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

[Tridus]

I despised this. Loathed it. The whole thing took me right out of the story. There's several problems:

I was exhausted from log4j related stuff at work (and the disconnect prone 2.5 hour queue to get in) and not at my best mentally. So throwing me into this out of nowhere where I'm suddenly using another character that's awful was not at all what I wanted out of playing. I managed to die on the first enemy somehow, FFS.

This game is not a stealth game. The mechanics are bad for stealth games, and if you aggro something that is a mortal threat, it takes forever running away to drop aggro, which puts you lost who knows where or aggros more stuff and kills you.

... again, this game is not a stealth game. Wandering around aimlessly for a while with a countdown wasn't fun. Spamming one button isn't fun. Trying to sneak past enemies when you have no sneak skill and are just trying to eyeball distance isn't fun. Honestly, I find none of these "play as someone else with a simplified set of skills" sequences fun, but this one was just dreadful.

By the third time I was really over it and just wanted a "no, this is dumb, skip" button. But of course you can't skip it. Then I got to a QTE that I didn't expect, was drinking something, and failed it before I got my hands free.

Doing it AGAIN, I keyboard mashed as usual and somehow managed to bring up the settings menu, which you can't do in any other QTE in the game.

Somehow at the end of this entire sequence that exists entirely to show how weak you are, you are magically strong enough to do all that stuff that happens at the end? It's in no way believable and feels like they wrote themselves into a corner then just ignored what they had already established to write themselves back out of it.



I mean, great for people who enjoyed it. But this was literally the worst quest in the entire game for me, and if it wasn't part of the MSQ I'd have abandoned it in a heartbeat and never gone back. This entire zone is full of "we're going to try to make this game do stuff that this game is frankly not very good at it, so it's going to be finicky and annoying" gimmicks, and it really detracted from the story they were trying to tell.

[Ayuhra]

By the third time I was really over it and just wanted a "no, this is dumb, skip" button. But of course you can't skip it. Then I got to a QTE that I didn't expect, was drinking something, and failed it before I got my hands free.

Doing it AGAIN, I keyboard mashed as usual and somehow managed to bring up the settings menu, which you can't do in any other QTE in the game.

This quest didn't bother me much but that QTE is probably too tight for where it is. By that point you are worn out, it's a very mash-heavy QTE and if you lose you start over AFAIK. That's not great.

[Packetdancer]

Doing it AGAIN, I keyboard mashed as usual and somehow managed to bring up the settings menu, which you can't do in any other QTE in the game.

This was my one actual complaint about this section. Every other Active Time Maneuver locks out normal keyboard input during those times, so hitting "K" counts as "Press a button" as opposed to "Open character settings", and "C" counts as "Press a button" rather than "Open character window" and so on. This one locked out combat actions, but not keyboard input entirely. It startled me when I keyboard-mashed like usual and suddenly had like 4 windows open.

I escaped out hastily and finished the ATM without issue by sticking to just the movement keys, but it definitely could've made me fail that part.

I feel like that one's a bug; the control system probably has a few modes ("Standard combat", "Lock out combat actions", and "Lock out all input") and someone set the wrong flag there, compared to every other Active Time Maneuver. Hopefully that one gets a hotfix in 6.01 along with their adjustments to the difficulties.

Somehow at the end of this entire sequence that exists entirely to show how weak you are, you are magically strong enough to do all that stuff that happens at the end? It's in no way believable and feels like they wrote themselves into a corner then just ignored what they had already established to write themselves back out of it.

I am actually going to disagree here; that bit at the end was some of what made this sequence work for me. I took it as that all through the sequence up to that point, you're functionally limited to what this random Garlean grunt could reasonably have done. But at the end, pushed to your limit and desperate to get to your friends, you break through that and begin to draw on a bit of your normal power.

Which was, after all, the point of Fandaniel and Zenos' entire little mocking experiment: how formidable would you actually be, stripped of your strength? How much of your power could you feasibly draw on in an unfamiliar, weak body, if motivated by desperation? The answer seemed to be "more than I'd have expected at the beginning of this experience."

I still didn't find the sequence compelling enough that I have any desire to play it again, but it didn't fail narratively for me.

(Though it did feel odd they didn't do a little more with the thread from that sequence. I half-expected that at some point near the climax of the game, we'd be left in an unfamiliar body -- an aetheric construct to survive space or whatever -- and it would be the experience there that allowed us to still utilize any of our normal power in that form.)

[DiaDeem]

[Duskane]

that trooper do be thicc tho

[Canadane]

I really enjoyed this one and look forward to more like it.

[Raim]

Out of curiosity, couldn't you just steamroll it on Very Easy mode after failing it once? Or is it still somewhat difficult?

[Jijifli]

Out of curiosity, couldn't you just steamroll it on Very Easy mode after failing it once? Or is it still somewhat difficult?

Very easy makes you have double health and deal double damage. This basically means where 1 guy could almost kill you, it raises the bar up to 4. On top of the health kits you can find, my assumption is you could probably kill every non-magitek enemy easily on very easy (those guys might still kill you though).

So, unless there's something I'm missing or people just really really wanna fight the thing the mission screams at you not to fight, it's pretty easy if you remove a huge chunk of the point in very easy mode.

[Alleo]

Out of curiosity, couldn't you just steamroll it on Very Easy mode after failing it once? Or is it still somewhat difficult?

I did it on very easy but for me the problem was, that you still got no clue on what to do. The fightings are a bit easier but most of my time was spent finding a solution to getting out there (because the quest said to get out)...it took some time to find the new quest object and even more time to gather the stuff up.

Honestly if they add quest markers to the very easy mode that would really help it.

In the end for me the worst part was the story around it...how the WoL magically makes it to the camp just in the right time to block the first attack Zenos does...and that after we were not able to walk anymore..

[Doozer]

I saw vague mention of this quest as I cautiously browsed the forums while in queues and expected something a lot worse. I enjoyed this one (more than the previous one, but that one was still okay too), especially the last bit. I didn't find it hard at all, though I did accidentally run by the fuel tank at the start when I went the wrong way, but I didn't have any problems completing it on my first try.

Every expansion people come running here saying instanced fights are too hard or annoying, but want us to believe they're hardcore raiders when playing the rest of the game. It's like how people hate the Rathalos trial because so few attacks are telegraphed. It really shows how much people rely on hand-holding in this game, and as soon as it doesn't have a huge sign pointing you where to go, it's stupid and unnecessary. Interesting.