No no, it's Rise OVER Run; and other Math you get wrong. [VERY Strong Opinion; Bozja]

As someone who unlocked the mount when Bozja was current content I don't think all these critiques are necessarily wrong but I do think there's some context to the grind that's lost a bit with the time gap: The time gating isn't meant to make the content difficult it's meant to give you a reason to keep going back. One of the consistent complaints I've seen about EW has been the lack of longevity in content like Criterion which is more directly challenging than (most of) Bozja. While SHB was still current Bozja was kind of just a thing to chip away at over time because it was something to do, and having these longer term goals helped with that. Obviously years on when it's less directly relevant that can seem like an unreasonable ask just for a mount but there was design intent behind it.

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Originally Posted by Nexae

If you want an idea of just how bad griding FATEs is in Bozja? I have only 20 total records to get from the first part, I have 18; I've already received three local achievements for FATEs alone, a fourth for Delubrum, most of Delubrum finished, Lacus Litore Memorized to the letter, Rank 21 Mettle, a whole set of Bozja gear, half a set of Law's Order, I'm

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So I'm going to home in on this bit not as a "you're doing it wrong" but to give some advice: I think you're going about this in the wrong order. Based on this you haven't actually cleared Zadnor yet, presumably because you're trying to unlock the early records before moving on, which isn't an unintuitive approach but is sort of making things harder for yourself. You mention in the first part having to grind "millions of mettle" which is true on paper but sort of not; While the number goes up the relative grind for mettle specifically kind of doesn't if you're going through the content as it was released. When Bozja initially released the rank cap was 15 (only 10 was required to finish the zone, the other 5 were just something to grind out and unlock a few extra fragment appraisals), which is why there's a big jump in mettle requirement after that: you're meant to be gaining those later 10 ranks in Zadnor, and doing skirmishes etc in there will give significantly more Mettle allowing you to cap out a lot faster. This has the additional benefit of letting you trade excess Mettle for "Suns" which are permenant stat boosts active in all Bozjan zones. With that in mind it's generally easier to grind out the Zadnor field notes before the Southern Front ones since you'll a) gain a lot more Mettle and hopefully some buffs to make the Southern Front portion easier and b) make death less painful in general since you're already at max rank (as an aside I do think mettle loss on death scaling with rank does mean dying in Southern Front is extra painful since dying once is liable to cost you significantly more Mettle than you'll get back for clearing whatever it was you died doing).

It's definitely a rough grind especially if you can't clear the duels for whatever reason but it was designed to keep players busy for a 2 year period and the way it's set up does reflect that so all you can really do is persist or move on to something else if you're having that miserable a time with it.

Bozja and the content to it is absolutely fine, I just wish they made it way more relavant to do by eg. upping it to lvl90-100 ish content and for the love of everythign good, no Beastmaster or BluMage in it, as it ruins the goal of the areas of being excelent loot and leveling areas for normal jobs.

I don't get the rant, but again modern people was never brought up with any kind of grind but a silver spoon in the mouth and demanding stuff only and refusing to work on anything.

EDIT:
Losing mettle and the likes, IS NOT punishment, it is a good thing if anything, it make you stay on your toes as well well as giving the reason for people to revive you, its nothing and also don't take on stuff you can't take on, and learn by it, losing mettle increases the skill of the playerbase if anything, as well as the ability to go and help others, by eg. going towards the revive achievements as well.

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Let's assume you want the Al'iklil: You need just 50 Field Records in total. That's it! 50 Simple drops. These are not obtained from one place, Bozja, but rather many. You need just 50 records, quick and easy right?

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More or less. I got that mount when Bozja was current.

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#1. Grinding Mettle to Rank 25 (Millions. Literal millions of Mettle, btw).

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However, you get millions extremely quickly in the final section of Zadnor. So it's a short farm to get 20 million.

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#2. Grinding the First (for Bozja) FATE-Dungeon, an instanced.. er, instance, which requires waiting for it to proc (minimum 30m)

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30 minutes is nothing to gamers, but probably is to casual players.

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before pairing with a random number of other players who may or may not know the fights

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It was always the case that some people didn't know the fight. What was great about these CE raids is they telegraphed everything once with floor aoe indicators, then never again. So you had the opportunity to watch and learn, and if you didn't learn, then it was on you. It set a great balance between telegraphing for casual players, but not over-telegraphing, and also only telegraphing it when it was too late for more obvious stuff so that you could still learn it.

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#3. Grinding Lost Finds: Imagine Loot Boxes, but imagine about 30 different kinds

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Right, but these are easy to grind and you can get loads from reflect farming or using Lost Death on a boss mob or buying from the Market Board. The specific ones you want come from specific locations so that narrows it down a lot too.

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#4. Grinding Specific FATEs: Oh, you know, just your standard waiting for an hour for the FATE GCD to finish, then starting the first FATE, then the next.. then the next... Then you get your FATE! ..But Hark! What's that.. it's... not a guaranteed drop?

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I heard that was an issue for a specific one in the first area, but personally I got lucky and got it easily.

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have to do #4 each and every time

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Guess it wasn't an issue for me because others were in the area spawning it constantly. But regardless, you can afk camp until the right ones show up and then do the chain and then wait more. Surely other things you can do like discord or watching netflix or house cleaning.

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to qualify, you need to take no damage from Named Attacks & AOEs, nail every mechanic every time

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Mostly pretty easy. I qualified most times. A lot of people didn't and that was part of why I qualified as well. For whatever reason, other people find them hard but I didn't. Maybe I've just played for too many years.

The good thing is they listened to feedback and made it so each time you qualify you increase your notoriety. That wasn't previously the case, so you'd get people qualify 50 times and never get the duel. Now with just 2 or 3 notoriety you're probably above most other challengers.

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1-3 players max

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A duel is literally a 1-on-1 fight.

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The only time you get practice with said fight, is if: you wait an hour, complete at least two FATEs, complete the last FATE with Impossible Aplomb, get chosen at random over everyone else (unless you solo it, then nevermind ever getting it [see below]), then you have to do more waiting, then fight.

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Well true, it's a bit tedious to do this multiple times and either you have to endure the tedium of that or study via youtube. Blue Mage solo content doesn't have that issue because you can just re-queue immediately. So solo content could be done better but on the other hand, the rarity of the fight makes it a spectacle that others can watch. There would be whole crowds of people around it watching and cheering and they would get a buff for watching. It was actually entertaining to watch.

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Oh! But don't make a single mistake! You won't make it. Full. Gods damned. Stop.). Why would you do this?

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Challenging content in a video game. There is hardly any of it in FFXIV beside extreme/savage/ultimate which require a party. This is one of the few things we can say people can challenge themselves solo with in this game. It'd be good if we didn't get SE to remove what little challenge there is for solo players.

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Guaranteed drop rate on the Field Record. Well, that and so you can tell everyone you don't have a Job (I actually don't at the moment, department was dissolved..).

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You know what? Maybe this content is just for people with no job, the self-employed and people who don't occupy most of their after-work time with other activities like relationships, being a parent, or food preparation. Some people just have more time and they need content for themselves as well.

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you die? You lose Mettle. You release? You lose a LOT of Mettle.

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1 or 2 Skirmishes in the final Zadnor section and you've recovered it. It's not really a penalty lol.

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'Murder Death Kill'

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I remember doing that one more times than any other! Although it was mostly for grinding mettle.

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I've solo'd it no less than five times

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Only 5? I solo'd it like 100-1000 times.

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That's no less than 7 hours dedicated to getting only 1 Field Record; I still don't have it.

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I got all the duel field records by farming CLL and Dalriada. Rare drop, certainly more than 7 hours. I have 22 CLL runs and 31 Dalriada runs on my main character.

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So now you have Final Elden Soul by Square Enix: Time-Gate Edition.

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Just remember that MMORPGs are historically very time-consuming games, to the point they used to consume your entire life (including time you spend eating, showering and sleeping). This game is a lot better where time is concerned, but it's still an MMORPG and still has a degree of time-consumption in areas because of being based upon old MMORPGs that didn't respect people's time.

/teleport, 12-16-minute dungeon runs, 10-minute trial/raid pulls, cooldown resets on death, teleports back to the boss arena in dungeons, quests only asking you to kill 3 enemies, extreme trials letting you buy a mount after 99 runs. These things respect your time, but there are aspects of the game that are still inspired by older MMORPGs and consume your time and, frankly, some people are bored and want something to consume their time.

Bozja was super fun for me; I still do it on occasion and try to help who I can.
I have run into alot of players who act like there's a meta to the lost actions - like if you don't run x item, they think you're trash type players- and I just pretend we speak different languages and spam bubble lmao

I hope if there's a new "bozja" that they finally introduce Ashelia's outfit

Grinding content is for people who like grinding. Players aren't entitled to every nice looking reward just because they're in the game.
If you do content you don't like just because you want a shiny mount, that's on you. The opposite mentality is why Endwalker relics are a joke.
Bozja is made for players who wanted grind content involving easily and quickly forming groups on the spot organically, with its own unique progression and lasting a whole expansion's life cycle and feel rewarded for enjoying said content. It's also one of the only 2 types of content in the game that gives room for job build customization. That gameplay appeals to a specific audience that very rarely gets anything aimed at them in this game.

The mount and the field notes associated with it are a real slog. I'll take open field notes to Castrum and Dalradia anytime and I have 7 bikes so I know all about it. MDK is hard but it's certainly better than having to run an entire duty or having to go to the trouble of spawning FAF and Steel.

I adore the field zones and am thrilled to hear we're getting them again in DT.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

The opposite mentality is why Endwalker relics are a joke.

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Totally agree.

So, just want to point out to some folks who responded here (especially Mx. ElitistQuotesMcGee up there), that all of you are missing a crucial detail:

TIME =/= DIFFICULTY

The people who have been stating their dissenting opinions here, have missed the part where my complaint actually lies. People who want a good challenge is one thing, making someone take that challenge so often that it goes from difficult, to fun, to mildly entertaining, to boring, then to frustrating, is another. When I first tried Lacus Litore, we all failed at Dawon, and never finished. 13 people just couldn't figure it out. But I went back, again and again. Now I know the fights, the turns, the dialogue, how long it takes for people to get from one place to another, I can predict how many prisoners we're going to save at this point, take no major hits from any boss (that was actually a fun run, I get why people go top), and I still don't have the last record I need. At this point it's not gratuitous, it's inane. I will start to resent this content ere long, due in full to the complete lack of any reason to play this particular content beyond getting this one, final, note. That's not as much a grind, as a waste of my time, and a waste of an opportunity to take part in other parts of one of the most expansive MMO's to date. You know, that whole... Exploration thing?

So, sit there, agree with each other about how you think people want handouts, and ignore the conversation at hand. That's your choice, as you "Real Gamers" are very fond of pointing out.

Now, for those of you who actually engaged, thank you. Also a thank you to Hainiryun, both for your advice and prospective! I really feel a little foolish for trying to do it the long way, I guess. I don't typically tend to be so forcibly linear with content, but in this case it's FFXII+, so I wanted to do the thing from the ground to the top. Sounds like this was literally the one time I should've done it my usual way. Ugh.. ah well. I just wish it wasn't lore that was stuck behind such lurid drop rates, well, that and the Al-Iklil. Speaking of! I was in an instance when someone got their last Record- their very last record; in Bozja Southern Front, go figure. They even brought it over to me to show it off (I asked), it's totally worth it in my opinion! Just.. one.. more.. damn.. record.. nhhhhhn...

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Only 5? I solo'd it like 100-1000 times.

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Okay, I know I'm being played here, but I have to respond: 1000 times? Really? If you've solo'd MDK One Thousand Times I'll eat my custom 'Brown is Beautiful' Converse High Tops. Hell, if you've even solo'd MDK 100 times, I'll eat my microphone's foam filter. The only reason I only solo'd it 5 times, is because people join in very quickly. Unless you're living in a ghost server, you're getting company. 1000 times, more like 1000 hollow boasts. Don't forget there's a global timer on Bozja, eventually you have to refresh your instance and get put back in with people.

Learn to contribute to a conversation, I know it's hard for a Master Lone One-Wolf Mega Army Manguy Extreme to understand, but really it's kinda sad (read: entertaining; don't stop) to read this nonsense. XD

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Originally Posted by Nexae

Okay, I know I'm being played here, but I have to respond: 1000 times? Really? If you've solo'd MDK One Thousand Times I'll eat my custom 'Brown is Beautiful' Converse High Tops. Hell, if you've even solo'd MDK 100 times, I'll eat my microphone's foam filter. The only reason I only solo'd it 5 times, is because people join in very quickly.

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Sometimes people joined, but not always. Also, sometimes it would put me in an instance solo and this was when it was new. It scales depending on the amount of others doing them. If everyone is in CLL and I'm not, then it's virtually solo content. If everyone is farming mid and I'm north, it's solo content, so I did it a lot. I can't think of any Skirmish I did more in Bozja tbh. I probably only did the Zadnor last area as much.

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Learn to contribute to a conversation

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I think I contributed an awful lot here. Just because everything doesn't perfectly agree with you 100% doesn't mean it is not part of the debate.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I think I contributed an awful lot here. Just because everything doesn't perfectly agree with you 100% doesn't mean it is not part of the debate.

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Your "contribution" here was arrogance and elitism. You came in swinging with an argument, and not a thought for debate. "Well I can do X, Y, Z. I Like X, Y, Z. I.." is not an argument for anything. Quoting every step with non-stop "gotcha" refutations isn't a debate. You're an elitist, and your contributions are as bold as they are lame. There is plenty I wouldn't have agreed with, but those points were brought up by people offering a perspective, an opinion, and even some advice, and my mind was changed. You came in with what you thought was BDE, but really was just vitriolic and hyperbole.

I have an updated appreciation for some things now, but don't take credit MLO-WMAME, it wasn't from your "contributions".