Forked Tower Is Unplayable — And I’m Done

[Raikai]

This is all a problem with the community, not inherent with the game. It would be great if the community were to address these shortcomings though.

What? The game's structure is problematic and is the crux of the issue - the players in the equation are also problematic aspect, but that's a symptom, not a cause.

And by problematic, it's not just about the accessibility, but a collection of different issues that connects to that.

[Amarande]

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.

This is a big reason I opine that DT's difficulty uptick is a step in the wrong direction. Group content SHOULD bond people together much better than it does; instead, it all too frequently drives people apart, because it is rare for folks to be not only personality compatible but also lockstep enough in skill and learning rate to be able to stick together without the n-2 others in the group getting annoyed at the slower learner and/or the faster learner getting annoyed at the group ...

Honestly most of the DONT JOIN UNLESS YOU HAVE 50+ CLEARS parties

Is it really starting to get that bad in places? This feels like GW2 raiding levels of bad mojo if that's the case (and we all know how this nearly killed GW2 raiding altogether)

This is some intense victim blaming. The game is broken but it's not the game's fault? The players are the problem?

I think I get what sentiment was trying to be expressed here, the expression is probably off though. It would be better said on the lines of "the game has shortcomings, but players choose to react to them in a manner that exacerbates rather than mitigates their effect"?

They wont, it is much more about status and having status on discord now a days.

Kinda yeah ... it's like NA especially is rapidly deterioriating to the point where competitive, job-like play is becoming the only allowed way to play the game if you hope to get an endgame group (See my frustrated comments in other threads about why we can't adopt things like JP-style strats that are actually designed to CLEAR THE CONTENT instead of maximize competitiveness at the expense of comfortable consistency). There are a few scattered holdout communities and that is it, and I worry for their future if the game continues on present trends (eg we're almost halfway through the Moogle Event leading up to odd patch and most people I know are still bashing their head on the first half of this Savage tier, if they haven't thrown in the towel altogether ... I know very few with a 7S or 8S clear).

I really hope it's not the thought I've had for some time (since the Covid era when GPU prices hit the moon pretty much) where the root cause is the sorry state of the US economy (basic idea being that too many of the "nicer" crowd in NA has been priced out of the gaming hobby, while the folks successful enough in the working world to continue to afford to play comfortably have enough of the hyper-competitive go-getter personality to create a positive feedback loop usually described as "toxic competition") ... Given the suggestions EU is faring better though, I can't rule it out.

(It might be of note here that most of the people I am consistently closest friends with in MMORPGs either have disabilities, are homemakers, are retirees, and/or are not from the USA ... Which makes the above feeling about the trend seem still more likely ...)

I am totally ok with hard content but not harsh, mean and punitive mechanics. Not even the savage or ultimate fights are this mean. How many savage or ultimate clears would you see with such penalties? A whole lot less, that’s for certain. Oh, somebody stood in the wrong spot, we are now all dead and have to wait 30+ minutes before the next pull.

Yeah, I don't really get what SE is going for here either on reflection on your comment.

Practically every other game publisher has steadily moved in the direction of minimizing downtime between attempts (e.g. WoW making it massively easier to rez a raid in-instance rather than have to make the trek back from a graveyard, LOTRO eliminating the 10-minute Dread penalty, etc). Why is the friction considered good design here?

The main issue is that there are few prog groups available at the moment. The people who have done it on patch release are now doing clear/reclear runs instead of going back to prog groups. Therefore, people who are at further prog points have little choice but to join prog groups that may be at earlier prog points.

Yep. I've gone looking for fresh groups and there are painfully few on days I'm not working even before considering whether they have room for a WHM (and sometimes I've started to see two-session runs advertised, where the second night may not actually stay fresh prog depending on how the first night went so if you can only sign up for that run you may be out of luck) ...

[Supersnow845]

I can understand the hosts hesitation with early prog groups as well

Early prog for forked will almost without fail wipe to dead stars (whether it’s snowballs or fire towers). The problem is the incentive for a forked veteran to run a run that’s going to wipe at dead stars is really bad

Of the 30 sanguinite a run can give 22 of them require you to kill dead stars to obtain (20 are beyond marble dragon). Tablet just isn’t a particularly interesting boss that doesn’t have any particularly fun tech you can do and dead stars is probably most vets pick for the worst part of forked (except maybe the keyword dance on lockwards)

So taking new people on a fresh prog run is basically committing 3 hours to attain 16 sanguinite and getting two kills of tablet which achieves basically nothing when a reclear run gets to more fun deeper parts of the raid and if you can clear cow twice is basically a full +2 piece in one go



Forked is just very backloaded and unbalanced

[DullahanDuinn]

Just a small touch on FT. Yes it is not casual friendly.

Most runners or reclear parties naturally stuck to the same core people. People with clear/enrage experience. This is nothing anybody can be blamed for or was.

After x weeks of progging in discord(s), beating instance memes, finally clearing, it is very natural that the hosts take small breaks; setting up party comps, signups, respecting time of runners and ensure there is no black sheep in the run without any experience.

Chaos and Light offer a lot of runs with various prog points. Even PUGs (without name dropping the place) are offered by literally anyone willing to.



Big respect to the OP's move to uninstall and unsub. Many say it but do not do it. [And reclear Savage 1 week later or sign up for more FT]. This move deserves respect. The players time and money are not guaranteed.

[Khryseis_Astra]

I definitely understand OP’s frustration… I’m someone who has done almost everything the game has to offer, and even now still log in daily. But FT has definitely soured my enjoyment of the game. Like a lot of others, I was looking forward to the field ops because I had so much fun with Eureka and Bozja… but instead of giving us Bozja style dungeons that were casual-friendly and repeatable, we got another BA. And it IS a big deal for a lot of people to have to go through that much scheduling and waiting for something that has to be progged bit by bit, where you only get 3 rezzes and so many points where one person can cause a wipe, thus having to repeat the whole time-consuming process all over again. The decision to lock field notes and a Triad card behind it is just insult to injury. Yes the field notes are connected to the Tower and its bosses, but there should’ve been a Normal mode for others to go through to get those, and repeat for the most likely RNG card drop.

It’s not like we don’t have almost a year to wait for North Horn. They should use that time to make a Normal mode for both zone’s Towers. This is just the latest in a string of things where something we thought would be fun, ends up not living up to expectations. Like Chaotic, or the graphical updates (which I can’t call an “upgrade” in many cases) to our characters. I still love this game world and its characters, and the ARR-EW story will always hold a special place in my heart. But I’m finding it hard to keep engaged now that I’ve caught up on most things, and the new things coming out end up being disappointing in some way.

I haven’t been back to OC for two weeks now… finished everything but the Tower. Same with Eureka, everything but BA. And BA is pretty much a guaranteed clear now, but it’s the need to schedule it that makes it inconvenient for me. FTB has that, plus a ridiculous amount of difficulty that will probably take multiple scheduled runs to get a single clear. I have no desire to farm any Extremes, because I know I won’t be able to spend totems for wings for an unreasonable amount of time. Right now I only log in to check retainers and do my Cosmic dailies. I’m on a break for the most part while I play Clair Obscur.

I’ll be watching the Live Letter on Thursday. Hopefully they throw me a bone with housing updates and don’t kick those down the road even further. The other stuff I’m really looking forward to (BLU, BST and Variants) isn’t even coming in 7.3, so I need something to tide me over til whenever they come out. And so help me if Variants come out and end up being “oops it’s Savage,” that might be it for me.

[Supersnow845]

An idea that I had but then kinda realised wouldn’t work is stealth nerfing forked by releasing more powerful phantom jobs that were designed to come in 7.45 in 7.3 instead

But then I thought about how tightly forked is woven around the existing phantom jobs and how limited they are. Like thief, ranger, geo, bard, time and zerker are all hard required for a kill (thief and ranger for traps, geo for the float traps, BRD for Romeo’s on the idols, time for dispel on the tablet adds, the bridges phantom and the stone solider on lockwards and zerker for the purple canister)

Then Think about the surrounding jobs, knight is the intended “tank class” as many mechanics can’t be tanked with traditional mitigation and for non tanks knight forms a pseudo “platebearer”, chemist is the only one allowed to raise, SAM is the default “do the most damage” class and oracle has an intended purpose in forked but it’s just it can be cheesed.

What could they actually do with phantom jobs that would make forked appreciably easier? Every job is either going to step on the toes of one of the existing jobs utility, combine two jobs utility and render the original jobs useless, or be SAM but worse (or better which renders SAM useless)

Like are we going to get “geo but bell is 80% and it also allows you to use thief percept”? I can’t think of anything new jobs would actually add

[FuturePastNow]

An idea that I had but then kinda realised wouldn’t work is stealth nerfing forked by releasing more powerful phantom jobs that were designed to come in 7.45 in 7.3 instead

But then I thought about how tightly forked is woven around the existing phantom jobs and how limited they are. Like thief, ranger, geo, bard, time and zerker are all hard required for a kill (thief and ranger for traps, geo for the float traps, BRD for Romeo’s on the idols, time for dispel on the tablet adds, the bridges phantom and the stone solider on lockwards and zerker for the purple canister)

Then Think about the surrounding jobs, knight is the intended “tank class” as many mechanics can’t be tanked with traditional mitigation and for non tanks knight forms a pseudo “platebearer”, chemist is the only one allowed to raise, SAM is the default “do the most damage” class and oracle has an intended purpose in forked but it’s just it can be cheesed.

What could they actually do with phantom jobs that would make forked appreciably easier? Every job is either going to step on the toes of one of the existing jobs utility, combine two jobs utility and render the original jobs useless, or be SAM but worse (or better which renders SAM useless)

Like are we going to get “geo but bell is 80% and it also allows you to use thief percept”? I can’t think of anything new jobs would actually add

I suspect that Freelancer- while useless now- is going to get critical skills from other jobs as it progresses eventually to level 26. At least that would be how Freelancer worked in other FF games.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Hey everyone, isn’t it interesting that with all these people who are complaining about the game have forum creation dates prior to 2017 and have less than 25 posts on the forums? These are spam bots on the forum. Some people may have bought accounts to spam the forums. Please don’t take these posts like the main poster seriously.

[AmiableApkallu]

If you think of Forked Tower as (boss + corridors) x3 + final boss, then I've seen halfway through the second corridors (a.k.a. "Bridges"). Based on that amount of experience…

I'd say that Forked Tower's mechanics are one notch up from Delubrum Normal with a generous dose of Dawntrail's penchant for making you run all over the arena on short notice. By and large, mechanics avoid the untelegraphed role-based cleaves and and spreads, and partner vs. party stacks that characterize Extreme trials and Savage raids. And while it's technically true that there are times where one person's mistake might wipe the entire raid, what's far more likely to happen is that twenty people make twenty mistakes that snowball (pun intended?) into preventing the raid from clearing a DPS check.

The reason to organize via Discord is because many of the mechanics require coordination at the level of six light parties, and those light parties need to have a certain distribution of Phantom Jobs. SE would need to add phantom job requirements to Party Finder for that to have any hope of being a completely satisfactory mechanism.

The reason to be in voice to listen to callouts is to make the most of the three raises you're allowed.

Which brings me to what I feel is Forked Tower's real source of difficulty: The raise restriction, and getting kicked out of the instance on a full wipe. The mechanics might not be so bad, but often, nothing beats hands-on experience and occasionally taking something to the face.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Hey everyone, isn’t it interesting that with all these people who are complaining about the game have forum creation dates prior to 2017 and have less than 25 posts on the forums? These are spam bots on the forum. Some people may have bought accounts to spam the forums. Please don’t take these posts like the main poster seriously.

Maybe they were too busy enjoying the game back then to even think about complaining?