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

[Valence]

But it's the thing, that didn't even work anyway. I got into the content with the relic quest. Nobody was farming mobs and I wasn't gonna either.
If those stupid atmas also dropped from mob farming I'd have immediately shifted to this to level up with knowledge lvl sync (even with the broken chains at level up), no question. Those fate trains were one of the most miserable experiences I've had in this game so far.

[RaionKansen]

I played it day one and after 6 or so hours I had three atma. I took a break because honestly I thought it was quite boring. Nothing you do in there carries over outside of OC so I have no interest in knowledge level or phantom jobs. I just wanted the relic for glam purposes. Today I had a lot of free time and after 12 hours and no atma to show for it I’m just going to sit this relic out. The thing I like about Cosmic Exploration is how you can see your progress, there’s no RNG involved, I don’t know why they didn’t do something similar. How is everyone else feeling about OC?

Its boring. The devs are so out of touch. I don't know what kind of player OC is for.
The content is boring for high-end raiders, and yet its way too grindy to be considered casual.
There's multiple layers of RNG on top of eachother.
They don't explain the overworld chest system which is going to lead a lot of people to grind mindlessly and hit 12 stacks of phantom mastery with 0 Atherspun Gold which means they can't get +2 gear

[CarlCarl]

I like the CE's and am indifferent to the loss of the CE queue system, I like the gimmick (phantom jobs), I like Forked Tower as an instance and I like the aesthetics of the zone.

Everything else feels like a downgrade.
The lack of a normal-level open dungeon to end the zone with, the lack of duels, the lack of levelling and Forked Tower's entry system all just feel like baffling decisions. Having fates only spawn one at a time with all of them being boss fates felt weird too.
I don't really understand why the devs decided to ignore so many of the lessons they should've learned by now considering they already made Eureka and Bozja. Why are we moving backwards here?

[Stasya]

I like the CE's and am indifferent to the loss of the CE queue system, I like the gimmick (phantom jobs), I like Forked Tower as an instance and I like the aesthetics of the zone.

Everything else feels like a downgrade.
The lack of a normal-level open dungeon to end the zone with, the lack of duels, the lack of levelling and Forked Tower's entry system all just feel like baffling decisions. Having fates only spawn one at a time with all of them being boss fates felt weird too.
I don't really understand why the devs decided to ignore so many of the lessons they should've learned by now considering they already made Eureka and Bozja. Why are we moving backwards here?

Imagine if they implemented duels with giga toxic rng system from bozja, it would be hilarious. Force people go to specific spot, put something like cipher (like priority in bozja), sit for 3 minutes in fate location only for system to not pick them (so they waste time, item and silver from potential other fate they could have done). While in bozja you just interact with ui and run around in zone.

In before someone try to defend devs with "ooooh duels would have been better there". They literally copy pasted BA portal, i am glad that they went lazy with duels. (i dont hate duels idea, i just hate rng to get in)

[Kandraxx]

Genuinely feels like your usual daily reward, f2p mobile game. The only fun thing in there is watching all the Splatoon/Paypal Legends die to CEs over and over.

[dspguy]

My issue with some of the phantom job abilities is that so the enemies you fight are immune to so much of it. Mind you, I get that when I have my DoW/M kit, I have maybe 20-30 abilities to choose from. And some tiny fraction of those are useless against some enemies.

But when your "job" in OC only has a few abilities and the enemies are immune to any 1 of those, we have 25% to 33% of our "kit" that is rendered useless.

Of course, I get that not every enemy we fight in OC are CE/Fate enemies, however, the reality of it is that players spend a LOT of their time doing CE/Fates. And those enemies tend to be immune to those status effects. Why give us these jobs if they can be useless as often as they are? Either don't give abilities that they won't allow a boss to be weak to... or change the abilities we do get.

It is only moderately better with open world enemies in OC. While gold farming, some enemies are immune to paralysis, stun, etc. Why make a job's kit reliant on these status effects if so much of what we fight is immune to it?

[Username69]

I'd rate it an 7.5/10. Good start, but needs more.

Things I like:
- CEs are fun
- I prefer PJs over Logos/Lost Actions. Too much choice is a bit overwhelming to me and being non-consumeable is a big plus encouraging me to actually use them, along with less RNG (please let people sell their extra Oracle/Serker/Ranger drops)
- Gold farming is some silly fun
- Area is beautiful
- Coffers add a nice little bit of excitement to traversal.

Things I dislike:
- Lack of dangerous areas. Even at high levels Eureka was fraught with danger and encouraged you to enter them repeatedly to spawn NMs (Cassie, Louhi, Crystal Dragon, Penny etc.) OC plays it incredibly safe. Following from that...

- Lacking social aspects. Eureka encouraged a lot more communication and had a nicer culture. Work to spawn NMs, communicate which were up/down, the sense of achievement by spawning them and the nice bit of downtime waiting for people to arrive. OC is so fast paced and on the rails that it's just a constant FATE/CE zerg rush. People do talk, but there's no real "culture."

- Rewards are lackluster. No Cassie Earring/Blitzring or general useful items from the chests/CEs is disappointing. Getting Cassie Earring was so memorable and exciting- they need to have these rare drops from CEs to give an extra bit of motive to farm outside of just EXP/Silver imo. Also getting decent weapons/armour aside from the silver sets would help mix up gearing.

- Forked Towers implementation. Think this is a mix of the community being too reluctant to try harder content and the fast pace/instance size of OC discouraging people from doing so. A bit frustrating that people clamour for non-homogeneity and call the game too easy and then balk at content that tries to answer those issues.

[Jeeqbit]

Its boring.

Not to me.

The devs are so out of touch.

I mean, players cried out for a Field Operation and relic grind on these forums throughout Endwalker. Then Zepla made a video, which gave Yoshi-P the final push to resume adding them. So I'd say their in touch in that particular aspect at least.

I don't know what kind of player OC is for.

People who like Field Operations, large-scale social content and grinds to work on.

The content is boring for high-end raiders

*Certain high-end raiders, maybe? Depends how the individuals' dopamine system works, it seems.

and yet its way too grindy to be considered casual.

I've only gone in there for 2 or 3 hours a day (and skipped some days). A casual player could do that. And I'm nearly done with the CE grinds and have all the Atma... 3 weeks is about all it takes at that pace.

[Shurrikhan]

Main Wants:

• Gamewide: While in activation range of an aetheryte crystal, you can teleport to aethernet hubs by clicking them on the world map.
• Gamewide: Increase the status effect caps by at least 10.
• Allow for phantom jobs to be swapped via macros, e.g, "/pj b(a)rd", "/pj sam(urai)" "/pj next", "/pj back", etc.
• Reduce exp requirements by ~20%.
• All Phantom Job buffs of your own are now passive and compiled (e.g., with a different ID for each combination, so that if you have learned the buffs from every job, you'd have that all in one buff, but you could also have just a certain one or three or five or whatever), but you only apply your current Phantom job's buff to others. Buffs received are now likewise compiled. This should greatly reduce the burden of status effect limits.
• Gamewide, status effect limits increased by ~50%.
• Remove EXP loss on death. Like... why bother with this?
• Make individual mobs more interesting, with fairly predictable but only subtly telegraphed attacks and more openings to take advantage of, both; lower HP but more threatening. No immunities except DRs, which should let up faster than normal. Nerf tanks so they can't just cheese what all threats are added, and maybe even have some mobs reset or ignore Enmity or calculate Enmity differently (then attempting interceptable skill-shots against healers after getting pissed at their healing others, for instance, so that tanking isn't just a matter of being a excessively sturdy dps with otherwise dulled-down gameplay and instead actually needs to thwart enemy offenses).
• Make mob farming viable, both for general knowledge-/phantom-job-leveling and Atmas, etc.
• Add intermediate special mobs generatable from farming a given area, between standard and FATE boss difficulties.
• Add special missions or "Echoes" -- pseudo-FATEs that only your party can interact with, a la Battlecraft Leves but where player and mobs involved therein appear distinctly... ghostly(?) to avoid confusion. Some of these must be manually triggered once unlocked and may describe the challenge before teleporting you to a given starting point from which point they act a bit like Guildleves / a sort of mini-scenario. These typically involve challenges beyond the basic "Defeat boss" / "Kill X mobs" / "Collect Y items" / "Escort NPC Z".
• Between the above, it should be more of a loss to leave an area to go to a distant CM than to just finish off the requirements to trigger an Echo or two before leaving.

And ideally (though this is definitely in pipedream territory)...

• Add some treasure maps and some optional but intersecting questlines related to them.
• Add hunts, in the sense of rare mobs that are usually found only under certain conditions (and may even require you to find tracks, survey certain areas, etc., in pursuit of them) to get people moving around the map if they don't want to FATE-farm, farm a certain area, etc.
• Add roaming NMs, some of which may attack players directly after they meet certain conditions, with hidden received-damage scaling from players or unique "incapacitation" conditions to keep this from feeling like an unfair death. (E.g., one may swoop down, instantly finishing off your prior fight and then begin attacking you, reducing most to "Incapacitated" until the party has fully "fallen", survived long enough, or has warned the NM off.
• Add Expedition Resources. Different areas/NMs may drop different Essences, ores, artifacts, etc. as temporary slot-less currency that may be contributed to the larger expedition for others to use (granting you a portion of the EXP given by the tasks the resources contributed to).
• The Expedition or even individual parties may create devices and conveniences from the above drops, such as Chronoresonators to increase the frequency and difficulty (and therefore reward) of echos, campsites, Camouflage, maybe Warpstones (tuned to a specific Aetheryte to register and be pulled into CM for that region only), Analytical Tools, Everlasting Glowstones, Linked Spells, etc. (Probably for later zones only.)

[NoFaceNobody]

The only fun thing in there is watching all the Splatoon/Paypal Legends die to CEs over and over.

Don't forget those legends running directly into death walls because their program can't figure out where to go lmao (you see it alot during the Company of Stone CE, always during same mech and they run into same part of deathwall)