Forked Tower Is Unplayable — And I’m Done

[Vanguail]

This is where I am at with this game. My subscription runs out next month and if I don't see any meaningful changes to OC or FT in 7.3 I am not bothering to come back. An alliance raid and a deep dungeon is not worth the subscription cost. There is other content sure, but nothing worth it for me.

There are so many games available to play now. Really good games with great gameplay and social features. FFXIV isn't some special unicorn. If the devs want to keep players engaged they need to respect peoples' time. Expecting players to flock to Discord in order to play your game is nonsense. There is no excuse not to have an easily accessible mode in the game for everything outside of Ultimates. Having a harder version of stuff for the players that want it, and want to take the time needed to engage with it, is fine. It also gives players who want to move on to harder content something to grow into. But the devs can't expect to keep subscriptions when making content like FT and Chaotic. Sure plenty on Japanese servers did Chaotic, but NA servers were pretty sad. I tried to join a few PF groups for it and they ended up being toxic and falling apart. Waste of my time. The worst thing a video game can do is make a player feel like they just wasted their time.

MMO players are an aging player base. Many of us have careers and families but still want to support the game. To me it feels like the devs are catering too much to the streamer style of gamer. Nothing against them, but I don't see how some of their design decisions make sense otherwise. Although I can't wrap my head around many of the design decisions in OC.

[Jeeqbit]

MMO players are an aging player base. Many of us have careers and families but still want to support the game.

There are a lot of older players and people with families, going right into the 50s at this point for really old MMO players. And I met people in their 60s playing occasionally long ago, but that was rare, probably gonna get increasingly common though.

But older players and people with families have always played MMOs. It's always been a good way for partners to bond fighting fantastical bosses together. Real life isn't quite as exciting as that, after all. And people have always met partners through MMOs too, as much as journalists only "discover" it as if it's new thing every so often.

I know from my frequent use of discord that lots of 18-22 years olds play this game or are getting into this game though. It's not as if MMOs (or at least this game) is exclusive to older players in their 30s-50s. That's a myth. We are just at a point where MMO populations have a very diverse range of ages and where 50 year olds in general have a higher chance of being gamers than in the 90s.

To me it feels like the devs are catering too much to the streamer style of gamer.

Doubtful. I think they just wanted to make more large-scale content so that the game feels alive, after how socially isolated and solo-oriented Endwalker was. The problem is just how the body checks make things a little too punishing than they seem to be intending. It happened with Chaotic, and now Forked Tower, both of which overshot their goals for difficulty.

Nothing against them, but I don't see how some of their design decisions make sense otherwise. Although I can't wrap my head around many of the design decisions in OC.

They've admitted even they didn't understand their own design decisions and just slapped things together without thinking about things like the entry properly.

The irony is they have all these procedures that are meant to make design robust and considered, and all those procedures tripped them up to the point where the opposite happened.

Players are both fed up with formulaic content

Formulas are fine, but obviously there needs to be a certain degree of difference and variety in that formulaic content, and sometimes there isn't quite enough. For example, a routine "field operation" is fine, but doing something considerably different with it is nice - for example, having us dive underwater and battle enemies under the sea and find treasure in shells and amongst seaweed, then having special actions that take advantage of the fact we are surrounded by water and make use of the physics that come with that.

they're so set on their ways of formulaic update cycles that they can't provide a hotfix unless it's RMT related.

The main issue with it is that they want it to go through their QA process, which can take 1-2 weeks at minimum, and that doesn't take into account if they find a bug that is challenging to fix and takes time to figure out how to solve. Although rare, there can be sneaky bugs that are complex and difficult to identify the root of. Given it's a large-scale game with people's player data on the line, they don't want anything to wreck their character data, so that's why it will need to take some time.

It will also relate to how they manage their branches, since they've said they have one for each patch.

[Kirutsuki]

The main issue with it is that they want it to go through their QA process, which can take 1-2 weeks at minimum, and that doesn't take into account if they find a bug that is challenging to fix and takes time to figure out how to solve. Although rare, there can be sneaky bugs that are complex and difficult to identify the root of. Given it's a large-scale game with people's player data on the line, they don't want anything to wreck their character data, so that's why it will need to take some time.

It will also relate to how they manage their branches, since they've said they have one for each patch.

I agree with what you say here if the issue is a systemwide one for an MMO. But what's going on with Forked Tower isn't that.
Ofcourse there's some spaghetticode or whatever and implementing FT into duty finder might be more work than just 1 week.
But hotfixes are usually lesser fixes to the actual issue and CAN be temporary fixes until the actual fix is out.

Here's the thing, other gamedevs are able to do these sorts of hotfixes in a reasonable time from release. Sure one week would be optimistic, but let's say a month.
A clear statement from the devs saying they know it's an issue and are trying to solve it asap, but here's a temporary hotfix to alleviate the issue. And for something as crucial like this I would have expected a hotfix ~2weeks ago.
Since OC released May 27th, within the first week people started reporting issues, that would have been ~June 4th and it's now July 19th. It takes way too long for fixes to happen that the playerbase clearly reports on.
Japan is also a country where they work all year around (which is a problem of it's own) but essentially they don't get vacation in June either.

I get it that realistically speaking creating an actual fix would probably take a month or two before QA, but that's also with the aspect in mind that they are working on other stuff as well.
But critical issues should be brought to the forefront in their whiteboard and it's all hands on deck when those issues arise for that singular problem.

And YoshiP only recently coming out on interviews saying that getting into FT is an issue tells me that they are WAY behind on community reported issues or don't address issues unless they make headlines.

Lastly I just want to say that this issue specifically is instance based, it's within OC itself and it should not effect players data other than inside OC itself, so the QA could also be shortened.