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

[Infindox]

Maybe they like it on JP Servers

The Japanese playerbase is just as confused as we are about it.

[Astronema]

its a total flop at this point. disney might as well buy SE and add in marvel super heros at this point to complete the failure.

[remiff]

I might come off a bit harsh, but this is in line with the kind of content the game has been giving us since Endwalker.
After 13 years of existence, patches take longer and longer to release, and the content mechanics have become overly minimalistic, unengaging, and honestly not appealing at all.

Unfortunately, since the game is going through a real content drought, players rushed into Occult crescent without really acknowledging the massive and numerous flaws of the zone.
Maybe I’m being too critical, but seriously, the Moon crafting content is barebones, boring, poorly designed… and OC is the same.

It’s their third attempt at this kind of area, and still no improvements, the same old issues.
You can really feel they’re sticking to a strict patch schedule, with a fixed number of dev hours per feature.
As a result, everything feels shallow—and I’m sorry to say it so bluntly, but it feels completely rushed.
Nothing goes beyond the bare minimum.

And why? Probably because the 3rd Division hasn’t hired enough people and is spread across too many projects.
Is that necessarily bad? Not really.

But it’s definitely not good for FFXIV.

They worked on the console port of Fantasian by Sakaguchi, then Sakaguchi came back to Square Enix for a AAA project with the 3rd Division, they also did the FFTactics remaster…
and we don’t even know what other projects are ongoing.
But all of this is clearly taking a toll on FFXIV.

Patch delays are too long for content that feels paper-thin, with artificially inflated longevity.

Like upgrading gear from a tower raid that hardly anyone will do because the entry conditions are so limiting—it was bound to fail.
To me, OC is a visual upgrade from Bozja, but a massive downgrade in terms of mechanics and content.

I know not everyone will agree with me, since I tend to speak my mind without a filter, and that doesn’t always sit well with people.
But this is how I feel about FFXIV right now, and why I can’t get into it like I used to.

Honestly, since Endwalker, I just log in and run around aimlessly.

[Ephremjlm]

Its funny because unless you are a shill content creator who makes money off of people watching you play the game or who watch your content about the game I feel like im seeing across the board SE dropped the ball INSANELY hard.

Is there good in the content? Honestly yeah. Is that good outweighing the insane mistakes (or in the case of tanking Eureka and Bozja, and not allowing for exp to be earned a purposeful one) then absolutely not.


Its absolutely crazy man. I was able to let a lot of things go but like the final straw was the forked tower. Its so inaccessible and im an old school FFXI player who still dabbles in classic servers from time to time. Like I honestly can't tell if they are actively TRYING to tank the game to migrate everyone over to the mobile version when it comes out.

[CNitsah]

There is a part of me that feels like Mr Ozma has gone wild, doing what he does best (hard boss design), but nobody dares to tell him to chill the fuck the down with the hardcore content, because it's one of the few things that constantly get praised. Even, here, nearly nobody criticise the content itself, but rather the absence of normal mode.

[Yodada]

There is a part of me that feels like Mr Ozma has gone wild, doing what he does best (hard boss design), but nobody dares to tell him to chill the fuck the down with the hardcore content, because it's one of the few things that constantly get praised. Even, here, nearly nobody criticise the content itself, but rather the absence of normal mode.

Except the boot lickers like Happy, Arthas and Xeno no one gives a fuck about Ozma and his outdated Bullshit Raiddesign. He is stuck in the 90's of Gamedevelopment. And with Chaotic it clearly showed that he is just as incompetent like the others currently at CBU3.

[Aniise]

Its funny because unless you are a shill content creator who makes money off of people watching you play the game or who watch your content about the game I feel like im seeing across the board SE dropped the ball INSANELY hard.

Correct, because streamers and hardcore raiders seem to be the only people SE seems to care about at the moment.

I mean, I waited for Occult so long, and I wanted to love it because I loved Bozja a lot. My honeymoon period ended after about one or two days, though. And now I just gotta say that the casual/midcore crowd loses again.

How could they fumble an exploration zone so hard after Bozja, which was perfect for almost every sort of players, with fun instances that you could just queue in and for the more adventurous crowd the duels and DRS?
How could they make Forked Towers another Discord Only Thing, and even with discord as a help to coordinate, make it extremely hard to get in and also frustrating?
The lost actions were much more fun than the phantom jobs as a system, at least so far. They felt much more fleshed out somehow. Kinda hard to explain, but I hope you get what I mean.

The only thing I don't have a big problem with are the Demiatmas...farming for a relic is okay I think. Keeps you at least kind of engaged. I just wished every atma color would drop from every fate/ce in the zone and not just specific ones. But if it gets too frustrating I can farm outside of the zone for them, too. So that's at least something...

Doesn't change that Occult should have been a better Bozja and not a worse Eureka.

[Phen]

It so... almost works. The issue for me is it seemed like the loop was going to be what Zadnor or eureka had where every so often you have the "boss" encounter that really functions as the "crown" of a session in the zone.

Eureka had the relic dropping material bosses and they kind of worked as the end of a run. I think the sealing demon is supposed to be this being a high level spawn thats finishes story but its just... not impactful enough.

Zadnor had the alliance raids that could be reasonably pugged. When they announced the 3 raise thing, which seemed less punishing on paper than maybe BA --i figured at worst the idea is a few balanced parties can form rq- do the first half of tower, and then maybe bounce before fights require more coordination etc. But the first fight has the design of "filter out random groups" with knock-offs/body checks.

Without that its just a grind loop for while to get 2% damage. It just doesn't feel quite there after you get a few.

Also obviously the : best role for CE- tank, best role for solo farming- tank, best role for gold group farming- tank, issue seems bad enough to warrant a patch of some kind.

One big positive: i like jobs not making you feel like you are wasting resources if you pop out while a buff is on to pick up a friend that just logged in. I hated using a expensive item i had 2 of then being like ... can you try fishing the instance for a few minutes. I think the few complaining on chemist being so resource dependent show that tying a lot of the base "borrowed" power for the zone to consumables can be improved on.

[Remember_The_Name]

I was holding my breath for new Exploration Zone since DT disastrous release. The Occult Crescent so far... in line with content they are making. Too safe, uninspired, boring.

1) Gameplay loop. Absolute garbage. Running around instakilling or even missing FATEs then porting back to base and repeating the process painfully reminds me about Hunt Trains. And those are monotonous as hell.

2) No Duels. Just why? Why can't we have a show-offs for players with some exclusive rewards for them who dare? They did excellent in ShB (outside of some queueing issues).

3) Phantom Jobs are too safe. Yeah, they are cool and has some interesting interactions with normal jobs, but they are too few and far between. No crazy wombo-combos to send players on a power trip. This point MAY BE improved in the future patches, but I have no hope in the Dev Team.

4) Forked Tower. lol, lmao even. So you say that the crowning content for South Horn is a hardcore raid with a load of entry problems? And you say there are no "lighter" version or even another dungeon for midcore players to enjoy?
Great job, SE! We totally do not need a long term low commitment duty to busy ourselves with, perish the thought!

You know, back in the Shadowbringers, when I played CLL/Delubrum/Dalriada, I was fantasizing about future raids like these that SE will cook for us in the future. What new interesting mechanics, interactions there will be. Oh ho ho, facing the reality feels bad...

[Ephremjlm]

Except the boot lickers like Happy, Arthas and Xeno no one gives a fuck about Ozma and his outdated Bullshit Raiddesign. He is stuck in the 90's of Gamedevelopment. And with Chaotic it clearly showed that he is just as incompetent like the others currently at CBU3.

To be fair, and to his credit (though I disagree with his take on the rewards heavily) he made a whole video calling the field op, and SE out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xoSVANo4xI