So how is everyone feeling about Occult Crescent now that it’s been a few days?

[dspguy]

Aside from that matter, I like it. It's not quite as good as either Eureka or Bozja, but it's decent. I prefer Eureka's implementation of FATE spawning which required players to farm specific mobs together and coordinate the spawns.

I haven't done Eureka since Hydatos was current content. At the time, much of the instance was all working together, across multiple parties and communicating via /shout about where we were going next and what we were trying to spawn. And generally speaking, there weren't that many leechers that would just wait for the FATE to spawn. There was a lot of teamwork going on.

In OC, the teamwork mostly begins and ends at raising people after a CE. That's about it. I can't compare it to Bozja since I never did Bozja when it was current content.

I hope Forked Tower is "fixed" where it is either able to be cleared with PUGs in a zone... or they make it easier to queue up pre-mades... or something? I can't motivate myself to keep farming silver/gold for upgrades and increasing job levels for mastery buffs knowing that Forked Tower is the way it is right now.

[Zyzden]

At this point I might just be done with MMOs. I left WoW 10 years ago for this game and enjoyed it for a very long time, but it really feels like the dev team is stuck and doesn't have any new ideas so it's probably time for me to move on.

[Gurgeh]

I hope Forked Tower is "fixed" where it is either able to be cleared with PUGs in a zone... or they make it easier to queue up pre-mades... or something? I can't motivate myself to keep farming silver/gold for upgrades and increasing job levels for mastery buffs knowing that Forked Tower is the way it is right now.

If the only change they make is to open Forked to pre-mades, I will lose my shit. Again.
Just fix the instance, to make it playable, with other people, 'in game'.

[Ephremjlm]

As much as I like customization, I unfortunately can see why it never lasts for long in MMOs because people can and will optimize the hell out of such systems and only insist on using the meta choices. It only gets worse if you're expected to use BiS for any group content and to take anything else is to be accused of griefing and getting kicked.

Naw you were fed this excuse by Yoshi P and a few others who got told no by some try hards back in the old school MMO days. Other games still do this and it works. FFXI is a PRIME example of this and it's an MMO they already own. Back in the day as long as the content could get done it really didn't matter HOW you did it. Did people optimize sometimes? Yeah. But you didn't HAVE to. I used to break the cardinal rule back in the day (and still do on a certain classic server when I play) and I would go RDM/WAR in FFXI. Some people have doubts because its unconventional but once they see that I can not only do the content, but I can heal, cast status effects, buff, do damage, and even off tank for a second, then they have no problem. The key in that is that they DO give you a chance you just can't be a troll and wipe people for no reason, but thats literally any game that requires cooperation. If anything its worse in games like this where there are less options but there are really no creative excuses to NOT be optimized. The thing I liked about Bozja is you can pick whatever two abilities you want to have equipped and in your holster and do whatever you wanted. They could have went way harder in that direction but they didn't.

[FlowerMilk]

It's not the worst FATE grind in the game to get all of the jellies, but it's still essentially a FATE grind so it's pretty boring. At least I'm also getting some catch up gear at the same time so that's nice.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

As much as I like customization, I unfortunately can see why it never lasts for long in MMOs because people can and will optimize the hell out of such systems and only insist on using the meta choices. It only gets worse if you're expected to use BiS for any group content and to take anything else is to be accused of griefing and getting kicked.

As somebody who dabbles equally into the "BiS" and meme/unoptimal setups of Logos/Lost Actions, I can tell you without a shred of doubt that this sentiment is on the borderline of fearmongering & such a novelty I could count on one hand the amount of time I see such individual taking it up to the point of kicking you out.

Case in example that I remember vividly: Cluster farming in Bozja (or any rank III mob mass pulling, too). Players' favorite and optimal essence choice for the main tanks is the Bloodsucker. But at the time when this point was agreed upon, Bloodsucker was one of the more expensive essences and wasn't easy to farm (it stayed as one of the more hassle essences to farm to this day). No Delubrum items. No ray buffs. I came up with an alternative set up to use Breathtaker and copious amount of Auto-Pots ready. Both are relatively way easier to farm large amount of. Slap in a cheap Paralyze III to one of my duty action and have a go. The result? Yes, I deal less damage, but I've done my part, which is to hold the mob's attention while 2 other players paired with me mow them down freely. I can even use it to solo on -every tanks-, not just WAR because the self sustain was just that good for the purpose it serves.

Did anybody questioned directly in later patches? Sure, once. But I was never kicked for using my 'poor man's' setup. I've seen people attempting to pull with even worse setups before but players never really try to kick anybody without seeing the first few results first. And when that happens, it's usually "Okay this doesn't look like working. What am I doing wrong?", then the learning process goes on and make that one player a better cluster farmer.

[mallleable]

I know treasure chest loot is a bit of a hot topic, but I think there should be rare gold chests that can spawn around the map that only Thieves with lockpicking unlocked can open.

[Voidmage]

I know treasure chest loot is a bit of a hot topic, but I think there should be rare gold chests that can spawn around the map that only Thieves with lockpicking unlocked can open.

If the rewards are a problem just give it gold and silver and maybe even an atma, so there is another way to obtain it on the side.

Hide those in hallways or other locations and surround them with nasty traps so ranger can actually do something with its skill as well.
Let those traps go through tanks defenses. Make them one hit kills for all I care or make them give us a very long, uncleansable debuff or make the trap destroy the chest if it triggers.
(My favourite would be to delevel you to level 1, change you to an Lalafell and empty your bank account)

Maybe by killing things on the map you sometimes get the message that it “dropped a note to treasure nearby” or something.

Imo everything would be good to make some jobs be able to use their skills outside of tower.

[Voidmage]

I have my... doubts, given I can't think of a single MMO I've played where "talent builds" didn't up an "illusion of choice" where you were better off just copying whatever IcyVeins (or equivalent websites) told you to use, because doing anything else was just making the game harder on yourself and others just to feel "unique".

It's a different story in single player RPGs of course, where all options ARE viable to some degree and more importantly you're not impacting anyone else with unorthodox or goofball ideas. But in MMOs? No, I don't play these kinds of games to be a nuisance to others and I got tired of talent trees blowing smoke up my ass years ago, that I could "pick anything" only to feel lied to and thinking I was a hindrance if I didn't pick "properly".

I understand where you are coming from but I think they are actually correct, at least partly.
Most people in an MMO don’t really care about other players much.
I would actually even say that even in savage upwards no one would really bat an eye if you had suboptimal skills as long as the clear is possible in a normal fashion.
That’s why you could still see jobs even if they weren’t optimal in that content and at the beginning of HW one player even said that they played the job because it was fun first and foremost (I think someone on this forum even had it in their signature).
When cross class skills were a think some were bickering but you would see pretty often blm without quelling strikes or manashift on their hotbar and use it despite it costing them damage.
People are really better than many think in my opinion and you can ignore those who are rude tryhards.

What I think you are correct though is that it would be just an illusion of choice because this game is too focused on fighting content in its job design.
That’s why I think the most we would get is cosmetic like skills on jobs that aren’t used for battling itself, like “steal” (or my dream spell “mini”)

I don’t even remember the last time we had a skill that had only use outside battle content.

[Valence]

As much as I like customization, I unfortunately can see why it never lasts for long in MMOs because people can and will optimize the hell out of such systems and only insist on using the meta choices. It only gets worse if you're expected to use BiS for any group content and to take anything else is to be accused of griefing and getting kicked.

I understand and at the same time don't like that argument. It's being served ad nauseam past a point where in reality if we just look back at logograms and lost actions, there were actually many different meta builds that could be used, also depending on the job used. I do agree that the meta by definition diminished greatly the amount of possibilities but it also funneled them and blocked people from decision paralysis. People uninterested into experimenting could just follow the meta.

Meanwhile I kept experimenting and cooking and that was fun (the only thing that actually crippled the cooking was the system requiring stupid consumables). Who cares about the meta as long as it doesn't bar too many doors? The real issue is that a lot of those actions were actually just underwhelming, and that's a dev problem, not a player problem. Even in standard XIV pve there is a meta between jobs, and you can coast by perfectly fine with the non meta ones, yes even MCH those days. But MCH is also showing that there is certain limits within which the meta tolerates, but outside of which the option just gets scorned.

Multi variable systems are harder to optimize in binary ways like the mono variable system of XIV pve, considering the amount of options especially if a lot of those options are actually solid or viable. If you don't believe me and I know this isn't the same type of game, but look at the meta between a RTS game like SC2 that has only 3 streamlined factions with minimal macro/build variables, and another like AOE4 that has close to 20 factions and a complex and deep macro system and varied maps, and tell me honestly which of the two has the healthiest meta. One had to constantly be fined tuned to the millimeter like chess because the smallest little blip would make the balance completely lopsided, the other is just sturdier because there is so many variables and options that the game can fall back to when something breaks somewhere. Or, to make another analogy, it's like in mother nature, the less species in your biome, the more fragile it becomes. Is it harder to create something bigger? Yeah, sure it is, but see the viability it will get in comparison.

I have my... doubts, given I can't think of a single MMO I've played where "talent builds" didn't up an "illusion of choice" where you were better off just copying whatever IcyVeins (or equivalent websites) told you to use, because doing anything else was just making the game harder on yourself and others just to feel "unique".

It's a different story in single player RPGs of course, where all options ARE viable to some degree and more importantly you're not impacting anyone else with unorthodox or goofball ideas. But in MMOs? No, I don't play these kinds of games to be a nuisance to others and I got tired of talent trees blowing smoke up my ass years ago, that I could "pick anything" only to feel lied to and thinking I was a hindrance if I didn't pick "properly".

Because basic talent trees like WoW have way too few variables for it to truly kick in. It's just picking up from within a restricted amount of paths and it showed. Which also meant devs were not capable of balancing said paths, which is no different from just having double the amount of classes.