Everything wrong with OC

[CNitsah]

It's been a few month since the release of occult crescent. To me, someone that spend far too much time in both Eureka and Bozja/Zadnor (that's I'll call B/Z from now on) – I mean, I got all their respectives relics – I feel like it failed to capture what made those content work, and still relevant to this day. I've thought about it a lot, and did this analysis that probably nobody will read, because it's far too long

What made previous exploration zones work

On the paper, OC kept the same gameplay loop as previous exploration zones, and that loop never has been that much interesting (farming mobs to spawn some fates or buffed fates, and running from one to another). But this time, the rythm is too fast : the gameplay loop always was repetitive, but the interaction with other players was what brought variety to the experience. IIRC, when talking the lack of exploration zone in EW, Yoshida said they understood we wanted things to do together. Everyone doing the same things alongside each other without communicating is not doing something together. The pacing at which fates spawn are brought down push you to not interact with other. If you don't return directly at the end of a fates then directly TP near the next, you'll miss it. OC is a constant rush that dissuade you to interact with other players.

The atma farm

I don't have much problem with the atma drop rates : that said we need a vendor to exchange atmas at a 2 to 1 rate (or maybe more). When you reach the end of your farm, the farm becomes really frustrating. Especially since only a small part of the map is still relevant. You wait for the fates and CE in that zone to come, but 5/6 of the fates that spawn are useless to you. As it is now, atma farm is the cover definition of "the first 80% of the project took me as long as the last 80%".

The shelf-life problem

Then there is the problem of the shelf life. What made people come back in Eureka and B/Z. For the first one, definitely the relics. For the second ones, the relics and B/Z being a perfect place to xp your job from 71 to around 85. OC doesn't have that.
We're a couple of month after the release, and I rarely see people with all their phantom jobs maxed. For now it's still well populated, but will this zone stay relevant after this expansion? There is a world where it ends as another Variant dungeon/Eureka Orthos. The atma farm is not enough to keep (some) players invested in the zone. This content hasn't been designed with long term exploitation.

Now I know that FFXIV always has been a game that respect your time, but it still gave you the mean play it for extensive period of time : that means was relics. Removing farmable relics and not replacing it by another content that served the same purpose is one of the biggest mistake, if not the biggest error SE made, and it seems they haven't entirely realised that (to me that's also why the game is bleeding players). The whole "Nothing to do" problems hasn't so much to do with different players wanting different things, but rather about having nothing to do during down periods. You could tell me that "nothing forbids me to farm roulettes or something else like that", because after all, you also repeat the same things again and again in exploration zones, so how it is different? Well, my first point is the difference : it's content that push interacting with other players, and often unknown players.

The incentives and phantoms jobs

Let's go straight to the point, gear as the main reason for farming isn't as compelling as a relic. Relics used to have some aura around them it wasn't some kind of tome weapons. Gear is obsolete by the next patch (or sometimes it stays relevant for 2 patches). It just doesn't have the same aura (ok this one is lame).
But there is more problems induced by switching the farm from weapons to gear. During the promotion, a lot of focus has been put on "trying different combinations of jobs and phantoms jobs and play with that". Yet with the time needed to upgrade one gear (I nearly finished my 8th phantom job, and only bought the airship, the speed map and the phantom jobs before concentrating on the gear and only just got enough silver to upgrade a full set to +1), it kinda push you to not switch job because you'll loose your gear bonus. You actually designed a system that go against how you sold your whole exploration zone.
Phantoms jobs have the same problems*: The time you need to xp them is not a problem by itself. But the xp process also goes against what was sold. You only reach that "try differents combinations" when you get them all to max level. During the xp time you stick with the one you have to lvl up.

So in the end, you sold us a content with flexibility, but the way you get the gear and the xp process of the phantom jobs push you to do the exact opposite stick to one job and one phantom job at a time. Bummer.
But that's not the end of it. For some reason, the survavibility in OC is the worst of all the exploration zones. I guess this was done to push people to play healers, but in reality, so many players just play tanks. You can survive a CE with 8 vulnerability stacks as a tank. And it makes the whole thing so frustrating for DPS. If your heal doesn't know the fight, isn't good, or you just don't have a heal in your current party, and since some of the design choices push you to not change jobs or phantom job, you're gonna have a bad time. For a little while I hoped the Phantom job bonus that seemed inspired from medals would give a hp bonus, which would give me more survivability, but it does not. It just make some game session everything but fun.

Forked Tower and its lack of normal mode

I'm not gonna talk about the whole entry method thing. This exist and was a stupid choice. But I feel like even now, the lack of normal version of the forked tower does disservice to the content. I guess SE is not dumb enough to gatekeep the rest of OC behind the forked tower completion, especially with how it wasn't a success. If they do, that's basically killing OC part 2, because most player won't even try to enter it. So from now on, I'll ignore this possibility.

FFXIV is a story MMO. Each content has and the story is what drive a good part of the players base. I'm not sure how receptives those players will be to the second part. It's kinda like telling people "you can watch Terminator, but not climax, but you can still watch Terminator 2". It's nice enough but something is missing. I feel like at a time like this, not sending a message that's basically "we only want the players that are ready to play high end content" seemed like the obvious thing to do. Yet, they chose the "too late, maybe next time". As it is now, I feel like giving a FTB normal mode should be their priority, but they seem to consider it's absence as non problem. Gating the mojority of the community out seems like the way they chose to go. It's weird to me. More than any speech they could do, announce a FTB normal would be a proof they either understood how it was problematic or at least listened to the community.

(Also, don't put TT card behind High end content. TT cards collection is something that always stayed reachable by everyone with enough time. Don't make that something only for people that do high end content. The pleasure of collection is to have them all, not all but one. You just loose interest in the thing if you can't have them all. It's the only reason some people bother with your insane fishing conditions and find fun in it. Make a fish that can only be fished with non tradable bait dropped on savage, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people that bothered up until that point just won't bother anymore)

Conclusion

So in the end, what would I do*?

I could stop here, but I can see people saying "yeah, you're criticizing but doesn't propose things to fix the problems" so here is what I would do :

- slow down the pacing a little, allowing people to actually interact without risking missing the next fate.
- Switch the farm to the relic again.
- Reduce the cost of armors (even if it means slightly boosting the cost of amelioration item, the idea is to get the non update gear pretty easily, which would push you to change job more often.
- Either reduce the xp needed to lvl up jobs, so you can experience with them faster, or better, design a system that allow you to give the xp gained with a mastered job to another job (even at a reduced rate)
- add a potion like Eureka potion or add a hp bonus to the phantom job mastery bonus to make non optimal parties of some CE less frustrating for dps.
- Do a Forked Tower normal.

But even if it's OC, what the game really needs is content with true shelf life, what older exploration zones used to be. I don't think it's a coincidence the game started to loose (then bleed) players when SE stopped adding content with shelf life.

[Supersnow845]

While I agree with just about everything you said here one thing I will note is that the gear isn’t really a problem swapping jobs because the cryptic way they list occult effects obfuscates the fact that the occult effect is really weak

If you have the best occult gear possible (a full set of +2) the 600 main stat and the 15 special attribute contribute overall 13.5% damage and 15% phantom action damage. So the punishment for swapping off occult gear to a different job unless you are going from +2 to nothing at all amounts to basically losing like 5% damage

Other than that I agree with just about everything. OC is too fast, a lack of forked normal breaks its gameplay loop and you can really only play around with phantom jobs (which are boring anyway) when you have all 12 mastery stacks

[Raikai]

I'd also like to point out the storyline being really, REALLY lacking.

They didn't deliver an installment that feels fulfilling to complete, like how it was in Bozja. The whole questline is basically just exploring points of interest and then "Let's wait until we can get to the North Horn to see the actual relevant thing". There's not even a cliffhanger to make me look forward to the next one. Heck, even the Forked Tower ends up being a side-side quest.

As I write this, I realize it's symptomatic to Dawntrail's side stories. The ones with installments just don't feel complete - The Alliance Raid, for example, parts 1 and 2 does not give the feeling of an achievement at all. Heck, much like the Forked Tower, the raids themselves are just filler, because the fights are nearly pointless, and besides Prishe, none of the bosses there are relevant to the whole thing. Feels like if I'm watching a movie divided by month-long commercials (even patches).

[Supersnow845]

I'd also like to point out the storyline being really, REALLY lacking.

They didn't deliver an installment that feels fulfilling to complete, like how it was in Bozja. The whole questline is basically just exploring points of interest and then "Let's wait until we can get to the North Horn to see the actual relevant thing". There's not even a cliffhanger to make me look forward to the next one. Heck, even the Forked Tower ends up being a side-side quest.

As I write this, I realize it's symptomatic to Dawntrail's side stories. The ones with installments just don't feel complete - The Alliance Raid, for example, parts 1 and 2 does not give the feeling of an achievement at all. Heck, much like the Forked Tower, the raids themselves are just filler, because the fights are nearly pointless, and besides Prishe, none of the bosses there are relevant to the whole thing. Feels like if I'm watching a movie divided by month-long commercials (even patches).

Forked tower’s lore offerings basically amounting to “tower is guarded by monsters to hide a series of books you can’t even read because it’s in a dead language” is absolutely pathetic

I guess on the one hand it’s good because it doesn’t disadvantage people who don’t do forked but on the other hand it’s pathetic for those that do

[Hyperia]

Biggest issue I had with OV was the uneven spawn rate of the CEs for atmas and most importantly, way too many teleports. You didn’t travel in the zone, you teleported. Kill a FATE, teleport to base and teleport to the next one, over and over and over again. They need to limit teleports, put a cooldown on them and spread them out more. The teleporting ruined it for me as it was mandatory, if you didn’t, you missed out.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Forked tower’s lore offerings basically amounting to “tower is guarded by monsters to hide a series of books you can’t even read because it’s in a dead language” is absolutely pathetic

I guess on the one hand it’s good because it doesn’t disadvantage people who don’t do forked but on the other hand it’s pathetic for those that do

Especially since this is an area that should be bursting at the seams with cool Magi lore! At least I’m not missing much!

But yeah I’m still mad about FTB, and if it doesn’t get a Normal mode, I probably always will be. Putting field notes and a Triad card behind content that isn’t puggable and easily repeatable is just insult to injury. Bozja’s field notes and cards could all be obtained without doing DRS. I ran Dalriada so many times for a card, there’s no way in the seven hells I’d do FTB that many times, especially with the time and scheduling effort required.

[Sunhwapark]

OC is a constant rush that dissuade you to interact with other players.

This 'rush' was a major reason I didn't like OC at all, felt like I was suddenly running on a treadmill at max speed with no pause button.
Paired with not interacting with players, which is a shame because OC was the one of the thing I was interested in doing in this patch cycle- mostly because of how heavily I enjoyed Eureka(and Bozja to some degree), but I just abandoned the thought after trying it for a while.

[Jeeqbit]

OC is a constant rush that dissuade you to interact with other players.

That's a common issue when things are made more efficient by developers. Cutting out the needless wait times actually cuts out the social interaction, which is what people spent that wait time doing.

The problem is really that some extremely casual players, and there are a lot of these, complain when there is a wait time. Eureka was universally slammed when it was current and these forums were full of negativity about it in Stormblood, because they did not like the wait time. Yet, that is one of the most memorable things about Eureka - the banter we had while waiting for NMs to spawn in /shout.

Bozja allowed for this primarily because you all formed a party while waiting for CEs to start. These parties often persisted and allowed for conversation while farming Skirmishes for ages between CEs. There was also quite a fair amount of it in CLL and Dalriada.

But the social interaction wasn't quite the same as that large scale banter that Eureka successfully created, which was just a lot of fun with 144 people there.

It's a question of whether they should listen to all those extraordinarily impatient casual players that are looking for a mobile game. I think it's not worth it and that they'll complete the content eventually after some weeks, as intended by the developers.

I don't have much problem with the atma drop rates : that said we need a vendor to exchange atmas at a 2 to 1 rate (or maybe more).

I think the solution really is just to make it so we are only trying to get 1 item in the first place. Or, make it so we can easily focus on getting the other types of atma ie. second type of atma comes from gold farming.

What made people come back in Eureka and B/Z. For the first one, definitely the relics.

It's not just the relics we went back to Eureka for. It was the rare treasure. I returned to Eureka casually over months and years to get the mount from Pyros. In contrast, it only took me about 3 farm attempts to get the one from Hydatos I recall.

It's that sort of thing people would go back for and then sell it on the market board. That's what MMOs were about in the old days. Someone would put the effort into getting that rare loot so they could sell it or make something rare with it, while now it's all so casualized that all old loot is devalued intentionally to consider "casual players".

At a certain point, catering to casual players actually destroys the fun even for said casual players. Because this sort of thing made playing older MMORPGs fun as a casual player. You may not have had time for much, but you could farm 3 hours for a really rare loot and then get a lot of money for it. That's what this genre was all about and now everything is just handed out like candy and that's boring.

[CNitsah]

That's a common issue when things are made more efficient by developers. Cutting out the needless wait times actually cuts out the social interaction, which is what people spent that wait time doing.

The problem is really that some extremely casual players, and there are a lot of these, complain when there is a wait time. Eureka was universally slammed when it was current and these forums were full of negativity about it in Stormblood, because they did not like the wait time. Yet, that is one of the most memorable things about Eureka - the banter we had while waiting for NMs to spawn in /shout.

Bozja allowed for this primarily because you all formed a party while waiting for CEs to start. These parties often persisted and allowed for conversation while farming Skirmishes for ages between CEs. There was also quite a fair amount of it in CLL and Dalriada.

But the social interaction wasn't quite the same as that large scale banter that Eureka successfully created, which was just a lot of fun with 144 people there.

It's a question of whether they should listen to all those extraordinarily impatient casual players that are looking for a mobile game. I think it's not worth it and that they'll complete the content eventually after some weeks, as intended by the developers.

Yeah this. Hope they would realise XIV is a mmo with some old school content, and if they want a faster game and closer to F2P games, they have to make another game. XIV, due to him being designed as a rather old school mmo, will never be that, never truly satisfying that demographic, by following that direction, they also stopped satisfying their mmo players core community. Right now they're trying to be both and fail. They have to choose.

BTW, I didn't know the new relic step was in 7.31, and I notice they repeated the same mistakes again.

[Ardeth]

The drop rates for the Demiatmas and the silver coins are fucking awful. That place feels like a prison. It even ruins the open world by making it more appealing while being a worse choice.

It's like they've learned nothing from Guild Wars 2 when it comes to how to make open-world content.

It's about as fun as a positive cancer diagnosis.