If you can’t complete the MSQ Trials you’re stuck on, what are you meant to do? Players are raising this as a concern that it’s becoming too hard to progress past some fights in the game! Titania, Praetorium, Zodiark, The Final Day
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Timestamps:
0:00 We have a HUGE problem in FFXIV
0:40 Rewards and motivation is key in FF14
0:58 Castrum versus Praetorium rewards
2:34 PEOPLE LEAVE CASTRUM AND DODGE IT!
3:23 Let me not get on a soapbox though lol
4:09 BEGGING for help to get MSQ Trials done
5:30 THE DEEPER PROBLEM! Rewards!
6:57 The lack of rewards identified
7:56 Great reward sources exist
8:00 Expert Roulette Dungeons
8:20 Hunt Trains
8:51 Trial Roulette rewards are bad
9:44 What are your thoughts?
Houston we might have a problem.
People are dodging castrum like it’s on fire, MSQ Trials are dead, and unbearably long super queues hours long which means today we’re talking about content that is relatively unpopular or in more charged words dead. I’m going to first talk about the problem at hand and the lurking larger problem behind that and then I’m going to work on discussing some solutions.
We all know rewards and motivation are key to getting people to do something, anything really. This isn’t a gamer or zoomer sort of problem, this is a fundamental to human nature.
Time goes in and reward goes out and we want to optimize that.
So what we’re seeing here is inherently exactly that problem.
While this is far from the first time I’ve heard this problem, it’s a problem any veteran of final fantasy 14 can tell you has been a problem for years.
It takes very little effort to notice that praetorium and castrum meridianum are just simply tremendously unpopular content for most players with a few key exceptions.
First off is that when you run MSQ Roulette the praetorium will give you an astonishingly large amount of experience for essentially sitting down and turning on netflix for an hour
Now hilariously enough that spins into the second option you can get for MSQ roulette called castrum meridianum which is a far more active dungeon, takes something like 30 minutes or so to clear and gives significantly less experience– history points to people actively queue dodging and leaving those groups for dead. Which at various points in time became considered acceptable and then at other points unacceptable. 3 thousand upvotes over a year later, downvoted into oblivion a year earlier.
Your instinct might be to assume that I’d step on a soapbox and claim these people are all terrible. I hate that kind of preachy hypocritical nonsense, reality is when even I was leveling and I hit castrum I would audibly groan and if someone else left first I’d be the first person to follow after because yeah it’s a huge difference.
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If you can't progress through the MSQ, what are you supposed to do as a newer player? 🍕🍕🍕
0:00 We have a HUGE problem in FFXIV
0:40 Rewards and motivation is key in FF14
0:58 Castrum versus Praetorium rewards
2:34 PEOPLE LEAVE CASTRUM AND DODGE IT!
3:23 Let me not get on a soapbox though lol
4:09 BEGGING for help to get MSQ Trials done
5:30 THE DEEPER PROBLEM! Rewards!
6:57 The lack of rewards identified
7:56 Great reward sources exist
8:00 Expert Roulette Dungeons
8:20 Hunt Trains
8:51 Trial Roulette rewards are bad
9:44 What are your thoughts?
🍕🍕🍕
Weird, diabolos doesn't have these issues at all 🤷♂️ normal que times across the board
We have NINETEEN jobs and the Savage loot lockout system is 3-4 years old, even older on its books currency aspect! There needs to be a change to help people gear up more and faster. I would also say a permanent increase on weekly tome cap..or likewise a lowering of pricing. 825 for chest/legs is ridiculous anymore
This is so bizarre to me. I don't like getting old content. If there was an option to tell the game to not match me into content 20 or 30 levels under, I would never turn it off. I would much rather wait a longer queue and get an Endwalker trial than get insta-queued into level 50 Ifrit with half my spells disabled because someone turbo-optimizing his grind cheesed the roulette. I have limited gaming time and I want to spend it doing something fun instead of grinding braindead content because it's more efficient.
The more I thought about MSQ roulettes, the more I believe they need to be turned into solo content. Because when I first played ARR MSQ – I was just left behind and teleported to each boss room. It really was not not fun as a new player.
I think they should reuse old content as rewards to make better incentives. I'm new to the game and I never would run MSQ for EXP. But I'm currently working on my ARR Relic weapon for Warrior. They should retool these, so you earn special currency where you can buy Atma/completed books/etc….
Why have people grinding un-synced dungeons/fates/enemies when you could play MSQ roulettes and earn currency to by the 12 Atma you need?
I think it would be a better option and just giving people "EXP."
I believe both my White Mage/Dragoon/Warrior where almost level 70 by the time I started Hevansward. As a new player they caps at 90, so you if you play a lot of dungeon content like me. You will have multiple classes over leveled.
The gear system is a big part of this problem. Gear's instantly replaced and nothing of value drops from dungeons (outside of the odd glamour piece), normal trials drop absolutely nothing at all, EX trials give you a cool looking weapon that's replaceable by crafted gear like a few weeks later. There's no real choice in what you use and your bis only comes from savage drops and capped tombstones. There's no personality in this system. I think at its core, it's good because for a game with so many jobs you can't make 12 hard to get pieces.
However, I think they need to add some choice/customization pieces (we have an unused offhand slot for most jobs), either weapons with unique effects are are upgradeable to max ilvl, some charm/trinket system, maybe something like ESOs monster 2 piece set. You can make these things scale like menphina's earring does, then players have a reason to get their "Ramah" or "Shiva" pieces from the trials and keep that content around.
Clickbait. There's plenty of people that do MSQ roulette and there's already plans to change it.
Report anyone who leaves castrum. Ban everyone who leaves it habitually at the start.
I'm writing this comment before watching the video now that I know the subject, but will edit after viewing:
One of the biggest issues with MSQ is the reward structure, both positive and negative. Praetorium awards so much for so little effort that it's seen as almost mandatory for some, and Castrum rewards too little to be worth the time investment. BOTH sides of this coin are bad because when you do MSQ roulette, you aren't even playing the game. When I was grinding for the Amaro in ShB I spent MANY hours in MSQ roulette and it was a daily exercise to pop in discord with buds also in MSQ and watch anime on netflix together. If we got Castrum we'd tighten up and actually run the duty, but that didn't make it *fun*. What we have is A) A duty that REWARDS you for NOT PLAYING THE GAME and B) A duty that PUNISHES you for being in that roulette instead of any other instance. I can't think of a worse combo, and frankly all the solutions have already been laid out- it's just a matter of SE actually taking the time to implement changes.
1) Trust/Squadron MSQ solo duties. We shouldn't be bribing players to fill a roulette.
2) Take the exp gain from MSQ roulette and don't just get rid of it- allot it towards a more interactive and fun roulette. I believe the reward should be split up across trial and numbers roulette (50/60/70/80) to actually incentivize more players to do that content. Its wild how many duties you just don't see often because 5678 rou isn't actually that rewarding.
Edit: Minor anecdote- Had a buddy restart FFXIV back in late ShB and the first thing this man was doing was playing a DNC in MSQ roulette so he could get to 80 ASAP and play DNC. Answer me this; do you really want returning players starting straight on MSQ roulette? Spoiler: he didn't stick around. He came back for EW and it stuck, then, but it really solidified my stance on this roulette, then.
Also, I believe that when you're queuing for a roulette, you should have an idea about WHAT you're doing to be doing. MSQ roulette is straight up a coin flip. Any other roulette you queue for, you have at least some general idea of what you're queuing for. Hell, with limited levelling roulette added, even levelling roulette narrows the scope of what you're doing now. I do NOT blame people for leaving Castrum, though I never do. You queue hoping (expecting) prae, and if you don't get it you do other productive tasks for half an hour.
Personally I wouldn't mind if they split Trials and made high end & low end, with low end having enough daily rewards to draw in experienced players. Some days I want to run a ton of roulettes so it would be nice having more options. Really hoping the MSQ roulette changes they make will be good.
I'm a castrum leaver, but I do wait for the instance to load in to see if anyone is new or not. If there are new people I won't leave, but if everyone there has cleared and we've all just gotten bad luck in MSQR, then I drop. Even if CM gave equivalent XP to Prae, I'd still probably prefer to leave it just because it's so annoying to run with the start and stop cutscenes and goofy interactables and the big pull where Cid can get stuck etc.
As for alliance raids, I used to be a habitual stripper but these days I'm more sanguine about it. I generally like the glamour from Ivalice and Nier so I don't feel too upset for another opportunity to possibly collect a piece I might be missing (even though I somehow regularly get groups that struggle to complete these raids).
Funny thing is, I used to be in primal, and the first time I ever ran castrum to progress story as a noob right at the start a healer said "Oh HELL NO" and quit lmao
Then I transfer to crystal and never had that once, and I frequently get praetorium with generally shorter que times. Aether (Ayther) on the other hand sounds like they are experiencing que time hell x.x
I think the game may also be playing favorites with older trials/dungeons etc because of the influx of new players. I can't tell you how many damn bards that don't use songs, dragoons that don't use jumps or healers that heal every 5 second I've seen. Today was the first day I dipped outta the dungeon because of those last 2 things. It might only take 5 min longer to clear but it's noticeable. They need to rework a lot of duties XD.
MERRY-DEE-ANUM. Hope it helps. <3
Never see people leaving castrum in Tonberry. So probably mentality of people between region is just different.
Trial Roulette… I think there should be higher rewards, or more daily reset or have something like leve allowance. Not sure how many people will roll for Trial outside from daily reset. I remember queuing for lakhsmi for 20 minutes or so.
Or have something like Duty Invitation. If you turn it on, it will actively send invitation for trial duty to everyone people who has it turned on. to join a duty when you are online, and not in another duty. Yeah basically Uber, Grab, Lyft for Duty. Whoever accept it first get the job if they fit the requirements.
50/60/70/80 Roulette… The reward is quite low that I sometimes think whether I should do it or not.
Alliance Raid : I got this problem in Ivalice 2. I think either a lot of people queuing directly at Ivalice 3. or just AR roulette, in which pretty much all of them assigned to Crystal Tower. I think I spent 3-4 days with 1 hour each just trying to get Ivalice 2 started. in various hours. from prime time to noon.
You’re gonna have to seriously pump up the rewards for trial roulettes to make me risk getting zodiark, it’s becoming very tiresome to wipe 6 times (I’m not exaggerating) because people don’t know how to play follow the leader no matter how many times I explain it.
My gripe is just the long unskippable cutscenes in praetorium and castrum, it's such a time sink. I understand that it's for newbie players to watch the story, but having a full party of non sprouts feel so unnecessary. BUT I also understand that people will start hating on new players because they'll dread having a newbie in the party so the devs just decided to keep it on for everyone. The only compromise I can think of is just keep the older players inside an event barrier (like we do in trials with a newbie watching cutscene) so we can at least sort our inventory while we wait lol
i unsubbed theres literally nothing to do in this game ive been having issues with this since for a while only ff andys will come in and ask did you do this and that yes i did most of its just boring the same formula over and over if you dont hardcore raid or dont roleplay and dont have any reason to craft especially since the mb is fuked no thank you imma play lost ark something new and fresh and ive been enjoying it so far
When me and the wife were new players we just duo'd both instances. Not hard to do actually even at min ilvl it was surprisingly simple and probably even simpler now. In terms of the roulette i dont ever do any at all but if someone says join us for msq i prae to god i dont get praetorium. The meager amount of experience difference between it and castrum is not enough for me to care about wasting my time with the cutscenes. I prefer castrum and always will until they make the instances skippable when no new players are present.
Maybe take Prae down a couple pegs in max iLVL? And put some locks/keys on the elevators that we normally skip. Actually would like to see reduced max iLVL with the Crystal Tower series too.
I remember hitting the Casturm and Prea back in the day first time, and absolutely hating them with a seething passion. This was back before they forced people to watch the cines. I was literately yanked from cinematic to cinematic, skipping important plot relevant stuff. I was left confused and bewildered, often times dead with no one else around. They left me so upset that I nearly left the game. It completely destroyed the ending of ARR for me. A lot of it comes down to have one or two new people each run, and everyone else there is bored and farming for tomestones. So instead of helping new players, they leave them dead on the teleports and lost. To this day, while I have run both more than a few times (typically under duress), I avoid MSQ roulette like the plague. It's just not worth it, no matter the rewards.
When I and my questing partner finally hit those instances with our alts that we stream with, we decided to do something different. We got two other FC mates and 4-maned them, synced (but not MINE). It was a night and day difference. And it was FUN! And challenging! If it had only been like that in the beginning….
Right before the lockdown, when they were still working on the ARR New Game+, YoshiP had mentioned in passing that MSQ Roulette was probably going away. My gut feeling is that they were putting in a Trust like system to help new players though those duties, but nothing was officially said. Alas, that did not materialize. I fear it was one of the many things that was sacrificed to the great dumpster fire that was 2020.
LMAO… HUGE problem and Dead content, really!!! Damn, me and my friends are probably playing a different game for the last 10 years!!! For sure like any other game there is room to improve but to label it as HUGE Problem? Dead content? It's an absolute stretch. Why the hell is this game is still thriving with such a HUGE problem and DEAD CONTENT exists. Yeah it's full of hypocrites, that's the card we use when people do not agree with our opinion.
while i understand that people rather have prae rather than castrum, just do the thing and try again tomorrow. the penalty it about the same time it would take to complete castrum, even with wiping once or twice which is really rare. for me, i just go for whatever the roll gives me. yes, i prefer prae, but it is time wasted if you leave once you don't hear the music that you want. that's just me.
and during the moogle tomes events, i just have youtube, netflix, hulu, and/or do work during to pass the time. omg the number of times i have done prae and castrum made me numb because not only i had to do it for my account, i had to do the same for my partner's character, was rewarded with a nice dinner as compensation 🙂
I did both for my MSQ on alt last week. I didn't face any problem. I did them 4 times in total. 1 on Tank (around 5 min queue), 1 on healer (instant queue), 2 on dps (around 12-13 minutes queue).. I didnt see an issue. I guess it has to do with data center
Tome cap at 450 which can be done in 2days, 7weeks to get 1 weapon, and i have 19class to fill, its super demotivate when i cant try some other class less than a month because gated by 450tomes.
I'm not sure if rewards alone can fix a 45 minute Minimum dungeon, where 30 minutes are unskippable cutscene…
I say cut some things (like being told how to use an elevator), rework some things (so Nero isn't yelling at Cid through your phone while you stand there and watch) and implement battle mechanics from later patches (i.e. dialogue bubbles in battle)
Honestly; if someone is not able to complete a trial in normal mode — especially the older ones, they shouldn't be allowed to move on lol. And "what are you supposed to do as a newer player?" Really!? There are easily hundreds of things that come to my mind. This post is dumb.
My opinion is the Trust system – with the caveat that the Trust system allows parties (so groups of 2 or 3 friends can enter if they want) and then fills in the missing players with NPCs) – would be a way for new players to do older content.
Secondly Castrum and Prae need to allow scene skipping. Most people refuse to sit through an hour of cut scenes if they don't need to no matter how good the reward is.
It’s because in this game unless you want to do savage or ultimate, getting gear has no value – so farming the latest tomes is pointless because crafted gear will suffice – you can even stick with the level 89 job gear and clear things fine. Also the next time the new crafted gear comes out, all the gear earned from savage is made redundant so you only clear for the achievement, not the gear. 14 suffers a big incentive problem to do content – not enough unique rewards or power gain.
Just going to say, the problem is XIV's combat isn't fun. You need rewards attached to this content because it presents no challenge and the combat isn't inherently fun and only shines in more mechanically focused content.
you don't wait 2 hours ever for the first endwalker trial, it's only possible if you play when everyone is asleep on your server and you also only search for french players.
These two MSQ raids should be single player with trust kinda system, less mechanics on the bosses and completely overworked, cause nobody who saw those cut scenes actually wants to run them over and over and over and being forced to watch it over and over and over.
There are so many cut scenes it would be drawing people more in to the story if they would be alone fighting side by side with CID or other NPC's
In terms of Expert Rou or the final trial. I don't have any queue issues on EU servers at the day
Before even watching your video, and only having played FF14 from january 2020 to mai 2020. I knew the subject of the video. These 2 MSQ dungeons should be removed from roulette and turned into solo instances you only need to do once. These 2 dungeons are by far the worst experience i've ever had in mmo. and when i say by far, i mean literall lightyears ahead and i've played have p2w mmo's as f2p player, and getting owned by someone who dumped the equivalent of my life savings into a game, is a less horrible experience then doing either of these dungeons.
Even when you experience them the first time, they are dull, the cinematics really aren't that special, and there is no real reason as to why they are unskippable. These are also the only cinematics in the entire game that are unskippable. Which to me was strange, since i'm in the habit of skipping most cutscenes.
Imo, these dungeons are even "quit moments". I see players actually quitting becuase of the horrible experience these dungeons provide. The only proper fix here would be to remove them from the MSQ requirement and make them optional.
Increases the rewards is a possibility, but that does not change that these dungeons are a negative experience. I mean you could add an event where a player has to go sit on an ingame toilet for 20 minutes and you get a 100 tokens and 10 million gill. Every player will do this every day, but not a single player will say, do you remember that toilet sitting content. NOW THAT WAS AMAZING!
Even in this video you say: i'd rather have the longer one, so i can tab out of the game on do SOMETHING ELSE. This should make it clear, it has nothing to do with incentive. The content is literally just awfull, and the fact that is enforced is stupid. The proper solution has nothing to do with incentive, The incentive that should be there is "I want to do this content", Not, if i get X reward, i might consider doing this content i don't actually enjoy.
So everyone should stop beating around the bush and be honest, the MSQ roulette dungeons are just a horribly bad experience and it would be better for new players, to NOT have to experience these at all.
I have never once quit out of Castrum or Prae for the simple reason that I really enjoy alting, and the tomestone rewards are just too damn good. I do them all the time. They fill a useful niche – I don't think they necessarily need to be more challenging or less rewarding, just more varied.
It's certainly strange for the game to have such a heavy focus on story and yet only have two slivers of the enormous MSQ in that roulette. I wouldn't complain for a moment if it expanded, they certainly have a ton of options.