Please make Forked Tower more Accessible and easier like Bozja

[Supersnow845]

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

[technole]

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.

[Mawlzy]

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

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

[Sepher]

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.

[SkankyRoe]

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

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.

[Daralii]

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.

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.

[Khryseis_Astra]

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.

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

[Kissune]

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.

[Kissune]

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

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.

[CVXIV]

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

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