Please make Forked Tower more Accessible and easier like Bozja

It should be clearable with a max of 24 peeps, not require an item to enter, and should be as only slightly harder than the CE's with no Raise restrictions and such xD.

It's a bit malicious that the tower requires 16 people to enter but the first boss needs 24 or you will immediately wipe.

If they wanted the tower to work like BA, they should've brought back the 144 player instances. Otherwise, it should've been implemented like DRS.

'A bit' malicious? It's either a gross oversight or it's insanely evil.

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Originally Posted by Aco505

It's a bit malicious that the tower requires 16 people to enter but the first boss needs 24 or you will immediately wipe.

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Does it not scale with the number of people in the raid? For something like that, it seems a massive oversight to have missed that in development.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Does it not scale with the number of people in the raid? For something like that, it seems a massive oversight to have missed that in development.

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If it goes by the same rules as Ba or DRS, it scales minimum to 24 but the big thing is that in terms of mechanics, there's no way 16 people can do it because you have stuff like like 3 bosses in the 2nd boss fight, and multiple 6 towers that need to be soaked etc etc.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Does it not scale with the number of people in the raid? For something like that, it seems a massive oversight to have missed that in development.

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I cannot speak for the HP scaling of the bosses (although I'm sure it's intended for 24 minimum) but one of the first mechanics of the first boss requires 24 people or you will wipe. Whether 16 would be enough for the other bosses... I'm not sure but at least one mechanic of the second boss requires 6 tanks or invulns to deal with a total of 6 wild charges in succession (2 at a time).

This also isn't the first time either. We have the same issue with Chaotic. You can enter with 12 but you need 24 cause of the towers in p3. There definitely is some lapse in judgement that is going on in the team.

As it stands, very few (if any) are going to be able to access this content unless there is out of game coordination I feel.

This isn't something you can just PF like Savage/Ultimate/Unreal. The 24 player minimum with no queue is brutal and only serious raiding FC's with multiple members may be able to do it.

Edit: Perhaps burning Sanguines puts you in a Queue that just sits until taken? More burned higher prior, but just have a base "Pool" across your entire DC forming parties?

Raids in the style of CLL or Dalriada are cool.
Raids in the style of DR or DRS are cool.

Repeating BA seems an odd decision when the above two examples worked well.

I still think we need to see how it goes though because BA itself became a lot more trivial over time once a significant amount of people had fully augmented elemental gear, bonus accessories, logos actions, raid leaders that fully coordinated and called out the mechanics, and other advantages.

I don't know about the 144 people issue but it seems like it's causing a lot of issues working like BA but not allowing the amount of people in that Eureka did.

Even changing the entrance system would help immensely here I think.
Make it like Delubrum Reginae where you can queue through an NPC with a premade Party or with randoms.
That thing is still done today because of its scaling and easy to access system.

The dungeon itself seems really interesting but as it stands now, none of us will be able to get in blind (or in at all) and we have to wait until Discord clear parties are available which… goes contrary to the feeling and concept of that dungeon.

It’s really disheartening seeing content creators having a blast with that raid while I and a few others stand alone at the entrance and can’t get in because it needs so many people and even Discord premades seem to struggle with the instance hopping from what I have heard.

The discord for BA was formed because its entrance system was atrocious (and even that was better than this) so why repeat that mistake after having found better ways with Bozja?

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Originally Posted by Aco505

It's a bit malicious that the tower requires 16 people to enter but the first boss needs 24 or you will immediately wipe.

If they wanted the tower to work like BA, they should've brought back the 144 player instances. Otherwise, it should've been implemented like DRS.

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You actually don't even need 16 players, just 16 ciphers, and since you can offer up at least three that means in theory as few as 6 people (or less?) can start it and go in. They wouldn't get very far, obviously.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

Even changing the entrance system would help immensely here I think.
Make it like Delubrum Reginae where you can queue through an NPC with a premade Party or with randoms.
That thing is still done today because of its scaling and easy to access system.

The dungeon itself seems really interesting but as it stands now, none of us will be able to get in blind (or in at all) and we have to wait until Discord clear parties are available which… goes contrary to the feeling and concept of that dungeon.

It’s really disheartening seeing content creators having a blast with that raid while I and a few others stand alone at the entrance and can’t get in because it needs so many people and even Discord premades seem to struggle with the instance hopping from what I have heard.

The discord for BA was formed because its entrance system was atrocious (and even that was better than this) so why repeat that mistake after having found better ways with Bozja?

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Nooooooo please don't change it so you can queue as up to 48 man people together as one party, like you can do alliance raids cough cough. Entering this raid should be grindy, boring and time wasting as hell (making all 48 man in one instance) and it should be easily griefable by random players, who are protected by gms if you dare to say rude words "we are premade can you not try to grief?".

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Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

You actually don't even need 16 players, just 16 ciphers, and since you can offer up at least three that means in theory as few as 6 people (or less?) can start it and go in. They wouldn't get very far, obviously.

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Testing has shown that one person offering 16 ciphers doesn't work. It must be 16 different players offering at least one cipher each.

I think one thing that’s being missed here is the fact that BA had this same problem but only when the content is new (I’m not saying this as a defence of FT just pointing it out)

Right now OC can have up to 15 or 20 instances running at once, so coordinating auroral mirage is near impossible since you can only queue with 8 people. BA used to have this problem when there was 20 hydatos instances running at once but now that there is rarely more than one you can much more strongly manipulate ovni. Since FT gets rid of BA’s portal problems when the instances calm down FT should arguably be easier

Was this ever a good idea to replicate……..I’d argue it depends on your opinion of coordinated discords. In general I vastly prefer BA’s design to DRS because it feels like I’m interacting with hydatos to enter its boss zone, but i also used to host BA so I’m biased to being pro discords, if you really don’t like them then FT is just repeating all of BA’s mistakes

I feel like as a good compromise FT should have been externally queued from the phantom village like DRS then the entrance design of FT should have been given to a DAL/CLL style raid that you don’t need coordination, you can join up and make parties with other people who got in

whatever u say here doesnt matter cause the devs dont listen or see the english forums (graphics update was the only exception)

but regarding forked tower, its more of a toilet tower in design since dead content on arrival and gated to only discord elitists making u sign up 5 months in advance and making you obey their orders instead of making it PUG-able

hopefully it will be forgotten and dead content within a few months when we get to a new patch with relic upgrade and/or new zone, since nothin is changing anytime soon guaranteed, the devs are slow and require 3 years of research to make a small change

why don't they have two one for hard raiders and a storyline one for less hard core players to get by

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Originally Posted by itachi-otsutsuki

'A bit' malicious? It's either a gross oversight or it's insanely evil.

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Considering this is the second time it's happened in less than a year I'd say it's more likely a case of deliberately misleading the players rather than a gross oversight.

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Originally Posted by george357

why don't they have two one for hard raiders and a storyline one for less hard core players to get by

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because there isn't really a story to forked tower. its optional content for the sake of being optional. the storyline ends with the last quest, forked tower is just kinda there as mostly just a 'hey look at this FFV reference' and little more than that.

personally I enjoy the difficulty of it. The instance prog gets a lil frustrating but I think if it was just something I could show up and do more or less first time like OP is p much suggesting, I'd get bored of it real fast. Idk why people can't let some content be hard to access in a game where everything else is p much handed to you

making it easier to get into i support. As unique as this system is, when you require this much coordination to get any prog in I do really wish you could just queue in like DRS. But I don't want it to just be a glorified CE, that's for sure. OC deserves a challenging finisher in its debut, and forked tower does quite nicely. The hardest part is getting into it, but the difficulty of the fights themselves are just right.

This comment is pretty much the gist of it. Discord elitists, yes that's what they are. Gatekeeping content. Screwing over anyone who tries to pug it. SE essentially inadvertently siding with them by designing things this way and being painstakingly slow to catch on to things (if they ever catch on). Or just not caring.

What im interested in: Are the Japanese complaining too? BC if not, they will never change it, bc Japan Opinion = Only Opinion, everyone else "Fuck off"

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Originally Posted by Lami_Khatayin

What im interested in: Are the Japanese complaining too? BC if not, they will never change it, bc Japan Opinion = Only Opinion, everyone else "Fuck off"

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This is at least the third time so far in Dawntrail where every region is more or less echoing the same sentiment, and once again it's "Who is this supposed to be for?"

Requiring an Item for it was the first mistake. You need these Silver Coins for EVERYTHING from getting a simple riding map to upgrading your Gear. And seeing how few Coins you get per Fate why would anyone waste them on these Scrolls for a duty you will most likely fail. It feels like the Devs are completely out of the loop here.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

This is at least the third time so far in Dawntrail where every region is more or less echoing the same sentiment, and once again it's "Who is this supposed to be for?"

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From what I am seeing, Yoshi P and the dev team are starting to solely develop content for streamers/content creators who have a vast network of folks to coordinate with. The actual, normal playerbase? We don't seem to matter as much anymore.

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Originally Posted by Lami_Khatayin

What im interested in: Are the Japanese complaining too?

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From what others who can read JP have said, yes. And the whole thing just feels malicious.

Like they see us asking them to come up with something fun and creative instead of another fate farm or tedious grind. So they went to the extreme of just giving us a tome farm. Then when we complained they went right back to a tedious fate farm, but also put a hardcore raid with silly rules like only 3 rezzes allowed. It really just feels like a giant middle finger to the entire playerbase. Doubly so since they brought back atma, just to twist that knife a lil deeper. I have had the idea for years that Yoshida was just creatively bankrupt and was keeping the more creative and skilled devs on a leash, since we know SE has some really passionate and creative ppl in their employ, but at this point it kinda feels like he is trying to intentionally crash the game, cause the only ppl who seem to be happy are the the ppl sitting in LL or clubs all day and ppl who honestly will just take whatever they give them with a smile because they drank the kool-aid. And it makes sense when you consider he is open about his dislike of the game.

It's like, if your that unhappy just move on, bro. Seriously, let someone else, someone who actually wants to see this game do well and it's players have fun take the lead.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I still think we need to see how it goes though because BA itself became a lot more trivial over time once a significant amount of people had fully augmented elemental gear, bonus accessories, logos actions, raid leaders that fully coordinated and called out the mechanics, and other advantages.

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Having done a few Forked Tower runs through the 2nd boss, I don't think it'll end up being remotely trivial even after all the power creep. There's a lot of randomized mechanics where one person can murder dozens of other people or otherwise ruin the run. The closest content I can think of in terms of difficulty is actually Chaotic, and we've all seen how that went. I personally enjoy it but I have no idea if this will end up being very accessible for less hardcore players.

SE makes content that is supposed to appeal to a large amount of the playerbase. Content that is supposed to be casually consumed and be a nice little distraction that earns us rewards and a nice weapon. A large amount of the playerbase are confused, let down and annoyed at the content provided because of its absolutely horribly design and implimentation in an expansion that has been horribly written, designed and implimented. Ppl's frustration at this game is at an all time high boiling point.

But we always have that guy...

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Originally Posted by Kissune

i may be blunt here and I apologize if this comes off as rude but... have you all ever considered that maybe some content just isn't meant for you?
like, I personally am enjoying forked tower a lot

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Originally Posted by Kissune

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I don’t mind the difficulty of it and think it’s fine but I completely criticize the way to even get inside.
Clearing, sure it can be challenging but not the attempt to even try it in the first place.

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Originally Posted by itachi-otsutsuki

This comment is pretty much the gist of it. Discord elitists, yes that's what they are. Gatekeeping content. Screwing over anyone who tries to pug it. SE essentially inadvertently siding with them by designing things this way and being painstakingly slow to catch on to things (if they ever catch on). Or just not caring.

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I don’t like having to use Discord as much as anyone but calling people using it elitist is completely awful and unneeded.
They are normal people trying to clear and are just as annoyed by the entry way as others are.

Like… Jesus.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

But we always have that guy...

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Just add Kissune to blacklist at least on forums. High end streamers doing world first prog looked miserable on streams because not only dumb system won't let you get into one instance together but also random people literally stream sniping (knowing first boss mechanics/listening to stream) taking places from premaders. I can guarantee you that randoms will try to sneak in to coordinated discords attempts aswell.

If dumb devs wanted to make just ONE raid for zone like eureka, that's fine, no one will bash them for it. However, they literally copy pasted dogwater design of getting into instance. Not because "people liked eureka", but because they are giga lazy to create system for 48 man alliance premade to queue OC and raid.

When the Japanese players are talking about "volunteer blockades" to make sure PF groups can actually get into the instance, there's a very fundamental problem with the system.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Raids in the style of CLL or Dalriada are cool.
Raids in the style of DR or DRS are cool.

Repeating BA seems an odd decision when the above two examples worked well.

I still think we need to see how it goes though because BA itself became a lot more trivial over time once a significant amount of people had fully augmented elemental gear, bonus accessories, logos actions, raid leaders that fully coordinated and called out the mechanics, and other advantages.

I don't know about the 144 people issue but it seems like it's causing a lot of issues working like BA but not allowing the amount of people in that Eureka did.

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Agreed… especially for the first zone? Looking at the map furnishing of the whole island, I’m guessing there will be three zones total: South Horn, the Central/Middle area and North Horn. Feels weird to start off with something that many people won’t be able to complete without an organized discord group… which is the main reason I still haven’t done BA because I can never seem to find a run happening at a time that would be good for me! (Also at this point I’d probably have to farm for actions again before I could even consider it.)

I’m kinda disappointed we didn’t have a CLL or Dalriada for the first couple zones… the part that really stings is that I assume the Tower is going to have some kind of lore dump that I’ll be missing out on because I will probably wait to try it until I have the best gear and everyone more or less knows what to do. Honestly I’d prefer a dungeon that didn’t require outside organizing to complete.

I don’t think it’s particularly fair to say “discord elitists” when the discords do everything they can to try to get as many people through the content as they can. They just acknowledge that completely unorganised pugging doesn’t work for this type of content

You can argue that’s a flaw in the content but again that isn’t really the discords fault

Content harder than BA with BA’s annoying spawn conditions is really pushing viability here, BA has been powercrept hard but that’s only because elemental gear scales so ridiculously and they redid gear stats going from SB->ShB. OC won’t scale anywhere near as hard so being harder than BA is going to be a tough sell

But I don’t think blaming discords trying to keep the content running for as many people as possible is a good thing

I don't blame them for trying a balance between the 'gatekeeping' of portals in BA, nuttiness about stabilizer use, and requiring a full queued instance in DRS.

The buy-in is okay, it just means if you are serious you'll buy-in to a run versus just hop in for funzies without regard to those who are prepared. I like this option better than the stabilizer where people saw it as a high-jack priority. If you fail in there you'll lose at-least 30k and get knocked down a level, so it's at-least a fate and CE to get back so you have to farm anyway. Since level will increase when they add the second area, this is likely going to be a non-issue over time.

We don't have a Eureka Physeos kind of relic this go around (at-least not now, but who is to say that doesn't get added in future steps?). Stat inflation will be much less over time since time to level phantom jobs, and cost it takes to +1 or more the OC equipment.

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Originally Posted by george357

why don't they have two one for hard raiders and a storyline one for less hard core players to get by

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The entire Dawntrail expansion illustrates SQEX only cares about the former group.

Forked tower seems dead on arrival for most people. Unless you are using a Discord group, you are not getting in.

The window to enter it is only 5 minutes, which means most in the instance could be in a CE and miss it entirely. As such, they should remove the time limit or make it much longer.

If you are using a pre-made, there is no way to queue into an instance with 48 people, thus, leaders try to coordinate queuing into the Southern Horn at the same time. It doesn't always work, and can involve a lot of joining and leaving, which is just a waste of time. Thus, we need a way to queue into the instance as 48 people.

While I don't think the cipher to get in a huge barrier to entry, it is a barrier to entry nonetheless. They should have it as a rare drop from CEs or chests to help make them more available. Or just remove it.

Overall, I would rather have just seen a way to queue into Forked Tower directly, but only time will tell. As the zone becomes less populated, it will be easier to coordinate runs, but right now, Forked Tower is not accessible content.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Content harder than BA with BA’s annoying spawn conditions is really pushing viability here, BA has been powercrept hard but that’s only because elemental gear scales so ridiculously and they redid gear stats going from SB->ShB. OC won’t scale anywhere near as hard so being harder than BA is going to be a tough sell

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I think it's also important to take into consideration the sheer difference in difficulty between the two raids. BA had practically no body checks and the mechanics were arguably not even at the level of extreme trials aside from maybe one or two in the AV and Ozma fights. Meanwhile I'm hearing Forked Tower has a ton of body checks and a mechanical difficulty on par with second or even third floor savage raids.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Agreed… especially for the first zone? Looking at the map furnishing of the whole island, I’m guessing there will be three zones total: South Horn, the Central/Middle area and North Horn. Feels weird to start off with something that many people won’t be able to complete without an organized discord group… which is the main reason I still haven’t done BA because I can never seem to find a run happening at a time that would be good for me! (Also at this point I’d probably have to farm for actions again before I could even consider it.)

I’m kinda disappointed we didn’t have a CLL or Dalriada for the first couple zones… the part that really stings is that I assume the Tower is going to have some kind of lore dump that I’ll be missing out on because I will probably wait to try it until I have the best gear and everyone more or less knows what to do. Honestly I’d prefer a dungeon that didn’t require outside organizing to complete.

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Unless they're keeping a zone or Delubrum-style raid a secret, there'll be one more zone and its raid in 7.5X, and that's it. The two patches in between now and then are supposed to just be the deep dungeon and more phantom jobs.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Unless they're keeping a zone or Delubrum-style raid a secret, there'll be one more zone and its raid in 7.5X, and that's it. The two patches in between now and then are supposed to just be the deep dungeon and more phantom jobs.

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Hmmm I wonder how many relic stages we’ll have with only one more zone…

I feel like I'm getting kinda mischaracterized here. I'm not entirely happy with the spawn system either, but I do love forked tower's difficulty. Instance prog isn't really fun. Randoms being able to grief kinda blows. That's basically my only complaints with it. The actual fight itself is fun, and the difficulty and coordination requirement is right up my alley, since it feels like actual genuine old MMO raiding. Its kinda what I wanted chaotic to be, but that ended up being predominantly personal responsibility mechs, which... eh. It does feel like there is a disconnect between intended difficulty and intended accessibility with FT. The content is just hard enough to require coordination, but not easy to coordinate. Which should probably be addressed.

The thing is, I as a player enjoy difficulty. I like frustration, friction. It feels fun to be presented with something inherently irritating to get the satisfaction of overcoming it. I don't mind Atma grinding, because I don't mind grinding. I got all my Atmas done by day 2, and was kinda disappointed the rest of the relics don't require more. I'd have probably suggested 1 per relic instead of 3, beyond the first, since 'first is hardest, rest easier' is a good design philosophy now that we have this many jobs in the game. But it is what it is. At least CEs give tomes. I'm not saying this all bc I think my opinion is the most correct or more valid than anyone else's, just trying to explain where I'm coming from when I post my thoughts.

I've had enough things I loved about this game destroyed because I said nothing. I know supersnow knows what I'm talking about. I take issue with people constantly complaining about things being catered to high end players and wanting things simplified, because as a so called 'high end player' I've watched almost everything I enjoy about the game sequentially stripped away from me expansion after another. The game, imo, needs harder content to balance out the fact that they've basically neutered every job's skill ceiling. Getting actual hard content with the phantom jobs felt like a breath of fresh air because it's the first time since Shadowbringers that I felt like I had a unique identity in a party. Even then, I think FT will definitely become a lot more accessible. People right now are still grinding up, the content has been out for less than a week, people need to be patient. Most are still interested in getting their gear and loot before even thinking about forked tower. That's the way it is with most of my more casual-midcore oriented friends, and I suspect as strats finalize and become more publicly shared, people get geared, and have silver to spare on ciphers you'll get more people thinking 'hey, FT opened up, let's give it a shot'.
If I was to suggest any changes, I'd want the entry requirements shifted to match the required coordination. If it was something that could be queued for, even with the buy in and weather requirement, it would probably be fine. Even just the current system but premade parties of 8 are prioritized over smaller groups, so its harder for randoms to grief but allows you to PUG easier since you only really need to form a group of 8.

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Originally Posted by Stasya

Just add Kissune to blacklist at least on forums. High end streamers doing world first prog looked miserable on streams

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Oddly harsh reaction to someone disagreeing with you but I can't expect much else from the forums I guess.

Also RWF always look miserable. The RWF is a miserable experience after the first like, day. Have you never seen a world first vod? The reactions are usually along the lines of 'oh my God I'm so glad that's over'. It's less elation, more relief.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Hmmm I wonder how many relic stages we’ll have with only one more zone…

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The Blades' relic is loosely tied with Bozja up to a certain point, so it'll probably be something like that if I had to guess

The main reason I use loosely is because I think the only requirement you had to do was reach rank 10 to do CLL and then DR
Otherwise you could do the steps outside of Bozja