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

[Infindox]

I actually enjoy most of what they put in there, but the big bad points are:
1. Forked Tower is almost impossible to get into. The amount of people in an instance means you will always have those who are only there for grinding atma, getting achievements, new people in general, etc, which takes away from those who want to try it. And even if you get people on a Discord server to run it, people are having difficulty getting into the same instance.
2. Just look at gold farming on PF, don't need to say much more about that.
3. Because of how the CEs are, some of the phantom jobs feel pointless. I know that they are technically made for Forked Tower, but having them actually be useful for the rest of the area would have been nice.

[Gember]

Personally, enjoying it a lot. FFV's job system + the War of Magi lore is a real treat for me. The critical encounters are super fun as well. Playing as a healer, it was a fun challenge trying to raise people and learn mechanics at the same time. I noticed by the end of the week that the fights are becoming easier for everyone since people are learning, mastering their phantom jobs, (Phantom mastery bonus is doing a lot.) and gaining gear. Its nice that farming gold can be done in parties or solo as a tank, and its a overall nice vibe to see a lot of people playing together. It wasn't too long ago I was finishing up an achievement in Zadnor, and 7/10 times there was no one there but me if I decided to play earlier in the day and not the prime hours. It might be a little fast and repetitive, (I mean all grind content is like this, so its no surprise.) but I will for sure go out of my way to master all phantom jobs because I am overall just enjoying the content in full.

[fulminating]

I still think eureka is the best iteration of field zones, mobs aren’t particularly threatening here until you’re gold farming specifically in a party and the CEs are always up so there’s neither reason nor time to chain mobs during downtime. I like having to physically go to the ce, even if the journey isn’t as eventful as eureka. I don’t know that I’d want the return of sleeping dragons, but I don’t think longer tethering and more alert mobs would hurt.

The phantom jobs aren’t as dramatic as the action system, but people also seem to be using them a lot more than they were in bozja.

CE difficulty I think is probably at the upper end of casual drop in drop out, some such as the commander urn aren’t difficult but when deaths start to happen it snowballs fast due to the relentless pace. I imagine this will only get easier as people gear up/master jobs. Forked tower I think would benefit immensely from being able to enter an instance as an alliance or full 48. I expect this too will get easier as the content dies down (or maybe not, it is 2/3 of the instance cap all trying to enter at once). I don’t like that there seems to be ways for one person messing up to instantly evict the tower, I really don’t expect this will help draw the more casual crowd toward it. CLL, DR, Dalriada and even BA all struck a better balance in this regard where usually a death only takes yourself out except for double meteors in ozma which is still pretty spooky if the supports aren’t alert.

War of the magi is cool, hope it stays that way.

Overall better than bozja probably with some kinks that could be addressed or compensated for in north crescent.

[yesnt]

Fates die too fast. I arrive, manage three hits and get... three silver... that's not even worth the effort of traveling there.

CEs are good, but could give more silver.

Atma RNG was a nightmare.

Phantom weapons are 75% ugly or boring. Yes, I know we get upgrades later, but rn they look kinda lazy. They also look kinda random, like they simply used what drafts they still had lying around from older concepts.

I am disappointed that the chests make rewards from older content worthless. Why did we not get new interesting loot? Recycling is okay to an extend, but the drop rate is so generous with pretty much everything that everything becomes just more inventory trash.

New hairstyle is meh. Nobody wants it. I wouldn't care if we got hairstyles more regularly, but we don't. The last one we got was from Chaotic, which was 6 months ago. So we are going for another couple of months without a good new hairstyle, not cool.

I meant to farm a set of gear for one job, but it's too expensive. I suppose that's just not for me then idc.

I accidentally sold Aetherspun that will be needed for +2, that is idiotic interface design. Fuck that.

Fortune carrots are ultra rare. I used one and I got... materia. Trash game design.

Idk what Fork Tower is, nobody queues, people say it's not worth it without watching guides and gearing up, so I am probably just not gonna do it at all since I don't want to watch spoiler videos just so that I won't contribute to wipes due to bodychecks (from what I've read).

Phantom jobs look like an afterthought. Maybe this will look different with upcoming patches, but I am not hyped atm.

Overall, it's okay, but after I got my phantom weapon, I am not motivated to do any more of it.

Edit: I wish there were more quests. Most quests happen right in the beginning when I want to just get inside and try the new content. It was good cinema, I just wished there was more story, especially with phantom jobs.

[Valence]

Way too fast paced and hectic to take a breath, it's fates into fates into CEs then fates on a loop. Everything spawns back to back but only one thing at once so the area turns into a gigantic zerg train running from one side of the map to another. And you better be fast because those fates are dying in 10s. It's bland and tasteless. CEs and even fates are just DDR and gotcha mechanics, feels extra bad. Literally learn the dance or else.

Phantom jobs have interesting job identities but they're all over the place, and mostly designed for Forked Tower so 80% of them are terrible outside. I dearly miss the experimental and customization side of lost actions and logograms and how they interacted with older systems (reflect, dodge, etc).

Pot fates and carrots just feel like an extra bad gamba. No thanks.

The Atma relic step was terrible. I'm finally free of that nightmare.

Gold farming is very potent to level up phantom jobs and make gold coins. Too bad gold farming meta now makes it so that parties are asking everybody to use cannoneer for those except perhaps one thief. It's really frustrating. But it's definitely more chill than the regular rush train hopping from fate to CEs even though there isn't much gameplay behind. It's a basic grind gameplay, like in eureka.

Forked Tower suffers from 72 people instances. I haven't been inside, so I can't judge if it's fun or not. Judging by how they design their pve nowadays though and seeing how CEs and fates are, it's probably just terrible DDR again with bosses in the middle of a circle arena. How original... but I hope someone proves me wrong there.

Phantom jobs and perhaps the gear upgrades are the only sense of progression in the area. Bozja already lost a lot of it as a step down from Eureka since it was just artificially cut into 3 areas per zone. This one didn't feel like my level mattered for anything anyway because you level by spamming CEs and fates, which are level agnostic. Since you spend your time running everywhere on the map and mobs are mostly designed not to get too much in the way, you essentially discover the whole map at once, and immediately get access to everything at once. No progression at all.

[Daralii]

Forked Tower suffers from 72 people instances. I haven't been inside, so I can't judge if it's fun or not. Judging by how they design their pve nowadays though and seeing how CEs and fates are, it's probably just terrible DDR again with bosses in the middle of a circle arena. How original... but I hope someone proves me wrong there.

Most of what I've read is that it's considered harder than BA and DRS and has plenty of body checks and hard enrages. This is ignoring the nonsensical nightmare that getting in with a premade is.

[Kaurhz]

Not tried it yet, not sure when I will,

But it's actually serious that only 1 given FATE or CE spawns at a given time, and if it relatively faster paced than Eureka?

[Kisshu]

Phantom jobs have interesting job identities but they're all over the place, and mostly designed for Forked Tower so 80% of them are terrible outside. I dearly miss the experimental and customization side of lost actions and logograms and how they interacted with older systems (reflect, dodge, etc).

All they had to do with Freelancer was let you take abilities from mastered jobs. Something like 4 ability slots and 1 trait slot and people could use that to build their own job. Instead we get a weird heal and treasure number detector.

Not tried it yet, not sure when I will,

But it's actually serious that only 1 given FATE or CE spawns at a given time, and if it relatively faster paced than Eureka?

At most I've seen 1 fate, 1 CE and 1 pot(bunny) fate up at the same time.

[ovIm]

the entire content reeks of mediocrity, there is nothing to be found in OC that is not already in the game in a way, and it failed to iterate on the things that made previous Field Operations so interesting.

Phantom Jobs only upside is that there is no limit to using them, compared to Logograms or Lost Actions, which required some modium of farming to keep available. However, very few of those skills actually interact with your kit, meaningfully change what you do or offer any kind of customization. Its a second set of cross class skills you equip.
Giving people that mastered a job a permanent damage and healing buff is a cool idea though, I have to admit. Some phantom skills have interesting effects, but not enough to distract from the simplicity of the combat system. Which is a missed opportunity, considering that this could have elevated the gold farming in this area.

The CE's are just your typical "boss in square or round arena making you dodge AoE" kinda fights that we have aplenty in this game. There are a couple where there are groups of enemies that need to be nuked down instead of a singular boss, but they still follow the same kinda design. The only somewhat interesting CE I played was the turtle one, and I really wish there were more fights like that. CS3 have shown us that they can do more and design something interesting, but chose to instead give us more of the very same stuff we get from anywhere else in the game.

FATE HP scaling is busted, that so far is known. Some of those fights could be interesting if they weren't to quick to explode. Which they need to though it seems, to funnel you quickly into the next CE, and to warrant what little reward they give. Unless you are goldfarming with mobs, you rush over the map constantly chasing the next FATE or CE circle. You could of course completely forego CE farming to instead focus on FATE's, but with how unrewarding some FATE's are, I don't see many people doing that.

I have no opinion about atma droprates to be honest. The PVE side of this game becomes more stale and boring by the patch, thus I have no reason to desire a PVE weapon, so I shrug whenever an atma gets dropped into my inventory. My own RNG was round about 8% droprate, based on the amount of CE's I did. I have not done a single DT FATE.

The social aspect is diminished. Its still cool to see people traversing the map to help lone stragglers that were defeated with a res, but 90% of the things I see in shout chat are, and I quote, "lfg ce". with how fast paced FATE and CE spawns are, there is very little time to talk to your fellow adventurers, unless of course you chose to forego a FATE or a CE.

The fact that we have no CLL/Dalriada instance is baffling to me. I have no opinion on Forked Tower as I have not yet entered it, not sure if I ever will.

Overall, to me, the content is a "it exists" / 10.

[Valence]

Not tried it yet, not sure when I will,

But it's actually serious that only 1 given FATE or CE spawns at a given time, and if it relatively faster paced than Eureka?

Yes. A fate approximately spawns 1 minute after the last one was cleared, but they queue up one after another so you will never have more than one at a time on the map. If people are busy clearing the CE that's up, then the fate will wait and no other will spawn until said fate gets cleared.
CEs also only spawn one at a time.
Since there is no progression inside whatsoever (the knowledge level is only a gatekeep for forked tower or endgame mob farming for gold coins), as soon as you step in OC you have access to everything and just have to follow the rush train of 60-70 players, that jump between fates until a CE spawns, then resumes.
Oh and of course as people have complained about everywhere already, the fate scaling is borked so they die under 10s so you better be fast.