Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

[AngelCheese77]

Hrm ... from the preliminary patch notes for 4.2:


To ensure new players are able to enjoy the cutscenes in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium, all cutscenes in these dungeons can no longer be skipped.

Because this will increase the time required to complete these dungeons, completion rewards and Duty Roulette bonuses for these duties have been increased.

Eh ... not sure if it will be enough incentive to keep people doing them, but we'll see.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

Personally I would have made it a solo instance that had various NPC's helping out, the dungeons themselves as they are now are bad and with current gear are a complete joke.

The idea of forcing you to watch cutscenes is a hilariously boneheaded idea. What if no one is new? What if new players don't want to watch the cutscenes? What if someone reading slowly doesn't finish the cutscene fast enough and gets locked out anyway? Were none of these a concern?

What were they thinking?

[Hroun]

Admittedly, it's nice for new players who care for lore.. but realistically those first time players will eventually come to hate the system that enabled them to watch the scenes to begin with.

[SaitoHikari]

There is one issue I see with this.

If the cutscenes are no longer skippable, yet everyone that's in MSQ Roulette has actually already done the dungeon once before... What's the point of making them unskippable?

These two dungeons should really, really just be overhauled into a lengthy solo duty, with Ultima being overhauled into an actual trial. In fact, the entire pre-Heavensward sequence should really be re-evaluated. It's getting really bad when all the general gaming enthusiast forums and websites I frequent show me that interest in the game is higher than ever (there's almost a literal army of FFXIV fans at ResetEra in particular telling people disappointed with FFXIII and FFXV to try FFXIV), but virtually everyone encouraging people to get into the game have to include a disclaimer that pre-Heavensward is poorly paced. And a lot of prospective new players are often quitting somewhere between pre-Titan and pre-Heavensward phases, and if they don't, they get super burned out after it all anyway.

Surely there's data that exists that would tell you guys exactly where subs lapse in regards to progress in the main quest.

[Destati]

What if you're running these dungeons unsynced? Will we be able to skip cutscenes then? I've just been running them with one or two higher-leveled friends when I go to do these with my alts.

When they said they were going to increase the reward for the roulette I was expecting a bit more than just... poetics. Something along the lines of the Alliance Roulette rewards would have been nice, but honestly I don't think I'll be touching MS now.

[Hasrat]

Re: making it a solo instance. While I agree with the idea, in practice, I think it might take more work than they'd expect to change it. As an example, think of the search lights. Will NPCs be tuned to know to turn them off? Or, will it more likely be that the player will have to be in charge of all interactions? What about all the cannons? Can NPCs figure out how to use those? What about the entire Livia fight? There's a number of "boss is effectively invincible for now" parts scattered around here, and it'll take a bit more tooling to get NPCs that know what they need to do, I think.

It won't be so easy as just "run the dungeons with NPCs." That would be either overly complicated, or, in creating the solo instance, will have to be so modified that they are disinclined to put that much work into doing so.

Making it solo sounds easy, but there's probably more effort involved in that than is immediately apparent.

It'd still be nice if they did it. As someone said a while back, once done, it would likely be the final permanent solution; no more band-aid fixes. But the evidence seems to be that they have no desire to dedicate much resources to the cause.

[Aylis]

Making it solo sounds easy, but there's probably more effort involved in that than is immediately apparent.

It'd still be nice if they did it. As someone said a while back, once done, it would likely be the final permanent solution; no more band-aid fixes. But the evidence seems to be that they have no desire to dedicate much resources to the cause.

I think the issue is the time involved and nothing more. The two dungeons were built and made by the current dev staff. Things can be changed, mechanics reworked and whatever changes are needed to make it a solo instance. They've adjusted other fights in the past, adjusted player abilities and what not, it can be done. The issue of time being all this would require a major overhaul which could mean the next major patch could be barren. No new dungeons, no new raids, no new anything really. We already know the dev team is majorly understaffed and this maybe why they won't go back and do the overhaul. Even if it is majorly needed. The only forseeable change I can see them doing in the future with these two places are.

1) Re-enable cut scene skipping after enough sprouts complain they can't get the dungeon done because very few will touch it now.

or..

2) Create the next phase of a legendary weapon that shoehorns players into these two dungeons. For current and future legendary weapons. Like FATE grinding 2.0

[Caitlinzulu]

Heard the suggestion several times to just run it with your gc squad mates..... Well anybody yet considered that the people running these dungeons for story prop wouldnt even have a squad to begin with? much less one thats up to scratch?

[FalcorPIX]

This is not cool at all, some players just dont care about cutscenes or story at all, to force this into them is torture.

I already did those so im kinda fine with it, but some friends recently started, they gonna be so angry when they enter those after 5h queue and then find out they cant skip cutscenes.

Its probably reason to quit after they complete the first one, they wont do the second one.

[Zeonsilt]

This is not cool at all, some players just dont care about cutscenes or story at all, to force this into them is torture.

I already did those so im kinda fine with it, but some friends recently started, they gonna be so angry when they enter those after 5h queue and then find out they cant skip cutscenes.

Its probably reason to quit after they complete the first one, they wont do the second one.

It can be much worse. Imagine a party of 8: 2 sprouts and 6 mentors(because only mentors will end up in this dungeon after 4.2).

One mentor will instantly leave(and take penalty), followed by 5 other mentors(for free), which leaves 2 poor sprouts alone and the "5 hours queue" repeats again.