Praetorium - Worst Experience Ever

[Esmoire]

In my opinion it's one of the most embarrassing parts of FFXIV. The last two dungeons should just be solo duties with AI allies; the last fight with Ultima can be made into a trial that is a step below the ex version in difficulty. This should have been done years ago rather than a series of bandaid fixes that ultimately end up waving a huge extrinsic reward to get people to do something they know isn't fun.

Sorry you had that experience. I agree with you that's it's really awful. Going through that followed by the atrocious early 2.X experience almost had me quit the game.

[Shougun]

In my opinion it's one of the most embarrassing parts of FFXIV. The last two dungeons should just be solo duties with AI allies; the last fight with Ultima can be made into a trial that is a step below the ex version in difficulty. This should have been done years ago rather than a series of bandaid fixes that ultimately end up waving a huge extrinsic reward to get people to do something they know isn't fun.

Sorry you had that experience. I agree with you that's it's really awful. Going through that followed by the atrocious early 2.X experience almost had me quit the game.

When someone said 'but what can be done?' I just thought this too. I personally liked doing them for the big exp, pulling /everything/ ever in big wall to wall pulls (if healer gives consent, and party doesn't seem afraid) because it's hilarious looking and some of the biggest balls of trash you'll see in the game, and seeing new players (telling them about buttons and following as it makes sense), but honestly it might be potentially more fun, for new players, these days with just a good cast of trust AI. It might also be an excuse to revamp squadron content, mixing in some trust elements, and making the content have a more settled future- which could be a nice happy bonus. Cid on the radio guiding you as the crew quickly take down the base, occasionally jumping in as a trust ally.

[Enla]

If it helps those are literally the only two dungeons that do that, because SE caught so much flack back when they first came out and in the intervening years that they never attempted something so ridiculous again. So going forward you should be safe to enjoy the story without the actual content being skipped.

[AduroT]

They at least need to change those two teleports in Prae to require a key that drops from the last killed trash mob so you can’t just skip all of them. That’s the biggest new player trap right there.

[LaylaTsarra]

They at least need to change those two teleports in Prae to require a key that drops from the last killed trash mob so you can’t just skip all of them. That’s the biggest new player trap right there.

That would fix most of it and honestly it wouldn't take much longer to actually kill those mobs instead of by passing them. Sounds like a pretty easy dev fix to me.

[KageTokage]

Praetorium really is just an artifact of poor design that only got a couple band-aid fixes applied to it to make it slightly tolerable for new players. Ideally, it would've been better off turned into a solo duty with how cutscene heavy it is, perhaps with the actual players replaced by a squad of NPCs from your respective Grand Company.

I did it before the era of the MSQ roulette improvements (But before the forced cutscenes) so I was lucky that people actually waited for me to watch everything.

[Refth]

Think of it as a rite of passage for your (hopefully) long journey ahead in FFXIV.

Everybody has a similar experience when running Prae for the first time. It gets much better.

[kelevra13]

If you are one of the people who blitz through content when new players are in the party, without a care for their experience, you are ruining that experience. And if support cannot help roll me back, I will not be continuing my sub.

I was one of the new players that just followed everyone that blitz through this dungeon. I did not read or watch anything before Castra and Praetorium, but I just followed how everyone else in the party moved and stopped and fought when they did. The cutscenes are unskippable, so the the party would chat during them. It was fun. I told them I was new, and they said welcome to cutscene hell. They also told me to enjoy and not to rush the story.

I'm sorry to here that you had a bad time. However, most if not all the players that have gone through these two rush them because of how long they are. There are tons of unskippable cutscenes, and these players probably want to get the most out of their free time. They may have other things to do outside the game. In other instances, in my experience at least, the rest of the party waits until new players finish watching the cutscenes before engaging.

As stated by the previous posts, find a party or an FC and tell them how you'd want to play it out. Because yeah, that's Praetorium, and SE probably won't do anything more about it.

[LalaRu]

Just to add, today you are asked to teleport to the fight, so you cannot be so much lost in the place, even if you forget to get the magitek key you still can tag along.

Maybe OP wanted do fights as they are "real" ones, but current IL won't allow it, it needs be dealt with it. Maybe a FC run on "minimum il" may satisfy that need.

And yes, SE learnt from that and all future things have a "story mode" and a "pro mode" version of it, so you are safe from that point onward.

[StriderShinryu]

Not too sure what to say as, as some of the others have said, it actually used to be a lot worse. You will be able to run it again any time you want because of the XP boost older players get for running it daily, but that also means you'll always be doing it with others who have done it 10s or 100s of times. And, even if you end up with a good group, yeah, there's no way to get that first experience back.

I guess the only thing I can suggest is if you're in a Free Company/Guild to ask others there to run it with you. Tell them what you just posted here and see if they want to do it as a slower run.

It would be nice if they did a "solo" version of these instances for the early game rework that they're doing but I'm sure if they were going to we'd already know about it.