Please equalize rewards between Castrum and Prae

[Seraphor]

Take out Ultima Weapon as a standalone trial, then Prae and Castrum should be a similar length.

[Seraphor]

They’ve already deleted both dungeons via balance changes and absurd ilvl in the roulette. They’re cutscene galleries.

If they want to award players xp merely for watching cutscenes while Netflix has their attention, then add an xp bonus in the daily challenge log for watching something in the neverending journey.

There’s no need to wait for 7 other people at all to watch a cutscene.

It doesn't exist to award exp for watching cutscenes.
It exists to fill queues so that newbies aren't waiting 3 days for the queue to fill.
The exp is the incentive.

[van_arn]

It doesn't exist to award exp for watching cutscenes.
It exists to fill queues so that newbies aren't waiting 3 days for the queue to fill.
The exp is the incentive.

naturally, deleting msq roulette means they need to correct their mistakes with these instances. They’ve already removed the fights, so let the cutscenes play back to back in a trust dungeon for new players.

[Vickii]

I mean, you don't HAVE to do it....


I'm all for advocating for change to make the final dungeons solo instances (they probably work better for new people that way), but acting like they are something you are forced to do and wanting them removed for that reason is just silly.

This. I stopped doing it and I feel great about it.

I didn’t ever ‘hate’ doing it but after seeing them both hundreds of times and knowing the lines off the top of my head I just decided to take a break from it and never went back.

It might be good, or in the case of Prae great XP, but there’s other ways to level and to get tomestones. Now I play to have fun.

[kidalutz]

You're never going to get them to let you skip cutscenes again.

[Halivel]

Simple request. Getting tired of 3/4 of the raid quitting when they see Castrum. Either fix it or get rid of Castrum.

It's done the way it is because of the time consumed to finish both of them. Praetorium is longer so it gives more exp, Castrum takes less so it gives less. I won't be against the rewards being even, but there's technically nothing to "fix" so I'm not sure they will do it. Shouldn't hurt if it happens, though, and also shouldn't be hard to do either , so at this point it's just the matter of the demand.

Another way to fix it all is to let us skip cutscenes.

Looking as you joined forum in 2019 I'm assuming you started playing not much earlier (can be wrong as somebody who joined forum more than a year after starting playing). Cutscenes were skippable in the past. This game's playerbase's toxic attitude towards new players became exactly the reason why it was changed and now they are unskippable. Thank the gang that was kicking players from dungeon if they wanted to watch cutscenes and kept saying "watch it in the inn" even though new players deserved to watch it right in the dungeon just as we did when the game came out.

The only thing that can change it is DevTeam expanding the Trust system to old expansions so new players could run said dungeons in Story Mode with NPCs at the pace they want. It can happen as, if I recall it correct, Yoshida did say they want to include old dungeons in Trust system as well, but I won't hold my hopes high on that happening in any foreseeable future.


Also, to clarify, the MSQ Roulette exists solely for seasoned players to help new players clear these instances so they could proceed with the story, because without it it took too much time for newbies to wait their queue. The reward for it (which was seriously upgraded with cutscenes becoming unskippable) is a compensation for the time you spend there. Same goes for Leveling and Allaince roulette as well, for example (sweet 5 hours queues to the Labyrinth on Tank flashbacks mmmm), and, to an extend, for all the other Roulettes. It's there to keep old content alive. You aren't forced to do them if you don't want to. If you need to farm your weekly tokens, running last patch dungeon two-three times will be faster.

[Packetdancer]

Looking as you joined forum in 2019 I'm assuming you started playing not much earlier (can be wrong as somebody who joined forum more than a year after starting playing).

*raises hand* I started in 2.0 -- actually I started in 1.0, but quit and then lost that account because it was tied to a dead email, so started over with 2.0 -- and only bothered to join the forum in like, late 2019.

Anyway...

Cutscenes were skippable in the past. This game's playerbase's toxic attitude towards new players became exactly the reason why it was changed and now they are unskippable. Thank the gang that was kicking players from dungeon if they wanted to watch cutscenes and kept saying "watch it in the inn" even though new players deserved to watch it right in the dungeon just as we did when the game came out.

I'll note that in addition, back in the day, the cutscenes had dialogue options; for instance, when Gaius asks "Tell me, for whom do you fight?" you got to actually choose what to say. (Which makes his response of "Hmph, how glib." to your silence in the current cutscene somewhat unintentionally hilarious.) So even if people were watching the cutscenes, they'd finish at different times. To add to this, for some reason (possibly because of that dialogue option), the Gaius elevator scene did not appear in the inn book at the time, so if you skipped it in the dungeon you would never see it.

So you'd either watch the scenes (and have people charging on ahead, leaving you all alone and confused when you finished) or you had to insta-skip the cutscenes to stick with everyone (thus being unclear what the actual ending of A Realm Reborn was)... or you had people who saw you were a first-timer and kicked you so they wouldn't have to wait.

That roulette is there not for the benefit of endgame players; it's for the benefit of new players going through that instance, to ensure they can fill out a party. The rewards for the roulette are not for running the instance, they're for making yourself available to fill the instances where needed. As such, that's why cutscenes are no longer skippable.

And this is also why every time someone suggests "the cutscenes should be skippable if no one is a first-timer", I wince; if that were the case, I absolutely believe people would see a first-timer bonus at the beginning and either quit (so they could rejoin a new instance later where there'd be no newbie), or if there was an obvious sprout, just kick them to get a replacement so they could skip all the cutscenes.

[van_arn]

*raises hand* I started in 2.0 -- actually I started in 1.0, but quit and then lost that account because it was tied to a dead email, so started over with 2.0 -- and only bothered to join the forum in like, late 2019.

Anyway...



I'll note that in addition, back in the day, the cutscenes had dialogue options; for instance, when Gaius asks "Tell me, for whom do you fight?" you got to actually choose what to say. (Which makes his response of "Hmph, how glib." to your silence in the current cutscene somewhat unintentionally hilarious.) So even if people were watching the cutscenes, they'd finish at different times. To add to this, for some reason (possibly because of that dialogue option), the Gaius elevator scene did not appear in the inn book at the time, so if you skipped it in the dungeon you would never see it.

So you'd either watch the scenes (and have people charging on ahead, leaving you all alone and confused when you finished) or you had to insta-skip the cutscenes to stick with everyone (thus being unclear what the actual ending of A Realm Reborn was)... or you had people who saw you were a first-timer and kicked you so they wouldn't have to wait.

That roulette is there not for the benefit of endgame players; it's for the benefit of new players going through that instance, to ensure they can fill out a party. The rewards for the roulette are not for running the instance, they're for making yourself available to fill the instances where needed. As such, that's why cutscenes are no longer skippable.

And this is also why every time someone suggests "the cutscenes should be skippable if no one is a first-timer", I wince; if that were the case, I absolutely believe people would see a first-timer bonus at the beginning and either quit (so they could rejoin a new instance later where there'd be no newbie), or if there was an obvious sprout, just kick them to get a replacement so they could skip all the cutscenes.

My issue is we've tried Square's hamfisted attempts to keep this self-admitted mistake alive without them doing what they actually need to do: don't require 8 people to run this.

If the cutscenes can be skipped, then new people get left behind. If the cutscenes can't be skipped, then people dodge to wherever they get the most XP-- and leave new people behind.

We're in a situation now where no matter who you are, if you're in Castrum/prae you're skipping the fights-- they've been nerfed into oblivion. Just take it a step further and make it a cutscene gallery to end ARR with some solo fights and be done with MSQ roulette entirely. Don't make new players wait at all to get their clear.

[Ultimatecalibur]

they've been nerfed into oblivion.

Not nerfed; just completely overgeared because there is no ilevel sync like LotA, ST and Camp Westwind. I'm now actually wondering what the time requirements would be like for both Prae and Castrum if they had ilevel syncs of say i70.

[van_arn]

Not nerfed; just completely overgeared because there is no ilevel sync like LotA, ST and Camp Westwind. I'm now actually wondering what the time requirements would be like for both Prae and Castrum if they had ilevel syncs of say i70.

Outcome is the same. Nerfed.

Whether this nerf was a direct change or a result of the ilvl overgearing is immaterial; they are nerfed to the point of irrelevance by the sync settings. They are cutscene galleries now, not dungeons.

Cutscene galleries shouldn't need 8 people. Square can do better.