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

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

So last night I was on my alt and we decided to do some roulettes before maintenance. Expert went by with no problems even though my Healer is a tad undergeared (but well above the minimum requirement) and we decided to do Alliance. It ended up being Orbonne which can be bad (and it was) but I've done it so much I was confident we'd get thru it.

That confidence would be sorely tested.

Apparently myself and my FC mate ended up in the carry alliance (as in--the one being carried). 80% of our group could not get the sniping mechanic down (on Mustadio) and died every time. We scraped by on the knight ad phase for Agrias and when our group got sucked into the darkness for that little dps check, someone mentioned the sword mechanic but failed to point out that the dark ads needed to be dps'd down normally so our alliance wiped (thankfully other alliances raised myself and one or our 3 rez mages).

Surprisingly, Cid went down ok, even though only me and my cohealer went for the ice wolf (we didn't kill it in time but I saw what was coming and was able to survive) and Ultima went down fairly easily if slowly. But dang. Earned my bling healer championship belt that night. *Struts*

Only 6 new people were listed and surprisingly they weren't all in my alliance. I was amazed we didn't wipe on any of the bosses. It was a hard run, but satisfying.

[Seddrinth]

I myself when FIRST approaching a battle as in, my first time with a boss like the discovery. I won't read/watch it because I want the chance to fight it anew and see for myself if I can figure things out (personal challenge as I see looking ahead as spoiling and cheating for the FIRST time fight). Which is why I use Duty finder a lot more than party finder in that kind of thing.

However, I get if that's not what people like and if I die a lot okay, feel free to yell at me (even though it will do you no good).

But as I said. No one died the battle. No one messed up horribly. There were about 3 others that said 'first time' with me. So that should have made it obvious.

They just said it and left, no context.

Gotcha. In that case you can understand why the person may have been frustrated and suggested the 1st timers watch a guide in future. This is a 3 year old fight that most players should know. People get this in the roulette so they can get their daily done, get their tomestones, get their gil so people are not queueing in here with the intent of it being a 4/8 blind prog. When I want to blind prog an instance, I will always ask my static/friends/fc mates to help, just out of consideration for others. So that may have been the reason the person was irritated.

[Nekaru_Infitima]

Gotcha. In that case you can understand why the person may have been frustrated and suggested the 1st timers watch a guide in future. This is a 3 year old fight that most players should know. People get this in the roulette so they can get their daily done, get their tomestones, get their gil so people are not queueing in here with the intent of it being a 4/8 blind prog. When I want to blind prog an instance, I will always ask my static/friends/fc mates to help, just out of consideration for others. So that may have been the reason the person was irritated.

I don't have friends/fc mates. My friends got bored of the game or got too busy with work and I'm the only one still playing. So that point is moot. It's either PUGs or doing everything solo. A lot of solo. -_-

[MagicAura]

I myself when FIRST approaching a battle as in, my first time with a boss like the discovery. I won't read/watch it because I want the chance to fight it anew and see for myself if I can figure things out (personal challenge as I see looking ahead as spoiling and cheating for the FIRST time fight). Which is why I use Duty finder a lot more than party finder in that kind of thing.

However, I get if that's not what people like and if I die a lot okay, feel free to yell at me (even though it will do you no good).

But as I said. No one died the battle. No one messed up horribly. There were about 3 others that said 'first time' with me. So that should have made it obvious.

They just said it and left, no context.

You do you and don't get discouraged by rude people. The person who said that and left, probably assumed that saying "first time here" means one hasn't watched any guides, which is definitely true for you but not necessarily true for everyone. For example, on my first time on trials or dungeons, I will say that even if I have watched a guide. Because regardless of guides, the first time includes mistakes and it's good to put these mistakes into context for the others. However that person in your group was simply presumptuous and rude and of course it's "all about them". There can be a cultural difference between approaches to this problem as is clearly demonstrated by Seddrinth's response to your message above but I don't subscribe to the concept of "bend over for the sake of other's tomestones/gil/time/whatever". Everyone is playing to have fun and hence I believe that everyone needs to make a little space for everyone else even if it takes a few more minutes to do things. Middle ground and kindness.

Edit: Grammar.

[Ammokkx]

I don't know why the last 5 times I did either raid, I smoothly clear Dun Scaith while wiping 24/7 on World of Darkness.

What is life.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Just failed a guildhest roulette about 15mins ago.
Yep, you read that correctly. A friggin' guildhest.

I rolled as a MCH, got matched with GLD, SAM and AST. All sprouts.

I thought lightly "It's just a guildhest...". Little that I knew the run itself would prove me wrong.

Got the one where the party need to stall the big turtle before taking out the fire sprite and light up the herb patch before finally dragging the turtle over.
Everything was doing okay until the AST light up the herb patch. Where's the turtle? Trying to mate with the sprout GLD at where it spawns (yikes!)
We typed the instruction in the chatbox but apparently the GLD doesn't seem to pay attention to the chatbox.
The SAM even running in circle spamming the /gratuity emote to get his attention... to no avail.
It goes on until the turtle's dead and we failed the duty.

Oh well, another 10-15mins queue then.

(Dear Gaia, please people, peek at the chatbox once in a while)

On the bright side, this is the first time I have failed a guildhest so now I know a failed guildhest doesn't let the party retry. A failed guildhest would simply boot everybody out. (Damn, annoying queue)

[TyrTry]

Turtle.

That turtle has caused massive amounts of wipes, so don't be surprised. The fight literally tells you to NOT kill the turtle and the NPC is literally holding your hand, but people STILL do not pay attention. People just que in and immediately go ham on the poor helpless turtle, without paying attention to their surroundings.

[Packetdancer]

Just failed a guildhest roulette about 15mins ago.
Yep, you read that correctly. A friggin' guildhest.

Me to myself as I read this: "I wonder if it was the turtle. I can see wipes on that one. People never read what they're supposed to do, and when I get it in roulette I have to REALLY try to get folks to do it right."

Got the one where the party need to stall the big turtle before...

Me: "Called it."

[Packetdancer]

Gotcha. In that case you can understand why the person may have been frustrated and suggested the 1st timers watch a guide in future. This is a 3 year old fight that most players should know. People get this in the roulette so they can get their daily done, get their tomestones, get their gil so people are not queueing in here with the intent of it being a 4/8 blind prog. When I want to blind prog an instance, I will always ask my static/friends/fc mates to help, just out of consideration for others. So that may have been the reason the person was irritated.

While I understand the annoyance, and I've felt it myself a few times when a roulette goes hugely off the rails... there's two things I remind myself of.

1. Roulettes are not meant for me to gain tomestones. Roulettes are meant to provide extra bodies in dungeons for folks who need to run them for the first time. People who don't know the fight because they're in for the first time aren't getting in our way, they're literally the reason we're there. The tomestones are the "hey, if you do this favor for me, I'll give you this" payment from the game devs.
2. Letting people go in blind on the first pull—even if it goes horribly wrong—can actually be really good for them, in terms of teaching them how to read mechanics.

I've seen more than a few times where people will complain "How did this person make it to 80 and never learn what Ravana shields/Shiva circles/whatever are?" Or "How did this person make it to 80 and never learn to figure out mechanics for themselves? Do they expect everything to have a guide right away?"

But many times, people also will go, "You want to run Ravana extreme? God, why? Just run it unsynced with a couple of level 80s, no one wants to do that content." Well, when you run it unsynced you kill him so fast you frequently never see the Ravana shields... which may explain why people get to 80 and don't know what "Ravana shields" are. Similarly with Shiva EX and Shiva circles.

Or they'll say "just watch a video" when people are trying to figure out the mechanics... and if that happens every time, it's perhaps no surprise that when they get to 80, someone doesn't have any practice at figuring the mechanics out, and that yes, they do in fact expect there to be a guide for everything, because everyone's told them to "read the guide" and not bother trying to figure out the mechanics.

Yeah, it's understandable if someone queues for Trial Roulette and expects to just be out again in 10 minutes that if the group has wiped multiple times and they've been stuck fighting Cruise Chaser for half an hour, they're going to feel a bit frustrated and frazzled. So it's always best when you can blind prog something with people you know. It's why my FC routinely runs on-level blind prog parties of old content with a couple of experienced folks who can give explanations if needed—the sprouts enjoy it, and it really helps them be ready for endgame where they'll see the same mechanics... and especially when they step into content that's so new that no one has yet made guides.

But honestly, first-timers will learn more from wiping and discovering their mistakes (and having things explained) than people just dragging them through and explaining nothing. And so when I get those situations in roulettes, I try to remind myself that being patient with that and helping support them as they learn to read mechanics for themselves will be to my benefit as well when I encounter the same people down the road in some alliance raid during the first week it's out.

[ThatOneDiviner]

Praetorium remains the cursed MSQ dungeon even if it's the one I prefer getting.

First run: everything goes fine until the lightshow boss at the end. A ninja dies because they can't avoid the bad. Yells at both the AST and me for not healing them. Look - in fairness, could we have noticed before they dropped? Sure. However, literally no one else dropped below 70% HP that fight. Not even the casters. Because they didn't stand in every single puddle of bad. Up until that point all I'd had to do for heals was drop a regen on the tank and then go ham pressing my one button rotation because auto-regen took care of everyone else. Praetorium's stupid easy to just Not Take Lethal Damage in, idk how the Nin managed it.

Second: One tank DCs at the start and we have two AFK DPS. I wanted to die. At least our two active red mages gave a damn. Turns out you can five man the dungeon in a similar amount of time as it would take to go through it normally if you're all competent. :/ Wish we had stopped to vote kick at least one or two of them before the final boss though, but tank ran ahead and pulled before we could.

Edit before I forget: Also speedran AST to 50 through levelling roulette because I want to learn a second healer class. Get Stone Vigil multiple times. It's a bit dicey while I'm still figuring out how to play it, but for the most part if the group is all good and have all been through it before we get through it fine.

Well. One such run threw us in with a level 40-something GLA. Yes. GLA, not PLD. We do at least manage to get to final boss with only one wipe to the Ice Sprite + patrolling Aevis area, but oh my god. That was NOT FUN to heal on a class I'm still learning to play. Hit the last boss and gently ask the dude why he hasn't got his job stone on and he just straight up admits to not doing the quests. One DPS, bless them, gets snippy at him (nothing reportable or even really mean, but the dude was rather flippant about not doing the quests and was like 'lol I didn't feel like it' so the DPS was like 'bro that's not something you laugh about, stop being lazy and go do them') and points out that that's one thing you really Should Not skimp out on doing. At least the boss fights were easy compared to the mob pulls because otherwise I might have actually pulled my hair out.