"body swap" duties

I personally don't like them.

In the cold had everyone up in arms and I was more mad the whole body swap plot with Zenos went absolutely no where. I was expecting him to kill a Garlean child while skin suiting me to make them distrust us or something remotely cunning, but instead he just snears and gets found out immediately. What a waste.

But yes I hate those missions mainly because your playing X and they force you to play Y.

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Originally Posted by Nerfworthy

The one with Thancred in ShB was painful to get through, IMO. It was too long, too many different parts involving the same guy, and just honestly a terrible experience.

However the one I've experienced in the very beginning of EW was quite fun! I thought they were better spaced-out and I kind of liked experiencing the different jobs at a much more palatable level of difficulty to get a taste for how it might look/feel to play without going through with leveling one myself. Thumbs up for this iteration of body-swapping.

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It doesn't help that Ramjet is awful anyway, overpowered with no explanation. Kinda like pre boosted Zenos.

A bit boring if they drag on, otherwise they are okay. I think during the story it's nice to be reminded that only your character is the ultimate machine of destruction and death while your friends got very average combat abilities.

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Originally Posted by Conundrum

It doesn't help that Ramjet is awful anyway, overpowered with no explanation. Kinda like pre boosted Zenos.

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When they go as quickly as they come, they don't need much of one. What was kind of a drag about Ran'jit was he seemed more like Thancred's opponent to overcome, not the WoL. And while he did do that somewhat in the RP encounter, it was ultimately the WoL who killed him, and without a whole lot of effort to boot. Escaping from him before left most thinking, "Why are we running? I can kill him now." However, I think fleeing was the better option in that scene. Plus it gave G'raha a chance to shine.

Same thing kind of happens during job quests where the antagonist is said to be capable of "ending us" if they so choose, and I'm over here thinking, "Um... you must not have heard of me..."

They're just weird. Why do we need to do such things?

I really enjoyed the EW ones because they actually had me doing something different, but up until that point they were my least favorite type of duty. I don't like having to do a standard solo boss fight, with just three or four abilities, especially if they're long drawn-out scenarios.

I hate solo duties in general, with passion.

But I admit the rp ones are even worse. Because you have only few skills which makes it feel even more of a drag, because you're not playing the class you picked, and because playing as someone else feels weird.
The leats bad rp duties are the ones in which the team is all spread around tactically, and you get to play as a bunch of persons and then at the end as your own character.

I don't mind them from an RP standpoint, but mechanically it's irritating. You go from a full suite of abilities to 3 buttons you can't even change the keybinds for.

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Originally Posted by Conundrum

This is never not a terrible answer to a complaint about something.

It's just mindless franchise fanboyism.

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They aren't wrong though about it being a regular thing in FF, but their tone left a lot to be desired. lol "Deal with it" was a bit much. But yeah, it's just a thing, love it or hate it. Personally I enjoy it.

I greatly enjoy them and it would be nice if we didn't just battle but got a taste of what interacting with the world was like with those characters and see how it differed than how people treat us as the WoL.

IIRC in that first time they used it with Alphinaud, we got to explore around a little bit. It was very satisfying not having what was happening to our friend just happening in a cutscene, but experiencing it ourselves.

Omg I HATE!!!!!! PLAYING!!!!!! OTHER!!!! JOBS!!!!!!


omg I'm graha tia :)

I’m gonna assume you mean the RP duties where you play as an NPC.

Personally my gripe is the boring ‘rotation’ I repeat for so long that does only chip damage. If they scaled each encounters to be only averagely 1-3 minutes long then I’m all for it. But that’s not the case for many of these solo duties unless you do it in very easy mode… which again to my opinion, equally boring because I literally have close to 0 chance of dying.

I like them and think they're neat but also think a lot of them drag on way longer than they need to. The Thancred v Ranjit fight in ShB is the worst offender imo. It went on so long I was frustrated AND bored by the end of it.

The Roleplaying duties are good, when used to tell a piece of the story. It lets them show you a fight happening without your character being present, the alternative would be just have the fights play out in a short cutscene...

Though they can be rather frustrating because their hotbar is sometimes a complete mess... Looking at your hotbar especially Alphinaud.

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Originally Posted by ZelrothDenathrius

Dont get me wrong, i love the game and find it very pleasant to play as a WoW refugee.

The only thing that i hate about this game is the "body swap" duties (dont know how to call them in other words). They are very boring and frustrating some times.

Anyone else feels like me??

(Sorry for my bad english)

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I don't mind. Doing those duties is a means to an end, there's never any challenge in them, and whether I'm pressing 1-2-3 on my job or a random custom job is entirely irrelevant to me.

As a self-proclaimed "WoW refugee", you'd know that WoW has plenty of those as well, so you shouldn't be too surprised about other games implementing the same.

I'm not up to current content by a long shot, so I think the only duties I've done with this gimmick are the ones in Stormblood where you play as Alphinaud and later as Hien. I was really excited by this idea when I first came upon it in the MSQ, since I'd seen a similar thing done in story missions in Guild Wars 2, where you briefly play as another character with a suite of totally new and unique skills to get your head around. However, I've been a little disappointed by how FFXIV handled this concept because you wind up with only 4 or so skills, and they are basically just carbon copies of standard skills from other jobs I already have. Rather than playing as a whole other person, I felt like I was just playing as an extremely low-level version of me. It's also very weird, because these characters clearly can do way more than this when they are NPCs!

Now, I'm not asking for a whole hotbar of new skills to learn -- that would be equally as bad, and disorienting. It's not about the quantity, but quality. Only a small handful of skills is fine, so long as they are interesting, and not something I ordinarily have access to. This is a rare opportunity to give us crazy abilities that would be completely unbalanced on a regular job in the "real" game. Remember that FFXV event where you battle against Garuda and can do the "Warp Strike" ability? That was awesome, and they put that into a seasonal event that a lot of players will never get to experience! I think we can justify that kind of effort put into an MSQ mission that basically the entire player base will see, no?

Heck, it doesn't even need to be a battle scenario. Sure, Alphinaud can fight, but that's not his gift and not a way to showcase his personal talents. Have him search for information, solve a mystery, do a puzzle, or something. Just some basic dialogue choices to test if you're paying attention to clues can be plenty of fun on their own. Toss in some less-used mini-games or interfaces, like that type of quest where you go first-person and target something with a reticle. I know those are simple as dirt, but I actually like them because they are unusual compared to the rest of the game.

I mean... WoW had vehicle quests, OP...

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

Have him search for information, solve a mystery, do a puzzle, or something. Just some basic dialogue choices to test if you're paying attention to clues can be plenty of fun on their own. Toss in some less-used mini-games or interfaces, like that type of quest where you go first-person and target something with a reticle. I know those are simple as dirt, but I actually like them because they are unusual compared to the rest of the game.

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Now that is something that would be fun, solve puzzles as some other character using their smarts, instead of their brawls in fight. Sadly this game was never much about puzzles.

I like them. Provides a different perspective to the game with a bit of insight on how other characters and NPC functions in the story. Some of them, like Thancred in ShB, felt really good in a storytelling scenario. The buildup and disability of previous events and how he has to fight through them was very impactful. The one in Endwalker gave me more insight in how he actually goes through stealth missions from ARR to ShB to be honest, and I have to say - Thancred is a pretty amazing considering he never became a ninja and self taught himself assassination techniques.

The Final Duty in ShB 5.55 - where you have a lot of characters swapping around though - it felt a bit too much to take in at once. It's great for how you get to see how each NPC fights, but it also feels very disorienting from a gameplay standpoint. Having a couple of out-of-instance swaps every here and there feels good though.

The "In From the Cold" ripped me out of my body felt really uncomfortable in terms of my connection to my avatar - but the scenario is mainly designed to do that to provide a sense of despair of what regular NPCs have when facing the calamity in the storyline. They felt truly powerless, and it really provides some insight to how strong we have grown throughout our adventures because we basically never felt that raw and overwhelming despair where we are powerless to do much of anything. For that reason, I like the duty's execution - stellar job by the devs in that regard.

Still though, I hope that technology never makes a return. Having my character suddenly wrenched from my control and in another's hands felt really scary and disturbing.... Another well-made execution on storytelling though. Makes sense why Beast tribes and all our enemies generally fear the Eikon Slayer.