I hope we never see a system of essences or lost abilities again

[Iscah]

Additional to my previous post, the overall system is "do uninteresting repetitive grindy thing A so you are well-prepared to do mildly interesting (the first few times of many) repetitive grindy thing B, which is not sufficient motivation to get past the first thing.

[Ayuhra]

Sure, maybe it isn't a wipefest, but actions & essences are merely multipliers. The basics of dealing high damage are still the same - opener, rotation, using abilities when they come off cooldown and riding the GCD timer are still integral to actually doing damage. To say the issue is once again mostly essences and not poor gameplay strikes me very odd, but if it helps to cope, you do you.

I mean, I do every piece of content in the game with these same people and haven't generally noticed fights taking too long except for maybe the Diamond Weapon which has a lot of starting and stopping so it's hard to judge.

Delubrum Reginae can be a slog if people haven't gone through the hoops to get their damage essences. A lack of essences can make a HUGE difference in DR which is balanced around players having them.

[Catwho]

The only time I had to buy any essences was when I was trying to unlock the entire plate to 99, and there were a handful I was missing so I bought a chunk off the board and spammed them.

Otherwise, I've just kept the ones I've earned as I've earned them, and switched jobs depending on which one had good essences that day. (Perk of being all 80s.)

I've never "grinded" for essences. I never had to. I kind of would like less Lost Bubbles and more Lost Potions since I'm running low on those, but it just means I keep Lost Bubble on more or less permanently since it's a free and easy way to help the party survive.

[wereotter]

I think, and I may just be speaking for myself here, that players that aren't using them fall into the mindset of "do I actually have to use this item to clear at all?" and if that answer is no, then there's no feeling that if they're not using one they're hurting the team. None of the bosses have enrage mechanics like a savage tier fight would, so if the only punishment is it takes longer, than there are those who look at it and think they can waste their time farming essences or waste their time with a longer run, so it's a wash. (I'm sure someone will math out the difference in time, and quite frankly I don't care what people have mathed out here. It's well known that people will optimize the fun out of any game with math and time calculations)

If I happen to have an essence that will make things better, sure I'll use it. But if I'm out, I'm not going to give up running the content I want to run because I haven't gone back and grinded enough enemies to get the thing someone else thinks is mandatory but actually isn't, and I'm sure as hell not going to spend my money on a one time consumable item for one clear of what is, arguably, casual content.

All that being said, I do agree that the system they chose to use is pretty terrible, and perhaps the easiest solution would have been to just make the essences unlockable stances that you just apply rather than one time consumable items, or if not that, at least where you don't lose essences you already have up while you're in Gangos so if someone so chooses, they can just remain there for as long as they want to be running Bojza content without having to reapply an essence for every single instance of anything they want to run.

[Payadopa]

Sadly the few are actually the majority. (That is if you're talking about essences)

Fair. Haha
Still, I don't think the solution should be dumbing down.

[Shougun]

Sadly the few are actually the majority. (That is if you're talking about essences)

[TeraRamis]

Fair. Haha
Still, I don't think the solution should be dumbing down.

I'm not convinced that eliminating the essences is dumbing down - they're just a flat stat boost that you click once. The lost abilities are actually interactive. I don't know that we'd miss a stat boost/damage increase (or, in the case of most DR runs, deficit) were it removed the next time they do a zone analogous to Eureka/Bozjan.

[Nothv13]

I'm not convinced that eliminating the essences is dumbing down - they're just a flat stat boost that you click once. The lost abilities are actually interactive. I don't know that we'd miss a stat boost/damage increase (or, in the case of most DR runs, deficit) were it removed the next time they do a zone analogous to Eureka/Bozjan.

Keep the lost actions but make them either just unlocks and then a gil fee to put them in holster (or whatever they will call the next one). I mean we need more gil sinks so why not. Essences I think should be replaced by an expanded honors system similar to what was introduced with Zadnor

[Adeacia]

My complaint is that they are called "Lost" actions even after you find them. Once you find it, by definition, it's no longer lost. The actions you haven't found can be called lost actions, but rename them to found actions once you have them.

I didn't mind the essences in ShB. It was the lost action stuff in SB that made me quit the relic grind on the spot once I found I needed a certain number of unique ones just to continue. Depends on how they do it on if I'll bother with the content or not.