Opinions on Crystal Tower: Labyrinth of the Ancients and Syrcus Tower

[Shistar]

Would be better for all that AR weren't mandatory at all, in any place. Then that might help give the roulette some space. I think being restricting in the first place does not ever feel good.

It didn't use to be. But when you get to a certain point in ShB's MSQ, if you don't know anything about CT and its related characters, the point kinda falls flat on its face. Heard it happened quite a bit back when ShB came out, and that is why they now force sprouts to do CT.


I think it'd be better to make all of them mandatory (at least to run the roulette, if you don't wanna do them you should be able to continue MSQ with some exceptions), it's great content, tons of resources go into it and they won't stop making them anytime soon, so...
They're also great for introducing sprouts to new mechs in a fairly low-stress environment. One death or even an entire alliance's rarely mean a wipe.

[Supersnow845]

You shouldn’t be forced to unlock the other raids to progress the MSQ, that’s CT’s Biggest mistake already

You should just be unable to access the roulettes if you don’t have every possible raid unlocked that you can have at the point of the game you are at

There is no excuse to be in the middle of EW with only CT unlocked

[Chajii]

You shouldn’t be forced to unlock the other raids to progress the MSQ, that’s CT’s Biggest mistake already

You should just be unable to access the roulettes if you don’t have every possible raid unlocked that you can have at the point of the game you are at

There is no excuse to be in the middle of EW with only CT unlocked

On top of that, I think adding more reasons to unlock alliance raids would encourage more players to do them.

Right now most players have CT unlocked because of the MSQ requirement changes in patch 5.3, many have Ivalice unlocked because of Bozja; if we could get new optional contents that are locked behind other alliance raid series as well, more players would consider checking them out.

[Raikai]

It reminds me of PSO2, where I (a melee) am running up to enemies to kill... oh wait... (ranged magical class) kills all the enemies in front me of due to being much higher in level. No resistance at all, one shot everything. Another game, WoW, felt similar. No resistance. I actually like the level sync in this game, because I get actual resistance from enemies, rather than over powering them, power creeping them, etc. I would not see a LVL100 BLM and think *wow, I look forward to having those skills* I would instead be thinking *ah, again I don't get to hit the enemies, which is what I'm here to do...*

Of course, who knows, could be wrong. But it needs to be tried and tested to see how people feel when LVL100s blast everything before you do.

The idea about syncing it down with the full kit is also to balance the damage of higher levels to match the low level kits. You shouldn't over power them in a syncing situation. And what you described seems like actually a zero syncing scenario but like an over-world activity when a low level meets a high one. In fact it's hilarious that in WoW the back-scaling benefits more the low levels than the higher leveled people, both in dungeons (Timewalking) or in the same expansion's leveling range (eg a lv61 kills something much faster than a lv69).

This kind of situation, of a low level competing with a higher level for enemies, rarely occurs in XIV's over-world, because there's very little reason for anybody to actually farm enemies like that. Well, maybe Blue Mages leveling? But we know how it goes...

[PyurBlue]

If the rewards are still sufficient enough that people are willing to do the content even if it doesn't maximize their immediate enjoyment, then it's serving its purpose entirely. I'd say maybe you're new to MMO's, but your join date is back in 2015, so maybe not. For better or worse, it's a baked-in aspect of the MMO genre that certain aspects feel more like a "job" than anything else.

I'm familiar with this idea but it has never been a "feature" that has drawn me to MMO's, instead it's something that I've put up with for the sake of everything else in the genre. Having to do X to receive Y isn't necessarily bad but some devs focus way too much on the reward and not the content leading up to it. FF14 has some lenient grinds but can also have very repetitive or dull (low level) content which can make even easy grinds feel very tedious.

So in the absence of known balance of whether the average person thinks diversity or speed is better when it comes to only CT or diversity then diversity still wins out because it’s also the actual utility purpose of the roulettes

Instead of trying to please the average, I'd prefer to have options to attempt to please everyone. Having multiple roulettes isn't negating their utility function, so dividing them further shouldn't have negative effects.

[Kahnha]

it should be placed in MSQ roulette since it is required for MSQ while you are at it, place Ala Mhigo, alex, amourot, research facility, and Dead ends in MSQ the last dungeons of xpacks would be good for the roulette

CT raids were just annoying to get level Machi (60) raids were also annoying to get also missing so much of your kit at that point.
and being penalized on relic progression because if it makes it not so fun.

The relic step was very good work on squares part enjoyed very much doing roulettes with my FC xD

[Supersnow845]

Instead of trying to please the average, I'd prefer to have options to attempt to please everyone. Having multiple roulettes isn't negating their utility function, so dividing them further shouldn't have negative effects.

The only way you’ll make that work is to completely split crystal tower into its own roulette, if you tried to split the current 6 sets in half for example you’d just be sacrificing mhach and ivalice to “save” nier, myths and echos

If your suggestion is 2 alliance roulettes; crystal tower and other then sure but every other way whatever is paired with CT loses to CT

[Themarvin]

Lower the max ilevel you can synch to there and increase the difficulty so you can't skip mechanics.

[Myotis]

Over dps due to weird scalling does ruin the expirience for everyone.
CT should be updated soon as possible as it is a first expirience for a lot of new people but also it's quite common for everybody else since to unlock other raids you have to do a lot of tasks in the game.
I belive that better solution would be if raids were part of the MSQ somehow where way more people unlock them creating addtional diversity.
instead of 3 raids we could have 6 to mainstain the gear-up process

[FasaiLeFaye]

It didn't use to be. But when you get to a certain point in ShB's MSQ, if you don't know anything about CT and its related characters, the point kinda falls flat on its face. Heard it happened quite a bit back when ShB came out, and that is why they now force sprouts to do CT.

My problem with this is that there are two expansions (and dozens and dozens of hours) of content between CT and ShB. Personally, by the time I got to ShB, I didn't remember a single thing about the CT other than there was a large crystal tower with allagan stuff in it. Thus, the point still fell flat on its face because between CT and ShB, we're introduced to dozens of new characters and situations and nary a peep about the inner working of CT.