"In from the Cold" Scenario, any way to skip it?

I was a big fan of this actually…at first.

It was a good idea and felt really fresh and really reaaaally made you feel the hopelessness.

My big complaint was there didn’t seem to be a lot of logic in where to go. I wanted to just exit the city, regardless of direction, and kept getting turned around. Especially starting and being able to get to the east side, I would have wanted to keep going go east then simply skirt around the city where there are fewer enemies. The direction we had to go (into the heart of the mess) just didn’t make sense to me. Why repair the reaper when I could have just gone left and avoided everything entirely a block earlier?

I would have rather it just allowed you to get to a specific point with hordes of enemies; even allowing multiple “exit” points. Maybe some mechanic like throwing a rock to distract enemies.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Zenos is not normal by any stretch of the imagination.

We've still yet to receive a proper explanation as to why he was so abnormally powerful since his visions of the Final Days implied he was different even before he received his Resonant echo.

Hopefully that's something that gets explained in Pandemonium or some other 6.x content. The way he's constantly referred to as a beast, even by the Watcher makes me wonder if perhaps he's a reincarnation of something that wasn't even human originally.

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yeah, but neither are we, no?

iirc he was experimented on as a kid, going through that 'tune up' thing that weird looking roe in stb went through, only not going too crazy with it? at least I swear someone mentioned this at one point

Seriously OP, and the 20+ people who upvoted that post?
I just did that MSQ Instance, and you were REALLY gonna Quit the Game over it?

It wasn't even that hard. I fail to understand everyone who hated this Instance so much.
Is a little bit of Challenge by making you under-powered and having you put in a little work so bad? To actually have you do more then just attack X target asking to much?
This Instance was awesome, it was different. I especially loved the feeling of helplessness and how you cant just Brute-Force your way through without Challenge.
I to see another instance like this in the future. Mix things up.

I tried two times the first night I encountered this - switched to easy mode the second time.
After the second time I quit for the night.

But I honestly think the reason I did was that I had a two and a half hour babysitting the logon queue before that. I was honestly just plain tired after that, and a bit of a headache coming on.
So after that crap twice (I really don't like when you're forced to play someone else, and I didn't like the whole getting-my-character-possessed thing), I just wasn't having any of it.

I did not babysit a queue for 2.5 hours (dc'd three times during it) to have THAT thrown at me.
I did take screenshots of where I was when I:
1) found the out-of-gas mech
2) found the tank of gas
and was able to set waypoints the first time I tried it last night, and succeeded.

BUT - last night, after another two-hour babysitting marathon, I made sure to get done the crafting/gathering/turn-in type things ASAP once I logged in, in case this duty threw me over the edge again.
But it didn't - finished it the first time. Thank goodness we didn't have to real-time crawl at the end though...

I've got some sort of bug with this. I've tried 2 keyboards and 2 gamepads. In the sequence at the end, it does not register any inputs. I'm actually completely blocked by this quest now.

I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't hard, it just wasn't fun to me. That said, I dislike most roleplaying duties. From a story angle, I did like the situation ... so it's a hit or miss.

This was a great way of showing (not telling) us how powerful we truly are. Going toe to toe with a solider only to come out of it near death reminded me of that. Not having auto-regen made me realize that even the simple mechanic of recovering health is accounted for in lore. This wasn't difficult and it certainly wasn't out of the realm of things FFXIV has done before.

I can understand if people dislike it because it wasn't their cup of tea, but I strongly disagree that it was poorly executed.

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Originally Posted by Deusteele

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I don't entirely agree with this take. And I'm gonna start by saying I do have some issues with the quest's story, and the general context and related story.

But I liked this duty. I liked it a lot. It was definitely tougher than a lot of the other duties we've dealt with, and the sub-objectives weren't terrifically clear, but it ended up feeling more like a puzzle to me than anything else. I actually liked that the objectives weren't completely obvious, and that you kind of had to figure them out. What I liked most about it though was that it showed our character still coming up with solutions and working their way through a high-stakes situation and managing to still make a difference, even in a body without the strength and power that they're used to. The situation was far from being in their favor but they still managed to pull through, but it also still had that sense of urgency to it - of knowing they easily could've failed.

As for the rest, I have a TON of issues with Fandaniel and Zenos just in general.

I am so far beyond tired of Zenos and his obsessive self-important drivel. At this point my character has little reason to view him as anything other than an incredibly powerful and incredibly dangerous nuisance, seeing as he seems to mostly just be sitting around giving orders that seem to be primarily getting carried out by Fandaniel for... reasons I'm still not entirely sure I understand. Watching those two interact feels like watching a bizarre horror-comedy sit com with Fandaniel in one corner being the passive aggressive cousin ready to tear out someone's throat for a laugh and Zenos being the other cousin who's tolerating him because he's far too edgy and cool to cut him in half like he probably wants to.

All of that rambling to say, that for me the only thing that felt cheap about this particular quest is that it feels an awful lot like this entire little subplot was entirely just a whim of the current main antagonists, a diversion on top of a distraction that sure, delayed us but also accomplished... nothing?? Of note that the attack wouldn't have done already?? Like Fandaniel did this just to see if he could. For. Reasons, I guess.

Imo the story problems with this quest are less a function of the quest itself, but of the broader context of the story... and having one half of your dynamic duo villain pair being a one dimensional murder bot whose entire personality is being obsessed with fighting the warrior of light.

That said I'm still only on the L84 quests so have a lot to go, maybe my feelings on that will change, but so far the outlook isn't great lol

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

Seriously considering quitting the game over this one.

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Thanks. I needed a good laugh.

Doing that instance I had two thoughts:

1. MASSIVE ANXIETY
2. oh man, people are gonna cry about this on the forums so hard

Kudos to the scenario designers for making an instance that wove such dread and anxiety out of a simple stealth/survival mechanic instance.