Cape Westwind (Duty)

[Mogmi]

What's the story behind the Cape Westwind Trial with Rhitahtyn sas Arvina being removed and changed to be a solo story instance fight in 6.1? Why did they not keep it as a 8 player trial? It's been ages since i did the fight, But i remember having to do it solo and it being a pain to do solo and wishing it was a trial i could do with others it has been something I never understood.

[Daralii]

They decided that removing the MM part of the MMORPG should be a large part of their focus during EW's patch cycle.

[TaleraRistain]

It was part of modifications they did for Duty Support in the MSQ. It's really a lot better now. They gave him back the teeth he originally had. The trial had unfortunately become a joke, killed in very little time when it came up. Now he and Lahabrea are a decent challenge for a sprout in gear for that level and introduce some mechanics to sprouts before they would have seen them in the MSQ previously.

Steps of Faith is another they converted to a solo duty and it's improved a lot, too. You're much more active and it feels like you earned that entrance to Ishgard a lot more.

[Jeeqbit]

It was a pretty devastating fight. The first time I did it, most of the people in it died but we still beat it.

But as item levels grew to max in ARR, and then battle system and stat changes happened, it quickly became common to just skip the devastating part entirely with DPS. At first, it was our active intention to skip it for this very reason, but then we didn't even have to try anymore as battle system changes happened over the years.

So the result was this character in the story, who is meant to be "one of the Garlean's best, finest warriors", was a joke. Arguably one of the easiest. Meme'd upon. And survived less than a 1 minute. The initial cutscene was longer than the fight...

It was reworked so that this was not the case, and the solo version ensures it feels like a difficult, devastating fight and many new players will find it pretty tough compared to a lot of the other fights in ARR, which are comparatively nothing. This fixes the problem with the lore being at odds with player perception of the character.

[Catwho]

I recently did Steps of Faith on an alt character for the first time, and the new solo duty version of it has the same epic feel that the original did when it was launched (minus the confusion of having to send a DPS to man the canons, and that DPS actually having to time it correctly. That was always a struggle.)

I haven't done the new solo version of Cape Westwind, but even though it's a "pain" to solo, I'm sure it's still a much better experience than either 1. it being dead before you got out of cutscene or 2. the rest of the party trolling you with Savage mechanics in party chat macros.

[Alicie]

Just stay in aoe to die, then select "very easy" difficulty

[HyperiusUltima]

Listen, Rhitatyn was the hardest boss in the game even when new expansions came out. They had to nerf him to Duty format so he wouldn't be so hard. /s

[Gwenkatsu]

When I started, both Ritalin and Gaius van Monologue were an absolute laughing stock: Cut scene over, self-proclaimed Garlean super warrior drops dead on his face. So why were we supposed to be afraid of these clowns anyway? It just did not work.
Story-wise, this rework had to be done.

[Absurdity]

It was a pretty devastating fight. The first time I did it, most of the people in it died but we still beat it.

But as item levels grew to max in ARR, and then battle system and stat changes happened, it quickly became common to just skip the devastating part entirely with DPS. At first, it was our active intention to skip it for this very reason, but then we didn't even have to try anymore as battle system changes happened over the years.

So the result was this character in the story, who is meant to be "one of the Garlean's best, finest warriors", was a joke. Arguably one of the easiest. Meme'd upon. And survived less than a 1 minute. The initial cutscene was longer than the fight...

It was reworked so that this was not the case, and the solo version ensures it feels like a difficult, devastating fight and many new players will find it pretty tough compared to a lot of the other fights in ARR, which are comparatively nothing. This fixes the problem with the lore being at odds with player perception of the character.

He needed an update to no longer be a meme, but which part of that necessitated making it a solo instance?

I haven't done the "updated" version so I'm guessing here. But if they needed to make new mechanics for him and set an ilvl cap they could've done the exact same thing while keeping it a trial.

[Jeeqbit]

True, he might be an actual fight again now but the question remains why they couldn't achieve the same with a normal trial.
He needed an update to no longer be a meme, but which part of that necessitated making it a solo instance?

I don't really know. The best guess I can make is that there were too many of party duties close together, but they've just repeated that very problem in Endwalker and Dawntrail. The issue with so many trials is the potential difficulty getting a queue to pop, too frequently.

They also seem to be shy about syncing to minimum item level routinely like they did with Endsinger, for some reason, so they might worry that their bizarre sync policy will make it easy again.