It's okay to fail solo duties

Having read some existing threads, I wanted to provide my two cents about the current state of solo duties in dawntrail. Personally, I quite enjoyed how difficult the duties were, especially against lizard dad and also fighting as wuk lamat. Both of them took two attempts to clear as well as the lvl 90 viper duty all of which were done on normal. I am not an expert level player, I could barely clear Hydaelyn Ex when it was current content so I am hardly some ultimate clearing omegagamer. Nevertheless, I see no issue with the current implementation of difficulty at normal solo duties, and they should stay at and around the current level of challenge they are at. Players should be allowed the fail.

This is something I wish more people understood.

Dying in a video game is not the end of the world. It's even less of a problem in XIV, compared to older Final Fantasy titles, since you get put back at the beginning of the quest. If you think that's rough, try playing a game with save points.

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Originally Posted by PorxiesRCute

save points

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*cries in forgetting to go back to the save point in FFX before an important battle... for more than one fight* :eek:

But yeah. I get it, society puts a lot of "never make any mistake whatsoever or you suck as a person" into our minds in reality in all stages of our lives, but a) it's bullshit and always was and b) failing is an inherent part of learning a thing. Any possible thing requires it. And in games you don't even actually get hurt or lose anything of significance. The worst case is downleveling in Eureka if you can't get a raise from someone else.

Embrace the experience of failures and wiping in a game. It's free and essential to becoming better at playing. :)

I'm logging in to say this. Surely the people playing this game have played literally any other game. Losing/failing is a part of games, sports, life in general. Shooting a basketball and missing is not grounds for "welp, never doing that again". When you were learning to write your name you didn't throw the crayon on the floor and never pick it up again. You have to learn in this game too.

Not everyone is the same. Some might not care about dying multiple times to pass a quest then there are others that quit and never play the game again. For solo player games if I can't pass them then I just use the cheat engine for more hp so I can pass the quest then move on. Not everyone plays for impossible challenge but for fun.

It's not okay to fail solo duties - it interrupts the flow of the story. The idea that it's okay for the MSQ to repeatedly kill you is fallacious and toxic. It's not repeatable content; it's something that locks everyone out of every other piece of content until done and its main job is to deliver a story where dying repeatedly directly works against that purpose. Like think of every other normal Final Fantasy game, it's practically impossible to game over on the main story.

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Originally Posted by Mlem

It's not okay to fail solo duties - it interrupts the flow of the story. The idea that it's okay for the MSQ to repeatedly kill you is fallacious and toxic. It's not repeatable content; it's something that locks everyone out of every other piece of content until done and its main job is to deliver a story where dying repeatedly directly works against that purpose. Like think of every other normal Final Fantasy game, it's practically impossible to game over on the main story.

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Wait until you hear how many times I had to repeat my fight against Yunalesca in FFX, with guides. (I had the printed official guide book at that time, and internet.) Even that random chocobo eater in whats-that-road's-name took a few attempt. And don't get me started with these 20 iterations of a fight against Seymor. And FFX was not the exception to the rule.

You are free to have whatever opinion about solo duties and how often it should or should not be ok to fail them. However, do yourself a favour and keep the other Final Fantasy games out of that, it just shows how little you know of other Final Fantasy games.

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Originally Posted by Minali

However, do yourself a favour and keep the other Final Fantasy games out of that, it just shows how little you know of other Final Fantasy games.

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Oh dear...

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Originally Posted by Mlem

It's not okay to fail solo duties - it interrupts the flow of the story. The idea that it's okay for the MSQ to repeatedly kill you is fallacious and toxic. It's not repeatable content; it's something that locks everyone out of every other piece of content until done and its main job is to deliver a story where dying repeatedly directly works against that purpose. Like think of every other normal Final Fantasy game, it's practically impossible to game over on the main story.

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I'm sorry, what Final Fantasy games are you even thinking of where it's impossible to game over? Which ones have you even played? The difficulty of the DS remake of FF4 was so ramped-up that random encounters in the Tower of Zot would regularly wipe people.

Frankly I'm surprised that people are calling these solo instances 'difficult'. I found them all to be so easy that I'd rather they weren't there, they're glorified cutscenes that you have to press buttons for. I wish they were either more interesting or were just regular cutscenes like some of the later cutscenes. I genuinely have no idea how people are failing these.

In the process of the discussion and double checking with a friend, I learned people playing with a controller quite literally are unable to read tooltips, unless they have a touchpad or mouse around or so and jump over half a dozen hoops. This is incredibly absurd and I can see how this makes it harder to navigate skills in solo duties, even though they have roughly the same pattern. Sometimes it's the minor differences making, well, a difference. How CBU3 never came up with a good solution for this is beyond me. Of course this isn't the only thing that might be between you and a win if you consider these mechanics difficult in itself, but it's certainly not helping.

I was gonna chime in and say "It's in no way okay to fail solo duties, they're way too basic and easy for that and probably by design, it's not even a bad thing." but then I read Minali's post above and if accurate it's an inexcusable oversight by CBU3. It doesn't entirely obsolve players of responsibility for being bad enough to fail these things but it does make it understandable in the cases of controller players.

I found the post again where someone in the forum explained it and it sounds incredibly clunky and link a thing you won't know about unless you accidentally unlock your mouse by random button smashing. (Unless you play plenty of games where you need to activate this "mouse cursor" but I can't imagine a lot of them to be out there.) My friend didn't know hovering about skills without a mouse is possible at all, until she was playing Endwalker, and only after she read about it on reddit.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6524586

The friend I mentioned uses a touchpad, which also seems to activate the cursor, but I'm not sure how many controllers actually have one. I only play with my controller from Steam once in a blue moon and am not sure if it has one. I certainly don't remember ever needing one in a game. Maybe it is a standard for new ones today, I don't know, but how often do you actually buy a new controller? Back in PS2 days I replaced mine once after it had serious signs of decay from using it a lot and that was after using it for 8 years or so. And either way it's very unintuitive and apparently hard to find.

Considering controllers are so popular in JP from what I know, one would expect them to be aware this is an issue. (Maybe they consider it obvious because JP people are so used to controllers? I have no clue.)

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Originally Posted by Minali

In the process of the discussion and double checking with a friend, I learned people playing with a controller quite literally are unable to read tooltips, unless they have a touchpad or mouse around or so and jump over half a dozen hoops.

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This isn't true - virtual mouse mode (L1 + R3) allows you to bring up a cursor and hover over things without plugging in a mouse.

I'm not a controller player, so I don't know how well this feature is signposted, though.

EDIT: D'oh, reply beat me to it.

I know a few controller players that seemed to know to do that pretty instinctively. At the very least, it was one of the first things my brother did when he wanted to use the cursor on the PS5 version.

My biggest problem with solo duty fights on borrowed jobs used to be the binds. I use somewhat peculiar arrangement and the game forcefully putting the skills in 1 2 and 3 was detrimental for me. However nowadays you can reorder the hotbar to your hearts content before starting the fight. It gives both, time to arrange them in manner that makes sense to you, as well as read the tooltips in peace. I have not tried on controller side but I'd assume the reorder option is there too. The fights give an impression of urgency and people are conditioned from group duties to jump into the pull to a point they might do so and feel hurried even in solo ones. But in solo ones you can always take time, examine and adjust the toolkit before committing to start the fight part which is easily missed. Do I kinda dislike being forced in melee jobs, yeah, as I naturally play ranged. But I play to learn to be better.