Forked Tower: Blood Needs A Normal Mode

[Gwenkatsu]

So, I was thinking about this: If it's first come, first served, then you can't require that anyone in the party have a certain phantom job leveled up to a certain point. In which case, how do you leave in the "interesting parts" to use phantom job skills without making those skills required?

Or they could open the normal version for PF, and let the group creator decide "I want 2 of Phantom Job X, 1 of Phantom Job Y, and 3 of Phantom Job Z" - much like you can already ask for certain roles or jobs.
Using party finder to create a party with certain rules might sound like a crazy concept, but the longer you think about it the more sense it makes, no?

[Supersnow845]

Or they could open the normal version for PF, and let the group creator decide "I want 2 of Phantom Job X, 1 of Phantom Job Y, and 3 of Phantom Job Z" - much like you can already ask for certain roles or jobs.
Using party finder to create a party with certain rules might sound like a crazy concept, but the longer you think about it the more sense it makes, no?

I mean his point is that selecting by phantom jobs you’d have to be able to select by level of phantom job alongside normal job and normal level, like a thief is useless if they aren’t max level

[AmiableApkallu]

Using party finder to create a party with certain rules might sound like a crazy concept, but the longer you think about it the more sense it makes, no?

I've said as much in another thread:

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.

But going back to:

Without wipe mechs you would just go back to the beginning instead of it being game over, so you could just regroup and make sure you have a good mix of jobs.

My point is that in a first come, first serve system where anyone can just walk up to the pavilion, it doesn't matter if you allow everyone to switch jobs at will if no one in the instance has, say, Time Mage leveled. I imagine it's actually quite difficult to design a raid where Dispel has an interesting use case without it being arbitrarily more difficult and annoying (but still clearable) without it.

We can have CLL/Delubrum Normal/Dalriada style entry for Forked Tower, but then just as Lost Actions don't really matter there, neither would Phantom Jobs. Or we have entry gated behind Discord or an improved Party Finder, and mechanics where Phantom Jobs matter.

SE has kind of written themselves into a corner with how phantom jobs are designed.

[Khryseis_Astra]

My point is that in a first come, first serve system where anyone can just walk up to the pavilion, it doesn't matter if you allow everyone to switch jobs at will if no one in the instance has, say, Time Mage leveled. I imagine it's actually quite difficult to design a raid where Dispel has an interesting use case without it being arbitrarily more difficult and annoying (but still clearable) without it.

We can have CLL/Delubrum Normal/Dalriada style entry for Forked Tower, but then just as Lost Actions don't really matter there, neither would Phantom Jobs. Or we have entry gated behind Discord or an improved Party Finder, and mechanics where Phantom Jobs matter.

SE has kind of written themselves into a corner with how phantom jobs are designed.

True… I’ve had them all maxed for awhile now, so I didn’t think of that. Still, assuming there is a Normal mode created, as enough people try and clear it, it will become known what is needed, and anyone who doesn’t have them maxed will know which ones to have leveled if they want to do it.

[Lufir]

I pretty much quit OC after finding out the Forked Tower wasn't like a Dalriada or Castrum. I had Oracle and the gold coin Phantom jobs left to level, but it would be pointless.

[FuturePastNow]

I pretty much quit OC after finding out the Forked Tower wasn't like a Dalriada or Castrum. I had Oracle and the gold coin Phantom jobs left to level, but it would be pointless.

I leveled up all the jobs and got the achievement for 500 CEs, and when they add new jobs I'll go level those up, but same. I'll grind boring content all day long but I'm not going to jump through annoying hoops for it.

[Khryseis_Astra]

I leveled up all the jobs and got the achievement for 500 CEs, and when they add new jobs I'll go level those up, but same. I'll grind boring content all day long but I'm not going to jump through annoying hoops for it.

Same.

Not surprised, but still disappointed that today’s Live Letter did not mention anything about the possibility of a Normal mode for FTB. Not that I had much hope for it, but JP seems to have a good many people disappointed by it as well. At this point, if it’s not done alongside the North Horn release, I doubt it ever will be, and if so, I think that’s a mistake. It will ruin the content as a whole for a large amount of people.

So I will continue to campaign for it, but I don’t have much hope left.

[Maltothoris]

SO there is a recent interview https://www.famitsu.com/article/202507/48601 talking about forked tower and we got some tidbits about what they want to do. The translations are taken from the reddit discord

When asked about the future plans the dev team have in mind in response to player's feedback regarding the raid system for 48-man has been implemented on "Cresent Isle" in advance, YoshiP plans to do the following where they want to retain the players (have the players remain) in the instance for a period of time after their entry. In addition to this, they also plan to include a system that allows players to see and have a clear idea how many sanguine ciphers they have invested, and determine if they themselves are selected to enter Forked Tower, since displaying all of them could lead into troubles between players. For now they're still in discussion on whether they'll be able to adjust the gimmick at that stage.,

YoshiP then elaborated that as long as a viable strat has been established, it can be cleared by 24 players with the other 24 players can follow along and clear, and that was the intention. But YoshiP admitted that they didn't adjust properly on that part considering the amount of mechanics that involve collective responsibility. Which is why in Patch 7.3 they aim to adjust it so that it will reach the difficulty they originally envisioned for the content. The next Forked Tower is in development and will be created based on the feedback they received from the players. There are also players who asked for complicated mechanics and thus the devs want to fulfill that wish in some degree.

So it looks like though the alliance change was welcome enough, it still didn't raise clear rates to where they would of liked. In addition to the other changes, they are thinking of adjusting certain parts in FT itself. However, I think it's too little too late in that regard.

[TaleraRistain]

SO there is a recent interview https://www.famitsu.com/article/202507/48601 talking about forked tower and we got some tidbits about what they want to do. The translations are taken from the reddit discord



So it looks like though the alliance change was welcome enough, it still didn't raise clear rates to where they would of liked. In addition to the other changes, they are thinking of adjusting certain parts in FT itself. However, I think it's too little too late in that regard.

Unless they make it puggable, clear rates are going to stay in the toilet.

[FuturePastNow]

So the "intent" was that 24 players who know what to do would be able to carry up to 24 others through it, which from my understanding is basically how BA and DRS are run, but they failed to actually design the mechanics to follow that intent. How do you get that so wrong?

And how do they "aim to adjust it so that it will reach the difficulty they originally envisioned" in 7.3 without redesigning all of those mechanics, which they are not doing? The changes they have announced don't do that, they just make it easier to enter for the groups getting their 100 reclears.