Why is it so common to join extremes without watching a guide first?

[Tiramu]

I got Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 when they were released and had the physical guide for each of them, the guides were out at the same time the game was new. I also have my original Chrono Trigger and Earthbound guides. (Earthbound even came with the guide) And through a large portion of the 90s we just went to the library and printed out the 200 page Gamefaq guides with the giant ASCII art. And even in the NES days we picked up Nintendo Power if we got stuck in something. The original FF1 on NES and maybe FF4/"FF2" here in NA were the only FF games I can think of where you might not have had easy access to resources outside of Nintendo Power. But as of the PS1 days we had easy ways to look at guides online and it's not like NA players were playing any of the older FF titles outside 1, 4 and 6 as we didn't even get the others until the PS1 ports with the horrendous load times. The only gamers that were living through the dark ages with no help were people playing stuff like Sierra games and Myst/Riven haha

I used guides in the olden days and still use them now. But I also do savage+ultimate and if anyone has made any sort of guide or toolbox for those you better believe I'm looking at them, even when week 1 raiding.

Not to tell you how to play your games, that is not my intention. You should play as you wish. But doesn't this sound a little like guides have become a bit of a crutch? Isn't it more enjoyable to at least try to complete content without a guide than needing them before even attempting the content.

Well the 30m+ queue time should clue them off that it's not something you can wing it and clear the first time while actually blindfolded.

Thats not always the case though, while not an extreme Odin is often treat like one and has a long wait time. I tried DF'ing it before I knew how to use PF, not for 30 mins but I gave it a chance. I didn't get a roll on it, and kinda left it to the side. Then one day I was doing roulettes and rolled Odin and we cleared it. Sometimes people just randomly get lucky (or unlucky) with trials that are usually reserved for PF groups.

Not really, no.

Take Garuda, for instance. Was "The Howling Eye (Hard)" actually significantly harder than just "The Howling Eye"? You just basically can faceroll both these days, after all. Why would a sprout encountering the term "Extreme" for the first time think "The Howling Eye (Extreme)" would be any different a step up from "The Howling Eye (Hard)"?

Moreover, we like to tell sprouts "If you see blue quest markers, always accept those, because they unlock new stuff." So they see a blue quest marker, they click on the blue quest marker, and it tells them "Use the Duty Finder to complete The Howling Eye (Extreme)", just like it's told them "Use the Duty Finder to complete <whatever>" for every previous trial and dungeon.

Why on earth would we expect them to do anything other than try to use the Duty Finder to complete the extreme trial they've just unlocked?

I agree with this too. This is an issue with messaging, and I find it hard to believe most players haven't done exactly this, or wandered into an extreme utterly unprepared unless they were explicitly told not to undertake them until they are ready in their FC or whatever.