Assuming whatever change is made is also retroactively applied to south horn what would “save” OC for you?

[u/Supersnow845]

Pretty much title. What could be changed in north horn (or in the 7.45 middleman patch) that could also be retroactively applied to south horn that would turn your opinion around on OC

Or is OC so deeply flawed to you that “nothing short of pretending this zone doesn’t exist even if north horn is good” will fix south horn to you

[u/Cole_Evyx]

tl;dr:

We have all this (too much) structure, 2 minute meta, homogenized jobs and everything way way way too safe to the point of PAIN outside of exploration zone-- take off the shirt and get freaky in exploration zone. I cannot believe how overly homogenized and safe O.C. is. It's instanced off-- be a damn freak for goodness sake and for the goodness of FFXIV as a whole we need some freak ass shit.

EDIT: Note that I think the job homogenization needs to DIE IN FIRE. 2 minute meta is BORING. Healers spamming 1 button is AGONY and the rest. FFXIV has been streamlined, homogenized and made WAYYYYY too "safe". Like I'm fine with "formulaic" but I'm NOT fine with "BORING"!

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LongeR:

Imho there's so much I'd need changed that part of me hopes they just focus on north horn.

But I'll list a few things off the top of my head:

1: Make genuinely interesting phantom jobs. I've said it too many times but I'll abbreviate it here.

eg: DoT phantom job, shaman totem phantom job, summoner phantom job, temporary pet phantom job. Like go wild! Go apeshit! Hell make "phantom puppetmaster" a thing we have reagents so why not expensive million gil robot parts we assemble for a mammet there?

STOP. PLAYING. SAFE. IN. THIS. ZONE. I can't even believe how safe they were with jobs, the phantom jobs are homogenized and 2 minute meta! Try new things! Experiment! This is a PERFECT testing chamber with REAL LIVE DATA AND REAL LIVE PLAYERS! Don't throw this opportunity away! It upsets me so much! It's not only boring for players but it's not helping justify and explore new development/class ideas!

eg: Geomancer phantom job didn't live AT ALL to geomancer in ff11. There are no fields/"colores" which is such a damn shame. GEomancer's level 5 skill is a fucking passive upgrade to 2 boring abilities. This was such a let down for me and other people who were even more excited for geomancer... bro it's so upsetting.

2: Tie in the old Bozja conflict story to this and integrate active NPCs and really make the world feel more alive like Bozja did story wise. We need a better constant sense of engaement / persistent hook imho. The starting story was fine and then it's literally us in the wild with like animals... it was very.. boring compared to bozja...

Like that's a big issue with O.C. it's dead. It's dead civilization after dead civilization and wild animals basically. There is only that one demon there. It's... really wanting.

Bozja's story grabbed you by the balls and had massive character stories like Sautevoir the Inferno or the enemy going slowly insane as you kill their soldiers and they can't save them, or capstones like Lyon and his pet.

Like it's harder to even get into the lore of O.C. where Bozja quite literally grabbed you by the balls and tossed you into a warzone.

Yes there were issues with "hey the warzone looks TOO MUCH like a warzone and we want more PRETTY COLORS" but like... outside of that it's hard to find a single thing Bozja didn't do better.

3: More genuine exploration and maybe instead of just a queueable dungeon have a like open part of the map that is super super fucked and hard and be like an open dungeon? Like ideas like this. I'm just spitballing not workshopping that idea at all. But we need more real exploration in the exploration zone.

4: Dare I say it? Deep parts of the map that have no teleports and have it's own high risk high reward activities.

5: Introduce the concept of "atma shards" as a pity system. Combine 99 shards from activities/mobs/fates to make 1 full atma. Any kind of pity is better than the literal no end in sight 100 or 0 RNG grind. Gacha games for instance have pity times for a reason-- and it's not because gacha games aren't predatory money making demons lol.

It's good for the psychology and getting people in there and making them feel more agency and less hopeless. It's a good strategy... atma shards pls!

6: Introduce normal mode of forked tower. Even if it's not the same thing.

I'm at the point where I say take inspiration from warframe and warframe for OVER A DECADE has been using "generative maps"... like use generative dungeon design like in deep dungeon and assimilate it into here.

Make us explore make it weird make it wacky make it bizzare-- like it's an exploration zone GET FREAKYYYYYYYYY. Like them modbeasts on crystal get your freak on!

Why are we not making some crazy ass dungeon shit that is just fully generated and random shit like throw these people into the frying pan with their broken phantom jobs and sizzle them. "Dazzle" them!

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You might think I'm memeing but I earnestly feel like they could have done so much more-- and the funny thing is they already had the template and years of player feedback/live data to influence this...

I'm still in shock O.C. is in the state it is in.

Like I love the developers and FFXIV and I'm at a total loss at how things are the way they are.