Let's talk about Alliance roulette and ilvl cheese for a sec.

[Helbya]

There is a point of contention in the community regarding ilvl cheese in roulettes, particularly Alliance. Some people openly partake, some go in discreetly, and many people oppose ilvl cheesing.

ilvl cheesing a roulette involves removing gear for a roulette to limit which duties may appear in the roulette, This ensures a player is able to receive the roulette bonus while keeping them out of 'difficult' or lengthy duties. By lowering item level below 90 a player can enter the Alliance Roulette with a level 90 character to ensure they receive 120 AstroTomes and 50 Causality Tomes while they are technically only eligible for Labyrinth of The Ancients and Syrcus Tower, even though they may have every alliance raid unlocked and multiple parties trying to fill for those duties. Or take advantage of the beefy exp bonus while levelling without really playing their class. I'll admit, I did this too in the past while levelling classes I did not have the courage to actually play the class I was levelling but seeing it from the other side; it was detrimental to my play. I missed out on relevant exp and didn't push myself to actually learn the class I was playing.

Most of the time we can tell this is happening when players load into a duty and we see their health jump up from ~50% once they put their gear back on.
To this I would suggest a change to the Roulette system, to better influence players to make full use of the system. The roulettes are there to help players fill parties and attempt the various duties in FFXIV, this is achieved by players entering roulettes with the most duties available to them, so entering the roulette with restrictions on duties is counterproductive. I say we tune the roulette bonus to match the number of duties available. Tuning the bonus tomes/exp to the item level at time of queuing for a roulette would entice players to enter with the highest available item level and thus keep the largest number of duties available. It does not need to be a variable gradient, as there are clear ilvl thresholds for each set of raids, but restricting the number of Astronomy tomes to 40 for ilvl 90, 60 for ilvl 235, 80 for ilvl 365, and 100 for ilvl 495 encourages people to make themselves available to the most alliance raids. An ilvl above the 565 needed for Aglaia awarding the full 120 Astronomy tomes. The same can be done for Causality tomes and Bonus Exp.

This behavior of ilvl cheesing is problematic when it become widespread. If there are ten players registered in queue with ilvl 80~90 then the roulette is going to try to create and fill a party for a CT raid, while twenty other players queued up for various other raids will sit lower on the priority list because each of their parties has one to two players. Just last night a player had to ask the novice network for help as they were waiting 70 minutes to enter Rabanastre.

[Raraka]

Currently, you have a choise between:

A) Dont iLvL cheese and get a long alliance for not so much exp, but have somewhat engaging content

B) Cheese and go to a 20 minute corridor where you can press like 4 buttons, AND get the same Exp as above

While a lot of people will prefer A, it takes just 1 person picking B to drag a light party into Crystal tower

At this point I will take any of the solutions people have proposed the last few months:

- Make the roulette use your highest iLvL equippable for your current class (So if you unequip, it still considers your max iLvL)

- Buff the exp depending on how long the duty is, 40 minutes to 1 hour alliances going as up as to an entire level of exp

- Move CT to the MSQ roulette

- Make a separate roulette for non-CT alliances

Regardless of the solution, people are either doing Alliance roulette for Crystal tower, or avoiding it because they know its a 90% chance to crystal tower, and something has to be done about it

[Jeeqbit]

Regardless of if people do this, Crystal Tower would still come up very frequently.

Since I don't want to keep repeating myself, I just recommend watching this video to understand how we would get Crystal Tower a lot even if nobody did this https://youtu.be/RCoooKmF6NU?t=760

[Ranaku]

Already talked about it a lot, look up some of these threads. No need to dig that topic up again cause nothing will change.

[Renalt]

I just don't do Alliance Roulette anymore. If I want a better Alliance Raid I just hard queue for the one I want.

[Avatre]

I just don't do Alliance Roulette anymore. If I want a better Alliance Raid I just hard queue for the one I want.

That's how I normally do it...but getting the tomestone bonus for getting all the EW relics is nice. Even if I do end up jumping ship if it's any of the CT series(happened 3x yesterday, before I finally got Puppet's Bunker - good thing I still have my FC house I'm decorating to work on).

[Cincierta]

I've been queuing the 80 raids just so people get a break from CT. A good chunk of the time some people who wanted brain-dead content will eat the penalty at the start.

[RyuDragnier]

Regardless of if people do this, Crystal Tower would still come up very frequently.

Since I don't want to keep repeating myself, I just recommend watching this video to understand how we would get Crystal Tower a lot even if nobody did this https://youtu.be/RCoooKmF6NU?t=760

Here's the thing, without ilevel cheese, people would be fine with getting CT raids because we know nobody is gaming the system to get them, and thus the people entering it actually need them. I get irritated as hell when I see CT raids, but the second I see the bonus for a new player, I cope with it because I know I'm helping somebody new through it. If I don't see that, I'm automatically assuming somebody cheesed to get them. Yes, I know relics use these constantly, but it's far more likely to believe somebody is actually in need of the place if there's no way to game what you're getting. Until then, guilty until proven innocent.

[Midareyukki]

Here's the thing, without ilevel cheese, people would be fine with getting CT raids because we know nobody is gaming the system to get them, and thus the people entering it actually need them. I get irritated as hell when I see CT raids, but the second I see the bonus for a new player, I cope with it because I know I'm helping somebody new through it. If I don't see that, I'm automatically assuming somebody cheesed to get them. Yes, I know relics use these constantly, but it's far more likely to believe somebody is actually in need of the place if there's no way to game what you're getting. Until then, guilty until proven innocent.

Exactly. I don't mind CT. I think it's fine. It's a raid like any other and it's part of the roulette, so :shrug:

The real issue I have with it is how boring it is. And it's boring because it's literally just me spamming one button and dozing off. At lv 50 there is no engagement with half your classes. And when you compound that with a really easy mode raid whose mechanics are easy to ignore, it quickly becomes irritating. Mechanics should be more evident, classes should be more engaging. Or hell, both.

And it's like... why do you think people proc this to begin with, but don't do it to Sastasha on Level Roulette with the use of exploits? You'd get experience from the other raids, so why proc this one? It's because classes are uber condensed at that level and the raids are such a literal snoozefest that you can stand and AFK in with no consequence.

Had the instances been a bit more engaging, I'd be a lot more fine with getting CT. But they're not.

And before anyone asks... guys, I spam Dun Scaith and Return to Ivalice raids because of nostalgia. Often 5 times in a row on one day. I know that stuff like the palm of my hand, I literally snooze through them too. But I'm far more engaged regardless than on CT raids. So it's not the problem that "Oh you do the raids so many times you end up feeling burnt out". I don't get burnt out from these alliance raids, because they're engaging even when I know what's coming. I get burnt out from sleeping in something meant to keep me entertained.

[SonjaRampage]

These topics are getting as tiresome as the CT raids tbh, let's quit making new ones.