Remove Praetorium

[Frizze]

Yeah, no chance. These cutscenes used to be skippable. New players were "encouraged" to skip, and sometimes kicked from groups. If they didnt then the other players in the group would leave them behind, speed-run the dungeon, and they would get stuck going straight from one scene to the next without any actual "dungeon". The "new player friendly" advice on the forums/in NN back then was to do both these dungeons for the first time with a group of friends who were willing to wait with you, let you enjoy the cutscenes, and still participate in the run. There were hundreds(this is not an exaggeration) of threads complaining about the issue. The "fix" that was decided on was to make the cutscenes unskippable and then to up the reward for the roulette until it was high enough that people still qued regularly enough that new players werent forced to wait overly long. They will not go back to the days of skipable scenes and new players having bad experiences in what is supposed to be the climax of the 2.0 story. If you feel the rewards are too low for the time investment the content requires, do not run the content. Full stop. History shows that if people stop queing and their internal metrics show that the time to complete for new players gets excessive then they will boost the rewards again. Everything else is just hot air.

[Arohk]

Yeah, no chance. These cutscenes used to be skippable. New players were "encouraged" to skip,

You can run with NPC's now if you want to watch cutscenes. It f... suck every time you get this in mentor roulett, watch cutscenes for half an hour and not even getting the MSQ roulette rewards or get a lockout for 30 minutes.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

You can run with NPC's now if you want to watch cutscenes. It f... suck every time you get this in mentor roulett, watch cutscenes for half an hour and not even getting the MSQ roulette rewards or get a lockout for 30 minutes.

U get a mount...If you dont like it dont help.

[tsuchii]

U get a mount...If you dont like it dont help.

We might have different definitions of helping. For me helping isn't being forced to rewatch or idle or afk for a 20min movie I have already seen. I've done a couple thousand of those mentor roulettes and I'd rather teach someone an extreme than do Praetorium.

[Frizze]

You can run with NPC's now if you want to watch cutscenes. It f... suck every time you get this in mentor roulett, watch cutscenes for half an hour and not even getting the MSQ roulette rewards or get a lockout for 30 minutes.

Yes. This is the exact attitude that lead them to forcing the cutscenes to be unskippable. "New players can go to the inn if they want to watch cutscenes." That was LITERALLY a common response from the people ruining the new player experience. If anything, i take this reply to mean that the MSQ rewards are too high currently. Do you feel the same way when an extreme trial pops up in Mentor Roulette?

Hot take: Anyone getting a penalty for leaving a matched mentor roulette should be locked out of said roulette until the next weekly reset. Yes, i understand that real life sometimes forces us to suddenly take a break - if it didnt id be saying they should permanently lose access. But a week is enough. They can still directly help people through NN and by joining groups, just no roulette and no achievement credit for the rest of the week.

[Arohk]

Do you feel the same way when an extreme trial pops up in Mentor Roulette?

Actually no, i always ry toclear them, but there are a few that are really difficult to do, nike Niddhog or Sephiroth, i don't think i every cleared them in Mentor roulette.
I also prepared Makro for most of the EX trials i usually getto explain the bosses to new people.
The difference is that EX trials aren't a damn snoozefest where you just have to sit through.

[tsuchii]

Actually no, i always ry toclear them, but there are a few that are really difficult to do, nike Niddhog or Sephiroth, i don't think i every cleared them in Mentor roulette.
I also prepared Makro for most of the EX trials i usually getto explain the bosses to new people.
The difference is that EX trials aren't a damn snoozefest where you just have to sit through.

I am 50 duties away from goddamn horse.

When I don't see a first time bonus, I have left every single Praetorium I get. Most of it, at least. Sometimes, I just give up.

I'd rather teach ARR/HW extremes than sit through Praetorium cutscenes. Hell, even *shudder* Rathalos EX. You will mostly get ARR extremes from free trial players which is easy to teach and rewarding when you get a clear. I agree that Nidhogg, Sophia, Thordan, Ramuh and some others are quite unteachable.

Of course commenter assumes the worst, commenting about completely tangent topic of getting extreme trials when the concern is about Praetorium's forced cutscenes.

[TaleraRistain]

Yeah, no chance. These cutscenes used to be skippable. New players were "encouraged" to skip, and sometimes kicked from groups. If they didnt then the other players in the group would leave them behind, speed-run the dungeon, and they would get stuck going straight from one scene to the next without any actual "dungeon". The "new player friendly" advice on the forums/in NN back then was to do both these dungeons for the first time with a group of friends who were willing to wait with you, let you enjoy the cutscenes, and still participate in the run. There were hundreds(this is not an exaggeration) of threads complaining about the issue. The "fix" that was decided on was to make the cutscenes unskippable and then to up the reward for the roulette until it was high enough that people still qued regularly enough that new players werent forced to wait overly long. They will not go back to the days of skipable scenes and new players having bad experiences in what is supposed to be the climax of the 2.0 story. If you feel the rewards are too low for the time investment the content requires, do not run the content. Full stop. History shows that if people stop queing and their internal metrics show that the time to complete for new players gets excessive then they will boost the rewards again. Everything else is just hot air.

It was common on Jenova to put together cutscene watching PFs (I did it a lot after my Castrum run got ruined by this) and we would instantly boot anyone who tried to sneak in and hurry or was nasty to the new folks.

[Nicola_Kunu]

I was sadly part of that experience when the cutscenes were skippable back in 2017 - Bosses would be killed in the middle of the cutscene I wanted to watch and I wouldn't get to actually *play* the content. I can see via my achievements that I basically took a 2 week break after that miserable experience (Mapping the Realm: Praetorium).



I remember I was absolutely miserable after being told to go watch the cutscenes at the inn. I didn't want to do that as that divorces me from the fights that connect each cutscene.

Whilst I came back, Devs don't want players to quit the game after a negative experience with their game - especially a game that has a subscription model.

I also didn't know what Party Finder was back then (because I hadn't done any content that required Party Finder before, and PF is one of several dozen interaction-heavy menus in this game). There was no way before going into the dungeon beforehand to know that that would have been better.

Looking back, do I understand why people skipped cutscenes in Duty Finder? Of course, the dungeon was like 40+ minutes with cutscenes, 10-15 minutes if you skip everything, and I don't recall if there was any added loot bonus to the MSQ dungeons like Prae.

Some part of the design had to change.

I am happy that MSQ roulette exists in its current form so new players do not have the same awful experience I had.

[tsuchii]

I was sadly part of that experience when the cutscenes were skippable back in 2017 - Bosses would be killed in the middle of the cutscene I wanted to watch and I wouldn't get to actually *play* the content. I can see via my achievements that I basically took a 2 week break after that miserable experience (Mapping the Realm: Praetorium).



I remember I was absolutely miserable after being told to go watch the cutscenes at the inn. I didn't want to do that as that divorces me from the fights that connect each cutscene.

Whilst I came back, Devs don't want players to quit the game after a negative experience with their game - especially a game that has a subscription model.

I also didn't know what Party Finder was back then (because I hadn't done any content that required Party Finder before, and PF is one of several dozen interaction-heavy menus in this game). There was no way before going into the dungeon beforehand that that would have been better.

Looking back, do I understand why people skipped cutscenes in Duty Finder? Of course, the dungeon was like 40+ minutes with cutscenes, 10-15 minutes if you skip everything, and I don't recall if there was any added loot bonus to the MSQ dungeons like Prae.

Some part of the design had to change.

I am happy that MSQ roulette exists in its current form so new players do not have the same awful experience I had.

I am not happy. There's a reason people complained rewatching a 20minute movie THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY seen. There are alternatives. Put it on solo duty.