3 hours waiting to start Odin's dungeon

[マルコ]

The title says it all... getting deeply disappointed by this aspect of the game, a game this old should have this stuff figured out, by letting me hire NPC for the dungeon or some other way... yesterday I've waited two hours for people to join on the Mog King quest and be able to advance the MSQ, Odin isn't MSQ but I'm OCD and I want to clear all the secondary content before moving forward, and the game is just not letting me do that...

So the state of things is that I've PAID MONEY to be left waiting in a queue...

...is this what money gets you these days from an AAA company?

And so I know fans won't like this, but I need to take this off my chest:
A big ♥♥♥♥ You to Square-Enix for taking people's money and then not delivering on what would be reasonable expectations.

I'm so close to want to withdraw my subcription I swear, except I know they're too greedy of a company to allow it

[Aya]

You can pretty much progress the entire game with NPC for mandatory dungeons and trials. Optional contents are pretty much that, optional. Like I said in another post, you railroaded yourself into a corner with your own narrative is a you problem.

[ShyGuy]

Older content is harder to get groups for, full-stop. It sucks sometimes, but what're you gonna do, you know? The best you can is set up (or join) a party finder with the settings you prefer, and hope people join and stick it out. I know of a Discord server for participating in older content synced and/or min ilvl, but it's for NA, maybe EU data centers have a similar one you might come across at some point (seeing as you're on Phoenix, and there's no cross-region visiting).
Doing this kind of stuff often, you will start to see familiar faces and can make friends, so through that it may become easier to do older content under the more difficult restrictions. Good luck

[mxd_]

Before you give "A big ♥♥♥♥ You to Square-Enix", maybe consider using Google or asking for help in a game designed around social interactions. A quick search could have easily provided a straightforward answer and a beginner's guide. Instead, it seems easier to vent frustrations on the Steam forums and blame the game and devs.

[xxxaziexxx]

Escrito originalmente por マルコ:

Escrito originalmente por Aya:

That’s not a dungeon, that’s a trial.

ok... what's the difference?

Dungeons have a bunch of trash to pull between bosses and usually have 3 bosses to beat. They also have their own tab in Duty Finder.

Trials have 1 boss to beat and no trash to pull--usually (I think Gilgamesh might be one of the only exceptions here). They also have a separate tab in Duty Finder.

As someone else has said, the content you're trying to do is super old. Use Party Finder or run it unsynced (not scaled down to level 50). You can set yourself to an Undersized Party in the Duty Finder window by changing your options in that window.

[マルコ]

Many things I don't understand in these answers, let's go through a few:

Escrito originalmente por Veotax:

Don't try to play this off as some scummy thing they're doing to keep people subscribed, that's just dumb.

You’re free to disagree, but I think it’s a valid guess if someone on the accounting side influenced the decision. How do you prioritize your workforce’s time - on new content or on QoL improvements that let customers complete content faster and potentially unsubscribe sooner?
I could provide other guesses, even one as simple as "they don’t care." Either way, none of them reflect well on SE, so I feel you won't like my other guesses either.

Escrito originalmente por Aya:

Optional contents are pretty much that, optional. Like I said in another post, you railroaded yourself into a corner with your own narrative is a you problem.

I didn’t reply to that other post because I genuinely don’t understand what you mean by "railroaded" or "into a corner." Expressing my opinion isn’t “railroading,” and there are no “corners.” I can repeat my opinion all day, even if you don’t like it. You’re free to dismiss it as “optional” content but for me, it’s part of the game I paid for, and I judge both the game and the devs accordingly.

Escrito originalmente por mxd_:

Before you give "A big ♥♥♥♥ You to Square-Enix", maybe consider using Google or asking for help in a game designed around social interactions. A quick search could have easily provided a straightforward answer and a beginner's guide. Instead, it seems easier to vent frustrations on the Steam forums and blame the game and devs.

I feel I need to re-iterate my “♥♥♥♥ You” to Square-Enix and clarify something:
The fact that I’m grateful to the people who helped me doesn’t lessen my frustration with SE for creating this situation in the first place.
Saying "it’s old content" doesn’t even begin to excuse it in my eyes - despite the help, I still had to wait over seven hours to get through it.

And from what you guys let out, I know this pattern is going to repeat for many more dungeons and trials.
So don’t mistake my thanks for help as me backing down or admitting I was wrong about SE - I’m fully justified in feeling the way I do, this issue is a direct result of sloppy work on their part, and the frustration it causes is on them, not me.

I know myself well enough to say that the next time this happens, I’ll be venting here about SE again. Based on what was said about this "old stuff", it seems inevitable.

Although, I’ve seen this pattern play out many times in other community HUBs already, so let me put my hands forward and point out something very important here:
I didn’t say “♥♥♥♥ you” to you or anyone else in this community -

Criticizing a company is not a personal attack on its players or defenders. Neither you nor anyone else has a reason to feel personally offended or act like you need to retaliate on SE’s behalf.

I can read from small things in some of the replies someone is taking it more personally than I think they should, let me give an example:

Escrito originalmente por Aya:

also friend, i don’t know if you’re a real Japanese or a weeb

I've ignored it the first time, but let’s address it one second:
Firstly, we’re not friends, so addressing me as such comes across as patronizing.
Secondly, your response is making unnecessary assumptions about me, reducing my choice of language preference to only two extremes - being Japanese or a 'weeb' - is not just inaccurate but dismissive of the many valid reasons someone might have for such a choice or where they might fall within the spectrum between those extremes.

This feels like clear bait - a low-key attempt to derail the topic and make the other person feel compelled to justify themselves, giving you an opportunity to double down on the 'weeb' label and take a jab at them, and this is why I've ignored it the first time.

And so I'm putting my hands forward and simply saying this:


-- respect my viewpoint, just as I respect your right to disagree -- let's not derail this into personal insults and jabs because I've never insulted you to begin with.

[Alternity]

If you want to do everything, youll hit a serious road block when you get Into savage and ultimate. These are not fights you just get in and clear. Extreme to a certain extant can be cleared relatively fast, though. Odin in particular is on the easy side.

I strongly suggest to join a synced MINE discord server to find other people who also want to clear old content synced.

https://discord.gg/BmpW6C9

[Gentle Nobody]

If you think finding folks for Odin was hard wait until you unlock Bahamut. The only content I had to do with a friend so far.

[Veotax]

Escrito originalmente por マルコ:

Escrito originalmente por Veotax:

Don't try to play this off as some scummy thing they're doing to keep people subscribed, that's just dumb.

You’re free to disagree, but I think it’s a valid guess if someone on the accounting side influenced the decision. How do you prioritize your workforce’s time - on new content or on QoL improvements that let customers complete content faster and potentially unsubscribe sooner?
I could provide other guesses, even one as simple as "they don’t care." Either way, none of them reflect well on SE, so I feel you won't like my other guesses either.

No one expects you to do literally everything, I assure you that the decision to not add NPC support to a 10 year-old Extreme Trial has nothing to do with them thinking "Mwahahaha, if we don't add NPCs to this, we'll make more money!"

The NPCs are there for story-required dungeons, there are only a few 8-player Trials that have NPCs, and all of them are in the main story, none of them are optional content. An all of them are classed as easy content, since they're required for the story.

Hell they only added NPCs to the first optional dungeon last month, they've just started adding them to optional content now. So again, this isn't some evil plan to waste time and make people subscribe for more time. Hell, Odin is part of the free trial, so that would be an awful plan to make more money!

The content is old as ♥♥♥♥, and the NPCs are relatively new. They're still adding NPC support to old stuff.

To be very blunt, if you think this is them being lazy or evil, you are absolutely deluded.
If you're a completionist who needs to do everything, get used to the Party Finder none of the Extreme or higher content has NPCs, hell, plenty of the easy-level optional stuff doesn't. Because the NPCs started as something for finishing the story.

[Odd Nightsky]

yeah old optional duties do tend to have rather long queue times. especially if you're trying to go as a DPS.

what makes Odin even worse is that he's not part of the trial roulette that people run fairly regularly. so you don't even get randoms from that rolling up to help out.

[マルコ]

Escrito originalmente por Veotax:

Hell they only added NPCs to the first optional dungeon last month, they've just started adding them to optional content now.

Good to know.
Unfortunately, I don’t have months or years to wait for them to finish this process, and the time it takes to organize things on discord or just waiting on the Party Finder is still a huge chunk of time took away from studying japanese using FF14, which mostly defeats the purpose of playing this game specifically, for me =_=

What frustrates me the most is that this issue wasn’t even apparent during the first month of my subscription (I always had NPCs in the dungeons back then), so now I’m only discovering this 4 days after renewing the subscription, which I can't even refund... so I just have to clench my teeth and endure it for the rest of the month.

Just crossing my fingers NPC will stop soon offering me this many side-quests involving dungeon/trials =_=

[Alternity]

Escrito originalmente por マルコ:

Escrito originalmente por Veotax:

Hell they only added NPCs to the first optional dungeon last month, they've just started adding them to optional content now.

Good to know.
Unfortunately, I don’t have months or years to wait for them to finish this process, and the time it takes to organize things on discord or just waiting on the Party Finder is still a huge chunk of time took away from studying japanese using FF14, which mostly defeats the purpose of playing this game specifically, for me =_=

What frustrates me the most is that this issue wasn’t even apparent during the first month of my subscription (I always had NPCs in the dungeons back then), so now I’m only discovering this 4 days after renewing the subscription, which I can't even refund... so I just have to clench my teeth and endure it for the rest of the month.

Just crossing my fingers NPC will stop soon offering me this many side-quests involving dungeon/trials =_=

Im sorry but the bulk of text is in the story, not in optional synced battle content. Using the learning Japanese excuse to be mad at this situation makes zero sens. You don't need to do any of that content synced to read the Japanese on your screen.

[Aya]

Escrito originalmente por Alternity:

Escrito originalmente por マルコ:

Good to know.
Unfortunately, I don’t have months or years to wait for them to finish this process, and the time it takes to organize things on discord or just waiting on the Party Finder is still a huge chunk of time took away from studying japanese using FF14, which mostly defeats the purpose of playing this game specifically, for me =_=

What frustrates me the most is that this issue wasn’t even apparent during the first month of my subscription (I always had NPCs in the dungeons back then), so now I’m only discovering this 4 days after renewing the subscription, which I can't even refund... so I just have to clench my teeth and endure it for the rest of the month.

Just crossing my fingers NPC will stop soon offering me this many side-quests involving dungeon/trials =_=

Im sorry but the bulk of text is in the story, not in optional synced battle content. Using the learning Japanese excuse to be mad at this situation makes zero sens. You don't need to do any of that content synced to read the Japanese on your screen.

And then he didn’t understand why I said he railroaded himself into a corner…

[マルコ]

Escrito originalmente por Alternity:

Im sorry but the bulk of text is in the story, not in optional synced battle content. Using the learning Japanese excuse to be mad at this situation makes zero sens. You don't need to do any of that content synced to read the Japanese on your screen.

Already commented on that, read back one page, both.

[マルコ]

Escrito originalmente por Aya:

And then he didn’t understand why I said he railroaded himself into a corner…

And I've said one's opinion has nothing to do with "railroading" and that there are no corners, so I still don't get what you're trying to say, maybe try to explain yourself...

[Aya]

1. But this is respectable.

Escrito originalmente por マルコ:

Lol 3 other people joined through the party finder, fight started, Odin instantly died... I don't even know what happened but essentially is like the fight never happened xD ç_ç

I'll go back waiting on the content finder, I want a fair victory and also see and partecipate in the fight, otherwise is meaningless.

2. ???

Escrito originalmente por Aya:

Escrito originalmente por マルコ:

Maybe for others, but that logic doesn't apply to me unfortunately.
OCD has me clearing side quests as soon as I find them, and once my focus is on it, nothing can progress until this is cleared.
It's just how I operate, so either this gets cleared and I progress, or I'll give up on this game :\

And this is also a good lesson/reminder on why I should stick to Single Player games...

This is probably a Game Over

Not sure what else you can do then other than wait for people during prime time and weekend.

And also it’s unfair for everyone involve when you railroaded your own narrative and due to your own ocd problem that you don’t want to progress.