXP sources in the game beyond MSQ, and some of them are actually fun to play and don't force vets and newbies to butt heads the way these two dungeons have done since 2.1 dropped. If it goes, good freaking riddance honestly. We'll all be free of the burden then - new players wanting to experience ARR's climax properly, and old players who can't stand being forced to sit and watch the same crappy cutscenes over and over that we've seen since 2.0.

[Esmoire]

Is it? Is player acquisition for a game this age that much more important than retention? IMO neither should trump the other. There needs to be balance. Too many games flip off their veterans while chasing "untapped demographics" that just don't exist.

Do I think the MSQ roulettes would be better off as solo instances? Unequivocally. Do I think not addressing the XP or tome farming would damage retention? Very much so.

The thing is...

People that run MSQ for exp will not care sll thst much if it gets changed to a solo instance， they will just move on to the next exp method prob frontlines.

This. And with fewer roulettes, existing roulettes have better saturation. It's not a 1:1 thing since not everyone who did MSQ roulette will do the others (it's a popular one if people are not going to be playing the game, like watching videos or playing on their phone), though for those duties that might have slow turnover time, or for people trying to queue for a post-expansion trial a bit late, they'll get in the game faster.

Also, bear the irony of the fact you are bringing up existing players for content that is old, anyways. So what's our loss? XP, of which people who have cleared ARR already have so many great sources? Pretty minimal, especially since pixies give us so much XP now, and people at high level in general already have a greater density of roulettes to choose from, and more and more and more stuff is coming out several times a year at any moment besides now, most of it aimed at established players.

[WigglesTheWiggly]

I think Square learned from this because the Prae and the previous dungeon are as bad as it gets and it's not even close. I honestly don't know what they can do now to fix it either

An option to run it with a trust/squadron. This would allow you to play at your own pace.

[LaughingBanana]

Yeah, happened to me the first time went there too, got confused on where to go, got killed, nobody gave a damn just rush forward, hahaha. I was so angry.

Now I always try to hang out in the back if I see someone with a sprout getting left behind so I can show them the way as fast as possible.

[RocciaSolida]

I hope SE will eventually introduce the opportunity of running certain old duties with the trust system and the two MSQ roulette dungeons are one of those.
The thing with Praetorium/Castrum is that their rewards are too good to pass on if you're leveling your character so players feel kinda compelled to run their roulette and this leads to those instances being rushed.
In my opinion many of the main story duties don't even feel right to complete as an 8-men party, especially because in the final cutscene you can see all the players celebrating whereas YOU're supposed to be THE warrior of light, it's just weird. But that's just a nitpick of mine.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Wierd. Sounds like I had the only good 1st time Experience.

[DBriggs304]

I'm confused...

How did you miss anything when you can't skip the cutscenes? You logged off cause the group was rushing through it, so how is that on the group?

There won't be a group anywhere in this game that won't rush through Prae or Castrum especially with the moogle event going on unless it's a FC that is purposely running it slow.

[Alleo]

Yes the devs had not completely thought it through when they created these two dungeons and they never did something like that again. I would be 100% fine if made these dungeons into NPC only runs so that anyone can enjoy it on their own pace.

But I also have to say: It was much worse back then when we had no forced cutscenes (and even though I was against these at the beginning, I now have grown to accept them) and I am not really sure why you got so confused OP. Yes people rush but most of the time the tank takes the monsters and if you stay with the group you mostly should have no problem to follow them. Only problem is, when the rest of the group either skips cutscenes (which is against the ToS) or if they have a certain language because then certain cutscenes are shorter. But as soon as another boss battle begins you are ported there and should then be able to keep up again.

I do try to wait for new people and even mark the one thing for the keys with a one but imo it should not be that much of a dealbreaker. Just wait until you are teleported with them and then you still can take part in the boss fights.

[MistakeNot]

I'm confused...

How did you miss anything when you can't skip the cutscenes? You logged off cause the group was rushing through it, so how is that on the group?

They missed near everything in between the cutscenes. I ran into that problem a while ago when I briefly disconnected right before getting the magitek armour. As a result I was of course behind the group when I got back in, but I couldn't catch up with them for a long while because I was bombarded with cutscene after cutscene after cutscene, without seeing what triggered the cutscenes.
For me this wasn't much of a problem - I have run Praetorium plenty of times before, so I know it well enough. For a new person it wouldn't have been much fun though.