So how is everyone feeling about Occult Crescent now that it’s been a few days?

[CNitsah]

FATES and CE

- Overall pretty good.

Fates need a fix with the scaling.
DPS need some survavibility : if your heal is not used to the fight or you have no heal in your party (you do with people available), you're gonna die from raid-wide attacks, even if you avoid all of the mechanics. And once you begin dying, it's a festival of rez/die again at next raid wide (I mean, our best potion give you back 11k live usable every 70 sec). This lead to an overrepresentation of the tanks in this content, because they're more tanky and they have better healing tool.

- Relics

I'm on the fence on Atma grinding : on one side it's a grind, and the time it takes is ok. But it gets frustrating when you don't progress during 6 hours. I don't mind the 30 hours grind, but I do mind feeling like this has been a total loss of my time.

- chest on the map

I like that, they give a purpose to just strolling around can bring you things. Not a fan of them giving you Eureka, CLL and Dalriada rare mounts like it's nothing (even the one I don't have). I don't know, are you trying to kill the few everlasting content left in your mmo. It's weird.

- Fork Tower
There is the whole fiasco about making all the party of a premade enter the same instance : it's a nightmare for organised runs, and seems to difficult to do in pick-up : the content needs organisation and planification. I'm not sure not having a normal version and more difficult one was the right choice. Most people are just not interested in doing more difficult content. There is an argument that it will be easier with time, when people get the zone gear upgraded, but did you look at the cost needed for that? Most player won't do it, and we all know how it will turn out : people without the gear will be gated out. I feel they should have gone the Delubrum Reginae way, with one Normal and one higher difficulty. Especially since there are hints part 2 will be gated behind the fork tower (Fork tower is central in the story, I don't see how they can continue the story without people clearing it).


Overall it's a mixed bag. I have my fun for now, but I feel that to many things only have interest if you're planning to do the high difficulty raid. The main grind for now is not the relics, it's the upgraded gear : a few pieces are BiS, but the upgrade are interesting only if you plan to do the tower. Fork Tower is also the only place where Phantom jobs really matter and you can test them to their full extent. Eureka and Bozja/Zadnor had many things that made them intersting for every type of player. Once your Atma step is done, most of the interst of OC is for High End Players (and completionnist).

[TaleraRistain]

Especially since there are hints part 2 will be gated behind the fork tower (Fork tower is central in the story, I don't see how they can continue the story without people clearing it).

That's the part that got me. How the heck are we going to find out who the big bad is since they seem to have this tied so closely to Forked Tower? Even if they don't lock north horn access to clearing it, I don't see how you'll be able to get to a final boss of any sort without it with the way they have the story set up.

[SkankyRoe]

That's the part that got me. How the heck are we going to find out who the big bad is since they seem to have this tied so closely to Forked Tower? Even if they don't lock north horn access to clearing it, I don't see how you'll be able to get to a final boss of any sort without it with the way they have the story set up.

The way things were worded in the scenes I thought implied that instead of a two-pronged, singular tower like in FFV it's a pair of towers, one each at the end of one of the horns of the island(if you look real closely when Forked Tower weather it active you'll noticed Forked Tower:Blood seems to be situated at the end of the South Horn point). My best guess is that we'll get Forked Tower:Magic as a regular story-difficulty dungeon like CLL/DR/Dalriada, and Forked Tower:Blood will remain as the hardcore raider dungeon, likely with some changes to the entry situation after all the negative feedback.

[TaleraRistain]

The way things were worded in the scenes I thought implied that instead of a two-pronged, singular tower like in FFV it's a pair of towers, one each at the end of one of the horns of the island(if you look real closely when Forked Tower weather it active you'll noticed Forked Tower:Blood seems to be situated at the end of the South Horn point). My best guess is that we'll get Forked Tower:Magic as a regular story-difficulty dungeon like CLL/DR/Dalriada, and Forked Tower:Blood will remain as the hardcore raider dungeon, likely with some changes to the entry situation after all the negative feedback.

I'll need to go back to my screenshots but it did sound like the two towers were going to be important to discovering just who the architect of Occult Crescent is. If that's true and Blood just remains some hardcore premade only thing, then we won't be able to finish the story without joining a Discord. Which is not awesome.

I love the content, but I have no idea why two Phantom Jobs only cost 1000 silver coins while two others cost 1600 gold.

Silver is incredibly easy to farm in the instance, whereas gold requires farm parties that are at least thrice as hard to get going.

Especially since people don't want to party up for gold in the instances since there's a far superior solo option. I foresee that getting nerfed hard.

[SkankyRoe]

I'll need to go back to my screenshots but it did sound like the two towers were going to be important to discovering just who the architect of Occult Crescent is. If that's true and Blood just remains some hardcore premade only thing, then we won't be able to finish the story without joining a Discord. Which is not awesome.



Especially since people don't want to party up for gold in the instances since there's a far superior solo option. I foresee that getting nerfed hard.

There's not really any feasible way to nerf it that will make it any more clearable by the average player, they'd have to entirely rework the fights, something I highly doubt they'll do considering they never did for the Coils of Bahamut. And from what I heard from someone I partied with last night who was in the W2 group the raid has no actual story beats locked behind it. I think it's been set up to remain completely optional, between Ketenramm and Archive pushing us toward the Magic tower and our own dialogue choices regarding the Blood Tower I think it's heavily implied that any foray into the Blood Tower is purely an adventure/treasure hunt our WoL is doing on their own time while waiting for Ketenramm and Archive to update us.

[FuturePastNow]

- Fork Tower
There is the whole fiasco about making all the party of a premade enter the same instance : it's a nightmare for organised runs, and seems to difficult to do in pick-up : the content needs organisation and planification. I'm not sure not having a normal version and more difficult one was the right choice. Most people are just not interested in doing more difficult content. There is an argument that it will be easier with time, when people get the zone gear upgraded, but did you look at the cost needed for that? Most player won't do it, and we all know how it will turn out : people without the gear will be gated out. I feel they should have gone the Delubrum Reginae way, with one Normal and one higher difficulty. Especially since there are hints part 2 will be gated behind the fork tower (Fork tower is central in the story, I don't see how they can continue the story without people clearing it).

Unless it was translated wrong, they said in the live letter that it isn't necessary to the story. In fact Forked Tower doesn't seem to have any story, it's just a thing that is there, challenge content for people who want challenge content (and who have a high tolerance for the BS entry requirements). I don't like the way it was implemented but I don't think anyone will ever be required to do it

[Mawlzy]

Unless it was translated wrong, they said in the live letter that it isn't necessary to the story. In fact Forked Tower doesn't seem to have any story, it's just a thing that is there, challenge content for people who want challenge content (and who have a high tolerance for the BS entry requirements). I don't like the way it was implemented but I don't think anyone will ever be required to do it

Has that demographic not got enough "challenging" content recently, or by rule does SE have to provide streamers with something new to use for clicks?

I'd argue that if an element of new content has no reason to be there, then the resources devoted to it would have been better spent elsewhere.

Here's a wild thought: if SE is going to throw in a random raid or dungeon that is dislocated from the story and apparently pointless, how about construct it so that the majority of players can enjoy it, rather than the same minority who were handed other "high points" of this expansion like CAR?

[Daralii]

Has that demographic not got enough "challenging" content recently, or by rule does SE have to provide streamers with something new to use for clicks?

I'd argue that if an element of new content has no reason to be there, then the resources devoted to it would have been better spent elsewhere.

Here's a wild thought: if SE is going to throw in a random raid or dungeon that is dislocated from the story and apparently pointless, how about construct it so that the majority of players can enjoy it, rather than the same minority who were handed other "high points" of this expansion like CAR?

Savage, Ultimate, Chaotic, and 48-man Chaotic are the four key pillars of Final Fantasy XIV Online. If you aren't playing them, you get the privilege of funding them and 30 random games instead.

[FuturePastNow]

Has that demographic not got enough "challenging" content recently, or by rule does SE have to provide streamers with something new to use for clicks?

I'd argue that if an element of new content has no reason to be there, then the resources devoted to it would have been better spent elsewhere.

Here's a wild thought: if SE is going to throw in a random raid or dungeon that is dislocated from the story and apparently pointless, how about construct it so that the majority of players can enjoy it, rather than the same minority who were handed other "high points" of this expansion like CAR?

I think this game's developers genuinely believe that players wanted harder content, and lots of it, and I think they misunderstood the real complaints that things like the Endwalker alliance raids were too easy. They have overshot the mark obviously