Any idea what is in patch 2.57?

[Nutz]

People struggling to clear an easy encounter would indicate more that the problem lies with the players, no?

This would make sense if SE was running some sort of gaming school or something, but they're trying to make money by providing an experience that MANY people will pay for. If there's a roadblock that would prevent even 5% of their current customers from continuing to pay them then they'll remove it and it will be the sensible thing to do. You may dream of a server full of nothing but fantastically skilled players, but all SE really wants a a server full of people who will pay them. I'm not trying to by cynical or anything, that's just the practical thing to do for their business.

[Spiritreaver1217]

People struggling to clear an easy encounter would indicate more that the problem lies with the players, no?....

Did you not see where i said it was the fact that MANY ppl can't even seem to get a chance to try the fight? Person in my FC literally loaded into a totally empty arena, well the mobs were there, but no players.

Where does skill play into that?

Your argument is flawed because there will always be players that are bad. Always. And the number of bad players will most likely always outnumber the "good" players. SE has hopefully learned their lesson from FFXI's CoP expansion and SoF changes are incoming, because frustrated bad players are still paying customers and you don't want large #'s of your customers going elsewhere over easily fixed issues.

[SanjuroXI]

Did you not see where i said it was the fact that MANY ppl can't even seem to get a chance to try the fight? Person in my FC literally loaded into a totally empty arena, well the mobs were there, but no players.

Where does skill play into that?

Your argument is flawed because there will always be players that are bad. Always. And the number of bad players will most likely always outnumber the "good" players. SE has hopefully learned their lesson from FFXI's CoP expansion and SoF changes are incoming, because frustrated bad players are still paying customers and you don't want large #'s of your customers going elsewhere over easily fixed issues.

SoF isnt even comparable to CoPs level of difficulty lol. I don't even understand how anyone is unable to beat SoF unless there just full retarding the mechanics. I have 2 haracters and DF both my clears np.

[Intellion]

The only reason why the general populace thinks SoF is hard is because many of them seem to fail at basic literacy. There was one time when I tried to help out a group of PUGs using macros w/ sound effects and it went like this:

Macro #1: Tanks, gather mobs under Vishap's belly!
Result: Tanks kited the mobs all over the place.

Macro #2: Tanks, get the mobs away from the cannons!
Result: No response. Cannons are destroyed by Biasts.

Macro #3: FIRE BOTH SNARES NOW!
Result: The tower person fires the Dragonkiller and misses, causing the cannons and snares in the area to self-destruct.

Macro #4: DPS, burn down the boss!
Result: DPS run all over the place, randomly attacking mobs and getting trampled.

Macro #5: DRAGONKILLER, FIRE!
Result: I never got to use this macro because the tower guy always fired the DK during Macro #3 or whenever he felt like it.

Is this fight really hard, or does the general populace just fail at basic literacy?

[Tyrn]

Is this fight really hard, or does the general populace just fail at basic literacy?

Look at how many people fail to understand the OP of this thread.

[LalaRu]

Macro #2: Tanks, get the mobs away from the cannons!
Result: No response. Cannons are destroyed by Biasts.

It doesn't happen. Bias will hardly damage the cannon, Biasts try to but then switch target and cannons still 80+%.
The game mechanic made them ignore aggro until they hit cannons. I tried get them, both had aggro on me but they will continue to go hit the cannons.
On top of that, I feel like all mobs on this map have their own concept of aggro. Tried to get Biast as soon as they spawned, but they kept 'green' for a good time, after third try they start to switch aggro but still moving to cannons. Quite annoying.

[Nalien]

The game mechanic made them ignore aggro until they hit cannons. I tried get them, both had aggro on me but they will continue to go hit the cannons.

The Biasts have a weird AI. They spawn aggroed to the cannon and are basically queued up to do an AoE attack on their target, but that requires them to be close enough, so even if you try to pull them they'll still go in to do the AoE since they're already set to do that attack. Stunning them cancels that out and they'll do their next attack, which should be on the tank if they attempted to pull them. If not they'll just go do another AoE on the cannon.

That's my experience with them anyway. When I did it I put down the pitch in their path to slow them down and did the stun shot the moment I saw the tank try and grab them, they then went straight for the tank and never got close to me. Probably more sensible to just have the tank pull them with stun.

[Dragoon4life]

I hope they buff the Mount drop rate for Levi and Ramuh Ex. Those buttheads are Stingy

[Spiritreaver1217]

SoF isnt even comparable to CoPs level of difficulty lol. I don't even understand how anyone is unable to beat SoF unless there just full retarding the mechanics. I have 2 haracters and DF both my clears np.

Well good for you and your 2 characters. And good for me since i have my clear as well. Not so good for all those ppl beyond your understanding(again and for the third time...) that are not even getting a chance to try the fight because no one wants to even attempt it anymore.

And to be clear, i'm not trying to equate the difficulty of SoF fight to CoP(and let's be real, CoP was not hard. Keeping a static together long enough to clear it was the hard part). All i'm saying is the situations are quite similar imo. There is a fight or series of fights that effectively locks the majority of content of an expansion behind it.

[StouterTaru]

SoF isnt even comparable to CoPs level of difficulty lol. I don't even understand how anyone is unable to beat SoF unless there just full retarding the mechanics. I have 2 haracters and DF both my clears np.

The problem is that you have the good players, the average players, and the bad players. The good players blew through it the first week, along with most of the average players. What's left needing the fight is some average players and a lot of bad players. Stick 3 bad players in a run, and it's very hard to beat it.

The same is true with Odin fight. I tried to DF it a few times after they released cards and the parties were made up of 2-5 people going for a carry. The dps wasn't even close, and a few people couldn't grasp the concept of dodging.