Just some concerns about roulettes (read, rant)

[Padudu]

Try running CT since ARR almost daily/weekly and then get back to me. They were fun back then when mechanics still needed to be done, and even then some of them were being skipped by the end of ARR.

LOL okay I see your point and why you would want that, in that regards yeah I can get down with that suggestion. wish I could relate, but playing through ARR pre-quest culling made me almost quit like 9 times and by the time I reached CT I quit for real for a long while

[AnotherPerson]

Since the intent of the MSQ roulette is to have people fill out groups to help people needing the run for their MSQ, I'd love to see all dungeons, trials, and raids required to progress in the MSQ be moved to the MSQ roulette. As much as I appreciate the CT raids for their ease and general time vs. tome gain via a separate selection, we really do need variety in the MSQ stuff.

It would also be good to have each Leveling and MSQ roulette give normalized XP based on the level of the job going in. Every non-new player, not just Player In Need, should also get an XP bonus for their first run of the day. It's nice to be able to get extra XP and tomestones in the other roulette categories, but if the Leveling and MSQ roulettes were the best mode of XP gain I can only see this benefitting the entire player base.

Let all the other types of content; Alliance Raids, 50/60/70/80 dungeons, Normal Raids, etc stay in their respective roulette options with normalized XP gain relative to dungeons of the level of the job going in.

The intent of the MSQ roulette is to let people fill groups for the 8-man storyline dungeon because that's an unskippable 60 minute long dungeon, and not everyone wants to do that. The people who do will get a big bonus exp from completing the daily roulette and tomes for queueing for it. The intent of daily duty roulettes is to help facilitate MSQ progression overall.

So... yeah, the daily roulettes already do give normalized XP gain. They're just not meant to be spammed unless you just want a small incentive for doing them outside of the roulette itself for the role in need.

[Raoabolic]

These types of issues only occur in communities. No amount of dev intervention will stop certain region's players mentality of min maxxing outside of throwing more rewards ala irregular tombstones and even then, that's more of a stop gap rather than a solution since the majority of the content in the MSQ roulette can be cheesed. It's actually kind of depressing if you think too much about it.

[dspguy]

Simple solution for people abandoning Castrum:

Mark it as "reward already received" for leaving any roulette.

Problem solved. You get what you get.

[Kaurhz]

Simple solution for people abandoning Castrum:

Mark it as "reward already received" for leaving any roulette.

Problem solved. You get what you get.

They should just do this with every instance of someone leaving a roulette.

[Xuled]

Topics been beat to death. People including myself will game the system for Prae if I need XP and if I don’t then I don’t run MSQ roulette.

As for harsher penalties, no thanks. If you make it “reward already received” you’ll most likely see an exodus of players doing roulettes. If you give everyone who leaves a 30min penalty, you’ll also see fewer and fewer people queuing in DF.

Further, would it apply if you get kicked? If so, you’ve opened it up to abuse from players (let’s be real, it would be). By the comments in this thread, it should apply.

[Kaurhz]

Topics been beat to death. People including myself will game the system for Prae if I need XP and if I don’t then I don’t run MSQ roulette.

As for harsher penalties, no thanks. If you make it “reward already received” you’ll most likely see an exodus of players doing roulettes. If you give everyone who leaves a 30min penalty, you’ll also see fewer and fewer people queuing in DF.

Further, would it apply if you get kicked? If so, you’ve opened it up to abuse from players (let’s be real, it would be). By the comments in this thread, it should apply.

Getting kicked for a myriad of reasons including that of AFK, harassment, or cheating is entirely different from you leaving wilfully because you're upset that you didn't get the duty you wanted in a roulette. By all means carry on but if you eventually get reported enough for the behaviour and if a GM warns you for the behaviour then don't come making a thread on the OF or on Reddit asking why you were banned and playing cry the wolf.

Furthermore, if you think this is abusable to where you're more than willing to sit there and potentially hold an entire instance of players hostage then to be frank you should absolutely be reported and absolutely deserve the punishment associated with such.

Granted, I would stand to argue the number of people that routinely engage in this behaviour would arguably be in the minority (be it with holding an entire instance hostage, or leaving when you don't get what you want) - But that's besides the point. It's reprehensible and should not be a behaviour that is enabled.

[Denji]

Hot take but I feel abandoning duties should have even more severe penalties than they already do.

The point of the bonus for doing roulettes is exactly that - a bonus. It isn't an obligated gift for logging in, you don't deserve it just for doing it. By doing a roulette you agree to do whatever is handed to you AND are given a reward for doing so. If you don't want to do a a particular dungeon then you can queue normally, there's nothing stopping you.

My personal suggestion is that if you abandon a roulette duty within the first 15 minutes you should lose the ability to get the bonus for that particular rou for the rest of the day until the reset. Forfeit the dungeon? Forfeit the bonus. Simple as that.

[KuroMaboroshi]

Most people will always want to optimise rewards, whether they are doing it actively or without noticing. It's only natural, as we all have finite time in our day and in our lives.
Roulettes in particular are prone to falling victim to this, since that's their whole point: Do old content that probably isn't very interesting to you, and get an increased rewards for doing so.

Now, you can express the efficiency of every piece of content as a function of reward value divided by effort.
Effort itself is usually composed of both involvment, as in "how much do I have to do to clear this" and the time investment. The latter is not just the flat duration of the content, but also affected by whether you can do other things during the content. Basically, it's "time I lose doing this content".

This is where content differs widely, and since rewards don't scale to it, there is always an optimal way to go about farming your rewards. Praetorium takes longer than Castrum Meridianum, but has way lower effort required, even though it takes longer. On top of it, there's somewhat better rewards. People "lose" less time during Praetorium and get higher rewards, slanting the "efficiency" heavily in favour of it.

Alliance raids have the same issue: You will get the same rewards, but Crystal Tower raids can be finished much faster and more reliable than the others, so there is a clear incentive to do them instead (on top of wanting to avoid any reminder of the NieR raids existing). This second example also shows part of the problem as to why it is so difficult for Square to address this issue in a way that doesn't feel like selectively punishing players: They don't have too much influence on the "effort" part of the function.


There is the flat "time to clear", which can very widely depending on whether people are properly geared, using their correct rotations, and so on. This is also affected by whether the content is current or old, as with old content you can presume a higher number of players to be at maximum itemLevel for that content due to synching down from higher current gear. The older the content in question, the higher also the chance that a majority of people will have already done this content, making it much more likely that you can get a fast and clean clear. The best example of this is probably content like Delubrum Reginae Normal, where runs done by an organised, properly prepared party range around the 15 minute mark, while those unprepared or undergeared may well take up to an hour.
Now, of course Square Enix could balance rewards around the time it takes to clear, scaling them dynamically. But then, it becomes very likely someone will crunch those exact numbers and figure out new ways to break that algorithm. Let's say you scaled the amount of Exp awarded to the time you spent in the instance: Suddenly you have an incentive to clear up to the final boss of a dungeon, then sit there until the instance is almost timed out, wiggling your mouse every 5 minutes while doing something else, before killing the boss at the last minute for "optimal" rewards.
The same principle applies to all the other factors as well, and some, like skill, are very difficult to measure to begin with.

Trying to "fix" roulettes against exploitation for optimisation of rewards is a noble idea, but it's also a losing battle, as in order to fix it you need to introduce more systems that in turn would be exploited.

What about a "brute force" method then, such as forcing people of a certain level to queue with a certain iLevel of gear against the Alliance raid queue optimisation or locking people out of the roulette for that day if they abandon? In the former case, we already see what would happen when we look at Castrum Meridianum: People will try to queue and fish for something they want, otherwise leave. And if leaving locks them out of the roulette for that day, they'll just calculate that into their reward/effort calculation. You're only always gonna shift where that tradeoff math happens, no matter what you do, unless you were to literally force people to keep playing somehow.