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

[Inputnamehere]

Fun at first, but gave up midway. I reached 7 masteries and realized I don't have enough incentive to go further 'cause I'm not interested in the tower thing, which seems hella frustrating to team up/prog.

Last time I spent all that time to get 10/10/10 buffs in Zadnor, which was totally pointless. This time I decided to invest my time elsewhere. Other games maybe.

[Valence]

This is a little revisionist history. No one ever dropped Refresh because the Prange didn't really have anything beyond four abilities worth using. Bards also utilized Refresh as a core part of their damage rotation not to simply help healers maintain MP. In fact, that was secondary in higher end content and often led to conflict since you'd have healers spam GCDs heals, especially WHM, only to then complain the Bard wasn't using Refresh for them. Which is likely what contributed to the gradual decline in MP relevance and Refresh altogether.

Likewise, going back to Heavensward and the cross skill system. Tanks really had only one decision to make because Rampart, Provoke, Convalescence, Invigorate and Second Wind were all essentially mandatory. From there you picked some combination of Awareness or Bloodbath. DPS were not any better has you were always choosing Blood for Blood, Internal Release, Second Wind, Bloodbath and Invigorate. Goad was really the only ability swapped on the melee. Prange.

As for leveling other jobs, I have to disagree. Being forced to play a class you may not like isn't fun nor does it encourage people to learn how to play it. We see this even nowadays with leveling and how many people will queue into high level content without a clue what they're doing simply because they need to have all their jobs at max level. The game has never been about leveling multiple classes, but simply providing the option to do so all on one character should you choose. Which is why so many people disliked feeling forced to level other characters.

And in the case of tanks, you were essentially forced to level Gladiator because you needed Provoke. Nowadays you would get kicked for not having Swiftcast in EXs because there's quite literally zero reason not to. Back in ARR days, the game was new and people were still figuring out how to even do things.

Quoting counter examples doesn't make it revisionist because I could (and actually did) quote other examples that weren't always taken. You're even quoting counter examples to your points yourself. Whether it is Protect, Awareness, Bloodbath, Goad, even Feint or Fracture for some rotations (yes it was used as well), there were abilities that were not a full binary 100 to 0. You seem to go under the misconception that I'm saying that the system didn't have flaws, which has never been my intent. I actually believe I also said that there were definitely a lot of meta choices no matter what.
On Refresh actually , if my post history can show one thing, it's probably how I deeply miss resource management and party resource support that used to be core to rphys identity.

If people nowadays would get kicked for not having swiftcast, then I don't know what this game and community have become, truly. It's never been mandatory for anything at all, just in people's imagination. It's never been a problem of the community being new, you had people being rabid about optimization back then as you have today. If pantamelds weren't worth millions of investment today, you'd have everybody in extreme or savage literally kicking anybody without them week one. It's in reality a problem of effort and convenience of use, but I can definitely see the argument that feeling that you have to play a type of content or a class that you don't want to play, isn't necessarily good for the reasons you exposed. But you cannot deny my own experience, because it actually proved beneficial to me.

I honestly have a pretty neutral opinion on having to level other jobs or not though, because I can see the pros and cons about that. Ultimately it always boils down to: what manner of investment players can do to improve their build and class that would be tolerated, or what would not be? Getting benefits from another source of content would ultimately bring people up in arms because they would feel "forced" to play it to be optimal.

[Valence]

There's some real headscratcher design decisions IMO. The biggest one that comes to mind is the Atmas. I have 6 of one colour left over, due to RNG being a bastard to me. They're useless, now that I've done the first step of the Relic grind. Now, I have to hand in a new item which, surprise, costs 500 tomes (welcome back, EW).

Instead of the current '3 of each Atma, then 1500 tomes of Arcanite', why couldn't it have been '2 of each Atma to empower Gerolt's hammer, then 1 of each Atma per Relic you want to make'? By making the price of each Atma from the vendor 250 tomes, you'd still retain the 1500 tome price per Relic, but you'd be able to use duplicates you got while farming for the first step for something (that being, more relics). Additionally, you'd be able to use your tomes to purchase Atmas you have less of, making a 'bad luck protection' of sorts against the RNG trying to screw with your Atma drop ratios.

But wait! What if these Atmas were also purchaseable via Bicolor Gemstones, so that even farming outside of OC, you'd have a 'bad luck protection' system of sorts? This would allow for players to have the option to work on getting multiple relics completed, AND levelling alternate jobs to 100 (potentially being able to kit them out with a brand new relic the moment they hit level cap)

But wait! There's 6 Atma types, which correlate to the 6 zones of Dawntrail, right? But hear me out, there's something else in the game that there's 6 of: Expansions! ARR, HW, SB, SHB, EW, DT. So instead of doing 'everyone farms in these latest 6 zones (or OC)', we could have instead had each type of Atma be linked to each of the Expansions (ie: the light blue one comes from HW, the red one comes from SB, the purple one from SHB, etc). This would drive activity in FATEs across the entire game, from level 1 to 100. This would also be a boon to some players, who would be working on secondary objectives, such as working on an ARR/HW relic (which have some FATE related steps each), levelling a new Job from even lower levels, or even helping players finish working on the 'Shared FATE' systems of SHB/EW (if they didn't already do them while they were current, maybe they're a newer player IDK).

Please no more fates. Please..

[DivineP]

I'm 12/12 gear all +1 and all I can do is be stonewalled to max my gear by Discord groups. (I don't use Discord)

How they didn't use Bozjas que system in this day in age is beyond me.

Don't even get me started on 48 a 48 ppl raid in a 72 man instance.

Very disappointed I've been waiting for battle content since EW. Only to be stonewalled by that.

Do you even play your game SE?

[DivineP]

I'm 12/12 gear all +1 and all I can do is be stonewalled to max my gear by Discord groups. (I don't use Discord)

How they didn't use Bozjas que system in this day in age is beyond me.

Don't even get me started on 48 a 48 ppl raid in a 72 man instance.

Very disappointed I've been waiting for battle content since EW. Only to be stonewalled by that.

Do you even play your game SE?

As an OG player I'm getting abot fed up with these design choices.

[Tatiana]

I decided to try and achievement hunt to break up some of the grind only to find I need to collect an absurd 5000 treasure chests in this zone LOL, who decided on that number? 1000 I could see, 1500 would be pushing it, but 5000 is wild. Honestly sometimes it feels like they actively attempt to make it easy for us to dislike the content they release for this game enough to compel us to stop trying.

[Granyala]

Only been in there once so far, Class level 4 or so IIRC.

My experience:
Normal FATES: don't bother, they evaporate near instantly, no way to get them unless you happen to be in the vicinity by sheer accident.
Criticals: Okay stuff but gets old quickly.
Phantom Jobs: maybe too early but so far I am not impressed by the system at all. So far the skills I got don't seem to do much.

The Tonberry is cute though and definitely shared the WOL's reaction when "Atma" was mentioned. Turns out, droprate is appropriately crappy (as expected), so Kitty's facial expression was justified.

Map itself looks good. But I don't enjoy having to level shit, yet again or be instagib by every mob. What is it with people's obsession of "leveling stuff"?!!

I decided to try and achievement hunt to break up some of the grind only to find I need to collect an absurd 5000 treasure chests in this zone LOL, who decided on that number?

They clearly target no-lifers, the unemployed and kids with this stuff. So uuh yeah, don't feel obligated to do it. :'D

What will you do when they gate northern part behind completing it? because that's kinda implied in the story.

No way. That would kill the relic for 95% of it's target audience.
They didn't do it with BA they won't do it with the tower.

[Kaurhz]

Stepped in first time today after a friend wanted to finally 'dip their toes' in the content.

The CEs are fun, but I can imagine these getting pretty repetitive.

Would be nice if the gameplay was a little more than simply wait for the next FATE/CE to spawn... I can imagine this giving me major LFGZ3 vibes in due time, honestly.

The monster density just makes this place incredibly dull... One of the best things about Eureka for me was the monster density... It made navigating some areas and maps really challenging, and tested to a degree your ability to understand aggro types, e.g., with the sleeping dragons and sprites, it felt thrilling to explore... This place with how spread out the monsters are you can just simply walk by most of them without a care in the world.

Nothing to write home about, and honestly overall it does feel like a downgrade... Definitely not something I would expect for something that has been long awaited, but it's pretty much par the course.

[DivineP]

Oh darling you sleeping on alot of gil. Shame

[DivineP]

More for meeeee.

In actual fact for me, this is the best content that DT has realised by far ( outside of the tower ) ppl communicating like its an actual MMO - partying up. I love it.