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

[Titania40]

So, a couple days ago I finally finished up the Main Story for the base game. You know, taking out Ultima Weapon and defeating the Black Wolf. Before running that final (for the base game) dungeon I did a bit of research, so I'd know what to expect and what to watch out for during the boss fights. After making sure I've got my best gear on, my hotbars are arranged the way I want, and I'm well hydrated I queued up for the dungeon. As usual if I haven't ran a given dungeon before, I say "Hi" and mention "it's my first run of this dungeon, so sorry if I screw up." Nobody else said a word in chat. Once the opening cut scene ends I notice the others all seem to be from the same 2 Free Companies. Huh, okay? Still nobody said a thing. Then before the barrier dropped I found myself loading back into the over world due to getting vote-kicked. Er, what?! I'm assuming they must have been on Discord, Teamspeak, or some other voice chat method. I don't know if I got booted for being new to the dungeon, or because they specifically wanted a friend that for whatever reason didn't make it into the dungeon. Nobody said anything. But it did mean that the 20 minutes I'd spent waiting in queue had been wasted. Grr, nothing to do but to queue up once again.

The 2nd group started out as a hot mess. One tank, a warrior, was, apparently, intending to speed run the dungeon without informing anyone else. The 2nd tank, a gunbuster, was not using his tank stance or aoe attacks. Actually, he was busy running through every enemy group in sight while going for the search lights. Which left it to me and the other 3 DPS to try protecting our healers. Speaking of healers, our white mage was overly focused on casting Stone, don't know what tier of the spell though. The other healer was a Conjurer, not a white mage. And he (or she, don't know) was casting Cure and Cure 2, no Medica spells, and demanding for me to, and I quote, "start doing your damn JOB and tank, you lazy asshole!" I was running the Dancer job, not a tank job. Needless to say, there was a party wipe... twice. After that our warrior finally decided to ask "Why aren't you speedrunning?" At which point he learned that he was the only one who had ran the dungeon before, and nobody else knew the route or exact enemy positions so you can run past them without aggroing. So he agreed to stick with us. The guy playing a gunbuster stopped and looked over his tooltips after someone asked why he wasn't in tank stance. At which point he realized what ability is tank stance, and what abilities are aoe. Not to mention what abilities combo into each other. Apparently he had bought a MSQ bypass and a level 70 job levelup to get gunbuster on his first day of playing the game, and hadn't bothered to read ability descriptions or setup his hotbars yet. The conjurer, after being prompted by our white mage, admitted that they had done the White Mage job crystal unlock quest, and equipped it to get access to additional abilities. After that, things started going smoothly. It probably wasn't the fastest run possible. But once we got our act together, nobody died again. And the bosses went down like chumps.

Now, I'll admit that I got impatient to unlock Dancer and bought a level 70 Ninja level boost to unlock it right away. I then took the job into low level content such as starting a PotD run and low level dungeons so I could figure out what the frell I'm doing without being overwhelmed. I also took a good half an hour to go over the abilities carefully to figure out some single target and aoe rotations, and fiddled a lot with hotbar layouts to get things just the way I want it. I also played a DPS class (monk) up to level 45 before buying said class level boost, and continued leveling Monk afterwords. I want to get Monk to at least level 60 even though I intend to main Dancer, otherwise it feels like I cheated.

[Trobon]

So, a couple days ago I finally finished up the Main Story for the base game. You know, taking out Ultima Weapon and defeating the Black Wolf. Before running that final (for the base game) dungeon I did a bit of research, so I'd know what to expect and what to watch out for during the boss fights. After making sure I've got my best gear on, my hotbars are arranged the way I want, and I'm well hydrated I queued up for the dungeon. As usual if I haven't ran a given dungeon before, I say "Hi" and mention "it's my first run of this dungeon, so sorry if I screw up." Nobody else said a word in chat. Once the opening cut scene ends I notice the others all seem to be from the same 2 Free Companies. Huh, okay? Still nobody said a thing. Then before the barrier dropped I found myself loading back into the over world due to getting vote-kicked. Er, what?! I'm assuming they must have been on Discord, Teamspeak, or some other voice chat method. I don't know if I got booted for being new to the dungeon, or because they specifically wanted a friend that for whatever reason didn't make it into the dungeon. Nobody said anything. But it did mean that the 20 minutes I'd spent waiting in queue had been wasted. Grr, nothing to do but to queue up once again.

Abuse of the kick function is reportable and should be reported.

[Kuroka]

I got into a conversation with one and they insist on not reading guides before atempting content.

And? If you want speed farm then thats what pf is for, DF is meant for us to help new ppl, nothing else...

I got such tank in my fc, hes to scared to run blind so he looks up everything before he runs it... thats just sad.

[Titania40]

Yes, report the people who never once said anything in chat, and I didn't have enough time to dig out a pencil and sheet of paper so I could write down their names. Because why would I think I need to write down the names of everyone on every Duty Finder team? So, how would you suggest I should have reported it? I suspect that the people I've encountered who pull such stuff (thankfully rare so far) don't post in chat specifically so it's harder to report them. Out of the 50 or so dungeons and trials I've ran, I've encountered such groups 3 or 4 times. Only one of them gave any way for me to report them, due to posting in chat. But you know what? They were very careful to make sure their chat messages wouldn't be too incriminating if they got reported. And remember, the GMs are libel to punish you if they decide you reported falsely. Which makes me rather hesitant to report anything other then RMT spambots due to people being careful in chat.

[Hausti]

Then before the barrier dropped I found myself loading back into the over world due to getting vote-kicked. Er, what.

Thats weird because a vote-kick can only be used after 5 mins into the dungeon.

[SilverObi]

Yes, report the people who never once said anything in chat, and I didn't have enough time to dig out a pencil and sheet of paper so I could write down their names.

In the Social tab, there is a page called Contacts. It will list the last 50(?) people you were in a party with instanced or not.

Then before the barrier dropped I found myself loading back into the over world due to getting vote-kicked. Er, what?! I'm assuming they must have been on Discord, Teamspeak, or some other voice chat method. I don't know if I got booted for being new to the dungeon, or because they specifically wanted a friend that for whatever reason didn't make it into the dungeon. Nobody said anything. But it did mean that the 20 minutes I'd spent waiting in queue had been wasted.

You cannot vote kick someone before at least 5 minutes have elapsed, while in combat, or if loot is active in the pool. So no, this did not happen. Also you can't see FC tags on names or when you /examine while in an instance so there's no way you could've known they were in the same FCs unless someone said something to that effect.

[Titania40]

I don't know exactly what happened. I assume I got vote kicked somehow, but no way to know for sure. I know I got the popup, confirmed entrance, watched the opening cinematic for the dungeon, saw everyone in the starting area with the barrier still up, and then the game was loading again with me being back in the location I'd previously been waiting for the queue to pop. Nobody spoke, but they were moving about. Thus I know they were loaded in.

[nebby00]

I don't know exactly what happened. I assume I got vote kicked somehow, but no way to know for sure. I know I got the popup, confirmed entrance, watched the opening cinematic for the dungeon, saw everyone in the starting area with the barrier still up, and then the game was loading again with me being back in the location I'd previously been waiting for the queue to pop. Nobody spoke, but they were moving about. Thus I know they were loaded in.

That's odd, usually a vote kick cannot be initiated until more than 10-15 minutes have passed in the duty. I don't know what happened in your situation, but know that it's extremely uncommon for that to happen and actually is near impossible to occur. The vote kick feature typically cannot be abused (though it isn't unheard of), due to the fact that you cannot vote kick if there is loot that needs to be rolled on and then there's the amount of time that has to pass before a vote kick can be initiated. Perhaps the server goofed up or something?

Anyways, I do come with another tale. Though I didn't think it would be so soon after my last one, but I guess I need to anticipate more runs like this.

The Ridorana Lighthouse
Last night I had queued for Alliance Roulette yet again to get some experience since my AST is so very close to 80, and roulette decided to place me in one of the Ivalice raids which... I'm not too happy about. Primarily the reason is if there is too much water on screen, my laptop simply does not like it and my FPS drops horribly, so at first I was cringing since I thought "Oh god, not the Ivalice raids" but then I realized it was Lighthouse which isn't too harsh on my potato of a laptop.

Everyone loads in and we get the new player notification on screen, I don't think too much of it at first as we near the first boss and the fight starts. Hoo boy, we die a lot in my alliance. My co-healer SCH was on her feet most of the fight, I unfortunately wasn't so much due to trying to save some other alliances considering their healers hit the floor. Our RDM died way too many times during the first boss as well as our DNC, and typically the RDM was out in Narnia doing who knows what so my aoe heals never reached him and he always died on his own. We barely manage to scrape by the first boss, but I had a feeling the worst was yet to come.

And I was right. Math bot came to conquer and destroy and yep, he destroyed indeed. In fact, all of the Alliances were eating the floor constantly when Math bot decided to use "destroy". The healers in other alliances were dying, my co-healer was dying... I was dying. But my SCH co-healer and I kept trading each other raises struggling to keep everyone on their feet while our tank (thank goodness he remained alive) got the heals necessary to live while we were waiting on that LB3 to cast to get everyone on their feet again, since literally everyone else was on the floor except me and my co-healer who was struggling to keep each other on our feet and get everyone up.

We raise the NIN in our group and the alliances were picking each other up when the NIN decides it was a good time to use the LB3. It was not a good time to use the LB3. The Math bot uses "destroy" again, blasting everyone in the other alliances as well as the NIN eats the floor and I'm internally screaming when the SCH asks me to use the LB3 which I say "can't".

The SCH realizes the LB bar is empty then asks "who used the lb?"
NIN replies, which made me admittedly chuckle "It was me. I wanted to look cool"

From a fellow NIN to another, I really felt that. But then was not the time.

Knowing that I couldn't screw this up, I struggled to scrape my SCH co-healer off the floor as well as trying to get the other alliances up, and our RDM (though I stopped raising him due to my MP being wasted since he immediately died, or lived for a while but didn't raise anyone else), and my SCH co-healer and I probably traded raises to each other for what felt like an eternity as the Math bot destroyed us over and over again, but somehow we last long enough to get a second LB3 and I hit that button as fast as I possibly can, reviving the whole alliance... only for alliance C to get deleted, but we made it.

That was easily the sweatiest my hands have gotten from any fight ever. But I feel like this raid alone (as long the World of Darkness one) will stay with me for a long time. I got only two commendations at the end though, but I made sure to commend my co-healer, she was awesome to heal with and she deserves all the commendations.

[DontReadThis]

I don't know why all the PLD tanks in expert roulette are so scared of letting my Excog pop. They keep using hallowed ground right before hitting the health threshold to trigger it. Sometimes they even start spamming Clemency! Then the heal ends up being wasted when the buff times out.

It's especially bad in Montana's Relic. Whenever the water boss begins the intermission, every PLD tank starts spamming Clemency on themselves even though there won't be any incoming damage for the entire intermission, and then Excog pops 2 seconds after they heal themselves to full and is completely wasted.

[Titania40]

I did two dungeon runs tonight. The first one was Wanderer's Palace. None of us really knew what the frell we were doing, but things went pretty smoothly. There were a couple close calls, such as when our healer nearly got caught by the Tonberry Stalker. And even without knowing any of the mechanics, we still knew that taking out the tonberry adds during the final boss fight was probably a really good idea. Side note, even after 30 years tonberries are still bloody terrifying. Between how dark the halls were and the effects of everyone's aoes I was constantly terrified due to not being able to see the enemy aoe indicators. And since I went in as a monk, I had to get right in the faces of those tonberry. Scary.

The second one was The Lost City of Amdapor, and my bluetooth keyboard used for chat while on PS4 died JUST as Dungeon Finder popped. I tried to tell the group "Hi, first time I ran this". But the message didn't get sent. And I didn't have time to try again due to using the on-screen keyboard. For the most part, things went pretty smoothly. Just outside of the final boss room our tank asked me if I'd done the dungeon before, and I tried multiple times to tell him no. But no messages got sent. I tried via auto-translate. I tried via the on-screen keyboard. And nothing was working. Still, it wasn't too bad. I noticed the symbols and doors, and thought there might be some clock like mechanic, so waited for an explanation. None was given, so I figured it must not be a big deal. Of course, when Diablos started charging a massive attack I noticed people running to one of the doors which opened. So I joined them, stepping into the doorway just in the nick of time, twice.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the item I need for my monk relic weapon quest. So I'll have to do another run of that dungeon. Still, cool dungeon. And damn cool fight at the end.