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

[Granyala]

Update now that I am done with the relic:

Demiatma grind: unfair. Lacks bad-luck protection. I got quite lucky and finished it within a week. Others, not so much. I went from 3hrs w/o any drop all the way to the ridiculous other extreme of getting 3 (yes 3, I shit you not) atma back to back. I thought I bricked the server or sth. :'D
This needs refinement.

Phantom Jobs: Leveled Monk to max and Leveled the Tank to 5. They seem utterly useless and they take FAAAAR too long to level. For most of my time in there (typically WHM, solo no group) I didn't even bother to use the actions. The dash of the monk did like 24K damage on a ridiculously long CD. As I was not facetanking mobs, counter mechanics did not apply. Whopedidoo. Yeah, hard pass on leveling the rest.

Tower: Similar to Baldesions' Arsenal, with the ridiculous entry process, this is content that I will never experience.

CE/FATEs: CE's are good. Takes a while to get the hang of them (sorry, not the youngest kitten on the block anymore :P). FATEs need a different scaling mechanism, the current one simply does not work when all players are always in the same spot of the map. Which is usually the main base because the gameplay loop is: rush to FATE -> kill FATE -> recall -> stalk the central pylon waiting for the next FATE to pop.

Coin grind: Silver is not so bad, got pretty much everything I wanted during the demiatma farming. Gold? Are you fudgin' shittin' me?! 5-7 gold for a mob that lives like 2 minutes and does nothing except having a truckload of HP (Lv 20 ink stain)? Yah got better things to do. KK THX bye. Why gold does not drop from CE's that need actual player awareness is beyond me.

Story: What story? It's like 10 lines of text. Tonberry is cute though. Had to chuckle when he wanted the knife sharpened by Gerolt.

Summary: Overall a lame and soulless zone, glad to be done with the relic.

Man does it to feel bad to have all but the 3 demimateria from the SW corner of the map. Having to do fate after fate, ce after ce in all other areas and get demimateria from them over and over again, but have absolutely none drop from the one area that I need it from, and the only area with 1 single CE, since fate drops are abysmal both in and out of OC.

The NEED a demimateria conversion, 2 to 1 or 3 to 1, idc. This system is just stupid and just makes the normal grind all that much more frustrating and like you are being punished more than anything.

Yup it is royally stupid. Once I only needed 1 yellow and the 3 from south west I left OC because it became too inefficient. Farmed the remaining 4 Demiatmas in Living Memory and Kozama'uka.

[Asari5]

12 years experience in scaling fates and they still cant do it.

now we have fates in instances limited to 72 people. in instances where only ever one fate is around. people running from fate to fate to CE with only a few exceptions and they still mess it up?

if they just use fates over and over and over again they should at least make it work so you dont have to rush around the map just to see the fates die and get nothing its a reason gor frustration!


sure fates have still to be doable when 2/3 of all the people visit the tower. but its their job to be creativ and to figure something out...but i guess they forgot about that part quite some time ago. even i uncreativ as i am could come up with something like resetting the fate also resets the scaling. would that work well? i dont know, but it would be better as what we have now

[Granyala]

12 years experience in scaling fates and they still cant do it.

The Fates scale just fine. I had one spawn next to another, so people were in the subzone and it was CONSIDERABLY tankier. Took like 3 minutes to down.

The problem isn't the scaling as such, the problem is that SE created a gameplay loop that prevents people from actually dispersing over the map and constantly concentrates them in one spot. Reasons: only one Fate ever active, automatic spawns and unlimited returns, CE's you could not queue for wherever you were but have to go to the location to participate.

Eureka did not have this problem, despite the Fate Train doing basically the same because FATEs had to be spawned manually by killing trash mobs. So players were already there when the FATE spawned and it got scaled according to how many people were active.

I totally agree that SE should have seen this issue coming from a mile away.
To be fair: they probably did but do not consider it an issue as you still easily get gold as long as you are in an active group.

[Valence]

I had an epiphany and realized if this is anything like Bozja I can just go back and do forked tower after the content is fully released and it'll be easier due to access to more jobs, gear, etc.

So I guess I'm done with OC for the time being.

This is exactly what happened with BA. Same type of issues and drama at release, content eventually petered out, people figured it out and made organized groups with a strict structure to ensure everything goes smooth once inside, and today you can just clear it by finding a spot in one of those regular forays.
Still remains to be seen how the execution for Forked are gonna be in comparison though, because from what some people have said this looks a bit more like ex/savage raiding, which BA certainly didn't.

[0blivion]

OC itself: It's okay. I miss the signup system from Bozja a little, but it's way better visually so I'm willing to forgive them.

FT: Best content ngl. Is it hard? No, not really. It's like a kind of tricky EX or a first floor savage. It's fine. More importantly, it lets you basically convert 960 gold into 840 silver, and that's what really matters LMAO

The queue system: Abysmal. Please give back 48-player queuing or at least let us join as an alliance.

Demiatma grind: Disgusting, needs a pity system or at the very least a trade-in. Idc if it's a one-time step. It sucks. You sit on max heliometry until you are done with the demiatma grind so you feel urged to finish it to stop wasting currency.

edit: For those who are somehow unaware, gold is always faster than silver as long as you got cannoneer and a tank with thief unlocked. lol

[Daralii]

This is exactly what happened with BA. Same type of issues and drama at release, content eventually petered out, people figured it out and made organized groups with a strict structure to ensure everything goes smooth once inside, and today you can just clear it by finding a spot in one of those regular forays.
Still remains to be seen how the execution for Forked are gonna be in comparison though, because from what some people have said this looks a bit more like ex/savage raiding, which BA certainly didn't.

It very much feels like it was designed to be a large-scale savage, more so than chaotic even. A mandatory minimum of 24 people alive to get past one of the first mechanics of the first boss means that a lot of groups will automatically hit a wall(no pun intended), and with no current source of Reraise or Sacrifice or a way to get back raise stacks, deaths are a lot more punishing.

[FluffyFang]

My interaction with OC so far: I have 9 maxed jobs. Haven't done FT, but am already in a Discord for when I'm ready.

Demiatma: It's fine I guess. Drop rate feels a little lower than the usual FATE-grind step, but I'm also getting so many random resources every FATE that I'm not bothered by the number I'm doing (Exp, both tomestones, treasure chest resets, coins).

Phantom Jobs: Concept is neat. Max level bonus is good. Love being able to mix and match jobs (both actual and phantom) without losing resources. The previous exploration zones provided so much action variety that the jobs seem to pale in comparison, but depending on your role, you didn't really have access to 3/4 of those actions.

FT: I have anxiety, so I'm waiting to max all 12 jobs before going in.

CE/FATEs: Loving the mechanics. I'm at the point where I might get hit by something once an hour if I'm paying attention. Not loving the increasing number of people who are sandbagging CEs by not attacking (seriously, at least play healer and spam one button). Really wish there'd be more than one of each at a time so the entire instance isn't constantly a single blob of movement.

Coins: Both Silver and Gold feel about right. Gold felt absolutely absurd until I learned how to farm it. Solo method is good enough for me to unlock the jobs that cost gold. I'll want to join groups for upgrading gear, but that feels exactly as optional as it should.

Story: Massive disappointment so far. The premise was good, but every single thing after that is so painfully convenient they may as well have just said "We made this content for you with reused assets". It's amusing when that's the strategy for shoehorning Gerolt and Rowena into the relic weapon storyline. It's sad when that's the story for the entire zone. The plot-device amnesia actively annoys me.

Closing thoughts: Soulless, but still fun. The various grinds will eventually be tweaked to be easier as they always do. Very much looking forward to additional jobs and how that affects Freelancer. Number one concern is the story since that's supposed to give it all purpose.

[Shurrikhan]

Random aside, but...

How many of the problems with Phantom Jobs, specifically, (e.g., as a "step down" from Logos/Lost Actions) could be mitigated significantly by jobs just having more compelling solo-play (such as through a bit more role cross-over, versatility, and contextual interactions) in the first place, I wonder?

[Deedlit]

Absolute dogwater.

[Elkanah]

I want to throw tomatoes at the devs for making a terrible story, bad design on access to Forked Tower, and how literally 0 of the mobs make sense on the map from the 5th Astral Umbral era. It's like they just chose random things and threw them in areas that kinda make sense. Like throwing an Elephant in the middle of Houston Texas traffic. WHY IS IT RIGHT THERE??