Forked Tower: Blood Needs A Normal Mode

[Fawkes]

"we believe the difficulty level overshot what players were expecting before release" is an absurd statement that tells me their battle content team needs a shorter leash

[Cyrtip]

Furthermore, we believe the difficulty level overshot what players were expecting before release.

The wording here leads me to believe it’s as I feared… not only was this another “oops it’s Savage” like CAR...

This isnt them saying "oops its savage"
They said "difficulty level overshot what players were expecting," or in other words, yet again, once again, another case of poor communication... at this point are we even surprised?

And on the topic of CAR, can anyone find the developers mentioning it was supposed to be extreme difficulty? I'm pretty sure we gaslit ourselves into believing "oops its savage" because we heard one single fan-translated line from an LL (If only LLs had official translation...).

Back before it was even announced, Yoshi-P said “I can’t go into too much detail yet, but I’m trying to create savage [content] that has 24 people" in the Japan Expo interview back in mid-July.

And then in his late August Gamescom interview, "in patch 7.1 there will be the 24-person savage content"

Even the LL digest says this about chaotic (while making no mention of extreme difficulty anywhere):

We estimate its mechanical difficulty is equivalent to the first fight of a Savage tier, or the second fight of a Savage tier when inter-team coordination is considered.

I'd say they were pretty spot on with their analysis of Chaotic's difficulty.
Now me saying all this doesn't mean you can't be dissatisfied with how FTB turned out, but saying they don't know how to balance content is wrong because pictomancer is a job, not content lmao. They designed FTB's mechanics exactly how they intended to, people just wanted something different.

[Mawlzy]

I'd say they were pretty spot on with their analysis of Chaotic's difficulty.
Now me saying all this doesn't mean you can't be dissatisfied with how FTB turned out, but saying they don't know how to balance content is wrong because pictomancer is a job, not content lmao. They designed FTB's mechanics exactly how they intended to, people just wanted something different.

I think think is probably correct, but leaves us with the conclusion that SE consistently designs content that is of no interest to the bulk of the player base.

Given we are also told there is a lack of "resources," it would seem this is a deliberate decision to keep one segment of the player base engaged, while being prepared to shed the rump.

[Fawkes]

And on the topic of CAR, can anyone find the developers mentioning it was supposed to be extreme difficulty? I'm pretty sure we gaslit ourselves into believing "oops its savage" because we heard one single fan-translated line from an LL (If only LLs had official translation...)

I don't have the quote from Yoshi-P but here's a post from the japanese thread about Dawntrail's difficulty, that references him saying Chaotic was supposed to be extreme but they made savage instead.

実際に滅は極程度の難易度で発注してたけど零式レベルになりました！そのままだします！ってやってますしね。
発注通りじゃないなら作り直させるべきだと思ったし、それでそのままお出しするならターゲット層も変わってくると思うんですけど、ディレクションどうなってるんでしょう。

[Khryseis_Astra]

This isnt them saying "oops its savage"
They said "difficulty level overshot what players were expecting," or in other words, yet again, once again, another case of poor communication... at this point are we even surprised?
…
Now me saying all this doesn't mean you can't be dissatisfied with how FTB turned out, but saying they don't know how to balance content is wrong because pictomancer is a job, not content lmao. They designed FTB's mechanics exactly how they intended to, people just wanted something different.

The more I think about the two the more it seems like FTB is more along the lines of what people were hoping for from CAR: an Alliance raid only bigger and more challenging, but instead we got Cloud. lol

Then in this instance, for OC, people were expecting more CLL, Dalriada, DRN/DRS for the field op content and instead got BA the sequel. Which feels like a backwards step in the entirely wrong direction.

So I think you’re right, it definitely comes down to communication, as well as a lack of understanding of the divisions in the overall community right now, and what each type of player wants, along with understanding what kind of content could appeal to the most amount of players and even bring them together. I think Bozja, for all my dislikes of it, had that nice balance of dungeons not being too easy right away, but not being so hard that it killed the fun of it, or kept people from even attempting it. FTB fails on that.

[Khryseis_Astra]

After reviewing the raid plans and video guides, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to attempt the Tower any time soon as-is. There’s just too much room for error and I’m not the kind of person who can practice and learn anything where one mistake means game over, reschedule and try again.

Why they would have a story-mode entrance system and lock story-level rewards for this level of difficulty is beyond me. I’m sure at this point, I’m just screaming into the void. But I still want a Normal mode so I can feel like all the effort I put into this content hasn’t been for nothing.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Something that came up on the other thread: the OC zone gear. Will each zone get its own set? Or will the gear in North require having the +2 set to carry on? You need 60 pieces of sanguinite for one piece of gear, and the support fate gives 2, assuming the puzzle which spawns it isn’t just skipped. Obviously any Tower requirement for the relic effectively kills that off for more casual players, so I doubt they’d do that. But at this point who knows?

It really seems like certain things were made with the assumption that there would be two modes and don’t really make sense with just having the harder difficulty version. One is putting field notes in there along with a Triad card, some of which I assume are random drop. And the achievements for running the Tower 10, 50 or even 100 times! How many people do they think are going to do this even once, let alone 100 times? I’m a Triad collector, and assuming I get this done at all, I won’t be doing multiple runs for the card!

[ServerCollaps]

the 1st boss is dirt easy and killing it gives 6 sanguinite within 10 minutes of effort. Just Farm that. Also the new area increases your phantom bonus to +26 instead auf +12, which will be a massive damage boost to overcome obstacles

the TT card of the final boss will be added to an npc later anyway (its current droprate is about 25-30%). There are also enough people that finished the 100 clears already or are close to it. Dont underestimate your co-players

[Chasingstars]

"we believe the difficulty level overshot what players were expecting before release" is an absurd statement that tells me their battle content team needs a shorter leash

Yeah. If they admit to overshooting the difficulty, that is also an admission of overtuning the content. Which to fix overtuning, means nerfing aspects about the battle content in order to allow for a higher percentage of clears. As if they simply admit to it but don't really do anything else about it, it might as well be a "sorry you feel that way" apology.

[Jeeqbit]

Yeah. If they admit to overshooting the difficulty, that is also an admission of overtuning the content. Which to fix overtuning, means nerfing aspects about the battle content in order to allow for a higher percentage of clears. As if they simply admit to it but don't really do anything else about it, it might as well be a "sorry you feel that way" apology.

No it is the intended difficulty, because they intended it to be high-end.

The issue is players were expecting a normal mode instead and they acknowledge that. It doesn't mean they will magically make it not high-end content.

Their solution is that future field areas will have a normal mode.