Castrum Lacus Litore declining participation

I love castrum, I'd be much more inclined to do castrum if I could do it without having to go into Bozja and wait up to an hour for the chance at getting in.
There are so many other things to do in this game that doing castrum is a hard is a hard sell when I've only got a few hours to play on the first place...

For reference, this has already discussed extensively. Here and here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...a-bad-decision.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ething-Squenix

Many of my opinions will be in those threads. Example:

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

I can do FATEs in borzja, or the big bosses, because of the amount of time inbetween Castrum qeueus, EVEN IF you could get enough players to do it, there is no point. People can just continue to gather their coins through the zone, at a MUCH higher efficiency. Better than even registering for Castrum and clearing it.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Unless they do that and nerf the droprate for HW FATEs, then any less wouldn't be enough to make Castrum rewarding in this sense. If the other rewards that Castrum offered were actually REWARDING.. On it's own, as it is now, people don't want to do it.

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At the time I was in a mad rush (with many other players) to get Castrum completed in time for the patch. I was successful, but it took me a VERY long time to do so. I got lucky. It was probably, in part, due to the amount of players chatting (including myself) in zone at the time about getting a a full run - my clear was a full run.

I had been waiting in zone for extended periods for each and every castrum pop. An entire week really. From what I could tell, people will join up in the evenings (prime time) during the weekend. That same weekend I saw two full runs, that supposedly were clears (said so in chat). So, your best hope is probably the weekend (though, I am on NA servers). You will definitely need to continue to camp in zone, and hope to God that you can get a full run. Every single run I did, like you, that was around 24 players was a failure. Never got past the first boss.

I grinded through Bozja a good bit, so I'm taking a bit of a break from it. I would be attempting to help otherwise. This decline has been going on for some time, but I noticed a pretty radical drop in player participation just before 5.4 hit. Guessing it didn't get any better. They should have taken the opportunity to implement some fixes now instead of later, especially if they actually want more people to participate in future Bozja content like they claimed. But much like the previous patches of this expansion, their decisions continue to leave me scratching my head in confusion.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I don't think I've ever done it with more than about 20/22 people and I've never rescued any fewer than 5 prisoners. Lowest was 16.
So people see that there's less than 24 people, incorrectly think "it will fail" and leave.

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I've run it over 30 times and never completed it with fewer than 28 people. So, I wouldn't say I 'incorrectly' think that it will fail, I came to that decision through experience. I'm sure it's possible with the right players, but the right players definitely aren't trying to do Castrum anymore.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Castrum just needs to give every kind of reward available through Bozja.
On top of the coins and gear drop at the end it needs to give:

First Boss: 10-20 Bozjan Clusters. 1000-2000 Mettle

Lockboxes from saving prisoners.
Guaranteed Memory drop from the prisoner guards + Albeleo if the quests are active. (so you'd get 2 minimum, more if you take out multiple guards)
Plus regular loot drops from all the mobs in the Castrum, so you could get extra memories, clusters or fragments.

Adrammelech: One of each of the three Memories guaranteed if the quest is active. 3000-5000 Mettle.

Final Boss: Bitter Memory for fighting Dawon/Lyon each, so if you're in the party that goes up top, you get 2. 6000-8000 Mettle.

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Yes something like this would work!

While it’s very frustrating for us who want to do castrum we have to remember that everyone in Bozja who is not helping has come to Bozja for their own reasons, these are levelling job, levelling rank, relic stuff, cluster farm etc..

So all they really have to do is give some incentive for these people to want to help.

At the moment, with other ways to get coins (and the coin stuff not being that good) and by losing mettle there’s just not that incentive there.

I ran it a second time after story clear and died about 10 times. I was hoping I was going to get Mettle at the end to make up for the loss, but the fact that I got nothing but a fat chunk of loss to my Mettle intuitively tells me to not bother with running it again. Fix it.

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Originally Posted by AceofRains

I ran it a second time after story clear and died about 10 times. I was hoping I was going to get Mettle at the end to make up for the loss, but the fact that I got nothing but a fat chunk of loss to my Mettle intuitively tells me to not bother with running it again. Fix it.

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To me, mettle is a non issue. You can grind everything you lost in Castrum from Fates and CEs in like, 20 minutes at most. But still, there probably should be some mettle reward for completion or from each encounter.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

To me, mettle is a non issue. You can grind everything you lost in Castrum from Fates and CEs in like, 20 minutes at most. But still, there probably should be some mettle reward for completion or from each encounter.

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I had just zoned in when Castrum opened. The loss immediately turned me off to everything else. Grinding everything else is just lame if I’m not building up to the Castrum run. And if the Castrum run means nothing then its not worth doing anything there. Much easier was it to grind out HW FATEs since I know I’ll get memories 100%.

I did probably over 30 Castrum clears over the first week it came out. Obviously it came out during a large patch lul period, and even end-game raiders had nothing else to do, so the % of more skilled players crushing through it starts to wane over time. Even if the content isn't really any more difficult than a 24-man on release day kind of ordeal. But now you have new random pugs that want to do it, and a dramatically less vets that want to do it and that is why stories like the OP exist.

Personally they missed the mark on making the content repeatable. Like Frontline they should have put a better incentive to keep going back like a mount or minion, something more unique than a title that no one really uses. Instead they watered it down that once you cleared once, you can get coins from CEs. So that killed more repeats, not to mention the gear is so-so at the moment, although YoshiP did say the haste bonuses could be useful in the next Save the Queen Savage.

I bet they are saving the mount for the Savage, but still they could have done something more unique for Castrum.

As for meddle loss, it's not an issue. Punishment for death is supposed to encourage you to know mechanics and that has always been a theme in battlefield content. You don't lose levels either, so what are you worried about?

We had 30 people tonight and failed on first boss because the first time we had new tanks who didn’t know what to do, and then we ran out of time on second attempt..

At this point I think it would be best for them to look at all time limits for castrum - registration time, spawn time, boss despawn time etc.. because we’re just fighting so many battles here.

Have to wait an hour for it to spawn where we may or may not get enough people in a short window to register and then we’ve got to pretty much kill the boss first try or it’s game over, we wait an hour and it starts over again.

Just keep it open for registration at all times and let us go when we have enough people and give it the same timers as all the other raid stuff in the game.