What's the point of occult crescent?

[Seketh]

As a bit of a preface, I'm someone who loves this type of field operation content. I got every shadowbringers relic on content, and I've completed two eureka weapons with the intention of getting more. I also adore relic content, and I have every ARR, HW, SHB, and EW relic.

I've seen a lot of posts on here about how flawed Occult Crescent is, and I agree with all of them. The one thing I feel like I haven't seen people comment on, however, is just how meaningless occult crescent feels.

Since their introduction, field operations have been introduced as a more unique way to acquire relics. But, with OC, I feel like this point has been completely forgotten about. Step 1 is FAR more efficient to ignore OC and fate grind, while step 2 doesn't even let you DO OC. And to make matters worse, those steps are just one time tasks, when you complete them, it's just a redo of the EW relics.

Though I find this better than the EW relics, it feels somehow more offensive that they've made this zone and are completely underutilizing it. And, as attributed to what others have said, it's not even that fun of content. It doesn't have any of the charm or enjoyment that Eureka and Bozja had. Instead, we got a boring zone with ANOTHER piece of high end content(I say this as someone who participates in high end content, I've cleared 4/6 ultimates, but I'm so tired of how much of it is getting pumped out).

Time and time again since it's induction, I've just asked myself: What's the point of occult crescent?

I really hope that the devs learn back to previous expansions and actually turn occult crescent into a piece of ignorable content that isn't just a mask hiding another awful tome grind. And I'm tired of them providing 'alternate' ways to accomplish relic content. If you don't want to do the content, why should you get the reward?

[Canadane]

At this point you should ask yourself what's the point of any content?
I noticed you have not gotten every SB weapon. Maybe field operations just aren't your thing.

[Shistar]

I agree that not having OC as, at least, one of the paths you can take to get your relic was pretty dumb. At least give us the option!
Doing FATEs was honestly worse than doing OC for the demiatmas, the drop rate was much lower. Unless you only needed a specific demiatma or you were also getting your shared FATEs done in the meantime, there's really no point to wasting so much time doing that instead of OC.

[ViinaS]

The point is mindlessly running from CE to CE and nothing else.

The Relic.... yeah you could try to farm the Demiatmas in there. After many hours of not seeing a single one I just gave up and won't do DTs relic at all.
I play maybe a few hours per week now and am not gonna waste that on a shitty RNG grind.

[YumieYumiki]

Doing regular fates is horribly boring. CEs have a pretty high drop rate (20% according to yoshi), and for each demiata type, there's one CE that you can trigger by killing a bunch of a specific mob (https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...cal_Encounters), so you have some control over it. If you're missing like just 1 or 2 you can focus the OC fates and CEs that drop them when they're up, and when they're not, kill the relevant mobs to trigger the CE you need

[Seketh]

At this point you should ask yourself what's the point of any content?
I noticed you have not gotten every SB weapon. Maybe field operations just aren't your thing.

Just because I don't have every weapon yet doesn't mean that I don't like the content. I've been actively working on eureka weapons for a while, just because I haven't completed everything within a day doesn't mean I dislike the content.

Besides, I love field operations, I adore bozja to this day and go in despite having every relic.

Most content has a few cool and definable rewards, while OC has some, it's nigh useless for the relics, the things it's advertised for.

[Vejj]

This content is such a drag. After 480 days, I check back in and the only experience I have on this expedition is an incredible rush from A to B, followed by FATEs that are over in seconds and constantly receiving bronze and silver rewards.

Square Enix is still proud of this content, right?!

[Catastrophe573]

I can imagine an Occult Crescent that is the same as the one we got, but "works" and has a point.

In Eureka and Bozja it was important to kill random trash mobs. But not even ones from fates! You were supposed to farm "random encounters" like a 30 year old RPG. Your reward was that this would cause the CEs to spawn, where you could get the rewards you wanted.

OC has no reason to farm trash mobs. For some reason the fate and CE schedule is packed full of CEs spawning automatically as soon as the previous one ends.

The fates melt like Ifrit unsynced. This can't be intentional. But the side effect is that the fates are useless. Besides, we have constant uptime on the CEs anyway. You'd actually have to stop doing CEs to do a fate. (Or, since fates are mere seconds, I try to race to one between CEs when it is convenient. Which feels wrong.)

The random chests on the map have broken loot. There's no way the 99 sangunite mount was supposed to be in the bronze chests lol. These chests were supposed to add an extra step to the fate/CE grind and fix loot boxes. (I hate opening 80 loot boxes.) New to the OC, instead of being given a lootbox by the fate or CE, except for soul shards, your reward is placed in a random chest that you now have to hunt down. But the rates were too high. Players opened too many of these chests, with too good rewards, and quickly obtained everything and crashed the MB prices. (Which even hurt Eureka and Bozja because it crashed their prices/rarity/interest!)

They even broke bunnies. Bunnies are the one type of fate that is always supposed to be up. It's a parallel grind for "optional rare loot" that isn't tied to zone or gear progression. Except in OC bunnies only spawn once every 30 minutes? I theorize this is because the fate schedule is so full that they can't spawn any faster.

Imagine an OC where the default state of the map is empty except for the bunny fate. If you want the berserker soul shard then you have to go kill mobs in that part of the map to spawn that CE. Shout chat helps, you take it down. Because you're alternating between trash and CEs, you're alternating farming gold/silver, and you're not wearing out the same 11 CE boss designs and getting sick of them. And if the map chests took just a few more fates to respawn, and had reasonable loot, the "value" of these chests would stay high. Meanwhile 5 other players didn't help you get that berserker soul because they were focusing on bunnies/pots. We were so close.

[Exmo]

I think for OC you do have to farm specific enemies to spawn CEs, like Eureka.

[Infindox]

I think for OC you do have to farm specific enemies to spawn CEs, like Eureka.

You do, but the way it's set up it can be unnoticeable to most players, because you don't have to kill as many of the enemies to spawn it.