Solo Duties, We Need to Talk About It

[moahrs]

I imagine that no DEV should read this, I imagine that many will laugh in my face, and say that I don't know how to play FFXIV, and maybe I really don't. I come from WOW (since 2007), and I've been playing FFXIV since 2019. But there's something about WOW that isn't there here. It doesn't make us lose patience with the game, it doesn't make you irritated with the game to the point of dropping everything and returning to play that quest days, or even months later (as is my case, I stopped in a solo dutie of endwalker, and I only came back months later, before the new expansion came out). I don't understand how the game's DEV, or even the game's engineer, thought of "how to irritate the players... ahm, I know, solo duties".

Solo duties with your own character are difficult, but acceptable, even when you have to do work to kill Zenos, but you know the skills, you know what to do, how to activate them, and so on. You know JOB.

Now the solo duties with other characters and jobs, I really can't imagine who had this bad idea....

I play ranged, since WOW. Here, I started as an Archer, Bard, then Summoner, and Finally I met MCH, which I loved and became my main job. I don't like being a TANK, MELEE, and I hate being a HEALER, so I never intend to level these jobs. I've tried, I swear, but in FFXIV the experience wasn't good.

Then, FFXIV comes along, and puts me in solo dutie as a healer, as a tank, with melee DPS... for what? to annoy... if I don't know how to play with it, I don't want to play with it, it doesn't interest me, I play to have fun, not to annoy myself. But I'm a masochist, and I still play FFXIV.

Now, I have a solo dutie in DT, like "Wuk Lamat".... I've tried "n" times, just now I gave up, and went to level up carpentry and botany. It's impossible to pass. The explanation of the class at the beginning, with it running, is rubbish.... I learned something on YouTube, that is, you need YouTube to help you play, and the game doesn't have the capacity for that.

Is there a part where something appears in green where I should press a skill? what skill? In the second warning, I know which skill, but in the first, I have no idea, it doesn't even show it properly in the video.

Its health drops like a leak, which there's no way to hold back, the cooldown of the life magic is infinite, it never ends... even on very easy I can't get past this solo dutie...

Then there will be haters who will tell me to go back to playing wow, to disappear, this, that, etc... No, I like playing FFXIV, otherwise I wouldn't be here with this post.

I just wanted to ask the DEV's, if they bother to look at this game here on the forum, to worry about having fun and not annoying the players. Not everyone likes to play with all the JOB's, some have fun with 2 or 3 types of jobs, if that (I have fun with just one), and don't force you to play with jobs.

The game stops being fun when it becomes painful...

[juliorain]

part of playing ff14 is learning to be flexible and stepping in other jobs' shoes so you can understand others. In every instance starting with their inception in the Stormblood patch quests, they give a simplified idea of each of the characters' movesets. Even if you don't play that job or have no experience playing as them, you can read the tool tips, and from that "oh so I need that on 1 target" or "oh I need that for trash."

with respect to your story fight issue: it was a step up from Gulool Ja Ja's spar with you so most of the mechanics of the fight for the first half should have been very familiar. They gave you three buttons, each with clear tool tips. One was a strong single target hit, the other an aoe, and the third was a mit/heal. (And maybe a limit break). The fight had clear text telegraphs which by then you should be associating with certain mechanics.

[moahrs]

I understood what you said about having to be flexible with all jobs. But not even Skyrim, where you can be anything, forces you to try everything. I don't think it's right to force the player to “learn a job” with solo duties.

As for the fight in the Taking a Stand quest, it's not that simple. it is not self-explanatory. The warnings on the screen are just warnings. They don't tell you what to do. In this case, there are 2 warnings: the first one, I haven't figured out what to use yet, I use any skill. The second warning, I learned the skill to use from a YouTube video.

But damn. As I said in the other post, there are no resources. her life drains from the fight, nor from his boss skills and she doesn't have a health potion to use, food that helps, knowledge of gear, nothing.

sorry. I know I'm just complaining, but I'm upset to know that once again I won't be able to finish the MSQs from this expansio, as the phases arrive, but patience. What Square Enix wants is to sell its pay-to-win packages to complete the previous expansion.

[Rayne6665]

Ngl it took me 3 tries and got through it lol (even on very easy . I know, shut up with the “GiT gUd” lmfao) off topic, some gave up with the follow and hide quest. Want to proceed further into msq? Just do it and get it over with. If not, uninstall ffxiv xD (just kidding)

[Minali]

I'm ok with these solo duties, especially considering you only have to juggle 4-5 buttons. It's not that they throw a whole Lvl 95 WAR toolkit at you. That said, as I already mentioned elsewhere, the tooltips are really lacking at times. It tells you the first button rotates through three skills but doesn't always bother to tell you what this skill does. It tends to be 1-2-3 for single target on the first and 1-2-3 AOE on the second button, but then there is sometimes also a dot and... It works for PvP to have tooltips like this because you can still go into the PvP menu and look up each single skill but you don't have this option in a solo duty. Personally I never had big issues getting along with these instances and I find them great from a narrative point of view to make things happening elsewhere or character development of an NPC more immersive and most of all more interactive for a player than a long cutscene. So of course I lack a personal perspective of what specifically keeps people from doing them. However, I daresay having a hard time to understand what exactly the buttons actually do might be a big part of the problem.

I would be very much opposed to removing these instances alltogether just because some people can't handle playing another job for five minutes, it adds more variety to the already rather small amount of gameplay things to do aside from "click thing" and "talk to NPC A". However, I think it would be a good idea to add an option where you can just skip it if you failed to do it 3 times. The "very easy" option is supposed to help with this as a substitute, but as we can see in the following thread, "very easy" only seem to adjust amount of health and damage output and stuff instead of actually making it more approachable and easier by taking out things with a tough reaction time etc:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-a-stand-quest

So I'd be for adding a skip option/replacing the duty with a short cutscene so you still know what just happens if you don't want to do the fight, and adjusting the "very easy" mode mechanics so people with disabilities who still want to play it have an option to do so. It would give people like you the option to opt out of these duties without missing anything without requiring to take out a big and interesting gameplay element.

[moahrs]

Ngl it took me 3 tries and got through it lol (even on very easy . I know, shut up with the “GiT gUd” lmfao) off topic, some gave up with the follow and hide quest. Want to proceed further into msq? Just do it and get it over with. If not, uninstall ffxiv xD (just kidding)

too far if I uninstall the game, heheheh. I just think the game is made for fun, and not to make you angry. I get upset because I can't progress, and the game doesn't give you other options. Why doesn't she ask for my help to beat her instead of Lamat? it was an option. Don't force me to do a job that I don't know and don't interest me.

[moahrs]

I would prefer all the warrios tools but being able to use game resources like food and potions, I would feel more comfortable.

I agree with you 100% on this, the game lacks activities, I like the WOW way of killing x things, facing an elite with a potion that makes him weak but still hits hard, etc. ffxiv when it comes to combat, square forces things that really bother me.

the idea of ​​jumping solo dutie after n attempts would be fascinating. I couldn't or I don't care to stress myself out in this solo dutie, I jump it, but see what happens, I don't get the xp or the reward, but I advance in the story, simple. I thought the solution was brilliant.

[LibitIncarne]

"very easy" only seem to adjust amount of health and damage output and stuff instead of actually making it more approachable and easier by taking out things with a tough reaction time etc

I believe the only time that Easy Mode actually does something other than damage inflation is a Stormblood duty where it expands the area of effect of the duty action.

This duty isn't that difficult. It's possible to clear it despite not soaking any of the towers.
Use the HP boosting skill whenever you can, use the combo on the left to deal damage and heal, and more important than literally anything else, DON'T STAND IN THE BAD.

Was that solo duty that walled you in Endwalker called "In from the Cold", by any chance?

[moahrs]

I believe the only time that Easy Mode actually does something other than damage inflation is a Stormblood duty where it expands the area of effect of the duty action.

This duty isn't that difficult. It's possible to clear it despite not soaking any of the towers.
Use the HP boosting skill whenever you can, use the combo on the left to deal damage and heal, and more important than literally anything else, DON'T STAND IN THE BAD.

Was that solo duty that walled you in Endwalker called "In from the Cold", by any chance?

I agree with that, very easy mode is not that easy. It helps, but in this quest, it doesn't help, because when you don't know what to do, just jumping around and leaving the boss's skills doesn't help for long.

As for the fight, thank you for this short explanation, but I don't really understand it yet. HP Bosting is a single skill (button 3 I think), which doesn't increase your life much, and in my opinion, it doesn't help much... With access to the JOB skills that I play, it becomes easier, and I still have the heal potions, which help me a lot. As for the combo, it has 2 buttons: the 1st. with 3 phases of unique damage, and the 2nd. with 3 attack phases in the area. I use 1st or use 2nd on the melee attack, and my health drops faster than of the boss. I can escape the boss's skills, which isn't complicated, I can't get through the stage with just the boss, I imagine when I get to the stage with him and the minions, which I saw on YouTube, there won't be any way.

You know, a good idea would be to do the same scheme as zenos, but in very easy, it has 6 extra life charges (I know there was a context for these extra lives, but they could be extended). It would help a lot, since the idea is to progress in the story, and not get stuck in it.

Yes, it was in this solo dutie...

[LibitIncarne]

You know, a good idea would be to do the same scheme as zenos, but in very easy, it has 6 extra life charges (I know there was a context for these extra lives, but they could be extended).

There are 3 duties where you have access to extra lives like that.
1: The Mothercrystal (Duty Support Mode)
2: Endwalker Zenos Solow Instance (It's 6 in all difficulties, though one is consumed through the phase transition.)
3: The level 93 Trial (Duty Support Mode).

The level 93 trial has much less of a reason than Mothercrystal or Zenos to have an extra life, and only serves to mitigate the fact that for some absurd reason, the Duty Support/Trust system is unable to have you on the gropund and waiting for a revive.
Urianger, Alisaie, and Alphinaud are in fact capable of reviving the other NPCs.