Occult is awful, and I enjoyed both Eureka and Bozja greatly

[Kyuushi]

As for the tower, it'll get powercrept within a couple weeks when people actually have the gear and mastery stacks. I doubt 48 is mandatory even right now. People just need time to actually do it and learn each fight, the same with every other high-end encounter. Just with a few puzzles like BA/DRS.

The issue is not the difficulty of the tower. The issue is that people that want to get in the raid are being actively punished. It is objectively bad design when the people that actually want to do the content can't just because of how instances are designed. You can have 48 people willing and ready to go but after hours of trying to get in the tower they have to abandon 2 parties and just go in with 4. This is not an anecdote, this has been my experience with forked tower so far and that's not even the worst one.

The only argument I've seen about this is that it's to incentivize just random players going in and doing it but there are several issues with this. First of all is the level of content. There are body checks, enrages, specific job requirements and certain degrees of co-ordination you definitely won't get from random people just chill grinding the content. If it's meant to be done with randoms it should be at the level of Castrum/Dalriada and we have those raids as proof of concept of how good that works. If it's not meant to be done with randoms then there is way too much friction in just trying the content. You should not have to spend 2 hour just to get in the raid when you have 48 people willing and ready to go.

The second issue is that the community by and large seems completely disinterested in doing the Forked Tower at all. Everytime the tower weather comes up and me or some other person have tried to shout to try tower we're just met with crickets. You can blame the community all you want but if the difficulty level isn't designed for them, there's no real reason for them to engage with it. So we have content that's trying to pull in randoms, with difficulty levels that they do not wish to engage with and that actively punishes people that actually WANT to go into it as an organized group. Who was this content actually made for? The design is so backwards.

You could say it was the same with BA but BA was put at the end of a series and also had and instance cap of 144 which although it was still a mess at the time was still easier to deal with than this. And that is another issue. They have created content that is better than BA for this sort of thing with the Bozja, both for more random friendly content like Castrum, Delubrum and Dalriada, and also for more hardcore content with Delubrum savage. But not only did they go back to the worse design of how to get into BA but they made it EVEN WORSE by halfing instance caps to 72.

[Mawlzy]

The second issue is that the community by and large seems completely disinterested in doing the Forked Tower at all. Everytime the tower weather comes up and me or some other person have tried to shout to try tower we're just met with crickets. You can blame the community all you want but if the difficulty level isn't designed for them, there's no real reason for them to engage with it. So we have content that's trying to pull in randoms, with difficulty levels that they do not wish to engage with and that actively punishes people that actually WANT to go into it as an organized group. Who was this content actually made for? The design is so backwards.

I have a tinfoil explanation.

SQEX made a game that is a tribute to the franchise. They tried to appeal to the broadest base as possible, because MMOs are expensive to make and consequently require a massive subscriber count. Thus they pulled in people covering a wide spectrum from those who like visual novels with dragons and cat-girls to those who desire a second (or possibly only) job clearing high-end raids.

With EW wrapping up phase I of this plan, SQEX has concluded a sea change is in order. The story is now aimed at teenagers, and the fight design increasingly emphasizes twitchy reflexes and rote memorization. The little non-raiding content we have been drip-fed, such as cosmic exploration, is some of the least imaginative, dull, repetitive rubbish puked out by any "respectable" studio in the last three decades.

Apparently a cost-benefit analysis has revealed that phase II of this project will be more profitable with a significantly smaller player base, all of whom like high-end raiding of the monothematic design SQEX produces. All other content is an afterthought slowly being kicked to the curb.

[Jeeqbit]

1. I agree in that I prefer there to be time between FATEs and CEs so I can actually exchange for items or farm Gold. But the majority of players prefer go-go-go gameplay, and this was proven by how much people complained about Anemos and Pagos, which were the polar opposite - there were giant waits between NMs. It has to be this way for the ultra casual players and the people with attention span problems.

2. I've waited to figure out what I think of the CE design. At first, the mechanics seemed confusing. But after doing them enough, I'm starting to get them. I believe it's designed this way because they promised Dawntrail would design battles differently, so you have to actually figure mechanics out instead of them being obvious, which everyone got tired of in dungeons. After starting to figure them out, I am coming to like and appreciate the design now because combined with the music, they feel like real fights. Even once you understand them, they are not only hard to get right, you have to get them right constantly, because it's throwing these mentally exhausting mechanics at you for potentially 10 minutes depending on DPS.

I don't know about non-tank jobs, because I'm playing a tank. But on a tank I can usually eat about 9 vuln stacks without much problem, before even using mitigation.

3. Much as I have the same issue with not being able to play the support job I want to while leveling another, it wouldn't make much sense to level a job you are not playing. So I suppose just play the one you are leveling or don't level it. I appreciate that it's different and not just completely copying Lost Actions. Can we at least appreciate that? Within the formula that we have for everything, a little tiny bit of variation is nice and the gimmick this time is Phantom Jobs. They will probably do it different next expansion. I think it's nice to shake up the gimmick just a bit each time.

4. I agree about how they make all the old rewards given out easily but unfortunately they've always done it. Bozja did the same thing to old valuable items.

5. It does seem there are some issues with people getting into Fork Tower, especially with people being underleveled in the first days after release. I think it will improve to an extent when more people progress and I think it will get easier as people farm gear for it. Whether these things will make it that much easier I don't know.

[Voidmage]

For me it’s really only Forked tower that is badly designed.
We had the perfect system for such a thing with DR and yet the devs decided to use the worst way possible to do it.
I have looked at the Japanese comments and they agree that this system here just doesn’t work, especially with the difficulty of the content itself.
They are also afraid that it will be a story thing you have to do which would prevent many from progressing this content in the future.
Please change it to the Delubrum Reginae system or similar.
That system has proven its future proofing.
Personally I think this is the result of the devs only testing things in a small dev server bubble.

The class point I agree with and as far as I have seen, the Japanese side does also.
Tanks are the obvious best choice in this content and we are frankly at a point where their overpoweredness becomes visible.
I don’t have a solution for it outside maybe scaling damage differently for certain classes or giving all tanks guaranteed hard hitting tank busters all the time but at this point something in this game really needs to change.

As much as I like the fates I think as a system they are dated.
For this particular case here it would help to scale them on the amount of players in the zone itself so they don’t get rushed to death.

I don’t really agree with the other points, outside that yeah there should be more time between fates but I started to just ignore some to take a small break in between.


I truly love OC as it is but Forked tower truly is a horrible design even for organized runs with all the instance hopping if you aren’t a big content creator who can amass people in the zone to join them.
Even with instance hopping you just play gacha if you even get in the same group after hours only to lose your place to someone who innocently tried to get in on their own.
And I think the interest will dwindle even further as word comes out of just how punishing it is.
Why not have a normal story mode akin to DR difficulty and this one as a “savage” version?


So yeah, here’s my feedback on points I dislike but I don’t expect changes tbh.

[Fawkes]

While a TON of people LOVE snapshotting, the delay has gotten substantially worse, likely due to the larger player count.

Hold the phone, I thought snapshotting was just terrible janky garbage caused by the internet part of the game being made poorly or something. You're telling me people LIKE it? As in they prefer it to having the things you see on screen actually matching up with what happens?

[itachi-otsutsuki]

Exactly, the content is fine but for the love of God. Atleast make it queuable like DR. What the ???? are they doing? Just wasting our time for nothing? You can't even get in to prog lol.

[itachi-otsutsuki]

The cycle of CE > 2-3 FATEs > CE is fine. It's actually pretty good for people who put the effort in on mastery. If you're suffering on red jobs, either pick one with more sustain or stop being anti-social and join a party. You can play whatever phantom job you want anytime. There's no mandate on them and you don't NEED 12 mastery for anything, most people in the world first fork run barely had 7 tops. If you have fun on one, keep playing it, or don't. That's YOUR choice.

I'm with you on #4 but not for all of the items. I'm a little mad Gabriel III and the Dal raptor are in the boxes and drop like candy because I grinded my ass off to get them both and got neither on my main, but Eureka's mounts have been in company boxes for years now and I don't think all of the loot is in the table. I've seen one Evlaan drop, but no bulb as of yet.

As for the tower, it'll get powercrept within a couple weeks when people actually have the gear and mastery stacks. I doubt 48 is mandatory even right now. People just need time to actually do it and learn each fight, the same with every other high-end encounter. Just with a few puzzles like BA/DRS.

With all of this in mind, remember that we still have at least 8 new phantom jobs (around an extra 20% damage/healing when mastering all of them for a total of 50%) and the entire 2nd zone with whatever powercreep it'll bring. I'm actually really happy with the system as-is. Mastery and gear provide that fun type of powercreep Eureka had in its gear and Bozja had in rays (even if that grind was immensely boring), the CEs are all engaging with plenty to do in each but without feeling unfair, most of the jobs are really well implemented and add another layer to rotation that's fun without sacrificing the fun factor from the action systems both older relic areas used. There's a lot to like about it with a few minor nitpicks here and there, but nothing I'd call a deal-breaker.

You still need to deal with bodychecks. And only the most hardcore of grinders will be maxing all jobs for that stat boost. There is 0 incentive to grind unless you wanna do Forked, since there is also no ability to level jobs. But then there is also 0 incentive to do forked cause you can't even get into the duty to prog unless you sign up with a discord and even then it's hard.
They just completely messed this up. They HAD better systems in place in Bozja, so there is literally 0 excuse.

[itachi-otsutsuki]

It is a 'skill check' but that's a backwards way of looking at it when SE should just fix their netcoding so things actually match up. As it stands the playerbase has been forced to incorporate 'snapshot logic' as part of the skillset to do a raid. Even then, it still gets me sometimes cause not every snapshot will be the same. Some are early, some are late. It's super janky when you think about it. Especially at not 0 ping.

[Aco505]

I'd also add that there should've been a Castrum/Dalriada CE raid to provide players with puggable content of medium difficulty, with the tower staying as the harder one.

[Valence]

I think this thread hits the nail on the head.

1. Go-go-go Gameplay taken to the max. The optimal gameplay that everyone has devolved into is sprinting to a FATE, killing it in 5 seconds, returning, immediately sprinting to the next FATE, killing it 5 seconds, returning, sprinting to another FATE, returning and then sprinting to the CE.
There is no chill downtime with the gameplay loop, and the unlimited return function seems to only encourage this. The gameplay map seems incredibly small, as you're only ever sprinting to the same couple of FATEs, instantly returning, and teleporting to the next FATE.

This feels incredibly exhausting to go through, and sucks up all the fun. No time to breath, and since this system wouldn't work with an actual progression system, as soon as you enter in OC, you have access to everything so you can get on the bandwagon. It's awful.

2. Critical Engagements are poorly designed and courage Tank turtling. Get hit more than once on a DPS job and you're eating the floor, having no fun, and placing a burden on your teammates. Sure, it's a get good angle, but the actual reaction of the playerbase is for everyone to turtle on Tank jobs. You can get hit a couple of times on a Tank and shrug it off. Every CE is the majority of the players turtling on Tank jobs, or on a rez job.
The real problem here is the lack of defensive options for DPS jobs (aswell as my upcoming 3rd point). There is no Beast essence or something that will allow people to have fun on a DPS job, but stay alive. Even in a group with a shield healer if you aren't completely confident in the CE you're just going to die, and be a burden to the group. A Tank on their own is so much more safe than a DPS player inside a group with shield healers.
There are surprisingly few defensive utility with the support jobs too, most DPS will not be able to heal or protect themselves when they get hit.

This is in direct correlation to a wider problem that's been creeping up in pve everywhere: tanks are godmode immortal. It's true in casual pve like dungeons above all, but it's also true in savage as tanks will generally be the last ones standing unless a body check mechanic wipes the raid independently of the battle system. In any type of pve content nowadays you're better playing tank if your objective is just staying alive.
I have mostly played through CEs as a DPS job though, and could sometimes manage to creep up to 5 vuln stacks without dying from room wides. Generally you die either because a gotcha mechanic sends you to the death wall, or because you got hit by at least two mechanics intersecting, the latter generally survivable easily by tanks (that's why they stay alive). And of course if you don't have any healer in your team, but that's a given in pve. Having potions like in eureka though would probably alleviate this. Ideally you could swap to jobs like chemist and heal yourself, but then it would mean not leveling other phantom jobs that you actually want to level (cf bullet point 3)

3. Not being able to play with the support job/actions that you want because the gameplay loop requires you to swap support jobs to a new one to continue building EXP. Let's say I really like playing with Oracle. Too bad, I can't ever play with it because I need to level all of my other support jobs. You spend the entire gameplay experience leveling support jobs that you don't care about, instead of playing the ones that you actually want to play. There's also the hilarious thing of when you max out a support job, and get its final skill, you never actually get to use it because you need to be swapping to a new support job to level.

It's a huge problem.
Even more compounded in places where phantom jobs matter more than in CE/fates, which is gold farming: most serious gold farming parties want you to go on cannoneer because that's what deals a lot of damage to lvl27 mobs with a chance to OHKO.

4. The complete destruction of the Eureka and Bozja gil economy. Why are all of the rare drops from Eureka/Bozja flowing out of random chests in Occult? It has completely destroyed the economy of both of them. It's like saying "We don't want you to make gil in Eureka and Bozja, only do Occult where you make no gil". Many of the rare drops and glamours from Eureka/Bozja tanked to nothing in value.

That's unfortunate for eureka/bozja aficionados, but I think this will ultimately quiet down once the content gets behind us. At least to some extent.