Please make Forked Tower more Accessible and easier like Bozja

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Originally Posted by ovIm

Honest question here, and I don't mean to be an ass to statics trying their best at FT, since we are all victims of CS3's awful design here:
would that not theoretically fall under the "aiding the enemy" bit of the Prohibited Activities in Final Fantasy XIV? I'm fairly certain refusing to heal/resurrect people in the instance can be considered that, which would theoretically make not resurrecting people in FT a offense reportable to a GM.

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I think this is a different case here where that would not be applicable.

If you choose to silently join FT alone without communicating with anyone at the entrance, then you have chosen to undertake the content alone, so you can't really blame the others for not cooperating with you because you have shown that you yourself do not want to communicate and cooperate. It's like if you go to a CE and stand there without joining a party, you're choosing to play solo so you can't exactly report every healer for not raising you when you die. It would be a different case if they force you into a party when they teleport you into the tower instance.

If the premade runs a tankbuster into you though, that's 100% reportable. It's probably also reportable if the solo player runs into a trap and wipes the run if they're told to stay behind.

I’ve been playing FFXIV since the beta between the end of 1.0 and the launch of ARR. I’ve been loyal through thick and thin, only stepping away when health issues required it. I’ve defended this game time and time again — because I love it. But this situation with The Forked Tower (FT) is, frankly, unacceptable.

The fact that players could queue into DSR as a full 48-man alliance, but cannot do the same with FT is absolutely baffling. Multiple groups across Crystal, Primal, and Dynamis spent hours trying to get their alliances into the same instance — and were met with failure after failure. Instead of one cohesive instance, we saw countless half-empty ones, splitting up friends, statics, and communities.

There were so many ways this could have been anticipated and avoided. And yet, for some reason, it wasn’t. Again.

To those saying, “Just wait for the Live Letter on the 20th” — respectfully, that’s not good enough. We all know the likely response: “We’ve heard your feedback, and a fix is coming. Please look forward to it.” But while we wait, people’s time is being wasted in a game that has prided itself on respecting players' time.

The NA and JP communities alike are making noise about this — and the silence from the development team feels like a slap in the face. This isn’t just a PR issue. It’s a matter of trust and player experience.

We’re not asking for damage control. We’re asking for the team to do better — truly and meaningfully. Please.

Just going to add my 2 cents to the forums hoping square will read them as what I'm about to say is already already said. For forked tower I have been in groups trying to "instance prog" for over and hour then disbanding since we cant get in an instance together. Square you already have the system in place for Field operations under alliance for Delumbrum Reginae (savage) for a full 48 man group. Can you make one for occult crescent so we can queue into an instance with up to 48 people. I understand the way its built isn't like delubrum and its open to the public but at least let us not have to spend hours just trying to get the group together for nothing. I heard they had similar issues in Eureka for BA but the game has gained a bigger player base so this old issue has exploded into an even bigger one affecting more players.

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Originally Posted by Krojack

I clear all current savage content with my static. I cleared Chaotic using PF and pugs over 50 times. There is no way I'm going to do this Tower content.

If using an external system, Discord in this case, is REQUIRED to get a a group together for in-game content then said content is a failure. Tower is the biggest failure in this game to date.

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This. I do Savage with my static and in PF. I use Discord with my static and I use Discord with a community group that I also do Savage, Extremes, and Unreal with.

But when I am forced to go to some specific Discord because said Discord has decided they own the content for the entire datacenter, I refuse. I've never done BA and never will because it's a failure in design that it can't be organized in game. Same with Forked Tower. Any design that lets any one group of players monopolize and claim content and gatekeep it away from the rest of the playerbase unless they jump through their hoops is failed content.

I've been doing OC constantly. It's fairly boring but at least the CEs can be kind of fun. They should have had a normal version where they could still use the cipher system that people could do for the lore, the TT card, the record (I believe I've heard one of them is in there), and maybe a currency that someone could work toward +2 gear with. That would also give players a stepping stone to potentially try a harder version. And the harder version should have a direct queue so people could get together and practice and prog it.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

They should have had a normal version where they could still use the cipher system that people could do for the lore, the TT card, the record (I believe I've heard one of them is in there), and maybe a currency that someone could work toward +2 gear with. That would also give players a stepping stone to potentially try a harder version. And the harder version should have a direct queue so people could get together and practice and prog it.

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Agreed. I’ll probably try it at some point, but honestly the need to schedule it outside of the game is why I still haven’t gotten around to BA. At least BA was the end of the content! With Forked Tower the way it is, I probably won’t be doing it any time soon, and I’ll be missing lore going into the next zone! Like Eureka, I’m really loving the setting here and want to see where the story goes, but now I feel like I’m going to be missing a chapter.

Not to mention another TT card that will probably be random drop for content that will probably only be feasible for me to do once… up til Eureka Orthos, I had every card in the game, and here’s another that will be near impossible to get. I’ve also gotten all the field notes you can get in South Horn, the last FIVE are from the Tower, also probably random drop. How many times do they think most people are going to be able to run this? I love the zone but the choice to set this up the way they have really boggles the mind.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Agreed. I’ll probably try it at some point, but honestly the need to schedule it outside of the game is why I still haven’t gotten around to BA..

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I have tried once, wasted an entire evening hoping for a spot to get in there.
Total garbage design

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I think this is a different case here where that would not be applicable.

If you choose to silently join FT alone without communicating with anyone at the entrance, then you have chosen to undertake the content alone, so you can't really blame the others for not cooperating with you because you have shown that you yourself do not want to communicate and cooperate. It's like if you go to a CE and stand there without joining a party, you're choosing to play solo so you can't exactly report every healer for not raising you when you die. It would be a different case if they force you into a party when they teleport you into the tower instance.

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But this is something that can be randomly joined in the zone, though. If you make that argument, wouldn't it also apply to someone running roulettes alone instead of in a premade group? Both involve joining something where you may not be able to choose your partymates. But it's not okay to leave someone dead in a roulette just because they didn't queue with you. The idea with anything where we can potentially have randoms is that we're expected to work together and help each other.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Agreed. I’ll probably try it at some point, but honestly the need to schedule it outside of the game is why I still haven’t gotten around to BA. At least BA was the end of the content! With Forked Tower the way it is, I probably won’t be doing it any time soon, and I’ll be missing lore going into the next zone! Like Eureka, I’m really loving the setting here and want to see where the story goes, but now I feel like I’m going to be missing a chapter.

Not to mention another TT card that will probably be random drop for content that will probably only be feasible for me to do once… up til Eureka Orthos, I had every card in the game, and here’s another that will be near impossible to get. I’ve also gotten all the field notes you can get in South Horn, the last FIVE are from the Tower, also probably random drop. How many times do they think most people are going to be able to run this? I love the zone but the choice to set this up the way they have really boggles the mind.

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The TT card sucks but the lore is what I hate because it really sounds like the towers are tied to the architect and anyone who doesn't do them is going to be missing a huge amount of that information. I don't want to read about it on a website. I want to gather it myself in game with the record system they put into place.

Nah, I'mma be real, I think they can make a normal mode version for FT, but the current version needs to stay additionally. Furthermore, we as a community should have a no-tolerance policy towards disruptive behavior like sniping. FFXIV has its "toxic positivity" rep for a reason, unfortunately. We shouldn't tolerate players intentionally undermining the great efforts hosts go through to actually progress these fates. Killing snipers with TB is against ToS, but you should absolutely just leave them on the floor, as they can easily wipe you past boss 1. Unintentionally stumbling into tower is fine, the issue arises when people get told in /yell or /tell to please step off the platform because there's a 48man premade and then ignore it. That doesn't deserve coddling.

Just came here to +1 this. I loved Bozja, it's fine if players want harder content, but please, give us a "normal" version as well. The harder version should be just queue-able outside of Occult Crescent.
I don't understand why they even changed it. The way they handled it before was perfectly fine.

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Originally Posted by 0blivion

Nah, I'mma be real, I think they can make a normal mode version for FT, but the current version needs to stay additionally. Furthermore, we as a community should have a no-tolerance policy towards disruptive behavior like sniping. FFXIV has its "toxic positivity" rep for a reason, unfortunately. We shouldn't tolerate players intentionally undermining the great efforts hosts go through to actually progress these fates. Killing snipers with TB is against ToS, but you should absolutely just leave them on the floor, as they can easily wipe you past boss 1. Unintentionally stumbling into tower is fine, the issue arises when people get told in /yell or /tell to please step off the platform because there's a 48man premade and then ignore it. That doesn't deserve coddling.

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I understand where you're coming from, but to pay a sub for this game and then be ordered not to engage in content by a player cabal is not going to go down well.

SE created yet another completely predictable problem. When the director talked about wanting "more friction," I didn't realize he meant friction between players.

idc about difficulty - I'll just smash my face into it until I get a clear.

It's just baffling to me that CBU3 is a development team with over 10 years of experience working on one of the largest MMO's of all time, and they still do not understand enough about their game or its playerbase to make a decent raid.

They claim that you only need 16 people to enter forked tower, but you are immediately body checked by the first boss. So 24 if you're struggling. It was designed and intended to be run with 48 players - 2/3 of the number of players who can even enter the instance in the first place, and this relying on other players to do a support fate too. It was already difficult enough trying to queue in Eureka with 144 players per instance so doing this with only 72 and making it some lottery system in addition to an extremely short and random weather event is honestly just incompetent at this point. idk, I can't find a defense for them. They just don't know how to make content anymore and the game is going to languish over time because of it. It's a shame really, but what can you do when the developers won't listen? The same thing we always do - wait for the game to die as a result and move on to what's next.

There's players who want the player population to drop back to Heavensward numbers and are excited that everything is bad right now. For you few who remain at that point in time, I wish you nothing but another Alexander: Gordias content experience.

Honestly having done the content myself (well up to Twin Bridges at least) I can say that it's a great raid that is severely hampered by the needlessly punitive entry requirements. I find it utterly baffling that the developers would silo off the crown jewel of the Occult Crescent in such a fashion that many players won't be able to experience or enjoy it without joining a Discord group, but then again this isn't the first time the devs have made a questionable design choice and it probably won't be the last. The way that they have created this convoluted entry process seems utterly tone deaf and it seems like they have not listened to the feedback they have received about previous Field Exploration content like Eureka/Bozja especially in regards to how positively the 48-man queuing system for Delubrum Reginae Savage (DRS) was received. There are two potential solutions that I think could make this content work better as currently both casual and hardcore players are dissatisfied with the current entry system:

1) Keep the current entry requirements but remove the resurrection restriction and don't kick the 48-man alliance out if there's a wipe, let them try from the previous checkpoint if they fail and give the instance a 90 or 120-minute timer. This would make the instance a lot more PUG friendly, making players more willing to give the content a go without diminishing the difficulty of the fights. It would make it less of an issue if random players get into the instance because if they make a mistake it can be easily fixed and the Phantom Job distribution could be reshuffled (maybe also remove the restriction of changing Phantom Jobs unless combat has started).

2) Keep the current difficulty of the resurrection restriction and wipe = kicked from instance in place, but let Forked Tower Blood (Savage) be queued into via a 48-man queue option from outside the Occult Crescent instance. In this case a Forked Tower Blood (Normal) raid should be made available in the instance with no resurrection restriction, no kick on wipe and maybe reduced personal responsibility compared to the Savage version. Again this way more casual players would have more content to get stuck into and complete the story of the South Horn and more hardcore players would be able to access the duty more easily so that the more punishing aspects of the raid don't sting as much as accessing it would be a much less complicated affair.

I don't expect there to be any changes in the upcoming Live Letter as I know the devs can be slow to implement feedback (it's like the game is like an oil tanker that takes a long time to turn around if it's going in the wrong direction), but I'd really like them to look at this soon because Forked Tower has currently created a situation where everyone loses, it's created needless friction between players and fostered hostility and toxicity within what should be a really enjoyable capstone piece of content, the players deserve better Yoshi-P...

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Originally Posted by Novarius

(maybe also remove the restriction of changing Phantom Jobs unless combat has started).

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Wait you can't change your phantom jobs once you are in there??? And they expected this to be puggable?

You can change Phantom Jobs on the starting platform for the instance, but once you jump down from there you get a debuff which prevents you from changing Phantom Job at any other point in the instance... this is why it is critical to bring certain jobs to Forked Tower as it is impossible to progress without the vast majority of them... the devs probably expected people to hold off attempting the tower until they had most jobs maxed but this conflicts with their design choice to allow entry at Knowledge Level 20 irrespective of the Phantom Jobs a player has currently mastered... and you know how people are they see a shiny new toy and they want to play with it, it's not their fault that they don't know the sheer level of co-ordination/planning that is needed for a run to succeed... Additionally, another oversight is that a minimum of 16 players can enter Forked Tower but the first boss has a body check that will kill you without 24 players...

Its just them boing sadistic. I had the joy to be in an tower instance today as they were in there, 1-2 groups were gold farming, we others had no fun doing most stuff - for the first time ive seen the demon fate fail lol
Idk it feels it doesnt scale quite right with the players being at the tower...

I've been in a few instances where people were in the Tower, one of them was doing pretty well, they at least made it to the last boss. I got to kill the boss that spawns in the zone. That was at least different- the boss itself has very simple and repetitive mechanics so it's uninteresting by itself but it was something to do.

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Originally Posted by Novarius

2) Keep the current difficulty of the resurrection restriction and wipe = kicked from instance in place, but let Forked Tower Blood (Savage) be queued into via a 48-man queue option from outside the Occult Crescent instance. In this case a Forked Tower Blood (Normal) raid should be made available in the instance with no resurrection restriction, no kick on wipe and maybe reduced personal responsibility compared to the Savage version. Again this way more casual players would have more content to get stuck into and complete the story of the South Horn and more hardcore players would be able to access the duty more easily so that the more punishing aspects of the raid don't sting as much as accessing it would be a much less complicated affair.

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Honestly this one is probably the better option because it lets groups get in there and prog. I daresay we would see some PF groups pop up. Part of the issue with Discords is that we don't really *need* them anymore. We have strat videos from content creators. We pass around raidplans. We have sites like wtfdig. The raiding community is able to come together and while we might have conflicting strats at first, we generally can all figure out what we need to do and we'd be willing to beat our heads against the content to clear it. But there's not really a chance of that because of the entry system.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Its just them boing sadistic. I had the joy to be in an tower instance today as they were in there, 1-2 groups were gold farming, we others had no fun doing most stuff - for the first time ive seen the demon fate fail lol
Idk it feels it doesnt scale quite right with the players being at the tower...

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I had an instance with people doing Forked and yeah, Calamity failed. There just wasn't enough manpower for it. So these entry requirements not only suck for people trying to prog the instance or people that want to do it but don't want to be forced to join a Discord but also suck for the people left trying to do normal things in the zones.

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Originally Posted by All_Nonsense

It's a shame really, but what can you do when the developers won't listen? The same thing we always do - wait for the game to die as a result and move on to what's next.

There's players who want the player population to drop back to Heavensward numbers and are excited that everything is bad right now. For you few who remain at that point in time, I wish you nothing but another Alexander: Gordias content experience.

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We're almost there already, the wailing and screams coming from within the walls of Savage this tier already remind me of the horror stories of Midas at least ...

(We're talking I know maybe a small handful of souls at most that are past M6S, and that's among old and new friends that used to clear Savage tiers on the reg. And we're getting the Live Letter for the odd patch THIS WEEK. Yeah ... last time that was commonplace pacing was indeed Midas to my understanding. Hopefully hunts in 7.3 won't be a complete mess resemblant of the original tier that The Hunt came out during as a result ...)

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Originally Posted by Novarius

the devs probably expected people to hold off attempting the tower until they had most jobs maxed but this conflicts with their design choice to allow entry at Knowledge Level 20 irrespective of the Phantom Jobs a player has currently mastered... and you know how people are they see a shiny new toy and they want to play with it, it's not their fault that they don't know the sheer level of co-ordination/planning that is needed for a run to succeed...

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Don't forget the pervasive player culture basically twisting your arm to fomo rush content these days if you actually want to get through any of it with some of your sanity intact (and who will frequently helpfully tell you "well, you should've rushed it ... maybe next patch" if you dare to try to take your time to power up first).

The janky entry method slows this down a bit for the foray raids, but the mindset gets increasingly fixed into people's heads with each passing tier and taints every new piece of content everforward, and I have come up with no effective long term way of solving it ...

Yes please make it possible to join Forked tower like the Castrum in Bozja South or Dalriada in Zadnor.

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Originally Posted by Amarande

We're almost there already, the wailing and screams coming from within the walls of Savage this tier already remind me of the horror stories of Midas at least ...

(We're talking I know maybe a small handful of souls at most that are past M6S, and that's among old and new friends that used to clear Savage tiers on the reg. And we're getting the Live Letter for the odd patch THIS WEEK. Yeah ... last time that was commonplace pacing was indeed Midas to my understanding. Hopefully hunts in 7.3 won't be a complete mess resemblant of the original tier that The Hunt came out during as a result ...)



Don't forget the pervasive player culture basically twisting your arm to fomo rush content these days if you actually want to get through any of it with some of your sanity intact (and who will frequently helpfully tell you "well, you should've rushed it ... maybe next patch" if you dare to try to take your time to power up first).

The janky entry method slows this down a bit for the foray raids, but the mindset gets increasingly fixed into people's heads with each passing tier and taints every new piece of content everforward, and I have come up with no effective long term way of solving it ...

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With this batch of content I'm actually finding a not small group of people who think if you are complaining about the content, that means you rushed it.

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Originally Posted by Infindox

Wait you can't change your phantom jobs once you are in there??? And they expected this to be puggable?

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Think of it like BA. You're able to mix mnemes and create your plates at the entrance. But once you jump down, what you have on you will have to last for the rest of the run. In FTB it's similar: you pick what your PJ will be and that will have to last until the end of run.

Of course this is highly restrictive because unlike LAs system where we can stockpile many different actions for different purpose, in FTB you're stuck with only what your chosen PJ offers.

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Originally Posted by Infindox

With this batch of content I'm actually finding a not small group of people who think if you are complaining about the content, that means you rushed it.

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When one makes a statement that appears to fit with a general bodies of pre-existing 'witness-able' information it's easier to find credible without providing much detail.

But if one makes statement that go against the body of 'witness-able' information, especially if that information is approaching almost a consensus, then more detail is required to sound credible.

Details please.

(In this case I'm inclined to think 'not a small group' is actually, my social circle of acquaintances, that is a concentration of people where only white-knight thinkers have survived. A little bit too much 'group think' going on maybe.)

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Originally Posted by forksapien

Yes please make it possible to join Forked tower like the Castrum in Bozja South or Dalriada in Zadnor.

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I think it's tragic that a guy named Fork is struggling to enter the Forked Tower, please Square Enix we cannot allow this injustice to stand, only you can right this wrong...

The reason DR and DRS were so well received aside from the ease of entry was that it was almost 100% personal responsibility. If you messed up you died not the entire group. I'm not against harder mechanics but can we stop pretending that its ok one person can wipe 48 people SE? That is just an unfun design that promotes killing people not a part of the core group that signed up for a run to ensure they can't grief a run. Its toxic I know but at this point I can only recommend it given the time it takes to get an organized group in and the fact that one sniper can ruin the whole thing because they weren't prepared is insane. Somehow this is by far the least pugable content while forcing you into pugs. I honestly think this is the worst content they've ever released. Make it instanced so people can get in when they have time to get in or rework the content so one person cant grief the run. One of those has to happen or nothing will change.

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Originally Posted by forksapien

Yes please make it possible to join Forked tower like the Castrum in Bozja South or Dalriada in Zadnor.

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I will literally host a newbie run for you on Light if you ask me to, lol. I agree it is an injustice that a guy named Fork hasn't gone into FT!