Duty Roulette : Extreme? Mentor?

[NymRey]

So this might be my opinion alone, but I feel a duty roulette for extreme trials and raids should exist. I realize the complexity that comes in actually completing raids with a bunch of people who are definitely unprepared because they don't know what trial they are getting...

I'm stemming this off of a bad 1st experience my friend has been having. He's recently been running through the game and I extended my sub to give him someone else to experience it with. We managed to get a Garuda extreme off. He enjoyed it a lot, looking up mechanics, having to work together and not mess up. However the same experience could not be said when we had to do titan. Titan is much more difficult, and long story short, we couldn't find a party after hours of searching. And when we do the duty roulette, it queues us up with nothing but mentors after a good 40 minutes. And just like that, they all leave instantly.

So here's my issue. We had to do it unsynced and basically roflstomp all these bosses that he looked up and was so eager to fight against. My friend was quite unhappy with that and wondered when he will get an authentic experience. It soured up my mood as well because these are all fights I experienced back in the day when people used to Q up for these on a regular.
I'm sure given enough time we might be able to form a party. Whether or not it stays through all the way of course is a different story. That being said, the party finder is something that my friend didn't even know existed. It makes me wonder if many beginners are the same. That coupled with the fact that mentor roulette is the solution for any content that isn't covered by the other roulette makes me wonder if there should be a solution for this.

Since mentor roulette gives 10 genesis and no mentor wants to do extremes, should there be an extreme roulette with appealing rewards that preserves the experience of those earlier raids along with the non high end stuff? Or maybe mentor roulette can give additional bonuses when being given extreme trials.

[Raldo]

"I want to do old content in a very niche way that won't attract very many people. Can you make a roulette for it?"
...and even if your request ever happens...
"Why isn't anyone queuing up for this roulette?"

Your only option for this sort of thing is to use the party finder, or to find an FC with enough bored people to do run some difficult-ish content for zero benefit.

It soured up my mood as well because these are all fights I experienced back in the day when people used to Q up for these on a regular.

Even back when this old content was relevant, it was still almost always using pre-formed parties, even before the party finder existed. So the timer didn't matter. So if someone's gear broke, you could re-enter with the same crew. So you could establish strategies before you entered. So you could set minimum limits on the iLv of the people entering. So you knew the people entering your duty actually wanted to do it, instead of potentially having them abandon immediately.

Using the duty finder negates all of these benefits. Regardless of how your suggestion might be implemented, you'd likely still have to deal with people abandoning if they got slotted into Ramuh EX or something difficult as they fished for Garuda EX for easier runs.


tl;dr: You're going to either need to setup a PF, make some like-minded friends, or get in a decently large FC with a fair number of bored people hanging around. There is nothing the developers could add that is any better than what is already on offer. Maybe start a linkshell? Shout in a highly-populated area and see if anyone's interested in joining a linkshell that might periodically run synched primals.


Other options available to you:
- Just run the Lv70 EX primals. That gives you a taste of EX primals at the level they were meant to be done.
- Try to duo (trio, quad, whatever) each EX primal unsynced. It's certainly not the same experience, but it can still be a challenge.

[NymRey]

I like the ideas. I do feel though that if the older extreme content is something people just plain don't want to do, they should at the very least exclude extremes from mentor roulette all together.

[Kalise]

I think the main issue with such a thing is trying to give out rewards that make people actually care to do it.

Like, as is, people generally don't want to do difficult content. As such, there would need to be substantial rewards given to entice people to even consider running an EX roulette, but then you face the issue of some people just insta-leaving if it's not one of the easier pieces of EX content.

Even with a roulette, it's not as if you'd really get the proper experience either. Due to it likely coming with the standard roulette level sync that lets people steamroll through and also the Echo buffs so people would just try and brute force it with the extra damage/healing buffs...

But if it could be balanced to be rewarding, then it could be interesting. Additional content to do that isn't annoying af like the MSQ roulette and its 5 eternities of cutscenes.... It would also be a nice way to get additional people queuing for EX content so that people who are farming for Ponies or trying to complete some older Relic Weapons get easier parties.

The biggest issue is just trying to figure out what rewards would work. Since, things like Poetics aren't highly valued, Mendacity/Genesis are obtained more easily via other means or if this roulette would be a really efficient way of capping them for the week you'd just see people queuing for it on Tuesday when the weekly reset happens and then no-one queuing for the rest of the week (Kind of like what happened in WoW with their LFR system, everyone who cared did it the same day the weekly reset happened and every other day it was pretty barren)

Since, while I'm the kind of person who likes tackling challenging content and having to pay attention to mechanics and use tactics, the vast majority of people would rather just stick to content that lets them just roll their face across their keyboard until they're handed all the loot and currency they could ever want...

[NymRey]

This is what I was thinking as well. If the only reason people would want to join roulette and such is the rewards, then providing an ample reward for such a roulette would get people to join. And then extreme content that isn't high end would be played.

That being said the whole difficulty thing is an issue too though. I can very much see people dipping if they see an extreme that tends to fail...

[RopeDrink]

they should at the very least exclude extremes from mentor roulette all together.

Why? That goes against the whole concept of mentor roulette - you know, mentors being rewarded for the likelihood of needing to mentor people through difficult/niche content that isn't as prevalent or replayed as standard dungeons/raids.

[Dmhlucky]

I personally think there should be some way to measure if someone was actually helpful in a DF roulette. Some of the "Mentors" don't do any mentoring, they are just rushing through to get their shiny. I've been in plenty of instances where I've explained a mechanic, or carried a group through a dungeon because they had no idea whats going on. I am sure i am not alone in this.

And as bad as this may sound, seeming selfless or whatever, i am not looking for a personal reward thing, but a reward in general to encourage others to actually give a crap.

A lot of your issue stems from people just wanting to complete something fast to claim their reward.

Maybe modifying the Ilevel Sync would benefit, although people would complain that it makes it an unnecessary challenge.

Sadly, never going to make everyone happy.

[Kalise]

A lot of your issue stems from people just wanting to complete something fast to claim their reward.

Thus is the nature of MMO's.

Where people only do content for rewards, never for the actual content.

Which means they want to do things as fast as possible, so they can spend their time getting more rewards...

As far as Mentoring goes, it's a little bit flawed in how easy it is to become a mentor as well as the rewards for it being good enough to entice anyone to do them (Rather than specifically people who wish to actually Mentor others)

[DrWho2010]

also how would you measure the mentor-ness of the mentor? someone could skew it so that they get a bad report when they actually did good, but someone was in a bad mood. how do you deal with stuff like that? maybe they have friends/bots padding them with good reviews?

[FFgame]

Tell your friend to stop crying and level up, next expansion is around the corner and no one will be running Stormblood soon.