Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

[Jijifli]

Queue times for the new players may increase, but we do not actually know that they will increase

How many people do you think woke up, saw the changes and went, "OH YES NOW I WILL QUEUE FOR MS ROULETTE FOR THE NEWBIES AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN"

How hard it's gonna hit the queue in the future? I don't know, but it's going to be longer. There's no a forcing people to watch the cutscenes is going to get more people interested in doing the roulette often enough compared to people pushed off of it that did it before.

[Krotoan]

Then I wonder what you think objective means. It's not an opinion that this change is bad for new players. And I explained clearly why it is.

You even acknowledge that it's bad for new players a few posts later, thus proving my point that it's bad. It's a fact (since you don't seem to like the word objective) that this is bad for new players.

ob·jec·tive
əbˈjektiv/
adjective
adjective: objective

1.
(of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts

I said it's a bad thing for people doing solo/unsynched runs, where did I say it was bad for new players? The loss of some of the running pool because of speedrunners and xp/tome farmers? Not BAD, just less pool, if the run keeps at a steady pace for the remainder who are doing it it's not bad.

It's not a hypothesis. How many times are we going to play semantics?
Also, it's not a question of whether queue times might increase, they already have. One of the most common things mentioned in Prae and Castrum is how queue times are longer now. This is not supposition or conjecture or hypothesizing. It's already happened and is getting worse.

show me the numbers , as in player counts doing the instance, newbies doing the instance , newbies quitting after experiencing the new system who are quitting the system BECAUSE of the change, players doing the instance now vs players 2 months ago etc.etc.

You don't have them. Anything you post about dying queues, or detriments to new players , or this is worse than so and so situation are you own opinions. Colored by your own feelings on the matter and therefor NOT objective.

Slower runs are NOT a bad thing if the amount of newbies getting through and remaining after the experience stabilizes or increases. But we have no access to this number and cannot make this distinction. Neither side of this has any info other than severely colored anecdotes of your own experience. Time will tell, you do not.

As has been shown by your... impassioned responses, you are far from objective.

[Raiya]

Look regardless of the arguments the reason this roulette was made in the first place was so newer people could get this done by getting older players into it. Regardless this change is generally not welcome by most people except a few white knights or those wanting to be spiteful towards the speed runners (some who deserve it others not).

The instances needed some changes but forced CS's is not only the lazies and cheapest way but also the most ridiculous, why?

1) It makes people nearly afk play expecially on Praetorium which is ridiculously CS heavy and boring.
2) It puts others who would help off simply because they dont want to spend more than an hour queuing up to AFK in a CS heavy instance.
and most hillariously of all
3) This whole change can be defeated not by exploits, not by hacks or cheats...... but by unplugging your bloody ethernet cable! Seriously all it takes is that to force a 90k and login again within 20 seconds bypassing the entire forced CS! If only 3 or 4 people do that they can drastically reduce the time for praetorium dramatically. The fun never stops!

This is why I find it an extremely poor choice for fixing this. Castrum is somewhat manageble but Praetorium is the real problem its now triple its original completion time but the reward doesnt reflect the same time. They need to be reworked entirely but the team stubbornly refuses to do this.....

[Tridus]

I'm not really sure what else there is to discuss on this one. Unless the queue reaches a point where newbies can't get it done in a reasonable time, there's no reason for SE to make any further changes. It's job is to get newbies through the MSQ. If it does that, it's working as intended.

So if/when we see massive queue times, that'll be a thing. Predicting them has aready been done and is old hat now.

[Iscah]

An additional thought I had re. queue times: is it possible that this won't actually affect one individual player's queue time much at all?

If there are less people overall queuing, but still enough people to fill up parties, then the queue will be slower, but also shorter.

You'd need access to more data to know where the balance actually lies. It could conceivably work either way.

[polyphonica]

An additional thought I had re. queue times: is it possible that this won't actually affect one individual player's queue time much at all?

If there are less people overall queuing, but still enough people to fill up parties, then the queue will be slower, but also shorter.

You'd need access to more data to know where the balance actually lies. It could conceivably work either way.

Yes, so long as you have at least some regular influx of people queuing (which you will due to new characters needing to pass the story), the biggest factor that impacts the queue time in a trinity-based game is not the volume, it's class balance. I imagine that, if queue times become a problem, their next step will be to improve the bonuses for adventurer in need.

[Reynhart]

I imagine that, if queue times become a problem, their next step will be to improve the bonuses for adventurer in need.

They can also change the party structure. Nothing really requires two tanks, so it could follow the same treatment as Crystal Tower, since tanks are probably the hardest spots to fill.

[Iscah]

They can also change the party structure. Nothing really requires two tanks, so it could follow the same treatment as Crystal Tower, since tanks are probably the hardest spots to fill.

I agree, that would make sense. I've been mostly playing as off-tank and there's not a lot to do - I'm trying to keep an eye out for enemies targeting someone other than the tank, and 'bringing up the rear' during large pulls. It seems to be the most useful thing to be doing at the moment. (Any better suggestions?)

(It seems some people are still taking longer in cutscenes than others - must be something to do with computer speed? For the most part I seem to be one of the first people back out in control, but the other day I actually got locked out of the first colossus fight in the Praetorium because the entry got sealed while I was still in the cutscene. That might be due to just one other person with a fast connection running into the arena early.)

[Tlamila]

(It seems some people are still taking longer in cutscenes than others - must be something to do with computer speed? For the most part I seem to be one of the first people back out in control, but the other day I actually got locked out of the first colossus fight in the Praetorium because the entry got sealed while I was still in the cutscene. That might be due to just one other person with a fast connection running into the arena early.)

Which is why, even if I'd feel masochist enough to want to watch all those cutscenes, I'm never running it anymore. It takes me from seconds to minutes to load in and out of cutscenes, so it would take for me way longer than others (it always , in fact I loved auto-skip because even skipping would take me too long) and I'd be locked out of fights. I think it's more hardware than connection speed tbh, like with loading screens.

[JaakRoot]

My 2 cents from a newbie perspective:

I am a very new player to this game and just started 3 weeks ago. Never played before and started to play because of a friend. I am currently lvl 48 and will soon arrive at the MSQ you are talking about.

In my opinion, this change is great as it will weed out speedrunners and keep only newbies and vets that are willing to help ( mentor, etc..) for the duty and I am 100% willing to sacrifice more queue time to get this. I was always feeling uneasy to watch the cutscene for previous duties as I knew quite well I was making everyone wait so I already skipped a few. Now, I know that there won't be any speedrunners or people that does not want to watch the cutscene and I will feel more relieved watching it myself.