Difficult experience in Forked Tower – a reminder to respect public content

[Cyrtip]

>"I want to complete the forked tower, content that is impossible to run ad-hoc because it requres savage level coordination from 1/3 (minimum - will need ~2/3 for a smooth run) of an entire OC instance full of people of random game skill, tower knowledge, jobs levelled, pjobs levelled, willingness to communicate, and interest in the tower itself"
>Make absolutely zero plans Friday night so I actually have the time to enter the content two. whole. times.
>Make discord post "Progging final boss, friday night, 7:00 to 12:00, sign up here"
>Spend two hours spreadsheeting 200 responses with a huge variety of jobs and phantom jobs unlocked into 6 teams of 2 tanks, 2 healers, 1 melee, 1 ranged, 1 caster, and 1 anydps, with the 48 man alliance having 2+ ph. chemists, 3+ ph. knights (all playing tank), 2+ ph. rangers, 2+ ph. thieves, 2+ ph. geomancers, 2+ ph. time mages, 2+ ph. bards, 1+ ph. oracle (most of these phantom jobs needs to be max level, and you can not change phantom job in the tower, so they all need to be different players. there is also a raise restriction, so if one of these players dies a fourth time they are dead permanently and we need a backup)

>Friday's finally here
>30 minutes waiting for the parties to fill
>30 minutes waiting for replacement(s) because not all of the 48 show up, so now we need to find someone else who can fill their phantom job and tank/dps/healer role
>60 minutes trying to get all 6 parties in the same 72 player instance
>30 minutes waiting for red sky
>5 more minutes waiting for the portal to activate
>but wait, a player who has never set foot in the forked tower before has appeared on the platform before activation!
>"hey, could you step off of the platform please. we're a full tower party on the final boss' enrage and just spent 2+ hours all trying to get here, this is content that can *not* be done blind or uncoordinated, one person can wipe the whole raid in <5s"
>they dont
>the 1/49 chance they dont get in as opposed to any of the people in your group who set aside an entire night for this and have been waiting two hours to play the game, unsurprisingly, doesnt pan out
>10+ more minutes on the starter platform in tower trying to figure out what role we're now missing, and who needs to swap to what job/phantom job/party to make the attempt work

now enter one of the following
>they wipe an alliance to the hallways mega trap
>they wipe an alliance to the other hallways mega trap
>they wipe the raid on snowballs
>they wipe 1/3 of the raid with a line aoe snipe a la Nier's alliances (this mech happens multiple times)
>they wipe the raid on fire towers (6 opportunities)
>they wipe an alliance to a bridges mega trap (there are 3 of these)
>...
you get the point, and those are only some of the ways that they can instantly doom the entire group in the first half of the raid, not including things like killing just enough that we fail the next body check or die to enrage, or they kill the same person so many times that not only can said person not play anymore, the whole raid has to quit at bridges, because we needed them alive with XYZ phantom job

tl;dr
what was Square thinking with the entry conditions for this one

i don't think the discord hate is warranted, Square made this problem, players are just trying to use every tool at their disposal to make it remotely possible
however killing intentionally is bad
not interacting at all is freedom of association

[SeriousPan]

There's a fair few problems with Forked Tower and I'm a bit disheartened to see people hating on people who organise runs on Discord to try to get clears, the tank buster murdering fool not withstanding. "Leeching" and "Sniping" aside, I don't think it's that elitist to want to try to organise the runs as smoothly as possible with Discord. Someone in this thread was commenting on how people don't want to communicate in their MMO but doesn't joining discord group and meeting people there count for much? Either way CBU3 screwed the pooch big time and made so many blocks to an experience that can be organised properly via text chat that I think people are overlooking.

The fights and the hallways after them have very low time limits. Stopping to explain to each person, via text, the mechanics so they don't obliterate everyone in their group takes time. If this is pugging like people want it to be right now then they also need to spend more time making sure everyone can understand the instructions be it because of experience, language barriers and trying to find out who has what job. The amount of time you get in each part of FT is deceptively short for the amount of text chat communication needed because CBU3 just wanted to add timer stress onto everything else as well? Ridiculous.

I wish this content could be easily puggable and people wanting to do it blind had that opportunity. Doing content blind like new raids is half the fun of this game for me but CBU3 forgot what kind of game they were making content for apparently. Considering this is AFTER the lessons learned from BA I'm quite disappointed in the repeated mistake. CBU3 released content that created unnecessary friction for this games community with punishing timers, annoying entry systems and wipes that cause significantly lost time and now tensions are high. I hate that we're all at each others throats because of these ignorant design choices.

[Aravell]

I think the people who present the situation as everyone having an equal chance to enter the tower so "snipers" aren't "sniping" at all are misrepresenting the situation because someone who hasn't tried going in the tower wouldn't know how easy it is to secure yourself a spot as a solo player.

The system works that people with more ciphers placed have a higher chance to enter. So, as a solo player, you can just walk up to a pavillion with over 40 people there and toss in 5 ciphers, which would essentially secure you a spot outright. Most organisers would at most ask the 48 people to put in 3 ciphers, if they wanted to force you with your 5 ciphers out of their run, all 48 of them have to then toss in 6 ciphers each, which is kind of ridiculous to ask so many people to do.

[Ajisaii]

If SE catered to raiders, the jobs wouldn't be this braindead.

They gutted black mage for raiders btw they literally admitted it publicly it's funny you people think its for the casuals or the people who play their job wrong no matter what

[ChrysOCE]

I think the people who present the situation as everyone having an equal chance to enter the tower so "snipers" aren't "sniping" at all are misrepresenting the situation because someone who hasn't tried going in the tower wouldn't know how easy it is to secure yourself a spot as a solo player.

The system works that people with more ciphers placed have a higher chance to enter. So, as a solo player, you can just walk up to a pavillion with over 40 people there and toss in 5 ciphers, which would essentially secure you a spot outright. Most organisers would at most ask the 48 people to put in 3 ciphers, if they wanted to force you with your 5 ciphers out of their run, all 48 of them have to then toss in 6 ciphers each, which is kind of ridiculous to ask so many people to do.

TBH that's an issue with CBU3, not solo players. As much as I dislike the whole concept of the discords "owning" this content, the real issue with with CBU3 making it this way. So, just as much as people want to say "dont hate on the discords", the same goes the other way, don't hate on players who enter to experience FT, as it is designed to be done so. All of this is on CBU3, noone else.

[jumps004]

This content was supposed to be fun, something a large portion of the player base could do. It should have been a CLL or Dalriada or come with two versions like Delubrum Reginae and its Savage version, because right now a tiny, basically insignificant, and niche portion of the playerbase are the only ones getting to experience it at all. It is creating so much animosity to the point it is spawning petty arguments like the ones littering this thread.

CBU3 designed actively hostile to the game content with this. I know a lot of people like arguing just for the sake of arguing, but people shouldn't be turning on each other for this content in the first place.

We should be getting this issue that should never have existed in the first place noticed by CBU3. I really hope they have noticed by now.

[Aravell]

TBH that's an issue with CBU3, not solo players. As much as I dislike the whole concept of the discords "owning" this content, the real issue with with CBU3 making it this way. So, just as much as people want to say "dont hate on the discords", the same goes the other way, don't hate on players who enter to experience FT, as it is designed to be done so. All of this is on CBU3, noone else.

I think everyone here can agree that actively dropping a tankbuster on a random player just because they're not in your group is a bad thing and is reportable, but it's valid to have some annoyance towards the solo player who took the place of one of your organised team (since you can take upwards of an hour to even get into the same instance with everyone), especially when said solo player can very easily (with no cost to them) leave the instance and try their luck in another one, maybe they get lucky in another instance and the organised team there only has 47 because someone went AFK and got kicked out, who knows?

Either way, solo players are free to enter the content as it is public and discords are not the devil, most of the issues come directly from how the content is designed, which is purely on the shoulders of the dev team.

[Supersnow845]

actually SE already put rules down for this in the BA era because of people who were joining BA and leaving immediately to grief groups.

if you leave the content immediately its considered griefing and is reportable! FT/BA work different so leaving right when you enter cause you dont like who you are with is a reportable offense.

dang this thread blew up while i was at work. 17 pages and counting?!

That was explicitly designed to counter a very narrow issue of griefing which centred around people getting enough people together to take portals then leave immediately with no intention of ever doing BA specifically to waste spots and mess up the scaling of BA for those trying to prog it. That’s literally the opposite problem to what’s occurring here where the people leaving want to do the content

Leaving FT immediately even refunds your cipher so it’s explicitly designed to allow you to leave at the start

Don’t twist a very narrow part of BA’s original problems to pretend that if you get into Forked with other people they are obligated to attempt it otherwise it’s reportable

[Musashidon]

That was explicitly designed to counter a very narrow issue of griefing which centred around people getting enough people together to take portals then leave immediately with no intention of ever doing BA specifically to waste spots and mess up the scaling of BA for those trying to prog it. That’s literally the opposite problem to what’s occurring here where the people leaving want to do the content

Leaving FT immediately even refunds your cipher so it’s explicitly designed to allow you to leave at the start

Don’t twist a very narrow part of BA’s original problems to pretend that if you get into Forked with other people they are obligated to attempt it otherwise it’s reportable

so you are mad now that the rule works against you it doesn't count? its great to see people immediately 180 when something that worked for them works against them.

its pretty obvious if people leave immediately they had no plans to do the content, so my answer stays the same its how the content works its your risk if people decide to leave immediatly and risk someone reporting you.

[Supersnow845]

so you are mad now that the rule works against you it doesn't count? its great to see people immediately 180 when something that worked for them works against them.

its pretty obvious if people leave immediately they had no plans to do the content, so my answer stays the same its how the content works its your risk if people decide to leave immediatly and risk someone reporting you.

I’m sorry like what does this comment even mean. I’m not angry about anything. I’m telling you that twisting the BA scaling griefing system to pretend like leaving forked because someone messed up assigned groups is reportable is straight up wrong

These people explicitly wanted to do the content, they just wanted to do it on their own terms. You can’t force them to bring you along under threat of the TOS simply because you zoned in with them, that isn’t what that narrow branch of the TOS was ever about

Having 10 people zone in then immediately leave with the express intention to mess up the scaling is not remotely the same as people deciding to back out because they lost valuable member spots to randoms. You aren’t entitled to their time and you can’t force them to carry you under threat of the TOS