Cutsence Skipping in MSQ Roulettes, by disconnecting

[Anya_Synia]

Which rules? There are none. It´s not even a real exploit and SE can´t determine if someone disconnect on purpose or not, unless they´re writing it in the chat.
Sometimes ppl just disconnect or a leaver is getting replaced with someone else via MSQ or Mentor-roulette. Of course it would be kind to wait then, but who does that? Ppl rush castrum anyway and in 9/10 cases newbies will die on the way, because they don´t know what´s going on.

SE just needs to stop to force ppl to wait for some cutszene-watchers or that we´ve to watch cutszenes over and over again. Problem solved.

It is a real exploit and yes people do get punished for it.

[Kirika-]

Which rules? There are none. It´s not even a real exploit and SE can´t determine if someone disconnect on purpose or not, unless they´re writing it in the chat.
Sometimes ppl just disconnect or a leaver is getting replaced with someone else via MSQ or Mentor-roulette. Of course it would be kind to wait then, but who does that? Ppl rush castrum anyway and in 9/10 cases newbies will die on the way, because they don´t know what´s going on.

SE just needs to stop to force ppl to wait for some cutszene-watchers or that we´ve to watch cutszenes over and over again. Problem solved.

Yes, it is against the rules. That are laid out, go read them, as you do state that you did so when you signed up for the game.
Yes, they are enforced.

It is completely trivial, for both SE and anyone who has played this game long enough, to tell the difference between someone accidentally disconnecting or if it's someone using a different language and therefor getting a shorter cut scene time, and someone exploiting the game mechanics to cheat. Even easier to report said players by name and server for breaking the rules, while in game, and it only takes a minute to do.
And, yes, they DO take action against said cheaters.

The non-skip-able cut scenes are for only two MSQ instances, and are in place for the benefit of first time players of them and are compensated for in exp, gil, and tombstones at a higher rate that any other dungeon or roulette.

If you do not want to watch the cut scenes, then you do not get the rewards. If that is what you want, don't queue for them. Problem solved.

[Karshan]

Fucking put those 2 as MSQ solo mission already, it should have been done a very long time ago and would have avoided so much salt.

[Alien_Gamer]

As the title suggests, I have noticed that people have begun to skip the cutscenes in MSQ-Roulettes again. They do so by quickly disconnecting and reconnecting to the game.

Even if one waits out bench time - aka the login queue - it is still considerably shorter than the cutscenes. If more than one person does that in a run, the boss will be dead before the cutscenes are over, allowing them to move forward faster.

It appears as if the idea of "making cutscenes unskippable in MSQ-roulette" was only a temporary solution because by now people have found a way around this "unskippability".

What do you think is a good way to deal with this?

I've been in a couple runs where 3 people were skipping like that and it really didn't speed things up at all. Before Nero, they'd finish the fight around the same time the cut scene ends, with Nero and Ultima they'd get about halfway through before the rest arrived but Lahabread would die before the cutscenes finished.

They had to disconnect/reconnect their internet each CS, sit through log in queues, then work harder to kill the boss, all for 2-3 minutes off the run? I think the longest time I've seen saved from that exploit was about 5 minutes. Doing all that extra unnecessary work for a few minutes? You'd have to get at least half the group to make any significant dent in the time elapsed, while I'm sure that has happened somewhere, its exceedingly rare.

I'm sure in the minds of the skippers, all that work is worth the 2 minutes saved. Meanwhile I'm just going to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

[ssunny2008]

Yes, it is against the rules. That are laid out, go read them, as you do state that you did so when you signed up for the game.
Yes, they are enforced.

I know the standard gaming rules, but there are none like "don´t disconnect in castrum". An exploit is something which gives you a huge advantage ingame. To skip a cutszene is no real exploit.
If someone is doing that in 3-4 cutszenes, ofc it´s super suspicious, but in the end, you might punish someone for perma dc´s caused by the provider. It´s not like you can kick such persons out of the group and all would be fine anyway.

And, yes, they DO take action against said cheaters.

It´s laughable what they do there. There are so many ppl cheating, exploiting, using cheats or bots and SE just ignores it on purpose. As long as you´re no chat spamming real money trader or some badass who´s insulting others in the mainchat, you won´t get banned anyway. I´ve reported more than enough ppl who abuse different bots.
No matter if it´s something like cactbot or the farmbot, whatever. They´re still playing and have x 9999 stacks of polycrystals in the AH. And nobody can tell me, that they´ve farmed that every day, just to sell them for 10 gil or less. Not to mention all those "savage / ultimate" - carry groups who´re free to advertise themselves in the game, just to get paid with real money via discord / paypal.
But hey, i got banned once because my bank fckd up online services, so 1,50€ for a music roll from the shop didn´t got paid. Did i got a message that something went wrong from SE´s side? NO! I needed to call them, still got banned for a couple of days until they got their 1,50€, meanwhile i lost paid time from the abonnement and you noone of them is available at weekends too.

Their "ban - priorities" and customer-service is a joke.


And if we´re talking about exploits in that way, what about "Hello World"?

It´s not like SE should fix such stuff immediately, but they don´t.

[Kirika-]

I know the standard gaming rules, but there are none like "don´t disconnect in castrum". An exploit is something which gives you a huge advantage ingame. To skip a cutszene is no real exploit.
If someone is doing that in 3-4 cutszenes, ofc it´s super suspicious, but in the end, you might punish someone for perma dc´s caused by the provider. It´s not like you can kick such persons out of the group and all would be fine anyway.

■Behaviour that disrupts the game balance
■Misuse of flaws

https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216

[ssunny2008]

■Behaviour that disrupts the game balance
■Misuse of flaws

https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=5382&la=1&kid=68216

Yes and?

Why are all those botters not banned? "- Automating gameplay processes."

Why isn´t half of the players not banned for using ACT and cactbot? "- Modifying, analysing, integrating, and/or reverse engineering game software or data."

Why is the other half not banned for the housing tool? "- Creating, distributing, using, or promoting utilities that interact with the game."
(or even all the glitches)

I guess, because the game wouldn´t have any players left.


SE´s judgement about all that stuff is highly questionable. Too punish players to finish castrum faster, content which is one of the worst things in the games history, is just laughable. Even if it´s not skipped, not any newcomer will enjoy it.

[Seera1024]

Yes and?

Why are all those botters not banned? "- Automating gameplay processes."

Why isn´t half of the players not banned for using ACT and cactbot? "- Modifying, analysing, integrating, and/or reverse engineering game software or data."

Why is the other half not banned for the housing tool? "- Creating, distributing, using, or promoting utilities that interact with the game."
(or even all the glitches)

I guess, because the game wouldn´t have any players left.


SE´s judgement about all that stuff is highly questionable. Too punish players to finish castrum faster, content which is one of the worst things in the games history, is just laughable. Even if it´s not skipped, not any newcomer will enjoy it.

So because you feel SE doesn't enforce some rules, they should add more rules to list of rules to ignore?

As for ACT, they've stated that they can't tell when someone is using it or not unless they basically put spyware on your computer to do so and they don't feel that that is right. So they ban when people mention it in chat and get reported for it. I'd imagine cactbot is along the same lines.

Bots they ban in waves to try to keep botters from figuring out what part of their bots code got them discovered.

The cut scenes in those two MSQ dungeons were made unskippable because new players before were either kicked in cut scene or would jump from cut scene to cut scene until the dungeon is finished or have no context for the fights they are fighting inside of those dungeons. Those cut scenes also make very little sense outside of the context of where you are in the dungeons so players can't just go rewatch in the inn afterward and get caught up without confusion being added.

Is it a perfect solution? No. But it is the next best solution to it being a solo duty.

And while they may be working on a solo instance version of it, it's probably something low on the priority list given the resources they have are probably better spent working on new content.

[True-to-Caesar]

When I did these runs the first time it was not enjoyable as sprout. I did have cutscene disconnect skippers who were laughing at me and being jerks because I forgot to get the key and got left behind (for some reason it’s the only dungeon where everyone must get the key, instead of being shared like other dungeons previously and after that).

Besides for Lahabrea who has very low HP, this exploit is hardly worth it because you get 2-3 people doing it max.


Both Castrum thingies should be solo, if they persist with group content, at least let people skip it if everyone did the MSQ already.

But hey, i got banned once because my bank fckd up online services, so 1,50€ for a music roll from the shop didn´t got paid. Did i got a message that something went wrong from SE´s side? NO! I needed to call them, still got banned for a couple of days until they got their 1,50€, meanwhile i lost paid time from the abonnement and you noone of them is available at weekends too.

Is this real ?
How can you blame and punish a customer for something clearly outside their control, instead of talking to them as first approach or removing the item?

You can’t expect them to buy more cashshop stuff in the future with that kind of actions. Amazing, no idea who decided that but they must be bad at customer relation and sales management.

[Lauren]

Castrum and Prem should be solo instances at the end of the day.

I hate that new players take ages to queue into them only to watch all these cut scenes introducing bosses and the bosses just MELT within seconds. It must be so anti-climatic.

It's a waste of time for everyone really.