alliance roulette is just broken and infuriating at this point.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

It's a flaw in scenario design oglf making CT Lv50 mandatory and the rest not while refusing to rework CT raids as they are way past their prime from sheer potency and stat adjustments.

I do not agree of moving them into MSQ roulette, but something needs to happen to Alliance Raids as a whole.

[UkcsAlias]

It's a flaw in scenario design oglf making CT Lv50 mandatory and the rest not while refusing to rework CT raids as they are way past their prime from sheer potency and stat adjustments.

Mandatory isnt realy the issue, the issue is it wants to pop quickly for these. Too often i queue and see it pop instantly, only to get ST as lvl 80+ job.

A system that at least tries to avoid this to happen would help. I dont care the queue is linear. and will pop whenever it finds 24 suitable people. Its counter productive for the later raids.

I would make it in such way that when you queue, it takes the latest multiple of 10 as base level and use that for a seperate subqueue. These sub queues will have a system in place that will prevent too low level raids from popping quickly (the further away the level is, the harder it will force a fixed time in which it cant pop).
For example each 10 levels apart from the subqueue you are in, adds a 5min margin to which raid is allowed to pop (with a cap of 15mins). And by giving it seperate tiers of waiting, it will focus you more towards the higher lvl raids.

I dont care waiting for a raid if the raid is fun. Even waiting 30 minutes is better to me than CT (hence taking a penalty is no problem for me). And if i had to wait this long to see CT, i then at least would know the wait was long enough to know other raids werent likely to pop anyway (i would probably have left the queue at that point already or rejoined the queue with a lower level job knowing its going to be CT).

[vetch]

It's a flaw in scenario design oglf making CT Lv50 mandatory and the rest not while refusing to rework CT raids as they are way past their prime from sheer potency and stat adjustments.

CT should absolutely have remained optional. It's trivial to write Shadowbringers in a way that doesn't require CT to introduce G'raha, the same way Heavensward was written without requiring the DRG quests to introduce Estinien. It was never necessary since 99% of G'raha's character development and relationship-building with the player character happens inside ShB anyway.

I'd agree with moving it to MSQ roulette. It's a mandatory part of the MSQ, after all. If not that, I guess the easiest fix would be to fiddle with the iLvl sync, so that we actually see some mechanics.

LotA and WoD still have some of the most interesting encounters of any alliance raid... or would, if the mechanics were ever seen.

[Espon]

The only thing that annoys me more than getting Labyrinth of the Ancients in Alliance Roulette is getting it a second time in Mentor Roulette.

They really need to put in an item level sync. Bosses shouldn't just curl up and die within 1 or 2 minutes.

CT should absolutely have remained optional. It's trivial to write Shadowbringers in a way that doesn't require CT to introduce G'raha, the same way Heavensward was written without requiring the DRG quests to introduce Estinien. It was never necessary since 99% of G'raha's character development and relationship-building with the player character happens inside ShB anyway.

There's more to the Crystal Tower than just the introduction of G'raha Tia. Many story points and lore revolve around the tower itself, where as Estinien's backstory prior to him appearing in the MSQ can be summed up in a single sentence.

[vetch]

There's more to the Crystal Tower than just the introduction of G'raha Tia. Many story points and lore revolve around the tower itself, where as Estinien's backstory prior to him appearing in the MSQ can be summed up in a single sentence.

Story points like what? All the Crystal Tower info is in the same boat as Estinien's as far as I remember, and I really don't mind if five more summary paragraphs get added to ShB.

While I agree it should have remained optional, they backed themselves into a corner by deciding to make G'raha a Scion instead of remaining the Crystal Exarch. CT makes far less sense if you then do it after Shadowbringers MSQ (not to mention you'd have the uncomfortable time paradox of G'raha running into himself in Mor Dhona.

Your mention of Estinien actually is a good example of why it would be a problem to leave CT optional. A couple of members of my Marilith FC have completed Endwalker but are just now leveling Lancer. They say the Lancer story is extremely awkward considering Estinien has no clue who they are and they aren't supposed to know who he is. It's a lot harder to pass it off as an echo memory when the character didn't know the job in the past.

We don't need in-game lore for why side content that happens earlier in the story doesn't contain references to events that happen later. Once the context has been established that quests canonically happen in the expansion when they become available and not when the player chooses to finally engage with them, it just becomes part of the background vocabulary of the game. It's no odder than finishing Heavensward and then going back to do Shiva EX.

The only explanation needed is "because this is how the game is set up".

[Espon]

Story points like what? All the Crystal Tower info is in the same boat as Estinien's as far as I remember, and I really don't mind if five more summary paragraphs get added to ShB.

During the Eden storyline we need to summon a creature of darkness to help offset all the light so we pick the Cloud of Darkness. Yes, this is optional content but it still references back to it and wouldn't make much sense if we summoned her with no knowledge as to who she is.

Post-Endwalker content has us returning the Void and assumes this isn't our first time there and already know what to expect upon returning.

Xande, Cloud of Darkness and the Allagan Empire are the reason why Azdaja is even stuck in the Void.

Amon, Xande's servant (and minor boss in Syrcus Tower) plays a major role as Fandaniel and causing the Final Days to return. This could be explained with some extra dialogue since the original boss is just a clone, but still helps to serve as a connection to the past.

We'll likely be going to Meracydia in a future expansion and the Crystal Tower and the fact that we were the ones that killed its greatest past enemies will likely have some relevance. At some point it just becomes annoying and time consuming to write branching dialogue and cutscenes all the time all due whether or not the player did a side quest.

I could probably find more examples of how they would need to develop branching dialogue/cutscenes and trying to avoid plotholes all because of Crystal Tower being optional but I'm lazy.

[Supersnow845]

During the Eden storyline we need to summon a creature of darkness to help offset all the light so we pick the Cloud of Darkness. Yes, this is optional content but it still references back to it and wouldn't make much sense if we summoned her with no knowledge as to who she is.

Post-Endwalker content has us returning the Void and assumes this isn't our first time there and already know what to expect upon returning.

Xande, Cloud of Darkness and the Allagan Empire are the reason why Azdaja is even stuck in the Void.

Amon, Xande's servant (and minor boss in Syrcus Tower) plays a major role as Fandaniel and causing the Final Days to return. This could be explained with some extra dialogue since the original boss is just a clone, but still helps to serve as a connection to the past.

We'll likely be going to Meracydia in a future expansion and the Crystal Tower and the fact that we were the ones that killed its greatest past enemies will likely have some relevance. At some point it just becomes annoying and time consuming to write branching dialogue and cutscenes all the time all due whether or not the player did a side quest.

I could probably find more examples of how they would need to develop branching dialogue/cutscenes and trying to avoid plotholes all because of Crystal Tower being optional but I'm lazy.

The point is though that we have already done CT even if you haven’t done it personally at the time, that’s how all side content works

The WOL canonically did CT in post ARR