Alliance Raid Now iLvl Locked, Why??

[Erzaa]

Just put the CT raids into their own separate duty. Problem solved.

I wouldn't be opposed to that, but wouldn't that just make Void Ark the raid to be cheesed? It's not that hard either.

[Katz_McKatz]

I wouldn't be opposed to that, but wouldn't that just make Void Ark the raid to be cheesed? It's not that hard either.

None of them are that hard. It is all dependent on the alliance group. I have been in alliance groups who sped through Euphrosyne.

[Erzaa]

None of them are that hard. It is all dependent on the alliance group. I have been in alliance groups who sped through Euphrosyne.

I feel you're missing my point. Moving CT into its own roulette is good in theory. It being the only required one, having its own queue makes sense.

But, the whole point of cheesing the ilvl is to get the maximum rewards for minimum effort. So CT is removed from the pool, that just means the next quickest and easiest raid is going to become the one everyone complains about, likely Void Ark.

I want SE to please fix the current situation, but at the same time I don't want them to go for another easy and quick band aid that's going to cause more unintended consequences. That's how we got to the current situation in the first place.

[Katz_McKatz]

I feel you're missing my point. Moving CT into its own roulette is good in theory. It being the only required one, having its own queue makes sense.

But, the whole point of cheesing the ilvl is to get the maximum rewards for minimum effort. So CT is removed from the pool, that just means the next quickest and easiest raid is going to become the one everyone complains about, likely Void Ark.

I want SE to please fix the current situation, but at the same time I don't want them to go for another easy and quick band aid that's going to cause more unintended consequences. That's how we got to the current situation in the first place.

Thanks for explaining what you meant. I agree with that.

[PyurBlue]

I feel you're missing my point. Moving CT into its own roulette is good in theory. It being the only required one, having its own queue makes sense.

But, the whole point of cheesing the ilvl is to get the maximum rewards for minimum effort. So CT is removed from the pool, that just means the next quickest and easiest raid is going to become the one everyone complains about, likely Void Ark.

I want SE to please fix the current situation, but at the same time I don't want them to go for another easy and quick band aid that's going to cause more unintended consequences. That's how we got to the current situation in the first place.

This is a legitimate concern, but CT remains the only raid that is required, so it's much easier to be forced into while using random queues. In the case of any other raid, you have the potential of queuing with people ineligible for Void Ark.

If it's possible for SE to do something more complex than just separating roulettes, which appears to be possible, then I think additional options should be considered. However isolating CT should also be a priority because of its current place in the game.

I don't know exactly what is possible, but we could further divide roulettes such that the ones of equivalent effort are grouped together, eliminating the desire to find the path of least resistance. Another alternative is to simply let people blacklist content from roulettes. As long as you have two groups with opposing desires, that will work.

[Toutatis]

However isolating CT should also be a priority because of its current place in the game.

I don't know exactly what is possible, but we could further divide roulettes such that the ones of equivalent effort are grouped together, eliminating the desire to find the path of least resistance. Another alternative is to simply let people blacklist content from roulettes. As long as you have two groups with opposing desires, that will work.

The objective of roulette is to fill whatever needs to be filled. Removing CT from queue would just create long queues for whoever specifically queues for it. The same goes with further fragmenting roulettes and blacklisting duties. You’d just wait much longer for raids to fill up with 24 people.

And that free gear is completely inaccessible unless you complete almost the entire MSQ. In other words it's not an option for many.

The gear issue is a problem. Reading through this thread, I can't help but think if the people on the side that is trying to ignore the problem were actually in the opposite situation, would they not be calling for QoL improvements? Getting gear for the roulette is not impossible, but it clearly wasn't thought about. Bad decisions don't have to be defended.

This is going to be “fun” when 7.0 comes out and people end up being locked out of Alliance roulette doing their MSQ with no MB option to gear up for a while…and when the first craftable gear is released, it will be at outrageous prices (plus it’s even more absurd when you think that this early craftable gear is primarily aimed at getting into the new savage tier and not to clear old low level ARs).

[PyurBlue]

The objective of roulette is to fill whatever needs to be filled. Removing CT from queue would just create long queues for whoever specifically queues for it. The same goes with further fragmenting roulettes and blacklisting duties. You’d just wait much longer for raids to fill up with 24 people.

CT wouldn't be out of roulettes entirely, it would just have its own. I'm very doubtful that there would be any shortage of players either given its natural popularity. The only thing that might cause a player shortage is the redistribution of rewards across the alliance raids, but even then CT would remain the lowest effort raid and attract the people that just want to mash one button while tabbed out to something else half of the time. Also remember that attracting players to the roulette only helps fill the goal of reducing wait times. If people are avoiding your roulette because they don't like one of the potential outcomes, limiting the occurrence of that outcome can be a net gain. The prevalence of CT did causes at least some player to avoid the roulette.

There is a possibility that giving control over roulette outcomes leads to unpopular raids, but it's not a given. A good sign is when the population is divided in preference, such as over CT. A black list option would have worked in alliance raid just because you had two groups that would choose opposing options. If CT is separated, it's less clear if that would still be the case, but SE could just look at the numbers or ask for feedback to help make the decision. And, while it's not quite the same thing, before CT was mandatory it was actually possible to blacklist the 50 raids by not unlocking them. I actually did this on some of my characters, but I don't know how common this was, so it's hard to use it as any kind of proof that blacklisting is viable.

We can also consider other arrangements of roulettes, such as splitting alliance raid into beginner and Expert. The former could hold all the lower difficult raids and not just CT. Or CT could go into the MSQ roulette if you really wanted to keep the number of roulettes down. Actually come to think of it even if CT was removed from normal roulettes completely, it would still be a part of the mentor roulette, though that might be going a bit too far in reducing the player pool queueing for that content.

This is going to be “fun” when 7.0 comes out and people end up being locked out of Alliance roulette doing their MSQ with no MB option to gear up for a while…and when the first craftable gear is released, it will be at outrageous prices (plus it’s even more absurd when you think that this early craftable gear is primarily aimed at getting into the new savage tier and not to clear old low level ARs).

It certainly will be a lot of fun. Most of the "just get gear" arguments right now are hinging on the fact that it's late in an expansion. Crafted gear becomes even less accessible early in the cycle.

[LumKitty]

Or CT could go into the MSQ roulette if you really wanted to keep the number of roulettes down.

OMG this would be hilarious if they did it.
For one it actually makes sense CT is required for MSQ where all other alliance raids are optional, but it would also really piss off the ilvl cheesers as there's a significant chance they end up stuck in Praetorium.

For those of us who actually do MSQ on the regular, it'd be nice to have a bit more variety too

[TomsYoungerBro]

I feel you're missing my point. Moving CT into its own roulette is good in theory. It being the only required one, having its own queue makes sense.

But, the whole point of cheesing the ilvl is to get the maximum rewards for minimum effort. So CT is removed from the pool, that just means the next quickest and easiest raid is going to become the one everyone complains about, likely Void Ark.

I want SE to please fix the current situation, but at the same time I don't want them to go for another easy and quick band aid that's going to cause more unintended consequences. That's how we got to the current situation in the first place.

They already resolved this by giving out additional rewards for the 60/70/80/90 alliance raids. CT is no longer the "maximum rewards for minimum effort".

[Erzaa]

They already resolved this by giving out additional rewards for the 60/70/80/90 alliance raids. CT is no longer the "maximum rewards for minimum effort".

If the additional rewards were enough of an incentive to stop ilvl cheesing, they would've never added the ilvl lock in the first place.

There's nothing wrong with splitting CT into its own roulette with its own rewards. We'd just have one additional roulette per day to do. Instead of MSQ, Dungeons, Alliance Roulette, Frontlines etc, we now have MSQ, Dungeons, CT Roulette, Alliance Roulette, Frontlines etc. It's an extra 30 minutes per day, no big deal, if SE wants to do it, they can go for it.

Let's say hypothetically, CT is split out into its own roulette. Now, we have Void Ark, Ivalice, Nier and whatever the Endwalker raids are (I don't know their names, I haven't done Endwalker yet.)

The question is, are the additional rewards you'd get from running Endwalker raids say, worth the additional time and effort investment in completing them, over just running Void Ark, or not? This is what ilvl cheesers will weigh before deciding to cheese a raid.

Either way, in the end it doesn't solve the issue of the players who are currently locked out of the raid roulette who had nothing to do with ilvl cheesing. We still can't queue up for Alliance Roulette unless we pointlessly overgear compared to our current MSQ progress.