alliance roulette is just broken and infuriating at this point.

[Acelyn]

I'm. Tired. Of. Crystal. Tower.

2013, 2013 is when ct was released, and now in 2024 it still dominates that roulette.

For crying out loud, move those 3 fights into the main scenario where they belong, i promise it will not be affected by the move and it would be the easiest thing the devs can do to remedy this mind-numbingly dull trio.

if you're not going to give players a full rotation for ancient content, or put in the work to update it so it isnt so trivial then the least that can be done is just moving it to a place where players wont have to be bothered by it.

whoever decided that casual content, at the beginning of a game, thats free and easy to get too is REQUIRED made a terrible, terrible decision.

I'm making this post that'll never probably be seen because i just left a lota instance, and i wasnt the first or only player either, i'd rather take the penalty than run those ever again. but with how content in this game works the roulette is the shortest wait to get into some of my favorite content.

but its dominated by this terrible trio, where my lvl90 character has a hint of a rotation that cant even beat back boredom. its so bad that players are just quitting as soon as they hear the notes of the music.

it would honestly help CT if it was moved.

the massive in jump in fun from the CT raids to the Mhachi raids is so massive its ridiculous.

please
please
please

move the crystal tower raids into the main scenario roulette.

[Supersnow845]

At this point when I get CT I just wait to see if someone else leaves, if nobody does then I leave and just take the penalty

It’s annoying that the best casual content on the roulettes is locked behind the 95% chance you’ll get CT but at this point I just refuse to stay for CT raids

I’ll take the penalty then when it’s over just queue for the high level raids directly and hope they pop

[DrWho2010]

with the influx of new XBox players we're bound to get CT for some time yet for Alliance roulette.

[Yuella]

You do not have to do alliance roulette every day. There are other ways to gain xp and tomes. The most important thing is having fun. If you're not having fun with alliance roulette, then don't do it.

[Supersnow845]

You do not have to do alliance roulette every day. There are other ways to gain xp and tomes. The most important thing is having fun. If you're not having fun with alliance roulette, then don't do it.

That’s the point I’m not doing the roulettes for experience, I’m doing them because I enjoy alliance raids and having to queue directly for the high level ones that take hours to pop while the roulette constantly pops CT is a problem

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

It's a flaw in scenario design oglf making CT Lv50 mandatory and the rest not while refusing to rework CT raids as they are way past their prime from sheer potency and stat adjustments.

I do not agree of moving them into MSQ roulette, but something needs to happen to Alliance Raids as a whole.

[UkcsAlias]

It's a flaw in scenario design oglf making CT Lv50 mandatory and the rest not while refusing to rework CT raids as they are way past their prime from sheer potency and stat adjustments.

Mandatory isnt realy the issue, the issue is it wants to pop quickly for these. Too often i queue and see it pop instantly, only to get ST as lvl 80+ job.

A system that at least tries to avoid this to happen would help. I dont care the queue is linear. and will pop whenever it finds 24 suitable people. Its counter productive for the later raids.

I would make it in such way that when you queue, it takes the latest multiple of 10 as base level and use that for a seperate subqueue. These sub queues will have a system in place that will prevent too low level raids from popping quickly (the further away the level is, the harder it will force a fixed time in which it cant pop).
For example each 10 levels apart from the subqueue you are in, adds a 5min margin to which raid is allowed to pop (with a cap of 15mins). And by giving it seperate tiers of waiting, it will focus you more towards the higher lvl raids.

I dont care waiting for a raid if the raid is fun. Even waiting 30 minutes is better to me than CT (hence taking a penalty is no problem for me). And if i had to wait this long to see CT, i then at least would know the wait was long enough to know other raids werent likely to pop anyway (i would probably have left the queue at that point already or rejoined the queue with a lower level job knowing its going to be CT).

[vetch]

It's a flaw in scenario design oglf making CT Lv50 mandatory and the rest not while refusing to rework CT raids as they are way past their prime from sheer potency and stat adjustments.

CT should absolutely have remained optional. It's trivial to write Shadowbringers in a way that doesn't require CT to introduce G'raha, the same way Heavensward was written without requiring the DRG quests to introduce Estinien. It was never necessary since 99% of G'raha's character development and relationship-building with the player character happens inside ShB anyway.

I'd agree with moving it to MSQ roulette. It's a mandatory part of the MSQ, after all. If not that, I guess the easiest fix would be to fiddle with the iLvl sync, so that we actually see some mechanics.

LotA and WoD still have some of the most interesting encounters of any alliance raid... or would, if the mechanics were ever seen.

[Espon]

The only thing that annoys me more than getting Labyrinth of the Ancients in Alliance Roulette is getting it a second time in Mentor Roulette.

They really need to put in an item level sync. Bosses shouldn't just curl up and die within 1 or 2 minutes.

CT should absolutely have remained optional. It's trivial to write Shadowbringers in a way that doesn't require CT to introduce G'raha, the same way Heavensward was written without requiring the DRG quests to introduce Estinien. It was never necessary since 99% of G'raha's character development and relationship-building with the player character happens inside ShB anyway.

There's more to the Crystal Tower than just the introduction of G'raha Tia. Many story points and lore revolve around the tower itself, where as Estinien's backstory prior to him appearing in the MSQ can be summed up in a single sentence.

[vetch]

There's more to the Crystal Tower than just the introduction of G'raha Tia. Many story points and lore revolve around the tower itself, where as Estinien's backstory prior to him appearing in the MSQ can be summed up in a single sentence.

Story points like what? All the Crystal Tower info is in the same boat as Estinien's as far as I remember, and I really don't mind if five more summary paragraphs get added to ShB.

While I agree it should have remained optional, they backed themselves into a corner by deciding to make G'raha a Scion instead of remaining the Crystal Exarch. CT makes far less sense if you then do it after Shadowbringers MSQ (not to mention you'd have the uncomfortable time paradox of G'raha running into himself in Mor Dhona.

Your mention of Estinien actually is a good example of why it would be a problem to leave CT optional. A couple of members of my Marilith FC have completed Endwalker but are just now leveling Lancer. They say the Lancer story is extremely awkward considering Estinien has no clue who they are and they aren't supposed to know who he is. It's a lot harder to pass it off as an echo memory when the character didn't know the job in the past.

We don't need in-game lore for why side content that happens earlier in the story doesn't contain references to events that happen later. Once the context has been established that quests canonically happen in the expansion when they become available and not when the player chooses to finally engage with them, it just becomes part of the background vocabulary of the game. It's no odder than finishing Heavensward and then going back to do Shiva EX.

The only explanation needed is "because this is how the game is set up".