Alliance Raid Now iLvl Locked, Why??

[PyurBlue]

Though the facts point to there being less CTs overall for the population

Which ones, out of curiosity?

The ability to use ilvl to force CT is gone, but no one has to unlock anything besides CT in the first place. It's very possible that nothing has changed.

[PyurBlue]

So I happened to stumble across some actual data on alliance raid:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ays_more_info/

Contrary to what some may believe, at least for this measured case, CT was not the only thing that popped up prepatch. More interesting though is some data on the pre/post comparison:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...l_update_wont/

Unsurprisingly, ilvl manipulation seems (I want to stress that there is uncertainty involved and we should remember that when forming conclusions) to have barely caused CT to popup, as the larger problem is CT being low level and required content.

From the data, there is a reduction in CT, but it's not noticeable. Anyone interesting in adding more data points now at least has some prepatch numbers to compare to.

My take away from this, the ilvl change remains bad for creating problems and for not solving the issue it was created to address. A better solution would be to separate CT from the other raids.

[Denji]

I do alliance raids daily and my personal experience is that for the first time in the many years I've played, I've gotten more than just CT raids and I am so, so thankful for this.
The LOTA theme alone is enough to make me shudder yet now I get HW, stormblood and shb raids now and sometimes even in a row.
I'm sorry but whatever they changed? Good. Thank you. Thank you so much devs. It's like one of the few changes that I 100% support and stand by.

[TomsYoungerBro]

So I happened to stumble across some actual data on alliance raid:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ays_more_info/

Contrary to what some may believe, at least for this measured case, CT was not the only thing that popped up prepatch. More interesting though is some data on the pre/post comparison:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...l_update_wont/

Unsurprisingly, ilvl manipulation seems (I want to stress that there is uncertainty involved and we should remember that when forming conclusions) to have barely caused CT to popup, as the larger problem is CT being low level and required content.

From the data, there is a reduction in CT, but it's not noticeable. Anyone interesting in adding more data points now at least has some prepatch numbers to compare to.

My take away from this, the ilvl change remains bad for creating problems and for not solving the issue it was created to address. A better solution would be to separate CT from the other raids.

A couple things to note in this assessment:

1. While he has created a good amount of data for himself, the data set is still too small
- He queued basically all on DPS except for a few times in "Year 1" as a tank. No data as healer (unless i missed a couple). This means he has no evidence on healer queueing, almost none on tank, and the rest on DPS
2. This doesn't take into account populating other queued ARs
-While sure his percent of "non-sprout ARs" is relatively low (see point 1 on how that still isn't conclusive), this doesn't account for other queues of 60+ ARs now being able to pop since those Ilvl cheesers cant only qualify for CT. The ilvl cheesers wouldn't need to cheese if they only had CT unlocked

In conclusion, his thread on the 6.5 update prediction didn't get upvoted well because he doesn't have enough data (or variety of data), and he is not accounting for certain factors that come with this ilvl change. And yes, no one is arguing CT wont still be the majority. We now just have a much better chance of the other ARs .

Which ones, out of curiosity?

Dun Scaith, Orbonne, Puppets Bunker, Tower, Aglaia, and Euphrosyne to name the ones that come to mind. I almost never get one of the 60s now adays, so to get dun scaith twice already surprised me (though again its a small dataset, so its just confirmation bias).

[PyurBlue]

A couple things to note in this assessment:

While there is a lot of data, it doesn't make for a totally conclusive assessment of the ilvl check's effect. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, the change hasn't been out for very long and there are other factors influencing the queue right now, like a new endgame raid.

This isn't about determining exactly what the rates of each raid is, but more about providing a solid basis for comparison. This thread is full of posts like this:

I do alliance raids daily and my personal experience is that for the first time in the many years I've played, I've gotten more than just CT raids and I am so, so thankful for this.
The LOTA theme alone is enough to make me shudder yet now I get HW, stormblood and shb raids now and sometimes even in a row.
I'm sorry but whatever they changed? Good. Thank you. Thank you so much devs. It's like one of the few changes that I 100% support and stand by.

I'm not singling you out Denji, your post was just a convenient example.

Getting more than 1 non CT raid in a row is mentioned as a positive change, but if you look at the data that was recorded, that was not even uncommon prepatch. Reading what was posted and then looking at the recorded runs, things are the same now as they have always been. So what is there to praise?

Initial impressions are probably being bolstered by a placebo effect and it's making it harder to figure out what is actually happening. That's not conductive to arriving at a fair judgement on the ilvl check. This is important because the downsides, like being locked out of roulette for no good reason, still remain.

If CT is just as common as it was before, which appears to be true, all that SE has done is made a reverse QoL change. I'd like to see people being a little more careful with their comparisons so we can get a real fix if this one is as broken as it seems to be.

Dun Scaith, Orbonne, Puppets Bunker, Tower, Aglaia, and Euphrosyne to name the ones that come to mind. I almost never get one of the 60s now adays, so to get dun scaith twice already surprised me (though again its a small dataset, so its just confirmation bias).

I was asking about what facts you were alluding to, not which dungeons you were getting.

Though if you are keeping track now and weren't before, you can use the reddit data as a baseline for comparison.

[Elkanah]

..

Doesnt help that unlike ARR and HW, all the 70 and 80 gear are locked behind story progression in the final dungeon before you can even buy the gear instead of just being available from the npc the moment you get into said area. Now that we have the town npcs with upgraded tome gear options, this might help alleviate issues for lower levels. However, they really need to change that by level 100. If you somehow hit 100 before the end, tome gear should just be readily available to buy. Not wait till AFTER Dawntrails final msq dungeon/story is finished before it's available and unlocked. So dumb.

[TomsYoungerBro]

I was asking about what facts you were alluding to, not which dungeons you were getting.

The fact that there are no longer ilvl cheesers that can force CT raids, and that objectively more people that queue alliance raids are elligble for non-CT ARs because you can no longer ilvl cheese. This is what is being praised.

[Saraide]

The fact that there are no longer ilvl cheesers that can force CT raids, and that objectively more people that queue alliance raids are elligble for non-CT ARs because you can no longer ilvl cheese. This is what is being praised.

Wait how do we know those people havent simply stopped doing alliance roulette?

[TomsYoungerBro]

Wait how do we know those people havent simply stopped doing alliance roulette?

The same as assuming people are queueing aglaia/euphro/thalemia for coins which would cause those to potentially come up more in roulettes. The odds that every ilvl cheeser just isn't queueing the content anymore is not a bet to take.

Also even if every single ilvl cheeser did stop, the percentage of players queueing as elligble for non-CT did increase, so within the pool "more" people are elligible for non-CT raids compared to pre-6.5 .

[TaleraRistain]

I don't think either side foresaw this complication from the change

I know they don't really read the forums here, but I and others brought it up in threads about the change before it was implemented because I knew it would directly affect my Dynamis alt. I also brought it up in other areas of social media. So it wasn't something nobody knew could happen.

Like someone else said, this levies an extra tax on some players through no fault of their own and could be fixed if they take MSQ progression into account or just consider the raids someone has access to when calculating the ilevel required instead of the class's level.

I am curious if this has effected queues even more negatively on places like Dynamis. Since that could be a DC where more people are affected, and could cause the queue times to increase exponentially if players who were attempting to queue there were now locked out. It could also lead to exploitation of those players by others knowing they have no choice but to buy their marketboard gear.