First I Hated Phantom Jobs And Now They're My Good Life

[Veritas-Ancora]

I love casual busywork in Final Fantasy XIV.

When all the phantom jobs first released, I was like, "this is the dumbest hill I have to ever climb, this will never be used" and now I'm looking forward to the next exploratory mission and leveling them.

What changed? Boredom. I just want my subscription to have me doing something silly to keep myself going. The leveling for each of the jobs isn't terribly painful but there's so many of them that they'll keep me busy.

Surprisingly there's a lot of players who are still playing South Horn. I wasn't expecting that. But any time I'm signing in during "peak" (I use that word loosely) hours, there's plenty of groups all doing the same thing.

So yeah, my mind has changed. I'm glad Square-Enix put the extra time and effort into giving something that will change.

Am I bitter that you can't level in South Horn? Absolutely. It would've made my life a lot easier.

But it's content, and content is content is content. Which is content.

[Alicie]

No thanks. I do not need a dedicated system that I have to level up or do something similar long term for just one piece of content, and I also want to play the job I selected to play, not a weird augmentation-amalgamation of jobs.

[LanceSummers]

No thanks. I do not need a dedicated system that I have to level up or do something similar long term for just one piece of content, and I also want to play the job I selected to play, not a weird augmentation-amalgamation of jobs.

Systems like this can be fun and good forms of long-term grinds. The issue is long-term incentives to justify said long-term grinds. Collecting gear to use within the instance is their idea of a grind but there needs to be a reason to grind for said gear in the first place.
Bozja and Eureka had these reasons worked out. You would be spending a large amount of time in these instances because they were the best or only way to get your relic weapon, and grinding for gear made getting subsequent relics easier.
Occult Crescent fails at this. Are there really any reasons to grind Occult Crescent other than for fun?
The relics are far easier to get outside of OC, and for the second step you can't even use OC at all.
Rewards you get from OC that can only be used inside need to be properly balanced with rewards you can get that have a use outside. There's just not a solid reason to commit time to OC for the sake of rewards, it's a failure in design imo.

[Alicie]

Systems like this can be fun and good forms of long-term grinds. The issue is long-term incentives to justify said long-term grinds. Collecting gear to use within the instance is their idea of a grind but there needs to be a reason to grind for said gear in the first place.
Bozja and Eureka had these reasons worked out. You would be spending a large amount of time in these instances because they were the best or only way to get your relic weapon, and grinding for gear made getting subsequent relics easier.
Occult Crescent fails at this. Are there really any reasons to grind Occult Crescent other than for fun?
The relics are far easier to get outside of OC, and for the second step you can't even use OC at all.
Rewards you get from OC that can only be used inside need to be properly balanced with rewards you can get that have a use outside. There's just not a solid reason to commit time to OC for the sake of rewards, it's a failure in design imo.

The problem is, I chose and levelled a job, I farmed gear, and I want to play said job in said gear, but for some weirdass reason, SE just forces some extra garbage I haven't asked for into me and artificially cuts down gear/forces some other gear onto me. No, let me play with what I chose and what I enjoy, not some weird combo with it's own levelling system .

[HammAndCheese]

I love casual busywork in Final Fantasy XIV.

When all the phantom jobs first released, I was like, "this is the dumbest hill I have to ever climb, this will never be used" and now I'm looking forward to the next exploratory mission and leveling them.

What changed? Boredom. I just want my subscription to have me doing something silly to keep myself going. The leveling for each of the jobs isn't terribly painful but there's so many of them that they'll keep me busy.

Surprisingly there's a lot of players who are still playing South Horn. I wasn't expecting that. But any time I'm signing in during "peak" (I use that word loosely) hours, there's plenty of groups all doing the same thing.

So yeah, my mind has changed. I'm glad Square-Enix put the extra time and effort into giving something that will change.

Am I bitter that you can't level in South Horn? Absolutely. It would've made my life a lot easier.

But it's content, and content is content is content. Which is content.

I've been meaning to hop back in to level the newest jobs, its good to know that the content is still fairly active. I was going to wait until the North Horn but might as well do it now.

[Veritas-Ancora]

I've been meaning to hop back in to level the newest jobs, its good to know that the content is still fairly active. I was going to wait until the North Horn but might as well do it now.

Yeah, I mean, what else is there to do?

It keeps me busy and I'm learning interesting mechanics in the meantime.

Might as well milk it now while there's still people there.

[CCheshire]

For leveling options, we have so much content available for ages like the new PT is meant to help everyone get to max level already, along with every single thing in the game gives us EXP for battle jobs. Honestly, I've had my alt jobs maxed out within 2 weeks of the DT release date and I've just been doing my dailies and events for years onwards.

I'd never run out ideas to level my alt jobs even if I had only time for 2 hrs every day if I wanted to max all of them. Also, I like that OC lets us use the max level jobs, which is limited to only normal raids, savage/ults, EXDR, or capped rous, maps, or Fates in LM. It's still active because its current content and the best place to do step 1 of the DT relic along with the others who are into FT1 or try to grind the new OC accessories.

[VeyaAkemi]

This is exactly why I enjoyed OC, it is shit to do, and sometimes that's just what I want man, nothing fancy, I just want something to do that I haven't already reached the end of progression for. Leveling wasn't an issue for me either, I had all Jobs at 100 for months by the time OC released.

[TKMXIV]

I really need to finish leveling my Phantom Jobs before more of them drop.
Also need to farm gold and silver as well for the new phantoms and some possible glams and more.

[Kaurhz]

Each to their own.

Personally I wouldn't be inclined to look at it as a positive if it's just stemming from boredom or genuine lack of things to do.

I used to have the same mindset with achievement hunting, but eventually the dark realisation of how hollow the rationale is -- Just hit me... Eventually just kinda deviated into spending my time playing other games, as I'd rather do something that's of a genuine interest to me than something that I am doing just for the sake of milking value from a sub.

Ironic that I write that given I am subbed, which is largely from a social outlet rather than a content outlet, and to be honest like some subscriptions I forget they are even there, especially when they're just as cheap as a hot chocolate.