Am I the only one that sort of kinda likes the nerf to SoF?

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

3.0 is gated by this expansion. What do you think will happen when 3.0 comes out? No one will ever want to run the Trial again making it harder for people who have yet completed it even more difficult. If you think 3.0 should be some badge of honour or something for completing SoF, then you need to get over yourself.

The new players would have spent a couple days figuring out the tactics and beat the trial. This wasn't Twintania or Bahamut we are talking about. Then they would have been more prepared for the increased challenges of Heavensward, since level 50-60 monsters and bosses will more than likely be harder than level 40-50 was. If your going to make it impossible to fail, why make it at all? A cutscene could have sufficed. And the developer's could have used that time making something cool for Heavensward. The trial itself was only slightly harder than Chrysalis was.

Essentially what happened was the developers made something cool for us in the very last patch before heaveansward, and we spit in their faces by being super-critical and abandoning trial roullettes.

[Viridiana]

Still doesnt change the fact that no one wanted to run it. You shouldnt make content that people only want to run once. SoF was set up in a way that required you to make zero mistakes. People didnt want to get to the very end and screw something up. With the nerf, its a bit more lenient with errors.

SoF was never a zero-mistake instance. As people have mentioned repeatedly, it's entirely possible to kill the boss pre-nerf even with missing a dragon killer. And as it stands, it's still content that no one has any reason to run more than once, because there are still zero rewards to clearing multiple times. I fully expected them to do something like adding a Vishap card or later when they add non-character cards maybe a Steps of Faith card or something. But now there's no motivation for poor players to improve and no motivation for decent players to do the trial more than once. . .

[Skeith-Adeline]

Trial wasn't hard, at all. Cooperation =/= difficulty. It's just some people have been handfed the entire game to them, so when an instance actually required them to press buttons not on their hotbars, they were exposed. Don't nerf instances for people who don't understand what interacting is.

It still isn't going to help the disbanding in PF.

[Varilae]

This is sad, but true. You'd figure FFXIV is supposed to be a game that requires teamwork (it being multi-player and all), but the truth is that most people don't want to co-operate with others. Never understood why that crowd even plays MMOs in the first place.

Completely agreed. Steps of Faith was really not that difficult. It required some basic coordination with a group, that's it. Yes, this doesn't always work out in DF and that sucks, but the fight could have been easily completed by asking people on your own server or making a PF. I find it incredibly hard to believe that any player wouldn't be able to find 7 other players who have the ability to work together to clear the fight through shout chat or PF.

If the goal of the nerf was to make the fight easier to DF when you get players who can't listen or work together, then mission accomplished.

[Lilyarel]

SoF was never a zero-mistake instance. As people have mentioned repeatedly, it's entirely possible to kill the boss pre-nerf even with missing a dragon killer. And as it stands, it's still content that no one has any reason to run more than once, because there are still zero rewards to clearing multiple times. I fully expected them to do something like adding a Vishap card or later when they add non-character cards maybe a Steps of Faith card or something. But now there's no motivation for poor players to improve and no motivation for decent players to do the trial more than once. . .

Its on trial roulette. Everyone runs the rest of them just fine. So whats makes SoF different?

[Nestama]

So they made a trial easier for casuals, so what.

Future Trials (and dungeons) that are tied into the storyline will also be super easy. So easy it will make us, the player, question why people were so terrified of the big bads. Remember Gaius and Lahabrea from Prae? Those two were 'hyped' up throughout the entire story, Gaius more so for people who played 1.0... then we actually fight them and they're about as challenging as Yu Yevon.

Were the people of Eorzea really terrified by these wimps?

[Dualblade]

The only reason I don't like the nerfs is because I believe they could have kept it were it was at (because really it wasn't that hard) while giving people a better REASON to run it more then once. Something like a Triple Triad card, people will trip over themselves running it multiple times to try and get it, which would also help out newbies who just want it done (and then maybe go back themselves to get the card as well if they don't get surpreme luck first try). Ultimately though its nerfed, nothing to do about it now.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I was fine with making the trial slightly more forgiving just to deal with the sheer levels of uncoordinated faceroll people tended to go into the place with. The trial itself isn't even hard, it just required coordination - which sadly, most people seem to lack due to how little game content has actually forced players to do so, outside of more challenging content like Ex primals and Coil - and even Ex primals are starting to be able to be facerolled due to increasing gear levels.

Nerfing a trial to this degree just because no one wanted to actually do it correctly and instead cry out that it's "too hard" was silly.

[SummerSkye]

Still doesnt change the fact that no one wanted to run it.

In my Free Company, if a player needs help with any MSQ, most of us will drop whatever we are doing (not much to do pre 3.0, anyway) and help them. FFXIV: ARR is an MMO. It still blows my mind that people choose not to socialize, make friends and join a decent linkshell or free company that will help them with content and only use duty finder as a last resort.

"no one wants to run it" in DF or even PF is not an excuse...or a reason to start nerfing content because players are too lazy to learn a fight. This was never a "hard" fight to begin with. I say people that CHOOSE to play an MMO, and then refuse to make friends or join a community have not earned the right to complain about what is or is not going on in duty finder.

[Rath]

This trial should have just reset if everyone is dead at the same time and then no nerf would have been needed. Because it did not, people would abandon and have to queue up again, which means no practice with the same group. I don't mind the story version being nerfed because of this.

What I do mind, is that they did not introduce a hard mode like they do with other trials that are toned down to allow storyline progression. There needs to be a HM version (harder than the original version please), which has actual rewards of some kind. Maybe as part of the 3.0 drg relic quest line, that would be fun and be so much better then running old dungeons a gajillion times.