Escalating skill requirements & FFXIV future

[Vidu]

I sure had problem with Hien dying. Would not dodge any of aoe's or help out with adds. Sure had very hard time trying to heal him since would let me hardly target him kept going to guy he was fighting. It was very poorly set out. First they should made second battle where if failed didn't have to start all over again and sure never saw any echo helping me out in it. Before the battle they should warned you that have to play another person during it. Forcing you to play a npc that you hate is uncalled for. Least let you pick between the true who want to control.

...that sounds more like your issue was that you had to control an NPC you dont like for all of 5-10 minutes... Considering that you have all jobs at 70 (including WHM and both other healers), I find it difficult to believe that you have absolutly no clue what to do with the 4 (!) buttons they gave you as Y'shtola.
And they do warn and inform you at the start of the battle that you'll be playing as Y'shtola now? Or am I missremebering getting a notification like that in my chatbox at the start of the Y'shtola fight?

I agree to splitting the two duties and I think it would be nice if they'd be giving us some prep-time - maybe a minute where you can look at the skills and rearrange them if you like, but thats about it...

So now I'm not even sure if you're upset because the game made you play a character you dont like - which would be a stupid reason to take this nice new feature away! - or because 4 buttons and having to target something else but an enemy is to much skill-requesting for you - in which case I'd like to repeat that we need more skill-gates for people who fail at extreme basics of the game, not less...

[Selova]

snip.

In the same breath, wanting the continual dumbing down of content because a very specific type of player can't complete it is not healthy for the game as a whole. Also, no one does challenging content for undefined reasons, that's a pretty silly statement to make. If you are doing challenging content, you are making a conscious decision to pursue that content whether it's for the satisfaction of completing something challenging, gear upgrades or just the experience itself, No one willingly decides to partake in challenging content for no reason.

Using Pagos isn't a good example either, Pagos is not hard or challenging It is a tedious game of how long will your sanity last whacking against HP sponges for hours on end. No one is asking for "forced" harder content either, Nothing about that part of the MSQ is hard to begin with. There are even lore reasons that back up why a certain part of the MSQ might be a little more "challenging" (and i use that word lightly) than the others, asking them to dumb down a certain fight or scenario would literally impact and even in some cases break the game lore and honestly, I don't think that's something SE is willing to do. They at least give you the echo on these solo encounters and honestly that's probably the best you can expect from them.

[Ceridwenae]

Welp, now I have done this particular instance on BRD. I had did have a time issue the first two attempts with the meteor, but nailed it on the third. I'm not sure if I'd be able to take another shot at it had that third failed. The second part of the instance looked dicey a couple of times, but I'm very glad I pushed the buttons at the right time or something, because I just eked through. Hien was no issue, but I-as-Y'shtola was pushing it by standing in stupid a few times to see what would happen, and accidentally retaining him as a heal target instead of healing myself-as-Y'shtola (this is why I don't really do healing! I always mix the targets up!). I actually had a lot of fun with this, but frankly, my BRD rotation (such as it is) did go out of the window in Sadu's last phase. I still need a ton of practice (which I'm in the process of, thanks to Hubby's newfound tankdom dungeon spamming). I will get better, or at least passable! Fear not, Savage and Extreme content players: I am unlikely to darken your doors anytime soon.

I think sometimes, you just get caught out, sometimes you press the wrong button, and sometimes the server hates you, or you blink and miss something important. People have bad days and have a rant about it. I think if I'd had another fail, I'd have left and not come back until the next day. I think OP just had a few too many bad things occur, and got frustrated - perhaps in truth more at themselves than anything else, and just took it out here. Put it perspective: Sadu's portion of the fight was nicely put together: Here's mechanic A. Here's Mechanic B. Here they are together. Here's C, etc. If you've done all the mandatory content up to this point, there's nothing you haven't seen before. I say that, however, having repeated content, and I think that's a really important thing to do: spam the dungeons where and when you can. It helps.

So, the second portion knocked a few people off-kilter. This also happened in GW2 (specifically playing as Caithe a few years back now). Here, read the tool tips. There's time to do it as the fight will not start until you run further in the circle to initiate it.

Instances can take a while if you mess up. I'm wondering if I'm a similar age to the OP in that I've been playing these things for about as long as they have, and for me, time has not been kind on the reflexes. When things take several attempts and you have to be somewhat on point, it can have a debilitating effect: you don't always improve in successive goes. So the thing I'd recommend in future to devs is this: a simple save point between the two parts of a battle like this would go a long way. It won't affect people that don't have a hard time with this stuff, and it'll give an opportunity for a break without losing progress for those of us who sometimes need a little help.

I don't feel the difficulty here particularly needs adjusted, just a small bit of QoL.

[Fyce]

I sure had problem with Hien dying. Would not dodge any of aoe's or help out with adds.

So, an average pug player.

[Khalithar]

I actually dislike the solo instance battles a lot and wish I could bring in a friend to help. Not that I had any difficulty clearing any of it, more so just to speed it up or be able to help friends clear more quickly to save them time.

Edit:

I had only have one issue during the solo instance battles of the latest patch. During the solo battle with Magnai, he actually bugged out and never initiated his final AoE that leads to the quick time event. He went to 1hp and got stuck there, I had to die on purpose and redo the entire battle with Sadu. It was super annoying.

[24spencer]

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Please, leave the extreme difficulty for, you know - EXTREMES (& savages)

im howling the fight is like 3 aoes and a 2k dps check

[Derio]

The fight was fairly easy and this is coming from a casual player. Then again I play tank so it might be difficult for someone going in at the minimum ilvl.

However I thought the fight was done very well as far as a solo is concerned and perhaps one of the best IMO.

[Rhus]

Hien fight was easy despie me reading some horror tales here and expecting the worst.
Just apply Aero to the sub guy, ignore the main guy, spam stone on the sub guy and take him down with help of Hien.
Once dead focus with hien on the main guy. On aoe phase just kill middle one and you're good (much like BW dng). I found Hien was always stood in the middle aoe.
Heal when needed. Cleared it first time with no issues. You can't really go wrong with 4 buttons, one of which is a mana boost and I don't even play healers outside of levelling through DD to 70.

[TaleraRistain]

I actually dislike the solo instance battles a lot and wish I could bring in a friend to help. Not that I had any difficulty clearing any of it, more so just to speed it up or be able to help friends clear more quickly to save them time.

This would be a nice QoL change. I've wished I could tackle those with my hubby as a small group instead of a solo instance sometimes, when either he or I have trouble and one of us has to wait on the other to finish it. We can usually tag-team things in other MMOs. My hubby has a lot of irritations with FFXIV and it's hard to get him to play it with me. Any continued frustration can prematurely end our weekly FF night because he gets to a point he doesn't want to play anymore.

[JohnnyDevo]

You know what it took me to beat the fight?

A simple awareness that AI is not likely to be designed to dodge randomly placed AoE attacks, and an awareness that all the AoE attacks that I can't prevent are directed at me.

Any damage that Hien takes to attacks like that is my fault, really. It was easier to handle than making A11S towers survive, not stacking markers on the healer that is needing to heal and not move, not breaking the crystals you want kept alive in the first boss of the burn, etc etc etc.

The difficulty of this MSQ instance is nigh non-existent. It's a narrative, introducing nothing new, and only providing an entertaining twist on the usual combat as yourself. If Hien was dying, why didn't you fix it? Honestly, if they made it any easier, it would not be worth playing. If you've ever busted out the cheat codes of a game and given yourself god mode, you'd find that it's quite entertaining to just cut things down without any effort or interaction... but that's how your interest in a game dies. That's how it no longer becomes a game.

Part of me wants to think the "blame others" mentality is somehow so irrational that it seeps into the MSQ. Instead of thinking about what you can do to fix the problem, you blame the AI, which is the same as blaming the ones who designed the encounter.