Forked Tower is making me quit the game

[Voidmage]

Look, I am not arguing against a Normal version of this content or whatever else, I am arguing against the idea this content is fundamentally bad for requiring that extra layer of external organization, because it is precisely what I crave, a style of raid that sparsely exists in the game.

Which is fine because you have the same right to get your content as anyone else and are not wrong in thinking that FFxiv has a bit little in that regard.
The problem is that in this form with its entrance system it clearly doesn’t even want Discord (the tower doesn’t know what it wants.

The whole thing could have been mitigated with simply following DRS.
Have content for pugging and one version for heavy organization through Discord.

Right now the only thing I see in the zone is people having absolutely no interest in doing it at all because of all the talk around it.
Some of what I have seen is players who have just… given up or are like me and only do it begrudgingly in Discord without having fun at all.
Imo not even chaotic had downright broken players to this extent because there at least you could just use PF and people still had the hope of “our content will come in 7.3” just to be let down by SE again.

It’s probably just anectodal but I have never seen the more casual players that disappointed and let down like right now.

[CNitsah]

The worst is that it also alienate people that used to like that kind of content. Eureka and bozja were content made for everyone with more challenging option. OC only has interest if you plan to do FT. I spent hundreds, maybe thousands of hours in both Eureka and bozja. I'm at 30 hours in OC, 5 jobs maxed, and I don't see the point anymore. At this point, it's just sad.

This might be the worst error of 7.X patches. A lot of players that put their hope in that content have been told "This game is not for you anymore, even the content you were the most involved with is not for you". FFXIV won't die (too many whales/people using it for its mods/raiders fine with the state of the game), but its reputation can.

[Valence]

Honestly, given how it's designed like crap—light-years away from BA, which was already designed like ass back then—I seriously doubt it.
It's content doomed to die, just like Chaotic.

I'll hold you onto your word in an expansion or two.
But I'm not convinced this is going to stick as well as BA, because it's not a novelty like BA, and the mechanics inside look on savage level, which wasn't the case for BA, so this is going to drastically reduce accessibility and the amount of people ready to run it.

[IdleBlood]

Discord raid, nope. Toxicity allowed? Nope

[TaleraRistain]

It's a very different form of coordination found there, please read what I said, I value the player density and the process, and it is just a fact that it takes a lot more to wrangle 48 players together than it takes to wrangle 8

Well we're getting some conflicting information about the difficulty of this raid. I've seen people on these forums say they just had to mute themselves and listen to where to go in the Discord runs. I don't know if you do Savage, but you definitely can't just mute yourself and get told where to go. You have to actively engage and think and respond to mechanic triggers. If it's just knowing where to go, then if FT were able to be organized in PF and queued, that sounds like something that could be handled with macros and raidplans and sites like wtfdig that will tell you exactly where to go and when and you just study it ahead of time. We did that with Chaotic.

What's the aspect that it makes it something that absolutely needs Discord?

The one thing I've learned from the many threads related to CAR and FT is that I want absolutely nothing to do with the raiding community.

There are bad apples in every type of community but there are also some pretty chill people who raid. Even people who do PF for it. There are casual statics that are much more laid back about things. If you're ever curious, I'd look into one of those.

[Mawlzy]

It's a very different form of coordination found there, please read what I said, I value the player density and the process, and it is just a fact that it takes a lot more to wrangle 48 players together than it takes to wrangle 8.

You need to understand, I actively enjoy the Discord organization, specifically because it's something not found elsewhere in the game, only in these incredibly sparse raids.

Look, I am not arguing against a Normal version of this content or whatever else, I am arguing against the idea this content is fundamentally bad for requiring that extra layer of external organization, because it is precisely what I crave, a style of raid that sparsely exists in the game.

So the external organization is part of the appeal for you!? Do you work in HR?

I have now heard it all. And refer you to post #61.

[Nero-Voidstails]

I still think FT should be a raid you que in like DR in Bozja and what this community have with always using discord omg xx) once a content need discord it just mean it failed as a public content like it is

[Cyrtip]

What's the aspect that it makes it something that absolutely needs Discord?

From what I've seen clearing it a few times and entering 50+ times, mostly figuring out required phantom jobs, and getting enough people interested in the tower into one instance are the problems Discord/other forms of scheduling solve

At bare minimum, tower needs 24 people out of the 72 in the instance to even be clearable (bodychecks), and they need to be willing to communicate. For a comfy run, you need the full 48, and good luck getting 2/3ds of an instance of random players to be level 20, holding ciphers, and interested in the tower (Not to mention the various different prog points they'll no doubt be at)

And on top of that, required phantom jobs. Not only do you need 7+ different phantom jobs for different parts of the tower (you can not swap phantom job after the starter room), you need 2 or 3 each of a few of them.
To make matters even worse, you can't tell at a glance what phantom jobs the raid has. Because of this, most discord raid organizers make signup sheets on Google Forms so they can spreadsheet out what jobs and phantom jobs people are willing to play. It's not convenient to do, but it sure beats everyone having to type what theyre bringing in yell chat, then someone writing all of that down, then begging people who arent on a necessary pjob to swap to one (because you always end up needing something), nevermind the headache that is making sure each party is balanced, with 2tanks, a shield healer, a pure healer, a physranged, a melee, a caster, and an any dps (Most of these are just for a smooth run, but the raid does need 3+ tanks and 12+ interrupts to be clearable, also shield healers for raidwides).

If you could make 48-man PFs and instance directly in, the player count problem would vanish, and getting required phantom jobs via yell would be slightly easier because in alliance chat every message would also say your party number next to it (so we could easily see if we have a thief in A/B/C, and another in D/E/F) also, parties wouldnt have to say "I'm party A" "Why are we A?" "I claimed A, just remember it for mechanics..." when figuring out which party is which for positioning. That and PF leaders can control who gets in the PF, if someone joins a "Need oracle" slot and doesnt want to play oracle, kick. If they join a final boss clear party and have never set foot in the tower, kick. No more random players kicking someone from the premade out either (Bonus points if the person who didnt make it in was on a necessary phantom job).

Well we're getting some conflicting information about the difficulty of this raid.

Personally I would rate the difficulty of Forked Tower's mechanics as on the easy end of Dawntrail extremes. A majority of mechanics can just be called, the rest can be handled with a raidplan.
The real difficulty people are talking about when they say its savage level is the fact that while mechanics are easy Extreme-tier, all 48 players have to do them right. With 6x the player count of a raid, expect 6x the mistakes, and just like in extremes, one single mistake can kill the entire group
...That, and organizing takes a long time, waiting for tower respawn takes even more time, etc. etc. so you usually only end up getting one chance at the content every 2 hours (versus an extreme, where you can pull every other minute if you die early enough)

[VeyaAkemi]

What's the aspect that it makes it something that absolutely needs Discord?

It's legitimately just player density and all the implications that this density causes, at least in my eyes.

Let me try to explain my perspective on this... there is a wide gap between player skill in this game, right? from hypercasuals who struggle with normal dungeons, to people who only do normal dungeons, to early expac EX like EX1 and 2, to current expac EX like EX3 and 4, to Savage, to Ultimates, right? and the more people you add to the pot, the wider the range of skill in the group becomes, in terms of actual difficulty, I'd say the fights in FT are somewhere between EX2 and 3 in difficulty, but the problem lies not in the difficulty of the fight, it lies on making sure so many people know what to do and remember what to do, and in a way, it shares a similarity to statics that rely on Discord for a raid lead to call out mechanics, of which there are plenty out there, the callouts are being used to bridge those gaps in player skill, there is an added wrinkle of the corridors, which are legitimately very deadly, from traps to mobs that will one-shot a non-Tank with ease, if someone runs ahead, the raid lead can say "everyone stay back", and guarantee the other 22+themselves(since the corridors split) won't get blasted when the one idiot runs into a super trap, to as simple reminders as to switch sides when the Manticores do their arm slam attack.

Then you run into the next issue, and it's that because you have to go into OC, you start facing an issue of preparation, or more accurately a lack of it, think about it, for an Ultimate, you have to have: cleared the associated Savage raid to even unlock the instance and to meet an incredibly strict iLvl requirement that is BiS for this content or very very close, this puts even the attempt of an Ultimate significantly more strict while also creating expectations of how this is meant to be handled, comparatively, because the entry requirements for FT are so low, you literally only need Knowledge 20, it creates a deeper need for organization to make it work, you need to make sure everyone has the right Phantom Jobs, you need to make sure every party has a proper assortment of roles, and the most practical way to guarantee this is properly handled IS Discord or something similar to it.

If this content could be clearable with 8 and had an easier, out of OC entry requirement, it would absolutely be doable in PF, I'd argue it would be easy in PF even, by high end raider standards, but there are so many added wrinkles along the way that complicates the process far beyond that, and you could say that those wrinkles are design flaws, plenty of people already are, but they sum up to creating a very unique experience compared to literally every other content in the game, an experience that is found exactly in 3 raids across the entire game, and if that scratches a specific itch in your brain, which to me is the player density in itself, watching so many people sharing a common goal in a MMO makes me genuinely giddy, which is also why I adore Field Operations so much, then this is it, this is unquestionably what you want.

Hopefully I managed to communicate the point well enough, I feel I got a tad rambly there for a moment.

[Mawlzy]

There are bad apples in every type of community but there are also some pretty chill people who raid. Even people who do PF for it. There are casual statics that are much more laid back about things. If you're ever curious, I'd look into one of those.

I'm sure the raiding community includes many pleasant and helpful people.

Unfortunately, the last week or so we have had a procession of Discord raiders marching through the FT threads defending the vigilante "justice" they hand out, and expressing some of the most toxic sentiments I have heard in this game.

I don't want to be within 100 malms of those attitudes.