alliance roulette is just broken and infuriating at this point.

[Infindox]

Maybe it's just me, but the Alliance Roulette lately has not been giving me CT and usually gives the EW ones (mostly the second?) and the Nier ones. Tbh I'd rather do anything else, even CT, then get Puppets Bunker but my opinion. (I think it's too long).

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I'm personally fine with AR taking way longer than usual because 'faster, shorter' casual duties are already covered by dungeon, trials, normal raids, & (lol) guildhest. Why do I want another of same type if they can give me a variant? I thought people tend to call this is a 'theme park MMO' :kekw: (unless of course if you're never a fan of longer duties.).

That being said, a backfill like frontline queueing would be a great addition. Those 16 player at the start of duty won't instantly drop because 8 other is missing so long the core members are present (1 tank 1 healer 2-3 dpses are fine). Having your manual queues reset just because that one person did not accept the prompt is very frustrating. No they don't always re-pop instantly. Obscure duties would very likely just throw you back to another wait that can last as short as 10m to perhaps hours. I want to play the f###king game, not to watch netflix to wait for the time I can actually play, gdi

[Asari5]

they adjusted the exp and the poetics you get from the longer a-raids. so everyone who wants exp and poetics should hope for longer ones since it makes you able to get more out of it per day. makes sense, right?

[UkcsAlias]

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.

In the meantime having a 30min queue for dungeons or trials as a dps is fine...

The argument of fast is irrelevant here.

If its blocking the MSQ, the game should make sure people start doing these quests earlier so they have a good side activity to do while waiting. It makes no sense at this point to mark it only as side quest. They should be displayed as msq quest at this point (same for the hard trials).

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.

In that case you can just make it part of the msq roulette. As the raids due to being trivialy easy do take a similar time to complete compared to prae.

That they are in the alliance raid roulette is fine because during the off hours, this one at least can make the queues pop at a reasonable time. 30mins and then getting CT is fine during those hours as you just cannot expect enough people for a lvl 80 raid. Even the 60 these days have a higher chance to show as f2ps can still level from these, so its not just lvl 50 at that point either.

[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".

[Supersnow845]

They really need to stop shoving important quest lore into the side content then refusing to acknowledge it because it is side quest lore

The absolutely shockingly bad way they handled the void quests (as in the post shadowbringers role quest) inclusion in the 6.1-6.5 void quest and the “inclusion” of Gaia if you have some eden are other examples of this big problem

The crystal tower didn’t need to be MSQ it doesn’t matter that graha is originally from NOAH it wouldn’t have changed anything because the exarch becomes their friend over the course of the shadowbringers so they would treat Mt Gulg->SOS exactly the same regardless of their knowledge of graha, same as Amon being hermis favourite form of fandaniel, it isn’t needed information and it actively allows people who do the side content to benefit from deeper lore exploration

Every other piece of side content already canonically happens the second it becomes accessible, regardless of when you picked up CT personally your WOL did CT in 2.x, that’s how side quests work

[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

[Burmecia]

WHAT! Ilvl locking didn't fix this!? I am shocked (°П°）

[Espon]

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

I really cannot think of any side quests that play a major part of the main story that completely ignores whether or not you did it and treats it like you did. It'd be like if Gaia showed up no matter what in the post-EW storyline with the assumption that "the WOL actually canonically did Eden post-Shadowbringers." It would leave many players completely confused if they never bothered to do the Eden raids.

I was actually really looking forward to working with Gaius to help Garlemald when he was reintroduced at the end of Stormblood, but instead he just gives you a dumb excuse why he can't go, likely because it would be too time consuming to integrate into the quests whether or not you did the Sorrow of Werlyt questline.