Occult Crescent and the Phantom Weapons are a failure in almost every aspect.

[LanceSummers]

Occult Crescent is by far the worst field operation this game has ever scene. Below are my main points as for why I believe this.
1. Midcore? What's that?
Occult Crescent is by far the #1 exploration zone for hardcore raiders. We have 2 high difficulty raids for this island of content. That's double the usual amount, and how many normal raids do we get? 1... Just 1. The Save the Queen series (Bozja) had 3 normal raids and only 1 savage. For being supposed "midcore" content, Square is leaving the casual playerbase in the dust just to appeal to raiders.

2. Brainrot Design.
I genuinely hate how the gameplay loop in Occult Crescent is designed. There can only be 1 Fate at a time, and you better be sure you get there quick or it will die almost instantly. You are practically forced to speed to the next one just so you don't miss out on rewards. Not to mention the Critical Encounters... By setting a time limit that forces you to travel to a destination, you don't get time to do other things in the zone. It's a constant loop of fast-paced fates and Critical Encounters, with severe punishments if you miss out (which is incredibly easy to do) and no time to breathe in between. This is unacceptable, this pacing is terrible and does not belong in a game like this.

3. Phantom Weapons and the laziness of Tome Sinks.
I hate how the only option to get your Phantom Weapons after the one-time steps is tomes. We should have a pool of content we can do, preferably in Occult Crescent, we can do as an alternative method to get our weapons faster. Using tomes as the only method forces players to do boring content instead of something more fun that feels like you are playing on-expansion content.

4. Phantom Jobs and the Illusion of Choice.
Say all you will about Phantom Jobs. The Mastery System sucks. I should be allowed to gain EXP for any Phantom Job on any other Phantom Job so I can play what I want, instead of being forced to play ones I don't want to play just for mastery ranks.

[LanceSummers]

5. Lack of Reasons to play the Occult Crescent.
All older Field Operations tended to be the only or quickest way to get your relic weapons. With the stupid decision to lock the Phantom Weapons behind tome sinks, this is no longer the case. Hell, not even the one time steps are done easier within the Occult Crescent. You cannot do the Aetherwell step inside the Occult Crescent at all, and the Crystal Paste step gives abysmal Crystal Paste from the Occult Crescent. I want to play the Occult Crescent, but the Phantom Weapons are constantly pushing me away from it. Also, almost all forms of progression for the Occult Crescent are only useful in making items only usable inside the Occult Crescent easier to obtain. Just... Why?

6. Release Cycle and Lack of Content.
It feels like we are getting an abysmal amount of content for Occult Crescent compared to all other Field Operations, and they are spread out terribly. Each new step for Phantom Weapons should ideally give us some form of new content in the Occult Crescent to do... And no, new Phantom Jobs do not count.
Bozja got Castrum Lacus Litore, the Southern Front, Delubrum Reginae, Delubrum Reginae Savage, Zadnor, and the Dalriada. That is 6 pieces of content, all spaced out nicely.
For Occult Crescent we have the South and North Horns, Forked Tower Blood, Forked Tower Magic, and Forked Tower Magic Extreme. That is less content than Bozja, and we have double the hardcore content for no reason. It was also spread out terribly... There is almost no relation between the Phantom Weapons and Occult Crescent.

[Jeeqbit]

1. Believe it or not, they didn't expect Forked Tower to be regarded as high-end content. You can tell by the cast names and telegraphing that a lot of it was intended to be obvious or streamlined, with a status effect that allows multiple chances but without allowing too many so you don't purposefully sandbag. It just didn't quite go according to plan and a few of the design decisions made it difficult without coordination.

2. I agree with this, but it's actually a response to player feedback. Some extremely casual players (even more casual than you apparently), are so casual that they need CEs and FATE to spawn IMMEDIATELY after eachother so they can maximize their productivity within the 2 hours they play each week. To be clear, back in Stormblood, this was the top complaint and why people seemed to hate Eureka so much back then - NMs took quite a while to spawn so you could be waiting 15-25mins sometimes.

3. Honestly you get tomes from lots of activities, so I just do whatever I'm doing already and spend tomes when they cap on the relics.

4. This just doesn't make logical sense. Leveling a job you aren't playing, from a lore perspective seems really strange.

[Reptiletc]

I continue to believe that OC would be much better with the tele to critical encounter feature Bozja brought. Was very sad to see it go.

As for Forked Tower, they put far too much faith in people's ability to coordinate in PUGs. Tuning is needed here for sure since 1 person could easily ruin it for everyone and I don't see that as acceptable in non-hardcore content.

[LanceSummers]

1. Believe it or not, they didn't expect Forked Tower to be regarded as high-end content. You can tell by the cast names and telegraphing that a lot of it was intended to be obvious or streamlined, with a status effect that allows multiple chances but without allowing too many so you don't purposefully sandbag. It just didn't quite go according to plan and a few of the design decisions made it difficult without coordination.

2. I agree with this, but it's actually a response to player feedback. Some extremely casual players (even more casual than you apparently), are so casual that they need CEs and FATE to spawn IMMEDIATELY after eachother so they can maximize their productivity within the 2 hours they play each week. To be clear, back in Stormblood, this was the top complaint and why people seemed to hate Eureka so much back then - NMs took quite a while to spawn so you could be waiting 15-25mins sometimes.

3. Honestly you get tomes from lots of activities, so I just do whatever I'm doing already and spend tomes when they cap on the relics.

4. This just doesn't make logical sense. Leveling a job you aren't playing, from a lore perspective seems really strange.

For 4. The issue is that I literally can't play the Phantom Job I want to if I want to gain mastery. I am forced to level up every job with being able to spend virtually no time playing my favorite one. I do not have a choice of what job I play to earn mastery.

[SalamanderIX]

I don't like the CE design in the place. It's almost entirely bosses and they almost all have sorta low extreme level mechanics, and a lot of them.

Now I know Bozja and Eureka had this, but they didn't go quite as crazy with it. Bozja in particular had more things than "do the mechanical boss fight".
I mean, as a raider they aren't a big issue, but it does get boring doing the same kinda encounters over and over. Also the flaws with the current job balance in normal play shows a lot. A DPS or healer can not afford to make a mistake, while tanks can live through absolutely everything. I feel like the way the jobs are tuned works for ex/savage/ultimate, but in the open world or field operations it feels really off for everybody to be glass and the tanks to be diamond.

[CidHeiral]

My main critique of the zone is that this should be an area where you have to communicate and coordinate with other players, but other than asking for an invite for the FATE grind or finding someone asking for a raise there really isn't any of that in the main zone. There should be objectives or events that require everyone to talk to each other to succeed instead of everyone just mindlessly grinding FATEs for hours on end. OC could have towers you have to capture on opposite sides of the map, or maybe the main settlement gets attacked sometimes and everyone has to go defend it and fulfill different roles. The sky is the limit, but they basically just extended the Shared FATE grind and called it a day.

[Jeeqbit]

I continue to believe that OC would be much better with the tele to critical encounter feature Bozja brought. Was very sad to see it go.

I liked it in Bozja because it would allow me to AFK or vendor and setup Lost Actions while the timer counted down. But it did detract from the feeling Eureka had, where it made you actually navigate the terrain. Navigating terrain was SO much fun in Eureka. Having to pass a dragon by walking carefully or risking death by running in hopes of making the NM was just totally awesome. Most people hated it, but I loved it, and it is one of my fondest memories of Eureka. Pagos especially was my favorite zone of all.

I actually feel they still nerfed it a lot in Occult. They spread out the aethernets to each quadrant of the zone, and you don't really navigate anything dangerous because any "dangerous" enemies rarely even attack you. You have to stand in front of them and /wave to get their attention. They should fill North Horn with high-level dragons with a massive aggro range and it'll be fantastic.

[Kaurhz]

Point 2 is probably the one I relate with the most... It makes it a nightmare for newer players long-term since you're missing half of the FATEs because they go down so quickly... It's a bit strange they went with a design that exposes the gaping issue with FATE scaling in the game... I don't know why they tried to go with this design?? Whether they thought they had to change something for the sake of changing something...?

3. I have a love-hate relationship with this... I can see why they went with Tome as the repeatable step.. I just don't think there's enough to justify it...Plus, given what they did with DoH/L relics where you would get a boost to rates on subsequent relics... It just seems like such a disconnection... Especially when crafter relics work so well -- and especially when they are clearly going the route of intending that people obtain many relics... At least this is what the design suggests to me.

5. I do agree with lack of reasons... Sure you can argue there is some incentive, but very little incentive that is actually exclusive to exploratory.... Eureka nailed it because you had to do it... Bozja nailed it because you still had some repeatable steps which were better, and you could level (even if too late).

6. This is just exacerbated by how they've designed the relic to be honest...

[Khryseis_Astra]

Things I think OC would’ve been better with…
3 zones instead of 2: South Horn, Central Crescent and North Horn. Each of the three zones gets a normal level raid duty. Both Towers could get a higher difficulty version, but if they could only do one, it should be the last one not the first!

I think that would’ve gone a long way towards breaking up the monotony, and would’ve added more ways to integrate relic steps that everyone could participate in. I was fine with the tomes for subsequent weapons, but to have such a lack of zone involvement for the main step felt bad. And honestly the “oops no resources for a Normal FT” probably added to that. And yes I know they start hard and scale down for Normal mode for most content. But it was definitely a choice to scrap the mode that could be enjoyed by players of all levels, and a bad one at that.

Instead of an endless loop of the same Fates/CEs, we needed things that actually made the zone feel alive and cooperative. A FTB akin to CLL where different teams went in with different responsibilities in different parts of the Tower would’ve been awesome, had it been able to be easily cleared by randoms. Even the “support Fate” that goes along with FTB was deemed irrelevant by those clearing it, so those don’t happen anymore. I’ll always cherish my 4 pieces of Sanguinite! lol

Lastly, while I like the idea of Phantom Jobs, I think it would’ve been more fun to have you level them all to learn all their skills, and then allow the Freelancer job to choose between them all, so that you could have the level of customization you got with Eureka and Bozja actions.

In the end it feels like we’ve spent way too much time with the same old loop in South Horn… hopefully North Horn is good enough to make up for that somehow.