72 player instances make Forked Tower incredibly painful to do.

[Atreus]

Time to play dead weight for those pre-made discord groups and sniping their entry queues

Weird to brag about griefing, but ok. They'll just leave you on the ground and won't raise.

[CNitsah]

There is also the fact that many ppl want you to be in their premade groups and will refuse to heal or raise you if you're not, in casual content that is open, has entry requirements that are not easy to come by and is not just queuable by groups.

They got this so wrong is Eureka with BA, got it right in Bozja and just went back to the bad Eureka decision afterward. I thought they were supposed to be learning and improving this sort of content and not going backwards. Why are they making content that is supposed to be casual, so easily gate kept behind rando discord groups? I mean i am fine joining discord for call outs, but I don't want to be in any discord for FFXIV, I have been in a few and yikes, just yikes. iykyk

Because SE has only 2 publics in mind. Casuals and the most invested players. In their mind, casuals only do msq/raids/raid 24. Everything else has to be aimed for most invested players, which do high raids, ... that require a high lvl of communication. They ignore all the other publics. All the people that want something mildly challenging that don't ask for a discord are ignored. I feel like they did it well enough with Delubrum reginae, with its normal mode being challenging and its savage mode being aimed at players who wanted more.

My real fear (hope? Idk I read everything and its opposite on that one) is that forked tower will be needed for part 2 and they will have to change things because people will be locked away from northern part of the island because of how forked tower ask for communication and will be only clearable with discord, and even that is hard to organise due to how they designed the thing. BA had the good taste to be at the end of the whole thing. From what I read, BA is basically DRS in term of difficulty with BA entering condition.

Honestly, SE should learn to listen to the casuals when it come to casual design, hardcore/most dedicated players when it comes to high end content and somewhere in the middle when it comes to retention content aimed to everyone. Stop listening to people that always want thing to be harder for content meant for everyone/people that just want things with mild challenge that don't ask for too much inverstment.

[Akamadoshi]

Hi, as somebody from Japanese servers, no, we cannot do this content yet with randoms ^^;
I worked hard to get to level 20, I exchanged my certification, and I looked into a guide on how to find the portals.
I was disappointed when it was completely ignored. After 2 days, it continues to be an ignored content even when the red moon weather shows every 30 minutes and most people are at level 20.
The problem is that Discord channels do not particularly exist in the Japanese community. While there are some, it is extremely hard to find one, or one that is able to function at all.
That is not even including the strictness of "gold farming". the requirement is phantom job "Cannoneer" at level 3 or higher, level 20 required to 3-5 pulls enemies and "quick as possible" using cannoneer as 7 other members.

In order for me to even be able to do any FATEs is "make a decision between fates", even when the Fate is 0% completed and I am main-tanking as the first pull of the boss fight, the Fate is finished after my 3rd combo skill.
The contribution of each fate is too weak for this reason as it considers me who pulled the FATE boss as "silver achievement" to earn the full credit, so it is a wasted effort to even try get a hit in (it is almost impossible).
I tried to do this content on an American character, and I had a lot fun. I was shocked fates actually have a lot mechanics, it was amazing I was able to die from them. (I felt relieved and human again) I was able to breathe.
In Japanese servers, it does not seem like you have room to "breathe", going back to forked towers, : What is so different from this content to previous content? Is it too hard to even try?
I wanted to go in blind, to not be spoiled, but it looks like I am forced to spoil myself? I would like to know in case

[RenegadeInferno]

1. People find they have to solo DR in many cases. I've seen people complain about this for years, even on Aether.

I just use PF to get a 5-8/8.
The ONLY issue with DR in my book is the 10min wait time AFTER sitting in PF for between 5-30mins.
Got an 8/8? Cool, in you go. It shouldn't require the full duty cap of players to let you in, not anymore.
With 8/8 it may make it easier to match with DF, I don't know.

2. People on the EU data centers were saying for years (on these forums) that they were struggling with getting a party for CLL.

Can't say I've ever had an issue getting a group for CLL/Dal.

[Kyuushi]

I just got in a group to try the forked tower and this has been one of the worst experiences I've had in this game. Not because of the actual fight. We got to around 10% enrage on the first boss and were about to go for the kill...and that's were the problem lies. That 10% enrage was on the 3rd attempt and at that point we didn't have enough instance time left to try another time. We tried to get another instance with all 48 people in together for almost 2 hours but it didn't work and then people just gave up. Why is there so much friction in trying to do this raid? BA was like this also sure but at least BA had a 144 player cap on its instances. Not to mentioned they took a step forward in how they designed these fights with Bozja and that worked very well comparatively.

I just don't get who this content is for. The level of difficulty is made for an organized group of players playing together but the instances punish these groups by not allowing them to get in the same instances... If you're forcing the content to be done with a group of unorganized randoms the level of difficulty should be Castrum/Dalriada where you can pretty much get trough it by just blinding pushing through. Instead this raid has actual enrages, mechanics that requires specific organized positioning and even resurrections restriction. The main issue is that the difficulty isn't even the problem. It's that they're forcing 48 player groups who want to try the content to play instance roulette just to even get in. It's like if every time you wanted to do a savage reclear, when your party finally fills you flip a coin and if it's heads, you can't enter the raid that day.

[Yodada]

Weird to brag about griefing, but ok. They'll just leave you on the ground and won't raise.

I dont mind delevelling. Its going to be fun ride showing how creatively bankrupt Creative Studio III and their incompetence for producing and designing content is *Shruge*

[TaleraRistain]

Honestly this seems like this may be their design to counter the "only premade" type of thinking but then why even bring that back at all? CLL and Dalriada worked nicely so now they're backpedaling.

[Bunyon]

I was so surprised to hear that you need to join a discord to do this?? Are we going back to Eureka??? Bozja had a ton of content that anyone could just join and do together. Delubrium had two difficulties and allowed you to queue at any time, and now this one you have to make get into a call, wait a ton of time for the instance to even appear and from what I see even then people have trouble getting everyone in there? And it's the only dungeon for a patch cycle that already feels unbelievably long.

I really have to echo the sentiment of "who is this for" because holy shit it is not for me. I don't want to join a FFXIV discord, fuck that, much less to repeatedly grind anything. And I'm fine with hard content existing, it's just weird that there is no middle ground.

[Voidmage]

They most likely looked at the data and saw that BA and DRS were more enduring than CLL, Dalriada and DR. Because while people struggle to get parties for CLL, Dalriada and DR, the discords have still been doing BA and DRS regularly.

Delibrum normal is still done regularly in PF every week because the system is failure proof.
You queue for it and after a certain time is over you WILL get in even if the player numbers aren’t met.

Forked tower is the only thing I heavily dislike.
You don’t find enough players in the zone, you have to use a currency in a specific spot at a specific time and the tower itself also seems to be pretty tough with the rezzing limit.

Right now that thing is pure streamer content where people like Xenos or Arthas can easily amass enough people and have fun doing it blind while the normal player struggles to even get in and has to wait till a Discord with raid guides is out.
Fun right?

It’s a gigantic failure on SE part and I am baffled why they didn’t use the Bozja approach here (even CLL would have been better) or even just implement forked tower as part of the zone itself which you can enter with a team at any time.
For me the whole thing seems like yet another content just made for their beloved big hardcore content creators who can’t go half a patch without a tailormade thing for them and I am honestly getting very annoyed by that.

If Forked tower will be needed for the story progression in the future the feedback will be disastrous.

It tried to get in about 15 times now and never had enough people willing to go in.
I am very close of giving up on the whole thing.

[brinn12]

I wonder how they tested this content. Having a premade instance for developers is way too convenient. Surely they knew the same conditions wouldn't apply in the actual MMO, right?

I'm just hoping it's not going to be required for story progression. Yet another issue that highlights the need for active community managers on these forums. The worst part is knowing it'll take weeks to communicate with the people behind development.