An idea for CSs in story roulette. (Yes another one. Humor me on this.)

[Alukah]

At the same time, I disagree with the assumption that no one would run these dungeons with the cs option. Look to any of the "Why can't I watch cutscenes?" threads that pop up from time to time, and you can see that, if anything, the folks insisting that these dungeons should be speed run are in a MINORITY. The newbies have plenty of supporters.

If you want a tip, never go with "majority" or "minority" based on forums, the forums itself are a minority compared to the whole playerbase, even your own experience running those dungeons (assuming you run them every day) can be a better reference than these forums.

Also most people in those threads don't even run MS roulette anymore, people just like arguing for the sake of it and hardly ever practice what they preach.

@OP What do I think would happen? People would go to the many other options that give better myth / hour, no one runs MS roulette for the warm feeling of helping newbies, they even had to boost the myth gain just because the queue was dying, your suggestion would prob bring it back to an almost dead state.

Turn them into light or solo dungeons and avoid all problems in future expansions.

[RiceisNice]

People that are upset about players who watch cutscenes (and they do DF under the basis they'd want a speed run), what going to stop them from being upset from getting queued with players that are new and god forbid, relevantly geared for expert dungeons? The idea that people can berate others for being new or wanting to enjoy an aspect of the game is pretty toxic, and it just worsens if they're the majority in a given party for main scenario (vote kick) for both sides.

The truth is, when you accept a duty roulette, you essentially accept the risk of getting queued with players that may or may not fit your ideal mold.

[kidvideo]

/no, just use the book in your inn room if the general consensus is to skip. It's what I did on all of my first runs & I don't feel I missed out on anything.

[MythToken]

y
Speed runs are there because of people that are busy if we take the suggestion that people dont want to go where cutscenes are mandatory that doesnt mean that those new that dont want to see cutscenes taking the first options wont have to deal with speed runer, they will deal with those and you will have vets doing this category and it will penalize those that dont want to see CS but cant YET affoard to do speed runs...


You cant call what others have experienced many and more times as being BS. you do not solve anything with your solution unless you look into the speeruner side too especially in these two story dungeons.

Just me though,

Mei

How would you ever experience it more than once? And im not calling their argument BS, im saying the notion of them being in the majority is BS. Also please try to use more punctuation.

And the reason i decided to address the CSers over the Speed runners, is that you can't solve speed running.

[ManweSulimo]

What if there were two options for "Roulette: Main Scenario?" Stay with me.

Option 1: CSs are automatically skipped. Mythstone and Gil payout is reduced.
Option 2: Any CSs seen by the player for the first time, cannot be skipped. Pages in the CS's script is automatically continued to the next one when the audio voice dialogue that goes with it has played out. Boss rooms do not unlock until everyone is out of CSs. Mythstone and Gil payout is increased. (Add Grand Company Seals?)

Veterans can choose to do one or the other for the daily bonus but not both in one day.

New players doing any CS heavy duties can cue up for one, the other or both as a way of getting a party faster. Yes believe it or not, not all new players are into the CSs and that's OK.

This is just an idea that would make everyone happy (or at least try to.) There would be no argument during the actual duty because it was selected via roulette ahead of time by each player.

For those of you you about to say "Party Finder," it's not a viable option. It only picks up players from your own server plus new players already see the duty finder as the go-to for any and all missions.

Please post your thoughts. I would like to know if I missed any holes or overlooked any details. No Social Justice Warriors please.

I pray to God SE reads this post and acts on this because in my opinion this is the ultimate solution.

Let's take a step back. Remember SE is marketing this game to people that haven't ever played MMOs before as well. So let's say you are a brand new FFXIV player and you've never played an MMO before. You are an avid final fantasy player and you've played most of the games in the series and love the stories and that's one of the main reasons you play the games in the first place. So you're used to taking any story mode related content at your own pace and really enjoying it. The only interest you have is the excitement of what is going to happen with the story (remember people aren't thinking endgame whatsoever when they enter this for the first time so they may potentially not even know that tomestones exist etc.). You just got to what you think is the showdown with the Garlean empire. You're so pumped as you watch the opening video and you can't wait to beat up some Garlean generals. Then all of a sudden you get out of the cutscene when it finishes and you see all this party text and realize other players are raging at you and trying to bully you into not watching any more of the cutscenes which is the whole point of the dungeon let's be honest. And you either cave to being bullied or you watch the cut-scenes anyways but then by the time you get out of them the boss that you just saw in the cutscene is already dead. Either way your experience has been ruined and you are dumbfounded and maybe even your faith in SE is shaken. How could they have let this happen?

You only get one first time. The movie "The Sixth Sense" comes to mind. Need I say more?

So there are probably a few solutions to this but I think that the OP is just about perfect. Make 2 options, one for skipping cut-scenes and one for not skipping any cut-scenes. In the non skipping version, play all the cut-scenes exactly in sync for all players in the party based on the talking speed of the respective characters (unstoppable 100% movie with no player control).

The truth is you could even just make one option and make that option play cut-scenes as described with no option to skip them or speed them up but in order to properly implement that, the rewards per unit time must be perfectly balanced with the best rewards per unit time for other content available. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. As an i110.4 (115 weapon*) BiS, speed-running champion myself (used to do brayflox hm first two bosses in less than 4:30 back when it was 50 myth and that was the best way to get Novus etc.), I haven't Q'd for the story mode roulette in months because I know it's not optimal tomes per unit time. And especially since hunts came out I see no reason to do this whatsoever. However even I would be Q for this dungeon and knowingly sit through all of the cut-scenes and honestly even be excited to help out new players if the reward could be balanced based on how long it took. And for the new person they would be pumped that the battle phases would be blown through and they would really awed by all of the really well geared players, especially ones with actual skill and not just high level gear. Instead of resenting higher level players, they would look forward to working towards becoming one so they could also show the new people running these dungeons how amazing they can be once they get all or some of their endgame gear and some skill under their belt.

So now to figure out how to balance the rewards... I haven't run a full run of Castrum or Paetorium for quite a while but as a rule of thumb for this just add up the amount of minutes spent in cutscenes, multiply that by 10, and that's how much myth the daily bonus should be for the version with the cutscenes. This is on par with assuming a player can get 50 myth every 5 minutes maybe running Brayflox etc. So if the Praetorium took 1 hour then the story mode roulette would be in the realm of 600 myth only if they choose the full cut-scene option. Yes while this may sound high I really truly think that with rewards like this and disallowing the skipping and/or speeding up of any cut-scenes would completely solve this issue altogether. I still remember my huge anticipation for my first experience in Castrum and Praetorium and then conversely I remember actually running them and it was a defining moment of misery as a new player and a huge disappointment. For the sake of the future sustainability of this game and even for improved player to player interactions inside these dungeons I highly recommend that something along these lines be implemented.

*btw shameless plug can you weight the ilevel of the weapon such that players with full 110 gear and 115 weapons would be i111 please (or full i90 gear and i95 weapons to be i91, full i130 with i135 weapon be i131, etc.)

Otherwise cutscene skipping shout be disabled whenever the new player bonus is being paid out. The new player bonus and watching cutscenes should be tightly coupled. And this is easily enforced, and reineforced starting from things like Sastasha.

This is another solution, enable skipping cut-scenes if no new players are present and disable skipping cut-scenes if new players are present. However from my standpoint as an endgame player I would rather know how long I will be in a dungeon ahead of time before I even Q for it and be able to plan accordingly. Maybe my 2 star gathering node is going to come up, maybe I have irl commitments soon, maybe I have raid in 45 minutes and the non cut-scene skipping run would take too long but the skipping round wouldn't and so forth.

[MythToken]

Yeah i do think in the duty finder a watch cutscene check mark would work pretty well.

[Grey_Cain]

Considering that the point of the dungeon is to relate the story finale, if there are any new people they should be awarding the tomes for completing cutscenes instead of boss fights, although on completing the final boss fight the last reward can still be given without waiting. And if there are no new people, the tomes can be awarded after boss fights/at the end as normal. I'm sure there will still be a lot of speed runners dropping as soon as they see that there's someone new, but half the battle is just getting into the dungeon in the first place. Most of the time before (I haven't run these in a while), there were only one or two speed runners among the vets, and the others were all willing to stick through to the end to help out the new people.

EDIT: I think the checkmark idea has been suggested before, but that would work too.

[NyarukoW]

The best suggestion I've seen on the forums here, is to let the 1st-timers who is not in a pre-formed party vote to award the bonus after the final boss. That is all that is needed. If people that want to speed run can convince the 1st-timers to sacrifice their video more power to them, but I doubt that convincing will come in the form of verbal abuse, vote kick threats, vote kick abuse, or harassment via locking them out of bosses. And we can even default the bonus to be awarded if the newbie is too clueless to vote and decide, but pissing them off will mostly likely get a NO vote from them.

Otherwise cutscene skipping shout be disabled whenever the new player bonus is being paid out. The new player bonus and watching cutscenes should be tightly coupled. And this is easily enforced, and reineforced starting from things like Sastasha.

[LineageRazor]

Sorry but this is just wrong. If you look at the forums yes it might somehow appear that way. But the fact is the "speed runners" are the majority. Otherwise the CS'sers would be able to vote against the speed runners.
Every time ive done this dungeon its only 1-3 people who want to watch cutscenes.

So I think your assumption is wrong, based on the clear facts of vote power.

That being said, both sides have legit gripes. My solution to get rid of the roulette would eliminate the speed runners, and the only people queuing for the dungeon would be CS'ers.

Don't mistake "not for" as "against". In my experience, you have 1-3 who are for cutscenes, 1-2 loud people berating them for daring to even suggest such a travesty, and 3-6 players who don't care enough to speak up either way and so remain silent.

The difference is, the speed runners are (incorrectly) confident that they are speaking for the majority, while the newbies have no idea what the right or wrong thing is, and so unhappily concede, not knowing they even have the option to fight it. No "vote" ever becomes involved - and if it did, the speed runners would likely lose.

Getting rid of the roulette would drastically reduce the available pool of players, which is a bad thing as it means newbies, many of whom don't have a FC or many friends, could be gated behind the content for who-knows how long, especially as the game ages and the rush of new players peters off. The Roulette was a wonderful idea that SE implemented from hard-earned experience in FFXI: vets don't often help newbies if there's nothing in it for them. Roulette addresses this by making sure there IS something in it for the vets.

The problem is that the system awards the vets for helping the newbies FINISH the dungeon, when it SHOULD reward them for helping the newbies EXPERIENCE the dungeon. People have suggested ways to award the vets for doing the latter instead of the former - but it's just too late, I think. I doubt SE will spend the resources to correct the problem, now. But no - doing something that will essentially cut off almost all veteran help is not a good solution to the issue.

[Darki]

tbh, since there are only these two cs heavy dungeons I would prefer them to not put dev time into it.

If only two duties will ever be CS heavy like that then I am in full agreement with you. If they come out with more story duties that are CS heavy then I would like them to consider something similar to this.

As to everyone else, thank you for your input and for keeping the thread relatively civil. I have the feedback I needed