The Alliance roulette is unbearable

[Sheriyana]

Just tossing out an idea here: What do yall think of adding a 7 day lockout to raids? So, if you get Ivalice via roulette on Monday, you won't get it again until the following Monday. Maybe it doesn't need to be 7 days, but seems like some lockout could add variety to the alliance queue.

So you have variety once a week and the rest of the week is CT? I don't think that sort of lock out could work. All I can think of is making it like frontlines, but instead of locking you into a single map for the day, it'd lock you into one of the raid series and you could get any of the three for that day, though that would screw over new players trying to get into the raids that aren't on the rotation for the day, so doubt that would work either.

[Veranolth]

Or kind of like how Frontline works? Rotating between all the alliance raids?

I feel like there are 2 things they could do to fix the problem:

1. Increased exp rewards from the higher level alliance raids, because the issue right now is doing CT raids are really faster and more efficient.

or

2. Move the CT raids to MSQ roulette like some suggested earlier in the thread.

[HBill]

So you have variety once a week and the rest of the week is CT? I don't think that sort of lock out could work. All I can think of is making it like frontlines, but instead of locking you into a single map for the day, it'd lock you into one of the raid series and you could get any of the three for that day, though that would screw over new players trying to get into the raids that aren't on the rotation for the day, so doubt that would work either.

I'm thinking more like you would have to wait X amount of days until you could get into CT via roulette again. Perhaps there could be a way to guarantee you don't get the same raid two days in a row. However, I would only implement this for daily bonus. Subsequent alliance roulette would be not effected by this limitation. Still, I'm not sure what intended consequences it would have. Would everyone get CT on reset? I do like your raid series suggestion, but definitely would cause people to lose a day if they really, really want a series.
Another idea, albeit incredibly messy, would separate alliance raid queues for each expansion. Except, that doing 1 counts for the daily bonus. So people that want something fast would always choose ARR, others would choose the others if they want something more challenging. Guess we run into the same issue though: can the demand for the raids justify a separate queue?

edit: grammar, accidental double quote

[Sheriyana]

I'm thinking more like you would have to wait X amount of days until you could get into CT via roulette again. Perhaps there could be a way to guarantee you don't get the same raid two days in a row. However, I would only implement this for daily bonus. Subsequent alliance roulette would be not effected by this limitation. Still, I'm not sure what intended consequences it would have. Would everyone get CT on reset? I do like your raid series suggestion, but definitely would cause people to lose a day if they really, really want a series.
Another idea, albeit incredibly messy, would separate alliance raid queues for each expansion. Except, that doing 1 counts for the daily bonus. So people that want something fast would always choose ARR, others would choose the others if they want something more challenging. Guess we run into the same issue though: can the demand for the raids justify a separate queue?

edit: grammar, accidental double quote

I'm not sure if it's possible with the technical side of things but I don't think anyone would be against a feature that made sure you wouldn't be able to get the same instance two days in a row through a roulette, so yes please! I'm not so sure the second idea would be doable, I imagine it would be hard for the game to connect multiple roulettes behind one reward in that way but I'm no technical expert so no idea.

[Darthgummibear]

The point of roulette is to fill parties who queue directly. And I assure you, more players are direct-queuing into Syrcus Tower than Puppet's Bunker.

Then there's one less healer in the alliance queue because I just don't care anymore. A roulette by definition is supposed to be random, and it's hardly random if you're guaranteed to get the same result every day due to poor design choices.

[Iscah]

Moving the CT raids to MSQ roulette is absolutely not the answer unless you want a constant stream of people dropping out of the long dungeons hoping they'll get Syrcus instead.

The best solution I can think of – assuming they can't implement a scaling ilevel requirement, or surely they would have – is to split the 50/60 and 70/80 roulettes so at least you can find a bit more guaranteed variety. But perhaps that would mean there aren't so many people available to assemble into a full party for anything useful.

They could also just not make running the CT raids mandatory in order to progress the storyline - it just adds background info after all.

It's not "just background information" at all. It makes the difference between G'raha Tia being shut in the tower or not. The writers don't just let that sort of thing be assumed to have happened whether you participated or not – they treat it as undone until you do it. Thus it became required once it needed to have already happened before the plot can continue.

I'm actually surprised that the Stormblood Alliance raid is NOT mandatory in the MSQ. Not running it means you're missing the context for half the lore in this game...

I am struggling to think what this "half the lore in the game" is. Nothing in Ivalice has much bearing on the rest of events, at least not in a way that I feel like we'd be missing anything if we weren't aware of it.

WAIT. Did they say that?? Uusally we would get the 4 lv 90 ones together and then on 6.2 we should only have the 6.1 and 6.2 Dungeon in it... right...?

That's how Expert works, yes. There's no reason to think that it would go down to a single dungeon.

[Nihility]

to be fair if anyone queues something specific it will populate it with people that aren't messing with equipment to get a quick kill so it's not really messing with people trying to do higher level alliance raids.
All the crystal tower stuff tends to be a complete group of rouletteers not actually helping anyone so it doesn't really matter

it is pretty boring but not hurting people looking for specific stuff so whatever i guess

[Seera1024]

Moving the CT raids to MSQ roulette is absolutely not the answer unless you want a constant stream of people dropping out of the long dungeons hoping they'll get Syrcus instead.

24 man raids would never fill in a queue with 8 man group options available. The roulettes fill based on making people wait as little as possible. You'll get an 8 man group together well before you have the 24 man group together. You would need enough of the right combination of players actively queuing for those roulettes in order to have any luck in getting them. And given the MSQ requirements would push the CT raids as the most likely raids that would pop if ever in roulette. It would cause a shift of the alliance raids to party finder since they would be like extremes and take forever to fill.

Which is there are 2 trials in the level queue as otherwise the 8 man trials would never fill.

[Absurdity]

Then there's one less healer in the alliance queue because I just don't care anymore. A roulette by definition is supposed to be random, and it's hardly random if you're guaranteed to get the same result every day due to poor design choices.

I basically just reached the point where I instantly leave when I get a CT raid and take the 30 minute penalty. I can just work on my EW fate ranks or craft during the lockout and it certainly beats getting nothing but these god awful raids for the 3rd expansion in a row now.

[Arrius]

But what about bozja? Oh wait, that's dead content now.

Pretty sure Zadnor z3 is still super busy for leveling Jobs to 90 and farming Mettle.
You even get the occasional Dalriada if the players are in a mood.


Regarding Alliance Roulette and CT - I doubt they'll change anything:

You could have a player who only did the ARR Alliance raids and a FC who runs that content with them on their daily roulette evenings, so you cannot punish the FC folks for having that player with them.
You also cannot single out that player because he only unlocked the ARR Alliance Raids and not the others, whenever by choice or is not through HW yet.