Expectations for Occult Crescent?

[Amarande]

And deep dungeon is just the same old same old. How many people even did the last one? I feel like it flopped hard.

I took a long break during Endwalker and spend most of my time chasing after S ranks these days, so I never really got around to doing Orthos. I should.

However, I'm not surprised it didn't get enough love, there are a few legit problems with deep dungeons:

* The fact that unless you were around when they came out, it can be difficult to "get off the ground" in them, because the queue time for the initial floor sets is basically hopeless most of the time so you either have to hunt down 1-3 friends or try to brave it solo with no aetherpool (this could be pretty rough in HoH and I hear Orthos is rougher).

* Getting these friends can be a problem because they may not have an open Save Slot (as if both are in use, you can't go in with someone else at all).

* Servers have been less stable throughout Dawntrail and the whole format is unusually sensitive to disconnects as it is (a solo run is ended instantly and a group run is in danger, especially with the forced queue jump rule that was IIRC designed for 8P Prae but is still in effect for reconnects that essentially 100% prevents the ability to immediately come back after DC).

* The community for deep dungeons, at least the one I joined for a while back in StB (and which for civility reasons I will not name here), is not good. It quickly devolved into people mostly hiding in the "at least one proven full clear folks only" channel and outside of that almost entirely soloists, at the least it completely failed at being a watering hole for those who needed it most (people still yet to make their first clear and needing to find group mates) as few such runs ever materialized and were almost exclusively on Saturday (not just weekends, specifically Saturday). As with most FFXIV discords, toxic positivity is the rule, too.

[Valence]

FFXI had FAR better side quests than FFXIV, that team just didn't have the graphical convenience.

I haven't played XI. What would you consider they were doing better?

I took a long break during Endwalker and spend most of my time chasing after S ranks these days, so I never really got around to doing Orthos. I should.

However, I'm not surprised it didn't get enough love, there are a few legit problems with deep dungeons:

* The fact that unless you were around when they came out, it can be difficult to "get off the ground" in them, because the queue time for the initial floor sets is basically hopeless most of the time so you either have to hunt down 1-3 friends or try to brave it solo with no aetherpool (this could be pretty rough in HoH and I hear Orthos is rougher).

* Getting these friends can be a problem because they may not have an open Save Slot (as if both are in use, you can't go in with someone else at all).

* Servers have been less stable throughout Dawntrail and the whole format is unusually sensitive to disconnects as it is (a solo run is ended instantly and a group run is in danger, especially with the forced queue jump rule that was IIRC designed for 8P Prae but is still in effect for reconnects that essentially 100% prevents the ability to immediately come back after DC).

* The community for deep dungeons, at least the one I joined for a while back in StB (and which for civility reasons I will not name here), is not good. It quickly devolved into people mostly hiding in the "at least one proven full clear folks only" channel and outside of that almost entirely soloists, at the least it completely failed at being a watering hole for those who needed it most (people still yet to make their first clear and needing to find group mates) as few such runs ever materialized and were almost exclusively on Saturday (not just weekends, specifically Saturday). As with most FFXIV discords, toxic positivity is the rule, too.

Deep dungeons would certainly benefit from more shelf life with incentives. Maybe weeklies slowly counting toward some of the optional floor rewards? Idk. I'd like to see PFs crop up regularly for those.
Orthos had a problem that other DDs didn't have, which can be a matter of taste of course but enough voices complained about it: it's way harder because mobs are literally HP sponges and at higher floors it's all about untelegraphed moves that oneshot instantly which makes everything extremely binary (and harder). Bosses are also way more unforgiving for similar reasons.

[Daralii]

This is why I'm hoping it'll be more like CLL/Dalriada; those were "first come first serve" just like BA, but they occurred much more frequently, didn't require extra annoyance for entry(Ovni and Portals), and weren't "claimed" by discord groups. They also weren't Extreme/Savage difficulty so people could just join up randomly as they popped and have a decent chance of clearing.

The wording makes it seem like everyone needs to congregate to one location that they need to coordinate and pop the lottery ticket, but as far as I'm aware that information was spoken and not part of a slide, and I'm far from fluent in Japanese. I also don't think they said anything about how common the lottery tickets(sanguine ciphers) are.

[Gwenkatsu]

However, I'm not surprised it didn't get enough love, there are a few legit problems with deep dungeons:

There is another point that might not be obvious to people that played Deep Dungeons when they were new: To get into Heavens on High and Eureka Orthos, you need to have finished level 50 of Palace of the Dead. I tried this once (when it was part of a Moogle event), and failed miserably. The groups I got into weren't able to do it, and when I tried it solo, my weapon and armor level were way to low, I got stuck somewhere in the 30-40 range.

At this point I lost interest, so I will never be able to enter any of the other Deep Dungeons.

[Pip_Chick]

There is another point that might not be obvious to people that played Deep Dungeons when they were new: To get into Heavens on High and Eureka Orthos, you need to have finished level 50 of Palace of the Dead. I tried this once (when it was part of a Moogle event), and failed miserably. The groups I got into weren't able to do it, and when I tried it solo, my weapon and armor level were way to low, I got stuck somewhere in the 30-40 range.

At this point I lost interest, so I will never be able to enter any of the other Deep Dungeons.

I believe this might be a skill issue. I am, just as a side note, a subpar player who flinches at EX trials.
However, I have soloed POTD up to floor 99 (died by trap) and carried multiple people in a 2-man team comp up to 50. It is very easy once you read what the pomms do and stick to the halls and walls, use what you have, keep an eye on the mimics and make sure you get to max lvl as soon as possible in the time frame allocated. As an extra help, you get pot shards, You can buy a "potion of healing over time" from the Padjal at the entrance. If you ever go low, you can pop one and it will help clutch a fight, especially on bosses.
If you hang around the POTD entrance and see people gathering there, ask them if they can form a party and help you to floor 50. A lot of POTD players are very happy to help people, myself included.

[Kuroka]

There is another point that might not be obvious to people that played Deep Dungeons when they were new: To get into Heavens on High and Eureka Orthos, you need to have finished level 50 of Palace of the Dead. I tried this once (when it was part of a Moogle event), and failed miserably. The groups I got into weren't able to do it, and when I tried it solo, my weapon and armor level were way to low, I got stuck somewhere in the 30-40 range.

At this point I lost interest, so I will never be able to enter any of the other Deep Dungeons.

Im from shiva as well, if you still need it i would not mind doing Palace lol


But yeah it sucks youre basically forced to do stuff asap...

[Infindox]

* The community for deep dungeons, at least the one I joined for a while back in StB (and which for civility reasons I will not name here), is not good. It quickly devolved into people mostly hiding in the "at least one proven full clear folks only" channel and outside of that almost entirely soloists, at the least it completely failed at being a watering hole for those who needed it most (people still yet to make their first clear and needing to find group mates) as few such runs ever materialized and were almost exclusively on Saturday (not just weekends, specifically Saturday). As with most FFXIV discords, toxic positivity is the rule, too.

EO seems to have less people wanting to run it compared to the other two, honestly. I had no problems finding a group that we got a clear for both PotD and HoH, but EO I got to floor 30 with two friends and then had difficulty finding people who wanted to go further. (I also don't consider myself at all good enough to solo) Sure, people wanted to run it when it was new, but good luck with it now.

There is another point that might not be obvious to people that played Deep Dungeons when they were new: To get into Heavens on High and Eureka Orthos, you need to have finished level 50 of Palace of the Dead. I tried this once (when it was part of a Moogle event), and failed miserably. The groups I got into weren't able to do it, and when I tried it solo, my weapon and armor level were way to low, I got stuck somewhere in the 30-40 range.

At this point I lost interest, so I will never be able to enter any of the other Deep Dungeons.

Just ask three friends to run with you? Floors 1-50 aren't very hard if you work together and can even be done with a duo or trio if you can't find three others. And Pip_Chick is right, lots of people like helping with PotD.

[Gwenkatsu]

Thanks for the replies, but I think you all missed my point: IMO it's a very stupid design decision to make age-old content the prerequisite to new content. Do I need to finish Eureka to enter Bozja? No. So why is PoD needed to enter HoH and EO? And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who struggled in PoD, and thus will never gain entry into any other DD.
The DD mode as itself does not interest me, so I really see no reason to even try (except that one time for the Moogle event, where it just was not worth the effort - sleepwalking 7 times through Praetorium gave the same amount of moogle tomes, and never fails).

[Fawkes]

I haven't played XI. What would you consider they were doing better?

I played a lot of XI. It didn't even have a good quest log so you'd almost always have to look up the quest on a wiki to find out that you have to trade a cabbage to a ??? point twelve zones away.

It did have more unique and useful rewards from quests though. Back in the day I played as a Monk and got my Black Belt, it was the BiS belt for Monk and it was from a series of quests from purple belt to brown belt and finally black belt. You had to get drops from NMs for each quest, and for the Black Belt quest it was the three most camped HNMs in the game. So, the stuff you had to do was sometimes more memorable and the rewards made it worth doing. But those are kinda deeper differences in game design rather than just the quests being better.

[Aidorouge]

I believe this might be a skill issue. I am, just as a side note, a subpar player who flinches at EX trials.

For me it's not a skill issue, I just find Palace of the Dead incredibly boring to build aetherpool on (especially after I hit 10+ rendering the first 10 floors every redo pointless until I get back to floor 11). It's the same problem with Eureka, it's agonizing because of the grind that feels like it's going nowhere even though I'm at level 18 with 4 magicite. I've only died twice so far even, once from fall damage (on NIN of all things) and when I literally dozed off waiting for ashkin/sprites to spawn and tried killing other enemies while I waited. (And this was Dynamis so lol at any notion of asking for a revive.)

I'm honestly baffled whenever people glaze Deep Dungeons and Field Operations as this great and wonderful content (especially for casuals) because I'm just not having fun with them at all.