The constant disbanding of Steps of Faith

[Eidolon]

The only change need to be made is 4 hour lockout for abandoning a duty. Game over.

Great! The number of people who just Disconnect rather than leave parties will just rise Exponentially under your advised changes! So instead of getting people who -abandon- steps of faith and eat a 30 minute timer, we'll just see people who DC and wait for 30 minutes while you have to wait 5 minutes -JUST TO BE ABLE TO KICK THEM-.

Seriously. I hate both sides of this arguement.

[Aldracity]

Ehhh, the real problem with SoF is that it makes absolutely no sense...relative to the rest of the game.

Think about it for a second. Normally, the MT takes the boss, the OT takes the adds, the healers heal everything, and the DPS are supposed to Adds > Boss on their kill priority.

Steps? The MT takes the adds, the OT is a pure DPS (cannon), one healer is the real MT (heal aggro), the other healer can be a DPS (cannon), and the DPS ignore the adds. Dragonslayer is normal-ish, but the long walk isn't.

In other words, you're forced to forget everything you know about your role. The "Main Healer" WANTS to heal before aggro so they intentionally pick up aggro. The MT DOESN'T want to run around picking up adds, and instead wants to wait for the "Main Healer" to start getting slapped. The other tank needs to completely forget everything they know about tanking and just fire cannons like it's a new DPS rotation. Melee DPS need to ignore the "diagonal quarters" when flanking because those result in stompy stompy. Ranged DPS need to stand in front of the boss.

If you're the adaptable sort, or if you play multiple jobs/games, this factor is a non-factor. For those who are either one-Job 50s or else are all-in on FFXIV, the mechanics of this fight are borderline inconceivable.

It's not impossible in DF though. I've cleared it several times on patch day and post-patch, including explaining the fight through a language barrier on the Elemental data center where nobody had their clear.

[kyuven]

snip.

Why is thinking outside the box a bad thing?
If anything the only problem in that regard is we don't do it more often, so when it DOES happen we get caught off-guard.

[Seiryuukishi]

That's brilliant, in the cutscene a piano falls from the sky killing vishap!

Then after that, we'd have the problem of the same people complaining it's too hard complain about not being able to find the duty's exit. I think they should just cut the fight all together to appease the lowest common denominator.

I can do you one better. Revamp the fight altogether. Instead of chasing down Vishap to kill him, he chases us while being chased by dragoons. If we don't make to the exit and leave before he gets to us, fail. We get no abilities to use not even sprint. His run speed is doubled and we have slow. Oh, as an extra bonus he is attacking the dragoons while chasing us. If even one dragoon dies, fail. /sarcasm

That right there goes to show you there are some far more evil than SE. Now if you think Steps is still hard... I can do this all day.

P.S. This was meant as a joke and yet serious at the same time. Steps could've been far worse.

[Aldracity]

Why is thinking outside the box a bad thing?
If anything the only problem in that regard is we don't do it more often, so when it DOES happen we get caught off-guard.

Errr...your point exactly? This is the last encounter before Heavensward, yet it's also the first encounter that introduces mechanics which completely contort our standard MMO playstyles. In a vacuum this fight is great, but in the context of a random selection of players who just went through hundreds if not thousands of hours of holy trinity, it's a bloody mess. Yes it's absurdly easy if you have a party who knows what they're doing (or even half a party!), but that's not a good option for anyone on an underpopulated server or without a decent FC.

From a development standpoint, this probably is the fatal mistake that QA missed. Those are the guys who constantly try to contort their mentalities to break every possibility, yet I feel that everyone underestimated how rigid the average MMO player's mentality is, and how long it takes to soften that mentality.

[kyuven]

Errr...your point exactly? This is the last encounter before Heavensward, yet it's also the first encounter that introduces mechanics which completely contort our standard MMO playstyles. In a vacuum this fight is great, but in the context of a random selection of players who just went through hundreds if not thousands of hours of holy trinity, it's a bloody mess. Yes it's absurdly easy if you have a party who knows what they're doing (or even half a party!), but that's not a good option for anyone on an underpopulated server or without a decent FC.

...you just restated my point.

And yeah QA gets complacent a lot. Stoneskin II is because of them bitching

[Nova_Dresden]

The only change need to be made is 4 hour lockout for abandoning a duty. Game over.

Yeah, no. So currently I can (and do) abandon every SoF I end up in taking a 30 minute debuff because it's a better use of a half hour than watching that giant dragon trample over us two or three times in the same time span. You up that to 4 hours and instead I can just stand there and be kicked, vote abandon, or just wait out the 90 minute dungeon timer until it ends.

[Alistaire]

If people don't like it now, what makes you think punting it to the main story roulette will change it?

Easy, the other 2 MSQ roulette dungeons take more time. People will stay for a fight likely to take less time.

That's a bandaid fix, the real issue is people will quit out, regardless of which roulette it's in. Will people quit out less? That's to be decided, but I echo the idea of having a force reset on the instance.

If anything, the only problem with this solution is that people might ditch CM and praetorium more in favor of getting Steps of Faith.

[Nalien]

Biggest issue I have with Steps of Faith is that you can wipe very early on, but you still have to wait for Vishap to walk slowly to the end. They really should just make it so you can't respawn and a full wipe results in a restart. Not sure if that would keep people around for it, but it would at least make the fight a lot less frustrating to drag people through. It is a fight where people can make a lot of small mistakes and those mistakes will quickly add up to a wipe, though that wipe will come slowly and waste a lot of your time.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Easy, the other 2 MSQ roulette dungeons take more time. People will stay for a fight likely to take less time.
If anything, the only problem with this solution is that people might ditch CM and praetorium more in favor of getting Steps of Faith.

Counter: No one wants to do SOF now because the majority of the players prefer to face roll it and then wonder why it doesn't work, followed up by everyone quitting. SOF has a time limit of 60 minutes because it's expected of the party to clear it within that timeframe. The other 2 story quest dungeons you speak of have a much higher time limit because they're actual dungeons rather than a straight up boss fight, ergo they take longer to complete and most likely take a little bit longer to finish than a typical SOF run.

Also, those dungeons can be facerolled. SOF cannot, therefore people who don't learn causes everyone else to quit in frustration. SOF has a lot more mechanics than those two dungeons and is more demanding.