Occult Crescent Phantom Jobs Relics - small rant & thoughts from a Lifelong FF player

[AnimeGamerMina]

• Occult Crescent - Good Zone, Very Pretty, Very Eureka esk, Good Size, Multiple area types, Great music choices, Other minor positive points - 9/10
  
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• Phantom Jobs - Good Choices, Good use cases, Extra cred for old school sounds in the UI, Innovative, Fun(ish)
  
  Tedious A F to change Phantom jobs and ability usage, No macro capability to change designated phantom jobs or targeted abilities (Yes I know about duty action commands but I'm thinking more precise) adding to the unneeded tedium in the grind,
  
  (The Big one) The apparent lack of custom-ability of the Phantom Jobs hurts when compared to something like The Bozjan Southern Front where I could equip a Cure type and Resurrection type ability as a tank to help out now I'm limited too for now Chemist or a direct healer to Raise the dead which feeds into the tedium of the changing of phantom jobs - 6/10
  
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• Relics/Grind - I like grind as long as its not to bad and gives the sense of feeling any movement forward especially after several day..s . .. ... Oh wait that's happening right now lol Ive been at it for multiple hours a day now since patch day and I still do not have enough for my first relic weapon, all that being said I'm not mad at all we all begged for grind so bring the grind its part of the game and Ill keep grinding ...just wish was a lil higher drop rate lol - 7/10
  
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• Overall & End - I'm genuinely happy with the content and patch. My main gripe was the issues listed in the phantom jobs themselves but otherwise its fun and the nostalgia of FF5 and others from the SFX, Music, and I LOVE the the sprites <3 It has been ::chefs kiss:: So I continue to look forward to more and will continue to shower Square in moneys while offering soul sacrifices in the name of our Master Yoshi - P ... Praise be to his name :-D Thanks for coming to my TED Talk

[Jeeqbit]

I agree that the zone and terrain is good. Although it is sort of a field it does have bumps and hills and caves which is good. I'm not so sure about the ramps up to the cliffs though. Although it was annoying to a lot of people not having those in Pagos, sometimes developers need to take a stance and say "deal with it". Navigating terrain and having to find a way up is one of the things that makes the content feel great and cozy.

The atma grind isn't really much. I already have 4 out of 18 and haven't even been trying to get it yet. But apparently the grind is overwhelming to extremely impatient and casual players that want everything in the 2 hours they play for on day 1.

[Jestigeress]

I agree that the zone and terrain is good. Although it is sort of a field it does have bumps and hills and caves which is good. I'm not so sure about the ramps up to the cliffs though. Although it was annoying to a lot of people not having those in Pagos, sometimes developers need to take a stance and say "deal with it". Navigating terrain and having to find a way up is one of the things that makes the content feel great and cozy.

The atma grind isn't really much. I already have 4 out of 18 and haven't even been trying to get it yet. But apparently the grind is overwhelming to extremely impatient and casual players that want everything in the 2 hours they play for on day 1.

Atma grind was never an issue its the RNG that creates the inconsistency that is what causes the Problem. For you had some return on time invested were as myself now on Day 3 yet to get a single Atma Drop in 18 hours of time invested, again that is do with RNG. On the other hand have known others who got their 18 in under 5 hours and are just doing the Tome farm for the Next step now.

[Catwho]

Atma grind was never an issue its the RNG that creates the inconsistency that is what causes the Problem. For you had some return on time invested were as myself now on Day 3 yet to get a single Atma Drop in 18 hours of time invested, again that is do with RNG. On the other hand have known others who got their 18 in under 5 hours and are just doing the Tome farm for the Next step now.

They managed to get a weighted RNG selection for the Mech Ops in CE.

Sure would be nice if the Atma grind had a similar weighted chance. 1/100 on first, 1/50 on second, 1/25 on third, 1/10 on 4th, 1/5 on 5th, 1/4 on 6th, 1/3 on 7th, 1/2 on 8th and 9th, guaranteed on 10th.

Ands then it resets back to 1% chance after you get one.

The world's most unlucky person might be facing 180 CEs or FATES under those conditions, but that's still better than infinite/unknown.

[fulminating]

I wanted to be positivish somewhere, so here are my thoughts:

I’m expecting the archivist is some kind of fugue state war criminal, hoping we don’t get “ah well it’s a mistranslation, not war of the magi but cooking competition that got out of hand” - it doesn’t have to be grimderp but I’d just like this bit of world building to be done well. We’ve had some nuance before and it’d be a welcome respite from the oppressive sunshine and rainbows. I have been enjoying the field zones so far, although I should probably admit to farming fates for one flavour of demiatma. I’ll express mild disappointment that berserk doesn’t force direct crits onto phantom actions etc which makes them feel less integrated than in bozja with eg lost slash. every egg went in the inner release basket to the point the job breaks down if you don’t do it properly grumble grumble. I like the qol for chain mobs being denoted, and party sync being present. Had an unfortunate level up in a gold farm earlier where we progressed from easy friendly melees to magic ranged that smote the pulling dps. I don’t think I’d want that changed though, the variety is good.

Most of the CEs and FATEs are more involved than eurekan nms and bozjan encounters; I think it does require being more awake than in the other zones which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It does feel like more of an investment to go and do a bit of OC than bozja/eureka in that it’s still dip in dip out but the in might be a 20 minute ordeal running through a mountain of corpses that lost a fight to a pot.

Aesthetically and layout, it’s really solid - to be fair the groundwork for skalla/mhach/amdapor/nym architechure was already there for years, the torch guys in the southwest are cool. Maybe it’s just enjoyment at seeing a fantasy style again after the techno solution nine, but I think they just are really nice to look at. Between return and mount speed upgrade, I’d be surprised if anything was more than a few minutes away from anywhere else, well worth the removal of queueing for CEs remotely.

Edit: yeah tonberry trazyn the infinite why not.

[Voidmage]

The only real gripe I have with Occult Crescent is the Forked tower tbh.
From all the things of Baldesion they have choosen to bring back a similar entrance system that will just result in the whole thing becoming Discord content.
Right now I had no luck getting into because we were always short of people.
I wish they would have used the Delubrum Reginae system for this.


For the rest:

The zone itself is great, perfect even I dare to say and I honestly wish they take notes this time to implement some things into the normal overworld like the random treasure chests to give a true adventuring feeling.
It's beautiful, has great lore and shows that flying was a mistake for world exploration imo.
The music is... god I love the fight music in there.

The fates and CE's have fun mechanics.
It would be better personally if the normal fates also had some kind of "waiting system" because it's annoying seeing them getting rushed. But I also hate hunt trains, so just my opinion.
For me it shows that fates as a system just don't work anymore and need some kind of "safeguard" against rushing them.

Phantom jobs while fun are kinda underwhelming and I wish they went further with what they can do.
Some skills like Time mages Occult Quick or Berserker are really fun to use but it all feels too save and doesn't reach the fun you could do with the Bozja combinations.
I also don't see a reason why things like Slow can't work on bosses.
It's closed of content. Let us be overpowered...

The rewards are great and I really like that the treasure coffers have good drops in them.
Just the casting and healing gear is again probably the worst of them all design wise. This expansion is truly not good for us...

The relic grind and atma system is good.
I like grinding, I like rng and I liked the old relic weapon system.
It's also only one step so I seriously don't understand all the criticism here. There is so much time to farm while just doing the content in this zone.

This is content this game needed imo and from what I have seen inside from others, many have fun with it.
I just hope the devs keep at it because I am not sure a few more phantom jobs will be enough till 7.5x...

From me it gets a 8,5/10.
I really like it.

[Nihility]

the only thing I'm finding kind of problematic is enlightenment gold.

I'm hoping there's another way but atm it feels like all you can do is get a party together and powergrind otherwise worthless mobs for hours on end to get one item from it.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[…]I also don't see a reason why things like Slow can't work on bosses.
It's closed of content. Let us be overpowered...[…]

Adding to this point of yours specifically—it could also be an opportunity for them to add cheeky mechanic where, imagine if a boss is slowed (or given a specific debuff), they immediately change behavior instead of continuing their scripted timelines until said debuff is over. I.e. buffs themselves with ‘always critical damage’ stat, or reflect x% damage back, etc.

As I’m writing this I’m imagining the Berserker goes “Grrrr…!! You dare… slow me???” then adds small knockback everytime they execute their telegraphed AoE—hit or no.