Tales from Duty Finder: Some make you laugh, some make you cry. Let's vent.

[MisterMKay]

So decided to hop into MSQ Roulette to help level my AST. Starts out fine and we get to the first cutscene with Gaius... And then all of a sudden, the arena is cut off and the battle begins. Like, 10 seconds into the cutscene. I thought I had lag issues, but apparently one of the tanks and DPS decided to just freaking glitch out the cutscenes to run through the instance. I didn't get to fight any boss battles and sat through cutscenes the entire time. Meanwhile, they were patting themselves on the back and making stupid comments.

I got my EXP, but... how is that fun for anyone?

[Aramina]

So decided to hop into MSQ Roulette to help level my AST. Starts out fine and we get to the first cutscene with Gaius... And then all of a sudden, the arena is cut off and the battle begins. Like, 10 seconds into the cutscene. I thought I had lag issues, but apparently one of the tanks and DPS decided to just freaking glitch out the cutscenes to run through the instance. I didn't get to fight any boss battles and sat through cutscenes the entire time. Meanwhile, they were patting themselves on the back and making stupid comments.

I got my EXP, but... how is that fun for anyone?

They can be reported for that.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

A party finder story but one I just need to vent about

Beside my garbo luck with parties on o11s trying to get beyond pantokrator 1,today's prog attempt on o12s was the last straw for me

on my previous progs attempts I made it to numbers,I memorized the mechanics and I knew what to do,so I decided to join a pf aiming to get from numbers to final omega

So when omega m/f start dashing i took my box strat position(odd numbers on the opposite side and even numbers stay)

People kept dying as they walk halfway through the dash twice in a row and finally on the last pull,both me and the Paladin get kicked without stating a single explanation to what either of us did wrong(especially the poor Paladin who was actually doing the local/remote resonance correctly).I was in my position while I was seeing corpses in the middle of the arena during the dashes yet somehow I'm the one who gets the boot alongside the PLD cuz apparently most of the pf was from a static

I'm so absolutely done with Alphascape(savage) in general,I've already had my gripes with how each fight on this raid is designed which I mentioned before but the fact that my luck on the party finder ranges between either incompetent players,traps who expect a carry,impatient people who sometimes leave either after 1 pull or before we even do a first pull or flatout toxic asshats who blames you for their own mistakes and never provide any feedback when mistakes are made.....makes it just not worth the effort.

The reason I put up with the party finder for both Deltascape and Sigmascape was because,despite my hellish pugging and anxiety(especially on sigmascape),those tiers were still legitimately fun heck I've been doing reclears of neo exdeath and god kefka on almost a weekly basis not just for ucob/uwu gear but because I honest to god enjoyed those fights.

I know this is not the place for quality of raid tiers discussion but Alphascape,in my personal subjective opinion,just not a fun raid to continue progging through for me.It's not as fun as the previous omega tiers and most certainly not on the same calibur as Final coil or even the creator tier in Alexander

The fights on alphascape aren't even hard to begin with,they just have asinine design choices that I honestly had to put up with(on top of stupid pf shenanigans) for a while to gear myself cuz o10s is the absolute worst one of those and I had to farm this fight a lot for gear

I'm quitting my alphascape pug to resume my Eureka prog cuz at the very least what u get from eureka is at least varied and by the time u get to hydatos it feels more than worth the trouble despite the issues I have with pagos.What am I suffering through omega for?one mount and gear that isn't even good for using in ultimate fights or even look decent for glam?Yeah no thank you,especially with how augmenting scaevan gear is now easier than before even if it doesn't have the best sub stats.Sure the same argument can be leveled against both delta and sigmascape but as I said those raids were fun for me which at least made it worth the reruns

Here is hoping that Eden in 5.0 at least fairs better than the last tier of omega

[MisterMKay]

They can be reported for that.

Sadly, they didn't openly admit they were doing it; only that another player said they were doing it. I could report them, but I'm not sure how to prove it, tbh. I ended up blacklisting both of them.

[Limonia]

I actually saw the healer cast a combustion, once. I like to imagine that he was freaking out IRL. "Oh my God what is wrong with me I actually used a damage spell! Why do I even have this on my hotbar!?"

I sometimes see healers like that too. They don't dps at all and then just like out of nowhere they through out one single damage spell. I also always imagine that they are freaking out about it like "Oh no, what did I do right now??? I attacked the boss, OMG, the tank will die because I didn't heal him at 90% HP!" when they are the panicky type, or for the lazy ones "Oh no, I have to immediately uninstall, I did something that I forbade myself from ever doing!!". But they normally just go back to just healing. They probably just missclicked. But why did they have the boss targeted in the first place I wonder? Weird.

[Valdima]

Attempting to level AST to 70 has made me realize why I stopped being a healer main.

Just because I have essential dignity doesn't mean I want to have to use it every time its up. If you're so impatient that you're going to try and pull the entire population of the dungeon at once maybe don't que. If your hp bar is melting like you've been critical hit by a fireblast theres nothing I can do. I'm an astrologian not a miracle worker. Though the stars are speaking to me, and they say you're a petulant ninny that shouldn't be in a role that important.

[Ceridwenae]

I'm technically off dungeons for now, but my daughter wanted to do something these last two days whilst waiting for her dad to resub and be our tank, and she's on holiday from school, so we made another pair of alts just to mess around with. I go archer (I love bard so it's a no brainer for me), and she goes lancer. Yesterday, we were ready for dungeons on these alts, and despite the event content going on* it wasn't the worst wait in the world to run the starting trio.

In Sastasha, the healer is a fellow sprout, but the tank is not. However, despite having few aggro management issues, the tank is one of them that leaves two or three mobs trailing behind it to get on to the next pack. This has my daughter literally screaming"WHY?!" at it, as she can't do her thing so well; she has one ranged attack, but she was concerned it's a TP guzzler, and neither of us can deal with putting the TP back yet. Note I did not start this dungeon with Quick Nock either, but I told her not to worry, just try to keep up and do what she can, and I'll shoot and run. It went better when I got Quick Nock, but even then, I was having to hold it back a little because of the TP issue. Lesson learnt here: tanks, please take your party's abilities on board and consider carefully that you are all only as good as the weakest members of your team.

In Tam-Tara, we're all sprouts together. The tank is clearly the sproutiest, and I note from the get-go, no Shield Lob, no Flash, attacking one enemy only. This happened for the next two beasties, so I speak up and ask if they're new to tanking, and if they want tips for holding aggro, please ask. I am full with tips. I should've offered the same to the overhealing healer, but my anxiety was bubbling a little under with just speaking up to the tank. I figured I'd fix the healer if it became too much to deal with. Anyhoo, the tank does not respond. So I start to give tips anyway (basics: shield lob on approach, flash 2-3 times, basic 1-2 of Rage of Halone split over the mobs; turn everything away from the group, chuck out a shield lob/provoke if they have it for any escapees backed up with another flash when it comes back, no need to run after stuff like a headless chicken, etc). They do not really seem to listen, and aggro is ripped everywhere. My daughter is lancer-tank. I am archer-tank. The healer is healer-tank (IIRC white mage, but not a confident one. I have sympathy because I am not a confident WHM either!). It was messy, horrible, and we did not have fun, but we managed. At the end, the tank had the gall to say thanks to party. Oh, it speaks, indeed. *narrows eyes*

Oof. With a cup of tea in to steady my nerves, we're back in for Copperbell. Again, there is a full sprout contingent, again it's a gladiator and also a conjurer. Again, it's a tank who's so new they really have no idea what it is they're doing, despite having FC buffs on. So I do my usual, are you new to tanking, and/or the game, I have tips, yada yada. You too, healer. I have all the baby tips for you guys. No response.
Get to the first boss where I ask the tank if they're even listening to me at all (yeah, I was starting to get very cross!), and finally, he came back with what could've been read as a taunt (I paraphrase: "So teach me then!"). Alrighty. I will. I also went with being tactics and general guide for the dungeon, with how to group the mobs, deal with the blob boss, etc., just little QoL stuff for tanking through Copperbell on a gladiator. It went so, so much better because the tank was receptive and tried his best, and asked if he could add me because I was such a good teacher. Aww. <3 He was on a different server, though, so it's unlikely there will be meetage again (and I'm not really the best at maintaining contact anyway). Told him to pick up Stark Zodiark's tanking guides on YouTube, and to keep at it. Felt better after this dungeon, but nerves still so very frayed that it was enough dungeons for the day.

The upshot is, poor lancer daughter went and asked her dad to resub because we need our tank back. He has resubbed and has resumed teaching her BLM:


*I really should've twigged that the more practised tanks were doing event stuff, not sitting in queues for dungeons in the early afternoon. My bad, I suppose.

[LalaRu]

A party finder ... attempt on o12s ...

Dunno what's more savage, doing savage or using party finder for doing savage.

[MetalSnakeXI1]

Dunno what's more savage, doing savage or using party finder for doing savage.

Well on NA datacenters you have to use the PF cuz things don't go the same way as the JP datacenters where they use the duty finder for both savage raids and ex primals so............what choice do I have but use the party finder then?

If I had the choice I'd migrate to the JP servers but I have a lot of friends on Goblin including so many people in my FC

[HyoMinPark]

Sadly, they didn't openly admit they were doing it; only that another player said they were doing it. I could report them, but I'm not sure how to prove it, tbh. I ended up blacklisting both of them.

GMs have full access to the combat logs. If they see the two engaging in combat alone immediately after the cutscene should have started, they should be able to figure out they were using an exploit to skip them.