Enforce ilvl-sync to Alliance Raid Roulettes to put a stop to the Crystal Tower Spam

[Kolaina]

ilvl cheesing is an easy scapegoat, it's much harder to accept that this is just the way the game is designed

I believe this to be true. The ilvl cheese has minimal impact on what others get for roulettes. With the systems in place, the mandatory CT, and the lack in popularity of the other raids creates this. It’s not just 1 thing that people can point a finger at. It’s a system at work.

[Packetdancer]

It’s not just 1 thing that people can point a finger at. It’s a system at work.

I mean, first let's just put it on the table that the Crystal Tower raids are required to progress into Heavensward... and Heavensward is part of the free trial, so all free trial players who play through the entire trial will have Crystal Tower unlocked. The level 60 Shadow of Mhach alliance raids are not required for anything that I can think of until the post-Endwalker Tataru questline, which means trial users (and plenty of non-trial users!) will never do them. Ivalice at level 70 is required for Bozja, but folks who are playing now may not bother with it, while the YoRHa raids at 80 are not required for anything. And neither of those two are in the free trial.

This means Crystal Tower is the one alliance raid series that everyone (who can do alliance raid roulette at all, anyway) is guaranteed to have unlocked. So it's always going to have an outsized presence.

Where stuff gets weird is that there are countless possible ways to implement queuing/matching, and we have no idea how the roulette matchmaking works behind the scenes. To elaborate...

Let's say that we have a player, Becky. Becky is level 90, and has all alliance raids unlocked, and queues in level 90 gear for the roulette. We also have a player named Duncan; Duncan is freshly level 70, loved Final Fantasy Tactics, and has cheerfully queued up for his first run of Ridorana Lighthouse with a couple of friends.

There are also a whooooole bunch of people who can only get Crystal Tower in the queue, waiting for those last slots in their party to be filled.

The matchmaking system might prioritize popping parties faster, in which case if you can do both Ivalice and Crystal Tower, it's going to match you to Crystal Tower because that group's likely closer to popping. If it does things that way behind the scenes, if Becky chooses to ilevel cheese it probably doesn't make the situation worse; she was going to get matched into Crystal Tower anyway, and poor Duncan keeps waiting.

The matchmaking system might prioritize putting people into parties where they are able to fill the role, in which case if you can do both Ivalice and Crystal Tower and there's a pending Ivalice group, it'll probably try to stick you there first (because there's a smaller group of people to draw from who have it unlocked and are geared and leveled appropriately, thus can be matched into it). In which case, if Becky chooses to ilevel cheese her roulette, she has actively made it worse by removing one person from that matchmaking algorithm; she would've been matched into Duncan's group, but instead she's opted for Crystal Tower Roulette and Duncan continues to wait.

(Obviously the matchmaking algorithm is a lot more complex than either of those scenarios, but...)

The key is that we don't know whether or not ilevel cheesing makes the situation actively worse. It might! But it might be that the Crystal Tower has such an outsize presence and the matchmaking works in a specific way and as a result it's always going to dominate. There are only two things we can say for certain:

1. Whether ilevel cheese makes things worse or has no effect with regards to people trying to queue for later alliance raids, we can be certain it does not improve the ability to queue into later alliance raids, and...
2. As the stated goal of the roulette system is to incentivize running content you've already done in order to ensure that there are enough warm bodies to fill out parties so that people who queue specifically for Content X to actually run said content, and queuing specifically for the Ivalice raids can entail an hour-long wait in the queue, it is safe to say that the roulette system is not working where alliance raids are concerned.

[Fellgon]

My theory of these crystal tower spam is that there's a player thats need do this dungeon, and he dont do roulette, so selecting that speficific raid. And so, those in roulette help'em.

No worries, as soons they fix this will be a spam of Nier or Aglaia everyday, and so the forum will complain bout it. But ive seen a post that make sense, these raids are part o MSQ, so many new players need finish it.