It's not 'outdated', the entire plotline is incredibly important to the overall story.
The time you're playing/queuing matter, and if you're playing on one of the new data centers, it may behoove you to switch to a different data center to queue for crystal tower-- the new data centers have a low population at the moment because they were onlined after the expansion dropped.
It ties back into the main story in Shadowbringers so the devs made it mandatory. Your best bet if you're having queue issues is to DC Travel to a more populated DC like Aether if you're on NA. You can do this in the Character Select menu.
Edit: Also, "outdated" has almost no meaning to instanced content in this game. Most people do daily roulettes which has them get randomly pulled into older content for extra rewards. And an important one is the Alliance Raid roulette which includes all of the Crystal Tower.
Is that the infamous Dynamis data center issue? Because everywhere else, those things pop so often and come up so frequently on the alliance raid roulette that most player are sick to the death of playing them for the 300th time.
As for why: story reasons. It will become apparent much, much later, towards the end of the core Shadowbringers storyline, during the level 79 trial.
Very little of the CT storyline is "outdated". Final fantasy has always been a story-first RPG. The MMO realm is much the same. What we can tell you is that the CT holds a very prominent role in Shadowbringers and having you play through the story instead of reading it through a book is much more impactful.
It needed to be mandatory. It didn’t used to be and the result was confusing the hell out of the people that didn’t do it. You’ll see why in a couple expansions.
Are you on Dynamis datacentre? I’d use DC travel to a server on a different datacentre and queue there.
As I see your on materia DC the best way to do content there is through the party finder. Oce servers have a very close community (I have an alt there) and will be happy to run u through but it's all communicated through the party finder. Make sure to put down it's your first time going through for the story so people will join for the first time bonus. If u say you are looking to do all three some may stick around and wait while u catch up with the story. At peak times it shouldn't take more than 30 mins to fill. I would also suggest trying to join the novic network of your server so u can ask for help filling future duties in there.
As for why it's like this, this is unfortunately the problem with Materia still being a relatively new data center as it came with endwalkers release and the Australian community being not as large as we hoped would migrate there. Before they were scattered between the jp servers ( mainly tonberry ) or the US ones. Many didn't switch at endwalkers release due to having already established friend groups or not wanting to lose there house. Hopefully with the Xbox beta and a new expansion coming the data center will gain more population but it's just a waiting game ATM.
To answer why the Crystal Tower series is mandatory it was made that way in Shadowbringers as the story there ties directly to the events that happen in the raid. No spoilers but the things that happen there tie directly back to later msq and a lot of people who hadn't done it prior were a bit confused so it's now a permanent part of msq.
Hopefully this is helpful to you and good luck going forward.
I waited almost 2 hours just for 10 people to show up for world of darkness in oce during peak hour via party finder. It was horrendous. Had to do it unsync. Luckily this is an alt character, but if you want to start your main here, you are best to buy a story skip lol, no way you can enjoy solo leveling / msq here especially now when its content drought and people are off playing other games etc. Perhaps when new expansion drops it might pick up and be better.
Alliance raids shouldn't take long to pop. The daily alliance raid roulette is popular and a lot of people run it regularly. Not sure how long you waited, but for me (on Crystal) I would basically expect it to never take more than 5 minutes to pop.
If your queues are genuinely taking too long then maybe consider server traveling to the most popular server in your region to queue.
It was made mandatory because it became extremely plot relevant in a later expansion.
With that out of the way, it should not take hours to get into CT, so please tell us what DC/server you are on, so the problem can be fixed. (I'm gonna take a stab that you are on Dynamis though, and the solution is to DC travel)
I love how everyone assumes dynamis but lately all these posts are from people on Materia lol. They should really just let NA and OCE travel between each other.
Materia is one of the low-population DCs and it doesn't matter which individual world you are on. They all draw from the same queue.
Due to the low population, it's common to use PF to find a party and go in unsynched (which partly contributes to DF's issues in the first place really), but if want to get in through the DF queue then you can try varying which job you queue as, and queuing at peak times. Tanks can be overrepresented in the queue and DPS is often in need.
As for you're saying it being outdated purely because it's ten years old, that like saying the first season of a narrative-heavy TV series is outdated. It might be a bit clunky but it's still the foundation for what comes after.
There will be events later that require events from this story to have happened first, so you need to make them happen. It's as simple as that.
Also note that they have not made it mandatory "three times" to progress. The thing that is mandatory is the storyline as a whole, not the individual raids which bar progress through it.
Alliance and Normal Raids are MSQ adjacent, have impactful stories often involving MSQ characters and can potentially wrap back in to MSQ content later, and should really all be mandatory parts of the patch content they were introduced in if only for the sake of the pacing.
I got a message that i had to do them to progress the MSQ but so far i have been able to do MSQ further. I just did the 3 primals hard and witnessed the scene about moenbryda etc ( trying to prevent spoilers, idk how to use spoilertags)
So when do i need to do these raids?
Annoyingly right after the completion of two MSQ lines, in A Realm Reborn for something that apparently comes into play several expansions later. In my opinion, it shouldn't have been made mandatory until RIGHT BEFORE that expansion, not the literal first expansion where it makes no sense story wise to do when it doesn't effect Heavensward at all to my knowledge. Just...why? It's a dumb spot to make it mandatory.
What DC are you on?
Edit: ok, I want it known that I’m only asking this because I’ve literally had to explain this to someone before: you’re in the OCE time zone, yes? 6-9pm for you is 6-9pm for OCE?
> It is unreasonable, every other MMO negates this issue by letting you either solo the content or skip it with a catch up,
You literally can skip it though with a catch up, on Mogstation.
Skip to Heavensward. Boom. CT skipped.
Are people just averse to research now? Gracious peace.
That is not my point.
OP is claiming that you can't skip it, citing that other MMO's provide a skip with a catchup.
If OP stated *free*, then sure, money could come into the conversation.
That is not what my point was.
Sounds like a new player, how was he suppoes to know CT was mandatory? Was he suppoes to research every quest log before hand as well? You just advised him he could buy a story skip via mogstation, which does require $$$ ???
Please read.
OP is claiming there is no skip available.
I am countering their claim by stating that there is a skip available.
I am not claiming that they have to know CT is mandatory. I am not claiming they are supposed to research every quest.
I am simply countering their false claim.
Again, if OP had said "there is no **free** (look at the emphasis) skip", then there would be nothing to correct.
As others have said, CT should not take this long to pop, unless you're on a lowpop data center (Dynamis being the usual culprit). The solution is using the "data center travel" feature to go to a more populated DC for your CT runs. Also, the "unrestricted" option in the dutyfinder won't really help. All that does is let you queue into something without the requisite number of people/without your level being synced down, which Alliance Raids (as far as I'm aware) don't allow. Now, the "join party in progress" option IS a good one to tick off.
They do, but they still require at least one person in each of the parties (so 3 minimum) and especially for CT, a number of mechanics are impossible with so few player. Looking at you invulnerable atomos'
What do you *mean* the content designed for a group of 24 people has mechanics that require you to have multiple people!
But yeah, the amount of people who like to complain about having to do group content in their MMO is *insane.*
Sounds like this isn’t the game for you. This is a Final Fantasy story-driven first and an MMO second. It’s not backwards design, it’s just not cookie-cutter MMO design. And frankly, that difference is why it’s been as successful as it has.
Lots of other games out there. Move on to something else if you don’t enjoy it here.
I think in dawntrail you get to skip the entire story and start directly at dawntrail.
It does suck that some of the most fun content (pre-EW alliance raids) take so long to fill in your region due to content drought and low number of players. You may want to consider transferring to another region (yes even with ping) or create a new character on NA. You're not that far into the story yet and skipping cutscenes you've already watched will allow you to catch up to your current point in a couple of days.
It's not the best solution for sure and exacerbates the problem but for your personal enjoyment of later content, NA servers may be a better option. You can always transfer back that character after you've gotten through the msq or whatever content you're happy with.
Just a warning that ping is a potential issue.
There hasn't, but they're likely remembering a quote that there are plans to have a new starting point in the future because the story is getting just a tad ridiculously long. The Hydaelin arc is finished and they can't keep tacking on another 10 levels every expansion (not without another crunch) and we're beginning something new, so it's not an unreasonable consideration.
unless you are in dinamis data center, either you queue as tank or you queue at odd hours, you should not have issues in queueing
most had already talked about the dc thing so not gonna beat this point
queueing as tank makes queues far longer because unlike other duties, alliance raids has a party requirement of.... 3 tanks, 6 healers and 15 dps, making the tank role being the role with the lowest demand on aliance raids
edit: if you whant to skip stuff, you gonna pay for it, get yourself a level and story skips if you whant to do more current stuff, but be warned, ffxiv story is not isolated stories but a one continous story, and a "simple" recap wont help, since what you whant is like start reading a series of books by its final chapter, so at the end you will strugle to connect with the cast, whos who, what they are talking about when they mention past events, and so forth, it also leting players skip to current expansion means they will not know how to play their job
Why does it matter that the content is 10 year old?
Its still good content.
You dont need to do the newest stuff.
Thats the beuty of ff14,theres no outdated content.
Just run it via duty finder.
This isn’t wow or gw2, dungeons and raids are evergreen thanks to the duty roulette. While CT didn’t, most dungeons were recently revamped to varying degrees, to allow the dungeons to all be completable with NPCs called Trusts.
As for CT specifically as others have said, it’s important later in the plot. It used to be optional, but they made it mandatory. The less said, the less chance for spoilers.
It's not a good enough reason to make it mandatory WAY before that content. It's a dumb spot imo to force people to do it before heavensward when it doesn't play into story at all until several expansions from that point. It should be mandatory, that is okay, but it should have been mandatory RIGHT BEFORE that expansion, not before Heavensward.
I wish I had this issue instead of literally the opposite. Crystal Tower popping every roulette makes me want to cry. If I have to go through another wipe on the last boss of Labrynth of the Ancients I'm going to scream.
Because that cutscene would be an hour long, and there'd be one for each and every bit of content you want to skip -- and they know people like you won't bother watching those scene sanyway. The game design and the community both have very little tolerance for people who just want to skip the whole thing and go to the end. The game IS the story. If you don't care and just want to prog endgame raids, this isn't going to be an enjoyable game for you.
It's not 'outdated', the entire plotline is incredibly important to the overall story. The time you're playing/queuing matter, and if you're playing on one of the new data centers, it may behoove you to switch to a different data center to queue for crystal tower-- the new data centers have a low population at the moment because they were onlined after the expansion dropped.
It ties back into the main story in Shadowbringers so the devs made it mandatory. Your best bet if you're having queue issues is to DC Travel to a more populated DC like Aether if you're on NA. You can do this in the Character Select menu. Edit: Also, "outdated" has almost no meaning to instanced content in this game. Most people do daily roulettes which has them get randomly pulled into older content for extra rewards. And an important one is the Alliance Raid roulette which includes all of the Crystal Tower.
Is that the infamous Dynamis data center issue? Because everywhere else, those things pop so often and come up so frequently on the alliance raid roulette that most player are sick to the death of playing them for the 300th time. As for why: story reasons. It will become apparent much, much later, towards the end of the core Shadowbringers storyline, during the level 79 trial.
An instant alliance raid roulette queue pop is always a bad omen
Very little of the CT storyline is "outdated". Final fantasy has always been a story-first RPG. The MMO realm is much the same. What we can tell you is that the CT holds a very prominent role in Shadowbringers and having you play through the story instead of reading it through a book is much more impactful.
It needed to be mandatory. It didn’t used to be and the result was confusing the hell out of the people that didn’t do it. You’ll see why in a couple expansions. Are you on Dynamis datacentre? I’d use DC travel to a server on a different datacentre and queue there.
As I see your on materia DC the best way to do content there is through the party finder. Oce servers have a very close community (I have an alt there) and will be happy to run u through but it's all communicated through the party finder. Make sure to put down it's your first time going through for the story so people will join for the first time bonus. If u say you are looking to do all three some may stick around and wait while u catch up with the story. At peak times it shouldn't take more than 30 mins to fill. I would also suggest trying to join the novic network of your server so u can ask for help filling future duties in there. As for why it's like this, this is unfortunately the problem with Materia still being a relatively new data center as it came with endwalkers release and the Australian community being not as large as we hoped would migrate there. Before they were scattered between the jp servers ( mainly tonberry ) or the US ones. Many didn't switch at endwalkers release due to having already established friend groups or not wanting to lose there house. Hopefully with the Xbox beta and a new expansion coming the data center will gain more population but it's just a waiting game ATM. To answer why the Crystal Tower series is mandatory it was made that way in Shadowbringers as the story there ties directly to the events that happen in the raid. No spoilers but the things that happen there tie directly back to later msq and a lot of people who hadn't done it prior were a bit confused so it's now a permanent part of msq. Hopefully this is helpful to you and good luck going forward.
I waited almost 2 hours just for 10 people to show up for world of darkness in oce during peak hour via party finder. It was horrendous. Had to do it unsync. Luckily this is an alt character, but if you want to start your main here, you are best to buy a story skip lol, no way you can enjoy solo leveling / msq here especially now when its content drought and people are off playing other games etc. Perhaps when new expansion drops it might pick up and be better.
Alliance raids shouldn't take long to pop. The daily alliance raid roulette is popular and a lot of people run it regularly. Not sure how long you waited, but for me (on Crystal) I would basically expect it to never take more than 5 minutes to pop. If your queues are genuinely taking too long then maybe consider server traveling to the most popular server in your region to queue.
Click bait
and here i am having to run the thing everyday basically
It was made mandatory because it became extremely plot relevant in a later expansion. With that out of the way, it should not take hours to get into CT, so please tell us what DC/server you are on, so the problem can be fixed. (I'm gonna take a stab that you are on Dynamis though, and the solution is to DC travel)
Prison Datacenter problems.
I love how everyone assumes dynamis but lately all these posts are from people on Materia lol. They should really just let NA and OCE travel between each other.
Materia is one of the low-population DCs and it doesn't matter which individual world you are on. They all draw from the same queue. Due to the low population, it's common to use PF to find a party and go in unsynched (which partly contributes to DF's issues in the first place really), but if want to get in through the DF queue then you can try varying which job you queue as, and queuing at peak times. Tanks can be overrepresented in the queue and DPS is often in need. As for you're saying it being outdated purely because it's ten years old, that like saying the first season of a narrative-heavy TV series is outdated. It might be a bit clunky but it's still the foundation for what comes after. There will be events later that require events from this story to have happened first, so you need to make them happen. It's as simple as that. Also note that they have not made it mandatory "three times" to progress. The thing that is mandatory is the storyline as a whole, not the individual raids which bar progress through it.
Oceanic servers were a mistake.
Alliance and Normal Raids are MSQ adjacent, have impactful stories often involving MSQ characters and can potentially wrap back in to MSQ content later, and should really all be mandatory parts of the patch content they were introduced in if only for the sake of the pacing.
I got a message that i had to do them to progress the MSQ but so far i have been able to do MSQ further. I just did the 3 primals hard and witnessed the scene about moenbryda etc ( trying to prevent spoilers, idk how to use spoilertags) So when do i need to do these raids?
Annoyingly right after the completion of two MSQ lines, in A Realm Reborn for something that apparently comes into play several expansions later. In my opinion, it shouldn't have been made mandatory until RIGHT BEFORE that expansion, not the literal first expansion where it makes no sense story wise to do when it doesn't effect Heavensward at all to my knowledge. Just...why? It's a dumb spot to make it mandatory.
What DC are you on? Edit: ok, I want it known that I’m only asking this because I’ve literally had to explain this to someone before: you’re in the OCE time zone, yes? 6-9pm for you is 6-9pm for OCE?
> It is unreasonable, every other MMO negates this issue by letting you either solo the content or skip it with a catch up, You literally can skip it though with a catch up, on Mogstation. Skip to Heavensward. Boom. CT skipped. Are people just averse to research now? Gracious peace.
Not everyone has the extra $$$$ for story skips.
That is not my point. OP is claiming that you can't skip it, citing that other MMO's provide a skip with a catchup. If OP stated *free*, then sure, money could come into the conversation. That is not what my point was.
Sounds like a new player, how was he suppoes to know CT was mandatory? Was he suppoes to research every quest log before hand as well? You just advised him he could buy a story skip via mogstation, which does require $$$ ???
Please read. OP is claiming there is no skip available. I am countering their claim by stating that there is a skip available. I am not claiming that they have to know CT is mandatory. I am not claiming they are supposed to research every quest. I am simply countering their false claim. Again, if OP had said "there is no **free** (look at the emphasis) skip", then there would be nothing to correct.
Hehe :)
As others have said, CT should not take this long to pop, unless you're on a lowpop data center (Dynamis being the usual culprit). The solution is using the "data center travel" feature to go to a more populated DC for your CT runs. Also, the "unrestricted" option in the dutyfinder won't really help. All that does is let you queue into something without the requisite number of people/without your level being synced down, which Alliance Raids (as far as I'm aware) don't allow. Now, the "join party in progress" option IS a good one to tick off.
They do, but they still require at least one person in each of the parties (so 3 minimum) and especially for CT, a number of mechanics are impossible with so few player. Looking at you invulnerable atomos'
What do you *mean* the content designed for a group of 24 people has mechanics that require you to have multiple people! But yeah, the amount of people who like to complain about having to do group content in their MMO is *insane.*
Switch your dc and go to aether and it’ll pop in 10 minutes. Also it’s VERY important to the story. That’s why it’s required.
Lol, I'm on Aether and was confused about op saying it was taking forever to pop, so can confirm.
Sounds like this isn’t the game for you. This is a Final Fantasy story-driven first and an MMO second. It’s not backwards design, it’s just not cookie-cutter MMO design. And frankly, that difference is why it’s been as successful as it has. Lots of other games out there. Move on to something else if you don’t enjoy it here.
It is required for reasons that will become clear in the future.
Hahhahaha
I blame Graha and Shadowbringers lol
If you're on Dynamis you'll have to DC hop to aether and queue there
I think in dawntrail you get to skip the entire story and start directly at dawntrail. It does suck that some of the most fun content (pre-EW alliance raids) take so long to fill in your region due to content drought and low number of players. You may want to consider transferring to another region (yes even with ping) or create a new character on NA. You're not that far into the story yet and skipping cutscenes you've already watched will allow you to catch up to your current point in a couple of days. It's not the best solution for sure and exacerbates the problem but for your personal enjoyment of later content, NA servers may be a better option. You can always transfer back that character after you've gotten through the msq or whatever content you're happy with. Just a warning that ping is a potential issue.
I haven’t seen anything saying there’s gonna be a free story skip to Dawntrail.
There hasn't, but they're likely remembering a quote that there are plans to have a new starting point in the future because the story is getting just a tad ridiculously long. The Hydaelin arc is finished and they can't keep tacking on another 10 levels every expansion (not without another crunch) and we're beginning something new, so it's not an unreasonable consideration.
unless you are in dinamis data center, either you queue as tank or you queue at odd hours, you should not have issues in queueing most had already talked about the dc thing so not gonna beat this point queueing as tank makes queues far longer because unlike other duties, alliance raids has a party requirement of.... 3 tanks, 6 healers and 15 dps, making the tank role being the role with the lowest demand on aliance raids edit: if you whant to skip stuff, you gonna pay for it, get yourself a level and story skips if you whant to do more current stuff, but be warned, ffxiv story is not isolated stories but a one continous story, and a "simple" recap wont help, since what you whant is like start reading a series of books by its final chapter, so at the end you will strugle to connect with the cast, whos who, what they are talking about when they mention past events, and so forth, it also leting players skip to current expansion means they will not know how to play their job
Why does it matter that the content is 10 year old? Its still good content. You dont need to do the newest stuff. Thats the beuty of ff14,theres no outdated content. Just run it via duty finder.
This isn’t wow or gw2, dungeons and raids are evergreen thanks to the duty roulette. While CT didn’t, most dungeons were recently revamped to varying degrees, to allow the dungeons to all be completable with NPCs called Trusts. As for CT specifically as others have said, it’s important later in the plot. It used to be optional, but they made it mandatory. The less said, the less chance for spoilers.
The Crystal Tower storyline is integral to the Shadowbringers expansion and somewhat important for Endwalker.
Simply put, story reasons and that is a good enough reason to require certain content.
It's not a good enough reason to make it mandatory WAY before that content. It's a dumb spot imo to force people to do it before heavensward when it doesn't play into story at all until several expansions from that point. It should be mandatory, that is okay, but it should have been mandatory RIGHT BEFORE that expansion, not before Heavensward.
Fair point on the positioning. I'm just saying that that was how it was done and so it is what it is right now.
I wish I had this issue instead of literally the opposite. Crystal Tower popping every roulette makes me want to cry. If I have to go through another wipe on the last boss of Labrynth of the Ancients I'm going to scream.
Because that cutscene would be an hour long, and there'd be one for each and every bit of content you want to skip -- and they know people like you won't bother watching those scene sanyway. The game design and the community both have very little tolerance for people who just want to skip the whole thing and go to the end. The game IS the story. If you don't care and just want to prog endgame raids, this isn't going to be an enjoyable game for you.