Quote Originally Posted by MidnightEquinox View Post
Having an "improved" Hall of Novice would be a good idea either way.

I wonder if having tiers would split the populations in an odd way, though. I suspect either one or the other will get the majority of players. If you plop MSQ into the Tier 1, potentially you may end up with insufficient players to run that content. You may just put it in both, and that may effectively erase the tiers. It's generally rather tough to play with populations in this manner, often goalposts just get moved aggressively.

This also doesn't really account for style of play or focus. Someone can complete the Hall of Novice training but still not execute the latest rotation or not keep up with their GCD perfectly, which I've seen referred to as "basic" by people here. One issue with expectations is that they kind of never really end. I wouldn't be surprised if such a Tier II actually became more toxic.
Well I was thinking maybe with the right rework Hall of Novice might instill better habits to at least not do stupid things. Establish a floor. I think expecting stricter rotation adherence is a different floor for a different level of play, but I don't think failing rotations is what causes widespread player frustration so much as players literally not doing their jobs. At least as far as tanks and healers go, merely doing their jobs is *mostly* DPS-independent so I wouldn't care much about them executing the latest rotation outside of Savage-level content. That still leaves DPS, but I feel like a tutorial could at least provide them *some* kind of rotation framework that, while perhaps not optimal, would prevent them from sucking too hard.

All that said, you are right about the MSQ queue populating problem. That is a flaw in a tiered design. HOWEVER, if I may put forth another idea that I and others have proposed elsewhere: just have a back-up trust/squandrons system for players to queue into. I've always felt that this should be outright implemented for Prae/Castrum and just eliminate MSQ roulette altogether, but why stop there if they already have a good trust system? I feel like *every* MSQ piece of content should be soloable in the event a player cannot find party members--the key being not allowing players to *elect* for these roulette trusts, just giving them the luck of the draw based on available queuers.