My first bad experience with another player. :o

[AngeloFlick]

A very good piece of advice a user earlier in this thread gave was to make a Macro to tell the party at the beginning of dungeons, "Friend is new, we'll be watching cutscenes, sorry for any inconveniences, and any advice is welcome." I'm going to certainly put that to use for HW/SB Dungeons and Trials.

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I'm sorry, but I just cannot see this as an acceptable attitude. If people want to speed run, then they should use the Party Finder. Upon checking, neither C.M. NOR Praetoria are found using anything but the "Main Scenario" Duty Roulette.

If people are doing Main Scenario Duty Roulette, they should expect that many players are actually watching the story. Period. Lo' and behold, those are the only dungeons that CAN be accessed from the M.S. Duty Roulette.

In other words, you've got two viable choices:
1) Don't use M.S. Duty Roulette. Form your own Party instead if you want to farm it.
2) Expect that some people will want to view cutscenes. I'm not saying to wait for them, but don't expect them to not watch the scenes.

First thing-
you don't have to worry about warning the party about cutscene watching after CM or Prae because Squeenix never made that mistake again. You get a tiny intro cutscene for a new duty and a tiny intro cutscene for ending bosses and the rest are done either before you queue or after the duty is complete.

Secondly-
There is NO reason to "farm" these duties in party finder. Tomestone rewards and the huge EXP bonuses are only granted for doing it in the MSQ duty roulette. Speed running or no speed running, there is ZERO benefit for a veteran to running those duties in the party finder. Sucks for newbies but it's the way SE has set things up because no one, me included, would even touch that roulette with a 10 ft pole if it didn't have those rewards attached to it. Even with rewards and no cutscenes my husband practically has to twist my arm to get me to queue for it when we're leveling alt jobs, that's how sick I am of those duties. If I gotta wait for cutscenes I'm never touching it again.

Now what that guy did at the end of your CM run was uncalled for. When I run newbies can choose to watch cutscenes while we melt the dungeon or they can skip and see the fights. Either way doesn't matter to me because even synced the difficulty is trivial so we don't need the full group to clear. Sounds like the healer guy was just salty that he actually had to heal people since your friend wasn't there to split dmg as the OT.

[LineageRazor]

I love that idea, actually.

[EDIT}: They could actually mix the two, and just let your Squad fill any unopen slots. Like if my buddy and I went in there, he and I could have 3 Squad members each, for a total of 8.

Letting newbies run with their Squadron would be great... if not for the fact that Squadrons are locked behind so much crap that VERY few newbies would have them unlocked by the time they got to CM/Prae. Lost opportunity, there.

Biggest difference JP community is polite vs us in the west. If you played FFXI you know what i'm talking about. Sad

Yeah, someone has apparently forgotten about JP ONRY!!1! Played FFXI for nearly fourteen years, and JP are just as capable of douchebaggery as western players. The self-directed bigotry I often see on these forums is pretty tiresome: people are people, the world over, and JP's supposed emphasis on community over individualism doesn't change that one bit.

[kikix12]

Letting newbies run with their Squadron would be great... if not for the fact that Squadrons are locked behind so much crap that VERY few newbies would have them unlocked by the time they got to CM/Prae. Lost opportunity, there.

As a main story quest, it is very likely to get an outside NPC treatment instead of the adventurer squadron, making it a solo duty like many others. That would probably mean the end of the roulette and the dungeon version being forgotten in the oblivion (despite probably still being unlocked by finishing the solo duty).

[Syrellaris]

The quickest and easiest solution to the issue is making these Dungeons Solo experiences.

Again, new players have the ability to speak up. They should do so. Inform your fellow party members that you are new and wish to watch the cutscenes. People will be a lot more accommodating then when you don't.

I don't mind if a dungeon is 45 minutes long or even an hour, just don't give me 10 minutes of content and then 50 minutes of cutscenes in between. I've done it so much, i don't care about those scenes anymore.
So, no I am not waiting if you don't inform me in the rare times that I actually sign up for that torture.

[Gyson]

I'm amazed that the proposed solutions here tend to be either:

A) Newbies can just deal with the suck; enjoy the free ride and watch your cutscenes in an inn (instead of the dungeon where they're actually relevant). Epic conclusion to your fifty levels of storyline be damned.

B) Have the Devs spend precious development resources on dramatically reworking these two dungeons.

C) Boost the rewards to insane levels to convince children to play nicely together.

..instead of:

D) Don't queue for either of these dungeons if you're not prepared to spend some extra time on cutscenes.

I think anyone suggesting "A" has either forgotten the appeal the FFXIV storyline has on newer players, or failed to ever develop an appreciation for it themselves. Option "B" seems wasteful when "D" resolves the issue without requiring development resources. And "C" is just overly greedy - we're already rewarded for having new players on our runs.

Castrum Meridianum adds just 10 minutes of cutscenes to the run, where as The Praetorium's cutscenes doubles the typical PUG dungeon run time (of 30 minutes) to an hour. If cutscenes in these two dungeons were impossible to skip and the veteran rewards were (at most) double that of a normal dungeon, nobody should have cause to complain (although I'm sure many veterans still would). In other words, if we get X reward for a 30 minute run, then 2X reward for a 30 minute run with 30 minutes of mandatory cutscenes should be enough to satisfy anyone. In the end you'd be netting the same results in the same amount of time.

Having said that, option "D" is the common sense route. But for some reason isn't working for many people, despite having a plethora of content to farm the same rewards from. And so, the new players are stuck with a spoiled experience because many veteran players can't be more considerate. Grand. Also, the frequent implication in this thread is that new players would never get through the MSQ without the help of impatient veterans, as if there aren't enough patient veterans and other new players willing to help. I would suggest that in reality nobody can say for certain, but it would be interesting to find out.

<snip>

If you're going to continue to cherry pick and snipe comments out of context in attempts to make flawed points, there really is no point in trying to discuss this further with you. At this point your attitude and position are crystal clear: you're being incredibly selfish, and you seem to believe everyone should get on-board with your needs, no matter how it negatively impacts them. Queen Kikix12 has spoken.

[MADJAM]

"Hey, we got locked out because we're viewing cutscenes,"

Sarteck replies: Shht! I gotta see this! I'm paying you Allagan Tomestones after all.