Please make Forked Tower more Accessible and easier like Bozja

[AyumiCosplayGlam]

Christ, it's like Chaotic all over again with Square-Enix trying to create a "bridge" between casual and hardcore players, but that just made the chasm even wider.

Now people are just actively shoving each other down the cliff face.

To be fair, the problem is still the fact that Square Enix's perception of what midcore is, is flawed. On top of that, they also assume that every player wants to improve. Which could not be farther from the truth. The reality is that most of the people in FF14 are just chilling.
They enjoy the game for its story, shiny bossfights and overall casual approach and they are happy as long as there is something to do, something shiny to get, and the hardest difficulty they ever want or need is probably around Critical Engagements level,if they improve naturally, then thats good. Shoveling way harder content into the game than they are used to and baiting them to complete it with TT cards and hairstyles will achieve nothing but pour gasoline on fire.
It is genuinely not hard to satisfy these players but they utterly failed to do so in Dawntrail in every department.

The issue was already highlighted with Chaotic and how much people detested it, it should have raised every alarm bells they have available. Sadly however Forked Tower follows the same logic as Chaotic and people hate it for the same reason. Its battle content that people would do because it is interesting, the rewards are there as incentive, but its just too punishing for the average player, hence barely anybody bothers with it and the content dies weeks if not days after its release when the sweats get bored of it.

Square wont fix this, if they wanted to, they could have course corrected long ago after the reception of Chaotic, and Forked Tower would be a puggable alliance raid with a harder difficulty available for some additional rewards or higher drop rate.
But it isn't, so whatever is the next Forked Tower, it will use the same dogwater logic, too punishing fight, complicated entry, tempting rewards and more tumbleweeds than players inside it after week 2.

[Alahard]

Oh chaotic was peanuts compared to forked. Atleast in Chaotic a 'casual' could actually show up unnanounced in an alliance PF, and not grief the alliance to shit. Look up a guide, prog the content as much as they want and get better at it.

With Forked, all that is undone. You can NOT get into the instance in the first place, you can not practice, you can not gain confidence. There is zero chance you are going to clear it so there is also 0 incentive to engage with it which further cements the gatekeeping behind schedueled discord runs full of hardcore sweats.

Also I say 'casual' but that goes for anyone from casual to midcore and savage raiders. The raid itself isn't that hardcore. The retarded entry system just turns it into a hardcore fiesta.

Ironically the community's solution to organizing Chaotic actually makes it really good midcore content, and a good steeping stone. The RADAR discord has been able to split groups up into different levels, everyone relatively knows it's hard content, and there are plenty of veterans actually helping players actually learn. It's gotten to the point that I have recomended players new to raiding to stick with the any prog groups ( after some early ex kills) until they get a hang of things, and they have all enjoyed it. It's just that the community mostly saw the week 1 hardcore raiders go at it and get a bit dicey in pf ( when they should have really made their own premades to avoid "casuals"), but after the community solved the organization, even hardcore raiders can easily organize hardcore only reclear groups. The second chaotic raid won't be as bad on release just because there is an established system.

Hey look, being able to queue with who you want and when you want actually fixes the problem over time. Who knew.

However, Square just had to make sure that absolutely no organization could be done to ensure you can reasonably join in with like minded people. Or heck, even join in with your friends sometimes.

Why?

How is it that they just decided to do a entry system, that is more infurating than the actual instance?
FYI Yoshi P-> if there is a chance your friend cant join you despite the fact you both queued up, you failed.

[Amarande]

I'm sitting in one of the discords and it looks like things are shaping up nicely organizing there, but there's caveats.

What I'm especially worried about is the statics, I see at least one static forming (explicitly stating it is a full static and will not be sourcing pugs unless absolutely necessary) that wants to claim FT for a datacenter's prime time for three days a week.

What of the rest of the datacenter? We're supposed to just accept that one set of group leads owns the instance for those nights for the ENTIRE DATACENTER? "Go make your own group" is a lot less viable of a solution here (at best, even with multiple instances likely being here to stay due to the smaller limit, now you've got multiple 48's hammering the instance servers trying to each get their whole group in when just one has a tough enough time).

PUGs, even organized ones, are supposed to just have to run during work hours or complete degen late nights and that's it because statics will claim all the prime time? (Mind you, I DO play degen late nights but still!).

And then there's the question of whether we can skip the +2 gear or if, given that Blood came out this early in the cycle (unlike BA which was at the very end), Arcanaut +2 is going to be a mandatory progression stage for North Horn gearing which means everyone has to manage to get in or be palpably undergeared in 7.55 ...

[Krojack]

I clear all current savage content with my static. I cleared Chaotic using PF and pugs over 50 times. There is no way I'm going to do this Tower content.

If using an external system, Discord in this case, is REQUIRED to get a a group together for in-game content then said content is a failure. Tower is the biggest failure in this game to date.

[Kuroka]

Even more as they had fixed that in Bozja lol

[FuturePastNow]

I'm sitting in one of the discords and it looks like things are shaping up nicely organizing there, but there's caveats.

What I'm especially worried about is the statics, I see at least one static forming (explicitly stating it is a full static and will not be sourcing pugs unless absolutely necessary) that wants to claim FT for a datacenter's prime time for three days a week.

What of the rest of the datacenter? We're supposed to just accept that one set of group leads owns the instance for those nights for the ENTIRE DATACENTER? "Go make your own group" is a lot less viable of a solution here (at best, even with multiple instances likely being here to stay due to the smaller limit, now you've got multiple 48's hammering the instance servers trying to each get their whole group in when just one has a tough enough time).

PUGs, even organized ones, are supposed to just have to run during work hours or complete degen late nights and that's it because statics will claim all the prime time? (Mind you, I DO play degen late nights but still!).

Bring your own ciphers and join them, they can't stop you. Get your friends to do the same. It's the design intent of the content.

[ACE135]

Bring your own ciphers and join them, they can't stop you. Get your friends to do the same. It's the design intent of the content.

If you do that and sneak you in the tower, the answer of the static most probably will be "we won't revive you" if you happen to die.

[Mawlzy]

If you do that and sneak you in the tower, the answer of the static most probably will be "we won't revive you" if you happen to die.

The approach advocated by a well-known streamer who presumably lobbied for this content and even he has criticisms.

[ovIm]

If you do that and sneak you in the tower, the answer of the static most probably will be "we won't revive you" if you happen to die.

Honest question here, and I don't mean to be an ass to statics trying their best at FT, since we are all victims of CS3's awful design here:
would that not theoretically fall under the "aiding the enemy" bit of the Prohibited Activities in Final Fantasy XIV? I'm fairly certain refusing to heal/resurrect people in the instance can be considered that, which would theoretically make not resurrecting people in FT a offense reportable to a GM.

I mean I don't want those kinds of reportings to happen, mind you. Players who want to join in an instance with their closed group exclusively should be able to do so. It's just a thought that just shot into my head.
Makes you wonder what exactly went through the head of the person who designed the FT entry requirements.

[Stasya]

If you do that and sneak you in the tower, the answer of the static most probably will be "we won't revive you" if you happen to die.

You want to gamble if a random person won't wipe whole raid just out of spite/not knowing mechanics?