Roulette Exploits

[TaleraRistain]

I'm not denying that ilevel cheese happens because it does. But punishing everyone doing the roulette for the sins of a few by doing things like forcing them to unlock optional content isn't the way to go. Maybe the ilevel idea could work, assuming it's not going to negatively affect people who *aren't* ilevel cheesing.

Experience wise, I'm in the camp with those who aren't seeing an effect that much. When I get CT, there's a new person. When I get Orbonne like I have a lot lately, there's a new person. These are both raid series that are connected to some further story so it makes sense they will show up more. I also get Nier a lot and that's the one I i wish I could block. I hate those raids as much as others here hate seeing CT.

[Moonlite]

How many times have people gotten a CT raid and not seen the notification for new person? Then take into consideration other players levels. I would like to see my WT raid in the roulette. The rewards aren't really worth queing when you hit 90. But not going to get pouty about it being new people and CT.



Also SE needs to balance the roulette better. While individual encounters can differ. The overall length should not fluctuate more then 5ish mins. So if same group runs every raid if the fastest is 15 mins the slowest should be 20 mins. These are design issues. Not player issues. But if the longest takes 30 with all the same players. That is seriously broken double the time for same content. If you argue that it should be harder. It should be separate then.

[Rowde]

snip

Nope.

Considering that when new alliance raids are relevant, I have zero issues queuing for them directly. I don't think the loss of players who have ignored completing all the other alliance raids thus far from the potential pool of players queuing for alliance roulette is going to be a big loss. I'd rather have the roulette feel like it has 12 options instead of 3.

I also think it's better to have an additional incentive to do the side content versus a handout gimme roulette that can be cheesed down to only 3 options.

Not just to prevent ilvl exploit, but also for their continuing narrative.
Keep in mind, CT was optional for most of the life of this game. It was retroactively made mandatory upon the release of patch 5.3
While the other 3 existing raid series are still entirely optional... Return to Ivalice has to be completed to access further optional content, the Save the Queen content.

While Yorha will probably always exist in a vacuum, the Void Ark series (along with the ShB Role Quests) could become necessary reading if they want to explore the 13th in future expansions. So why not gently encourage the completion of the alliance raids now with gating roulette access rather than suddenly forcing player completion at a later date to progress MSQ? There will still be other ways to level for those that really don't have any interest in larger scale content outside of an easy roulette for experience points.

[Avatre]

I wasn't presenting them as options, I think both things need to be implemented. A would ensure that players that want to participate in the roulette HAVE to eventually complete all the available alliance raids to continue participating in the roulette. B is an attempt to prevent ilvl exploits by higher level players to force participation in lower level raids in the roulette.

That's a valid point. I hope they do something like that since getting those brain dead raids is very boring.

[Saraide]

How many times have people gotten a CT raid and not seen the notification for new person? Then take into consideration other players levels. I would like to see my WT raid in the roulette. The rewards aren't really worth queing when you hit 90. But not going to get pouty about it being new people and CT.



Also SE needs to balance the roulette better. While individual encounters can differ. The overall length should not fluctuate more then 5ish mins. So if same group runs every raid if the fastest is 15 mins the slowest should be 20 mins. These are design issues. Not player issues. But if the longest takes 30 with all the same players. That is seriously broken double the time for same content. If you argue that it should be harder. It should be separate then.

I've seen rarely it happen without a new player message. That's not the only legit thing forcing a CT raid however. Below level 60, others not unlocked or trying to farm shb relic stuff will also do it. It's not really feasable to prove any CT run was forced by only ilvl cheese and nothing else.

[Iscah]

If the roulettes can't be locked or given different ilevel requirements dynamically, perhaps an option would be to have separate roulettes at different levels and limit the scaling of the rewards.

e.g. There would be a "Level 50 Alliance Roulette" with an entry requirement of i90, that would give useful EXP while you're in the 50-59 range but capped at that point. Then to keep getting decent EXP you have to move up to the Level 60 roulette which includes both the 50 and 60 roulettes and a requirement of i230 (or whatever Dun Scaith is).

Perhaps only the high-level roulette options would drop endgame tomes, and the others would be poetics only.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Then lock in the gear you que with so you can’t switch back to your highest one when it pops.

Also easily bypassed. Just buy an ilvl 70 set off the mb so you're guaranteed to get Syrcus/Labs, and you'll look normal. 99% of people don't check for gear anyway, and if someone does, you can just not say anything or just say 'best I had on me'. Nothing they can do about it since it's not a GM'able offense and good luck kicking them once that first chest is open and everyone just wants to get out of there ASAP.

The only thing your solution accomplishes is now rather than bringing their best gear, you have effectively punished the remaining players by forcing the run to take longer than it could have, while giving zero punishment to the person you wanted to target.

Not going to lie, why does doing just Crystal Tower unlock the entire Roulette? Just like doing only Fist of the Father in Normal Raids unlocks the entire Roulette too. It's... not much of a roulette when there's only one option.

Because newer players want/need access to the roulettes too? It ain't rocket science. If requiring more than CT was mandatory for the Alliance roulette, you're basically saying that ARR players don't have the right to access the roulette until they're all the way done with HW at the absolute minimum. It would also effectively hold the roulette hostage if someone really doesn't want to unlock the other raids for various reasons other than just wanting an easier alliance raid queue. People were already annoyed by CT being mandatory for MSQ.

If you're afraid of getting a challenging alliance raid then don't queue for the roulette. Period. Being able to force 23 other people into a lvl 50 raid is a loophole (exploit) in the roulette system, and has a negative effect on people who want to enjoy a variety of raids. If the exploit gets patched and forces people like you out of the alliance roulette, then that's just side bonus in my view.

You do realize that the people intentionally lowering their gear are likely one of the lesser issues of why you're getting CT correct?

-CT is the only instance required by MSQ. So anyone hard queueing it (which will be many times more magnitudes than people hard queueing the other raids) will automatically drag all 23 other players with them to CT.
-Any single person not level 60+ will automatically drag the other 23 people with them to CT.
-Anyone who doesn't have the other raids unlocked will automatically drag the other 23 people with them to CT.

I guarantee, you could remove this exploit and over 80% of your runs will still be CT purely for the reasons above. The raid has so many biases skewed towards it that focusing on people lowering their ilvl is wasting your energy when its merely a drop in the pond compared to how many other ways the roulette is biased to push you towards it.

Then there's just the logistical problem of the roulette itself that drives those people to unequip gear in the first place: the hugely in-proportionate rewards vs time spent for CT vs the other raids. CT offers the exact same rewards as getting Dun Scaith, Orbonne or Tower but at a fraction of the time spent, and this is a hugely glaring flaw. Even if you force ilvl checks based on your level, I have a feeling the only reality you're going to create is similar to castrum, where upon being presented with an unfavorable option, many of these same players who already unequip will opt to simply quit and try again in 30mins, which won't be helpful for anyone actually trying to do the instance if its late at night or a bad timeframe and the person(s) who leaves are crucial roles.

The truly best option is to repurpose the soon to be vacant MSQ roulette as a CT roulette, give it the same rewards as current alliance, and then move to buff alliance raid's rewards to entice people to go for it on top of CT roulette each day. Then everyone wins without having to do stupid draconian rules for the roulette.

[Rhysati]

There isn't an exploit here. For the longest time I only had the first two crystal towers unlocked on my character so if I went into alliance raid, I cannot possibly get anything else. There is likely a HUGE amount of the player base who haven't unlocked anything other than what they have had to in order to progress past story content. Mainly because there is never a need or even any indication given to a player that the other alliance raids are even options to unlock.

If you are going for one of the "higher level" ones, then you're going to wait a lot longer simply because you need enough people who have it unlocked who haven't already been pulled into a lower level one with people who only have those unlocked.

[Limecat]

See now, I want a way to do this in reverse as well as narrow it down so I never get anything from normal raid roulette besides delta or sigmascape 1-3.

[Izar_Chillen]

There isn't an exploit here. For the longest time I only had the first two crystal towers unlocked on my character so if I went into alliance raid, I cannot possibly get anything else. There is likely a HUGE amount of the player base who haven't unlocked anything other than what they have had to in order to progress past story content. Mainly because there is never a need or even any indication given to a player that the other alliance raids are even options to unlock.

If you are going for one of the "higher level" ones, then you're going to wait a lot longer simply because you need enough people who have it unlocked who haven't already been pulled into a lower level one with people who only have those unlocked.

The way around that , which has already been suggested is that once you reach 60/70/80/90 your raid roulette daily task, becomes locked again (like expert does) until you unlock and finish the alliance raid for that level tier/expansion completely.