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

[Packetdancer]

After years being used to XIV's health regeneration being quick and automatic, I really wasn't expecting it to ever be turned off. I died twice before realizing that regen was turned off.

Far too many hours logged in deep dungeons -- where there's a 'no health regen' debuff on some floors -- will drive into your head that health regen is not universal in this game. (I admit, though, despite faaaaar too much time in Palace of the Dead -- I will get my Necromancer title, dang it -- I didn't notice the regen wasn't kicking in until after I'd fought the one soldier you can't avoid fighting.)

Honestly, though, I can see why this would annoy players. I didn't mind it (though I didn't particularly find it super enjoyable), but if I'd failed it and had to do it again from the beginning -- much less if I'd had to do so more than once -- I can imagine it would have felt really annoying really fast.

Still, I'm happy when Square-Enix is willing to try new things. Not all of those things work the way they first try them -- or in some cases (hello, Praetorium cutscenes) at all -- but better to sometimes try new things and see what works than never try anything new at all.

(Admittedly, I sometimes wish they'd try them a little less enthusiastically; there were a lot of escort quests this expansion. The first time I saw one, it was like "oh, this is interesting", but by the 20th or so it was getting a little old. By the end, any time an NPC went "If you'd care to accompany me" when picking up a quest I screamed internally -- even when some of those proved to be the normal old 'NPC walks off and fades away, and then you go find them at the destination' type. I get that it's Endwalker, but still...)

I'm not sure I'd have put this particular one smack in the way of the MSQ, admittedly, given how obnoxious I expect it would be if you ended up doing it repeatedly.

[Arazehl]

I had two main difficulties:

* After years being used to XIV's health regeneration being quick and automatic, I really wasn't expecting it to ever be turned off. I died twice before realizing that regen was turned off.

* The UI is deceptive. It greatly emphasizes the clock (which really isn't that important). There's a lot of bright and glowing things that don't do much, if anything.

Once I had multiple health packs, I thought I needed to prioritize speed by sneaking over "wasting time" on clickable objects. That strategy worked well...until I got too close to the end of the first area and a horde of bots stomped me flat.

After that death, I snuck over to the gate a second time, saw the robot, and clicked on The One True Glowing Object. After that, I sailed through the rest because the UI finally revealed what the actual goal of the scenario was.

Yeah I didn't realize at first there was a health meter that rose each time you encounter an enemy and would fail you when it reach full. I then realized there was no regen what so ever. Your mission was to avoid encounters and sneak through. Picking up health kits so that if you did have an encounter you could heal somewhat. It was more an avoidance mission. The problem I found was the darkness of the place made me overlook some of the paths around the enemies.

[White_Wolf_X]

Just did the quest and i loved it.

[Recon1o6]

While I am a bit miffed we couldn't break zenos' neck when he had left but fandango was still monologing, this was a pretty good instance personally.

It does feel like they have significantly upped the stealth capabilities of the engine. Considering the previous instance in shb which i detested, i was surprised how well this one went and the thancred one (never got spotted once!)

That being the case, i do think that the magitek mobs need the cone that the quests where you follow people have to indicate line of sight.
and like everything, I really detest losing so many buttons and especially having a pvp hotbar

I do get why we have few though- some players never played the job. A solution to this should be, if you have that particular job at a high enough level, you get more actions.

[icrot]

I did this quest a couple of days ago. Wasn't good, but it also wasn't as terrible as other people say it is. For me at least.

[Tavieon]

This post reminds me Game Care Network's videos...



A stealth session in a game which is clearly not a stealth action theme is a sin!!


Yeah, it's not as difficult as a real stealth game.. but annoying... DUTY FAILED!!

[Packetdancer]

I do get why we have few though- some players never played the job. A solution to this should be, if you have that particular job at a high enough level, you get more actions.

As much as I loathe the "you took my job and removed all the actions, where the heck is the thing I actually want to use right now" feel of the play-as-someone-else scenarios, I don't think they could do that and still balance it in any reasonable manner where the session would work for both people who hadn't leveled the job (and so had the limited actions) and the ones who had (and so had a more-plentiful buffet of actions to choose from).

Plus, if they didn't give you ALL the actions but gave you like, a hotbar and a half worth, controller users would be in AGONY when it dropped a ton of actions they had to shuffle around to make the duty remotely playable. It's bad enough on keyboard/mouse when they scramble things from where you're used to them, but on controller... yikes.

At least when you only get 4 or 5 actions the "we've ignored all your hotkey or controller setup" aspect is still manageable. :|

[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...