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

[VeyaAkemi]

If you view roulettes as an obligation you want to do quickly because you don’t want to spend a lot of time why even do the roulettes?

Because you need tomes to do basically anything relevant in this game, sure, there are "better" ways to get tomes, such as hunt trains, but maybe your schedule doesn't work well with the usual hunt train times in your DC, or any other reason, meanwhile, roulettes are there (mostly) to your leisure.

I understand people who just want to get paid, I truly do, but even if I understand their reasons, I still think they are in the wrong for it, which is why I feel the way to fix the overdominance of CT is to rework the roulette system around people behavior.

[Supersnow845]

The tome argument doesn’t even hold up because after the changes on a second by second basis crystal tower is actually the worst for times since every other alliance raid gives more tomes per minute of gameplay

[VeyaAkemi]

I am sorry, but there is no way an additional 15 Mathematics makes up for the time difference between Syrcus Tower and The Tower at Paradigm's Breach, and Mathematics(or whatever capped tomes get called in any given patch) are the tomes that really matter.

[Supersnow845]

I’d say it’s the uncapped tomestones that are more important considering capped tomestones weekly limits are so hilariously low it takes near zero effort to cap them and uncapped tomestones have multiple extensive sinks across alot of content

Regardless tower at paradigms breach is an outlier even amongst the longer alliance raids, something like rabanaste or euphorsyne benefits way more from those free bonus tomestones you get for doing non crystal tower raids

[UkcsAlias]

The tome argument doesn’t even hold up because after the changes on a second by second basis crystal tower is actually the worst for times since every other alliance raid gives more tomes per minute of gameplay

The ARR raid usualy takes 33% less time than those later raids. You can often enough clear these in similar times to regular dungeons.

But even then, i would gladly only get half the tomestones if i could avoid the ARR and HW raids entirely.

[VeyaAkemi]

I’d say it’s the uncapped tomestones that are more important considering capped tomestones weekly limits are so hilariously low it takes near zero effort to cap them and uncapped tomestones have multiple extensive sinks across alot of content

I can understand this angle, but also they are uncapped, you can reasonably farm every uncapped tome you will need for the whole patch on week one, and if you prepare well and only play one Job, you may not even need to farm them, the 2500 you can pre-emptively prepare should be enough or close to enough for your single set of crafted gear, it's because capped tomes are capped that they need constant maintenance, not every day, obviously, but they will get you returning to roulettes a few days a week for months.

[Exmo]

CT should be transformed into solo instances and removed from the roulette entirely

[HyperiusUltima]

I've been reading a bit throughout the thread, and there have been some good solutions, and some bad ones.

Personally, I think we need to look at design since I actually had this discussion with my Forked Tower raid tonight.

First of all, as another said earlier in the thread, these raids being the first Alliance Raid series definitely sets the bar and tone for the time, which was back when ARR was current - when we had an entirely different game.

Taking it from a different scope, over time we've lost what made Labyrinth actually challenging due to iLv and potency increases across the board for all jobs so they can focus on developing raids for the next expansion(Heavensward, and so on and so on). This makes me think on how this content was attempted to make evergreen only because it was tied tot he story, which is a rather poor excuse since sure, the story might be a good one since they're connecting the dots, but gameplay-wise people don't like it. It essentially reminds me of the roadblock of having to kill Titan, Ifrit, and Garuda a second time on Hard Mode, which honestly just doesn't make sense for me except in Heavensward where Titan Hard was required.

If anything, it's tedium - and when a majority of the new playerbase is trying Alliance Raids for the first time, they used to get overwhelmed(I sure did back then), but with how strong powercreep has gone over the years there is no threat to be had in Crystal Tower outside of WoD, which actually still showcases its mechanics properly due to it being the 'end of expansion' Alliance Raid tuned for Final Coil gear.

This happens every expansion because they do not consider how badly item level can be, which I hope they get a sharp reminder about The Final Day.

Speaking of The Final Day...let's give that a talk for a bit. Remember when during Asphodelos and later Abyssos there was a major issue where people had their experience cut short because some Trial groups just smashed damage?

Yeah...about that. I did an experiment during that time period and it was possible to knock her down to 0.1%, but you could not kill her outside of the cutscene there. This sparked a lot of talk about how our end-game Trials were facing the same problem at capstone: iLv was cheesing them hard to the point they weren't a threat.

The same goes for Alliance Raids, and this has been proven by The Final Day since after the change where they limited max iLv, you could see the fight after and actually feel good about it, even during Dawntrail. No more skipped cinematic work or voice work involved.

As much as I know people are saying "iLv won't fix it", it'll fix the damage problem at minimum if they go that route, and if the bosses still get dumpstered as they are now? Then that will require a real rework of the fights themselves.

[Kahnha]

The raids need some polish with how much the game has progressed

My take; Update CT raids make them punishing again maybe update it with assets from the EW stuffs give us cool visiuals and interesting new bosses
(it's why most peps like second walk and puppet's bunker)

More important is to make the classes have most of their kit by level 50

for EX

a Blackmage should have fire 4 and despair by Lv50

a war should have the inner release / nascent flash by Lv50

[TBerry]

If you view roulettes as an obligation you want to do quickly because you don’t want to spend a lot of time why even do the roulettes?

What part of "it's not a job" do you not understand?