3.2 Patch Notes

[MilesSaintboroguh]

This is my first MMO as well, but I do read everything that is given to me. I never understood how a game that does all but hold your hand still have people make the same mistakes time and time again. Perhaps this is part of the reason why we're getting the mentor system.

[UnstablePersonality]

This is my forth or so MMO and granted I am still learning...it is a shame to see people getting caught in the most obvious stuff...met a level 54 and 53 dragoon yesterday in Crysalis or whatever that didn't know how to 1, Limit Break and apparently couldn't even see the target bar for the tear in the first place so they basically stood around during that phase.

[Alahra]

However steps of faith can be explained in a few sentences. 1 tank and healer on cannons, cannons focus adds and use snares when up at later cannons. Dps focus on the main boss and ignore adds, one takes care of dragon killer. Tank brings adds to the front for the cannons to kill.

Honestly, I think the issue was that most fights, at least those intended for the MSQ/DF don't require more than 1 or 2 sentences to explain. Steps of Faith has several unique elements that need to be addressed, and people need to be assigned roles when you get in. Very little else in the MSQ/DF needs that. Heck, there are raid-level fights that don't require much more coordination than Steps does (you can explain AS1 in about 5 sentences if someone's done A1, for instance).

By the time we got Steps of Faith (and to a lesser extent, Chrysalis), the era of explaining things had long since passed for much of the playerbase. Most DF content between 2.1 and 2.5 didn't really need much explanation at all. But Steps of Faith's mechanics were significant enough that if you didn't sit down and develop a gameplan at the start, you were going to fail—contrast that with something like post-Nexus Garuda HM, where there is no explaining and the tank pulls immediately whether there's a new person or not.

Steps does explain everything to you as you go, but most of the explanations come too late. If you wait to run to the Dragonkiller until the NPC tells you to, for instance, you most likely won't make it up the tower in time to fire it, and with the original, un-nerfed Steps, that essentially means a wipe. When the wipe condition for the fight requires you to go through the whole fight before you can actually wipe, that can get to be quite un-fun.

[Andrea]

Honestly, I think the issue

I would agree if it wasn't for the fact that the mechanics are separated out to everyone and not just one class.

DPS just need to focus boss and one needs dragon killer. Sure there may be a wipe as like you said they may explain it too late. So what? its a wipe in a fight that was brand new, it happens.
Healers, one healer just does what they've been doing the entire game, heal people. The other healer does something they learned to do in Stone Vigil HM.
Tanks, same as healer, one does what he has always done, the other again, SVHM.

I understand what you're saying and agree that it is without a doubt the hardest MSQ duty at that point. IDK, maybe I give people too much credit and expect them to understand simple mechanics.

[Alahra]

I would agree if it wasn't for the fact that the mechanics are separated out to everyone and not just one class.

That's up for debate, to be honest. At release, it was harder to solo tank/heal it, so the role separation wasn't necessarily crystal clear to every random DF group. Most groups I was with for the first few weeks put ranged DPS on the cannons.

But it's not honestly that people can't understand the mechanics: it's that expecting people to explain those mechanics (and indeed, for people to want to listen to that explanation) in an environment (the Duty Finder) where explanations are almost never necessary was a bit much, especially for a piece of content that was gating the expansion completely.

Ultimately I think that's why they nerfed it—it wasn't the sort of content they conditioned people to for the DF. That's also why they nerfed Pharos Sirius, IMO, as that dungeon required more than most other DF dungeons at the time. That's also why they made mechanical adjustments to SCOB for the Duty Finder. Having a small number of content pieces that are more difficult/complicated than all of the other content in that same content class is messy.

I wish they hadn't nerfed most of that stuff too (though I feel Steps of Faith needed to be given its place in the scheme of the MSQ—I stopped doing Trials Roulette completely because of it in 2.5 because I do Trials for quick tomestones, and Steps was anything but quick Tomes).

But ultimately the game just doesn't have a place for difficult/complex DF content. The place for that stuff is outside the DF, which is why EX Primals and raids always require pre-formed parties initially. For things like Steps/Pharos/SCOB/everything else that's been nerfed to fit into the DF scheme, the game would already have to have a foundation for that type of content, to build the expectation and baseline necessary.

WoW ran into a similar problem with its initial Cataclysm Heroic dungeons, which were an order of magnitude more complex than the Wrath of the Lich King ones, which were all straightforward enough to work rather well with the new Dungeon Finder. The Cataclysm dungeons, though, were a lot more like the older, pre-DF dungeons, but the environment was now different: you weren't making parties with people from your server anymore, going in with pre-determined goals and strategies. You were now expected to do more complicated/difficult dungeons with complete and utter strangers with unknown playstyles and attitudes.

[Odett]

Except no one ever learned. See: Pharos Sirius. 99% of the game is all about pumping out MAD DEEPS. Kinda hard to break away from that, especially when you aren't told in game that you should slow down.

The reason why people wiped on Pharos wasn't from "mad deeps", it was from not killing ads and trying to tunnel vision the boss without doing mechanics. Hell, every single wipe in Pharos came from trying to ignore mechanics and low DPS. I made a post some week ago in a different thread about how 2.0 and 2.1 had dungeons where mechanics mattered and DPS mattered (bees in demon wall, killing the first Haukke HM boss before the giant skeleton appeared, killing the ads fast enough in Haukke HM last boss, the grenade in Copperbell HM first boss, every single fight in Pharos) and ever since people complained about that, every single dungeon after that has been laughably easy. A lot of people seem to be under the mindset that doing the bare minimum to get by in a dungeon is all that's required, and maybe SE should put actual DPS checks in dungeons again in order to babysit them, because those people won't move an extra finger unless they're required to.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I wouldn't expect that to happen. The Ultros fight has mechanics that falls on the DPS to clear, yet people always fail it.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

We ned more boss fights with over-dps checks, it seem.
Do too much DPS in short time and the boss get angry ^^

example: zombie dragon in CT1

Yes please that'd be awesome!

[Whiteroom]

Yes please that'd be awesome!

Just run some of the old primals unsynced with tunnel vision dps and you have it. Levi and Ramuh come to mind in particular.

[ArkNova]

Levi and Ramuh come to mind in particular.

Ifrit too, my FC would get to chatting too much in TS and dps him past 10% and ignore nails and wipe us