Forked Tower premade patch coming before 7.3

[Supersnow845]

Forked can’t be fixed by just removing its perceived friction points, it would have to be completely redesigned. Not saying that isn’t worth it but it’s full of way too much stuff that could affect a casual run you would have to redo it from the ground up to make it work

[Sad-Panda]

If they make a normal mode I would interact with it, but all this does is move FT even further into the realm of exclusive discord commmunities.

[Veritas-Ancora]

We need Discord to find 48 active players that are actually trying to do hard content.

With the huge dip in players, even the roulette would take over an hour.

[Yoshihara]

Reading through a lot of the posts in this thread, there are a lot of disingenuous and facetious posts about "FT being hardcore content" and "Discord servers being toxic elitists that gate the community".

I am in over a dozen of these communities and there is minor overlap in between all of them, as people have a tendency to want to stick to one prog / reclear community, but are free to join other communities to prog and clear with them.
Out of all of these only 1 or 2 of them are only interested in clears / reclears, of which they only hold runs once a week or have dispersed into the other communities.

Almost all of the public communities that welcome new players of all skill levels. The difficulty of Forked Tower is that of "Extreme" difficulty, not even Savage, however does have the problem of Chaotic Alliance where one person with the mechanic going into the wrong place can wipe all 48 people, or some janky moments where a role doing the thing a specific time with certain variables will wipe all 48 people. Almost every single one of the communities hold both public fresh and proglocked runs to help new players into the content and assist players already invested in the content at their prog points. None of the communities gatekeep people out of the content and only request you join voice chat (no talking required) so you can hear callouts and instructions / explanations.

Frustration over "Sniping" has always been an issue that should be remedied by this hotfix, because you are removing the time and frustration required to get into the instance and engage with the content. People get to play the game as opposed to trying to play the game. The other thread where someone complained that they were intentionally killed by a tank buster after sniping has had the raid leader actually turn up in the thread and provide their statement on what actually happened (Player was lying and was intentionally being uncooperative and refusing to communicate even though members of the community tried on multiple occasions to reach out to them). Getting wiped by the sniper who joins and doesn't know what they're doing is always a risk, and it is not the responsibility or the 47 other players to rez you if you are a liability who refuses to communicate.

Just because there are many of you in an MMO who are anti-social and difficult people who are professional victims does not mean that these communities are gatekeeping or being elitist about it - in fact the complete opposite. I've seen players who struggle with MSQ / normal raids take part in the runs, yes they're on the floor a lot, but in no way are they unwelcome from runs that correlate with their prog point. If anything almost every single FT community is not gatekeeping, but throwing the gates wide open and providing an avenue in which anyone can engage with it - you just simply have to ask, and you will be invited in.

[Fawkes]

The methods of access that were being abused by antisocial, discourteous, selfish players being closed up is the devs fixing oversights. It's not a sudden shift in their direction or intention.

The entry mechanic has the option to trade more ciphers to improve your odds of getting in. The "discourteous, selfish" players are the only ones engaging with it as it was originally designed and intended. What other use could it possibly serve? If the developers had originally intended for the 'pre-made only' situation that the content is in then they likely would not have included the ability to sneak up to the pavilion and drop a fat load of ciphers to snipe a spot. This update is them acknowledging that their design didn't fit the content, and changing it.

[Phen]

Reading through a lot of the posts in this thread, there are a lot of disingenuous and facetious posts about "FT being hardcore content" and "Discord servers being toxic elitists that gate the community".

If anything almost every single FT community is not gatekeeping, but throwing the gates wide open and providing an avenue in which anyone can engage with it - you just simply have to ask, and you will be invited in.

I've found communities arent toxic sure, but they are gates. Everyone ive joined before was bot run mostly, so wanna join as a light party or more of friends? good luck. That works for cll/del/dali but not here. This fix sorta sorta stops that, but if it obviously needs call outs where a macro/s.e. are insufficient- its Hardcore content.
Everyone is bending over backward defending FT, which has entry/design this entire game was built around removing (that being you are supposed to have trouble communicating with the randoms to barely clear 2 fights when it pops, you are supposed to wipe for months, its baked in for content longevity). It makes no sense to me.

[Avoidy]

Funny how that's something they can implement before a regular patch.

Well yeah, it's an issue that affects raiders. Naturally they will burn the midnight oil and fix it as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, in the actual overworld that everyone uses, chests still have questionable loot values, the whole carrot situation is basically a pipe dream unless you have a billion gil to just buy the carrots outright, RNG on job soulstones continues to screw unlucky people over, gold farming is still totally divorced from the way most people experience occult crescent (WHY isn't a small amount of gold given from CEs?), etc. etc. etc. and none of that is changed in a rapid maintenance. We get to wait months. Maybe even years. Maybe even forever.
But oh! The raiders can't conveniently enter FT? Issue a full blown apology! Shut the whole game down! Fix it now!

edit: Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they're doing something about it. But OC in general is full of issues that make it a terrible slog. Now look at the only one they've bothered to address and fix quickly.

[Auro_Seldaris]

Oh, so you CAN update your game whenever you choose, SE. You can just drop the update without having to make it a "patch feature". It's amazing what this newfangled "downloading" can do. Sorry, but they get no credit from me.

First, because they had to have their metaphorical arm twisted so hard it popped out of joint by the JP community literally boycotting FT and refusing to run it.

Second, because why are they having to relearn something they already learned? That's literally one of my biggest pet peeves in the world... when people have already learned a lesson and yet continue to make the same mistake. They already fixed this in Bozja, why did this happen AGAIN?!

[Daralii]

Alright Square Enix I'll tell you how to fix Occult Crescent and get people to do Forked Tower, since you clearly don't know how to learn lessons from past content of this type.

1) remove the raise limit

2) remove thrice come ruin

3) remove de-leveling upon death

4) remove the super traps that kill more than just the person who steps on them

5) remove the Cipher system entirely

There. If you want unorganized players in the instance to do FT organically, which is clearly your intent, that's what you'll have to do.

Normal DR had Twice-come Ruin, so it's something that pugs can overcome if there isn't a set of raise restrictions and copious body checks. The rest I agree with.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Normal DR had Twice-come Ruin, so it's something that pugs can overcome if there isn't a set of raise restrictions and copious body checks. The rest I agree with.

The cipher system would also be fine for a Normal mode… not much different than signing up for CLL or Dalriada in-zone for Bozja. When not attached to the hard mode version, it’s nice and immersive! I’d make it just one cipher per person, first-come, first-serve though. The cipher lottery makes no sense whatsoever for either mode.