Crystal tower raid fights could use a rework

[Avoidy]

Scale it so the mechanics actually matter, and then fix the ilvl cheese so I don't get it every goddamned day in roulettes. As it stands, people don't pay attention to CT because they don't really have to. You can just netflix and win. Even if CT had the most interesting mechanics in the world, being synced down to level 50 will make it a drag on most of the jobs in this game, since they don't feel like themselves until at least 70. It's seriously so bad. You can't even practice your rotation because most of it doesn't exist yet.

I'm just ranting at this point, but back when I did roulettes often, I'd have paid an extra 5 dollars a month to just avoid all ARR content.

[Iscah]

To be fair, there are a considerable amount of veteran players that still don't understand the purpose of the iron giants in the behemoth fight. I've seen tanks use invuln and step away from the comets, because the alliance itself refused to take down the giants. It's possible they don't know to or don't care if 1/3 of the people die. I've also seen iron giants not tanked.

From my experience (mostly on Elemental DC) people don't attack the giant; a tank just pulls it away from the group. For a long time I was under the impression that if you did put the effort into defeating it, another one simply spawned right away, but that may be to do with just how quickly the boss goes down.

I'm someone who advocates for them treating Alliance Roulette the same as Expert Roulette, where in order to access it you have to have all things contained within not only unlocked, but cleared at least one. Remove the ability to ilevel cheese it, and then it would be a true roulette and not CT roulette.

The problem there is that if people had to unlock everything, then the only people eligible for the roulette at all would be level 90 and have finished MSQ to the point of unlocking Aglaia.

I don't think the current system can handle locking people out at different extents of duties unlocked and/or appropriate ilevel accordingly, but I think if it is possible to overhaul that system then they should do so. I would rate it ahead of inventory fixes. They built the system for a game where endgame was at 50 and I don't think they put much consideration into how it would scale in expansions.

[Avatre]

The problem there is that if people had to unlock everything, then the only people eligible for the roulette at all would be level 90 and have finished MSQ to the point of unlocking Aglaia.

I don't think the current system can handle locking people out at different extents of duties unlocked and/or appropriate ilevel accordingly, but I think if it is possible to overhaul that system then they should do so. I would rate it ahead of inventory fixes. They built the system for a game where endgame was at 50 and I don't think they put much consideration into how it would scale in expansions.

In hindsight, I should have said similar, and not the same. Make it so that based on your level, so 50-59 you only need CT, then 60-69 need Mhach as well, 70-70 Ivalice, 80-89 Nier, and then 90 the current series. If they can do that, while also making it so that the ilevel cheese doesn't work, then it would be better and not "sleep roulette"

[Packetdancer]

In hindsight, I should have said similar, and not the same. Make it so that based on your level, so 50-59 you only need CT, then 60-69 need Mhach as well, 70-70 Ivalice, 80-89 Nier, and then 90 the current series. If they can do that, while also making it so that the ilevel cheese doesn't work, then it would be better and not "sleep roulette"

I just tend to think that queuing for Alliance Roulette should require me to be in gear of sufficient ilevel for at least the the first of the highest-level alliance raid series I've unlocked that I could do on the job I'm queuing as. So if I queue in on a level 73 job and have the Ivalice raids unlocked, I should have to be in sufficient gear to be placed in Rabanastre, otherwise it says I don't meet the ilevel check for the roulette.

The Crystal Tower raids are always going to dominate the roulette, there's nothing we can do about that. Everyone must do them to continue on to Heavensward these days, meaning everyone has CT unlocked. The Mhachi raids at level 60 are not required content for anything, so even free trial users don't always unlock them. The level 70 Ivalice raids are required for Bozja, but free trial users can't unlock them (as they can't go past Heavensward). The level 80 YoRHa raids are not required by anything; I know people at endgame who have not unlocked them. Etc.

This is a recipe for a good chunk of the playerbase -- especially free trial players -- to only have Crystal Tower unlocked, meaning they can't get anything else in roulette. The fact that you also need to run the CT raids for Shadowbringers relics did not help things, as people would sometimes queue for them directly as well.

I'm not sure it should force people to unlock later alliance raids to do the roulette -- I'm of two minds about that. But demonstrably the roulette isn't quite working. The roulette is meant to give you XP and/or tomes in exchange for "put me where I need to be to keep the queues moving", but people who queue deliberately and specifically for the Ivalice raids can wait an hour or more for the queue to pop, especially if they're on tank. Meanwhile, there are people who can get the Ivalice raids (in terms of having them unlocked and being of sufficient level) but who deliberately exclude themselves from the selection (via ilevel cheese).

Now, we can't really know for sure if ilevel cheese makes the situation worse. There's many algorithms to handle queues, and we don't know which SQEX uses, and given the way CT is going to naturally be the most common raid series anyway, some of those algorithms would funnel people towards the CT raids so readily that the ilevel cheese would be basically meaningless noise within the statistics. And some, of course, would absolutely be affected by ilevel cheese.

But even if we can't say if ilevel cheese makes the situation worse, we can absolutely know that it does not make the roulette work better (or, y'know, at least "more like intended").

[Cach]

The objective should be to make the raids take the same time than the rest, this will discourage the ilvl cheese.
Making iLvl more strict and/or redesigning some fights should do the trick.

As far as new players go... dunno, I'm against singelplayerizing the mmo too much. It took me a while to get over my fear of doing raids, but I really like it now.

One of the things I liked about Aglaia's first days was that it was hard enough to make half the raid constantly die, but easy enough that the more experienced half could drag the others kicking and screaming to the finish line. Perfect tuning if you ask me, lol.

[xbahax92]

Its time to turn them into solo dungeons, preferbly with the scions. Time to move on from CT roulettes into Void Ark ones!