Stop Gating Behind Older, Less Popular Questlines and Raids

[Saraide]

Agreed about seeing CT way too much. Which is why I feel they need to massively change how alliance roulette works. Make it more akin to how Expert works, where you have to unlock everything in it to be able to run it, based on character level. That way, as long as you are level 50-59, sure you will only get CT, but once you hit 60, you have to unlock the Mhach raids, same with 70, 80, and now 90. And change the item level requirements to be completely level based. No more queueing naked to get that one series, you will have equal chance to get any of the others.

Except you will never have an equal chance of seeing alliance raid because even with an expert roulette like restriction you still have a massive difference in how many people queue for CT raids. This works for expert because you only have 2 to 4 dungeons in rotation and they are all the same level. But cheesing (either by gear or by not having other alliance raids unlocked) is not the only thing that forces CT raids, far from it. It only takes a single person to force the roulette to give them players for any specific alliance raid but a going through the msq has a much much higher pull than any of the others. Mhach doesnt unlock anything after it, bozja is on life support after it's no longer the hot new relic so the ivalice raids have lost much of the pull they had during shadowbringers and nier also doesnt unlock any other content.

That doesnt mean I'm against preventing ilvl cheese, it's still against how the roulette is supposed to work but to think that this is the thing that makes you see much more CT raids than others will lead to massive disappointment in my expectation.

[Iscah]

Agreed about seeing CT way too much. Which is why I feel they need to massively change how alliance roulette works. Make it more akin to how Expert works, where you have to unlock everything in it to be able to run it, based on character level. That way, as long as you are level 50-59, sure you will only get CT, but once you hit 60, you have to unlock the Mhach raids, same with 70, 80, and now 90. And change the item level requirements to be completely level based. No more queueing naked to get that one series, you will have equal chance to get any of the others.

I would definitely like to see that happen, but I suspect the system may not be set up to handle it. I get the impression that they can't conditionally lock and unlock roulettes based on your current level/ilevel like that – you're either eligible for the whole thing or not. It may have been built for the game as it existed in ARR and they may not have had the foresight to future-proof it for higher level tiers.

If this is the case, it would be nice if they can rebuild it, but it's possible it's one of those very old core pieces of code they don't want to tinker with in case it breaks everything.

[VerdeLuck]

Bozja has multiple instances of this. If you unlock it and start completing the story, you're going to have trouble getting enough players to run Castrum in the Southern Front. Then after that Delubrum is another gate where no one plays it anymore and it's rare to get enough players to attempt it. After that there's also Dalriada. SE definitely needs to go back and touch up the entire Bozja section since there's rarely enough players who are around to complete some of these for newbies just trying to catch up.

[Avatre]

I've personally never much liked the Ivalice raids, but weren't they actually fairly well liked at the time?

Edit: I like the raids themselves, I just didn't like the story much.

The raids themselves have been vastly more accepted and enjoyed than pretty much any of the others. Not necessarily for the story, at least for most people, but for the actual design and mechanics involved. I still miss the week 1 release of Orbonne and the harsh check that was Orlandu, where many a run was squashed. Definitely made people actually think, and realize they can't get carried through everything.

[Youkulm]

Why is this even a thing? From what I gather the Return to Ivalice and associated Alliance Raids are among the least popular in the game. Why do I have to complete this line before I can start unlocking Bozja and resistance weapons? Is this Square's way of forcing players to partake in unpopular content? I could stomach doing the Crystal Tower stuff to progress ShB MSQ. But I really feel like I'm being punished for not being there to do Return to Ivalice when everyone else was.

Sorry, just had to rant a bit.

Just over all.. what?

Ivalice is one of the most popular 24 mans among everyone I know ( anecdotal, I know, but so is your claim. ). It had wonderful music and some of the most fun 24 man mechanics. Not sure what you're talking about as far as popular. Personally nothing will ever top the Ivalice raids for me but I know I'm biased as FFT is my favorite FF game.

Now if you mean its unpopular as in it take forever to pop? Yes 100%, that's because raid roulette needs to be fixed and they need to disallow cheesing the ilvl, but they haven't. If that's the case the problem here is a broken roulette not "gating content"

As for why...? Bozja is a part of Ivalice lore in FF14. Story Progression.

FF14 is a story based game, keeping content behind story is never going away.

[Osteichthyes]

It's on days like this that I'm kind of glad OCE is small, just people just throw up a PF and just unsync it for completion. Have the be on around the peak times though. OCE uses PF for really large amount, but DF does pop as well, just less frequently, because we know we don't have the population to do things like the other DCs. Maybe try a unsync'd PF if only completion is what you want. How knows, it might surprise you.

[Jennah]

Now, as long as they don't lock anything behind *BOZJA* (or Eureka) ... we good.

[myahele]

Now, as long as they don't lock anything behind *BOZJA* (or Eureka) ... we good.

Can you imagine if the next Matsuno project will require you to do the Ivalice raid on top of Bozja?

[Azuri]

Can you imagine if the next Matsuno project will require you to do the Ivalice raid on top of Bozja?

I hope Matsuno will never get another project. Cold reception of Bozja might ensure this. I don't care about XII in my XIV.

[Packetdancer]

I hope Matsuno will never get another project. Cold reception of Bozja might ensure this. I don't care about XII in my XIV.

But I want to go to Dalmasca! The tiny glimpse we got during one cutscene in the Bozja storyline only served to whet my appetite to actually go there!

More seriously, I actually do know a lot of folks who liked Bozja; being content with it, they didn't bother to post in the threads where people were complaining about Bozja. I get the impression that Bozja's reception wasn't as cold in the playerbase overall as some threads would suggest. (Which is always the case with a feature; the folks who are content with it are less likely to post than the ones who have complaints.)

However, the fact that we're seeing so many references to Corvos in the MSQ in general makes me think that any exploratory zone we get this expansion is likely to be Corvos, not Dalmasca. So I suspect those of us who do want to continue the Resistance storyline in Dalmasca and Bozja will be waiting at least an expansion for any opportunity to do so. (But hey, going to Corvos would also be great. Just please let me see the Anchorite if we do go there; I have lore theories about that thing.)