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

[Saraide]

It being an msq mission made it very obvious to me that the timer was extremely generous. The QTE is aswell. It's similar to that in seat of sacrifice where any button input close to failing it will massively boost your struggle bar. I wasnt so huge on it because you only had 3 buttons to use and none of them were related to stealth, that was entirely on avoiding LoS. That's what I think the thancred duty did well because it didnt try to be like all the other RP duties where it would just give you the NPC's job but take away literally all depth from it and instead had a stealth mission approach and different ways of dealing with each type of mob.

[Denji]

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.

[Packetdancer]

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".

FWIW, while I agree that FFXIV's aggro mechanics aren't particularly well-suited to stealth, they are more complicated than that.

Some enemies have a proximity-based aggro mechanic, where just getting close to them is enough. Others are aggro'd by sight, i.e. you must be within their aggro range and they must have line-of-sight to you within some front-facing field of view. Some are aggro'd off of sound, where if you walk too closely by them at the normal pace they'll hear footsteps and aggro, but if you toggle into RP-walk they won't. Etc.

Now, those mechanics aren't relevant very often anymore—save in 'niche' content like deep dungeons, Eureka, etc.—since overworld mobs are very rarely a major threat anymore, but the mechanics are still in game. I somewhat suspect that the stealth mechanic is some attempt to make them relevant again by making players have to think about how to slip past mobs without aggro'ing them.

I'm not certain it's a successful attempt, mind you...

[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.

[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.

[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.