Current fixes to Forked Tower is not good enough

[Daralii]

I mean, sure... But generally I am just chalking this to bad decision making, even if you think of a silo'd system... I would have imagined there to be team meetings, or a team meeting to go over the 'project' itself... e.g., what the intended difficulty is, and frankly if it was communicated that the intended difficulty is extreme/savage large scale, then I would generally say the last thing going through a sane mind is... "Ah, let's turn it into an open minefield"

Especially when you look back at, say, BA... Which even 7 years later suffers from the exact same issues that we're seeing here, albeit not as... Intense, simply because of the age and relevance of the content... Like, you still get groups of 12-16 people in Hydatos trying to claim ownership of an entire instance (and still getting upset when people do join that instance)

I just don't see any universe where someone thought this was a good idea... Even in a silo, and it seems fairly clear that it was a decision issue, versus a... logistical one, when they've already openly stated in PLL that they thought Delubrum had... Too many support systems.

It's honestly just comical given the post-mortem on Hydatos and BA.

- Reflecting on the Baldesion Arsenal (Nakagawa)
The Baldesion Arsenal was an extremely ambitious venture, and we were driven by the strong desire to deliver an experience and enjoyment that players had never seen before in a battle content. At the heart of the enjoyment is the restriction on resurrection, which introduces a heightened sense of tension as you play. This is how it all began.

The inspiration for this were the games I used to feverishly play, for instance Diablo 2 and its hardcore mode and Wizardry on the Famicom, to name a couple. I feel that we succeeded in bringing that same enjoyment and sense of tension to our players in the Baldesion Arsenal. I also think we succeeded in creating an enjoyable high-difficulty raid dungeon for the largest ever number of participants ever seen in FFXIV.

Having said that, due to the abovementioned issues and other things we’ve learned through your feedback, we’ve caused our players a great deal of stress, and this is something we deeply regret. We’ve been made to realize there are many things we can change and improve upon. We’re determined to correct all the major issues and take the experience with us when we develop future content.

My responsibility on the FFXIV team is to plan and develop battle content that will be enjoyed by all our players. In this post, I’ve been given the chance to say a few words on Eureka and the Baldesion Arsenal, but I’d like to state that my desire to create great content applies across the board.

In the future, should more issues like this arise, I promise to take your feedback to heart, communicate openly with you all, and quickly take the necessary measures to improve things. Thank you for your continued support.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post4896293

[ServerCollaps]

I'm pretty sure that they always were aware of what they are doing. They plan and consider things way too carefully to make decisions, that are "dumb" in their opinion. In the end, they are the ones, that have all data and statistics. It also doesnt help, when 20 people complain in the forum, while their data might underline a different trend.

[Gwenkatsu]

I'm pretty sure that they always were aware of what they are doing. They plan and consider things way too carefully to make decisions, that are "dumb" in their opinion. In the end, they are the ones, that have all data and statistics. It also doesnt help, when 20 people complain in the forum, while their data might underline a different trend.

They changed the access method via a hotfix, not in the next patch. This fact alone proves pretty well that their data and statistics showed the number of people bothering with FTB were super low.

And (not related to your post) also a huge lol @ the thought that missing QA staff has anything to do with a bad design.

[XtremePrime]

I understand the argument, but we've had Baldesion Arsenal fill this exact niche in Stormblood. It is impossible to do a pug Baldesion Arsenal run, so you need a premade group and more realistically a discord for callouts.
Genuinely asking, but why are people letting Baldesion Arsenal get a pass when Forked Tower is in the exact same spot? (minus the way you queue in the instance works)

[Saraide]

I understand the argument, but we've had Baldesion Arsenal fill this exact niche in Stormblood. It is impossible to do a pug Baldesion Arsenal run, so you need a premade group and more realistically a discord for callouts.
Genuinely asking, but why are people letting Baldesion Arsenal get a pass when Forked Tower is in the exact same spot? (minus the way you queue in the instance works)

Baldesion arsenal didnt have this and was later nerfed several times. Delubrum savage then got direct queue. Normally you'd think that this represents a form of learning on the part of the devs but apparently this was not the case.

[Valence]

I understand the argument, but we've had Baldesion Arsenal fill this exact niche in Stormblood. It is impossible to do a pug Baldesion Arsenal run, so you need a premade group and more realistically a discord for callouts.
Genuinely asking, but why are people letting Baldesion Arsenal get a pass when Forked Tower is in the exact same spot? (minus the way you queue in the instance works)

Because people have short memories.
But as I said in another thread, Forked will probably become a beloved niche instance once groups can get inside and clear it regularly, much like BA stopped having all the entry requirement issues and snipe dramas once the content petered out.

Only difference I see though, is whether or not the actual gameplay and design inside proves worthy of a successor to BA, which isn't a guarantee.

[Brandr]

Whoever designed Fork Tower should be fired.

[Supersnow845]

Baldesion arsenal didnt have this and was later nerfed several times. Delubrum savage then got direct queue. Normally you'd think that this represents a form of learning on the part of the devs but apparently this was not the case.

Just a note BA has never been directed nerfed by square

Eureka armour and the change to substats in ShB indirectly nerfed it massively but square never went in and said “okay we need to nerf BA”

[Raikai]

I like the fix. May even make me attempt to find a party on Aether for it if I decide to renew my sub in the following week (I'm just returning for a month I was gifted with, to check the updates).

It doesn't excuse the lack of a normal mode, though. Sometimes I just want to do something like CLL... you still play with others in sort of a challenging way, but don't necessarily need to go all the way as hopping to a different Datacenter and outsourcing the party finder to a Discord Server. Hopefully the actual ingame PF is having a healthy amount of movement after the update. Didn't check Aether's myself, but Crystal sees almost no action.

[CNitsah]

I understand the argument, but we've had Baldesion Arsenal fill this exact niche in Stormblood. It is impossible to do a pug Baldesion Arsenal run, so you need a premade group and more realistically a discord for callouts.
Genuinely asking, but why are people letting Baldesion Arsenal get a pass when Forked Tower is in the exact same spot? (minus the way you queue in the instance works)

BA was the final optional step. The enterety of Eureka was still relevant without BA. Relic quest are considered finish without the BA step. Even the story is considered finished with BA being an epilogue.

With FT, the story leads directly to FT. OC is irrelevant if you don't plan to do FT. I hope they won't be stupid enough to gate the rest of OC behind FT...

People give a pass on BA because the context is different. Plus BA didn't come after the better option DRS was.