why is castrum and praetorium not an instance

[Nezerius]

Not at all, Turbine only had a very small handful of mechanic changes to any of the LoTRO 'epic story' dungeons, which are in no way simpler mechanic-wise than XIV's, they added an item that you 'use' to apply boosts entirely equivalent to 'Echo'.

Let's face it, that's EXACTLY what XIV does in the forced-solo instances after you fail them once, SE recognised they had to do that back in beta (or was it even further back in V1, I don't recall now) otherwise many players would never get beyond level 5 in their class progression!

But this isn't LotRO, this is XIV. Not every job has a reliable selfheal that will get them through every fight. Can you explain how those jobs would get through CM/Prae solo? Can you explain how a job like that can solo bosses like Gaius, Livia, or even Ultima? Unless you mean increasing the Echo up to like +1000% damage/HP so they can kill things in just a few hits, but then what'd be the point?

Sure, you could throw in an NPC party to help, but who would that be? It can't be the Scions, since they're already busy taking out other Castrums with their respective city-states/grand companies, nor can it be Thancred, for obvious reasons. It can't be the Grand Company army that's helping you by distracting Castrum's main force, either. Perhaps a few random miners from the nearby Ceruleum Plant? Surely they're battle-hardened fighters and healers!

Solo would absolutely make no sense, lore wise, since this is one of the most guarded Castrums in Eorzea.

[Niwashi]

Im just curious if other games go back and do any changes to older content , are is se just following what most games do, Im just of the opinion that all content matters whether its new or old because with new players always joining the game you should want to make the experience work for people from top to bottom

I've never heard of a game company refusing to fix content from the main game when it's as badly broken as this is. (Perhaps it could happen with a minor optional piece of an old expac, but certainly not when it's the final climax of the base game.) And SE themselves does go back and update older content here in this game. Of course that's usually with minor tweaks rather than a significant overhaul like this would turn into, but that's mainly because that's generally all older content needs. Here it isn't.

Sure, you could throw in an NPC party to help, but who would that be? ... It can't be the Grand Company army that's helping you by distracting Castrum's main force, either.

It can't be the main unit of the GC's armies which is busy elsewhere, but a few members who are already assigned to fight under our leadership, that would work. And SE has already said they're planning on allowing our squadron to fight alongside us in dungeons. They haven't revealed yet which dungeons, but I'm hoping these two are the first to be implemented for the feature, as they're certainly the ones that most need it.

[bswpayton]

I've never heard of a game company refusing to fix

I,m noticing the trend , as I talk to a lot of new players what its doing is creating an environment to not appreciate the story. Where skipping a cut scene and prob not even going back and watching it is becoming the norm , and I would like to think that at least half the players came for the story. I really don't think that It would be to difficult to implement a new way to do these two dungeons at all.