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

[Gurgeh]

Anyone seen Xepla?
Of course it's well known she hates this game, and has absolutely no emotional investment in hoping it does well.

[Gurgeh]

1/70 is completely underplaying what is actually happening.
First only a few are on healer.
Not everyone needs to run to raise one person.
I often see more than one running towards that person or people asking if they still need a raise.
The raising of dead people in field content is really the worst example there is and I don’t agree the notion of measuring toxity there with the amount of people raising.

That and your second part is just “searching for misery”.
With all due respect Gurgeh but you are a person I would really give the honest suggestion of stepping away from the forum a bit and see at the positive things in life and in this game.
Yes, toxic people exist absolutely and not only a few but the good people do outweigh t the bad apples by far in this game and in others.

But this is really my last take on this topic. This doesn’t lead anywhere.
If you want to believe this game is such a toxic ground then so that but let me just say this:
If you expect negative things behind every corner you will definitely find it.


I really hope you are wrong…

I'm just enough not an idiot, to be unable to avoid the truth of your advice.
I spend more time in the forums.
It's because while I recognise irony, I have enough hope for people to assume they are not all trolling me. But that will be the case sometimes. Like could be with Daralli.
Who can tell.
None can tell if I'm trolling, and sometimes I am being outrageous for effect. I can't tell if they are trolling.

[Astronema]

market board prices for new stuff for OC are actually going up not down its hilarious.

[Valence]

Speaking of Role Actions... Square-Enix can't even get those right "at base" considering the large amount of useless ones that ranged DPS alone ended up with. Should I really expect them to come up with a talent system that's going to make the Grazes, for example, into something worthwhile?

The grazes and other similar "useless" role actions are extremely useful in content that does make use of them, notably deep dungeons, but ironically, in Eureka as well (couldn't mound until max level, mobs would aggro and follow you to narnia so having tools to shake them off was the difference between life and death).
The last time standard pve actually made use of Heavy was in Coils with the Renauds in ARR. And then they stopped bothering with crowd control altogether, and io and behold, made sure to make the remaining tools like Fluid Aura on WHM or point blank on MCH obnoxious af in dungeons until people clamored for them to be deleted, and made sure to keep binds like AST Stella, SMN Tri-Bind or RDM Tether in spite of them never being used and ensuring players would complain about them not removing those "useless garbage spells" when new expansions came out. And guess what, they were probably very happy to have players clamor for their removal so they'd not have to bother with crowd control ever anymore, and just kept some of it in role actions for non standard pve content because they decided since long that the pve they wanted wasn't about playing a RPG but dancing to a partition.

This is all still reliant on the developers creating a biome with sustainability, and a playerbase that allows smaller/lesser life to flourish instead of immediately mauling it, and that just isn't something I really personally trust that FF14 can do. Was there not a cross-skill system in the past even? Whose to blame for that getting axed? The developers for not improving choices, or players for trivializing the process?

Ah... wait, I bet it was the changes to boss encounters, wasn't it? Can't have people free-styling during the choreographed dance number and whatnot.

Cross class was somewhat basic but worked actually decently, but mostly in Stormblood where you could choose which of the cross class abilities available to your job you wanted. It was already consolidated under the "role action" system, but you couldn't have access to all of them, a bit like what multiple iterations of Frontline pvp have done in the past and do today. I think you could only pick 3 of them out of 5-6.
In HW it was a hot mess and still categorized under the cross class system since what you had access to was just some eligible abilities from the 2 "adjacent" jobs to your job, for instance a Paladin could raise since you could technically add Raise as a cross class action from WHM which was one of the two cross classes for the job, which is something that was could be pretty interesting if just for that example. The main issue is that it required people to level those cross class jobs to a level high enough to unlock those abilities before being able to use them, which had pros and cons.
Either way it was funny to see people not always having the exact same toolkit between two of the same jobs. Raising/Esuna paladins, Raging Strikes Black Mages and Machinists, but also abilities like Second Wind for example that was a MNK skill that could cross class only into DRG, BRD and NIN, or Bloodbath from WAR crossclassing into the two other tanks as well as MNK and DRG.
I think HW and SB could have merged this system even further by using HW's pollination system and restricting the amount of cross classes you could pick to make meaningful choices. Some of them like raise were meta, but a lot were actually just different flavours of utility or comfort.

[Infindox]

market board prices for new stuff for OC are actually going up not down its hilarious.

Mostly because player count is down during DT already, and people are leaving the content already, meaning less people going in to grab stuff.

[Zeekdober]

Even if you are frugal with your silver, 200 CE is not enough for just the gear and its upgrades.

Each gear piece is 4,000 apiece, so 20,000 for a single kind of job (tank/healer/melee dps/etc).
The upgrade material in silver is 1,600 apiece, but three are required for an upgrade so, 4,800.
Upgrading all five gear pieces to +1 requires a total of 15 of the silver currency upgrade material, so that is 24,000.

Each critical engagement gives 200 silver for completion, so doing 200 of them is 40,000 silver, meaning your short 4,000.

But that isn't all. Lets say you want to actually move your mount faster around the map so you can quickly get from place to place, that is another 3,000 silver.
Then you learn chemist is desired for Forked Tower because of its rez and elixir, that is another 1,000 silver.
Likewise for gold farming, you learn there is demand for cannoneers who are at least level 5, so another 1,000 silver spent.
Might as well pick up time mage at that point just because it also contributes to your overall freelancer level, so another 1,000 silver spent.

Alright you gotten all of this, and you want to do the fork tower, that is another 600 silver just to get a potential spot for one run of it with a cipher. But you also want to do it with your buddies, so you need to get more ciphers as the more you give the more weighted your spot will be, so lets say you farmed and now have a total of 5 ciphers, meaning that is 3,000 silver in price or 15 CEs. As ciphers contribute to a bidding war process to keep your spot and not get ejected.

Meaning 240 critical engagements done. Potentially more if you wanted to do additional runs in order to get your one set of gear you bought to +2, meaning getting much more ciphers to guarantee your spot.

Then lets say for whatever reason, after all of that, you want to get set of gear for each kind of dps and for healer and for tank. Well knowing what we know and not factoring in all the other stuff, and assuming just trying to get to +2, no extra runs of fork tower, the collective total would be another 264,000 silver. So another 1320 critical engagements. And god help you if you actually want to upgrade each of those to +2.

As for the gold, yeah its about ~2000 enemies. Though if you wanted each kind of gear and upgrading those, thats more like farming an amount of enemies in the five digits.

All of this wouldn't be so bad if I could level my actual Jobs while doing this. The decision to not let level 90 or 91's into OC is just dumb and the reasoning behind it was idiotic "We didn't want another Bozja/Zadnor leveling situation" ....my brother in Hydaelyn you literally control the EXP values for the game. At any point in time they could've increased the EXP for open world FATEs to match Zadnor, or decreased their spawn timer, or literally anything than what they did, which was nothing.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

The map is nice and the I enjoy the fights, as well as the versatility that comes with the subjobs, letting you have a bit more fun with the standard systems in play, but otherwise, its alright, I enjoy poking my head in and helping new players get their bearings on the content. Haven't tried Forked Tower yet.

The real grind seems to be gold farming, which can get you some nifty stuff, although funnily enough, most of the stuff you can get just makes you stronger in Occult.

[Gurgeh]

No, I'm done pretending that the developers or playerbase wants me here, and I've accepted that I'm just not good enough for Final Fantasy 14.

I wouldn't presume to liken you to me specifically, but irrespective, it's far from just you.
However, most people who feel similarly to you don't care enough to stick around long enough to be heard very much.
Especially, not in the face of inevitable personal criticisms. I'm pretty confident also that not being wanted in the forums isn't in the least bit where the feeling of 'not being wanted' has come from. In fact, you basically said as much.
I also know that you wouldn't have bothered if you didn't care at some level.

I suspect there is a tragedy here though, which is that while many of the frankly hurt and excluded casuals did genuinely care about the game, most of the hardcore high end never really did and don't.
They are in their static bubbles, topped up from recruitment discords, chosen by ff logs. They appreciate the MSQ a bit maybe, but by and large they race through it.
They don't want to have to poke their heads up and interact with rest of the player base (proven fact) in game, unless it's filtered to meet their approval.
They want their fun, for as long as possible, their way, on their terms
If FFXIV can't exist to serve them on their terms, then there is no point in XIV existing. The better it servers those terms, the better.
And once that dries up they already know they will very happily move over to guild wars or whatever without their hearts skipping a beat.
"I'm alright Jack"

Your not alone. But by nature of the problem, your doomed to always be the minority, as the like minded leave.
You are paying for this service.
The have created a player experience that willfully encouraged you to become invested.
Then it not only pulled the rug out from underneath you at end game, it's spent since the start of Endwalker rubbing salt in your wounds.
It has got worse. The community has got worse. And only the Devs and the game can have enough 'coordinated' 'power' to fix it.
Either they don't want you. Or they are incompetent beyond all realistic hope. And in such neglect they have egged the player base on every step of the way.
"Play other games" (it's only a small sin, but it's a great short hand for so very much)

[Fawkes]

Cross class was somewhat basic but worked actually decently, but mostly in Stormblood where you could choose which of the cross class abilities available to your job you wanted. It was already consolidated under the "role action" system, but you couldn't have access to all of them, a bit like what multiple iterations of Frontline pvp have done in the past and do today. I think you could only pick 3 of them out of 5-6.
In HW it was a hot mess and still categorized under the cross class system since what you had access to was just some eligible abilities from the 2 "adjacent" jobs to your job, for instance a Paladin could raise since you could technically add Raise as a cross class action from WHM which was one of the two cross classes for the job, which is something that was could be pretty interesting if just for that example. The main issue is that it required people to level those cross class jobs to a level high enough to unlock those abilities before being able to use them, which had pros and cons.
Either way it was funny to see people not always having the exact same toolkit between two of the same jobs. Raising/Esuna paladins, Raging Strikes Black Mages and Machinists, but also abilities like Second Wind for example that was a MNK skill that could cross class only into DRG, BRD and NIN, or Bloodbath from WAR crossclassing into the two other tanks as well as MNK and DRG.
I think HW and SB could have merged this system even further by using HW's pollination system and restricting the amount of cross classes you could pick to make meaningful choices. Some of them like raise were meta, but a lot were actually just different flavours of utility or comfort.

The problem with the role action system was they mostly just took abilities we already had and locked them away in a system where you could only pick 5, and some of them felt like they were mandatory, so it never felt like customization. Similarly, the cross-class system before that had "must have" abilities and then a bunch of fluff you could pick if you wanted that never really made much difference. And you had to level the jobs to have access to the abilities, so if you wanted to be a good tank or a good healer you had to level multiple classes. And before that you were directly required to level multiple classes, the job unlock quests originally had requirements like Paladin needed you to be gladiator 30 and conjurer 15 or something. But people didn't like being "forced" to level another class if they just wanted to be a tank.

And if we go all the way back to early 1.0, the game used to be entirely cross-class. Every class was basically freelancer, you could assign pretty much any ability you had learned with any other class. You had set points you were limited by similar to the Blue Mage job in FFXI so you couldn't just equip them all at once. Also there weren't restrictions on what classes could wear what, so mages could wear armor. I think all that led to the meta being everyone just playing as Thaumaturge regardless of what role they were doing.

[Daralii]

The problem with the role action system was they mostly just took abilities we already had and locked them away in a system where you could only pick 5, and some of them felt like they were mandatory, so it never felt like customization. Similarly, the cross-class system before that had "must have" abilities and then a bunch of fluff you could pick if you wanted that never really made much difference. And you had to level the jobs to have access to the abilities, so if you wanted to be a good tank or a good healer you had to level multiple classes. And before that you were directly required to level multiple classes, the job unlock quests originally had requirements like Paladin needed you to be gladiator 30 and conjurer 15 or something. But people didn't like being "forced" to level another class if they just wanted to be a tank.

And if we go all the way back to early 1.0, the game used to be entirely cross-class. Every class was basically freelancer, you could assign pretty much any ability you had learned with any other class. You had set points you were limited by similar to the Blue Mage job in FFXI so you couldn't just equip them all at once. Also there weren't restrictions on what classes could wear what, so mages could wear armor. I think all that led to the meta being everyone just playing as Thaumaturge regardless of what role they were doing.

One weird part of the transition to role actions was that healers used to have their own dispels that were functionally identical but had some job flavor, so healers are still effectively short one button because they were all consolidated into Esuna.