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

[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.