Please fix the “naked queueing” for Aliance Raids

[RyuDragnier]

Roulettes are optional. From a design standpoint, a roulette's purpose is to make it easier for players to find other players to play with when there's an instance they need for a story quest, for example, or if they just want to play a dungeon/trial/raid that they like. The rest of us are being paid in gils/tombstones for playing with these people in a roulette, with the clear understanding that the instance we get will be random based on what the majority of players queue for. It makes no sense to complain about not getting the desired instance in a roulette.

Agreed, so why do people try to manipulate or be allowed to manipulate the RNG in their favor? It's just optional, right? If they don't want to get raids other than LotA and ST, they shouldn't be queuing for the roulette.

[Seddrinth]

Agreed, so why do people try to manipulate or be allowed to manipulate the RNG in their favor? It's just optional, right? If they don't want to get raids other than LotA and ST, they shouldn't be queuing for the roulette.

Correct, it is optional. That means people are free to queue for it or not queue for it. It's not your place to tell anyone they shouldn't be queueing. If they have a preference for certain instance, that's up to them and is not your business or my business.

[ACE135]

I would like that you need the min-ilvl for the last 60 alliance raid if you are lvl 61+, min-ilvl for the last 70 alliance raid if you are lvl 71+ and so on, otherwise you can't queue for the roulette.

[linayar]

Agreed, so why do people try to manipulate or be allowed to manipulate the RNG in their favor? It's just optional, right? If they don't want to get raids other than LotA and ST, they shouldn't be queuing for the roulette.

It is a side effect of how level sync works. Some people don't like item level sync (see the Shiva Unreal thread about it) because either they want to feel powerful or because they want to feel their gear/melding choice matters.

And like I said, the issue people are having is not necessarily an issue that requires SE's attention to change the system. I would be fine with/love having ilvl requirement in roulette, but it's not really warranted.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Correct, it is optional. That means people are free to queue for it or not queue for it. It's not your place to tell anyone they shouldn't be queueing. If they have a preference for certain instance, that's up to them and is not your business or my business.

It starts being your business when you are the one being negatively influenced by their actions. Gaming the Alliance roulette wouldn't be as big a deal or as complained about if it only influenced the exploiter's results, but it is also heavily influencing the results of those not attempting to cheese the roulette.

[linayar]

It starts being your business when you are the one being negatively influenced by their actions. Gaming the Alliance roulette wouldn't be as big a deal or as complained about if it only influenced the exploiter's results, but it is also heavily influencing the results of those not attempting to cheese the roulette.

Well, barring any response from SE, in the meantime there is this in-game feature they just released called fellowship. It allows you to form an in-game community with lots of people. Making a community for people who don't want to game the roulette should be possible if enough people care about it.

If you queue in as a full alliance, you wouldn't have to deal with any gaming of the system.

[Packetdancer]

Anyway, perhaps one thing SE could do is use the same technology they implemented for Bozja and upscale players/gear. So no matter what you do, you can be sent to any duty you have unlocked. (This could be a very interesting approach).

Honestly, even without figuring roulette manipulation into it, the ilevel sync is arguably broken anyway.

Minimum ilevel for a duty is calculated as an average of your gear. If you have a bunch of gear that's below ilevel and then a couple of pieces way, way above it, you'll pass the ilevel check. And then those way-way-above pieces will be ilevel synced down, and your average ilevel can now be below the minimum required.

I don't know that I like the idea of just scaling all gear up, because I think needing to improve your gear a bit is a useful thing to do. But I think that just like individual gear above the ilevel sync maximum will be scaled down, gear below the ilevel minimum should be scaled up. So if you pass the average ilevel check in order to queue, you won't end up well below the minimum ilevel when you actually instance in and get synced.

But that doesn't solve the original problem, i.e. that roulettes (meant to fill out empty spots in parties that have potentially queued for specific content) are not serving their purpose with alliance raids. If someone queues for Orbonne, the party will fill out with other people who've queued manually for Orbonne, and if the group sits long enough without enough people, the roulette is meant to fill out the missing spots; the tomestones are the reward for queuing to be those extra bodies.

Because the whole thing is that it's not about what raid the person queuing into the roulette wants, in theory; whether people want to be able to just get Crystal Tower stuff (because faster), or the Ivalice stuff (because variety and challenge) is immaterial, because the roulette should put people where they're needed. If people are queued for Orbonne and waiting, people should be slotted into Orbonne. If people are queued for Syrcus Tower and waiting, people should be slotted into Syrcus Tower. If people are only ever running Crystal Tower when they queue for things manually, then yeah, it doesn't matter if people want more variety; they should get Crystal Tower in that roulette.

The goal is that the time in queue should be reasonable, not excessive.

However, the fact that Orbonne can take an hour or more to pop when queuing solo suggests the roulette is not actually achieving that goal. Whether that's because people are ilevel cheesing to ensure they get Crystal Tower, or whether it's because people who queue for alliance roulette have never unlocked Orbonne and don't want to do the Ivalice raids, or if it's because people only queue for alliance roulette when they're leveling an alt job and stop doing so when they hit 60, or if it's because the moon is in the third house and the server is made of cheese... the point is that something isn't working as intended.

Whether that means that they should split the roulettes into Crystal Tower Roulette (the Crystal Tower raids) and Alliance Roulette (everything else) and reduce the rewards for Crystal Tower roulette, thus encouraging people to queue for the roulette that can only give you Mhach or later? I dunno. Would people queue for that? I would; I actually like the other alliance raids. Would enough people queue for it specifically that it keeps the queues moving, though? Or would people just only queue for Crystal Tower, taking the shorter time over the greater rewards? I honestly don't know the demographics of how many people queue for what, so I have no clue on that.

I will say that regardless of what the right fix for alliance roulette might be, I wouldn't mind if Crystal Tower were tuned so that it were actually a challenge again. Because I honestly think it's a shame that things like Castrum, Praetorium, and the Crystal Tower raids—or, you know, Cape Westwind—are built up in story as this Big Thing, and then when first-timers queue in, they just watch people completely annihilate this 'big threat' as casually as getting a glass of water.

(Plus, I think new players would be better prepared for later content if the earlier content actually still contained some measure of challenge and mechanics, rather than people just steamrollering everything and never stopping to explain any of it to anyone. If no one explains what they're doing wrong during the Behemoth or Amon fights and just lets people die because, well, you don't really need that many people up? Then I feel like we really can't expect folks to just know what they're doing wrong in any later content that involves similar shelter mechanics.)

[Arngrim_Greyashe]

I'm really tired of seeing the crystal tower raids at this point. I understand your pain, op

[linayar]

Honestly, even without figuring roulette manipulation into it, the ilevel sync is arguably broken anyway.

Minimum ilevel for a duty is calculated as an average of your gear. If you have a bunch of gear that's below ilevel and then a couple of pieces way, way above it, you'll pass the ilevel check. And then those way-way-above pieces will be ilevel synced down, and your average ilevel can now be below the minimum required.

I've heard that min ilvl sync is not really minimum anyway (that you can realistically go lower and make the fight harder but still doable). If true, maybe it's to account for that.

[Seddrinth]

It starts being your business when you are the one being negatively influenced by their actions. Gaming the Alliance roulette wouldn't be as big a deal or as complained about if it only influenced the exploiter's results, but it is also heavily influencing the results of those not attempting to cheese the roulette.

What is this egregious negative influence you are referring to? Getting a different alliance raid than the one you prefer? First world problems right there.