alliance roulette is just broken and infuriating at this point.

[Jojoya]

That’s the point I’m not doing the roulettes for experience, I’m doing them because I enjoy alliance raids and having to queue directly for the high level ones that take hours to pop while the roulette constantly pops CT is a problem

Out of curiosity, are you choosing a single Alliance raid or are selecting up to the maximum of 5 when you queue? I would think that have 5 selected would help you get into one faster.

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.

Then we get into complaints similar to what we see with dungeons being reworked as Duty Support was being added.

I think SE would be better off reducing the ilvl sync for CT then re-evaluating to see if further adjustments are needed. It makes no sense that LotA was designed for an ilvl of 50, drops ilvl 80 gear yet the ilvl sync is 130. Syncing LotA to 80, ST to 100 and WoD to 120 would make a huge difference.

I also agree that moving them into the MSQ roulette is the wrong move. Better to create a new roulette just for the CT raids. With new jobs being added each expansion, adding in 1-2 new roulettes is not going to have a measurable impact on how quickly players are acquiring gear.

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).

The problem is they need those CT queues filled quickly so players can continue with the MSQ, which is blocking their access to later content like the other Alliance raids.

I think most players would be fine with CT if it was a separate roulette so they got to do a different Alliance raid daily in addition to it. Some might skip it but there would be more than enough that would still do it for the sake of extra XP to level alt jobs faster.

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.

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.