Please Reconsider MSQ Changes

[Spiriel_Basanda]

Lastly, I'm sure they are hoping this will help boost their MSQ skipping potions. I know people have been joking about that in this thread, but I don't doubt that was one of the positives in their mind for implementing the change in this way.

Now, I'm not saying that I don't think that this MSQ No skipping CS idea is dumb and it's just going to be a bad experience for everybody, but I don't believe this for a second. It's absurd. There's no way they seriously sat in their dev room thinking about ways to extort money from their players looking a little bit like this


and thought enraging their new playerbase was a good idea to make money. A player that finds out that they can't progress past a certain point is far more likely to throw up their hands and say "I quit" then "I'm just going to go throw more money to buy my way past this" and keep playing. They will get more money in the long term if they retain the players.

I more suspect that SE really, really doesn't want to turn it into a solo thing because it's far more epic in a big group scenario. Or at least, I imagine it was for the first few groups that did it when everyone wanted to read the story line. I'd imagine this is more of a last ditch effort to avoid turning it a solo experience while retaining the story the new players desire.

One thing though that I don't think people have considered. At least, I didn't see anyone in this thread suggest it. Look at the way they phrased it. "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." Perhaps this means you can't just press escape and tell it to skip anymore, but can still just mash buttons to get through the text and finish the cutscene. It really only prevents "skipping the cutscenes" if they block off the entrances to boss fights until everyone finishes. It'll take a little bit longer then it currently does if they don't block off the entrances to boss fights until everyone finishes it, but not by the 45 minutes-1 hour everyone is suggesting. Maybe everyone'll get a lucky break and the entrance doesn't get blocked off, eh? Okay it's unlikely that the barrier isn't up, but I can hope.

[Skivvy]

Snip

I'm not saying that I think this was their main/sole reason for pushing the change like this, simply that it was probably noted as a positive side-effect. XIV is a money grubber. Between the standard cash shop items, paid MSQ skip potions , paid retainers, etc, I'm really can't imagine this thought hadn't crossed their mind. :X

But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how this goes once the patch is live. Maybe, maaaaaaaybe they will be some additional rewards that make it more worthwhile of the time spent, but I'm not holding my breath :X

[Okamimaru]

They should remove all cutscenes from these dungeons and just have like a 2 hour long text speech from the scions detailing everything that happened inside... problem solved

[ToasterMan]

snip

SE is a corporation. What's a corporations main goal? Make a profit. I know the Dev team wouldn't just sit around and figure out how to get money out of the players, BUT there are people in corporate who DO sit around and try to figure out how to make more of a profit, and the Dev team has to answer to those people. This change probably wasn't all about making people buy potions, but to believe that potions had nothing to do with this decision is not only naive, but dangerous thinking.

[Akor]

Won't someone please think of the sprouts!

No bc "the cummunity deserved this."

SE is a corporation. What's a corporations main goal? Make a profit. I know the Dev team wouldn't just sit around and figure out how to get money out of the players, BUT there are people in corporate who DO sit around and try to figure out how to make more of a profit, and the Dev team has to answer to those people. This change probably wasn't all about making people buy potions, but to believe that potions had nothing to do with this decision is not only naive, but dangerous thinking.

Yea there was reason why they did it now after 4years of "pls fix this dungeon".

[Spiriel_Basanda]

You mean to tell me that the bean counters decided that the more likely to be profitable decision was the one that was likely to drive more players away, meaning they don't continue to pay their $13/mo? It's possible that some people pay for the jump potion, but I would predict that far more people would say "screw it unsubbing" then the ones that buy one, and that would lead to lost profits over a few months just for more in the now, I should think, but that's all I'll say on the matter anymore. I'm not going derail the thread with this.

Rabble rabble SE this is a terrible idea rabble rabble!

[Tempest222]

I think they will just end up changing it back to the way it was or thinking of some other solution, like making these solo duites. An increased reward of only 80 more poetics is really not going to cut it I think. Once they see that new players are having trouble getting passed this part of the msq because so few people are queueing for this roulette, they will be forced to fix it. I doubt they want to lose new players due to inability to progress in the msq due to queues that never pop or are potentially hours long.

[Slevin_Impudicus]

Hardcore raiders sell savage runs. Now anyone can sell a run. All it takes is patience and the right amount of gil.

[HyoMinPark]

Eh. All this means is new players will need to rely on their FC or party finder to do it. Not like it even was worth doing before. If they need to waste time on stupid stuff like bard perform and raid replay, and can't even make this into a solo instance, whatever.

A rare time when I actually agree with you, Riyah. At least partially.

The developers seem hellbent to spend tons of time and resources on Perform and implement this Duty Recorder feature that is immediately invalidated by other third-party recorders/streamers, but can't be bothered to do more than force everyone to sit through the cutscenes of Praetorium and Castrum. These two should have been a solo instance; they probably would have felt more epic that way.

I've seen the cutscenes. Yeah, they were in the innroom because I was advised beforehand that people would tell me to skip them (actually, they told me I could watch them and just enjoy them while they did stuff but I said I was fine with skipping), but I've seen them. I don't particularly want to be forced to watch them every time I want to run MSQ roulette.

I usually ran it on oddball DPS jobs or tank jobs that I wasn't comfortable with above Level 50, or to just get some poetics for whatever reason I needed them, and because the experience was actually really decent. Some of the runs were actually amusing; people joking around and emoting at each other. I've never seen players demanding people skip, personally. Most newbies they tell them to sit back and relax. Anecdotal, I know. And I know bad groups exist, but I don't see how this change is going to get rid of those bad groups. I think it's, overall, a fairly bad decision.

I probably will not run MSQ Roulette anymore. I'm sympathetic to the newbies. I really am. But I also have limited time that I can play now, what with school starting up again, and I just can't afford to spend 1-2 hours in a single instance when I have other things I want to try to get done.

[Sieben79]

One thing though that I don't think people have considered. At least, I didn't see anyone in this thread suggest it. Look at the way they phrased it. "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." Perhaps this means you can't just press escape and tell it to skip anymore, but can still just mash buttons to get through the text and finish the cutscene. It really only prevents "skipping the cutscenes" if they block off the entrances to boss fights until everyone finishes. It'll take a little bit longer then it currently does if they don't block off the entrances to boss fights until everyone finishes it, but not by the 45 minutes-1 hour everyone is suggesting. Maybe everyone'll get a lucky break and the entrance doesn't get blocked off, eh? Okay it's unlikely that the barrier isn't up, but I can hope.

Yep, can't skip cutscene if 15 second timer shows up .

Yay, what an experience!

Only really "hardcore" players would run this:

Castrum: cutscene, switch alarm off, cutscene, bigpull to boss room, cutscene, kill first boss, cutscene, enter vent, cutscene, then big pull til explosions, head to boss room, cutscene, kill second boss, cutscene....