The changes to Castrum and Praetorian are excessive and unnecessary

[Tsiron]

That's an issue with the balance more than the design, though...

[Jojoya]

Sorry to say that but Frankly I never felt like the old Castrum was any operation to disable anything. From my perspective when I ran it first all nuances it might have had were reduced to "run behind the pack and don't get left behind". Ineventible outcome when you make something into 8 man Run without any cap on equipment power. Everything that could have been was reduced to run, run, run and by the end of it I was confused and torn between "What the f*** just happened?" and "Wait that was it?". Ultimately it literally felt like "kill enemies until you're done" except not even challenging.

Paying attention to the cutscenes would give you a good idea of what was about to happen (we were following the plan Cid was making up as we went) though certainly I understand how chaotic the experience is the first couple of times through. Once you'd done it enough to know where the group would be rushing to next, it made it easier to follow the story elements.

The old version definitely had a feel of forcing our way through the Castrum to slowly disable the defenses. Now it feels more like "make a safe passage for Cid so he can blow a thing up". The way the original cutscenes were edited to try to tell the new story didn't really help.

[Jaquan]

Paying attention to the cutscenes would give you a good idea of what was about to happen (we were following the plan Cid was making up as we went) though certainly I understand how chaotic the experience is the first couple of times through. Once you'd done it enough to know where the group would be rushing to next, it made it easier to follow the story elements.

The old version definitely had a feel of forcing our way through the Castrum to slowly disable the defenses. Now it feels more like "make a safe passage for Cid so he can blow a thing up". The way the original cutscenes were edited to try to tell the new story didn't really help.

Oh I paid attention to the cutscenes. Shame they were happening when I was miles away from the objectives because I was left behind while 5-6 people who were there just rushed forward. The feeling was lost because the narrative and the gameplay didn't line up. Same deal with Prae because someone activated the elevator before I had chance to get in on the first clear. So yeah I've seen all the cool things my character was apparently doing with next to no context all the way up to Nero.

And to be frank after that first experience I never wanted to touch those again. (And in case of Castrum I never did) They were the worst experience I had up to that point and that's including Toto-Rak which is a slog even when you know where to go.

[Payadopa]

It's crazy how people will defend the most boring stuff if it nets them more EXP.

If an activity didn't give any EXP but was a lot of fun I'd still do it. But I'm weird like that.

[GeminiReed]

It's crazy how people will defend the most boring stuff if it nets them more EXP.

If an activity didn't give any EXP but was a lot of fun I'd still do it. But I'm weird like that.

It may come as a shocker to you but different people are different. The have different goals and have different likes and dislikes. If you're perfectly happy to chain run AV for the joy of it, rock on. I like it well enough especially with a group that can stomp it flat. But just because I like it it is not a "good enough" excuse for me to run it on a whim and certainly not on repeat. On the flip side Moogle Tomes can be a fantastic incentive if the catalog is good and I find the right group to run with.

Come to think of it there aren't any instances in this game I'd run just to run them. That doesn't mean I don't want to run them at all but I need a better excuse than "just because". A reasonable amount of XP tends to work but only if the conditions are right. The only instances I willing play support for were 8-man CM and Praetorium and all of the sub 50 dungeons.

I just did the new MSQ roulette on an alt and the "bonus" xp was absolute crap. I won't be touching that on any role unless I'm desperate for poetics and don't have access to a better source.