Please make Forked Tower more Accessible and easier like Bozja

[Mawlzy]

Nah, I'mma be real, I think they can make a normal mode version for FT, but the current version needs to stay additionally. Furthermore, we as a community should have a no-tolerance policy towards disruptive behavior like sniping. FFXIV has its "toxic positivity" rep for a reason, unfortunately. We shouldn't tolerate players intentionally undermining the great efforts hosts go through to actually progress these fates. Killing snipers with TB is against ToS, but you should absolutely just leave them on the floor, as they can easily wipe you past boss 1. Unintentionally stumbling into tower is fine, the issue arises when people get told in /yell or /tell to please step off the platform because there's a 48man premade and then ignore it. That doesn't deserve coddling.

I understand where you're coming from, but to pay a sub for this game and then be ordered not to engage in content by a player cabal is not going to go down well.

SE created yet another completely predictable problem. When the director talked about wanting "more friction," I didn't realize he meant friction between players.

[All_Nonsense]

idc about difficulty - I'll just smash my face into it until I get a clear.

It's just baffling to me that CBU3 is a development team with over 10 years of experience working on one of the largest MMO's of all time, and they still do not understand enough about their game or its playerbase to make a decent raid.

They claim that you only need 16 people to enter forked tower, but you are immediately body checked by the first boss. So 24 if you're struggling. It was designed and intended to be run with 48 players - 2/3 of the number of players who can even enter the instance in the first place, and this relying on other players to do a support fate too. It was already difficult enough trying to queue in Eureka with 144 players per instance so doing this with only 72 and making it some lottery system in addition to an extremely short and random weather event is honestly just incompetent at this point. idk, I can't find a defense for them. They just don't know how to make content anymore and the game is going to languish over time because of it. It's a shame really, but what can you do when the developers won't listen? The same thing we always do - wait for the game to die as a result and move on to what's next.

There's players who want the player population to drop back to Heavensward numbers and are excited that everything is bad right now. For you few who remain at that point in time, I wish you nothing but another Alexander: Gordias content experience.

[Novarius]

Honestly having done the content myself (well up to Twin Bridges at least) I can say that it's a great raid that is severely hampered by the needlessly punitive entry requirements. I find it utterly baffling that the developers would silo off the crown jewel of the Occult Crescent in such a fashion that many players won't be able to experience or enjoy it without joining a Discord group, but then again this isn't the first time the devs have made a questionable design choice and it probably won't be the last. The way that they have created this convoluted entry process seems utterly tone deaf and it seems like they have not listened to the feedback they have received about previous Field Exploration content like Eureka/Bozja especially in regards to how positively the 48-man queuing system for Delubrum Reginae Savage (DRS) was received. There are two potential solutions that I think could make this content work better as currently both casual and hardcore players are dissatisfied with the current entry system:

1) Keep the current entry requirements but remove the resurrection restriction and don't kick the 48-man alliance out if there's a wipe, let them try from the previous checkpoint if they fail and give the instance a 90 or 120-minute timer. This would make the instance a lot more PUG friendly, making players more willing to give the content a go without diminishing the difficulty of the fights. It would make it less of an issue if random players get into the instance because if they make a mistake it can be easily fixed and the Phantom Job distribution could be reshuffled (maybe also remove the restriction of changing Phantom Jobs unless combat has started).

2) Keep the current difficulty of the resurrection restriction and wipe = kicked from instance in place, but let Forked Tower Blood (Savage) be queued into via a 48-man queue option from outside the Occult Crescent instance. In this case a Forked Tower Blood (Normal) raid should be made available in the instance with no resurrection restriction, no kick on wipe and maybe reduced personal responsibility compared to the Savage version. Again this way more casual players would have more content to get stuck into and complete the story of the South Horn and more hardcore players would be able to access the duty more easily so that the more punishing aspects of the raid don't sting as much as accessing it would be a much less complicated affair.

I don't expect there to be any changes in the upcoming Live Letter as I know the devs can be slow to implement feedback (it's like the game is like an oil tanker that takes a long time to turn around if it's going in the wrong direction), but I'd really like them to look at this soon because Forked Tower has currently created a situation where everyone loses, it's created needless friction between players and fostered hostility and toxicity within what should be a really enjoyable capstone piece of content, the players deserve better Yoshi-P...

[Infindox]

(maybe also remove the restriction of changing Phantom Jobs unless combat has started).

Wait you can't change your phantom jobs once you are in there??? And they expected this to be puggable?

[Novarius]

You can change Phantom Jobs on the starting platform for the instance, but once you jump down from there you get a debuff which prevents you from changing Phantom Job at any other point in the instance... this is why it is critical to bring certain jobs to Forked Tower as it is impossible to progress without the vast majority of them... the devs probably expected people to hold off attempting the tower until they had most jobs maxed but this conflicts with their design choice to allow entry at Knowledge Level 20 irrespective of the Phantom Jobs a player has currently mastered... and you know how people are they see a shiny new toy and they want to play with it, it's not their fault that they don't know the sheer level of co-ordination/planning that is needed for a run to succeed... Additionally, another oversight is that a minimum of 16 players can enter Forked Tower but the first boss has a body check that will kill you without 24 players...

[Kuroka]

Its just them boing sadistic. I had the joy to be in an tower instance today as they were in there, 1-2 groups were gold farming, we others had no fun doing most stuff - for the first time ive seen the demon fate fail lol
Idk it feels it doesnt scale quite right with the players being at the tower...

[FuturePastNow]

I've been in a few instances where people were in the Tower, one of them was doing pretty well, they at least made it to the last boss. I got to kill the boss that spawns in the zone. That was at least different- the boss itself has very simple and repetitive mechanics so it's uninteresting by itself but it was something to do.

[TaleraRistain]

2) Keep the current difficulty of the resurrection restriction and wipe = kicked from instance in place, but let Forked Tower Blood (Savage) be queued into via a 48-man queue option from outside the Occult Crescent instance. In this case a Forked Tower Blood (Normal) raid should be made available in the instance with no resurrection restriction, no kick on wipe and maybe reduced personal responsibility compared to the Savage version. Again this way more casual players would have more content to get stuck into and complete the story of the South Horn and more hardcore players would be able to access the duty more easily so that the more punishing aspects of the raid don't sting as much as accessing it would be a much less complicated affair.

Honestly this one is probably the better option because it lets groups get in there and prog. I daresay we would see some PF groups pop up. Part of the issue with Discords is that we don't really *need* them anymore. We have strat videos from content creators. We pass around raidplans. We have sites like wtfdig. The raiding community is able to come together and while we might have conflicting strats at first, we generally can all figure out what we need to do and we'd be willing to beat our heads against the content to clear it. But there's not really a chance of that because of the entry system.

Its just them boing sadistic. I had the joy to be in an tower instance today as they were in there, 1-2 groups were gold farming, we others had no fun doing most stuff - for the first time ive seen the demon fate fail lol
Idk it feels it doesnt scale quite right with the players being at the tower...

I had an instance with people doing Forked and yeah, Calamity failed. There just wasn't enough manpower for it. So these entry requirements not only suck for people trying to prog the instance or people that want to do it but don't want to be forced to join a Discord but also suck for the people left trying to do normal things in the zones.

[Amarande]

It's a shame really, but what can you do when the developers won't listen? The same thing we always do - wait for the game to die as a result and move on to what's next.

There's players who want the player population to drop back to Heavensward numbers and are excited that everything is bad right now. For you few who remain at that point in time, I wish you nothing but another Alexander: Gordias content experience.

We're almost there already, the wailing and screams coming from within the walls of Savage this tier already remind me of the horror stories of Midas at least ...

(We're talking I know maybe a small handful of souls at most that are past M6S, and that's among old and new friends that used to clear Savage tiers on the reg. And we're getting the Live Letter for the odd patch THIS WEEK. Yeah ... last time that was commonplace pacing was indeed Midas to my understanding. Hopefully hunts in 7.3 won't be a complete mess resemblant of the original tier that The Hunt came out during as a result ...)

the devs probably expected people to hold off attempting the tower until they had most jobs maxed but this conflicts with their design choice to allow entry at Knowledge Level 20 irrespective of the Phantom Jobs a player has currently mastered... and you know how people are they see a shiny new toy and they want to play with it, it's not their fault that they don't know the sheer level of co-ordination/planning that is needed for a run to succeed...

Don't forget the pervasive player culture basically twisting your arm to fomo rush content these days if you actually want to get through any of it with some of your sanity intact (and who will frequently helpfully tell you "well, you should've rushed it ... maybe next patch" if you dare to try to take your time to power up first).

The janky entry method slows this down a bit for the foray raids, but the mindset gets increasingly fixed into people's heads with each passing tier and taints every new piece of content everforward, and I have come up with no effective long term way of solving it ...

[forksapien]

Yes please make it possible to join Forked tower like the Castrum in Bozja South or Dalriada in Zadnor.