Solo Duties

[Uniquisher]

Anyone else find solo duties, whether they be for MSQ or job quests, just... extremely boring? Like the game wasnt really designed for solo play in duties (or with one or two mindless npcs) and I cannot stand smacking the same enemy with about 3 skills as some role play character. Why do they keep adding these to the game?

[Frizze]

As with anything in life, some are boring and some arent. The solo duties seem to give them a little more freedom in some of the odd mechanics they can introduce. I cant envision them doing something like the riddles from the 5.2 solo duty in a group setting, as an example. They seem to add them because it gives them an extra way to advance the story. As for the role-play duties, those are actually incredibly popular. Thancreds went a little too long(opinion of course), but each of them gets tons of compliments and people asking for more.

[Mahoukenshi]

I quite like them in whatever form (and by extension Trusts), but yeah Thancred's role-play duty was quite slow in how much damage you deal. Especially if you compare it to 5.2 role-play duty which felt much faster. I also liked the rp-duties during the ShB role quests as it let you shortly experience the "life" of the past Heroes of the First. However, I assume wheter someone likes them or not may also depend on their priorities: Some story players don't like it if they are not the WoL (or get torn from their "power fantasy" trope) and purely endgame-focused players may perceive them more of an annoyance as well. This is, of course, no universal rule or anything like that.

I'm a rather atypcial MMO player as in that I care about the main story but lose motivation or don't care about the typical MMO aspects; like the (for my "casual" prorities) endgame gear grind at 80 in case of the former, or optional dungeons, trials and "hard content" for the latter.

[Kalise]

I think some of the solo duties are pretty interesting.

Stuff like the fight with Ran-jit (But not the tedious beating up of the civilians beforehand) and the fights with Zenos are pretty interesting. It's basically like being in a Raid, dealing damage while performing the mechanics.

There are also some off-the-wall duties that bring something different (Like the duty with Y'shtola and the 3 bunny waifus where you had to answer riddles and play the match game)

I abhor the RP duties though. Ever since the first one with Alphinaud in the Burn. Not only is it lame to be torn away from my character with a full assortment of skills to be shoved onto someone with like 3 skills (With bindings that are awkward because they cannot be changed and don't fit with how I usually set up my action bars), but honestly, the set pieces themselves could have easily been cutscenes and thus even more of a spectacle than having Estinein just mashing AoEs at a handful of Imperials (A complete joke when you consider the number of guards and the location combined with the recent events) and then pogoing on a budget Ultima...

[LalafellDown]

Too much pointless text/quests in my opinion. Main story quest tends to add fillers in between major plot points that are just fetch quests. Why do I need to talk to these 6 specific individuals. Almost always either talk to someone at multiple locations and then return to the main quest guy or click through several sparkles on the ground. I get it you want me to interact with each sparkle and wait for the loading bar load for each one. Just get to the point already. Wish there was a skip conversation/fetch objective button.

Almost every area has small pointless quests that explode around the map after completing a main quest. I’d rather have a map completion progress bar like Guild wars 2. The story would be told as you complete various tasks. Different game different visions I guess.

My suggestion would be to start taking risk in new design ideas for quests. I mean it’s about time they ditched each job quest. Cut the fat on the side quests already. Instead of having hundreds of small side quest. Why not build one big entire side story for each map location with voice actors? 5.0 job quest had something like this. It had some fetch objectives but it told a story that grabbed my attention. Why not make something similar for an entire map?

The La hee map had an awesome puzzle dungeon and what looks like a battle that happened before when arrived in the first. How come we didn’t get to experience it?

[kujoestars]

I quite enjoy most of the later solo duties because they add a level of immersion (if you have to run through an instanced version of an area to find people) and the bosses definitely are trickier with almost as much mechanics as in dungeons or trials. Great way to have me panicking on MSQ or Job Quests (60 MNK quest took me a few tries because I only noticed the Orbs of Death adds after second wipe). The final fight against the WoDs also got crazy with having to charge up the Weapon of Light in time; really gave a strong sense of danger and urgency when your turn comes up to charge the weapon and you have to get rid if whoever’s aggro’d on you. Extra scary when you go in completely blind and don’t see the Weapon is a separate clickbox from Alisaie and spend your first attempt panicking because you can’t seem to charge the weapon (which totally didn’t happen to me, what are you talking about?).

Most of them are bland, I can agree, but the climactic ones are duties I wish were replayable (without have to New Game+ I guess, ha; no New Game+ for Job Quests alas).

[VarkingRunesong]

I like having them as its something different. I just like having as much content as possible and not everything needs to be designed with group play in mind.

[Stepjam]

I do feel like a lot of the recent solo instances do last a touch too long (Thancred's comes to mind). But overall I still enjoy them.

And the class quest solo instances are good, the lvl 50 and 60 final Monk fights, and the BLM fight against shantoto were great.

[kujoestars]

I finished Zenos’ second fight last night after about 5 tries and

<insert long garbled angry rant and grumpy lizard noises>

I love and hate it at the same time, and I hope this isn’t going to be a regular occurrence, *sideeyes the mention of a recent Thancred solo duty*

[Frizze]

"Second Zenos fight"... in a thread about solo duties... the one in Yanxia where Yugiri fought with you? If im reading that right, you havent gotten to the first "role-play" instance yet. The first one(that i remember anyway) was in the 4.x patch line quests. And youve been doing solo instances here and there since like level 5. As a monk(pugilist) i would guess you started in Ul Dah, so your first would have been a fight near the Sultantree in central thanalan. An ascian summoned some form of voidsent and you put it down. Ill avoid any specific spoilers for now. The thancred fight that gets mentioned is interesting(individual opinions may vary) and it serves a purpose in advancing the story(somewhat - could be better), but the enemy(it isnt zenos, if thats what youre worried about) has a bit too much hp so the fight drags a bit longer then ideally it should(from a storytelling and gameplay perspective). Youre still a ways out from there however.