Forked Tower: Blood Needs A Normal Mode

[0blivion]

Help the "delete bridges" made me cackle because, yeah, they'd need to.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Basically do to Forked what DRN did to DRS

DRN’s traps still killed you, you could still precept them. All the skills still worked the same (other than arguably pure essence of the divine) it’s just the fights themselves were easier (and they removed very problematic aspects like minotaur and slimes/golems)

Just take forked, make the bosses easier, remove hard checks like using stop to stop the idols from casting raidwides, possible either delete bridges or make it much more simple and make the support puzzle a small extra thing one party can do like Lyon in the final boss of CLL

*Nods* There’s people on the other thread about the PF fix saying how this isn’t really Savage difficulty, more like Extreme. But I’d say the rez restrictions and the wipe mechs themselves are what puts it on Savage difficulty. Someone on a discord I belong to listed out 23 specific things that have to be done by people using a specific phantom job, that can cause a wipe if not done correctly. To me, that’s enough to be considered Savage. And it’s also enough room for error for me to put it off even further, if not altogether, if we don’t get a Normal mode added.

A Normal mode would be something I’d want to do over and over again. This version? Endure it once and never touch it again, assuming I’m lucky enough to clear before I get sick of trying.

[TaleraRistain]

*Nods* There’s people on the other thread about the PF fix saying how this isn’t really Savage difficulty, more like Extreme. But I’d say the rez restrictions and the wipe mechs themselves are what puts it on Savage difficulty. Someone on a discord I belong to listed out 23 specific things that have to be done by people using a specific phantom job, that can cause a wipe if not done correctly. To me, that’s enough to be considered Savage. And it’s also enough room for error for me to put it off even further, if not altogether, if we don’t get a Normal mode added.

A Normal mode would be something I’d want to do over and over again. This version? Endure it once and never touch it again, assuming I’m lucky enough to clear before I get sick of trying.

The crazy this is that even Savage lets you try again immediately. And we complained about body checks in Savage not because we want things easy but because it's artificial difficulty. Panda was body check after body check after body check. You had very little options to recover so you had mechanics you couldn't even see until you could run the body check gauntlet perfectly. These past two tiers have been praised because there are still body checks but they're used tactically and allow room to recover and see mechanics. We all complain about add phase in m6s but we also praise it because it's real difficulty in needing to prioritize targets and refine dps to get past that wall. So it's kind of even more head-scratching that they go back to this artificial difficulty when they had a lot of feedback from even the raiding community that we didn't like it either.

[SeriousPan]

The crazy this is that even Savage lets you try again immediately. And we complained about body checks in Savage not because we want things easy but because it's artificial difficulty. Panda was body check after body check after body check. You had very little options to recover so you had mechanics you couldn't even see until you could run the body check gauntlet perfectly.

Bodychecks are the teams favourite form of padding for the combat design in this game. Don't know what mechanic to add to make it harder? Bodycheck time! I concur with your point completely.

[Avoidy]

Their explanation, that they ran out of time or that there was a "cost" issue or whatever, is comical to me. It's like they did triage but in reverse. Instead of focusing their limited development time on something that could provide the maximum enjoyment for the largest amount of people, they hyperfocused on something turbo-niche that ultimately wound up being gatekept behind a discord and enjoyed by mostly raidslop enjoyers and amassed a whopping 400 clears after several weeks. Again. This is like the third time this has happened, lmao. They keep prioritizing this endgame sweaty poopsock crowd that makes up a minority, while most of the game's population which is casual just waits patiently for something that doesn't require prefight knowledge and markers and synchronized coordination and bodychecks for days so that one guy screwing up can anchor your progress all night.
But hey, I mean -- at least twitch raidstreamers are happy. Subcount's falling off a cliff and the game is visibly emptier outside of roleplay gooner areas, but at least twitch raidstreamers are giving the game a thumbs up on stream. Thank god, too. Where would we be without praise from out of touch players who never leave the comfort of their static?

[Khryseis_Astra]

The crazy this is that even Savage lets you try again immediately.

Exactly. Having content difficult enough to have to prog, but not being able to repeat it at will until you get the hang of it is just not fun for me. Even with the PF fix, it’s still going to be finding a run that works with your schedule with a Discord group, and hope you can eek out a clear without hitting your rez limit or wiping the raid, or you’re going to be repeating the process all over again.

[Kisshu]

Looking at the first boss, they could easily make a normal version out of it without having to remake the fight.

1: Show telegraph at casting start.
2: Rotate gets the rotating marker and pre-mark the danger zone
3: Meteors as normal, instead of four updraft markers on people, they have two fixed locations on the meteor side
4: Adds, two options, either use dispel on the red add, or kill the smaller adds to remove the defense buff (if the group lacks time mages)
5: No floating towers

With these changes, even a complete random group with no communication should be able to beat it. And you don't need to remake the entire fight. It's still mostly like the current fight, but makes it easier to see what's going to happen so people can adjust earlier for it.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Posting the text of the digest here (italics mine):

Having multiple difficulty levels would've been ideal; unfortunately, with the time constraints that we had, we lacked the development resources to design and debug two separate difficulties in addition to creating large-scale battle content like Forked Tower from the ground up. Furthermore, we believe the difficulty level overshot what players were expecting before release.

We initially anticipated that, as strategies developed, those who cleared the dungeon would be able to assist others with their clears. But entry method-related complications have hindered groups from going back for multiple clears; as a result, the overall situation has yet to reach the state of affairs that we originally envisioned.

Although we couldn't do it for Forked Tower, we've started discussing the possibility of designing Normal and Savage versions of the next large-scale dungeon. We appreciate the feedback that you've shared with us so far and will do our best to make our next updates as enjoyable as possible.

The wording here leads me to believe it’s as I feared… not only was this another “oops it’s Savage” like CAR, the way they said Forked Tower, without specifying Blood or Magic, sounds like the “next large-scale dungeon” is whatever they do for the next field op. So we’ll have not one, but two, BA style raids and no normal dungeon instances at all for Occult Crescent.

So in other words, the content casuals were looking forward to all this time is capping off each zone with a Savage level dungeon.

I still think this is wrong, and while I know it would take time and resources, both versions of Forked Tower should have a Normal mode. While I personally will try to find a discord group to get me through it (eventually because of the unnecessary hassle of having to do so), I will continue to campaign for the addition of Normal modes, and I will continue to hold a great deal of disappointment and resentment about having to do it this way. And as someone who initially loved the zone, it’s really killing my motivation to keep going.

At the very least, they could allow for some way for the field notes, TT card and Sanguinite to be obtainable outside the Tower, since everyone has decided the support fate is too time-consuming to deal with.

[Supersnow845]

Posting the text of the digest here (italics mine):


The wording here leads me to believe it’s as I feared… not only was this another “oops it’s Savage” like CAR, the way they said Forked Tower, without specifying Blood or Magic, sounds like the “next large-scale dungeon” is whatever they do for the next field op. So we’ll have not one, but two, BA style raids and no normal dungeon instances at all for Occult Crescent.

So in other words, the content casuals were looking forward to all this time is capping off each zone with a Savage level dungeon.

I still think this is wrong, and while I know it would take time and resources, both versions of Forked Tower should have a Normal mode. While I personally will try to find a discord group to get me through it (eventually because of the unnecessary hassle of having to do so), I will continue to campaign for the addition of Normal modes, and I will continue to hold a great deal of disappointment and resentment about having to do it this way. And as someone who initially loved the zone, it’s really killing my motivation to keep going.

At the very least, they could allow for some way for the field notes, TT card and Sanguinite to be obtainable outside the Tower, since everyone has decided the support fate is too time-consuming to deal with.

I really don’t think when they said “forked tower” they meant blood AND magic. While we know that the other one will be magic we can’t even guarantee it will be called forked tower specifically

Regardless this just reads like “next raid will plan to have a normal” which is forked tower magic

[Cyrtip]

Furthermore, we believe the difficulty level overshot what players were expecting before release.

The wording here leads me to believe it’s as I feared… not only was this another “oops it’s Savage” like CAR...

This isnt them saying "oops its savage"
They said "difficulty level overshot what players were expecting," or in other words, yet again, once again, another case of poor communication... at this point are we even surprised?

And on the topic of CAR, can anyone find the developers mentioning it was supposed to be extreme difficulty? I'm pretty sure we gaslit ourselves into believing "oops its savage" because we heard one single fan-translated line from an LL (If only LLs had official translation...).

Back before it was even announced, Yoshi-P said “I can’t go into too much detail yet, but I’m trying to create savage [content] that has 24 people" in the Japan Expo interview back in mid-July.

And then in his late August Gamescom interview, "in patch 7.1 there will be the 24-person savage content"

Even the LL digest says this about chaotic (while making no mention of extreme difficulty anywhere):

We estimate its mechanical difficulty is equivalent to the first fight of a Savage tier, or the second fight of a Savage tier when inter-team coordination is considered.

I'd say they were pretty spot on with their analysis of Chaotic's difficulty.
Now me saying all this doesn't mean you can't be dissatisfied with how FTB turned out, but saying they don't know how to balance content is wrong because pictomancer is a job, not content lmao. They designed FTB's mechanics exactly how they intended to, people just wanted something different.