Patch Notes are up!

[AdamFyi]

The mistake wasn't nerfing it, it was making it difficult to begin with.

The Steps of Faith isn't even that difficult. Communication; is it too hard in an MMO setting? The nerf is welcome. For players who are stuck, they can finally advance to Heavensward. But my only concern is communication. Is it really that hard to comunicate?

[Starcade]

Steps of Faith in carebear mode. How dandy of SE. Score one for the QQ crowd; they got what they wanted. Thank god I cleared it on the first day via DF. No surprise on the Echo increase for FCoB. Primal songs for primal horses is nice though I'm surprised that Sleipnir made the list. I'm sure it will have the Odin theme when we ride on them.

Good Lord. Carebear Mode indeed.

I almost want to see how bad it's gotten just to laugh at it now.

Here's a hint: Square-Enix, if you don't want only 10-15% of all runs resulting in a win, don't make the fight that hard in the first place, or lock out the incompetent players.

[Starcade]

The Steps of Faith isn't even that difficult. Communication; is it too hard in an MMO setting? The nerf is welcoming for players who are stuck so that people can advance to Heavensward. But my only concern is communication. Is it really that hard to comunicate?

Yes, it is, especially with a playerbase used to various mechanisms which, at best, might be quasi-legal.*

* = Does not apply to just XIV here. XI has many good candidates.

[Spiritreaver1217]

OH...

MY...

GOD.

They might as well have just handed everybody Steps at this point. They pretty much nerfed everything!

It's clear that the number of players who were clearing content was completely unacceptable to Square-Enix, so crap on all of us (yes, even me who went 1/30 or something) who actually cleared it unnerfed.

This isn't a nerf -- this is a wipeout!

Totally belaboring the point i made a little bit back, but does the change to SoF somehow invalidate your eventual win after 30 attempts? Or is it a case of 'I walked uphill to school, both ways, through 10 foot snowdrifts, at absolute zero-so everyone else should too!!!!!!' ?

[Seryne]

I'm glad I cleared steps the day the patch for it was released. None of us knew what we were doing but we eventually got it after three wipes.

Kinda annoyed that they nerfed it the way they did instead of it just resetting when everyone dies like everything else in game. It's an easy trial to begin with. All it needs is for people to communicate. Then again most people don't want to do that nowadays.

[Yukiko]

I wonder... so many crying about nerfs, but be honest to yourself, you would not do it again and again if not because of trial...
So i wonder how does that effect you? Shouldnt you be happy then if you must not do it in trial again when MORE players pass it and in result it will not pop up again?
Dont you like to have some speedrun garuda in trial instead of? Do you even know what you want?

[Shougun]

Direct 2nd party (i.e. from SE US staff) info trumps a 4th party (reader) translation of a 3rd party (online magazine) interview.

The line in question is simple enough you could learn the words and translate them yourself within the hour, or just let google do it (primal horse mount also fly). So I'd not argue the 4th party just out of simplicity. But sure, 2nd party info is better to quote and I'd love to use that first. Although the 2nd party quote does not disrupt the third party information, as it does not preclude the extra information in the third party source.

Perhaps not exactly being trumped (no incompatibility), it could still be made up.

Ok, well it would fit the norse mythology that Sleipnir can fly. Still misses 4 legs though (Sleipnir has 8 in the mythology).

Maybe he gets 4 more legs to kick the air even harder? XD. It would definitely fit the mythology (being able to fly, and getting the rest of his legs lol)!

[Duuude007]

It's funny that I beat the coil story 4 months ago, but still haven't gotten off my ass to do steps cuz it's probably not even a challenge. Oh, well. All I wanted out of this damn patch was a poetics uncap for my alts, but I guess that's not gonna happen before 3.0.

Why would they without new tomestones to take their place?

[AdamFyi]

Totally belaboring the point i made a little bit back, but does the change to SoF somehow invalidate your eventual win after 30 attempts? Or is it a case of 'I walked uphill to school, both ways, through 10 foot snowdrifts, at absolute zero-so everyone else should too!!!!!!' ?

It's the case of the skill level of the playerbase. It's a legitimate concern. Players don't have any incentive of improving their skill if they are spoon-fed nerfs every time they demand it. The Steps of Faith trial isn't even hard to begin with.

[Ashkendor]

It's clear that the number of players who were clearing content was completely unacceptable to Square-Enix, so crap on all of us (yes, even me who went 1/30 or something) who actually cleared it unnerfed.

I don't understand this attitude at all. As someone that cleared all of FCoB without Echo, I don't see the addition of Echo as crapping on my achievement. I see it as them allowing more people to have the enjoyment of earning the achievement. More people earning the achievement doesn't have any impact on how "valuable" my achievement is. The same thing goes for this. You cleared SoF unnerfed. Awesome, me too. Some other people haven't been as lucky, and now perhaps they'll be able to progress with their MSQ and finish up so they can get into the shiny new content we'll be getting in June. Ultimately, that's the goal here. SoF isn't meant to be a roadblock - it's meant to be a gateway. It's not meant to keep people out of the expansion. It's there to usher them into it with an engaging story and a memorable trial.

I think SE underestimated just how much of a hurdle SoF would actually be when done by eight random people. The mechanics are pretty nifty, but the unforgiving nature of the battle made it a real pain in the ass to do in DF. You miss a couple of dragonkillers, you mayaswell just all AFK until the thing resets and pray that half the party hasn't left in the meantime. It's just a matter of effort vs reward - right now it requires too much of the former for not enough of the latter, so many people just automatically leave when they land on it. I would've rather seen a reset button go into it so that you could just wipe a run that you knew was a failure (the aforementioned misses with dragonkillers, for example).