Let us block duties from roulette

[VictorSpoils]

Usually when people use phrases like "overwhelming empirical evidence" while not citing a single shred of it, it means there is no evidence whatsoever and they're just pulling something out of their rear because of whatever personal grievance they have or whatever falsity they've utterly convinced themselves must actually be true.

As for citing empirical evidence, it would be me grinding 2000 Mentor roulettes and all four 900-duty tank achievements, while spamming Trial/Raid roulettes for second-chance points. It's also the stream of threads that keep bringing this up. I would argue this supersedes all the unsupported contradictory claims about the roulettes that do not align with how they really operate.

The point is just that: there are too many conflicting points. It's usually when Crystal Tower is brought up that the argument shifts.

"Roulette can pick any duty, good or bad."
Even though it allegedly (and empirically) prioritizes certain duties. Not that there should be any "bad" duties anyway.

"Roulette prioritizes first-timers."
Even though they're frequently absent, especially in the latest raid tier because tokens.

"Roulette prioritizes people in queues."
Even though people have complained about sitting in queues like Ridorana for hours, and the roulettes love to grab a full party of rouletters and throw them in a duty (including ones nobody would queue for) after a very short period of waiting.

"That's because people only have Crystal Tower unlocked and the roulette prioritizes lower-level alliance raids!"
Then it is fundamentally flawed. Even if the latter part is true, it would be more logical to start from the higher-level duties and work down.

"BTW, people are manually grinding Crystal Tower...also, relic steps."
Which does not give the roulette bonus and is irrelevant to sprouts/first-timers going through the MSQ. And a roulette should not be influenced by bots: do they count as first-timers or people sitting in queues? Also, if people are deliberately grinding CT, they would not blacklist them and (in theory) lengthen the queue times.

The Mentor Roulette also compounded these issues. It would either "help sprouts/first-timers" or "fill queues" even if those contrast with each other. And yet it's possible to get thrown in Praetorium with three other trade mentors, and a good chunk of the duties are worthless guildhests.

I'm less acquainted with the dungeon roulettes and they seemed better in those regards, but there were people complaining about the level-cap roulette picking the same dungeon, even though all the dungeons are valid choices.

I was in favor of diversifying the roulettes, giving the ARR/HW duties proper potency adjustments, and throwing the Coils in there. It would expose many people to fresh content and probably solve the Crystal Tower fatigue.

[Aidorouge]

That would only hurt new players. Roulettes are there so newer players have other people to help them through content. This idea would be horrible for the health of the game. Either take the tomestone hit and check what boxes you want to run or suck it up.

Or people just avoid doing roulettes at all. That's what I did to dodge Stormblood and Shadowbringers dungeons/trials/raids, which I'm sure wasn't helping any new players back when I was still on Dynamis and they only needed one more warm body to turn their 20+ minute queue into a "less than 5 minute one". I only show up for MSQ/Frontlines/Guildhests anymore, and I only do that last one 10 times before calling it a week, and frequently talk myself out of doing the MSQ one after all these DDoS started.

The roulette bonus isn't worth the hassle of doing content I don't find fun (or in some cases, it's not even doable for me when synced), and I'm not obligated to show up so other people can get stuff done. Not that my presence is warranted if I'm struggling on Normal content post-HW. They'd be better off waiting anyway.

The worst that happens is that I'm more reliant on society quests/masked carnival/wondrous tails/PVP for poetics, but they're only being funneled into HW relics right now, and I can't even use the other kinds of tomestones because I can't access the vendors that use them so they remain capped/future ones go to waste.

[s32ialx]

Oh, this again.




There is overwhelming empirical evidence that the duty roulette does not:

• Choose between each possible duty evenly
• Prioritize duties that people are sitting forever in queues for
• Prioritize duties with first-timers

If it truly did even one of those things, much less all three, then it would not be an issue. If you went to a real roulette table and the ball landed on the same 1-3 results as consistently as this game does, they would most likely escort everyone there to a new table.

This sooo much this, you don't know how many times I have been handed Sastasha, Copperbell Mines or Haukke Manor or Bowel of Embers Level 20 trial etc, for my roulettes and guess what, not a single player in the party was below level 70 on the role they were on, cause you can inspect their actual levels in the party window, but because it was roulette and one or two of the other members were randoms more often than not it's just 1 extra random but as I stated that one or two randoms are level 70+ on their job that they are actively using in the dungeon.

[Raim]

The point of roulettes is to fill queues for people otherwise doing the content normally. There is no proof to the conspiracy that any content is weighted to be randomly chosen, thats not how the roulettes work. The rewards for daily roulettes are incentives to help people, but not the purpose of the roulettes themselves.

[Drimn]

The point of roulettes is to fill queues for people otherwise doing the content normally. There is no proof to the conspiracy that any content is weighted to be randomly chosen, thats not how the roulettes work. The rewards for daily roulettes are incentives to help people, but not the purpose of the roulettes themselves.

It is funny to have 4 max levels get stuck in Sastasha, though, you have to admit. I doubt it's deliberate on their part but it has happened to me a couple times.

Or people just avoid doing roulettes at all. That's what I did to dodge Stormblood and Shadowbringers dungeons/trials/raids, which I'm sure wasn't helping any new players back when I was still on Dynamis and they only needed one more warm body to turn their 20+ minute queue into a "less than 5 minute one". I only show up for MSQ/Frontlines/Guildhests anymore, and I only do that last one 10 times before calling it a week, and frequently talk myself out of doing the MSQ one after all these DDoS started.

The roulette bonus isn't worth the hassle of doing content I don't find fun (or in some cases, it's not even doable for me when synced), and I'm not obligated to show up so other people can get stuff done. Not that my presence is warranted if I'm struggling on Normal content post-HW. They'd be better off waiting anyway.

The worst that happens is that I'm more reliant on society quests/masked carnival/wondrous tails/PVP for poetics, but they're only being funneled into HW relics right now, and I can't even use the other kinds of tomestones because I can't access the vendors that use them so they remain capped/future ones go to waste.

I mean, I wasn't really talking about whether or not the content was fun or worth doing. At this point, I'm kind of inclined to agree it really isn't, and I don't normally do roulettes myself because I don't find them all that enjoyable. I just know it'd be awful for the game long-term if CS3 gave people the ability to blacklist and they started blacklisting ARR dungeons or Crystal Tower, not to mention it would make grinding Mogtomes a little more rewarding than it should be. The roulette rewards are for you contributing to the community and putting the MM in MMORPG, not for simply completing old content.

I might be fine with it if they get rid of all of the normal tomestone rewards and just offer people 10-30 poetics if they blacklist anything.

[Aidorouge]

This sooo much this, you don't know how many times I have been handed Sastasha, Copperbell Mines or Haukke Manor or Bowel of Embers Level 20 trial etc, for my roulettes and guess what, not a single player in the party was below level 70 on the role they were on, cause you can inspect their actual levels in the party window, but because it was roulette and one or two of the other members were randoms more often than not it's just 1 extra random but as I stated that one or two randoms are level 70+ on their job that they are actively using in the dungeon.

My personal favorite was getting pulled into Sastasha with a GNB, DNC, RPR, and SGE. (I was the RPR.) Gotta wonder who was standing in that queue for so long that Square-Enix insisted we needed to be sent there to help them, or who among us was the sprout still doing the MSQ, lol.

Admittedly, it IS possible to have unlocked all of those jobs just by reaching the appropriate level and talking to their respective NPC in the various starting cities. But like, none of us were watching cutscenes and nobody was obviously new since we were operating with precision to clear the whole thing. So unless it was somebody's alt that had purposefully put off doing dungeons until at least level 60, or had bought a level skip for a job without a story skip... how the hell did we all end up in Sastasha?
+++

I mean, I wasn't really talking about whether or not the content was fun or worth doing. At this point, I'm kind of inclined to agree it really isn't, and I don't normally do roulettes myself because I don't find them all that enjoyable. I just know it'd be awful for the game long-term if CS3 gave people the ability to blacklist and they started blacklisting ARR dungeons or Crystal Tower, not to mention it would make grinding Mogtomes a little more rewarding than it should be. The roulette rewards are for you contributing to the community and putting the MM in MMORPG, not for simply completing old content.

I might be fine with it if they get rid of all of the normal tomestone rewards and just offer people 10-30 poetics if they blacklist anything.

This is why I'm an advocate for having Trusts in all mandatory MSQ content (side content less so) to at least ensure the stuff that MUST be done remains doable regardless of the number of players around to do it. I wouldn't even be adverse to Trust versions giving minimal/zero rewards since the idea is to play it for the story, and not farm things.

And technically there's already one way to rig the roulette, by just refusing to unlock certain content. Crystal Tower versus the other alliance raids is the obvious one, but there's also people out there that only unlock as much of Alexander as they need to for normal raid roulette, or deliberately avoid the relic weapon ARR trials or anything related to Hildebrand.

[PyurBlue]

That would only hurt new players. Roulettes are there so newer players have other people to help them through content. This idea would be horrible for the health of the game. Either take the tomestone hit and check what boxes you want to run or suck it up.

Can you substantiate this? Why does the roulette only work if there is no blacklist option? If that's the case why doesn't SE make the mentor roulette the only roulette instead of separating them such that people can blacklist duties via type already?

As far as I can see there is no obvious downside to letting people opt out, not even from the view of the roulette as a queue filler.

[s32ialx]

The point of roulettes is to fill queues for people otherwise doing the content normally. There is no proof to the conspiracy that any content is weighted to be randomly chosen, thats not how the roulettes work. The rewards for daily roulettes are incentives to help people, but not the purpose of the roulettes themselves.

Except it will literally put you in sastasha when not a single person is under 70 if they are all randoms or even just one random

[Kaliesto]

maybe just banning the last played roulette would be enough. In other words you can't get the same duty you got last. That way you could oscillate between LOTA and CT lmao.

That is honestly the best damn idea I ever read, and I don't know why we didn't think of this for years.

Please for the love of Hydaelyn someone tell this to Yoshi P-san lol.

[angienessyo]

I don't like getting CT raids but when I sign up for a roulette I acknowledge that it's random and if I'm not willing to do whatever content the roulette throws at me, I don't queue up. I would only be okay with blocking out duties if there was a hard limit of like 1-2 things you can block out from getting. But I really don't feel it's a necessary feature as the point of roulettes is to keep the older content active and help new players get through it.