Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

**BillyKaplan** · 02-06-2018 04:51 AM

Originally Posted by Krotoan

None of them seem to be complaining about their first run though, just subsequent runs.

To be fair, that's still a playerbase who deserves to be heard and that's still content SE should want people to run. The fewer people with established characters running it, the worse it is for newer players, that's why the roulette was established in the first place. I agree with you about needing more time to see how this will really affect things, though I also agree with anyone who said we're likely to see a decline in participants.

**Krotoan** · 02-06-2018 05:08 AM

Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

To be fair, that's still a playerbase who deserves to be heard and that's still content SE should want people to run. The fewer people with established characters running it, the worse it is for newer players, that's why the roulette was established in the first place. I agree with you about needing more time to see how this will really affect things, though I also agree with anyone who said we're likely to see a decline in participants.

There will DEFINITELY be a decline. No doubt there. Subtract the speedrunners and the xp/tome crowd and you by all accounts have less players running it. Whether it falls to unmanageable levels is where the rub is. The original reason it was instated goes back to the pool that there was to draw from: individual servers. Now we have datacenter pools instead, this may be manageable now. As you've said though , time will tell.

They do deserve to be heard , as all players do. But when you have people complaining about something that was never really made for them, it just took advantage of them (this sounds bad I know but it seems to be what was done) it's kind of silly. BUT, there is the matter of the solo/unsynched runs having the limitations, which is dumb. That I'll argue was a really bad oversight or decision.

**BillyKaplan** · 02-06-2018 05:17 AM

Originally Posted by Krotoan

But when you have people complaining about something that was never really made for them

It's MSQ content. It was, by definition, made for everyone. I know you talked down on people's experiences with alts, but they're still characters who need to go through it to get to the rest of the content. And if I'm out of things to run on my main and alt will be at the stage where I need to run them through this, I can't guarantee I'll find the motivation to take them through it instead of playing something else because I'm not big on afking and doing something else while waiting for a cutscene to run its course. As much as SE keeps saying they don't mind people taking breaks, 1. no one really believes them, 2. hazardous from a business stand-point, 3. there's a customer's faith in the company to take into consideration that they're not really addressing. Forcing your users into unskippable cutscenes if violent, intrusive, and sets a very dangerous precedent.
Thing is, honestly, they couldn't have left this change only with the roulette because the first timers can't queue for the roulette. It's not an oversight, it's by design, it's just a bad one.

**Krotoan** · 02-06-2018 06:11 AM

Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

It's MSQ content. It was, by definition, made for everyone.

The roulette is not made for everyone. It was created because people were needed to fill runs for newbies. It was MADE to facilitate getting new people through a dungeon that people had little to no reason to queue for. Of course the MSQ is for everyone, but the roulette had a very blatantly obvious reason for implementation.

1. you have no basis for this claim. You can only speak for yourself and possibly the anecdotal evidence from forum posts, of which I've seen very little actual disagreement with the fact they expect us to play casually and take breaks. I've in fact seen lament from people who see this attitude as counteractive to SE's production of "content" and wish they didn't have this policy. Thus I have just as much evidence to counter your perception as you have to counter mine. Null sum resulting. Neither of us can prove one way or the other that this actually is or isn't their actual attitude towards their playerbase.

2. Apparently not since they're doing decent business and post growing numbers and profit. Yet, this also cannot be directly correlated or disconnected from their supposed attitude. Since it cannot be proven or dis-proven, also unarguable.

3 For one roulette you can choose to skip if you want unless you're running alts in which case I agree something should be done. However securing a new customer and passing them into your currently maintained content vs making an old customer deal with a minor inconvenience (should they choose to initiate it) seems easily decided.

In the scheme of the endgame this is a minor thing. It's one roulette for a vet, but it's a gate to the rest of the game and investment in a developing story for a sprout. While I'd rather they let people unsynch it with no forced cutscenes, if it's all or nothing I'm going to side with unskippable every time. The value of the initial experience vs "well my alt.. " is a no-contest.

**CazzT** · 02-06-2018 06:31 AM

Originally Posted by Krotoan

You keep saying "objectively". I'm not seeing an objective observation here, I'm seeing a biased preset opinion.

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.

**Felis** · 02-06-2018 06:52 AM

Originally Posted by Jxnibbles

At this point may as well be consistent make every cutscene in every other duty follow this same formula. If no new players may as well force everyone to rewatch the cutscenes. Have every cutscene scroll just like the msq because new players apparently can all read and grasp the story at the same speed

Other contents don't need a change. Most of them have 1 CS at the beginning, where everyone are locked in a circle until the last person finished the CS, 1 CS at the start of the final boss and 1 CS at the end after killing the final boss.

**Raiya** · 02-06-2018 07:01 AM

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.....

**Beckett** · 02-06-2018 07:09 AM

Originally Posted by CazzT

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.

Objectively, this is good change for new players who want to experience these dungeons the way they were originally meant to be experienced, which was the one and only intent behind this change. There may be veteran players who want to speedrun, there may be alt characters who don't want to watch the cutscenes multiple times, and there may be brand new players with zero interest in the cutscenes. SE has made it clear that those players are not a priority. Their primary concern is only for players who do want to experience the full amount of content these dungeons offer, and this change makes it so that that is the default option (no more having to beg friends or PF strangers to help solve a problem you didn't even know existed).

This change will undoubtedly increase queue times, but that is not an objectively bad result for the issue that SE is trying to solve. If the future that you're predicting comes to pass, and queue times do increase to an unmanageable level, then SE will probably take another look at the issue, but to say definitively that it will happen is not objective at all.

**CazzT** · 02-06-2018 07:43 AM