Occult is awful, and I enjoyed both Eureka and Bozja greatly

[occultsux]

1. Go-go-go Gameplay taken to the max. The optimal gameplay that everyone has devolved into is sprinting to a FATE, killing it in 5 seconds, returning, immediately sprinting to the next FATE, killing it 5 seconds, returning, sprinting to another FATE, returning and then sprinting to the CE.
There is no chill downtime with the gameplay loop, and the unlimited return function seems to only encourage this. The gameplay map seems incredibly small, as you're only ever sprinting to the same couple of FATEs, instantly returning, and teleporting to the next FATE.


2. Critical Engagements are poorly designed and courage Tank turtling. Get hit more than once on a DPS job and you're eating the floor, having no fun, and placing a burden on your teammates. Sure, it's a get good angle, but the actual reaction of the playerbase is for everyone to turtle on Tank jobs. You can get hit a couple of times on a Tank and shrug it off. Every CE is the majority of the players turtling on Tank jobs, or on a rez job.
The real problem here is the lack of defensive options for DPS jobs (aswell as my upcoming 3rd point). There is no Beast essence or something that will allow people to have fun on a DPS job, but stay alive. Even in a group with a shield healer if you aren't completely confident in the CE you're just going to die, and be a burden to the group. A Tank on their own is so much more safe than a DPS player inside a group with shield healers.
There are surprisingly few defensive utility with the support jobs too, most DPS will not be able to heal or protect themselves when they get hit.

3. Not being able to play with the support job/actions that you want because the gameplay loop requires you to swap support jobs to a new one to continue building EXP. Let's say I really like playing with Oracle. Too bad, I can't ever play with it because I need to level all of my other support jobs. You spend the entire gameplay experience leveling support jobs that you don't care about, instead of playing the ones that you actually want to play. There's also the hilarious thing of when you max out a support job, and get its final skill, you never actually get to use it because you need to be swapping to a new support job to level.

4. The complete destruction of the Eureka and Bozja gil economy. Why are all of the rare drops from Eureka/Bozja flowing out of random chests in Occult? It has completely destroyed the economy of both of them. It's like saying "We don't want you to make gil in Eureka and Bozja, only do Occult where you make no gil". Many of the rare drops and glamours from Eureka/Bozja tanked to nothing in value.

[occultsux]

5. Fork Tower

Fork Tower might be fun if you could get in with 48 people reliably, but it's entrance method is the most pathetic trash I've ever seen.
This is not a Eureka Hydatos situation. Hydatos was 144 players. These instances only hold 72 players. How are you supposed to get 48 players into an instance to do the content, and what is the merit of staying in Forked Tower instance when 2/3rds of the max players are inside it?
If Fork Tower was Baldesion Arsenal level difficult it might be not so bad, but by all accounts its more difficult than Delubrum Savage. DRS let you queue in.
Is this really supposed to be puggable content? What are you smoking?
There are constant body checks everywhere. The very first enemy has tons of coordination checks. A single random player can also completely destroy your group, even on the very first enemy, with a misplaced meteor or knock-up stack.
There is also only a 5 minute timer on the Fork Tower entrance weather. Zero time to in-instance organize an attempt. Again, how is this supposed to be pugged when the weather blinks out of existence instantly if you're not already a premade of 48 people waiting to go in.

It's such a blatant waste of player time. There is zero reason that this isn't queueable, or at least allowing an alliance to queue into the zone.

[CNitsah]

I strongly agree on 2 and 5.

2 : if you don't have a heal in your team, or if he not used to the fight yet, you get rekt by raid wide, even if you avoid all the mechanics. a simple recup potion like eureka had would fix so many things on this side.

5 is particulary wild to me. The main farming experience occult crescent has right now is not the relics, it's the zone gear, only useful if you aim to do the forked tower. But by doing only one version of the forked tower that is high end, they kinda wrote with fiery letters in the sky : this is only for a little part of the playerbase, when the said playerbase main complain over the past 3 years has been the lack of content with aimed for a larger audience. It feels kinda tone deaf. If you're not into high difficulty raid, there is no reason to farm occult crescent once you get your atmas. I don't get why they didn't went the Delubrum Reginae way. To me they fail to capture what makes eureka and bozja popular and still relevant to this day.

And man, you have to be pissed off to create an account on the forum just to complain. That's the second person I see doing that today.

[mallleable]

Yeah, and no on 2. I think the fights themselves are great, but yeah red DPS jobs need some help in Occult Crescent.

[caffe_macchiato]

Square Enix Co., Ltd. is still neglecting its online infrastructure. Your #2 issue (floor tanking) is likely due to "snapshotting", which is very prevalent in Critical Engagements. While a TON of people LOVE snapshotting, the delay has gotten substantially worse, likely due to the larger player count. The game cannot handle 72 people in a CE, yet it still insists on split-second snapshots that are nearly impossible to move out of. The player count is making the snapshotting worse. No other MMO has this problem. This is unique to Square Enix Co., Ltd.

#1 is because there is no variety of gameplay. It is FATE then instance. There is nothing to break it up, because Square Enix Co., Ltd. has not invested in proper gameplay mechanics besides what they originally invented 11 years ago. Square Enix Co., Ltd. has somehow lost the ability to design new games. Obviously, the company badly needs a buy-out. Hopefully it can happen soon. Even if monetization would get worse, at least FFXIV will finally have decent content like WoW has now.

[Rithy255]

I turtle as a rez tank and become the ultimate turtle.

[FuturePastNow]

I like #1. I think having to be constantly on the move, looking at the map, is kind of fun. Though you're right that we're just following the same paths over and over. Maybe the next zone should just not have any aetherytes, and longer CE times so you can reach them from anywhere without fast travel.

Can't really argue with the rest. I am guilty as charged of doing everything as tank, though I am trying to do as much damage as I can, while leveling up jobs.

[chip793]

The cycle of CE > 2-3 FATEs > CE is fine. It's actually pretty good for people who put the effort in on mastery. If you're suffering on red jobs, either pick one with more sustain or stop being anti-social and join a party. You can play whatever phantom job you want anytime. There's no mandate on them and you don't NEED 12 mastery for anything, most people in the world first fork run barely had 7 tops. If you have fun on one, keep playing it, or don't. That's YOUR choice.

I'm with you on #4 but not for all of the items. I'm a little mad Gabriel III and the Dal raptor are in the boxes and drop like candy because I grinded my ass off to get them both and got neither on my main, but Eureka's mounts have been in company boxes for years now and I don't think all of the loot is in the table. I've seen one Evlaan drop, but no bulb as of yet.

As for the tower, it'll get powercrept within a couple weeks when people actually have the gear and mastery stacks. I doubt 48 is mandatory even right now. People just need time to actually do it and learn each fight, the same with every other high-end encounter. Just with a few puzzles like BA/DRS.

With all of this in mind, remember that we still have at least 8 new phantom jobs (around an extra 20% damage/healing when mastering all of them for a total of 50%) and the entire 2nd zone with whatever powercreep it'll bring. I'm actually really happy with the system as-is. Mastery and gear provide that fun type of powercreep Eureka had in its gear and Bozja had in rays (even if that grind was immensely boring), the CEs are all engaging with plenty to do in each but without feeling unfair, most of the jobs are really well implemented and add another layer to rotation that's fun without sacrificing the fun factor from the action systems both older relic areas used. There's a lot to like about it with a few minor nitpicks here and there, but nothing I'd call a deal-breaker.

[Kuroka]

1. SO TRUE. It sucks all the fun outta it... i miss killing mobs to spawn a fate, or wait for a weather, anything thats not "be flash or be gone"
On top of that the fates are so inconsistent... some take 5 seconds, some 5 minutes....

2. Yeah, every time i switch to dps i regret it... we miss the potions we used to have on Eureka and the deep dungeons. I dont need to be immortal but with all the insta KO, overlaps and death walls... there needs to be something.

3. This hurts yeah, the feeling of wasting exp... i see why we cant level all of em at once. We should have the option to use 2 jobs at once...

4. It was always bad on the primal weapons and stuff, but this time... this is insane. Like ok, drop it from rare gold chests or from the end of tower, but on random chests all over the map? Tons of? Its week one and stuff is burned...

Would it hurt so much to make some recolors and use them? There are so many easy skins they could use, but nooooo...

5. Oh boy, i already skipped bozja cause i was sick of discord groups... i tried today, we died on the first boss within seconds. The same BS like cloud of darkness... nope, im sry, too old too tired for this kind of shi#...


Its better then Bozja on many parts, less depressing to look at.. but way too few fates, totally insane scaling and much more problems...

[KageTokage]

I think they need to reduce the CE frequency to like...once every 10-15 minutes but increase their reward payout proportionately so people actually have time to do some chaining between appearances.