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

[Neclord]

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.

I agree that it would. And I can tell you now, at least in the circle I'm in, a few organisers were quite disappointed that the first zone had a BA equivalent rather than a CLL. Many of us were hoping it would be the latter for a more chilled introduction to Field Operation that did not require the legwork and spreadsheeting to even clear it.

CLL is still my favourite piece of content they've made to be honest. The perfect level of balance between accessibility and requiring communication and co-ordination for clearing and maxing out the rewards from it.

[Aravell]

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.

The situation is also far worse on JP, it's not all sunshine and rainbows over there.

There was a prominent raid team that put out a public statement asking people to please let them progress because there were a large amount of people trying to enter with them to the point where parts of their core group were left out a lot. Then there's also been reports of people who silently throw in ciphers and immediately leave the moment they zone into the tower, which wastes one slot and kicks out one of the organised group's people.

Then the latest case of someone being hauled in by the GM for trying to recruit for FT by using the DRS tab as a placeholder was probably the last straw.

[Gurgeh]

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.

So... is 'that' the reason they have decided to dedicate the next live letter to OC? Just because JP players are finally unhappy too?
So glad I've decided/been-forced to stop subsiding other players.

[Carin-Eri]

So... is 'that' the reason they have decided to dedicate the next live letter to OC? Just because JP players are finally unhappy too?
So glad I've decided/been-forced to stop subsiding other players.

Eitherway, how they address said feedback will be interesting. As this thread demonstrates, the community is pretty 'split down the middle' over the issue.

[Volgia]

I agree that it would. And I can tell you now, at least in the circle I'm in, a few organisers were quite disappointed that the first zone had a BA equivalent rather than a CLL. Many of us were hoping it would be the latter for a more chilled introduction to Field Operation that did not require the legwork and spreadsheeting to even clear it.

CLL is still my favourite piece of content they've made to be honest. The perfect level of balance between accessibility and requiring communication and co-ordination for clearing and maxing out the rewards from it.

It has the feeling of a 24 man raid but it always felt more fun, but then you had DR Savage for people who wanted a proper BA experience, the decision to make it back like BA felt weird.
It tickles my nostalgia for the way Eureka was run though so I don't mind the way it's done currently, having to join a Discord and join a run to do it proper isn't the end of the world.

[RuriStone]

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.

'engaging in this behaviour' yeah playing the game how it was intended god how awful. Social consequences like what? oh no not being blacklisted by players who didn't want to clear the content with them anyway which is why they ask them to leave? god how awful that would be.

[YovelaLindswood]

I joined late-Endwalker, so I admittedly wasn't here for the entire history of any casual versus hardcore discourse, I can only go by what I've been here to witness.

And well... it hasn't been pretty. Dawntrail was my first expansion launch and I was hyped for it, but it gradually became clear it simply wasn't an expansion meant for casuals, which left me (still going through Stormblood at the time) wondering where I was supposed to go from there if I wasn't welcomed later on.

Of course, Stormblood its self was quite the skill-check on all fronts for me (dungeons, trials, and raids) so now the issue of "am I too casual for FF14?" was being book-ended for me AND I had to contend with an increasing amount of mockery and derision from other players to the point I stopped traveling out of Dynamis (because apparently some folks on other data centers REALLY hate the idea of us being over there to cause congestion and/or assume we're stupid trolls), and then stopped doing roulettes when I felt like dead weight outside of Heavensward content (ARF and Mhach aside), leaving me with little to do after a while and lost and confused as to how things ended up this way.

And the more bitter and vicious people got across the forums, social media, and even in-game about "filthy casuals" as the expansion wore on? The more I started dishing it back that all hardcores are just all jerks looking to push me out of the game, with Square-Enix seemingly in agreement based on content releases so far. So even if I had gotten to Dawntrail, what was waiting for me anyway other than the same problems everyone else is facing? Would I have even made it through Shadowbringers or Endwalker given how Stormblood played out for me?

I won't deny being toxic in response to the other side, but goddamn if they haven't been toxic too, and it's really damn hard to show them any sympathy when they refuse to show any themselves, or how my overall experience with Final Fantasy 14 can be chalked up to playing the "wrong" game this whole time, and that it isn't worth it to keep going if this isn't and never was a game meant for me.

Unfortunately the game kinda promotes it. If you're wondering where the toxicity stems from i'll try to explain it a bit. The game puts in 0 effort to teach you how the game is actually played and because of the tos promotes witch hunting anyone who tries to teach you. Like I had a buddy who had someone tell him he was pulling wrong and how to pull mobs so one didn't run off to the healer or a dps as well as a good mit plan for adds on his class so he could pull two add packs instead of one. One of the dps then threatened him to report the dude who taught him something because he should be able to play how he wants. Which is just setting him up for failure at higher levels where people expect you to know how to play. This goes straight into savage where you're expected to know pixel perfect movement, all mechanics, a perfectly optimized rotation, really tight dps checks, and as a tank in his case know how to dodge mechanics without moving the boss as much as possible for melee positionals. That and being even slightly off can cause your entire group to wipe in fights that can be up to 14 mins long of perfect movement. Perfectly optimized play has been ingrained in them so hard and most have been griefed by someone who just didn't get it or refused to learn and they can't really do anything about it. Like in wow we can kick the problem and move on but this game you can get in trouble for that so you gotta leave and try to reform which wastes so much of 7 peoples time. This kinda toxic perfection bleeds down and clashes with the toxic casual group that will report you for even suggesting that someone could play better. I think its higher up in this thread someone posted the actual tos and its got some really low bars. Like I can get reported if I tell someone their dps is too low even though this games dps checks are incredibly tight when progging and their dps can actually be whats holding back 7 other people from clearing. This repeated over a couple xpacs of generally dissatisfied players over the lazy decisions of se and refusal to improve has left both sides of the community pissy and we've reached a breaking point where people just don't care anymore. They wrongfully take out on each other, and players like you who are new and learning tend to be the unfortunate casualties in the fight between the two groups. I'm a good example unfortunately and can get pissy when i'm running an ew or dt dungeon and the tanks small pulling or a healer refuses to dps. Since these are things you're expected to know by now but nobody can teach you on threat of report.

[Gurgeh]

...
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?...

Fundamentally I believe people should be able to 'do' whatever the game 'allows' them to do.
- Discords should carry on as they are doing.
- Rando's should carry on joining instances. (If discords what to use derogatory emotive labels like 'snipers' to refer to them, because they are bored of calling people 'progliars', well Dks be Dks, and Cnts be Cnts)
- SE should continue to enforce ToS, and ban anyone harassing people in chat not to join content, or witnessed by GMs to wilfully griefing other players in instance such as a pattern of letting people die or killing them with busters. 1 warning policy.
- If discords want to give up thats up to them.
- In the mean time, yes, absolutely they should completely redesign the instance. I think in next live letter they should be announcing that anyone who wants to continue the current design is welcome to, but that instance will soon be taken offline to be replaced by an easier version, with all same rewards, never to return again.
- I think this is what they should have done with Chaotic too.
- I also think that they should be saying as diplomatically as possible that "'midcore' Casuals alone have had their content decimated since EW, meanwhile high end has eaten rich with little to no disruption, and even new content. There fore they will be taking resources from high end so that this can be achieved without further loss to casual midcore. This means some savage tiers or ultimates may not be delieverd at all this expansion. We appreciate this will be unwelcome for some, but we have to even handed about it. Without being even handed it remains at its 'most' unfair."
- This is what they should have done week 2 of Chaotic. Just taken it off line until they'd fixed it.
- EW isn't where this discontent began(people accepted covid was a thing, and both variant and island sanctuary was a valiant attempt, the marketing for island sucked though). Not even DT MSQ is to blame for this discontent, we accept not every expansion is going to be as amazing as what ShB EW did with the story. But when Chaotic dumped 'wilful', 'clear' and 'avoidable' insult on top injury, THAT is when the discontent began, and OC became the last-chance-saloon. Many casuals loved the radical challenge of cloud P1, that was fresh and new to them, then they hit P2, and all the resentment of 'progliars' that created, and the abonding of PFs after 2 pulls, and the abandoning of PFs without even filling.

They should re-design it, pausing other projects indefinitely, with only casual content ringfenced.

People who don't like? Please look forward to it resuming whenever, otherwise go play other games.

[Neclord]

'engaging in this behaviour' yeah playing the game how it was intended god how awful. Social consequences like what? oh no not being blacklisted by players who didn't want to clear the content with them anyway which is why they ask them to leave? god how awful that would be.

Nobody has any idea what the intention of the development team is. I'm not sure why you continue to repeat this like it is gospel.

I can only speak for the group I cleared with. We politely explained our purpose on every occasion and provided an invite to our discord if they expressed interest in joining future runs. In almost all of these cases players were co-operative and stepped out. Some of them even joined the future runs. It's a good experience when there are actual courteous, social people involved in these situations.

[Volgia]

Snip

The other thing is that this wall of communication in-game makes casual people who wanna try hard content a thousand times more anxious, because savage players will blacklist you for "no apparent reason" and exclude you, they can't say why because of the threat of getting reported. Most people who want to get into hardcore content go elsewhere for support (We got a massive amount of youtube content creators that can teach you to play any class, any encounter, any role) and if you ask nicely and are interested in doing any type of content 99% of the people will help you.