So how is everyone feeling about Occult Crescent now that it’s been a few days?

[SoCalKingg]

I would encourage anyone who is considering doing the Forked Tower to give it a try. I understand the “I don’t want to join a discord to do this content” mentality because I used to be the exact same way, but it’s really the only way to do the content the way it was designed.

16+ random people meeting up and going into the Tower without any type of coordination is going to lead to a very quick wipe. To clear the content and maximize the rewards, you need the right combination of Thief/Geos/Time Mages/Bards/Chemists/Knights/etc. You will never get this without coordination prior to entry.

The good thing is that some of the discords have a lot of really cool/friendly people in them who are willing to teach the fights and optimize the group’s composition so you actually have a chance of progging/clearing. They will do callouts in voice that are meant to help teach and minimize mistakes. In this content, 1-2 people botching certain mechanics can absolutely wipe all 48 people and send everyone packing. The point of the callouts/voice is to minimize the risk. Even with the callouts, there are still times where 1-2 people will derp and wipe everyone. When this happens, it’s heavily frowned upon to criticize the person who made the mistake, at least in the groups I’ve been in.

I can also sympathize with people who aren’t thrilled when one of their team members doesn’t make it into the raid because a random person walked up and put in a cipher. I have never seen 16+ random people walk up and put a cipher in so the only way you’re getting in without being a part of the coordinated group is walking up and sniping someone’s spot. It’s not fun to try and get 48 people into the same instance, wait 35 minutes for the weather change, and then lose people who may be playing critical roles in the raid to random people who walk up and don’t want to coordinate.

Last night we had a run where the raid leader didn’t get in (despite putting in 2 ciphers), the person who does all the callouts, and it was just a bummer. The coordinated groups are also dealing with griefers who are intentionally joining these discords to spy on times/DCs for the runs, trying to snipe spots for them with the sole purpose of trying to agitate people in say chat, get them to respond negatively, then report them and try and get them banned when they talk back.

The bottom line is that SE royally botched the entry system for this raid. If 48 people want to get together and coordinate a run without worrying about people sniping spots, they should be able to. If people don’t want to do any prep/coordination and just want to randomly queue in and see what happens, they should be able to, but those people should all be matched together. Make it to where 48 people can queue in together and also make it to where randoms can queue in and match with other randoms. The current system is awful as designed and is only going to do more harm than good.

[Granyala]

I would encourage anyone who is considering doing the Forked Tower to give it a try. I understand the “I don’t want to join a discord to do this content” mentality because I used to be the exact same way, but it’s really the only way to do the content the way it was designed.

Sorry but I am a retired raider for some years now. I have no illusions of grandeur: no longer do I have the skills or reflexes to deal with this twitch-action content (the CE's made that abundantly clear to me ._. ) and I most certainly will NOT subject myself to random people flaming me to death because I have made 1 tiny mistake and wiped the group.

Nu-Uh!

[TaleraRistain]

I would encourage anyone who is considering doing the Forked Tower to give it a try. I understand the “I don’t want to join a discord to do this content” mentality because I used to be the exact same way, but it’s really the only way to do the content the way it was designed.

That's why the last thing we should be doing is joining these Discords and encouraging them to continue doing this with completion numbers.

We got tome relics as a second step because they looked at how many people completed Mandervilles because it was just tomes. They threw a bone to those who didn't like tomes with just the first step. They care about completion numbers and pay attention to those statistics. So if we really oppose this design, we should shun it.

[Yodada]

snip

Alone for this BS we should encourage more people to "snipe" slots, alone to f*** over those Discords. This kind of entitlement that others are dictating how to play needs to stop.

[Supersnow845]

Alone for this BS we should encourage more people to "snipe" slots, alone to f*** over those Discords. This kind of entitlement that others are dictating how to play needs to stop.

Whatever your opinion of the discords is sniping spots doesn’t benefit anyone because the discords aren’t stoping you from pugging puggable content they are trying to organise people through content that’s explicitly NOT puggable by randoms. You aren’t sending any message to the discords other than being annoying because you sniping doesn’t change their position because this content isn’t puggable. Square also doesn’t care because they won’t even notice this type of interaction because it doesn’t flag anything

If you hate the discords that’s fine but the problem is the entry requirements, not the discords feeling like they are the only way to make it viable for people

[Router]

Whatever your opinion of the discords is sniping spots doesn’t benefit anyone because the discords aren’t stoping you from pugging puggable content they are trying to organise people through content that’s explicitly NOT puggable by randoms. You aren’t sending any message to the discords other than being annoying because you sniping doesn’t change their position because this content isn’t puggable. Square also doesn’t care because they won’t even notice this type of interaction because it doesn’t flag anything

If you hate the discords that’s fine but the problem is the entry requirements, not the discords feeling like they are the only way to make it viable for people

Square makes the dumbest systems imaginable and the big brain geniuses on the forums start complaining about other players, like they're the ones who coded the stupid ass entry requirements. Half the posts make me think that they don't even care about doing the content and they just want to complain about Discord servers.

[TaleraRistain]

Alone for this BS we should encourage more people to "snipe" slots, alone to f*** over those Discords. This kind of entitlement that others are dictating how to play needs to stop.

That's punishing the wrong people. The fault for why Discords think they're entitled to claim this content is because SE's design allows it. This is entirely at SE's feet. We don't need to bring in more toxicity toward each other. SE isn't going to see the numbers of people in a Discord. They will see completion numbers.

[Stasya]

That's punishing the wrong people. The fault for why Discords think they're entitled to claim this content is because SE's design allows it. This is entirely at SE's feet. We don't need to bring in more toxicity toward each other. SE isn't going to see the numbers of people in a Discord. They will see completion numbers.

Are discords that "think they are entitled to claim this content" in this room with us right now?

It is not casual delubrum normal raid where you can just go blind into trap and get ressed afterwards wtih 100% chance of clearing even at giga slow pace if you have bad players in instance. You need specific amount of specific phantom jobs to clear whole raid. You need at least 6 tanks just for tank busters etc. No it is not even 4th savage floor grinding teeth week1 in pf type of a content, you just need a lot of preparation to enter.

Their own design creates an issue where sniper can mostly just grief raid out of tank/healer and some phantom job (since sniper is entitled to play phantom sam you know). Sniper can also just wipe entire raid either for fun (trap) or oops i only watched first boss guide. Not to mention that getting entire raid in instance is pain for no reason.

If anything, "casuals" should storm square everywhere in internet for no normal raid version and no 48 man alliance pf system for forked tower. ( just the latter tbh would have solved instance prog and allowed EVERYONE prog this content already)