Idea Bag: How to get players to unlock older content (eg Raids)

[NekoMataMata]

Nerf all the roulette's experiences and then make it scale by how many duties in that roulette you have unlocked. With all duties unlocked it'll be the same rate or even slightly better than what it is now. With the bare minimum it won't be nearly as rewarding. Make it public knowledge by making it similar to how mentor roulette shows uncompleted duties in its tab(but don't prevent people from queueing even if they don't have them). Each roulette shows your duty completion(X/X duties), with a list of unfinished duties that you'd need to complete to get the maximum reward.

It's such a simple idea and it makes too much sense though.

It's not really just alliance raids experience that's insane with just CT. Even levelling is really good with just the first two duties in the game unlocked. The alt that I have attached to my forums profile(same character I got to level 30 for the Dynamis freebie) got to 50 from just logging in daily and doing leveling for a week and a half, despite not even being at the level 20 MSQ spot.



For anyone that thinks this is way too out there, I want to point some things out. Leveling up a secondary job is not necessary for the MSQ. The MSQ will level one job(sometimes more with road to 80) to level cap easily.

This wouldn't even lock you out of roulettes and some roulettes would still give really good bonuses even with just the MSQ duties finished. For example, the majority of levelling duties are MSQ, with the exceptions being a handful of ARR/HW/SB dungeons, since ShB/EW don't have non-MSQ X1-X9 dungeons. It's really not that big of an ask.

[UkcsAlias]

My suggestion, something as big a deal flying in 2.x like…

Flying is helpful in some cases, but i would not be surprised if most will still not care.
4 man mounts doesnt help solo players at all
Alliance raids are rarely beneficial for xp as they are at the level cap of the expansion. Even normal duties suffer here, and adjusting that sounds like a bad idea to me. Only its roulette should benefit here (and simply bump up its requirements there)

And exactly for that last one simply demanding players to have them unlocked to unlock that roulette is fine. The system already exists for mentor roulette. And to allow even more xp: split the roulettes to f2p and paid, giving 2 xp boosts (f2p is what we have now with only a lvl 50 requirement while being able to do 60 - and soon 70, while paid excludes the f2p raids - or maybe also include 70, but using a diffirent name)

A lot of players are VERY lazy, if any glam feature is locked behind a tedious thing to them, they simply wont care or do it over a very long time.

Having a roulette locked however constantly does push that in their face, motivating them to unlock it eventualy.

[Iscah]

Make the Roulette require everything you can unlock (based on level and progress through the raids) to be unlocked, even if it is just the first raid and alliance raid of each expansion.

"Just the first raid of each expansion" sounds like a terrible requirement, and would likely skew the roulettes even more in favour of maybe coming up quicker but rarely being anything but that first duty, because it only takes one person to drag it down there.

I know that Bozja worked. It made people do the HW and SB alliance raids and they came up in the alliance raid roulette all the time in Shadowbringers.

I've said before, I think they handled the "incentivise HW/SB alliance raids" step of the Bozja relics really poorly.

The pacing is dreadful. You have to do it all in a rush, six of each raid series, before you can progress to the next step of the relic – and then you never touch it again for subsequent relics.

It also gave equal weight to all three raids in the series, giving people no incentive to unlock beyond the first and easiest raid of the set. Result: endless Void Ark and Rabanastre. (Likewise for the eight-man raids, where the frequency of duties suggests that a lot of people never unlocked beyond #3 of 12 – probably not coincidentally, the first of the series that will give you the second type of tokens.)

It could have been handled so much better.

ARR had already shown a better way, with unique tokens dropping from each of the three alliance raids for Gift of the Archmagus. This could have been done for the Bozja relics: require collecting a set of three tokens from the three raids, one complete set required per relic. People then do less runs at once, more slowly over time, and have to unlock and run all three raids equally.

Likewise for the eight-man raids. Drop unique tokens from the final raid of each tier, and force people to unlock all twelve raids to get the tokens. No alternate sources, just straight up "if you want your relic, you need to have unlocked all optional content in the game".

In short, create a grind that encourages a width of content being unlocked, and benefits those who put in the work earlier. Not just incentivising a single duty that can be run over and over while neglecting the rest.

[Payadopa]

There is not enough motivation to unlock later raids when compared to giving up what is an extremely easy method of leveling quickly/lazily. Humans gonna human.

I honestly don't understand what's human about being bored. MMO players are weird. There is nothing even remotely satisfying about CT apart from leaving. I'd rather do five different things and take longer than doing the same thing five times only to be faster.

That being said, maybe higher level raids should give more exp unless you have a new player in your group or something and it then doubles the bonus. Or even better, make CT a solo instance with trusts.

[kaynide]

I honestly don't understand what's human about being bored. MMO players are weird. There is nothing even remotely satisfying about CT apart from leaving. I'd rather do five different things and take longer than doing the same thing five times only to be faster.

That being said, maybe higher level raids should give more exp unless you have a new player in your group or something and it then doubles the bonus. Or even better, make CT a solo instance with trusts.

Ah, my point about humans gonna human meant that we will find the path of least resistance/effort to get their desired outcome. Ie in this case, doing what you can to skew roulettes towards CT is the best for xp/minute.

Which is why the topic- how can devs encourage people to help skew it away. So far lots of good ideas!

[MsMisato]

Problem: even with ilvl fix, CT is still gonna get pulled in roulette because of people like me. How can SE motivate people like me to unlock other raids so people (like you, maybe) don’t keep getting CT?

Ok, so full disclosure…
I have alts. (My personal rant on not doing old raids):

I level these alts almost exclusively via Crystal Tower roulette and MSQ (they only really have 1 or 2 jobs so it’s enough).

The problem is, as is I will never ever unlock the 3.0 or later raid series. This means, even if the roulette requires a higher ilevel, my alt will still only pull the CT series.

So, while the devs have done a good job to get rid of ilvl cheese, they still haven’t motivated players like me to unlock them in the first place.

I feel this is a similar stance to new players- if they aren’t specifically interested in the glams or old relic grinds, there really is no motivation to unlock the old raids, especially if it potentially “penalizes” them by having potentially harder roulettes.

Doubly true I would wager that they don’t even bother with the older raids until they’ve finished the MSQ and are now sifting through content to decide what looks fun to do.

Rant TL;dr:
There is not enough motivation to unlock later raids when compared to giving up what is an extremely easy method of leveling quickly/lazily. Humans gonna human.

Things they have tried:
3.x series (along with 4 lords) unlocks Tataru’s Grand Endeavor. This is just story afaik, so not worth on alt, and maybe not so interesting for a new player when 7.0 or 8.0 comes along.
4.x series eventually unlocks Bozja, which is relic stuff; ultimately skins.

Suggestions?
What I would suggest is core things that you “wouldn’t want to be without”. Enough to get new players/alts to run the raids just once. The goal being that ultimately if when they do try to do alliance roulette, they would have an equal chance at pulling any particular roulette.

My suggestion, something as big a deal flying in 2.x like…

the upcoming 2-channel dye system.
Flying mount speed increase could be a thing. (Do all raids = faster fly speed for that expac)
A 4 man mount for doing all 2.x to 6.x raids.
Significantly more xp for roulette-ing into higher raids.
I dunno.. discuss!

So there it is: what could devs do to entice new players (who don’t want to run the old raids) to do them and ensure more roulette variety?

Discuss!

the only thing tied ot the other alliance raids are relic weapons from bozja afaik.

[CaptainLagbeard]

"Just the first raid of each expansion" sounds like a terrible requirement, and would likely skew the roulettes even more in favour of maybe coming up quicker but rarely being anything but that first duty, because it only takes one person to drag it down there.

I don't mean ONLY the first ones... But for example, when someone reaches 70, they'd need to unlock Rabanastre and Deltascape V1 to before they can do Alliance Raid and Normal Raid roulette respectively... And after beating those, either by doing them specifically or getting them through the Roulette, they would then have to go unlock Ridorana and/or Deltascape V2 to do the roulette again.

[Mr_Gyactus]

Problem: even with ilvl fix, CT is still gonna get pulled in roulette because of people like me. How can SE motivate people like me to unlock other raids so people (like you, maybe) don’t keep getting CT?

Ok, so full disclosure…
I have alts. (My personal rant on not doing old raids):

I level these alts almost exclusively via Crystal Tower roulette and MSQ (they only really have 1 or 2 jobs so it’s enough).

The problem is, as is I will never ever unlock the 3.0 or later raid series. This means, even if the roulette requires a higher ilevel, my alt will still only pull the CT series.

So, while the devs have done a good job to get rid of ilvl cheese, they still haven’t motivated players like me to unlock them in the first place.

I feel this is a similar stance to new players- if they aren’t specifically interested in the glams or old relic grinds, there really is no motivation to unlock the old raids, especially if it potentially “penalizes” them by having potentially harder roulettes.

Doubly true I would wager that they don’t even bother with the older raids until they’ve finished the MSQ and are now sifting through content to decide what looks fun to do.

Rant TL;dr:
There is not enough motivation to unlock later raids when compared to giving up what is an extremely easy method of leveling quickly/lazily. Humans gonna human.

Things they have tried:
3.x series (along with 4 lords) unlocks Tataru’s Grand Endeavor. This is just story afaik, so not worth on alt, and maybe not so interesting for a new player when 7.0 or 8.0 comes along.
4.x series eventually unlocks Bozja, which is relic stuff; ultimately skins.

Suggestions?
What I would suggest is core things that you “wouldn’t want to be without”. Enough to get new players/alts to run the raids just once. The goal being that ultimately if when they do try to do alliance roulette, they would have an equal chance at pulling any particular roulette.

My suggestion, something as big a deal flying in 2.x like…

the upcoming 2-channel dye system.
Flying mount speed increase could be a thing. (Do all raids = faster fly speed for that expac)
A 4 man mount for doing all 2.x to 6.x raids.
Significantly more xp for roulette-ing into higher raids.
I dunno.. discuss!

So there it is: what could devs do to entice new players (who don’t want to run the old raids) to do them and ensure more roulette variety?

Discuss!

I have a more simple solution.
Player cannot queue alliance roulette if he/she does not unlock (and finish) the raids, similar to mentor roulette and expert roulette. He/she can queue a specific raid, obviously.

The question is if we truly need this constraint.

[kaynide]

I have a more simple solution.
Player cannot queue alliance roulette if he/she does not unlock (and finish) the raids, similar to mentor roulette and expert roulette. He/she can queue a specific raid, obviously.

The question is if we truly need this constraint.

It’s an idea, but it’s punishing. In my case I’d just stop doing alliance raid roulette and pick up whatever the next easiest thing is. So, it would work, but I think the goal is to be less of a deterrent and more of a “dude you’ve gotta do the raids once, because xxx is just so good!”

For me, on my alts, a significant increase in flying speed would do it. Locking new jobs behind it might do it. Just glamours is not going to motivate me personally, and I wager it won’t really motivate new players who can just as easily get a copy of the glamours from other sources (eg Void Ark skins can literally just be bought off MB. I think it’s level…70?). But it’s all good! All ideas can work towards a good solution.

[Iscah]

I wager it won’t really motivate new players who can just as easily get a copy of the glamours from other sources (eg Void Ark skins can literally just be bought off MB. I think it’s level…70?).

As a serious glamourer, shared models are rarely a valid substitute for each other, because different colour schemes work for different purposes. They'll have different undyeable colours, gold edging instead of silver, all kinds of details that give them different uses. The marketboard copies can be fine to test out the fit and interactions with the rest of your glamour, but sometimes you really need the original.