Please make Forked Tower more Accessible and easier like Bozja

[Khryseis_Astra]

This thing is poorly designed
You can't have the entire instance enter, it's a lottery system
It is designed to be too difficult for casual players to succeed in, a bit above extreme trials in difficulty, suggesting to use premades
You can't make guarantee your full premade can even enter the thing, leading to a couple players who have never done the thing being able to grief it (not all their fault, it's the systems fault)
Why couldnt this have been like bozja where you queue for it outside the instance, and have an easier casual raid inside?

Just wondering, now that we’re seeing people clear it, for anyone who’s done both BA and Forked Tower, which did you feel was objectively harder? And do you feel the Tower has the same potential for herding first-timers through as BA? (Despite the challenge of getting a full group into the same instance!)

[Themarvin]

Would like it to be able to queu into like DR was.... or just be like the massive master fates that Boza and co. offered as a special special CE in a figure of speech.

Also I think it is bad with the permadeath thing if you exceed some stat.

It is like again the more supposed to be like for all content moves into a certain bracket, which is not really fair to the most of the people that would like to do this content.

[Gurgeh]

@ Creative 3
'Forcing' casuals and Highend Static players together IS the best answer. (Provided statics still have some content in which to be a thing, for 'their' part of the instance responsibilities.)

However if you are going to smash statics up then you need to think about who is going to be playing in their place?
Because in the case of Forked bidding wars the answer is definitely 'not' casuals. So no-one.

Chaotic was your chance to do this, when the casual player base was so disappointed, but because making changes and doing things differently is anathema to you, you fckd it.

Chaotic would have been fantastic at suprising casuals about what they can achieve, if you'd banned premades, forced everyone into raidfinder, and just eased the body checks to allow some recovery provided 60% knew how the instance worked.

----

Casuals would have loved trying to get better, and they would have had massive patience for it, as long as they can 'just play', and earn genuinely cool stuff for the first time.
That's what casual is. It's not entitlement. Its not effort. Its not skill. It's not practice.
Its not having to do stuff out of game. It's not having to schedule out of game. Recruit out of game. Play the instance out of game in your head via a you tube guide again and again. Casual is, just play, just have fun.

Forked is million miles the other direction. Casuals stand no chance if they can't even practice. But with it's perma death i don't think casuals were ever the target audience at all this time.

Which is why I'm at a loss as to why CB3 clearly did want to smash statics up with Forked entry requirements. The side effect is that they have now polluted the OC zone with hardcore farmers hell bent on getting their business done, with no time to spare the casuals they come across with pleases, thank yous, and let-me-help-you-with-that's.

[itachi-otsutsuki]

Oh chaotic was peanuts compared to forked. Atleast in Chaotic a 'casual' could actually show up unnanounced in an alliance PF, and not grief the alliance to shit. Look up a guide, prog the content as much as they want and get better at it.

With Forked, all that is undone. You can NOT get into the instance in the first place, you can not practice, you can not gain confidence. There is zero chance you are going to clear it so there is also 0 incentive to engage with it which further cements the gatekeeping behind schedueled discord runs full of hardcore sweats.

Also I say 'casual' but that goes for anyone from casual to midcore and savage raiders. The raid itself isn't that hardcore. The retarded entry system just turns it into a hardcore fiesta.

[Alahard]

Oh chaotic was peanuts compared to forked. Atleast in Chaotic a 'casual' could actually show up unnanounced in an alliance PF, and not grief the alliance to shit. Look up a guide, prog the content as much as they want and get better at it.

With Forked, all that is undone. You can NOT get into the instance in the first place, you can not practice, you can not gain confidence. There is zero chance you are going to clear it so there is also 0 incentive to engage with it which further cements the gatekeeping behind schedueled discord runs full of hardcore sweats.

Also I say 'casual' but that goes for anyone from casual to midcore and savage raiders. The raid itself isn't that hardcore. The retarded entry system just turns it into a hardcore fiesta.

Ironically the community's solution to organizing Chaotic actually makes it really good midcore content, and a good steeping stone. The RADAR discord has been able to split groups up into different levels, everyone relatively knows it's hard content, and there are plenty of veterans actually helping players actually learn. It's gotten to the point that I have recomended players new to raiding to stick with the any prog groups ( after some early ex kills) until they get a hang of things, and they have all enjoyed it. It's just that the community mostly saw the week 1 hardcore raiders go at it and get a bit dicey in pf ( when they should have really made their own premades to avoid "casuals"), but after the community solved the organization, even hardcore raiders can easily organize hardcore only reclear groups. The second chaotic raid won't be as bad on release just because there is an established system.

Hey look, being able to queue with who you want and when you want actually fixes the problem over time. Who knew.

However, Square just had to make sure that absolutely no organization could be done to ensure you can reasonably join in with like minded people. Or heck, even join in with your friends sometimes.

Why?

How is it that they just decided to do a entry system, that is more infurating than the actual instance?
FYI Yoshi P-> if there is a chance your friend cant join you despite the fact you both queued up, you failed.

[Amarande]

I'm sitting in one of the discords and it looks like things are shaping up nicely organizing there, but there's caveats.

What I'm especially worried about is the statics, I see at least one static forming (explicitly stating it is a full static and will not be sourcing pugs unless absolutely necessary) that wants to claim FT for a datacenter's prime time for three days a week.

What of the rest of the datacenter? We're supposed to just accept that one set of group leads owns the instance for those nights for the ENTIRE DATACENTER? "Go make your own group" is a lot less viable of a solution here (at best, even with multiple instances likely being here to stay due to the smaller limit, now you've got multiple 48's hammering the instance servers trying to each get their whole group in when just one has a tough enough time).

PUGs, even organized ones, are supposed to just have to run during work hours or complete degen late nights and that's it because statics will claim all the prime time? (Mind you, I DO play degen late nights but still!).

And then there's the question of whether we can skip the +2 gear or if, given that Blood came out this early in the cycle (unlike BA which was at the very end), Arcanaut +2 is going to be a mandatory progression stage for North Horn gearing which means everyone has to manage to get in or be palpably undergeared in 7.55 ...

[FuturePastNow]

I'm sitting in one of the discords and it looks like things are shaping up nicely organizing there, but there's caveats.

What I'm especially worried about is the statics, I see at least one static forming (explicitly stating it is a full static and will not be sourcing pugs unless absolutely necessary) that wants to claim FT for a datacenter's prime time for three days a week.

What of the rest of the datacenter? We're supposed to just accept that one set of group leads owns the instance for those nights for the ENTIRE DATACENTER? "Go make your own group" is a lot less viable of a solution here (at best, even with multiple instances likely being here to stay due to the smaller limit, now you've got multiple 48's hammering the instance servers trying to each get their whole group in when just one has a tough enough time).

PUGs, even organized ones, are supposed to just have to run during work hours or complete degen late nights and that's it because statics will claim all the prime time? (Mind you, I DO play degen late nights but still!).

Bring your own ciphers and join them, they can't stop you. Get your friends to do the same. It's the design intent of the content.

[IvoryHawk]

With how terrible the dev cycle is, they will change it, but it'll be by the end of the expansion to have it an instance entered from the outside, Yoshida and his team are completely out of touch with the community, 5 month wait for a chance at QOL improvements is unacceptable.

[Krojack]

I clear all current savage content with my static. I cleared Chaotic using PF and pugs over 50 times. There is no way I'm going to do this Tower content.

If using an external system, Discord in this case, is REQUIRED to get a a group together for in-game content then said content is a failure. Tower is the biggest failure in this game to date.

[TaleraRistain]

I clear all current savage content with my static. I cleared Chaotic using PF and pugs over 50 times. There is no way I'm going to do this Tower content.

If using an external system, Discord in this case, is REQUIRED to get a a group together for in-game content then said content is a failure. Tower is the biggest failure in this game to date.

This. I do Savage with my static and in PF. I use Discord with my static and I use Discord with a community group that I also do Savage, Extremes, and Unreal with.

But when I am forced to go to some specific Discord because said Discord has decided they own the content for the entire datacenter, I refuse. I've never done BA and never will because it's a failure in design that it can't be organized in game. Same with Forked Tower. Any design that lets any one group of players monopolize and claim content and gatekeep it away from the rest of the playerbase unless they jump through their hoops is failed content.

I've been doing OC constantly. It's fairly boring but at least the CEs can be kind of fun. They should have had a normal version where they could still use the cipher system that people could do for the lore, the TT card, the record (I believe I've heard one of them is in there), and maybe a currency that someone could work toward +2 gear with. That would also give players a stepping stone to potentially try a harder version. And the harder version should have a direct queue so people could get together and practice and prog it.