How to fix Castrum and Praetorium

[lackofwords]

Even with a light party, composed of 6 players, it doesn't change much. You're still at the mercy of whoever you're stuck with.

It may sound like a broken record, but it rings true;
The best hope for people who are looking for a fresh experience is to stick to the old ways; ask for help, shout for a party, or create one with Party Finder.
This way you can curate your party members, fully knowing they are here to assist you.
Rather than leaving your fate a fray of strangers in Duty Finder and hoping that they play on your terms.

When they've incorporation Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium with the Duty Finder Roulette, it increased the number of people participating in the duty.
The problem with this though, is majority of the people playing DF aren't playing to help carry new players along. They are just in it for the bonus reward.
Reason being, unlike the other duties, main scenario duties completions are required before moving onto other parts of the game. Thus, everyone has to have completed CM and Prae unless if it's their first time.

Also, as a side note, DF Roulette is part of DF. Only difference is that it applies a bonus reward upon completion. For people to have a better chance of joining the an existing DF you were roulette'd in they would have to pick your specific DF from the full DF listing.

Before there was DF Roulette, it was just simply DF. The incentive to repeat CM and Prae was for the philosophy tomestones. This was the stepping stone to obtain the ilvl70 Darklight gear.
Over time players dwindled out to seek higher ilvl gear.
Then, phil. tomes rewards were removed, and replaced mythology tomestones reward. With that, around the same time, there was the additional incentive of DF Roulette gil and bonus mythology tomestones.

As of now, the current structure of DF helps players jump into action quickly. It does not assist in anyway who you get in the DF.
Perhaps if you just want to play with players that never completed the duty, then maybe they could add such an option. However, it'll take ages to find players and fill the party.

[DoubleT]

if SE hasnt done anything about it in 7 months, I dont think they're gonna do anything about it now. An btw, Ultima was weaksauce in VII too, Emerald & Ruby were the hardest bosses in the game. If you really want that "perfect" experience with all the cs's, use the pf an form your own group. Now when you have done them both a 1000 times in the roullette, come back an tell us all how much you love to not skip the cs's/mobs. what SE really needs to do is put a warning label on the duty finder that says something like:

Warning! You are about to play with 3-7 strangers, things may not go the way you want them to.

Oh, an btw, if all of us high ilv people didnt run the story mode roullettes an help yall new people with it, you all would be sitting in multi-hour long queues waiting to finish your missions. And how is it bullying to just leave slow-pokes behind lol. I do MS roullette every single day for tomes, an I have yet to see anyone get yelled at for cs's or whatever. We always just go, an if slow pokes got to catch up then they gotta catch up. It's not our job to hold your hands through the 2 easiest dungeons in the game.

[Kyoraki]

An btw, Ultima was weaksauce in VII too, Emerald & Ruby were the hardest bosses in the game.

My mistake, I haven't played the game since I was around 14, around a decade ago. I should probably change that. Still, an Ultimate Weapon that drops jewellery instead of giant swords is still a disappointment imo.

And regarding the rest of the post, the point of the roulette is for you to help new players through the dungeon with the tomes as an incentive, not for you to farm tomes. If you're clearing content while the new folk are still in cutscenes, or worse bullying them into skipping them so you can shave a few minutes off your amateur speedrun, you're only being a toxic element in the community.

It's not our job to hold your hands through the 2 easiest dungeons in the game.

But is is. As I explained above, the tomes are an incentive to help first timers through the dungeon. Yoshi P has said as much. They're not there for you to speedrun it and play through the content without them. Your mild inconvenience completely ruins any sort of excitement or payoff that the finale has, and scares away folk from the endgame. Hell, even I'm not sure I want to join in knowing that it'll likely be full of selfish elitists that don't care about anyone except themselves.

[Lithera]

It's not our job to hold your hands through the 2 easiest dungeons in the game.

They only feel easy because you've done them a million times and go in super overgeared. I remember my first foray into Praetorium...that was a new kind of Hell that only Aurum Vale really compared to. Oh and letting people watch CSs isn't handholding. They may be perfectly capable players but you won't know because you lock them out of every fight.

[Artemiz]

This problem is a necessary evil due to a little short sighted game design in my opinion. Those 2 dungeons form a road block to anyone who hasn't cleared them yet, a pretty significant one at that. In order to clear them they need help from people who have already done it (most likely) and being so heavily CS orientated it's boring to those who have done it 50+ times. Without their help though we would have people getting stuck at a very early stage of the game and SE clearly can't have that as players would quit.

They shouldn't have done the cutscenes they way they did, one long one at the end would have been better in hindsight but it can't be changed now. Ultimately I don't think there is an easy solution to this without radically changing the dungeon (by making them solo or fundamentally reworking the CS) so newer players will forever get these two dungeons ruined and it's not really the players fault, from either side of the argument. I do this roulette every day because it's 100 myth in about 30 minutes, Brayflox is faster but I like a little variety personally and I can do it on lesser geared jobs. If I was forced to watch all the CS I simply wouldn't do it anymore as it wouldn't be worth the time unless it was helping friends.

[LalaRu]

I'm repeating myself, but just skip cs only when everyone choose to skip, is more than enough. People who rage about that, needs to make a reason themselves for it or just don't queue DF for their speedrun and tomes, because DF scope is not that, but they refuse to understand it and the only way to let them understand how they are wrong, is forcing them to view cutscenes everytime someone want see them.

[Razzle]

how to fix: scale down difficulty and make it solo content.

All of the suggestions you make for forcing other players wait - you do know that if que for story dungeons means 30 min of sitting and watching the screen - no one would que.

Right now newbies can run it because of those "evil" speed runners. Without them they'd have no party to run with anyway so making the runs less appealing for speed runners (or players in general) would hurt the newbies in the first place and contradict your whole intention when offering that solution. Meanwhile the speed runners will just find somewhere else to run.

Leave cutscene oriented content to solo. That's really the only solution to this endless saga lol

Anyway this thread pops every few days and is discussed with the same things... SE and other people will just ignore it like the rest of the threads... lol

/deadhorse.jpg

[Kyoraki]

Anyway this thread pops every few days and is discussed with the same things... SE and other people will just ignore it like the rest of the threads... lol

/deadhorse.jpg

The beatings shall continue until morale improves!

As for your idea, that could actually work. Replace the full party with an army of NPC's, filling it in with noteworthy people like the Company of Heroes, and even throw in some folks from Ishgard as an added twist, and we'll actually get the finale the game deserves. At the moment, I don't feel like any number of incentives will be enough for vets to actually bother helping first timers in any useful manner.

[Lithera]

how to fix: scale down difficulty and make it solo content.

Do you remember some of the major complaints about the story progression? Too much solo content...I can't run the mission battles with my friends...etc... It's a double edged sword with SE getting crapped on no matter what they do. By the way I couldn't imagine Ifrit HM being my first foray into 8-man content. I remember just running that gigas guildhest with a team of people who had never done 8-man before. Tanks didn't know how to coordinate...DPS all over the place. The only godsend would be the fact most people would get at least half a party of veterans who rouletted into their Ifrit HM assuming they aren't a full premade of new players.

[Razzle]

Do you remember some of the major complaints about the story progression?

I remember complaints. But not "major". I think the complaints we have now are much more "major".

If you don't like solo story content than too bad for you, it's an online MMORPG, not a steam multiplayer RPG lol

Game got plenty of non solo content - just not heavy story related - which is just fine for people that hate soloing. (btw I also don't like soloing)

That, or keep story party content but remove cutscenes from mid-runs.