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This giant brawl is amazing. A chaotic free-for-all that displays the power of the leaders we've gotten to know through this area, and they are dangerous enough that if you don't pay attention you WILL die, or lose the objective. It's fun to make fun of Magnai, but he clearly has the power to spare, to say nothing of Sadu. I go through MSQ as a BLM so, yeah, this fight was a mess.
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Nov 25, 2022 18:54
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SirPhoebos posted:I went with the Conan reference for the attack order The original quote is generally attributed to Genghis himself: "The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms." and variations thereof. It's apocryphal and he probably didn't say it. It was first attributed to him in the Jami' al-tawarikh, which was written a century after his death (and is in persian and arabic, not mongolian) but still predates Conan by quite a bit. Anyhow, as someone who generally plays through the MSQ as BLM I appreciate Sadu as the first plot foe to really bring the explosions for a proper mage duel. I was expecting yet another physical fighter after doing the Dotharl quests but, nope, she's more into maniacal laughing, giant statues and enormous death blasts. It's hard not to swoon a little.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:11
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I bet Sadu could still take most of the Steppe in a fist fight though.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:21
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While a neat set piece, this solo duty was the first one I ever outright failed due to the dps check on Sadu. I was maining Astrologian at the time, and they just do not have good single-target dps and cannot bring Sadu's totems down in time. One of many occasions when I got the feeling that the game actively did not want me playing a healer through the story, and more pointed than most. The Azim Steppe in general, between the solo duties and Bardam's Mettle, was for me a noticeable tick up in difficulty and my first feeling of unease that either I was deliberately handicapping myself by playing the class whose concept and aesthetic I enjoyed most, I was just a bad player, or both.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:29
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:sadu is in a committed relationship with killing, dying, and being dead Sadu x Killing is a long-run thing, but Sadu x Being Dead is pretty on-again-off-again  But yeah, Sadu and Magnai are pound-for-pound two of the heaviest hitters in all of FF14, and that does a lot to sell that there is a very good reason that nobody fucks with the Steppe. There's probably mages with more skill and definitely more breadth of knowledge than Sadu, but in terms of pure battle magic, I think you're looking at like... Y'shtola, and maybe some of the Job NPCs? What I'm saying is that Sadu owns.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:30
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:If I'm not mistaken, this started in Endwalker and was backported to previous instances of the game. Man how would that even work with (HW DRK Job Quest) Esteam?
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Nov 25, 2022 20:40
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I don't know about Astrologians not having enough personal DPS at the time because I was playing it at launch and never had to repeat a main story duty.  Maybe it's gear-related? I did Bardam's a few times for gear before I continued the main story.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:46
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In a prophecy twist, Magnai realizes that the one with the eyes he’s been after was himself all along. …But instead of taking the intended lesson (along the lines of “you must love yourself before you can love another”), he takes it entirely too literally, which then leads to a series of quests where you have to thwart his increasingly insane attempts to have a relationship with himself, including trying to wed his own reflection and making a journey to Azys Lla to see about using Allagan tech to make a clone of himself.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:47
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Likewise, I've done the entire MSQ, including all solo duties, as WHM. Your damage output is lower than a DPS, but I always figured they were balanced around that as the baseline. On the upside, you can heal through practically any damage you take. It's definitely a different experience than as DPS or tank, but I've never run into one I couldn't do.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:51
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I ran into several.  Maybe my gear was just bad, I dunno. Or I'm bad. But failing that solo duty made me switch to WHM, which I was able to punch through the solo duty as without lowering the difficulty. Still makes a lot of moments that are supposed to be big dramatic badass poo poo into slow, tedious grinds against an enemy that simply cannot kill you.Honestly, wish I could just set the game to automatically put all solo duties on very easy.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:53
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The solo duty echo buff thing boosts your damage if you're a healer instead of giving you regen like if you're a DPS so it's not much slower. I still don't like doing them as healer though since "you have a dot and one damage button to spam, and you can only die to one-shots" isn't engaging gameplay.
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Nov 25, 2022 20:56
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The first solo duty I failed due to low dps was the last one in the Stormblood patches and I mained Scholar up until Endwalker. Even then I managed it eventually, it just took a couple of attempts. I will have words for that duty when Sanguinia gets there.
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Nov 25, 2022 21:20
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I've failed and replayed a number of solo duties just because I'm a slow learner on mechanics (though oddly not the ones I generally see others struggle with)
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Nov 25, 2022 21:20
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I failed the Nadaam the first time because I took "leave us behind" as a cue to leave everyone behind when more enemies came out. Eventually someone plot relevant died when I was a malm away trying to cap the point and getting poked.
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Nov 25, 2022 21:29
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I usually fail solo duties because I missed the dialogue telling me to go do A Thing and just end up faffing about until I see that things are going horribly wrong and it's too late to save it!
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Nov 25, 2022 21:52
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ConanThe3rd posted:Man how would that even work with (HW DRK Job Quest) Esteam? Sang has met her dark side already, so there's no need to spoil that. I guess it'd just use the old text cut-in there.
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Nov 25, 2022 22:22
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yeah, I cleared it on AST without much of an issue on release. I keep making the silly mistake of playing AST through the main story in x.0, when the class is inevitably at its jankiest.
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Nov 25, 2022 22:35
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Cythereal posted:While a neat set piece, this solo duty was the first one I ever outright failed due to the dps check on Sadu. I was maining Astrologian at the time, and they just do not have good single-target dps and cannot bring Sadu's totems down in time. Failing DPS checks in solo duties (during MSQ) is generally a problem of the player skill, as almost all of them are doable with last expansion Tomestone gear, and those are about equal to mid expansion white gear. At the same time, it's hard to argue it's entirely the player's fault because DPS checks can be pretty difficult to understand how to improve on naturally. They're actually pretty trivial once you understand what to look for (at least at the solo duty level), but a lot of people just don't naturally evolve the sense to look for it and the game doesn't do much to hold your hand in this regard. But yeah, basically, you shouldn't have basically *any* issue doing solo duties as any class. The game basically doesn't favor using one class or the other for MSQ in basically any capacity whatsoever; it's just whatever (admittedly high) leniency that is built into solo duty stat checks can be exceeded by general player confusion or maybe the occasional design hiccup. If you had trouble with DPS checks as healer, then this actually goes against the idea that the MSQ is not designed for healer, because you would have had a much much harder time meeting the same check with DPS or tank due to the healer DPS bonus and general ease of rotation (compare to other ideas the Echo bonus can't compensate for, such as mobility). I would actually imagine that meeting DPS checks in solo instances as WHM over AST is more akin to the fact that WHM is just an easier class in general to just push buttons = get results. AncientSpark fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Nov 25, 2022 |
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Nov 25, 2022 22:44
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The only solo duty I've ever failed and lowered the difficulty on was the SGE job final fight, and that was really only out of laziness Pretty much all the solo MSQ duties I've mained DRK and was fine.
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Nov 25, 2022 23:02
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The only one I definitely remember having to lower the difficulty on was SAM 60, and even then I think Musosai still mostly kicked my rear end, since I was still wearing HW questing gear.
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Nov 25, 2022 23:18
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A bunch of solo duties kicked my rear end as a sprout. This is because I main BLM and I pretty much always bite it my first time going throw a fight as BLM due to its mobility being what it is. Less so since I learned wtf I’m doing, but still.
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Nov 25, 2022 23:29
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Cythereal posted:The Azim Steppe in general, between the solo duties and Bardam's Mettle, was for me a noticeable tick up in difficulty and my first feeling of unease that either I was deliberately handicapping myself by playing the class whose concept and aesthetic I enjoyed most, I was just a bad player, or both. Bardam's is pretty notorious for having especially hard-hitting mobs even when you're synced down, so at least there it probably was a gear issue as much as anything.
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Nov 25, 2022 23:41
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I have failed solo duties due to dumb mistakes, but the only one's I ever recall giving me serious trouble, that one SAM quest aside, are: - The Reason Roaille - Red Mage (Level 60), especially since I had no idea what Shire Gear was when I first got there - Return of the Bull, because I didn't have the duty action mapped to a button
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Nov 25, 2022 23:43
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gtrmp posted:Bardam's is pretty notorious for having especially hard-hitting mobs even when you're synced down, so at least there it probably was a gear issue as much as anything. Oh, I'm well aware in hindsight. It was never one of the dungeons I'd outright drop group from if I got it for LDR (or numbers), but decidedly not one of my favorites.
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Nov 25, 2022 23:44
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Regalingualius posted:The only one I definitely remember having to lower the difficulty on was SAM 60, and even then I think Musosai still mostly kicked my rear end, since I was still wearing HW questing gear. It's really hard to see the aoe markers and your buttons through the tears.
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Nov 26, 2022 00:01
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Also here confirming that I managed no problem as as Ast my first time through all of Stormblood on its release aside from one thing later on, though I can say most of the solo duties did feel like they dragged on. Healer is absolutely viable especially the newest one; but at the same time I can absolutely get feeling like ff14 does not want you to play healer, if only because playing healer solo is mind numbing if the duty is not built for it. As for Azim steppe it was real fun doing this as a xaela after picking it largely because I liked how my guy looked.
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Nov 26, 2022 00:14
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Cythereal posted:Oh, I'm well aware in hindsight. It was never one of the dungeons I'd outright drop group from if I got it for LDR (or numbers), but decidedly not one of my favorites. ...People really shouldn't just drop out of a roulette just because you don't like a dungeon as much. Maybe if the whole thing has turned into a poo poo-show with people dying to everything, but I feel like it's pretty lovely just to abandon a duty on people.
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Nov 26, 2022 00:15
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Zoig posted:Also here confirming that I managed no problem as as Ast my first time through all of Stormblood on its release aside from one thing later on, though I can say most of the solo duties did feel like they dragged on. Healer is absolutely viable especially the newest one; but at the same time I can absolutely get feeling like ff14 does not want you to play healer, if only because playing healer solo is mind numbing if the duty is not built for it. Yeah, healer not being particularly exciting to play in solo duties is, unfortunately, a bunch of confluence of mechanical designs in terms of how FFXIV does damage profiling (highly burst damage centric), and their concentration on making healers easy to jump into (because they recognize that healer anxiety exists), but going so far as to make it pretty brainless when the game is not calling for especially high difficulty. The main scenario not being designed for healer is less about the difficulty being too high (healer is probably one of the easiest roles to do solo duties on, really, although tank might be a close second) and more the opposite; the fact that the healer mechanics are just not that interesting without the shotcalling/group mechanics/pure panic of higher difficulty content in FFXIV. Hell, a lot of people argue that healer is not that interesting even in the most difficult content in FFXIV, although a separate group starts complaining anytime difficult content starts to pump up healer-specific difficulty as well. AncientSpark fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Nov 26, 2022 |
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Nov 26, 2022 00:22
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The only solo duty that I found to be truly hard (in a bullshit way) was the level 70 monk job quest during Stormblood release weekend (first job to 70 so I didn't have any of the new tomestone gear). That one actually made me kinda angry, but I'm sure it's a lot less obnoxious if you are actually wearing upgraded level 70 equipment. And another two expansions worth of job rebalances. I also remember losing to dragoon 67, mainly because I was derping about where to stand to best avoid the attacks. Aside from that, most of my solo duty losses were because, as IthilionTheBrave mentioned, some NPC says "do this thing" but I completely missed it because the text flashed by while I was in the middle of stabbing somebody.
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Nov 26, 2022 02:26
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meanwhile I've died in probably about 75% of all solo duties at least once extremely tired of hearing "skill issue" whenever anyone wants to discuss the difficulty of video games
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Nov 26, 2022 02:53
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AncientSpark posted:Yeah, healer not being particularly exciting to play in solo duties is, unfortunately, a bunch of confluence of mechanical designs in terms of how FFXIV does damage profiling (highly burst damage centric), and their concentration on making healers easy to jump into (because they recognize that healer anxiety exists), but going so far as to make it pretty brainless when the game is not calling for especially high difficulty. This is how I feel about it to - playing as a healer in a solo duty is more about avoiding dying from boredom rather than worrying about the enemies. I can't think of a single solo duty I've failed and I mained healer from ARR-StB and DRK from StB patches-current. Both healer and tank have the problem of boredom, but it is far far worse on healer. hexwren posted:meanwhile I've died in probably about 75% of all solo duties at least once I mean, that's why they added difficulty settings. Like the new God of War game, I'm terrible at action games, so I cranked it down to the easiest difficulty and enjoyed it quite a bit.
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Nov 26, 2022 03:10
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Mordiceius posted:I mean, that's why they added difficulty settings. Yeah it's good they have them. Did they add a setting to just default them to very easy?
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Nov 26, 2022 03:13
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Ultiville posted:Yeah it's good they have them. Did they add a setting to just default them to very easy? Unfortunately not. I think they basically want everyone to try it on the default difficulty before offering easy/very easy.
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Nov 26, 2022 03:15
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Mordiceius posted:Unfortunately not. I think they basically want everyone to try it on the default difficulty before offering easy/very easy. Funny thing, I have a friend who still plays FF14, and the first thing he does when he hits a new solo duty is go afk to let it kill him so he can then do it on very easy. Alas, no difficulty setting for story-required dungeons and trials.
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Nov 26, 2022 03:17
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I think actually trying in the initial go before you hit them with the nerf bat so you know the mechanics as far as you get so you can clear it easier.
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Nov 26, 2022 03:31
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Cythereal posted:Funny thing, I have a friend who still plays FF14, and the first thing he does when he hits a new solo duty is go afk to let it kill him so he can then do it on very easy. But.... why? Why not just... try?
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Nov 26, 2022 03:36
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Mordiceius posted:But.... why? Why not just... try? Why not play the game in the way you find enjoyable? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 26, 2022 03:42
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Unfortunately, the reason why there's no difficulty slider by default is that the general consensus is that FF14 is relatively easy at any point before Extremes, with maaaybe the exception of Alliance Raids/Normal Raids depending on if you allow for "dying but getting rezzed" as being easy or not. Yeah, there's a bit of a learning curve, and going blind can be sometimes a bit hazardous (you may need a retry on occasion, especially if you just have trouble with blind spotting puzzles), but once you get even a small leap beyond the basics the game, it really does not scale much in difficulty even in Normal. Generally, the people who have trouble consistently are those who have never gotten past the point of the basics. That said, that's not intended to dismiss this sentiment... hexwren posted:meanwhile I've died in probably about 75% of all solo duties at least once because the other reality is that FF14 is also pretty bad at onboarding things beyond the basics and is not really the player's fault for not improving on them naturally. Most people that do get those better skills are from being able to backport those skills in terms of puzzle solving mechanics and mechanics like DPS checks from practicing them in side content or doing further research on their own. It's actually a common debate in the community as to whether the current solo/MSQ content is actually too easy, to the point where it fails to onboard people who want to move on to harder content, since the jump from normal content to Extreme and beyond can be severe. Making the game even easier by default would possibly worsen that gap, and it's unclear whether that would be a good thing or not (on the one hand, there are people who want an easy time. On the other hand, even those who start on wanting said easy time may gradually become interested in harder content when they originally weren't as they play more. And the devs can't predict which one you might be). Largely, it depends on whether you believe in the game training you to increase your preference base or not, and different devs have different views on that. AncientSpark fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Nov 26, 2022 |
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Nov 26, 2022 03:51
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Be that as it may, the sheer difficulty I experienced with solo/MSQ content was a significant factor in my decision to quit the game. Especially in combination with people telling me a prettied up version of 'git gud scrub.' Or just kicking me when I was tanking a LDR and I wasn't pulling fast enough. There's a reason I stripped down my gear to an ilevel under 90 every time I queued up for alliance raid daily roulette, and it's not because I love the music in the Crystal Tower raids.
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Nov 26, 2022 04:06
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Sure, but that was your personal reaction to being told by the game that you're not good enough. Another reaction (that is pretty common) is to figure out what you're doing wrong by doing research. Another common reaction is to go ask the community. This does not mean your reaction is invalid. Hell, I do it on a lot of stuff (this is why I don't play FPSes, for example). But the dev has to decide which takes more priority; catering to people for the sake of completion or catering to people that react to difficulty by looking for improvement. Again, that's often a debate from dev to dev. In the case of MMOs in particular, though, the additional wrinkle is that getting people interested in aspirational content and/or finding catalysts for them getting involved in the community is a pretty big deal, and that makes difficulty an even thornier topic to figure out. I hate how "git gud scrub" has become a low-effort insult to gatekeep, because the base sentiment that there is some impetus on the player to improve is pretty important to allowing various design spaces in games and opening potentially new experiences to players they might not have known they were interested in before. Many great games are based on demanding mastery from the player when it seems initially impossible. Ideas such as experimentation and creativity and social stories can be based on adversity, and often, the player does not know ahead of time whether that exists or not, even despite their initial preferences or misgivings. As part of giving up or not, the player has to decide whether they trust the game will reward their efforts in improvement, and that's a conscious decision. AncientSpark fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Nov 26, 2022 |
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Nov 26, 2022 04:15
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