Can I ask why Creative Business Unit 3 are radio silent on the issue of Forked Tower?

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Well if that's the case they're going to lose a lot of casuals. Bozja was fun this in more ways than one isn't. Not that hard to pass up forked tower for me but the overall mechs and pacing of the game is poorly done in my opinion or at least not to my tastes. I rarely go there and this is from someone with 8 marbles and 12 Cerebus and 7 Frans bikes.

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The population's been in freefall for almost a year at this point. CS3 either doesn't care and are confident that people will stay subscribed and buying outfits, are too rigid and/or incompetent to make any necessary changes, or are saving the necessary changes to be a selling point of the next expansion. It's all very reminiscent of both times WoW was accelerating to a near-collapse.

I hope not. It's not going to work for SE. They are not prepared, will not be philosophically able to, make the same scale and depth of changes. Activision will have spend a lot of money. Activision scale changes would require SE to "throw the Ultimate raider out with the bath water", (and I suspect the presumably staunchly conservative JP player). They could recover gradually, its never going to be WoW scale renaissance.

I really was enjoying OC and sang it's praises while working on getting my relic done and randomly levelling the Phantom Jobs.

Then I learned how Forked Tower is designed and I simply just lost all interest in playing in OC at this point.

I'm disappointed that casual players are unable to pug this part of the story, essentially cutting us off of half of the OC experience. Why would I bother upgrading my OC gear and levelling more phantom jobs when it's unlikely I'll ever get to do anything meaningful that I wasn't able to do day 1 in the overland zone? I thought I was working towards being useful in FT but in it's current iteration I lost all motivation and this has left a sour taste in my mouth.

What I am left with now is an Endwalker-esque feeling where I do dailies and get the rest of my tomestone relics...

Whats worst is, all the grind might be pointless for the next part... till there we might need new gear for bonus, the next sett will have like ilvl 800+...

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Why is a savage level raid in the first tier of the Relic? BA was at the end for the 4th tier. Castrum, Delibrium and Dalraidia were all set for Casual Players in my view. DRS was optional and is one I still took many of my alts through.

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A bird told me that the hardcore raiders usually forget to unsub.

As for me developers need to move away from Alliance raids in this kind of content, especially where 1 of 48 people can wipe all others. Savage level inside the instances where you can be joined by anyone - this is absurd on the part of the developers.
If you want a dungeon inside an instance:
1. Make mechanics more gentle where because of 1-10 people on had to vayp the whole dungeon. Fewer mechanics where everyone has to do their own mechanics and where the wipe did not depend on that action. If a person died, it was possible to res and continue on.
2. Make then a tower for 8-16 people. For each party opened the choice to go to 8 or 16. Let's say if you need 16 people, the first group creates a list of entry, the other joins the first and the one who created the zone runs it as a normal dungeon. To collect such a number of players is easier and inside the instance. And there will be fewer problems with someone coming to you.
But the developers just make a savaga level dungeon, throw it in the player's face - and the community around such dungeons becomes so toxic that it becomes unrealistic and nasty to get into (like it was with chaotic). OC was created as a location for every level of player from casuals to hardcore players, and in the end 90% of players can't get through all the content, can't get to the point of collecting notes for the book.

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Originally Posted by Innio

As for me developers need to move away from Alliance raids in this kind of content, especially where 1 of 48 people can wipe all others. Savage level inside the instances where you can be joined by anyone - this is absurd on the part of the developers.
If you want a dungeon inside an instance:
1. Make mechanics more gentle where because of 1-10 people on had to vayp the whole dungeon. Fewer mechanics where everyone has to do their own mechanics and where the wipe did not depend on that action. If a person died, it was possible to res and continue on.
2. Make then a tower for 8-16 people. For each party opened the choice to go to 8 or 16. Let's say if you need 16 people, the first group creates a list of entry, the other joins the first and the one who created the zone runs it as a normal dungeon. To collect such a number of players is easier and inside the instance. And there will be fewer problems with someone coming to you.
But the developers just make a savaga level dungeon, throw it in the player's face - and the community around such dungeons becomes so toxic that it becomes unrealistic and nasty to get into (like it was with chaotic). OC was created as a location for every level of player from casuals to hardcore players, and in the end 90% of players can't get through all the content, can't get to the point of collecting notes for the book.

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Honestly, this whole debacle feels like corrupt-a-wish.

They grant more stuff akin to EX/Savage difficulties outside of those. Yay... But you'll have to deal with random people, whom you cannot control, making the whole thing unfeasible.

Even in their internal limited testing environments, It's hard to believe that such obvious thing could've been overlooked by somebody experienced as Yoshida.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Honestly, this whole debacle feels like corrupt-a-wish.

They grant more stuff akin to EX/Savage difficulties outside of those. Yay... But you'll have to deal with random people, whom you cannot control, making the whole thing unfeasible.

Even in their internal limited testing environments, It's hard to believe that such obvious thing could've been overlooked by somebody experienced as Yoshida.

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Yoshida's admitted that he barely does anything more involved than checking if the lights are still on. He's busy with managerial work, other projects, and whatever he does for the not-board of directors.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Well if that's the case they're going to lose a lot of casuals.

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Yeahhhh ... I've been getting this feeling a lot myself (although I didn't do Bozja much, the setback mechanic being when you die rather than when you fail to get a rez made things a good jot more stressful and I'm certainly glad that OC at least brought back the wild and free Eureka mechanic in this regard).

Either that, or their definition of "casual" has perhaps shifted and unfortunately us longtimers get caught in the ... Interpopulational Rift: their most important focuses possibly now being on hardcore raiders and sprouts.

Actually this last theory makes a lot of sense to me on reflection. The game's pacing more or less leaves us in an awkward spot, honestly.

Casual play thrives pretty heavily on the "new friend join me in this game" angle, and raids are just not really a priority from that point of view: unlike a fast-burn game like WoW where you better have accessible raids that the vet can readily help a new player along in or their options are basically to develop altitis or quit after the first month's sub, a month into XIV they're probably still reaching for the Heavensward emergency tissue box. It's a LONG time after they get off the wagon before they are remotely ready to join you or I in any endgame content ... so SE may have begun to consider endgame content accessibility a lower priority as a result.

(I checked my own achievements, FWIW, and even as a fairly heavy player, a month after I started this character I was just wrapping up post-HW and heading into Stormblood, so this is about right)

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

the raid is not part of the relic at all :shrug:

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True, though it's still up in the air if it will be a required step in order to upgrade OC gear going into North Horn (we might get a brand new set of gear then like with Pyros, but they could throw a further curveball and require the Arcanaut +2 in order to upgrade into NH steps ...)

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Originally Posted by Innio

and the community around such dungeons becomes so toxic that it becomes unrealistic and nasty to get into (like it was with chaotic).

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On the Crystal based Discord I am in it seems fairly open and friendly community wise with little or no active toxicity, but there are still some grave logistical issues.

Runs fill fast (mostly advanced sign ups rather than the Discord queue bot that was used for BA when I was on Aether in StB) so it can be difficult to find one, especially in today's world where prog points are expected to be much more strictly adhered to. (BA had MUCH less difficulty with this latter, I still remember tearfully the time we had a very nervous first timer with us in one of the midnight Aether runs who was glad for our kindness and reassuring and she came so very close to clearing when unfortunately during Ozma an AoE slip clipped her and, yet lacking the protection of +2 gear, she was slightly too fragile to take the damage and was whisked away by the next Black Hole before we could get her back up)

I'm also not sure how reliably runs actually happen after planning, especially since I've seen scheduled runs listed literally a half hour apart from one another on the same datacenter - the way gathering 6 groups into one instance and Auroral Mirage windows work, this seems way too optimistic for people to not be stepping on each other's toes ...

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Originally Posted by Amarande

... I still remember tearfully the time we had a very nervous first timer with us in one of the midnight Aether runs who was glad for our kindness and reassuring and she came so very close to clearing when unfortunately during Ozma an AoE slip clipped her and, yet lacking the protection of +2 gear, she was slightly too fragile to take the damage and was whisked away by the next Black Hole before we could get her back up)
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This was the game I remember. The community I remember, people cared, and you used to see it reflected everywhere and that is just fully gone now. Certainly in the EU.
No apologies the "it's fair that you shouldn't 'snipe' 'our' FT instance" is just appalling. What horrible, selfish people.
The people crying 'sniper' are all the same people who cried 'progliar' during Chaotic, it's all the same.
Low empathy borderline sociopaths.

I recently travelled to Materia because I just wanted to play some instances for old times sake before my sub runs out, but I didn't feel like talking to my FC, and I didn't feel like ignoring them either.
1st dungeon l, very first one, and I was not expecting it... was 'wonderful'.
People said hi. I apologised for not knowing the instance too well even though I was mentor. I got 'encouragement' from the healer, despite my being mentor. There was a DPS (BLM) dieing quite a bit but we were all encouraging each other. It - was - great!
(then i had to log off)
THAT used to be 2/3 dungeon experiences in this game, now I honestly can't remember the last time I had that 'level' of feeling I was playing with friends I had something in common with on EU, save for back around EW MSQ, when Chaos started imploding, thanks to raiding travel, and casuals started losing interest.

And I'm gonna say it... you know what's coming...
You know what's different about Materia?
Yes, a low concentration, a lack of, high-end players who have been naturally selected for being nasty selfish cnts, who don't even want to be in your instance for its own sake, in the first place, and instantly resent 'anyone' that slows them down, and does not play the dungeon the way they do, which is to try get out ASAP from the moment they got in..

("progliar, progliar"
go fk yourselves.)

Apperently they *are* now going to talk about this at the LL on Friday; clicking on the article on Lodestone it says "Part One: Addressing Player Feedback on Cosmic Exploration and the Occult Crescent". At this point I don't know what to expect, but pleasantly surprised they even are (this means the JP playerbase were annoyed).

Unless the Comments they make are " we are going to fix this as soon as possible ( latest acceptable is the next patch)" with actual details, and not a generic " oh we will do better next time" and leave the current content to rot, I won't be happy about it.

And something tells me they are going to do the latter.

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Originally Posted by Alahard

Unless the Comments they make are " we are going to fix this as soon as possible ( latest acceptable is the next patch)" with actual details, and not a generic " oh we will do better next time" and leave the current content to rot, I won't be happy about it.

And something tells me they are going to do the latter.

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Even then, the next patch is somewhere in the first half of August, and I'll be surprised if OC is still alive at that point.

Lying about your prog point is bad, news at 11. No bad or lazy player should expect to get carried by those that have put more effort into learning a fight of a high difficulty. And guess what, that applies to sniping and taking advantage of a clear group despite being a first timer, too.

That said, there's no way they'll change anything lol

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Originally Posted by Alahard

Unless the Comments they make are " we are going to fix this as soon as possible ( latest acceptable is the next patch)" with actual details, and not a generic " oh we will do better next time" and leave the current content to rot, I won't be happy about it.

And something tells me they are going to do the latter.

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I have a feeling if they do the later, it will be the breaking point for a lot of people. Having it listed at all (and as "part one") makes me think they will actually fix something, but that may be copium, who knows.

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Originally Posted by Infindox

I have a feeling if they do the later, it will be the breaking point for a lot of people. Having it listed at all (and as "part one") makes me think they will actually fix something, but that may be copium, who knows.

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I hope you are right....

But I am placing my bet on the worse option just because of historic track record.

I know they read our comments here too. Whether or not it's addressed or not is up to them and as I've complained in another thread, there is a lack of communication or transparency in general which isn't anything inherently new. This hits particularly harder for those who remember the dev team for pulling this game back from the brink and publicly apologizing for the literal calamity that was 1.0
It is Japanese community sentiment that the devs listen to foreigners only, it is the sentiment in the international forums here that the devs only listen to the Japanese players - You know what that means.
I'm interested in what they have to say in the LL, and despite all my complaints I have nothing but respect for the old guard, especially Yoshida himself, but I am not satisfied with the direction with the game.

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Originally Posted by Yoshihara

I know they read our comments here too. Whether or not it's addressed or not is up to them and as I've complained in another thread, there is a lack of communication or transparency in general which isn't anything inherently new. This hits particularly harder for those who remember the dev team for pulling this game back from the brink and publicly apologizing for the literal calamity that was 1.0
It is Japanese community sentiment that the devs listen to foreigners only, it is the sentiment in the international forums here that the devs only listen to the Japanese players - You know what that means.
I'm interested in what they have to say in the LL, and despite all my complaints I have nothing but respect for the old guard, especially Yoshida himself, but I am not satisfied with the direction with the game.

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I mean generally they need to be better in communication overall.

What they are doing now is not cutting it.

We were making fun of the wow dev team back in the ShB/Shadowlands era. Even yoship was taking shots at them.

But now, their communication team is running circles around the ff14 dev team. Weekly explanations on future plans. Overviews on what didn't work and what the team has learned. Fixes within 2 weeks of release. How they are targeting the main frustrations of players. Open interviews every other week with different team leads.

They're radio silent on 98% of the game's issues anyway
—they're involved in so many other projects besides Final Fantasy XIV, like a new AAA game in development with Sakaguchi, that they'll never properly address FFXIV.

And when they do acknowledge a few problems, it'll only cover about 2% of the game's issues. The game is 13 years old and has seen almost no changes in several areas.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Even then, the next patch is somewhere in the first half of August, and I'll be surprised if OC is still alive at that point.

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It probably will technically be, but mostly sustained by Forked Tower runs (largely due to the intense amount of backlogging introduced by how quickly runs fill up and the harder difficulty meaning people will usually need more prog sessions; also the fact that it takes at least TEN full clears to get enough Sanguinite to afford a full set of +2), the fact that +2 gear requires you to get lucky on three field chests per piece, and the fact that CEs are a comfortable ride for tomestone capping that does not depend on happening to be on at the right time for Dawntrail Hunt Trains ...

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Originally Posted by 0blivion

Lying about your prog point is bad, news at 11. No bad or lazy player should expect to get carried by those that have put more effort into learning a fight of a high difficulty.

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Again, if only it was out and out liars. "Prog lying" paranoia taints everything, as players are basically asked to be as pessimistic as possible about evaluating their prog whenever they join a group (only the common advice tied to the score system on Mythic+ WoW really compares here in degree) and it frequently turns off new people from joining the content altogether (which, unfortunately, I expect is being considered a feature, not a bug, by the people that beat the drum about prog lying ...)

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Originally Posted by Infindox

Apperently they *are* now going to talk about this at the LL on Friday; clicking on the article on Lodestone it says "Part One: Addressing Player Feedback on Cosmic Exploration and the Occult Crescent". At this point I don't know what to expect, but pleasantly surprised they even are (this means the JP playerbase were annoyed).

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Yep, JP is annoyed, I actually read a 2ch thread that was linked (from reddit, I think?) and even with the Google translating it's clear that they're on their last straws. Excoriating comments towards Yoshi, Discord organization being called bullying, and some kind of comment about "ten yen" that I'm not entirely able to grok because I don't know Japanese culture well enough (but I do know that a 10 yen coin is worth about as much as a US dime).

I'm curious as to what "player" feedback will actually be addressed though, because SE seem to have had some kind of terribly out of touch idea of what "the community" actually is (compare the supposed community desire for a harder expansion with how Dawntrail and its endgame is actually being experienced by most actual players I encounter!).

Yoshi P. and the team don't like to admit they've designed something incorrectly, so I expect ALOT of gaslighting. Much of this more difficult content follows a trend I've seen grow with FFXIV and it's team as a whole, catering and wooing, FFXIV content creators they know will stream it for hours on it (Mr. Happy). I feel they really are starting to develop content only with these folks in mind and NOT the general playerbase.

Sighh... Guess we gotta wait until 7.3 till Forked Tower is playable (maybe).

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Sighh... Guess we gotta wait until 7.3 till Forked Tower is playable (maybe).

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it's playable now... clearable too. Apparently they'll address "community feedback" this Friday during the LL.
https://i.imgur.com/tifnyiV.jpeg

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Originally Posted by Bryson

it's playable now... clearable too. Apparently they'll address "community feedback" this Friday during the LL.
https://i.imgur.com/tifnyiV.jpeg

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Congratulations! Enjoy that cube of blood!
... It's still an absolute mess of a raid that is unacceptable for a majority of the playerbase, ranging from casuals who can maybe play savage but will have issue with the mechanics in there to hardcore players who run into the issues of getting groups, dealing with randoms who have no idea they can ruin the raid, dealing with intentional trolls and griefers, etc.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

Yoshi P. and the team don't like to admit they've designed something incorrectly, so I expect ALOT of gaslighting. Much of this more difficult content follows a trend I've seen grow with FFXIV and it's team as a whole, catering and wooing, FFXIV content creators they know will stream it for hours on it (Mr. Happy). I feel they really are starting to develop content only with these folks in mind and NOT the general playerbase.

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FT Boss mechs are on par with extremes. the "hardest" part of FT is getting everyone in the same instance.. not the bosses themselves.

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Originally Posted by Bryson

FT Boss mechs are on par with extremes. the "hardest" part of FT is getting everyone in the same instance.. not the bosses themselves.

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so, we have a chaotic situation. people say its savage lvl but its actually just extrem difficulty?

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Originally Posted by Bryson

the "hardest" part of FT is getting everyone in the same instance.. not the bosses themselves.

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What I was referring to.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

so, we have a chaotic situation. people say its savage lvl but its actually just extrem difficulty?

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Pretty much. It's eerily similar to Chaotic in the sense that the overall difficulty is fairly low but the fight designers have a fetish for body check "one guy kills everyone" mechanics, which has predictably caused a lot of drama just like it did in Chaotic. By far the most frustrating part about all of this is how they haven't done anything to course correct since then. Definitely feels like they aren't listening to feedback.

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Originally Posted by Router

Pretty much. It's eerily similar to Chaotic in the sense that the overall difficulty is fairly low but the fight designers have a fetish for body check "one guy kills everyone" mechanics, which has predictably caused a lot of drama just like it did in Chaotic. By far the most frustrating part about all of this is how they haven't done anything to course correct since then. Definitely feels like they aren't listening to feedback.

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The excessive body checking is imo SE's attempt to further ignore the problem of party sustain and mitigation becoming too powerful.

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Originally Posted by Amarande

Yep, JP is annoyed, I actually read a 2ch thread that was linked (from reddit, I think?) and even with the Google translating it's clear that they're on their last straws. Excoriating comments towards Yoshi, Discord organization being called bullying, and some kind of comment about "ten yen" that I'm not entirely able to grok because I don't know Japanese culture well enough (but I do know that a 10 yen coin is worth about as much as a US dime).

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For the clarification of the 10 yen meme (?), they are basically talking about how no one literally wanted to buy Heavenward's physical copy so much due to how it was a disastrous expansion Stormblood including the expansion pass, something similar to the complete editions, shops literally throw the copies into the wagon and labeled them for 10 yen per copy. And this very expansion, Dawntrail, has been chided to be the possible second coming of that era.

5ch can be a good read sometimes, people there can be just scum but most actually give good points.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

The excessive body checking is imo SE's attempt to further ignore the problem of party sustain and mitigation becoming too powerful.

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It's been an arm's race since Stormblood and ShB. Remove party sustain, remove resource scarcity, add more and more instant trump cards and tools to survive, reduce battle system difficulty to peanuts until the only thing remaining to increase difficulty is on the encounter's side.
And you still get people that defend that tooth and nails somehow (see threads about tanking and healing for example).

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Can I ask why Creative Business Unit 3 are radio silent on the issue of Forked Tower?

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They're too busy spamming the queue to enter it :P

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Originally Posted by Bryson

it's playable now... clearable too. Apparently they'll address "community feedback" this Friday during the LL.
https://i.imgur.com/tifnyiV.jpeg

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That'll be a tricky one for them address since the "feedback" is opinions that are, basically, split 50/50.