"In from the Cold" Scenario, any way to skip it?

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

I didn't mind the quest. It was pretty neat. I just wish I had a better idea of where certain things were in relation to what the quest wanted. I almost got lost trying to make my way back to the Magitek Reaper after I found the fuel tank.

[LegendWait]

This quest was terribly easy, just read your tooltips, be sneaky and take out the enemies, you have a LOT of room for mistakes too.

People complaining... well your really just bad at the game or reading, or both.

[Packetdancer]

This quest was terribly easy, just read your tooltips, be sneaky and take out the enemies, you have a LOT of room for mistakes too.

Honestly, other than the waves of magitek you need to blow up with the busted magitek mount, I think there's only one enemy you have to kill, the tempered Imperial right at the beginning. I don't remember killing any others on my way through. So you can just plain be sneaky, leave out the 'take out the enemies'. (Edit: oh, wait, I forgot the little dueling circle thing right at the end. Though by that point, all 'sneak' was done.)

Still, I can understand folks not enjoying it; there's lots of different play-styles in this game, and I suspect not all of them meshed well with this particular quest. For instance, I know folks who play with their camera close in -- which I find disorienting -- who had trouble with the stealth quests in general, not just this one, because they found it weird to play with the camera out too far, but having it in close made it hard for them to spot enemies to avoid them.

I didn't dislike it, but I also didn't find it compelling enough to go "man, I'd like to play that again." (As opposed to how I felt about piloting what is functionally a Gundam against Sapphire Weapon, which was "yes please".) I am glad they're trying new things, though.

[Mezzoforte]

I really, intensely disliked this part of the MSQ as well, to the point where I felt like logging out and stepping away from the game it bothered me so much. I've never felt so put off by anything in this game before as I have with this sequence in the MSQ. And it has little to do with the mechanics of it, I don't mind the 'RP missions', they're not my favorite by far but I can tolerate them. The mechanics themselves of the sequence are 'okay', but I just couldn't enjoy any of it because of the context of why it was happening, I just wanted to be over with it and have control of my character back.

My dislike of it is entirely to do with the extremely contrived plot points that lead to a violation of the control over my character that left me feeling so bothered by it all. I didn't feel 'helpless' or 'desperate', I felt irritated and angry. And my ire wasn't directed at the villain characters like the writers were probably hoping, it was directed at the writers themselves for choosing to make that happen. As another said, it felt like a violation of my character, and not by the villains but by the writers.

working as intended
im guessing you spend most of your time rping on ff14?

[Kaurhz]

Liked the instance, hated everything surrounding it. If it were as simple as just pluck our soul out, and into a new body, and one where we have seemingly no combat prowess (yet Zenos retains as much of his prowess as ever), then why wouldn't Fandaniel, or any Ascian for that matter do it in the beginning. I dislike it simply because it does in fact beg that question.

I get the purpose of it, in that it shows a vulnerable side of our character. Albeit terribly handled given that it was only ever by the 'luxury' of our character not even inhibiting their own body. I also feel like they were just building up anticipation for our actual desire to cross swords with Zenos once more. But to be frank that only ended up as another reason on my plate as to why I just simply want rid of him.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Liked the instance, hated everything surrounding it. If it were as simple as just pluck our soul out, and into a new body, and one where we have seemingly no combat prowess (yet Zenos retains as much of his prowess as ever), then why wouldn't Fandaniel, or any Ascian for that matter do it in the beginning. I dislike it simply because it does in fact beg that question.

It was done with the soul extraction process of Aulus from Stormblood and he got killed by us, which likely resulted in his research being lost for a bit. Presumably the technology hadn't been completed until some point while we were on the First or at some point after we got back. Keep in mind that even with Ascian aid, it wore off after half an hour.

Really, my only issue with that stretch of plot is that Zenos takes your body, and then you immediately get it back and he's like "Well, that happened. See you later, best frenemy.". Cool sequence, but it resolves really easily.

[Kaurhz]

It was done with the soul extraction process of Aulus from Stormblood and he got killed by us, which likely resulted in his research being lost for a bit. Presumably the technology hadn't been completed until some point while we were on the First or at some point after we got back. Keep in mind that even with Ascian aid, it wore off after half an hour.

Really, my only issue with that stretch of plot is that Zenos takes your body, and then you immediately get it back and he's like "Well, that happened. See you later, best frenemy.". Cool sequence, but it resolves really easily.

I would like to think it was incomplete, taking into account that when he attempted it our soul rebelled. I was always hoping they'd expand on this in some way, shape or form, but in the end nothing.

Now this also highlights another issue I take with the whole thing. Regardless of their intent with it. It ended up being completely inconsequential. That whole sequence of events could have been left out entirely and would likely have only made the story better, to be honest.

[AldricBranchais]

I hope they do more solo duties like it. For those complaining, there's only a handful of mobs you actually *have* to kill. The rest can easily be ignored if you have even a rudimentary understanding of how mob aggro in FFXIV works. (Trust me you can walk right by some of them and they will not aggro by a good distance) and they also leash. You don't have to fight.

Pls god just learn the game I beg of you.

[Hiragawa]

I would like to think it was incomplete, taking into account that when he attempted it our soul rebelled. I was always hoping they'd expand on this in some way, shape or form, but in the end nothing.

Now this also highlights another issue I take with the whole thing. Regardless of their intent with it. It ended up being completely inconsequential. That whole sequence of events could have been left out entirely and would likely have only made the story better, to be honest.

I'm gonna copy paste my response from the other thread over here as well, since some of this was touched on during the cutscene itself: But it happens in the first couple of lines when you wake up in the other body, so I think a lot of folks missed it.

'When you're pulled into the body in the first place, Fandaniel says "The experiment was a success, but I fear our time is short."

He follows this a bit later with "I took the liberty of making some improvements - and selecting you as my esteemed test subject" while taking about Aulus' research.||

IE: He makes it very clear that you're a test of the process, and it didn't exactly last long. Plus, you know, crazy boy did it for his own behind the scenes reasons as revealed through the rest of the story, and he's kinda gone now. So it's a one off that didn't exactly work out all that great.'

[Floortank]

Now that I've had time to sleep on it I think I realize what my issue was.

In most games with stealth mechanics, there's a level of awareness that NPCs/enemies have that the ones in FFXIV do not. In breath of the wild this is indicated by a question mark (?) that slowly fills up. In the elder scrolls games you have the eye that slowly opens. In Dark Souls you'll have enemies that can hear you and will turn your direction/look where they heard you. In Persona 5 you get the ability to quickly dash behind the closest cover if it's available. In addition all of these games have ways to mitigate detection by couching/ducking or to stop moving.

FFXIV meanwhile it's just... Have you entered the enemy's agro range, y/n. There's no "slight" pulling, no way to move slowly instead. It's simply "find the random piece of rubble that is the correct one to hide behind amongst the 500 other pieces of identically coloured rubble".

It wasn't a stealth minigame.

It was getting your friend to power level you in a 2004 F2P Korean MMO. You were the level 1 player following your friend as they murder everything to help you level up while you did your best to avoid pulling anything that'd 1-hit KO you.

This is not even remotely true. You can walk right up to them if their back is turned. It is the most lenient aggro anywhere in FFXIV. No AOE facing mobs. If the Magitek Claw is facing away from you, run behind it.

Not understanding how aggro works is what got you killed.