"Taking a stand" quest

[MayberyRFD]

Been trying for over 4 hours to beat this quest..... watched videos, read guides, read this thread and nothing helps...... I barely get past the pillars stage on Very Easy!!! I hate it!....Apparently my game stops here....ugh!!! I hate having to play someone/thing else quests.......they suck balls@%@$#%#@#$#

[Carin-Eri]

Been trying for over 4 hours to beat this quest..... watched videos, read guides, read this thread and nothing helps...... I barely get past the pillars stage on Very Easy!!! I hate it!....Apparently my game stops here....ugh!!! I hate having to play someone/thing else quests.......they suck balls@%@$#%#@#$#

As noted earlier in the thread, for reasons unknown, the experience some had (including myself) was that Very Easy mode for this quest doesn't actually seem as easy as the 'Easy' mode.

[Ceryn]

I have no idea if it's at all helpful, but in addition to the excellent numbered list a couple pages back:

Successfully dodging/executing a mechanic makes your LB charge faster. And the LB does a fairly potent heal, so the more you get the hang of the mechanics, the more often you should be able to use her LB. I don't think it requires you to be flawless, I know in my clear I ate one or two during the fight and still had enough LBs to get through. So don't lose heart if you get hit a few times.

I didn't personally struggle with this fight, but I do hope anyone stuck on it is able to progress. If it gets to you, take a break. Your performance will suffer if you're flustered!

I had to take a two day break for Messmer and again for [redacted] at the end of Shadow of the Erdtree. I got in my own head and was just doing worse. Came back fresh and managed to get through.

[HappyHubris]

Did this on my first try. It's just spam 1, use 3 on cooldown, and hit your limit breaks. And then when the small enemies add in use 2 instead of 1.

There are only a few mechanics. For the strike, dash at the boss and stand behind him. For the totems, you want to end up standing on a green totem. For the 4 columns, you just stand in each pillar as he jumps in it.

[HappyHubris]

Regarding the tooltips, I don't know the specific settings for controller, but I do know many of the main combos are very non-telling.
They just say

1. - Random skill name
2. - Random skill name
3. - Random skill name

to tell you that button rotates between the three of them, but it doesn't always tell you what these three random skills actually do. If you know the original job, some might seem familiar, but that's rarely always the case. So "read your tooltips" might be a good idea for the usual jobs, but not so much for solo duties where the tooltips say fairly little to begin with. And knowing what the skills do is no help if your disability limits your reaction time or movement under pressure etc.

If you read the tooltips:
1 is a combo that damages and heals you.
2 is a combo that does less damage than 1 and does not heal you.
3 is a heal.
4 is a ranged attack
5 is a charge

I didn't understand why 2 existed (a combo with less potency and no healing?) until the little guys appeared. So then I hit two and...yep it's an AoE.

The names are immaterial; text explains what is it.

[HappyHubris]

Every time someone says "Read the tool tips" ... I get enormously frustrated and mad, as a console player, I cannot find where such a thing is actually explained and those shouting from the rooftops, stop being lazy and read the tooltips, might actually be a bit more helpful and tell the rest of us where they are.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ffxi...+on+controller

[HappyHubris]

At least someone is saying this. This is level 100 content. There has to be some level of skill check, otherwise you're not playing a game, you're reading a visual novel.

To be fair, FFXIV's MSQ is a visual novel 95% of the time, with a few dungeons, trials, and instanced fights thrown in. And a party can drag weaker players through the dungeons and trials.

[Healing-the-things]

SquareEnix literally FORCES me to buy my way through these stupid story fights by having to go to their online store and purchase the "Tales Of Adventure..." books in order to bypass these STUPID, STUPID forced NPC fight seqences.

IMO;
They are NOT fun.
I do NOT enjoy them.
I should be able to SKIP them without having to open my wallet.

Look, the game makes it stupid easy to play another kit, style or class... so I just don't understand why the developers put their players in a chokehold and shove a particular kit down everyone's throat simply to "eNhAnCe thE StoRy" ...ugh!

There are literally hundreds of optional dungeons, trials and quests in the game that a player can unlock and play IF THEY DECIDE TO... so why, exactly force these stupid fights on your players?

Lack of choices in a MMO is never the right choice.

I guess on the bright side there's plenty of other things I can do until SquareEnix rubs their greedy hands together and lets me buy my way out of their stupid enforced story-combat... otherwise I'll just be lvl 100 stuck at lvl 94 MSQ content, and honestly, I don't even care anymore [stupid cat!]

...just sucks I can't skip it like everything else in this game... its such a arbitrary and stupid choice on their part.

[Jojoya]

There are literally hundreds of optional dungeons, trials and quests in the game that a player can unlock and play IF THEY DECIDE TO... so why, exactly force these stupid fights on your players?

Because players who are long time FF franchise fans asked to be able to play as their favorite NPCs just as they did in other FF games. The game is really just one big tribute to the franchise. Sometimes they do a good job and those who haven't played any other FF games don't notice it. Sometimes they don't do a good job and it's annoying.

I guess I have to wonder what you even do in the game after skipping to avoid the solo duties. As others have said, the solo duties are not that hard but they can be challenging for those with disabilities. If you're having difficulty with a solo duty, you're also having difficulty with the dungeons and trials you mention.

We are not being introduced to new mechanics that have not been seen in previous MSQ content. Reading the NPC ability tooltips should give you a reasonable idea of how to use them because most jobs have their corresponding abilities. The only difference is we don't have a party where others can cover for our mistakes. We need to rely on ourselves. If that means watching a guide on YouTube for the duty because we don't learn mechanics quickly, then watch the guide.

This game has always been its own thing and not the standard Western MMO. It's not going to change.

...just sucks I can't skip it like everything else in this game...

What are you even doing in the game if you're skipping everything through repeated purchases of story skips each expansion? Just housing?

Not everything can be skipped unless you purchase a Tales of Adventure. The MSQ is mandatory as you pointed out and that makes any content that's part of the MSQ mandatory including some not-so-optional dungeons and trials.

[Berani74]

SE does monitor player progress on these special duties and will make adjustments when they find too many players are struggling to complete them. It could be Warpsberger was on the right track and SE missed something when creating the easier difficulties.

It's hard to say when/if they will make such adjustments for this duty.

Until such time, I think it's best to try to focus on sharing advice that may help others get the duty completed now instead of forcing them to wait. I have a family member with a physical disability that will probably be reaching this duty later today and I know it's going to frustrate them. Perhaps in helping them, we can come up with more tips to help others struggling with it.

With the number of disabled folks (including me) in this thread saying "it's a problem," it seems to me that "Very Easy" mode really needs a tweak because I try everything at "Normal" first. When "Taking a Stand" switched to "Very Easy" difficulty, I could not tell a difference and still could not complete it. Because it is MSQ, it's game breaking for those of us who can't get past it--and not everyone is as fortunate as I am, to have a whole house full of FFXIV players that can be called on for help.

There have been a few folks in the thread saying it's a "skill issue," I'm not necessarily disagreeing. I am saying that there are physical reasons that skill levels may not be able to be improved in order for some of us to complete "Taking a Stand" in its current form.