HectorHectorson: You're absolutely right that OC desperately could have used a CLL/Dalriada equivalent. Forked tower looks like a lot of fun, but the barrier to entry is going to be too high for a ton of players.

saladv3028: I wish they added an easier Forked Tower difficulty like how we had normal DR and DRS.

Cassandra_Solidor: Speaking of trolling. Despite allowing less than 24 players, and scaling accordingly, Forked Tower's very first boss has a 24 player body check. Meaning that should players get curious and enter, all they'll accomplish is deleveling to 19. There's no excuse for such a terrible design choice as it only serves to frustrate people and likely push them away from trying again.

As for the whole leveling aspect. SE needs something to keep Deep Dungeon alive. Which is likely why they didn't want to put it OC as they'll want to funnel more people into the new Deep Dungeon when it comes out. Is that a good excuse? No. But it's very likely the answer.

AOffensiveJoke: Complete bullshit when you were talking about Lost Actions/Pagos Actions there is no unqiue "Your style" everyone just took pre-determined builds that focused on damage output. Way more hillarious when you said "Fast caster" as if this game has slow casts, Phantom Jobs are exactly the same amount of skill expression as Eureka/Bozja actions and its insane that people think its any different.

lumeiruart: honestly, the fact that Dawntrail HAS a field operations zone, until Endwalker, is a huge W. I am a firm believer in that players need to have something to work on for a prolonged period of time throughout the expansion.

Huge fan of Eureka and less of a Bozja, due to aesthetics, so i’m super hyped.

guffels: These complaints about phantom jobs were just not liking jobs that don't have big nukes. Bozja also had tons of spells that nobody even knows the name of.

blazeman999999999999: I saw people with the Battle High & honstly assumed that it was a boon you got if you never died or never got hit in a CE. Kind of boggling that it's seemingly random and isn't an incentive for doing well

Envinyon: I love the zone and think it uses its map so much better than Eureka or Bozja used theirs. Especially Bozja which just felt so small and areas outside of CEs were entirely unimportant. I love the random treasure chests always giving you a reason to explore around and not just go to the next fate/CE. Phantom jobs are such a huge improvement over logograms and lost actions. Those being consumables meant I did everything in Eureka/Bozja and never once touched them outside of the two runs of BA and DRS I did.

Only thing I'm missing here is something like CLL or Dalriada. Having something like Forked Tower is nice, but I miss having a pseudo-alliance raid that you can just hop into and you need a small degree of communication to get through effectively. The difficulty of these 48 player raids isn't too bad, but you still have to go through a discord, clear like 4 hours out of your schedule to do it, etc. Hot take, but I think we're kinda fine with the amount of high end content we have, and I say this as a raider.

Cordialementifiable: This video felt like a cry for help from a deep burn-out of the game/YouTube/Twitch experience.

kilikx1x: I was having a conversation earlier today in OC Shout Chat where I said something along the lines of "trying to get into forked tower is basically impossible without joining a discord, this mechanic sucks in comparison to Bazja's dungeon" and for the next 30 minutes I got called a troll in shout chat because I guess that opinion is objectively incorrect... I still hold that opinion though. Forked towers entry system is utter garbage and it absolutely baffles me that they decided to do it this when when Bazja's entry system already exists.

steven700: I think Streamers really have a warped perspective when it comes to mass groups and some just want to alienate all others or any possible randoms. Though I do agree it sucks for 1 random to just wipe a group and cause penalities, we as asociety have grown far too accustomed to needing to clear within 1 or two attempts before disband. People really optimizing fun out of a game. And this critique, I think has some of that based on the what he has said about certain things being a step backwards. I do not personally think it is a step backwards, but rather a choice in how things are played, and to be less optimized. Though I do say it is ironic given how OC is set up with its fates and CE and how they pop up one at a time for optimized paths.

Thirtyleven: Cross classing would break any kind of balance in FT and would make it way less fun. Either it would be balanced around the broken combos, in which case the barrier to entry would be even higher than it is now, or it would be balanced around the basic jobs in which case you could sail through the dps checks incredibly easily. I love that every class has 1-2 abilities that feel completely broken (Ranger's Phantom Aim is absurd), and if you could mix and match these abilities they would either make the content hilariously easy or would have to be rebalanced to be more individually boring. You always talk about how classes should have moments of glory and that's exactly what phantom jobs do perfectly, for you to now say that anyone should be able to do multiple classes' worth of moments of glory is, to my reading, completely contradictory to what you normally advocate for. I really dont agree with this part of your analysis, i think phantom jobs are bar none the best version of field operations actions we've ever seen.

MarcusMaybenot: I think it's worth remembering everyone is looking back at Eureka and Bozja with rose tinted glasses and from the pov of both of them being complete.

Occult Crescent just came out and it isn't complete yet we don't have all of the parts.

catinator2: In your conclusion you say that if you didn’t like eureka or bozja, occult crescent won’t be any more enjoyable for you. However, as someone who really didn’t like eureka and bozja I’ve had much much more fun with occult crescent.

The superior fight design, and (imo) more interesting setting and lore goes a very long way. On top of that, I vastly prefer the phantom job system to eureka logograms or bozja actions. Bozja just had way too many actions and it was very overwhelming to sift through and read what each one did. Not to mention you got them at random as opposed to having some form of linear progression, and I had similar frustrations with acquiring eureka logograms.

Condensing the actions into a job that you progress streamlines the process immensely. I think the Oracle “roulette wheel” cycling through the 4 abilities is more engagement than I’ve gotten out of every eureka and bozja action combined. Love the video, just thought I would offer a different perspective.

chimi5027: I disagree with allowing players to level inside OC. There’s already myriads of methods to level up and look at how this system worked back in bozja: once the content becomes old (like 8.0 coming out), then the only people who interact with the exploratory zone only do so for leveling purposes. There are times when inside bozja are only there to level and don’t participate in CE’s or raids like CLL or Dalriada. Imagine having an instance of 30 people but only 4 want to do CLL because the rest are there to only level. I like the current version of OC and the elemental system in eureka. It allowed players to solely engage with the content at hand.

Nutrafin-3D: My favorite part of eureka was the strange maps with tight and dangerous corridors that lead to entirely different areas. For as much hate that pagos got, i thought it was great. Those little secret ledges to find new areas, dragons....

Eureka was peak for me.

While i don't dislike OCs map, it's just too openly accessible.

viysnjor4811: "no penalty for vuln stacks"

yeah unless you're a dps job in which case even 1 vuln stack means a single missed heal and your new role is floor tank and the boss just shirked aggro to you.

padaliny: wouldve been nice to level my jobs 90-100 there but still enjoyable

veodok2343: I don't understand the need for Discord pre-made groups or people's frustration behind it. It seems obvious to me that wasn't how SE intended for people to interact with the content. Every thing else in Occult Crescent is very natural and PUG-like; people spam LFG for group content and you get in. But all of the sudden when it involves a raid we need to be in a Discord and a pre-made? Why?

They don't let you queue in to OC as a 48-man raid. They randomly assign your group to an instance. So why are people trying to force the system to acquiesce?

Not to mention that people get mad when there are others in the instance that may also want to try to get into the raid. They're not "trolling" your pre-made, they just want to get into the raid too. Except they seem to be the ones that are actually applying for it as it seems to be intended: walk up, offer ciphers, wait to get in.

Brahmsonite: I know you all like your broken Lost Action builds, but I find them boring and unapproachable.

It's much more engaging to think about Job x PhJob and the jobs you can take on for gold farming and later when the Tower isn't so.... Savage-y.

Also, gods i find so many of these gripes tedious. One of us needs to touch grass and it might as well be me. Try to have some *fun*, my dude.

Dyvinell: I think my biggest gripe was being told i had to be level 100 ilvl 700 minimum when i had anticipated the ability to level the last of my non lvl 100 jobs while doing the content. As much as i was not a fan of bozja myself, that was one thing it definitely has over occult. Otherwise ive been loving the experience so far

pulzie8790: I joined Occult Crescent a bit late and i do have one thing i wanted to point out. I like the Critical Engagement and i think i have done a few now, but when i wanted to start with fates a decent amount of them were already cleared before i even got there. I know that was because i didn't have yet the riding map unlocked for the zone, but it left quite the sour taste in my mouth that the first thing i needed to buy was the damn riding map. Not something exciting i actually wanted as my first purchase.

Reruro: I'm the admin for one of the Exploratory Discords in question (CEM), and broadly I agree with a lot of your takes Rinon.

I think OC is mostly really fun, Forked Tower is great! That said, why in Gods Name

Jun 05 2025

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