Current fixes to Forked Tower is not good enough

[Amarande]

1. They are not locked out of it. They can make a PF and find 24+ people who feel the same way. If they can't find 24 people who feel the same way, then they are probably the only one that feels that way, so they need to adjust their mindset.

Except that people are so used to Discord based organization at this point that you wouldn't just need to make a PF, you would need to make a Discord.

It is incredibly difficult to get FFXIV culture out of the tailspins it sometimes finds itself in, and a large part of that is because with the massively discord based culture at this point, it often doesn't just involve putting up a group finder or making a linkshell/fellowship - you actually have to full blown kickstart and admin a whole new social media community to have any "real say" ...

3. Nobody is vetting others to enter FT; on the contrary the entire idea is to help anyone and everyone go from fresh to clear by carring them with callouts that make it as easy as possible to clear.

There is a huge deficiency in fresh prog parties atm (especially compared to this far into BA's timescale), and a distinct impression that most people are trying to "get theirs" before going back to help (starkly contrast BA, where even people well along in prog still participated in Frag runs).

I'm not sure if this is a difficulty matter, a carrot matter (BA gearing was done through frags alone so it was beneficial to get in as many farms as you could even if they were prior to your prog point, while Sanguinite is likely not nearly so alluring when virtually everything but the fixative and emote are dirt cheap from chest drops and you can't use the fixatives without getting 3 lucky enough outside chests per gear piece along with them?), or if player culture is in fact in sharp decline. Or if it's a combination.

4. Some runs will not be "fresh prog". You might need to have "seen" a certain phase. If you have not seen that phase, you can join a fresh prog group instead. It's not rocket science.

At this point, you almost have to volunteer to host a fresh prog group instead, which is a much bigger undertaking (and I'm not even sure how accessible it is to a green-to-FT player at this point seeing that you're like to be expected to take on the full responsibilities of a Raid Lead as well as trying to learn the content).

6. You're effectively saying High-End raids shouldn't exist. Maybe what you could ask for instead is for the normal modes to 1. exist and 2. be more challenging but not be a phase prog. Extreme trials are pretty good at that really - I can take first timers through them and prog through to the end within the timer in many cases.

Possibly they shouldn't, if players can't be patient enough to wait for later starters/slower learners to catch up (an exception can be made for people who are actively griefing in such fashion that it's obvious they aren't trying to clear the duty. Prog liars, annoying as they are, don't really count here: they may be foolishly going in over their head at the expense of the rest of the group but they still are genuinely attempting to clear the duty).

It's a cruel judgment, and I'm not sure if we're yet at that point, but on many an occasion one gets the vibe that the community is teetering on the point of "maybe we just can't have nice things anymore" ...

Stop acting like FT is high end content for starters, it is not, it is in fact quite a beat mainstream, if anything that is.

OTOH these days many players consider anything that can't be reliably cleared by a fresh group in a single run to be "high end" content.

If the death limits alone as a concept like in criterion is the best they can do when it comes to making content difficult, I think this content is doomed from the start. Exactly like twice/thrice comes ruin (or worse, combined with it) is literally the embodiment of everything that's wrong with the trinity in the current state of the game.
If they design things counting on "braindead cheeses" then it is no wonder that the pve has taken such a nosedive for a while.

Omg, 100%. As a White Mage, the sheer number of incurable punishment debuffs literally makes me question the legitimacy of my role in anything other than the most casual of content: healers are kneecapped in their ability to recover the party from mistakes "to maintain difficulty" to a degree that artificial heal check mechanics are necessary to even keep them from being obsolete altogether, ripe to be replaced by additional red jobs instead. (And if you get expert enough this isn't even enough as has been shown several times this Xpac)

Rez limits by themselves are alright (eg WoW gives you a strict limit on how many rezzes the group is permitted during a boss pull) but combined with all the other punishment debuffs seen in raiding it's getting to be much.

Solely Based on that people is gonna be selective about players using third party sites and software to lock people out of it.

(snip)

a too high percentage is based in stats and if people has passed this or that.

Yes. Passporting needs to go. It requires you to either break the TOS yourself or have someone that does in your party. Worse, it requires you to agree to have your data submitted to a third party MONETIZED aggregator (yep, they make ad revenue and even subscription revenue off your tears) or you start being locked out of more and more groups for more and more content.

I remember I complained a lot about it taking two weeks of head bashing to clear Shinryu Ex back in the day.

... I'd take everything needing two weeks of head bashing over this toxic boxscore system. Again, especially since Those Sites are a literal business. It'd still be fairly toxic if it was an amateur project but the idea that I have to not only submit to this garbage but also DONATE to a specific for-profit business in order to effectively raid is a complete pile of steaming stinking dookie ...