Eorzean Evening Post: Steps of Faith .

So the full intro video to Heavensward was released the week, and wow. If you are up to speed with the events in 2.55, you owe it to yourself to see it – it puts the events we saw glimpses of in the announcement trailer released last year in context. I’ve never been more happy about maining a Dragoon either. We’re badass and really get to shine in this one. Bring it on, Ishgard! All I wish is that I could use my various jumps to move between rooftops…

I’ve always been a huge fan of Blizzard’s cinematic trailers for World of Warcraft and they have some incredible talent on retainer, but there’s just something about how Square have structured their videos around a bunch of heroes – us – instead of the big bad of whatever expansion they are hyping. If you think about all the things that happened in 2.55, it’s easy to put your character into that Warrior’s shoes as he makes his way through the snow, his axe a terrible burden on his shoulders… I was blown away by that, having finished patch 2.55 just a few days earlier and having it vividly in my mind still.

 

Steps of Faith

One thing I didn’t touch on when discussing 2.55 last week was Steps of Faith, the new Trial introduced in the patch and the gatekeeper before finishing the story. It’s proven to be quite a divisive Trial and I’m not sure what to think of it.

First of all, the basics – a big dragon, aided by various adds, is steadily walking down a long bridge. Using our own trusty weapons and the provided cannons, we need to stop said dragon – called Vishap – before it reaches the other side. The Trial doesn’t end until Vishap reaches his goal, even if we die – just resurrect and back into the fray. It’s big, it’s epic and it’s a lot of fun trying to blast the dragon to smithereens.

In theory, at least.

I’ve only done Steps of Faith once, in order to progress the story. I guess I was really lucky in that we managed to fail three times without any drama before getting Vishap down. It’s not actually a very hard fight, as long as people know what they are doing. Mainly it’s about the three players assigned to the different cannons – either the smaller batteries on the sides or the big “dragon killer”-cannons – that need to know what they are supposed to do at all times. Which, for a large part of the fight, comes down to spamming the dragon with as many cannon balls as possible. There are also snares that need to be triggered at two points during Vishap’s walk down the bridge.

I had a lot of fun during my Steps of Faith-run, both because of the complete lack of drama and because I found manning the cannons a lot of fun. Yet, the Trial has issues. Big issues.

 

The issues

That I’ve only “done Steps of Faith once” isn’t 100% true. I’ve actually started the Trial three times – it’s just that first two times, people dropped out of the group the moment they zoned in so we never even got started. When it happened the first time, I chalked it up to bad luck. The second time I realised that something was wrong.

If people sign up for the Trial roulette and end up in SoF, they’d rather take the penalty for dropping the group than trying to finish it. That’s not a good sign.

As I noted before, the fight isn’t actually very hard – but as I also noted, as long as people know what they are doing. That goes for most boss fights in any game, really, so nothing new there. The mechanics aren’t very hard, so a few wipes should be enough for people to learn. Right? The biggest problem is found, in my mind, in the mechanic that the Trial doesn’t start over just because of a wipe. You might die repeatedly, your group might not stand a chance against Vishap and his cronies, yet the Trial won’t restart until the dragon reaches the other side of the bridge.

When you got the fight down, it’s a nice mechanic – you can always get back into it quickly, healers don’t have to worry about ressing dead players, etcetera. But since you are bound to mess up a couple of times before getting the details down, and you’re bound to meet up with players completely new to it through the Duty Finder… Well, then Steps of Faith is pretty much a long slog. Most people doing the Trial Roulette wants a fast run so they can get their Poetics and move on with their day. Steps of Faith does not offer a very fast run, unless you get Vishap down on the first try.

The end result? Trial Roulette queues are going up, because people stop signing up for it. That’s not good.

 

What to do?

So how do you “fix” Steps of Faith? Well, first of all it’s bound to “fix” itself – people will learn the mechanics and most groups will get Vishap down on the first try (if they even get that far before people start dropping the group, that is). But considering that some people have dropped Trial Roulette completely, it could take a while.

Because of Steps of Faith’s status as a story Trial you need to go through to reach the end of 2.55, you can’t really remove it from the Trial Roulette either. People would run it once, then never run it again, which means that the queues for it would be horrendous – you’d simply have to rely on your Free Company to help you out in order to progress the story and not everyone have that luxury.

You could remove the death mechanic, but that would change the whole dynamic of the fight. It would take a lot of design work to make that work properly, and I’m not sure that Square sees this as a big enough problem to devote that much resources to. Bribes are always a possibility, offering more Poetics for a completed Steps of Faith so that it’s “worth” the time it might take to finish. Once people are more comfortable with the Trial, the bribe can be removed. While that sounds good to me on paper, I’m sure someone would figure out a way to abuse it. Also, the current “bribes” we get whenever a new player is along for the ride don’t seem to be helping much.

Steps of Faith is a cool experiment, with a nice setting and an epic feel. At the end of the day, I don’t think I want Square to change much. It’s there and we as a community will have to learn how to deal with it. Hopefully it will be a lesson well learned for the developers as well.