Brainstorm: Recreate Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium

[HakuroDK]

Heya! So as everyone can probably tell, a lot of folks are extremely upset at how the two pieces of content in the Main Scenario Roulette, Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium, are handled, both from a design standpoint and from a player interaction standpoint. I'm not going to go into all of the details as to why that is as I am sure it's been talked to death. But I had an idea that might solve a lot of issues: Recreate these two pieces of content, modernizing them to match the rest of the game's flow. Let's go in chronological order.

CASTRUM

This one feels very simple to me.

1.) Reduce the required party comp from 2 Tanks, 2 Healers, and 4 DPS to 1 Tank, 1 Healer, and 2 DPS.

2.) Scale the content to a 4-man party.

3.) Add Castrum to the Level 50/60/70 Roulette.

4.) Allow the cutscenes to be skippable.

5.) Retool some specific boss fights to fit this new 4-man comp. Reduce the number of adds during the Rubicatus fight, remove the army of Iron Giants and all alarms from the final room. Also remove all enemies from the scaffolding where those alarms are situated. Keep all other enemies as well as the cannons to shoot down the gunship.

6.) Either remove the first phase of the Livia fight entirely from the game or retool it so you fight her normally in her magitek armor for the first phase, removing the cannons and the magitek loaders from the boss mechanics.

PRAETORIUM

This one is going to be a bit trickier, but I hope you'll stay with me.

1.) Same as the Castrum, reduce the required party comp to a standard 4-man comp, scale the difficulty to match, add it to the Level 50/60/70 Roulette, and allow the cutscenes to be skippable.

2.) Lock all transporters until all relevant enemies in that particular space are defeated.

3.) Remove the need to submit yourself to Magitek Armor Authorization.

4.) End the Praetorium after the Nero fight.

From here, we can do some creative things that match up with how the rest of the game handles its end-of-core-MSQ story.

POST-PRAETORIUM CUTSCENES

Here, we get our face-to-face against Gaius.

1.) Add an "Operation Archon Operative" NPC near the Castrum Meridianum portal that will escort you to the area prior to or after the Porta Decumana Trial (more on that later).

2.) Make the landing with the elevator where you fight Gaius its own room, and interacting with the terminal would begin the cutscenes where you interact with Gaius.

3.) Re-enable the dialogue options in the Gaius cutscene that were disabled when the Praetorium cutscenes were made unskippable.

4.) Scale the Gaius fight down to a soloable encounter and have it be a scenario fight.

5.) Play the remaining cutscenes up until you reach the door to the Ultima Weapon's chamber.

6.) Scale the first phase of the Ultima Weapon down to a soloable encounter and have it be a scenario fight.

7.) Play the cutscenes up through the casting of Ultima.

8.) "Porta Decumana Now Accessible"

PORTA DECUMANA

1.) Make this trial its own content: an 8-man normal-mode trial that can be accessed via Trial Roulette.

2.) Scale up the Ultima Weapon to have a slightly more modern health pool and slightly more damaging moves, but keep it an 8-Man Trial.

3.) End the trial when The Ultima Weapon has been defeated.

POST-PORTA DECUMANA CUTSCENES

1.) Spawn in a solo room version of Porta Decumana, and interacting with something causes cutscenes to play.

2.) Play all the cutscenes between the Ultima Weapon's defeat through to when you fight Lahabrea.

3.) Scale the Lahabrea fight to a soloable encounter and have it be a scenario fight.

4.) Play the remaining cutscenes all the way through to the end.

FINAL RESULT

1.) While some inconvenient cutscenes are still in The Praetorium (such as the one before the first boss), it's a lot more cleaned up and streamlined, so it could safely be placed in 50/60/70 Roulette along with Castrum Meridianum, removing the need for Main Scenario Roulette entirely.

2.) A new trial, Porta Decumana, would be added specifically to separate The Ultima Weapon fight from the rest of The Praetorium. You can even give a first-time completion achievement called "Such Devastation!" or something as a subtle wink to the meme.

3.) The Gaius fight, the Lahabrea fight, and all surrounding cutscenes are removed from The Praetorium entirely and put in their own space, removing their need to be made unskippable and ruin the first time player experience while also adding back in that player dialogue choice when speaking with Gaius.

POTENTIAL FLAWS IN THIS PLAN

1.) The remaining Castrum and Praetorium cutscenes that would not be removed. This... is hard because both of these pieces of content are so cutscene-heavy that even just chopping The Praetorium off at the end of the Nero fight still leaves a lot of cutscenes in. But I feel like just making those cutscenes skippable and running it as a 4-man dungeon is preferable to having 10+ unskippable cutscenes in an absurdly long 8-man dungeon with a lot more potentially impatient players.

2.) Phase 1 Ultima Weapon Power Scaling and Dialogue conflict during its solo story scenario. I feel this can be explained away with you not being capable of doing anything to it until Hydaelyn gives you actual superpowers during the fight, letting you beat it up, which then get systematically stripped for a time during the Ultima cutscene, in which you will require reinforcements to beat it up in the actual trial.

3.) Why you're participating in "Operation Archon" with only a team of four instead of a team of eight. I have not seen the cutscenes leading up to these two pieces of content in a good while, so I don't recall if there is any voiced dialogue referring to the fact that you are currently doing this with a party of 8 rather than a party of 4. If there isn't any dialogue at all, great! If there's dialogue and it's not voiced, that's easily changed! If there is voiced dialogue, it could be an issue, but it can probably be explained away as "multiple teams attacking different sectors at once".

FINAL THOUGHTS

I have watched a ton of content creators go through this final stretch of the vanilla ARR story and while many of them are able to ride it out on the wave of streamer privilege, some content creators can't, and indeed, there are a ton of new players who can't ride that wave and have to stick it out with folks getting their Main Scenario Roulette daily tomestones, many of which are just so done with the tedium.

I want the Main Scenario Roulette gone. It was created with good intentions of getting players to do "dead" content, but it's quickly devolved into a generator of toxic attitudes and behaviors towards newer players, and that's not okay.

I've tried thinking about how to fix this issue with the least amount of effort possible, and this was the result of that thinking. It's not going to take no work at all and, indeed, it might take a fair amount of work to do what I am proposing. But for the health of the game, Praetorium needs to be broken up into smaller, more manageable chunks because new players are choking on it.

[MistakeNot]

That is a way too complicated without really fixing much of anything.

The most popular option for remaking those duties is to remake them into solo duties.
The other is to keep them as they are - the current rewards are very nice, and making the duties shorter and easier would mean reducing the rewards. The rewards (in both xp and tomestones) are as large as they are just to bribe people into running these duties.

[MilkieTea]

That is a way too complicated without really fixing much of anything.

The most popular option for remaking those duties is to remake them into solo duties.
The other is to keep them as they are - the current rewards are very nice, and making the duties shorter and easier would mean reducing the rewards. The rewards (in both xp and tomestones) are as large as they are just to bribe people into running these duties.

This. I like getting nearly a level out of Prae, it soothes my aching soul and gives me 40-ish minutes to watch an episode of a show.

[Frizze]

That is a way too complicated without really fixing much of anything.

The most popular option for remaking those duties is to remake them into solo duties.

The solo duty option is also probly the least amount of work. Pick a framework(trust/squadron/duty NPC) from among those already in place. Add routing info as needed. Script out NPC reactions to boss mechanics as needed, add a bit of flavor text(possibly to keep you pointed in the right direction). You already have combat appearances stats and scripts for a couple dozen lvl 50 NPCs via the squadrons so you only need to make new NPCs if you want to. Castrum doesnt require much tweaking, but easing the missile phase of the livia fight isnt a terrible idea(maybe she's tankable, but the adds cause havoc?). As for Prae, it probly becomes too much work to get the NPCs into magitech so save that role for the player and reduce the HP of anything that is intended to be blown up/shot in the next couple sections. Then after all the cutscenes, a "new" version of the Ultima Weapon trial is qued as a full party content. The showdown with the breadman can be one on one afterwards.

Finally, delete the MSQ roulette and bathe in the tears of anyone primarily using brain-dead content to level their characters(ideally we change LotA/ST somehow at the same time for a similar purpose).

[Curisu]

Or just keep it as it is to continue having the best exp gain in the game.
You don't have to do it.

[DPZ2]

Pretty much agree with Curiso.

The major problem with the proposal is that the basic premise, "people upset with the way things are", turns out to be "a vocal minority that complains, yet are still doing the content".

Question: Why is that?

1. The XP gain
2. The poetics tomes, which can be used to gear alt jobs at levels 50/60/70.
3. The Moogle tomestone events, which can purchase minions, glamour and mounts

The MSQ Roulette is voluntary. The rewards are there for those who choose to run the content. You spend 40 minutes in Praetorium because the current benefits outweigh the so-called inconvenience.

If you're upset, it's probably because you think you deserve the rewards without the time involvement, not realizing that the time involvement is the reason for the rewards.

[dangadget]

I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding of the OPs suggestion.
By eliminating the MSQ roulette and rolling everything into the 50/60/70 roulette, you are taking away the bonus XP and tomestones.
This does not seem like a suggestion aimed at keeping the rewards while eliminating the "work"

OP, I notice something missing from your flaws list, and I'm curious as to your reasoning.
Making the majority of the cutscenes skippable will still hamper the experience for first timers.
The smaller group requirements...alleviate this somewhat..??
Still not sure the reasoning there

[MilkieTea]

I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding of the OPs suggestion.
By eliminating the MSQ roulette and rolling everything into the 50/60/70 roulette, you are taking away the bonus XP and tomestones.
This does not seem like a suggestion aimed at keeping the rewards while eliminating the "work"

OP, I notice something missing from your flaws list, and I'm curious as to your reasoning.
Making the majority of the cutscenes skippable will still hamper the experience for first timers.
The smaller group requirements...alleviate this somewhat..??
Still not sure the reasoning there

We understand. We don’t want the roulette eliminated and turned into a 4 man with no rewards - either keep it as is (insanely good rewards for minimal effort) or turn it into a solo instance duty so that new players can experience the fight as it was meant to be experienced, without the hampering of other older players speeding through. Take Livia and Ultima Weapon/Lahabrea and turn those into trials.

[Tarrick]

This. I like getting nearly a level out of Prae, it soothes my aching soul and gives me 40-ish minutes to watch an episode of a show.

Do you think it benefits the game for the most enjoyment to be had from _not_ playing it? The whole point of changing Castrum/Praetorium is to make the content enjoyable so that everyone _wants_ to participate. Coercing them into doing so by dangling massive XP rewards so that they mechanically go through the motions while actually doing something else is not enjoying the game.

[Tarrick]

Pretty much agree with Curiso.

The major problem with the proposal is that the basic premise, "people upset with the way things are", turns out to be "a vocal minority that complains, yet are still doing the content".

Question: Why is that?

1. The XP gain
2. The poetics tomes, which can be used to gear alt jobs at levels 50/60/70.
3. The Moogle tomestone events, which can purchase minions, glamour and mounts

The MSQ Roulette is voluntary. The rewards are there for those who choose to run the content. You spend 40 minutes in Praetorium because the current benefits outweigh the so-called inconvenience.

If you're upset, it's probably because you think you deserve the rewards without the time involvement, not realizing that the time involvement is the reason for the rewards.

OR perhaps the rewards are simply worth the monotony but people would rather prefer to be more engaged with the game. No one cares about the time investment; that's why they do it. It's having to watch the cutscenes over and over and over. We're playing the game to interact with the game, not just sit and watch our screens for the same story that we've already seen a thousand times.

And let's not kid ourselves that all cutscenes are created equal. Not all of these cutscenes are needed to convey the story, nor do they offer any significant "artistic" experience. There are many "establishing shots" like the opening cutscene of both dungeons that are completely unnecessary. There is a _ton_ of dialogue that could be changed to simply pop-up on the screen as you move along that absolutely does not need its own cutscene. And in-between all of that, there is still a ton of dialogue that is just fluff. The whole thing is extremely melodramatic and just generally bad writing.