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

[FuturePastNow]

You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like

[mewlynx]

I particularly dislike how needlessly stressful the gameplay is. It reminds me of Zadnor EXP farming where the FATE instantly dies and you need to be staring at your map if you want to have a chance to get credit for anything. I hope that they change Southern Horn to be less fast paced but I don't expect any significant gameplay changes will happen until Northern Horn releases.

Environmental coffer loot tables are too good. Seeing a bunch of previously high value glam, dyes, and mounts become near worthless in a few days is bizarre and I don't really understand the though process behind that. There really isn't much introduced in OC either that is rare or hard to obtain, either. Meanwhile I've yet to obtain anything of value from Pot coffers, and those require me to skip out on a CE or two so I can find the chest. It genuinely feels like there was some mix-up or error with loot tables.

I'm very disappointed that there isn't a CLL or Dalriada equivalent in Southern Horn. CLL and Dalriada were very fun to do as a break from grinding FATEs and CEs, and were balanced well to be completed by randoms while still requiring some level of communication. OC feels like there is nothing to do aside from do FATEs that die in literally 5-10 seconds and then return to base to stare at the map for the next FATE. Forked Tower exists, but what I hear makes me think it is balanced for people that find DRS and BA too easy.

I'm glad that an Exploration Zone exists for Dawntrail, but I really hope that isn't representative of what the entire experience will be like.

I forgot to also say that there is very little variety in gameplay. FATEs are all boss fates, and Pot CEs all have random enemies followed by a spongier enemy. Why isn't there collection, mob, or defense FATEs like Bozja? Maybe they were less exciting but they broke up the gameplay so that it wasn't just boss rushing.

[Avoidy]

Big agree. I finally got time off to really sink my teeth into it, and after a few hours I realized how shallow the gameplay loop was, especially for someone who didn't have an interest in large scale savage content. It's really disappointing how shallow this is, and how frustrating it manages to be when you do engage with it. I ran to so many fates, on my max-speed mount, just to miss out on them because they died in less than six seconds. I went out of my way to go after sooooooooo many treasure chests, often missing out on CEs and FATEs to follow the potion, and every single one of them just gave garbage worth literally 1 gil (we LOVE ribbons!). I had to spend my first 3k on a riding map to go at the speed that honestly should've just been the default, like why are we still doing this riding map bs. I'm leveling a phantom job and don't even know why. It'll give me new ways to kill the same fates/ces i've been killing just fine without all this stuff. Kill the crap, type /return, and then wait for the next one. That's it. And it's so fast, it feels like being at work. There's no downtime at all, no chill, and no payoff for any of it.

Urn was pretty cool though.

[Arohk]

You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like

○ ♪ Vuln stacks man ♪
/\__\ __/\ ♪ Vuln stacks man ♪
\( ﾐ X ● X ﾐ)/ ♪ Eating all the stacks he can ♪
♪ Takes a hit, 200k ♪
♪Wiping parties every day♪
♪Watch out, here comes vuln stacks man♪

[FuturePastNow]

○ ♪ Vuln stacks man ♪
/\__\ __/\ ♪ Vuln stacks man ♪
\( ﾐ X ● X ﾐ)/ ♪ Eating all the stacks he can ♪
♪ Takes a hit, 200k ♪
♪Wiping parties every day♪
♪Watch out, here comes vuln stacks man♪

Some people say a Warrior is made out of mud
A poor Warrior's made out muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and vluns and weakness
A INT that's weak and an axe that's strong

You hit sixteen vulns and what do you get?
Another stressed Chemist who's deeper in debt
Saint Nymeia don't you call me cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the Expedition store

[Nadda]

It's funny because I hated playing Bozja and Eureka but love OC so far.

Well not hate... I just didn't like how unclear things were in the other field ops.

Eureka had an easy-to-understand combat system but kind boring and cryptic quest shenanigans made it difficult to do without having a guide in hand.
Bozja had easy-to-understand quests and fates/CE but a convoluted combat system I didn't even want to engage with but you need to or you're doing it wrong and dying means losing item buffs or whatever and feeling bad for wiping cuz your high level buddies farmed all this good stuff to use

Occult Crescent I was just able to do stuff and have a fun adventure. The more that's built onto it in the future the more I'll enjoy it. I think when the North Horn comes out we'll be able to mix phantom jobs together?
I like OC because it didn't ask anything major of me. It just wants me to run around have a bit of a grind with friends or help strangers... and I like that.

Not to mention the ability to party with people of lower Level than you is really important to me.

Even though I was around for Eureka and Bozja when they are current I didn't do them until later, it sucks having a game mode which is more fun with friends but being unable to play with friends because they're already passed the zone and leveled content you're doing, so the experience becomes less fun and more just having your friend be a helicopter parent to you.

[AnkanV]

Delubrum Reginae is a 24-player duty wherein players must brave the depths of ancient Bozjan ruins, making effective use of lost actions to avoid its myriad perils and pitfalls.

These are for normal delubrum, not savage. Still hinting at added difficulty (and yeah, if you know what you're doing and bring the right lost actions, it's pretty trivial. But if you don't, it's pretty painful, but not unsurmountable.) And considering how SE previously, with delubrum, with variant dungeons, etc has given the playerbase one version that is more accessible it's not that far a stretch to have thought they'd keep in this very reasonable design philosophy.

I also haven't seen anyone say there shouldn't be a forked tower (savage) with the current difficulty. Just that'd be nice to have something that gives a bit of spice without requiring full on hours of preplanning and prep just to get into the duty instance.

[itachi-otsutsuki]

You can not get in the instance. If this was a dalriada equivalent atleast the entry prog would be bearable. It is literally a savage raid at this point cause of all the stress that is put on players doing things flawlessly due to the entry restrictions. This thing has literally taken world first longer to clear than the whole brutal savage tier we just had.

[Themarvin]

2 and 5 I can agree on, and somewhat also gold farming as well is not very friendly system either.

They should had made the Fork Tower as accessable as either DR or the other Major instances for Bozja alike content, it is nearly impossible to get into the forked thing again...

And then it all end up being this sideshow discord crap, where you have to arrange everything on a third party social media instead of having the full access inside of the game instead.

Maybe they like it on JP Servers, I don't know, but please remove Forked Tower from EU and NA servers, if not going to make the system user friendly and I am going to bang on that it is to easy to get thrown out of it as well, though I know from myself I would easy enough manage to get clears but I know ALOT of people that never would be able to go through, and I know in general as I see that many random people also struggle even with the easier CE's and needs to ne chain revived.

EDIT: Part 4, I don't mind that at all and alot of those items had to be untradeable to begin with, it is past content and sooner or later going to be entirely removed anyway, even though it is still a nice feeling to go there, but hey it is maybe like 2 times a year at best, due to SE does not renovate content to be max level but let it rot in general.

[Malganis_L]

biggest difference between BA and Forked Tower is that BA is punishing but mechanicly very easy, on a level of a OC CE for the most part where if you screw up, you only screw yourself (outside maybe one or 2 mechanics in Ozma fight), ideal for a bunch of midcore players,
FT has the shizo design of chaotic (aka combining hardcore content with systems that are supposed to lure mid and softcore players in, only for everyone to suffer) where 2-3 people screw up, everyone can die + an entry system that is worse than BA.

nobody asked for nonesense like this.