Difficult experience in Forked Tower – a reminder to respect public content

[YovelaLindswood]

Oof, Forked Tower really seems to bring out the worst of our so called 'great community'.

It's sad to see, but it's an issue that has developed over the years and has gotten worse and worse. And it's so ironic, too.
I mean, I'm sure a lot of us remember the great WoW Exodus during Shadowbringes. Where many of us didn't want those players to join our 'nice, peaceful' community.
Because their game was supposed to be ultra toxic, casual unfriendly, third party programs were everywhere and don't even start about parsing...

...and look at us now. Look at our community. At the state of the game. It's almost funny, really. We are what we accused WoW of being back then. We have become exactly that.

While toxicity exists in every MMO, and undoubtedly has always existed in 14 as well, it has become worse.
And the baffling decisions of the developers releasing content like this, that is clearly dividing the player base even more and provoking
arguments and disputes among ourselves is making it worse by the minute.

Reading this thread has shown me one thing however: None of us are happy about the status quo.
Casuals aren't happy. Raiders aren't happy (even though right now they are on the favored side of the coin, at the moment, however.). And still, we blame each other.

OP, personally, I don't think you did something inherently wrong by joining content that is free to join if yoiu meet the requirements. I can also understand the frustration of the raid group, however.
Still, being frustrated should not result in griefing or insults.
The devs need to step up their game to create an environment that doesn't pit players against each other.
So far, sadly, they have failed at this task...

As someone who regularly plays both games I feel like there's one big key difference in the toxicity. Us wow players usually tend to be pretty blunt. We'll tell you to your face you messed up and kick you so the majority can succeed. I also think its more healthy. I've been kicked before and it sucks but all you can do is just review the content more learn your class better and try again. It promotes personal responsibility and by in large the community tends to own themselves a little more and is just more real with each other. Contents also a lot more personal responsibility where one person messing up wont usually cause a group wipe just their own death. This games got a lot of passive aggressive toxicity at the casual level where you cant tell anyone they're bad so they both never improve and it breeds dissatisfaction in the higher end players who are upset that they will get reported if they so much as hint to a proper rotation. Coupled with the hyper precision of high end content where messing up anything at any point can cause a group wide aoe to go out killing everyone in just about every bit of high end content breeds an infinitely spiraling loop of toxicity and furthers the gap between casual players and raiders.

[Neclord]

Courtesy wouldn't be asking somebody to leave it would be offering a level of respect to invite the person and confirm they would be ok to join you all so you can play as a group.

It would be discourteous to the 47 other people - who are there to clear - to bring someone into content where the mistake of one person can wipe the entire run.

Joining in with this content makes us another football player just the same as the other football players. Yes setting up a picnic would be disruptive which I guess is akin to playing badly on purpose but this is not what has happened here.

It does not. The majority of snipers are not at the same prog point as the people doing the runs. If players do not have direct experience with mechanics that have the potential to cause full wipes (Boss 2, Bridges, Boss 4), then they are a genuine danger to the objective of the organised group - to clear.

[YovelaLindswood]

And we can't even blame it on the WoW players coming over here and "infesting" our community because they've all long since left to go back to WoW. This is 100% us at our "finest".

I resemble that statement! I'll infest wherever I want dang it! I shout for the horde in alliance chat in frontlines because how dare it be alliance chat and not horde chat!

[RuriStone]

It would be discourteous to the 47 other people - who are there to clear - to bring someone into content where the mistake of one person can wipe the entire run.



It does not. The majority of snipers are not at the same prog point as the people doing the runs. If players do not have direct experience with mechanics that have the potential to cause full wipes (Boss 2, Bridges, Boss 4), then they are a genuine danger to the objective of the organised group - to clear.

Maybe try taking it up with your local authority.

[Kasumii]

And I'm pointing out the flaws in your argument.

It's grasping at straws at best since there's nothing in the ToS saying that it's illegal to ignore someone. If someone dies at the end of a CE and everyone returns to make it to the next FATE, should the dead person report everyone there? It's the same argument and it's very flawed.

FT is a public dungeon, there is the option to go solo there, it's not ToS-breaking to ignore players not in your party, these are the facts. Now if you argue that actively killing the player and refusing to raise is bad, then I'd agree with you, but if the player dies naturally through their own fault, it's not breaking ToS to simply not interact and just leave them.

However, if the party has someone stupid enough to jump up and down on the dead body like what happened with OP, then that's 100% reportable.

I will actually concede at that point. Yes there is no way to force someone to rez you when they can just claim they havent seen you.
I would say you're veering closer into reportable behavior if the random actually asked for a rez and you *then* continue to ignore them and are doing so maliciously.

But yes I have to admit my argument is pretty flawed and I did let my hate-bias blind me there.

I still think there is a lot of difference between instanced dungeons and normal overworld content but I think we can both agree to disagree on that point since further discussion would be useless and pointless.

[TaleraRistain]

Which circles back to the original problem the so called “casuals” side of this discussion never has an answer for

If this content isn’t done by discords it’s done by nobody. Which is ultimately square enix’s awful design for the entry conditions

Like short of square completely redesigning it what do you want the discords to do? Anyone feel free to chime in here, what do you want the discords to do? They are filling a niche that makes this content possible. If your answer is “it shouldn’t need discord” then congrats your problem isn’t with the discords it’s with square.

Every person who joins in place of an organised discord participant lowers chance of success. As has been shown OP as an example died because they didn’t know a mechanic and almost killed others by blowing up traps. What else can the discords do? If you don’t want deal with them at all then again the problem is square.

Like people here acting like the discords are evil and the problem I have no idea how you want to solve this content

Maybe what JP is doing? From what I'm hearing, they've stopped doing FT. It sounds like Discord is not something as utilized there and they can't get together PF for it so they aren't wanting to do it from what I've read in different places.

Unfortunately, the Discords doing this is showing SE that their actions are okay.

[Volgia]

The thread, OP, and the person you quoted made no mention or implication regarding a "casual vs hardcore" mentality. This is just trying to cause a divide where its irrelevant, if it even exists.

Also the person you quoted did not say anything hostile whatsoever, and simply explained the issue that OP refused to communicate in a scenario where communication is essential, and as a result caused their own deaths.

The person you're quoting isn't even past Endwalker, they like to fantasize about these hardcore people who kick casuals to the curb. They have never tried any kind of relevant hardcore content ever.

[Neclord]

Maybe try taking it up with your local authority.

Right now the people engaging in this behaviour face social consequences from the people they are disrupting and are then following your suggestion. Chicken and the egg.

We all agree the content is terribly implemented. But it's also undeniable that the only way you are clearing this in its current implementation is through an organised run. Disrupting these runs do nothing other than cause arguments and bad blood; they do not increase the sniper's ability to play the content; they do not improve their prospects of the sniper clearing it; they also increase the probability that these runs stop operating altogether.

Frankly, as someone that cleared Forked Tower relatively early, I'd prefer to just see it nerfed to the ground so that the difficulty resembles CLL and it then actually becomes more accessible to a player naturally wandering to the entrance - even if that means we don't get to see the original Forked Tower as it was originally implemented ever again.

[Volgia]

Right now the people engaging in this behaviour face social consequences from the people they are disrupting and are then following your suggestion. Chicken and the egg.

We all agree the content is terribly implemented. But it's also undeniable that the only way you are clearing this in its current implementation is through an organised run. Disrupting these runs do nothing other than cause arguments and bad blood; they do not increase the sniper's ability to play the content; they do not improve their prospects of the sniper clearing it; they also increase the probability that these runs stop operating altogether.

Frankly, as someone that cleared Forked Tower relatively early, I'd prefer to just see it nerfed to the ground so that the difficulty resembles CLL and it then actually becomes more accessible to a player naturally wandering to the entrance - even if that means we don't get to see the original Forked Tower as it was originally implemented ever again.

It would have been fun to have both things, TBH. IT would have been nice to appeal to both people who liked Eureka and Bozja. IDK why Square just needs to "choose" one.

[YovelaLindswood]

The person you're quoting isn't even past Endwalker, they like to fantasize about these hardcore people who kick casuals to the curb. They have never tried any kind of relevant hardcore content ever.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhh called him out lmao. Gottem!