When will Forked Tower stop keeping players Hostage in instance?

[Alahard]

If they wanted FTB to be meant for actual hardcore skilled, they should've just made it a separate instance that PF can queue up for outside of OC. I know they wanted it to be inside OC for narrative purposes, but they could've kept the narrative one in the OC instance for a normal mode that players can just try out on a whim.

Except there wasn't enough resources, as doing both would have too high of a 'cost', so they resorted to this mess. Yay......

[AmiableApkallu]

Once #5 is implemented, they will have strayed fully from their original design intent of allowing random players to organically join the dungeon.

If it wasn't for the raise restriction, PUGs could conceivably power through Forked Tower (repeatedly), learn how the mechanics work, learn which phantom jobs are needed, and pass that knowledge on to future groups.

Except when someone asks, "Anything to know?" the answer wouldn't be a few short sentences; it'd be a wall of text or an entire slide deck with a raid plan. The degree of coordination required far exceeds anything seen in CLL, Delubrum (normal), and Dalriada.

[FuturePastNow]

I mean apparently their design intention was randoms were to be carried in an instance that one person can cause a full wipe? Also that it's a possibility to be left out of your friend group on a run. They really didn't think this through.

No, they really didn't. And I think all of these issues could have been predicted. Some probably were, but I think players expected more relaxed mechanics given the entry method and number of people.

[Altina_Orion]

I think they added or increased the echo when it was no longer new? But anyway, the echo made it a joke to solo. I literally had 400,000 HP in one of the CEs and that was in Shadowbringers. Otherwise devastating mechanics became a complete joke and I could ignore absolutely everything, including deathwalls and just auto the boss down.

In contrast, the CEs still require you to do mechanics just as much when solo. I'd actually say it's perfect. They feel like duels when doing them solo, and that may be why they didn't add duels... because we kinda have them with the fact we can solo CEs.
True, and that's because the sheer amount of players, quite frankly and obviously, carry eachother through. If you're doing it with a small party or solo, you are hopefully relatively confident that you can minimize or avoid vuln stacks or alternatively are prepared to risk a delevel.
They are going reassess FATE scaling anyway. They are actually going to try and fix this problem they have ignored for 12 years.

I see what you are saying but it creates other issues. Imagine this:

8.0 is brand new! People are enjoying all of the new... FATEs i guess. OC is dead because it can't be used for leveling. One, lone materia player wants to level their phantom jobs but nobody is around and they play BLM. Even with the CEs, they stand no chance. Tank busters will one-shot them, they have no self sustain because the phantom job leveling system is utter shit. They're fucked.

In Bozja, the echo prevents this sort of thing from being impossible.

[Alahard]

No, they really didn't. And I think all of these issues could have been predicted. Some probably were, but I think players expected more relaxed mechanics given the entry method and number of people.

Issues that could be predicted:

Everything that went wrong with BA that was repeated, but worse.

Choosing the hard mode when EW complaints were around casual content lacking, asking for another Bodja. When Bodja had CLL/Duels.

Deciding that players had no agency in controlling their hard mode runs

FT requiring specific phantom job setups, and expecting randoms to magically have all of them....

The rez limit

Full wipe kicking you out despite still having lives

More insta wipes with 48 people

Allowing groups with less than 24 people to join ... when 24 person bodychecks exist...