Alliance Raid Now iLvl Locked, Why??

[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.

[CidHeiral]

Another case of:



Tune in next time for DC travel restrictions!

[Toutatis]

Another case of:



Tune in next time for DC travel restrictions!

Except that’s not OPs case and no one here has complained about the removal of the iLvl cheese. It’s about SE implementing a half thought solution by not taking into account MSQ progress and locking out people who are over levelled but have not reached the point in MSQ where they can unlock the raids and gear corresponding to that level. Sure, atm it’s possible to buy gear from the MB at a decent price but that gear will be synched down and it renders all other gear you’ll get playing the story useless. In its current form, SE’s “solution” will also cause problems when 7.0 is released.

[Bloodbeat]

Except that’s not OPs case and no one here has complained about the removal of the iLvl cheese. It’s about SE implementing a half thought solution by not taking into account MSQ progress and locking out people who are over levelled but have not reached the point in MSQ where they can unlock the raids and gear corresponding to that level. Sure, atm it’s possible to buy gear from the MB at a decent price but it also renders all other gear you’ll get playing the story useless. In its current form, it will also cause problems when 7.0 is released.

A problem caused by the player base.

I have yet to have an Alliance Raid that isn't CT since the update. I even accidentally forgot to switch the roulette from Alliance to Normal and I got the exact same raid for the second time in a row.
The number of times I've said "just give us an *exclude CT* checkbox in Duty Finder" to have people whine "but that's not in the spirit of the game", even though the ability to cheese, via ilvl or refusing to unlock other raids is LITERALLY like having an *only CT* box always ticked for some players in the community.

Having a separate roulette is the only truly fair way to go forward.
Either that of Square Enix will have to drag you all into the real roulette by making a preliminary Dawntrail MSQ obtain key items from the last raid of each expansion before Endwalker.
I don't mind whatever solution they come up with as long as it frees the rest of us from this player-enforced prison of sameness.

[Nyxs]

Fix this or reverse it. It sucks currently.

[Toutatis]

A problem caused by the player base..

It’s more a problem caused by SE’s design choice. Other raids are optional by design and you can’t blame people for not unlocking them. (I have all raids unlocked btw and never removed my gear to get CT)

Making all raids mandatory now would require a lot of people to play lengthy questlines and spend considerable time in queue. To a new player, this game has a lot of content and it’s not like unlocking a new raid every 6 months or so. It they want to make ARs mandatory, they would have to do it in stages or they’d kill the roulette.

They can also ensure that there are incentives to unlock them and that the raid quests are easy to identify. I have come across many players that didn’t even know about ARs other than CT. Like that Dwarf that appears in a corner of Kholusia after the completion of 5.0 with just another blue marker…they get you to do fedex quests for a while and there is no indication that there’s a raid at the end.

[Bloodbeat]

It’s more a problem caused by SE’s design choice. Other raids are optional by design and you can’t blame people for not unlocking them. (I have all raids unlocked btw and never removed my gear to get CT)

Making all raids mandatory now would require a lot of people to play lengthy questlines and spend considerable time in queue. To a new player, this game has a lot of content and it’s not like unlocking a new raid every 6 months or so. It they want to make ARs mandatory, they would have to do it in stages or they’d kill the roulette.

They can also ensure that there are incentives to unlock them and that the raid quests are easy to identify. I have come across many players that didn’t even know about ARs other than CT. Like that Dwarf that appears in a corner of Kholusia after the completion of 5.0 with just another blue marker…they get you to do fedex quests for a while and there is no indication that there’s a raid at the end.

To be fair, none of the roulettes are mandatory, so nobody would be forced to do any of them. I just think this particular roulette is extremely susceptible to subversion by the player base and that has to stop.

[VerdeLuck]

Change is nice, but it seems to still give me Labyrinth every time, hopefully as more sprouts complete it, then I'll get others more often

[CaptainLagbeard]

I don't know if it would be possible for them the take MSQ progress into account when setting up the ilvl requirements... But the requirement is there mostly to stop people from forcing the ARR Alliance Raids

[TheDustyOne]

I don't see why it would be difficult, an integer is an integer, whether it looks at your current jobs level or the level of your latest MSQ, it just needs to compare and choose whatever's lower when it sets the ilvl requirement. I'd imagine it's easy enough to look at a characters current progress, realise that the character is only on MSQ level 64, and set the ilvl to 175.

If spaghetti code can't check the level of the current MSQ, then worst case scenario they can make a function that checks for the completion of certain dungeons or trials (because we know that's something duty finder can do) and decide to set ilvl based off of that instead.

i.e. If you've done Shinryu and your current job is level 73, put the ilvl for Rabanastre. If you've done Thordan, but you're on a new job at lvl 54, it's set for Labyrinth.