The Otter Garden

I’ve been leveling rdm on an alt. I was 58, almost 59. Highest dungeon I could run was the vault. Great. Lovely start right there. A long dungeon, with irritating mechanics, that can cause unnecessary frustration if you have a new tank and/or healer.

I had just run it with both new tank and healer. Wiped 4 times to charibert, after which the tank had to leave. We got another and finally cleared, barely. I had to spend more time using vercure than dpsing to survive as long as we did. Get out of the dungeon, go back in queue because I need to get this alt caught up, do sidequests I skipped over while I wait...queue finally pops again.

Zone in, and...the tank is rp walking. Maybe they forgot to toggle it off? Nope. Kept rp walking. Get to the first pack, down the first pack. Rp walking to the next one. Healer joins in walking right before the second pack. I am the only person who has spoken at this point, saying “hello” when I joined the party, as I always do. On the way to the third pack, the other dps (samurai) joins in the walking. This continues all the way past the first boss. In the hallway before the first zone transition, I finally speak up.

([me]) can I ask why the rp walk

Neither the tank nor the healer reply. The samurai does.

([sam]) at first i was just noticing how my heels clip through my dress ([sam]) then i seen they were walking ([sam]) and now its a thing

This in itself was not an issue to me. It was that neither of the others responded. Now I’d just had a really rough run of this specific dungeon. I don’t particularly enjoy the vault, even on a good day. Nobody I know wants it to last any longer than it could possibly need. So I speak up again, and say:

([me]) I just had a run of this with a new tank and healer wipe 4 times to charibert, I'd really prefer not to make the vault longer than it needs to be

And get absolutely nothing in reply. I was completely ignored. No one replied. No one toggled off the walk. No one even asked if perhaps I had an issue with the walk, or just if there was something I wanted them to do. They kept going at the exact same abysmally slow pace. Had they asked when they zoned in if we could do the dungeon in rp walk, I likely would have said “sure, why not” and not been irritated by it - or left right then and there to spare myself frustration. But they did not ask. They just went on and did their thing, and unless I wanted to run on ahead and tank as a red mage, I was forced to either wait on them for the entire dungeon, or take the 30 minute penalty. I’m sorry, but I did not have the patience for that, so I took the penalty. I’d hit 59 at the first trash pack so gubal is available, and I have sidequests to continue with for extra exp while it runs out.

I should not feel the need to make that decision. Nobody should feel the need to decide whether a 30 minute penalty is worth leaving a dungeon environment.

Ideally when someone requests you stop doing something, directly or otherwise, you stop, because it’s the respectful thing to do. If someone requests you stop doing something and you don’t intend to stop, at least grace them with the respect of a proper response saying why you aren’t going to stop.

To the people in that party, if any of them see this, I genuinely hope you enjoy that run, but please - don’t force randoms in duty finder to make an already long and tedious dungeon even longer. Particularly if they ask you not to. If you want to rp walk the dungeon, ask when you zone in so they have a chance to leave if they so wish, or bring a full party of friends who are already on board.