The changes to Castrum and Praetorian are excessive and unnecessary

[DPZ2]

I was curious to learn that I should have been getting 17 million XP as a level 80 Gunbreaker in Praetorium yesterday, rather than the 1.7 million XP I actually received. OP is exaggerating greatly about that 9/10th XP earned, especially given the great XP leveling reduction in Endwalker. Getting 1/3 of a level's worth of XP from the instance still makes it worthwhile.

The mechanics certainly improved, the boss fights are more interesting, and Praetorium took 30 minutes to complete with cut scenes.

This was always the ultimate set of fights for ARR 2.0. I was impressed back then, and a bit ticked off that the attitude players ran with was 'hurry, hurry, skip cut scenes, watch 'em later so I can get my XP and get out of here'.

[syldon]

I am talking to more people with MS randoms than ever before. Which may fade with time I know. AFKers are more of a burden as some people are still thinking they can get away with it.

I haven't done a castrum 2nd half yet so cannot use that for reference, but there is a huge disparity between prae 1 against castrum 1 and prae 2. You get the same amount of exp where as you have to watch a huge amount more cutscenes. So Prae 1 is taking near 30 minutes due to unskippable cutscenes against 16 minutes on the other 2. Both give the same exp.

I will bail every time on Prae 1 from now on. Unless there is a dramatic increase in xp gain.

I totally get that some want to follow the story as they are going along. I don't mind waiting for those. But when the whole group just wants to move on then this should be an option. Keep a vote hidden same as the vote to remove a bad player. I don't think it is good to make it visible with who is holding the group back, because they want to watch what they have paid for. But when the whole group doesn't want to watch these cutscenes, then it makes no sense just annoying people. This feels like blizzard stunts to extend content for no reason.