Forked Tower: Blood Needs A Normal Mode

[Supersnow845]

Here’s a question more out of curiosity

Let’s say there was a forked normal. And let’s say this forked normal dropped sanguinite so now you aren’t hard blocked at +1. There is still the fact that the gear progression ends at +2. Forked also doesn’t have a story and doesn’t expand on OC’s non existent story

People say CLL felt like a cap off but was that because people actually liked the raid (this applies to dal as well) or was it because Bozja was fantastic at environmental storytelling, hell dalriada doesn’t contribute to bozja’s power structure at all. Like what would a hypothetical forked normal “cap off” in the zone for you. Or is it more simply not wanting to miss out on a dal quality raid

[0blivion]

Reminder that Japan had the same issues and straight up cleared FTB less because they don't really do discord.

[Jeeqbit]

this sounds very reasonable until you meet the raiders calling people leeches, snipers and anti-social just for accessing the content available to them in-game.

They shouldn't call people leeches or snipers directly. Because that's rude, and is itself anti-social. However, this happens anyway in the same way that some people will link The Balance and teach a level 100 opener to a sprout asking for rotation advice in Sastasha.

It all stems from the fact that many people are inconsiderate and are lacking in politeness and empathy - the ability to imagine themselves in the shoes of the person they are talking to and what their mindset and feelings would likely be and be understanding about it.

These issues are not exclusive to these mythical "raiders". It's just an issue with how some players behave and there's nothing we can really do about it beside knowing that if their behaviour gets out of hand, they will probably meet a GM.

That said, using "snipers" in a general way in a discussion about Forked Tower is fine. It's not a new term. We have used it in the hunt community for a very long time. In our spawning and conducting linkshells we will say "they sniped it". But we wouldn't say that to them directly, because it would be rude. Instead, we'd explain that how the community handles hunts and invite them to our hunt linkshells so we can share hunts.

Again, there are exceptions, where someone would confront them directly and say they sniped - you can't prevent all players from being confrontational like that. And this is in the hunt community! Plenty of hunters don't raid, or if they do they aren't necessarily good at it.

I've played with both casuals and raiders and not seen much difference at all in their play

This is exactly why the entire argument being made that discord is for "hardcore raiders" is a myth. You said there is "not much difference" in their play, and that's because this is a casual game in general, and most of the people joining or clearing via discord are casual.

Most non-casuals who do it are not raiders, but achievement hunters. These individuals do all the content in the game, to get all the different mounts or achievements, so they play pretty much the year round in many cases. They aren't even necessarily great at the game, but with enough attempts and progression, they eventually clear things or wait until it's more trivial due to gear/unsync/tank privilege.

I think they need to play their own game in the West to see what it's really like being a player like me just trying to do stuff in this game because I would bet hugely it's very different to how it is over in Japan.

The culture is mostly the same in Japan. Same frustrations, except they think the developers cater to the west. Same issues with Forked Tower. Same issues with hunts. Only thing with differences is really PF culture, where they only loot 1 item each in Savage and only if they need it, whereas we are greedy.

are now losing even more subscribers.

Last I checked Lucky Bancho, it was at Shadowbringers levels (900,000). So it's kinda lost the gains it had throughout Endwalker. The Endwalker baseline was around 1.2 million. Beyond that was due to the hype of it going viral, Endwalker's "end of the story arc" selling point which brought more people back to the game than ever before and Dawntrail release.

What I am looking carefully for is if it gets to Stormblood levels. That's the one to watch for. Through ARR, HW and Stormblood, its baseline was more like 600,000. So if it gets back to that and is there a lot, then it's a big decline. But so far, I'm not convinced it will go to Stormblood levels because I think most people that were gonna unsubscribe already did.

If you see people not worried about Stormblood levels though, it's because things weren't so bad in Stormblood. Nevertheless, Square Enix would likely notice that way more.

[RuriStone]

They shouldn't call people leeches or snipers directly. Because that's rude, and is itself anti-social. However, this happens anyway in the same way that some people will link The Balance and teach a level 100 opener to a sprout asking for rotation advice in Sastasha.

I meant in general when i've cleared savages not just this OC raid ppls play isnt vastly different. So if you are saying hardcore raiders are a myth in general then yes and it's what I was trying to say in the first place when I said I didn't see much difference. I wasn't referring to 'mythical raiders' when I talked about their rudeness I was just using raider as a term to describe the rude group who play their game with spreadsheets, third party tools, discords, min maxing and application forms. Who are not mythical because they're very much with us in the forums and you've been in the same threads XD

So you're saying I should correct myself and call them achievement hunters? (To me it seems like raider fits better when we are talking about - a raid -)

I think what might actually be more mythical is the presence of GMS in the game currently tbh.

we'll have to agree to disagree about Japan I think the fact they don't like to use discord as someone else said is a big sign they do things very differently.

I still believe Square has lost touch with it's main playerbase and they're confusing the main casual playerbase with raiders and streamers sadly or perhaps think it's a way to get in touch i'm not sure but it's flawed. When I first started playing this game somebody said to me that they played ff14 themselves so they had a great idea of what players wanted, this really sold it to me but I don't believe that's true anymore.

[Jeeqbit]

So you're saying I should correct myself and call them achievement hunters? (To me it seems like raider fits better when we are talking about - a raid -)

It's mainly that if someone isn't a casual player, then you have to ask what they spend the entire year doing in the game. For many that's just collecting achievements or mounts.

In some cases it could be RP, PvP, hunting, Ultimates or MINE. But really, if people play the game all year round, they're more likely closer to an achievement type that just does all the content in the game or a wide variety of it, whatever it is, regardless of if they like it.

I think what might actually be more mythical is the presence of GMS in the game currently tbh.

They react to reports. It's really that simple. They don't patrol around the streets like a police officer. If nobody reports it, it does not get actioned.

we'll have to agree to disagree about Japan

My answer stems from seeing multiple translations and also interacting with them a lot on the cloud test DC. I made a JP friend there for a few days and we talked via translation. I've also had to convert things to Japanese in a server I'm in and I had to do a lot of research to understand their terminology, including reviewing numerous news articles that discuss the culture and drama in the game, and every time you realize that they're not so different over there.

they're confusing the main casual playerbase with raiders

No, what I think has happened is they:

• View casual content as spending a few minutes clicking mammets or doing a beast tribe quest.
• View midcore content, which we can define as spending more than 5-12 minutes playing, as Extreme, Savage, Chaotic, etc.

To be fair, Occult Crescent is actually in the ballpark of what people were wanting for midcore. It's just that Forked Tower having access problems for said midcore players is... odd, and is adding friction to doing the only enduring content they feel they really have, but makes sense if they view midcore as what I said above.

[RuriStone]

It's mainly that if someone isn't a casual player, then you have to ask what they spend the entire year doing in the game. For many that's just collecting achievements or mounts.

They react to reports. It's really that simple. They don't patrol around the streets like a police officer. If nobody reports it, it does not get actioned.
My answer stems from seeing multiple translations and also interacting with them a lot on the cloud test DC. I made a JP friend there for a few days and we talked via translation. I've also had to convert things to Japanese in a server I'm in and I had to do a lot of research to understand their terminology, including reviewing numerous news articles that discuss the culture and drama in the game, and every time you realize that they're not so different over there.
No, what I think has happened is they:

• View casual content as spending a few minutes clicking mammets or doing a beast tribe quest.
• View midcore content, which we can define as spending more than 5-12 minutes playing, as Extreme, Savage, Chaotic, etc.

Why do I have to ask what they're spending time on for a year? I don't know what your point is...I was just wondering if you felt they should be called achievement hunters not raiders but you were the one who brought it up not me. I'm happy calling them raiders it fits fine.

With regards to GMs well then the community do need to start reporting people more.

You have a relatively small amount of experience talking with Japanese people who more than likely do not represent the entire Japanese ff14 community it's not enough to change my mind but in your experience ok we're not so different. From my own personal experience of the West and it's community, from what i've read, watched and spoken to with people about Japan over the years I still suspect we are very different. Also I took an english lit evening course a long time ago with a guy who'd travelled from Japan to study we became friends he was very polite, friendly, caring and empathetic I doubt it's going to change your mind but mentioning it anyway to make a point XD

Making OC casual up till you reach Forked tower was either something they did which was just really strange or people are greatly overexaggerating FTS difficulty in order to get people into their discords which are probably dying down a lot after the disappointment in Dawntrail and how they are continuing to fail at putting content in the game that casual players actually enjoy not what they think casual players should enjoy. There is definitely some confusion going on somewhere or they're killing the game off on purpose like maybe they just don't care, maybe they have more important projects to work on atm. Either way they'll care when the money starts dropping.

[Daralii]

There is definitely some confusion going on somewhere or they're killing the game off on purpose like maybe they just don't care, maybe they have more important projects to work on atm. Either way they'll care when the money starts dropping.

They're working on an unnamed title that Sakaguchi's involved with and a Tactics remake, possibly one more. The CEO commented on XIV's population declining and basically said that everything is fine and Yoshida's experience with these completely unrelated games will loop back around to everything being fixed and everyone coming back.

[RuriStone]

They're working on an unnamed title that Sakaguchi's involved with and a Tactics remake, possibly one more. The CEO commented on XIV's population declining and basically said that everything is fine and Yoshida's experience with these completely unrelated games will loop back around to everything being fixed and everyone coming back.

Fair enough, good time to stop paying for the sub then. I might come back when/if there's something interesting going on content wise and they end wuks storyline.

[Jeeqbit]

Why do I have to ask what they're spending time on for a year?

Because if they're not playing for a year then arguably they are a casual player. In order to be something other than a casual player, they'd need something that is drawing their attention in the game each day for a year. Thus, I gave examples of what those things might be.

And it's rarely raids, although arguably they've been ramping up raid production in the last two expansions so you could make an argument based purely on that being a higher % of the overall content.

With regards to GMs well then the community do need to start reporting people more.

Everyone passes the responsibility around. "Others should report" rather than doing it themselves. The reality is that if players don't care, then it's not a problem. For example, if someone swears and all 8 people in the party don't care, then it's fine. Why action something if nobody is hurt/affected by it? But if 1 person in the party reports it, then obviously they cared or took offense, and so a GM would action it.

Essentially, things that go unreported aren't an issue because if the player cared enough, they'd take the time to file a report. And that's how the GMs view it too - you can see this clearly when you read the examples in the rules.

Making OC casual up till you reach Forked tower was either something they did which was just really strange or people are greatly overexaggerating FTS difficulty

I don't think it's that difficult. As I've said, it has actual telegraphs that you wouldn't get in Savage and half the time wouldn't get in Extremes either. The issue is the coordination and entry. If they'd made the simple changes to the coordination and entry that I mentioned earlier, I actually think it'd have ended up like Delubrum Reginae normal, which actually has a lot of tough mechanics and had things like hot and cold, yet people got through all of it casually. It may have been a different story had they put limited rez on DR normal, because people died A LOT, sometimes most of the raid.

There is definitely some confusion going on somewhere or they're killing the game off on purpose like maybe they just don't care, maybe they have more important projects to work on atm. Either way they'll care when the money starts dropping.

It's just confusion and decisions. They are actually trying their best. Got to remember many of them are developers that worked on FF11 as well. FF MMOs have been their life's work; of course they love it. Even Yoshi-P who was only working on FF14 has now spent 15 years on it and plans to spend at least 8 more. One of the things they love more than anything is meeting players in real life, which is why they were so determined to get FanFest running again and attend lots of gaming conventions, which has been happening a lot lately to make up for covid. How about all those concerts they put on? There's clearly passion there.

I think the issues are just:

• articulating player feedback from a very fractured and noisy and diametrically opposed playerbase
• managing (they focus mostly on new content and ignore old systems and procedures seem to exacerbate this remaining so)
• developing (because while I sometimes say things are easy, if you ask someone to do 200 easy tasks it's quite a lot to get through overall in a workday and having a family to look after later on)

[AmiableApkallu]

Here’s a question more out of curiosity

Let’s say there was a forked normal. And let’s say this forked normal dropped sanguinite so now you aren’t hard blocked at +1. There is still the fact that the gear progression ends at +2. Forked also doesn’t have a story and doesn’t expand on OC’s non existent story

People say CLL felt like a cap off but was that because people actually liked the raid (this applies to dal as well) or was it because Bozja was fantastic at environmental storytelling, hell dalriada doesn’t contribute to bozja’s power structure at all. Like what would a hypothetical forked normal “cap off” in the zone for you. Or is it more simply not wanting to miss out on a dal quality raid

For me, the problem starts with OC's gameplay loops: it's endless zerging between FATEs and CEs, or it's endless killing of trash mobs. There is nothing "accessible" that interrupts those loops.

These loops are the same ones as in Bozja, but CLL and Dalriada interrupt them.

And unlike Calamity Bound, Eureka's capstone NMs are a slog to kill the trash mobs for solo, have other conditions attached to them, and drop special currency, so you have a reason to look forward to them and to rally people for them.