When will Forked Tower stop keeping players Hostage in instance?

This is like the 3rd or 4th time joining in there and then suddenly all the players are gone due to Forked Tower event.

The Fix is not working and is twisting the gaming experience for all, including those wanting to do Forked Tower, as forced to 'steal' instances.

This is like the 3rd or 4th time within the last 10-12 days experiencing having to have wasted time in South Horn, and I believe many others as well, yes I have toned down since maxed all the Phantom Jobs and what so ever, so even as rare as it is now that I go in, experiencing this.

It would not be impolite to ask for getting the full fix SOON, the band aid as it is nice now, but is just a patch solution not an actual fix to the problem.

Most is really not interested in doing Critical Engagements and Fates lasting like forever either, since there is no scaling system to those either.

Wait there is another problem hidden behind the entry problem? This is the gift that keeps giving.

1. FATEs rescale if you pull then reset them. Got to learn (some) mechanics to solo them though.

2. CEs scale amazingly, and all of them are soloable except Calamity Bound. Provided you know and can do the mechanics enough, you can solo them all relatively quick.

The whole thing is designed with solo play in mind and was future-proofed already. I love just being the last person in the instance soloing everything. It shakes things up a bit.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

Wait there is another problem hidden behind the entry problem?

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It's not the entry system, per se. It's the fact that the up-to-48 people in Forked Tower still count against South Horn's population cap of 72 per instance. So, there can be only up-to-24 other players wandering about South Horn.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

1. FATEs rescale if you pull then reset them. Got to learn (some) mechanics to solo them though.

2. CEs scale amazingly, and all of them are soloable except Calamity Bound. Provided you know and can do the mechanics enough, you can solo them all relatively quick.

The whole thing is designed with solo play in mind and was future-proofed already. I love just being the last person in the instance soloing everything. It shakes things up a bit.

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I think it's not so easy as DD. You always say things are easy and soloable, but you always talk from the perspective of a Warrior (or tank) and of course that's 500 % easier than other classes, who don't have constant self heal or can survive 7 vulnerability stacks.

Then play tank? It's not that deep? lol.

/e: also not getting hit is mitigation! most DPS have silly personal defensives anyway
/e²: when i'm not doing tower in a tower instance i just solo CEs and FATEs. as jeeqbit said, they scale fine. SAM does like 20% of the HP bar if you're even remotely geared and using Zeninage. if you're good at dodging you physically cannot die. this especially goes for turtle, shark, lions, and... basically anything that isn't calamity bound

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

mechanics to solo them all of them are soloable solo them all designed with solo play in mind soloing everything

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Have you considered playing pretty much anything besides an MMO

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Originally Posted by ACE135

I think it's not so easy as DD. You always say things are easy and soloable, but you always talk from the perspective of a Warrior (or tank) and of course that's 500 % easier than other classes, who don't have constant self heal or can survive 7 vulnerability stacks.

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While true, you can play multiple classes in this game. You get a free tank in Gunbreaker even. It's also worth remembering that you have Phantom Jobs such as Knight or Freelancer which allows you to self-heal a lot. Also, if someone is willing to spend their time farming this content, they can probably spare a tiny percentage of that time leveling a tank.

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Originally Posted by yesnt

Have you considered playing pretty much anything besides an MMO

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Rarely, but I don't see the relevance. I was just saying it can be done solo. The point of the content being soloable is longevity - so it can be done in 6 years. We had these sorts of thoughts for Eureka and Bozja as well.

Eureka had a degree of future-proofing in its NM scaling but they were too much work to spawn solo and some of them were still overscaled, and you could just barely solo low level ones. Bozja's future-proofing was mostly alright, and Echo was subsequently added to make CEs easy to solo. Probably CLL, Dal and DR are the main hurdles.

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

This is like the 3rd or 4th time joining in there and then suddenly all the players are gone due to Forked Tower event.

The Fix is not working and is twisting the gaming experience for all, including those wanting to do Forked Tower, as forced to 'steal' instances.

This is like the 3rd or 4th time within the last 10-12 days experiencing having to have wasted time in South Horn, and I believe many others as well, yes I have toned down since maxed all the Phantom Jobs and what so ever, so even as rare as it is now that I go in, experiencing this.

It would not be impolite to ask for getting the full fix SOON, the band aid as it is nice now, but is just a patch solution not an actual fix to the problem.

Most is really not interested in doing Critical Engagements and Fates lasting like forever either, since there is no scaling system to those either.

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CEs and FATEs do scale though? Pots can be an issue because it scales to the last time that particular pot fate was done which was an hour prior, but otherwise things do scale.

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Originally Posted by ACE135

I think it's not so easy as DD. You always say things are easy and soloable, but you always talk from the perspective of a Warrior (or tank) and of course that's 500 % easier than other classes, who don't have constant self heal or can survive 7 vulnerability stacks.

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Don't get vuln stacks?

Though all of these do scale, it was implemented incorrectly. It should have been more like Bozja where it scaled with an echo rather than an HP reduction. The echo made things more survivable for smaller groups.

Currently CEs don't get more survivable with small groups, they just get less tanky.

Regardless whether they're currently soloable or not, I think it's still a valid concern to reassess the scaling to NOT take account the players within FTB. Especially the FATEs.

CEs except Calamity Bound are all fine though. If they lasts 'forever' it's probably because too many players are turtling the encounter by being tanks/healers, or not utilizing their PJs. I.e. joins CE with less than 6 players, but 4 of them are on WAR-Chemist, and 1 other being a SGE-whatever PJ. Yeah well that definitely would dragged the CE lol.

Note also this is why the support fate exists and why forked botched that

By and large players in the wider instance are punished for staying in an instance that a large scale raid is occurring in, so they should be compensated for it especially if they can’t get into a different instance (which you often can’t)

The support fate needs to be more robust and better rewarded (and spawn earlier)

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Though all of these do scale, it was implemented incorrectly. It should have been more like Bozja where it scaled with an echo rather than an HP reduction. The echo made things more survivable for smaller groups.

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I think they added or increased the echo when it was no longer new? But anyway, the echo made it a joke to solo. I literally had 400,000 HP in one of the CEs and that was in Shadowbringers. Otherwise devastating mechanics became a complete joke and I could ignore absolutely everything, including deathwalls and just auto the boss down.

In contrast, the CEs still require you to do mechanics just as much when solo. I'd actually say it's perfect. They feel like duels when doing them solo, and that may be why they didn't add duels... because we kinda have them with the fact we can solo CEs.

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Currently CEs don't get more survivable with small groups, they just get less tanky.

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True, and that's because the sheer amount of players, quite frankly and obviously, carry eachother through. If you're doing it with a small party or solo, you are hopefully relatively confident that you can minimize or avoid vuln stacks or alternatively are prepared to risk a delevel.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

I think it's still a valid concern to reassess the scaling to NOT take account the players within FTB. Especially the FATEs.

CEs except Calamity Bound are all fine though.

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They are going reassess FATE scaling anyway. They are actually going to try and fix this problem they have ignored for 12 years.

Also either gear or phantom stacks need to give defensive options

There is almost non survivability options on phantom jobs for classes that need survivability but you can be damn sure there is a wealth of options for doing damage for classes that have an inbuilt damage penalty but lots of survivability……..hmmm how strange

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Don't get vuln stacks?

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I was referring to a statement of Jeeqbit in another thread where he, among other things, said "you can survive a lot of vuln stacks".

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

1. FATEs rescale if you pull then reset them. Got to learn (some) mechanics to solo them though.

2. CEs scale amazingly, and all of them are soloable except Calamity Bound. Provided you know and can do the mechanics enough, you can solo them all relatively quick.

The whole thing is designed with solo play in mind and was future-proofed already. I love just being the last person in the instance soloing everything. It shakes things up a bit.

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If you play as Warrior ( I know I do myself )

But you are entirely off the point, soloplay ind mind if you are good, literally soloed last 10% of a CE as everyone died as a War.... but you are entirely off the point, though I do not deny that the content is rather easy, but time is a factor as well, having to use all these loopholes as well to fix things, should NOT be a viable option either, it certainly does not increase the game play experience either.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Note also this is why the support fate exists and why forked botched that

By and large players in the wider instance are punished for staying in an instance that a large scale raid is occurring in, so they should be compensated for it especially if they can’t get into a different instance (which you often can’t)

The support fate needs to be more robust and better rewarded (and spawn earlier)

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There could be three support FATEs/mobs, one each for hallways, bridges, and lockwards. And a mechanic that forces the Forked Tower expedition to actually spawn them (emphasis on "spawn"; I'm not sure how I feel about requiring the people outside to engage with them).

And then according to the changes that will come in 7.3 to the crescent: A new instance is made for the premades and is temporarily locked when the premade group enters and will unlock after an amount of time has passed, making it so no one can snipe, but also anyone joins afterwards is stuck in effectively a 1 to 24 player instance until the tower is done.

Although nothing stops the premade group from just leaving after the tower is done and creating another temporarily locked instance.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

And then according to the changes that will come in 7.3 to the crescent: A new instance is made for the premades

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This part is already live — at least in the sense that if the currently-filling instance doesn't have enough space for the premade to enter as a whole, then a new instance is started.

(Did they actually say something about locking the new instance? I'm not seeing it, but maybe I'm skimming too quickly…)

I don't mind being in a low-population instance since almost everything scales really well. It's silly that the support fate isn't mandatory, though.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

It's not the entry system, per se. It's the fact that the up-to-48 people in Forked Tower still count against South Horn's population cap of 72 per instance. So, there can be only up-to-24 other players wandering about South Horn.

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Yep, this, exactly. And if you zone out and try to find another instance especially during prime time, you run into another instance with a raid going on. So you can't even go find a fresh instance to do FATEs and CEs in sometimes.

And the people in FTB are taken into consideration so some things can take forever if they just disappear into there. Plus less people at CEs means less people to help raise and more potential to fail the CE. I've seen that happen with Calamity because that's often rather disorganized in how the portals are hit and it's usually numbers that helps mitigate that.

Things may be a little better with 7.3 because they're going to change things to lock the premade instances for some time period, though we don't know how long. It would honestly probably be better to just keep it locked since they went with this system so premade FTB stays off in their own instance and doesn't have to worry about random entries, and people who want to South Horn activities can do the activities without losing over half the people in the zone. I can see where that may tax their instance server, though. But they have definitely created another problem with this most recent change.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

This part is already live — at least in the sense that if the currently-filling instance doesn't have enough space for the premade to enter as a whole, then a new instance is started.

(Did they actually say something about locking the new instance? I'm not seeing it, but maybe I'm skimming too quickly…)

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Its the follow up after the live letter:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...27e42cc330d08e

Where they state:

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Intentions Behind the Changes

As stated during the PLL, the update required to improve the Forked Tower experience would comprise several key elements:

1. The ability to enter the Occult Crescent instance with a preformed alliance of up to 48 players
2. Allowing auroral mirages to generate sooner after the Occult Crescent instance has loaded
3. Improvements to the cipher offering UI
4. Delaying auroral mirage generation until an active critical encounter has ended

And further down the line, after additional deliberation and discussion, we plan on further expanding the system with updates, such as:

5. Enabling exclusive access to the Occult Crescent instance for a set time when joining with a preformed alliance

We believe these combined changes will function in unison to improve the Forked Tower experience. However, given the outsized impact of 1., even in isolation, we have chosen to prioritize its implementation. Furthermore, to alleviate the issue of players waiting for prolonged periods to access the Forked Tower due to the time taken for an auroral mirage to generate after the Occult Crescent instance loads, we will also be implementing 2. in advance.

The remaining changes listed above will be implemented in Patch 7.3, as previously discussed, along with other minor adjustments and updates. Please accept my apologies for the delay.

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Once #5 is implemented, they will have strayed fully from their original design intent of allowing random players to organically join the dungeon. Why will the ciphers still exist at that point?

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Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

Once #5 is implemented, they will have strayed fully from their original design intent of allowing random players to organically join the dungeon. Why will the ciphers still exist at that point?

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Well, players inside OC are still able to form groups and enter FT if they want.

Forked Tower Blood really do be like:

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At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

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This whole Forked Tower design is so stupid... So amateurishly...

Feels like it was created by two kids challenging each other who can create "the hardest dungeon ever!"...

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Originally Posted by Brandr

This whole Forked Tower design is so stupid... So amateurishly...

Feels like it was created by two kids challenging each other who can create "the hardest dungeon ever!"...

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Having a challenging dungeon is fine. Having that dungeon behind such a frustrating entry system--and on top of that, including so many body checks--feels completely disconnected from what the content should be.

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Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

Once #5 is implemented, they will have strayed fully from their original design intent of allowing random players to organically join the dungeon. Why will the ciphers still exist at that point?

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I mean apparently their design intention was randoms were to be carried in an instance that one person can cause a full wipe? Also that it's a possibility to be left out of your friend group on a run. They really didn't think this through.

If they wanted FTB to be meant for actual hardcore skilled, they should've just made it a separate instance that PF can queue up for outside of OC. I know they wanted it to be inside OC for narrative purposes, but they could've kept the narrative one in the OC instance for a normal mode that players can just try out on a whim.

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Originally Posted by XtremePrime

If they wanted FTB to be meant for actual hardcore skilled, they should've just made it a separate instance that PF can queue up for outside of OC. I know they wanted it to be inside OC for narrative purposes, but they could've kept the narrative one in the OC instance for a normal mode that players can just try out on a whim.

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Except there wasn't enough resources, as doing both would have too high of a 'cost', so they resorted to this mess. Yay......

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Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

Once #5 is implemented, they will have strayed fully from their original design intent of allowing random players to organically join the dungeon.

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If it wasn't for the raise restriction, PUGs could conceivably power through Forked Tower (repeatedly), learn how the mechanics work, learn which phantom jobs are needed, and pass that knowledge on to future groups.

Except when someone asks, "Anything to know?" the answer wouldn't be a few short sentences; it'd be a wall of text or an entire slide deck with a raid plan. The degree of coordination required far exceeds anything seen in CLL, Delubrum (normal), and Dalriada.

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Originally Posted by Alahard

I mean apparently their design intention was randoms were to be carried in an instance that one person can cause a full wipe? Also that it's a possibility to be left out of your friend group on a run. They really didn't think this through.

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No, they really didn't. And I think all of these issues could have been predicted. Some probably were, but I think players expected more relaxed mechanics given the entry method and number of people.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I think they added or increased the echo when it was no longer new? But anyway, the echo made it a joke to solo. I literally had 400,000 HP in one of the CEs and that was in Shadowbringers. Otherwise devastating mechanics became a complete joke and I could ignore absolutely everything, including deathwalls and just auto the boss down.

In contrast, the CEs still require you to do mechanics just as much when solo. I'd actually say it's perfect. They feel like duels when doing them solo, and that may be why they didn't add duels... because we kinda have them with the fact we can solo CEs.
True, and that's because the sheer amount of players, quite frankly and obviously, carry eachother through. If you're doing it with a small party or solo, you are hopefully relatively confident that you can minimize or avoid vuln stacks or alternatively are prepared to risk a delevel.
They are going reassess FATE scaling anyway. They are actually going to try and fix this problem they have ignored for 12 years.

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I see what you are saying but it creates other issues. Imagine this:

8.0 is brand new! People are enjoying all of the new... FATEs i guess. OC is dead because it can't be used for leveling. One, lone materia player wants to level their phantom jobs but nobody is around and they play BLM. Even with the CEs, they stand no chance. Tank busters will one-shot them, they have no self sustain because the phantom job leveling system is utter shit. They're fucked.

In Bozja, the echo prevents this sort of thing from being impossible.

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Originally Posted by FuturePastNow

No, they really didn't. And I think all of these issues could have been predicted. Some probably were, but I think players expected more relaxed mechanics given the entry method and number of people.

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Issues that could be predicted:

Everything that went wrong with BA that was repeated, but worse.

Choosing the hard mode when EW complaints were around casual content lacking, asking for another Bodja. When Bodja had CLL/Duels.

Deciding that players had no agency in controlling their hard mode runs

FT requiring specific phantom job setups, and expecting randoms to magically have all of them....

The rez limit

Full wipe kicking you out despite still having lives

More insta wipes with 48 people

Allowing groups with less than 24 people to join ... when 24 person bodychecks exist...

The issues didn't need to be predicted because most of them are issues they already made with BA, which was so disliked at the time they had to make an official apology.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

1. FATEs rescale if you pull then reset them. Got to learn (some) mechanics to solo them though.

2. CEs scale amazingly, and all of them are soloable except Calamity Bound. Provided you know and can do the mechanics enough, you can solo them all relatively quick.

The whole thing is designed with solo play in mind and was future-proofed already. I love just being the last person in the instance soloing everything. It shakes things up a bit.

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So CBU3 released the 7.25 content to be soloable as a safety measure, and it turns out that the "future-proof" situation of the content being empty happened in the same patch it released.