Phantom Jobs are a step in the right direction but need iteration.

[Jeeqbit]

Do people really have trouble with lost actions? I play bozja casually and along the way I got enough (relevant) lost actions for 3/4 of total relic weapons. I only needed to buy from MB about 3 or 4 times, and their prices were pretty cheap as well. Unless you're attempting to do delubrum savage, you don't really need to grind for those lost actions.

There was no issue with Lost Actions.

However, casual players were not smart enough to use them or understand them. So they went into DR without them and DR took 40-60 minutes instead of 20 minutes. The bosses took so long that it was miserable and made me not want to do it again. The fights themselves were really good, yet the lack of action usage was that bad.

A benefit of Phantom Jobs is it's something casual players are far more likely to grasp.

[Fawkes]

There was no issue with Lost Actions.

However, casual players were not smart enough to use them or understand them. So they went into DR without them and DR took 40-60 minutes instead of 20 minutes. The bosses took so long that it was miserable and made me not want to do it again. The fights themselves were really good, yet the lack of action usage was that bad.

A benefit of Phantom Jobs is it's something casual players are far more likely to grasp.

False.

The problem was acquisition. Some of the fragments had terrible droprates, and on top of that RNG you had another layer of RNG with the appraisal system. So you could farm 100 fragments and only end up with 10 of the essence you wanted. Casual players didn't want to spend 40 hours a week farming fragments just to be able to do the raid twice, or buy them off the AH for 100 billion gil only to appraise into useless garbage. If the droprate wasn't crap and there were more fragments in the economy than anyone needed then casuals would've been able to use them more. But some people are too greedy and wanted them to be rare and valuable so they could farm them and make money, and the content itself suffered and now the pendulum swung all the way in the other direction so there aren't logograms/fragments to worry about at all and we get less interesting actions to go with it.

[CarlCarl]

False.

The problem was acquisition. Some of the fragments had terrible droprates, and on top of that RNG you had another layer of RNG with the appraisal system. So you could farm 100 fragments and only end up with 10 of the essence you wanted. Casual players didn't want to spend 40 hours a week farming fragments just to be able to do the raid twice, or buy them off the AH for 100 billion gil only to appraise into useless garbage. If the droprate wasn't crap and there were more fragments in the economy than anyone needed then casuals would've been able to use them more. But some people are too greedy and wanted them to be rare and valuable so they could farm them and make money, and the content itself suffered and now the pendulum swung all the way in the other direction so there aren't logograms/fragments to worry about at all and we get less interesting actions to go with it.

You say this, but in practise only top loadouts really required actual investment. Simple loadouts like essence of the skirmisher + banner of whoopdedoo already significantly increase your DPS. The required Awakening (dropped by 4 fates, the questline, and a stupid amount of mobs) and Resolve (dropped by questline and in packs of 10 from BSF z3 CEs) fragments really did not require much effort on the player's part to acquire. The fact that even such simple loadouts were already relatively uncommon despite the ease of acquisition shows that the problem was a mismatch between developer expectations and casual players. The moment you can click a subjob and immediately get buttons on your hotbar to press, there was no more problem at all.

[Jeeqbit]

The problem was acquisition. Some of the fragments had terrible droprates

For the most part, certain mobs dropped certain fragments, so they were very easy to farm. You could form parties to do it or reflect farm. In fact some party members would do this while you were doing other things, giving you fragments in the process.

Another option was to get Lost Doom and spam it on a boss. Eventually it would 1 shot them and you'd get loads of fragments.

Of course, many other fragments could simply be bought with clusters or looted from CLL.

And finally, for the ones you couldn't get, you could simply go to the market board and buy them.

on top of that RNG you had another layer of RNG with the appraisal system. So you could farm 100 fragments and only end up with 10 of the essence you wanted. Casual players didn't want to spend 40 hours a week farming fragments just to be able to do the raid twice, or buy them off the AH for 100 billion gil

Maybe they could have not bothered with the Appraisal system and maybe they should avoid that if they do it again, but the rest was fine in my opinion. 100 billion is an exaggeration though. There were some rare ones, but at least when the content was current (pre-Echo where it was more useful), prices were lower.