Would you want the Firmament to be a feature for future expansions?

While I like the idea of crafters/gatherers having an "end game", I don't know if Firmament is the way to go. And I especially don't trust them to come up with something that would work.

The "Expert Recipes" in the Firmament were insurmountably tedious, requiring far too many steps and still relying almost entirely on RNG in order to succeed. Those are not fun.

Both yes and not really.

I like the server wide reconstruction and how it will eventually end in a new Housing area. It's a nice idea and they put effort into it. But the execution is poor. Basically it's been a free ticket to lv80 crafters, a glorified scrip grind, a rather unhealthy ranked mode and a bot heaven.

Experts were a nice idea, but ultimately serve as something to shut the veteran crafters up and keep them quiet in the corner long-term. A few titles and 500 hours grind for a rather boring small dinosaur is all we really get until 6.0. Everything else, Master Recipes, endgame gear, the DoH/L relics, both Beast Tribes, Skybuilder scrip rewards, it's all free handouts to casual crafters who didn't even like crafting in the first place.
If they're going to repeat that in 6.0, I'm just not that interested. It's week-one-and-done throwaway content, then a long dull grind on the same craft.

It's absolutely fine if others disagree, this is just my own personal opinion.

Honest answer? No.

I hate crafting/gathering in this game and would rather have the dev time spent on combat content that we seem to get less and less of.

Nothing against crafters, I respect that they want some sort of endgame and they should have it. But it shouldn't come at the cost of the main meat of a mmo, combat content.

In ShB we have had Diadem, Ishgard Restoration, and Ocean Fishing which for me were all dead on arrival content for me, but we are going to lost out on having a new PoTD for example.

I prefer Doma completely. Now, if there was more to it than simply monetary donation, I think it would be better. If they allowed various avenues towards progression, or required different types of disciplines, I think that would be neat.

I really don't think it's asking too much to have 1 DoW/M, 1 DoH and 1 DoL at max level for any current patch cycle. Perhaps require the services of all to progress (specifically, DoW/M to "Clear out an area", DoL to gather the mats and DoH to make the things towards whatever progression.)

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Originally Posted by Thi

...but we are going to lost out on having a new PoTD for example.

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Bozja specifically was meant to replace HoH/PotD/Eureka in the same way Eureka replaced HoH/PotD. So correct, you're not getting a PotD, but Ishgard has nothing to do with that.

It would be more accurate to say Ishgard replaces the gradual upgrade of town zones that we saw in Idylshire, Revenant's Toll and Doma, granted 2 of those just "happened" regardless of player input.

NO thx we dont need more bot content

I'd love to see a district in Ala Mhigo get the same treatment.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I prefer Doma completely. Now, if there was more to it than simply monetary donation, I think it would be better. If they allowed various avenues towards progression, or required different types of disciplines, I think that would be neat.

I really don't think it's asking too much to have 1 DoW/M, 1 DoH and 1 DoL at max level for any current patch cycle. Perhaps require the services all to progress (specifically, DoW/M to "Clear out an area", DoL to gather the mats and DoH to make the things towards whatever progression.



Bozja specifically was meant to replace HoH/PotD/Eureka in the same way Eureka replaced HoH/PotD. So correct, you're not getting a PotD, but Ishgard has nothing to do with that.

It would be more accurate to say Ishgard replaces the gradual upgrade of town zones that we saw in Idylshire, Revenant's Toll and Doma, granted 2 of those just "happened" regardless of player input.

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Eureka didn't replace HoH though? Eureka didn't get you experience points, at least not during Stormblood not sure if you can level jobs there now. Eureka didn't really serve the same purpose as HoH/POTD and came out in the same expansion as HoH.

Bozja though is a replacement for both, being the source of relic weapons (Eureka) and leveling jobs 71 to 80 (Replacing POTD/HOH)

The leader-board didn't interest me one bit. I know people were worried about bots before it was implemented and it appears their fears were well founded. I also heard a lot of people who were placed mentioning health related issues arising from the intense grind. So, I didn't try for a ranked position and I'm not sorry. If that didn't come back I wouldn't personally care.

The quests and the actual building I've enjoyed a lot and I'd love to see something similar in the future, with one reservation. Since the firmament is going to be housing, I'm not sure I'd want that in a ShB area. I moved our FC house to Shirogane in SB and I've regretted that decision a little since as the SB areas have nothing going on in them this expansion. The house isn't used as much as it was before the move and I'm sure this may be due to newer players having no easy way to access it. Now the story has moved away from that area, the house feels a bit cut off from the rest of the game whereas there are still things happening in the ARR cities and they feel far more connected. I think a housing district in one of the ShB areas might suffer the same fate.

I enjoyed both the Doman Reconstruction and the Firmament though I prefer the latter since there is much more to actually do. Doma was a little dull by comparison. I don't mind missing some of the progress if I'm absent personally, but can understand people wanting to see things happen for themselves. I'm not sure how a new player would feel about the Firmament if the quests were still there but they only saw it after it was completed.

If it's improved upon, sure. I think the exp is absurdly high, the ranking is stupid, and the FATE system should be something more like GATEs.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Bozja specifically was meant to replace HoH/PotD/Eureka in the same way Eureka replaced HoH/PotD.

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Eureka did not replace HoH. We got both Eureka and HoH in the same expansion. We also got Doma and more dungeons in that same expansion too.

Bozja so far has been far smaller than Anemos, being an hour solo instance and nothing else. For all its faults in gameplay, Eureka is still 4 decently sized zones with a large number of rewards, including minions, mounts, barding, gil, housing items, glamour and has a large scale raid added on top.

Bozja will have a very hard time being an equal to Eureka in terms of volume of content and is off to a weak start already, never mind being equal to Eureka and HoH combined. The cuts this expansion haven't really been replaced with anything. They're simply cuts. That said, I don't feel the devs are being lazy, they seem to work flat out. There's just some sort of problem with budget or resource management which I hope they can overcome or be honest with us on.