Alliance Raid Now iLvl Locked, Why??

[Centaurea]

crazy how bothered people are with getting told to buy better gear as if SE doesn't throw you like 500k into your face with ARR only. Just level another job I guess? Nobody is forcing you to stay on a singular class throughout the entire game, you could probably level 3 whole jobs until you're finished with Endwalker.

[PyurBlue]

No it's not. Lots of people like it this way, don't assume it now magically inconveniences everyone.

I think it's still a fair statement to make even if it doesn't personally bother you, just because there were much better solutions proposed way before they made the change. I can't be sure why this is the solution they chose, and maybe there is some justification for it somewhere, but the problem it causes could be seen from lightyears away. SE made a bad choice here.

Separating CT from alliance roulette would have just made everyone happy with no drawbacks. Making CT required in the first place was already questionable.

[Eastwall]

I got somewhat screwed over by this, as a newish player. Level 80 and right at the end of stormblood / start of shadowbringers, ILVL 400 with stormblood poetics gear. It was definitely a WTF moment to log in and find myself locked out of alliance raids due to a requirement that was literally impossible to meet at my current point in the story!

I understand the need to stop people cheesing Crystal Tower, but you now have a situation where a new player doing normal progression is punished for leveling up too much by getting locked out of alliance raids, which kinda sucks if you do roulettes mainly for fun (I do them when I'm not up to doing more MSQ plot, and only play 3 classes, so tend to overlevel a fair bit)

A solution to consider: Maybe use the new ILVL table, but with the later restrictions only coming in when you've progressed MSQ up to the point that the new raids are available to you, so a lv80 character who is still in the Stormblood patch content is treated as lv70 for the purposes of ILVL requirements. Maybe have a limit of how many levels you can drop using this method (say 15) to handle the case where a really dedicated cheeser makes a character and only plays up to HW, while reducing the likelihood that someone playing normally gets caught out by overleveling

Well... Buy normal quality green gears is your solution. They shouldn't be expensive

[Rehayem]

All they have to do is fix their code: if character level 70-80, set ilvl to x.

[Ivtrix]

Well... Buy normal quality green gears is your solution. They shouldn't be expensive

Or spend poetics

[Toutatis]

Nobody is forcing you to stay on a singular class throughout the entire game, you could probably level 3 whole jobs until you're finished with Endwalker.

It’s the other way around: staying on a single job is a choice. No one is forced to do so: it’s called playing as you want. Shouldn’t be forced to level up other jobs. I can if I want but I shouldn’t be forced to.

I made an alt character just to play with some friends on a European DC and they needed a tank. Purchased a lvl boost on a tank and a story skip to a certain point and now I am locked because I gained 10 levels. Already have 3 chars with everything at 90 and everything unlocked and I have no intention of doing it again.

Well... Buy normal quality green gears is your solution. They shouldn't be expensive

It’s still silly to require people to purchase gear just to queue a roulette when the gear itself is useless and will be scaled down since the content on which it could be useful is locked behind MSQ and can’t even pop. Personally I will just stop queuing AR unless they change it.

Or spend poetics

Not possible: tome gear is locked behind MSQ which is why the lvl requirement alone without a check on MSQ progress is silly. Both the content (raids) and the tome gear are locked and inaccessible.

[DaichiSilurus]

All they have to do is fix their code: if character level 70-80, set ilvl to x.

That doesn't help, that's just what it's doing now.

It needs to check either your MSQ progress or which specific raids you have unlocked and set the ilvl according to those (and obviously the level of your current job)

[LumKitty]

Well... Buy normal quality green gears is your solution. They shouldn't be expensive

Once I got to Shadowbringers, yes. But when I was in stormblood, this was literally unavailable to me. I was geared with stormblood poetics gear which was the highest available to me. Also one of my classes is at Lv88, so soon will be locked out from raid roulette until I finish both Stormblood and Endwalker

I've been thinking about this some more and what I think is a better solution:

• If you have an alliance raid unlock quest available to you, block alliance roulette until that questline is completed (and tell you which one you need to do)
• Use the new ILVL requirement table for but cap it at the level of the highest raid you have unlocked (so a lv80 class who has just unlocked Ivalice would be considered lv70 with an ILVL requirement of 305), but a lv60 class would still only need 175
• Make the Sky Pirates questline accessible without needing flying in the region (I have no idea if there's any weird prereq for the stormblood or endwalker raids as I'm not there yet)

Optional: Limit how many levels you can be dropped for this calculation in case someone deliberately doesn't progress MSQ to still force CT

This would close off the loophole of simply not unlocking any of the other raids, minimise inconvenience as unlock quests are fairly short (at least in my experience so far) and guarantee that the ILVL requirement is acheiveable based on your current progress.

Comedy option (terrible idea): remove ILVL requirements on alliance raid roulette completely, so you can end up in an endwalker raid with your ILVL 130 gear and get rekt

[ForteNightshade]

The point is it possible to change thing that way, and they should if they could. And should be continued to be pushed that way instead of saying "just force" people to do it this way. So do you at least agree that it's still possible to fix thing this way? Why you would argue less optimal and more invasive fixed when there are proof it's possible to do so otherwise.

Is it possible from a technical stand point? But are they going to do it? No. After half a decade of people complaining how ridiculously overpowered, be it through sheer ilvl (CT) or job changes throughout the year, they've made it clear they have little appetite for wholesale changes. Furthermore, what you perceive has "less optimal" is entirely subjective. Even with EXP/Tome incentives, some people are still going to prefer baby mode CT and refuse to unlock the other raids. Putting in an ilvl sync will certainly help but we're so overpowered nowadays, we're still going to slaughter them.

Requiring you to unlock content to participate in a roulette intended to randomly queue you into said content is not unfair. You're ignoring the actual purpose of roulettes: to facilitate queues for less active content. Compensation is needed, and we can argue whether the current changes are sufficient but the end goal is variety not your preference.

Again, find a way to reward people so they want to play the content, don't force people to follow your (unfair) rule because that's how you teach them to resent it.

Light, I even highlighted it for you ... come on.

You did! Now I want you to re-read the sentence you highlighted. See where it says "some people?" Are you the "some people" I was referring to who only want CT because it's braindead? No? Congratulations, I wasn't talking about you! You're gaslighting yourself, my guy.

Putting all this silly nonsense aside, you keep insisting difficulty isn't a factor. Now that may be true for you, which I've already acknowledged previously. That isn't necessarily the case for others. People outright AFK in some of the easier content. That became an increasingly bigger problem for MSQ roulette. Without absurdly high EXP/tome incentives—to the point getting CT might be worth eating a penalty—a good chunk of people would either ilvl cheese (no longer an option) or simply refuse to unlock the raids altogether.

Regardless, you asked how I would fix it. You're welcome to disagree with my opinion but my opinion is to make all the 24 mans a mandatory unlock once you're completed the expansion they've released in. Basically, they all get the Crystal Tower treatment. I take that stance because I know it's far more likely they do that than overhaul the previous raids to where they aren't a complete joke. In an ideal world, old content would be reworked slightly or better synced so job changes throughout the years don't destroy it and we're not comically overpowered. Maybe we get the ilvl sync someday but after a decade (in the case of CT), I won't be holding my breath.

[wereotter]

Blocked off, no. But Alliance Roulette gave 120 poetics or something like that? Plus the occasional new player bonus?

You personally see no problem with a player receiving less currency for playing the game more because it doesn't affect you.

If a new player chooses not to use the resources at their disposal to gain the item level required to queue for the roulette, then you're right. I don't feel bad about it. I literally put out there that you can use the market board to meet the new item level requirement. Or can do like I've done for friends in the past and just when to the level 61/71/81 vendor and buy gear for them and give it to them.

New players are more resourceful than you think. They don't need you on here white knighting for them.