All Bozja content should be easy and the raids should be a roulette w/ big rewards.

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Originally Posted by Tint

I love easy faceroll content wich I can grind for hours.
(Well, I still hate Bozja. Grinding dungeons in ARR and HW was much more fun)

I don't like difficult content. But I want something to do. Running expert roulette 5 times a week and get a weapon as a reward doesn't keep me entertained.

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If you like boring grinds there is literally the entire rest of the game just waiting for you (bar savage etc).

I know tastes are completely subjective but I have a hard time wrapping my head around wanting boring stuff that is meant to last for hours. lol I don't play games to be bored.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

The difficulty is not fine for content that's meant to be run repeatedly with random groups. Can you honestly say that reteaching the mechanics to every new group, in an instance that can take over an hour to complete, isn't going to get old pretty much immediately for most of this community? Add the fact that you're pretty much guaranteed to eat significant mettle loss and we have content that may not even survive until the end of this week.

It's dumb. This community is not nearly as tough as it talks; you praise difficult content and avoid it like the plague at the same time. This content will be abandoned by this community so fast it'll be comical, and all of this "yay! challenging mid tier content!" will prove to be nothing but hot air. Meanwhile MSQ roulette will still be running strong 5 years from now.

Just make it easy so it will be alive long enough for casual players to actually get a chance to play through it.

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Once you until Delubrum Savage, you only need 70k for the weekly quest. So it really doesn't matter all that much if you lose it. Granted, I still think they should reward Mettle upon completion but c'est la vie.

As for the difficulty. By your logic, we may as well reduced everything, Savage and Ultimate included, down to be a faceroll. Why provide any content that necessitates the slightest degree of effort when we can gift out participation ribbons? MSQ is "going strong" because they buffed the rewards to ludicrous levels. When they first changed it to force cut scenes, people almost instantly stopped touching it. Hence why they subsequently doubled both the poetic and EXP gains to the point Praetorium practically gives you a full level. In fact, this actually hurts your argument and places greater emphasise on the rewards being the primary issue. They aren't good enough for the demand being asked.

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Originally Posted by Derio

They shouldnt be easy. But the biggest problem with Bozja is the rewards. Doing the content outside of Bozja shouldnt be faster than doing it in Bozja. My major gripe with this relic is that they are practically begging you to not be in Bozja and get the relic by doing fates and alliance roulettes.

Something needs to change because in 2 or 3 weeks Bozja will be dead content again. If you didnt do it the first 3 weeks then you will be out of luck.

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SE doesn't seem to agree since they made a savage version of the latest instance along with normal mode. I mean most Alliance roulettes have people dying a ton on the first week, but that is normal since people are learning and doesn't mean it is hard. What makes this content a pain is the lack of growth in strength due to gear level cap and the fact you lose mettle upon death. Not to mention the worst idea ever in having a two strikes you're dead rule in this thing on the normal mode. I mean give me a break here: this stuff is already tough enough, they don't need doom to be thrown into it.

I mean, people will die to stuff because they don't see it from weapon effects, they get distracted by their pet dog, a kid has an emergency, they get lazy and don't move right away, are distracted by rotations they haven't really mastered on their job yet, etc. Losing mettle and having to go back and grind more in a piece of shit zone you were done with ages ago to get it back was a horrible idea.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Once you until Delubrum Savage, you only need 70k for the weekly quest. So it really doesn't matter all that much if you lose it. Granted, I still think they should reward Mettle upon completion but c'est la vie.

As for the difficulty. By your logic, we may as well reduced everything, Savage and Ultimate included, down to be a faceroll. Why provide any content that necessitates the slightest degree of effort when we can gift out participation ribbons? MSQ is "going strong" because they buffed the rewards to ludicrous levels. When they first changed it to force cut scenes, people almost instantly stopped touching it. Hence why they subsequently doubled both the poetic and EXP gains to the point Praetorium practically gives you a full level. In fact, this actually hurts your argument and places greater emphasise on the rewards being the primary issue. They aren't good enough for the demand being asked.

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Alright, so how do you think MSQ would fare if they forced everyone to run it at min ilvl, added a Doom mechanic that instant kills you every couple of mistakes, and takes a large chunk of your exp every time you die; or if you're 80 it takes a percentage of your Gil? Oh, and you can randomly end up in a group without tanks or healers as well....

Let's not kid ourselves, the difficulty is definitely a big part of the problem. Savage and Ultimate are supposed to be the difficult but faster means of gear progression; Bozja and the relic are the easy but grindy alternative.

Improving the rewards SUBSTANTIALLY might be a way to fix this, but it's not a realistic one, imo.

Also, the mettle argument isn't a good one. Until we know for sure there's no new resistance ranks or mettle requirements coming, mettle is still necessary.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

The difficulty is not fine for content that's meant to be run repeatedly with random groups. Can you honestly say that reteaching the mechanics to every new group, in an instance that can take over an hour to complete, isn't going to get old pretty much immediately for most of this community? Add the fact that you're pretty much guaranteed to eat significant mettle loss and we have content that may not even survive until the end of this week.

It's dumb. This community is not nearly as tough as it talks; you praise difficult content and avoid it like the plague at the same time. This content will be abandoned by this community so fast it'll be comical, and all of this "yay! challenging mid tier content!" will prove to be nothing but hot air. Meanwhile MSQ roulette will still be running strong 5 years from now.

Just make it easy so it will be alive long enough for casual players to actually get a chance to play through it.

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MSQ roulette stands "strong" because it rewards a huge chunk of exp for watching netflix, and if this content gets abandoned it will be cause of lackluster rewards and not because of difficulty once the majority of players gets a hang of the mechanics it will be a lot easier to do and faster than it is now. Trying to cater to the players that do not want to pay attention to mechanics and come completely uprepared(some of them not even equipping an essence) for the content is the wrong way to approach with this content, because even if they enrf it it will still take like 30-45 minutes per run and it will be boring due to it getting nerfed and the rewards will still be lackluster so rather have more stuff taht you can get from CLL and DR (like lockboxes,maybe mettle or a mettle buffing potion that you can drink while in the southern front, and in DR's case lost actions that can be used outside of it in bozja).

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

It isn't elitism to ask what will become the best weapon this expansion to require more than "roll your face across your keyboard". Your easy catch up weapon for alt jobs is crafted, Tome or Primal. All three are more than adequate, especially for jobs you admittedly aren't going to play often. The crafted weapons alone are vastly overpowered for any content outside Savage or Ultimate. And come 5.5, the crafted weapons can all be augmented to i520 for practically nothing. That is the casual option.

The issue is they added harder content without offering justifiable rewards for completing it. Obtaining the Augmented Judge sets are absurd, and the relics themselves are inconsistent mess when it comes to farming for all the drops. They need to better incentivize Bozja while also adding more additional methods outside of it that aren't also the most efficient option.

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It's not elitism to make relics hard to get, yes.

It is elitism to take an easy to farm weapon that the good majority of the active player base probably had at least 1 copy of, suddenly lock it behind a skill wall and a time sink that the vast majority of the player base doesn't want to do, and then tell the complainers "too bad" whenever they say that it's not right for them to do that.

If the relic was tied to Bozja so that you needed to do Bozja to progress it from the start, then that would be fair. But SE in their infinite wisdom couldn't even add a step that required you to at least farm some fates and CE's and then they required Castrum and the new 24 man then sure, that would be fair and we would have less reason to complain, but unless you're just terrible at time management or like Bozja anyone who values their time will go farm HW fates and run dungeons instead of dealing with Bozja rng.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

It isn't elitism to ask what will become the best weapon this expansion to require more than "roll your face across your keyboard". Your easy catch up weapon for alt jobs is crafted, Tome or Primal. All three are more than adequate, especially for jobs you admittedly aren't going to play often. The crafted weapons alone are vastly overpowered for any content outside Savage or Ultimate. And come 5.5, the crafted weapons can all be augmented to i520 for practically nothing. That is the casual option.

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You're completely incorrect. Relics are the casual answer to endgame weapons. There's even a set of interviews on another thread on this topic on these forums where Yoshi-P outright states they are intended to be able to be completed solo without mandatory party requirements. And outside of jumping in a roulette or two (which you can still do solo technically), ARR and HW stuck to that format. They required grinds and investment, but that investment wasn't in mandatory party content. The interview is about Eureka and admitting they messed up and went against the intention.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Alright, so how do you think MSQ would fare if they forced everyone to run it at min ilvl, added a Doom mechanic that instant kills you every couple of mistakes, and takes a large chunk of your exp every time you die; or if you're 80 it takes a percentage of your Gil? Oh, and you can randomly end up in a group without tanks or healers as well....

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Mate, you can change your class by drinking a potion in normal mode. You can also equip raise. If you are worried about sustainability just equip something you think is helpful. There even is a chest inside the instance at the very start. Your argument makes no sense.

Additionally, it's supposed to be side content so allow the devs so experimentation. It's gotten way, way too stale. Also, you're blowing this way out of proportion with your example. lol

The new dungeon isn't even [that] hard. It just requires a modicum of coordination. This is an MMO. That's what you sign up for. Not everything (and I can't believe I'm saying this) needs to be turned into an easy solo grind (again, in an MMO). lol

All Bozja content is easy if you put the work into it. You just have to pay attention to mechanics in the raids.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

The difficulty is not fine for content that's meant to be run repeatedly with random groups. Can you honestly say that reteaching the mechanics to every new group, in an instance that can take over an hour to complete, isn't going to get old pretty much immediately for most of this community? Add the fact that you're pretty much guaranteed to eat significant mettle loss and we have content that may not even survive until the end of this week.

It's dumb. This community is not nearly as tough as it talks; you praise difficult content and avoid it like the plague at the same time. This content will be abandoned by this community so fast it'll be comical, and all of this "yay! challenging mid tier content!" will prove to be nothing but hot air. Meanwhile MSQ roulette will still be running strong 5 years from now.

Just make it easy so it will be alive long enough for casual players to actually get a chance to play through it.

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Say hi to :

-Players who cleared ultimate
-Players who cleared savage in pf only, or with slow groups
-Players who farmed savage mounts/gear/weapons in pf (even in SB savage you have to folow some mecanics)
-Players who cleared extreme in pf
-Players who are farming weapon/mounts in extreme in pf (some go to x99 try, less if they get lucky)

For statics it's really different, some groups are faster than other, but some take months to finish.

So yeah ofc the rewards have to be good. Say to thoose players "btw to farm the 1rst relic step : you choose between CT 15 times or extreme/savage 5 times.". I'm choosing savage dude lol. Many players are not as weak as you think.

People still get a clear on their first attempt right? I don't see anyone complaining about multiple wipes, rage quit or disband. So it's all in all, fairly easy content, far from any EX trial, and a billion kilometers away from savage difficulty.
If it becomes easier, it will be on CT level of difficulty. I'm sorry but I'm not a 5 yo kid, I'm a grown up adult and I like when developers take me seriously.
Not you?

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Originally Posted by Arngrim_Greyashe

All Bozja content is easy if you put the work into it. You just have to pay attention to mechanics in the raids.

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It's not about whether it is easy or hard, it's the punishment system combined with the way they handled the relic grinds with fates that make it bad. People should be able to get the components for the relic from Bazja just as easily as the overworld and to this day I have no idea why the bosses in Castrum and the new place do not give any mettle! They should be awarding mettle just like the outside since that makes it worth it to actually run them! Even preferably over the southern front, which should be giving people the relic parts far more readily to compensate for it.

It's not about making it easier as it already is easy, it's about changing the punishment for dying from discouraging people to do the content to encouraging people to do it right. Without mettle being awarded per boss kill or even from the dungeon, it just ruins it.

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Originally Posted by Juzjuzz

Say hi to :

-Players who cleared ultimate
-Players who cleared savage in pf only, or with slow groups
-Players who farmed savage mounts/gear/weapons in pf (even in SB savage you have to folow some mecanics)
-Players who cleared extreme in pf
-Players who are farming weapon/mounts in extreme in pf (some go to x99 try, less if they get lucky)

For statics it's really different, some groups are faster than other, but some take months to finish.

So yeah ofc the rewards have to be good. Say to thoose players "btw to farm the 1rst relic step : you choose between CT 15 times or extreme/savage 5 times.". I'm choosing savage dude lol. Many players are not as weak as you think.

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So, basically "say hi to roughly 5% of the community at best." This is supposed to be content for people who aren't running with statics. Random groups + Severe penalties for failure = Trash. Honestly, for people running with statics even Savage is easy; the mechanics in this game are extremely rigid and predictable. The only thing that's difficult about Savage is finding patient people to practice with consistently.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

You're completely incorrect. Relics are the casual answer to endgame weapons. There's even a set of interviews on another thread on this topic on these forums where Yoshi-P outright states they are intended to be able to be completed solo without mandatory party requirements. And outside of jumping in a roulette or two (which you can still do solo technically), ARR and HW stuck to that format. They required grinds and investment, but that investment wasn't in mandatory party content. The interview is about Eureka and admitting they messed up and went against the intention.

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Pretty sure atleast 3-4 stages of the HW relic required you to do party content. The difference however was that you could do them completely at your own pace, since the party content was either 4man, 8man or 24man party encounters that were either current PvE content or part of roulettes, maybe even both. It was never content with an incredibly limited lifespan that forced you to rush it or run the risk of never being able to complete it.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

So, basically "say hi to roughly 5% of the community at best."

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Especially since ShB the amount of people doing savage has exceeded that arbitrarily low number, but since he included people who pug extremes, old savage fights and old extremes it is certainly a lot more than 5%.

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Originally Posted by Juzjuzz

Say hi to :

-Players who cleared ultimate
-Players who cleared savage in pf only, or with slow groups
-Players who farmed savage mounts/gear/weapons in pf (even in SB savage you have to folow some mecanics)
-Players who cleared extreme in pf
-Players who are farming weapon/mounts in extreme in pf (some go to x99 try, less if they get lucky)

For statics it's really different, some groups are faster than other, but some take months to finish.

So yeah ofc the rewards have to be good. Say to thoose players "btw to farm the 1rst relic step : you choose between CT 15 times or extreme/savage 5 times.". I'm choosing savage dude lol. Many players are not as weak as you think.

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You forget that not everyone can log on to play that often, or play video games at more than a casual level.

There are people with kids, jobs that require them to work long hours, or just people with busy lives in general.

Not everyone has 8-16 hours a day to play video games you know, and it's easy to forget that when you're busy thinking you're better than people who aren't even trying to compete

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Mate, you can change your class by drinking a potion in normal mode. You can also equip raise. If you are worried about sustainability just equip something you think is helpful. There even is a chest inside the instance at the very start. Your argument makes no sense.

Additionally, it's supposed to be side content so allow the devs so experimentation. It's gotten way, way too stale. Also, you're blowing this way out of proportion with your example. lol

The new dungeon isn't even [that] hard. It just requires a modicum of coordination. This is an MMO. That's what you sign up for. Not everything (and I can't believe I'm saying this) needs to be turned into an easy solo grind (again, in an MMO). lol

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Getting 24 random people to coordinate on the spot is obnoxious. People will get sick of it and stop running it. I'm not saying it's difficult in the sense that it takes top 1% skills to clear; it's just difficult in the sense that it's not going to be worth it very long. I just got my clear and it went fine despite me going in blind. Only lost about 15K mettle and had a good group. I still have zero interest in ever stepping foot in there again, and that's where most people are going to end up. Then all the poor casual players who come in late will get to spend their days begging for pity clears; while all those people who were demanding punishing content won't be around.

I don't even want an easy solo grind, but I would IMMENSELY prefer a solo grind to what we have. Honestly, if it were a series of 30 minute solo fights that instant kill you for 1 small mistake I'd be 100% fine, as long as the content doesn't disappear in a week.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

You forget that not everyone can log on to play that often, or play video games at more than a casual level.

There are people with kids, jobs that require them to work long hours, or just people with busy lives in general.

Not everyone has 8-16 hours a day to play video games you know, and it's easy to forget that when you're busy thinking you're better than people who aren't even trying to compete

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That doesnt mean savage and extreme have to be the only options, i never said that. But right now the only option (with 100% droprate) is something that ppl are bored with. The more options theres is, the more fun the grind will be. Even for normal difficulty there's tons of fun raid and dj.

And thanks for saying that i play 8-16 hours a day and that i'm thinking that i'm better than others, the moment i ask for more difficulty. That's rude imo, you do that when you work too? Any thing more to add ?

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

So, basically "say hi to roughly 5% of the community at best." This is supposed to be content for people who aren't running with statics. Random groups + Severe penalties for failure = Trash. Honestly, for people running with statics even Savage is easy; the mechanics in this game are extremely rigid and predictable. The only thing that's difficult about Savage is finding patient people to practice with consistently.

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Even if the numbers are low, why not guiving the option to do harder content? The numbers are low aniway, it won't change much for casuals right? I don't understand why saying no to 5% and not guiving them less boring things to farm is bad. If it's high risk high reward, ppl will go there. Maybe not all the time, but if it helps going faster why not letting them trying?

I'm not sure if they need to make DR easier (I found there was plenty of time even if you wipe and the mechanics were easy to learn) but they do need to make Castrum a bit less irritating. And, you know, actually easier to get into. That first boss is annoying even when you run into a premade party and the time limit is way, way too short.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Getting 24 random people to coordinate on the spot is obnoxious. People will get sick of it and stop running it. I'm not saying it's difficult in the sense that it takes top 1% skills to clear; it's just difficult in the sense that it's not going to be worth it very long. I just got my clear and it went fine despite me going in blind. Only lost about 15K mettle and had a good group. I still have zero interest in ever stepping foot in there again, and that's where most people are going to end up. Then all the poor casual players who come in late will get to spend their days begging for pity clears; while all those people who were demanding punishing content won't be around.

I don't even want an easy solo grind, but I would IMMENSELY prefer a solo grind to what we have. Honestly, if it were a series of 30 minute solo fights that instant kill you for 1 small mistake I'd be 100% fine, as long as the content doesn't disappear in a week.

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The dead content argument is fair. That's what SE loves to do. And their only solution is making it so easy and/or soloable if feels like an insult. Bozja will be the same. Even the already easy MSQ has a [very easy] option.

And I can't, for the life of me, understand why SE can't raise the rewards. smh People even do the DR MSQ for the massive EXP gain. Why wouldn't that work with something that's actually fun?

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Originally Posted by Arngrim_Greyashe

All Bozja content is easy if you put the work into it. You just have to pay attention to mechanics in the raids.

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I don't want to be that person who is like "lul but everyone is terrible" but... like... have you done DF lol? I enjoy DF so I don't like dragging people for a content I appreciate they join me on, and most people are not toxic, certainly a general lax environment (which I do like), so it's generally all good for me (given you're not trying to do savage in DF, which I've done and like oof for certain bosses until echo stacks up) . . . but . . . "pay attention" is going to be out of bounds for a significant portion of people that make up that sort of hyper-casual crowd. Casual doesn't necessarily mean bad, just to be clear, as I would call my self casual mmo player at this point (I was hardcore long time ago), but a lot of people who just play to goof off and have a low stress environment are not going to find much resonance with what you just said.

Dark Souls is actually very easy too, if you pay attention. :p Obviously Bozja is no where near Dark Souls hard, but you should get the point. There is a level of try that will make "its easy if" be pretty invalid. Like I played Warcraft 3 ladder maps and it was easy to do well when you used hotkeys better than everyone else but I just found zipping around the map via hotkeys to soul drain the experience - I didn't enjoy what began to feel like work. Meanwhile I was pretty adapt at custom because most of them were "focus on one task well" which felt a lot less work-like to me. So it was easy to do well, because I enjoyed the effort I had to give- meanwhile it was "technically" easy for me to do well in ladder but not easy in the sense that I did not enjoy it at all (I enjoyed the story campaign, I just didn't like trying to grandmaster up because it was just work, to me, at that point).

Anyway.. point is I don't think what you said is a good sign for actually being 'easy' for the crowd I think OP is talking about (the casual DF sort of crowd). Most of the casual stuff in this game requires like 1/4 of the party to pay attention, you can have a lot of duds in a group and still complete most content.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Pretty sure atleast 3-4 stages of the HW relic required you to do party content. The difference however was that you could do them completely at your own pace, since the party content was either 4man, 8man or 24man party encounters that were either current PvE content or part of roulettes, maybe even both. It was never content with an incredibly limited lifespan that forced you to rush it or run the risk of never being able to complete it.

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Yeah I didn't really understand what he meant by saying you could solo it, unless he meant queueing for roulette solo. But it wasn't too much more demanding on that front that what MSQ asked of everyone. The last sentence is absolutely correct. You could go about your daily routines and get updates for ARR and HW. Maybe shorten things a bit with some extra grinding here and there when able to. You weren't supposed to be locked away in a special specific zone for ages unable to participate in anything else.

There is an issue with Castrum, it's not the difficulty its the fact that trying to get 48 people in a non alliance format to co ordinate a completion especially for first timers is difficult, I only play an hour and a half a night and we've tried twice in Castrum to get to the next step in the relic but the groups have never got past the first boss.

Our first time we went bottom and the top never had enough dps and wiped killing everyone then split, there went 3k mettle, Our second time (Yes we've only done this twice as its the only 2 times we've seen it in our available playtime) we went top and the bottom wiped then left..

I really have no hopes of getting my 1 relic per expansion this time round.

Before you say we have to play more we both work full time and due to the nature of our jobs we are frontline and have been working pretty much 7 days a week during the entirety of this damned pandemic, this content is just not player friendly in general and should be a roulette.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I don't want to be that person who is like "lul but everyone is terrible" but... like... have you done DF lol? I enjoy DF so I don't like dragging people for a content I appreciate they join me on, and most people are not toxic, certainly a general lax environment (which I do like), so it's generally all good for me (given you're not trying to do savage in DF, which I've done and like oof for certain bosses until echo stacks up) . . . but . . . "pay attention" is going to be out of bounds for a significant portion of people that make up that sort of hyper-casual crowd. Casual doesn't necessarily mean bad, just to be clear, as I would call my self casual mmo player at this point (I was hardcore long time ago), but a lot of people who just play to goof off and have a low stress environment are not going to find much resonance with what you just said.

Dark Souls is actually very easy too, if you pay attention. :p Obviously Bozja is no where near Dark Souls hard, but you should get the point. There is a level of try that will make "its easy if" be pretty invalid. Like I played Warcraft 3 ladder maps and it was easy to do well when you used hotkeys better than everyone else but I just found zipping around the map via hotkeys to soul drain the experience - I didn't enjoy what began to feel like work. Meanwhile I was pretty adapt at custom because most of them were "focus on one task well" which felt a lot less work-like to me. So it was easy to do well, because I enjoyed the effort I had to give- meanwhile it was "technically" easy for me to do well in ladder but not easy in the sense that I did not enjoy it at all (I enjoyed the story campaign, I just didn't like trying to grandmaster up because it was just work, to me, at that point).

Anyway.. point is I don't think what you said is a good sign for actually being 'easy' for the crowd I think OP is talking about (the casual DF sort of crowd). Most of the casual stuff in this game requires like 1/4 of the party to pay attention, you can have a lot of duds in a group and still complete most content.

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I mean, if they want it dumbed down so badly to where the game just hands you the trophy for participating, then no, it's not that easy. But in general, the content in this game has little difficulty once you actually learn the mechanics. I haven't delved into savage stuff in years, but 24 man raids and basic dungeons aren't difficult.

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Originally Posted by Arngrim_Greyashe

I mean, if they want it dumbed down so badly to where the game just hands you the trophy for participating, then no, it's not that easy. But in general, the content in this game has little difficulty once you actually learn the mechanics. I haven't delved into savage stuff in years, but 24 man raids and basic dungeons aren't difficult.

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I agree with the later, well minus a few very specific bosses lol. My point was however that nearly all that content, minus the specific 24 man raid bosses that are famous now, you can pretty much do the content with a massively hobbled group that hardly works together AND it was easy to form that group (I imagine there would be a lot less issues if it was just easier to pack every group needed).

So if we are aiming for that bar (which I would agree isn't that high) then Bozja s a bit higher than that bar, and so it would make sense to "further lower the bar" IF that casual audience that has enjoyed the difficulty of that other said content was the target audience.

There have been many dungeons where it was just two people carrying the whole team, and some cases (usually only 4 group but I've had one raid and a few 8 man) where it was just one person (that person sometimes being me, hype :D). Bozja has multiple issues before it can be called "as easy" as the common content is, it is however certainly not the hardest content in the game. Ultimate would like to have a word with people who think savage is hard lol, and savage is having words with Bozja XD.

Cleared Castrum today, got about 38-ish people for it and we only wiped once on the last boss because of issues with the top boss. Otherwise I probably died around 6-10 times from mechanics I didn't completely understand as did a lot of party members with all of them being first timers.

That being said, I can't help but feel I got lucky with the run going so smoothly. Only reason I think we cleared the last boss is because we had a pretty good amount of people who knew what they were doing, especially with the top laners for the final boss.

IMO I don't think they should nerf Castrum Lacus, but they should incentivize people who've done it before to run it again for the rewards, that way even if there's a lot of new people there's still a good chance things will go smoothly, even with some deaths.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Alright, so how do you think MSQ would fare if they forced everyone to run it at min ilvl, added a Doom mechanic that instant kills you every couple of mistakes, and takes a large chunk of your exp every time you die; or if you're 80 it takes a percentage of your Gil? Oh, and you can randomly end up in a group without tanks or healers as well....

Let's not kid ourselves, the difficulty is definitely a big part of the problem. Savage and Ultimate are supposed to be the difficult but faster means of gear progression; Bozja and the relic are the easy but grindy alternative.

Improving the rewards SUBSTANTIALLY might be a way to fix this, but it's not a realistic one, imo.

Also, the mettle argument isn't a good one. Until we know for sure there's no new resistance ranks or mettle requirements coming, mettle is still necessary.

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This comparison is so off base, you're playing football on a hockey rink.

First and foremost, Lost Actions are grossly overpowered compared to anything we can do at max level, nevermind being synced down to level 50. For reference sake, tanks can burst in their openers with the proper Lost Actions higher than Black Mage. Lost Slash on Machinist alone deals upwards of 600k, which is more than double a Crit/Direct Hit Technical Step. We are leagues above i430, and thus nowhere near a min ilvl equivalent. Likewise, your Mettle equivalent is an extremely flawed Strawman. You're assuming Mettle will have some further significant impact. Presently, it does not. And it will not until 5.55 some six months down the road. Meanwhile, EXP and Gil both have value currently. You can't compare losing either on the presumption Mettle will have equal value.

Simply put, you're making massive leaps and straight up poor comparisons while ignoring the obvious. MSQ gives a disproportionate amount of rewards as compensation for putting up with lengthy cut scenes. Like I said prior, which you ignored, when those rewards weren't present, people stopped queuing. The issue with Bozja as a whole is the reward structure.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

You're completely incorrect. Relics are the casual answer to endgame weapons. There's even a set of interviews on another thread on this topic on these forums where Yoshi-P outright states they are intended to be able to be completed solo without mandatory party requirements. And outside of jumping in a roulette or two (which you can still do solo technically), ARR and HW stuck to that format. They required grinds and investment, but that investment wasn't in mandatory party content. The interview is about Eureka and admitting they messed up and went against the intention.

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I'll have to ask you cite said interviews because not only does it contradict their statements from Stormblood, neither the ARR and HW relics could be completed entirely solo as dungeons were mandatory for both. Nevertheless, relics have never been targeted at the hyper casual demographic but rather made approachable for them. Their primary target is the softcore players; those who typically aren't interested in Savage but may do the odd EX here and there. Grinds like this typically don't attract casual players hence why the actual casual weapons are tome.

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Originally Posted by Derio

They shouldnt be easy. But the biggest problem with Bozja is the rewards. Doing the content outside of Bozja shouldnt be faster than doing it in Bozja. My major gripe with this relic is that they are practically begging you to not be in Bozja and get the relic by doing fates and alliance roulettes.

Something needs to change because in 2 or 3 weeks Bozja will be dead content again. If you didnt do it the first 3 weeks then you will be out of luck.

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They should be the same, realistically. You forget one key factor on why this happened. The community complaining about the one way "Grind" for the relics. Hence why this relic they made it two different ways to obtain it. So those who don't like the instance and prefer a more casual way to obtain the relic can do fates, etc. While those who do like the mindless grind can do Bozja constantly. But it doesn't matter anyways. All this community does is complain regardless of what they try/do.

On the topic of "DF crowd" and with people still saying Bozja is casual content... I'll still stand by that the difficulty progression the game provides for non-savage players is poorly planned if Bozja raids were indeed meant to appeal to that demographic. I'm not sure about Eureka, but regarding Bozja compared to ARR/HW relics, I thought the point of relics was to provide an alternative to "2nd best" in slot by the end of an expansion's life cycle for players who think savage raids are too challenging. Then why lock the progression of these behind content that's also considered too challenging for casual players?

It's just poorly designed. It makes the experience bad for both kinds of players. You have to deal with people failing or dragging the pace down and they have to deal with frustration of unexpected difficulty spikes when they've been carried through CEs easily or running instances that were hallways with 3 simple bosses for months or longer.


I bet all my gil if they add better rewards for Castrum, it STILL will be a pain to queue for, because yes, the difficulty is, in fact, an issue, for the average participant, because Bozja's "overworld" isn't nowhere near that hard and is rather misleading, MSQ duties have been faceroll hallways and even when slightly more challenging normal raid bosses happen these players end up successfully carried anyway.
This game at its current state is NOT doing a good job teaching players and experiencing the new raid I think it really shows now more than ever.
It shouldn't be other players' job to teach them. Game design 101 that Mega freaking Man showcased 30+ years ago. A well designed game needs to teach the player on its own. MMORPG or not.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

On the topic of "DF crowd" and with people still saying Bozja is casual content... I'll still stand by that the difficulty progression the game provides for non-savage players is poorly planned if Bozja raids were indeed meant to appeal to that demographic. I'm not sure about Eureka, but regarding Bozja compared to ARR/HW relics, I thought the point of relics was to provide an alternative to "2nd best" in slot by the end of an expansion's life cycle for players who think savage raids are too challenging. Then why lock the progression of these behind content that's also considered too challenging for casual players?

It's just poorly designed. It makes the experience bad for both kinds of players. You have to deal with people failing or dragging the pace down and they have to deal with frustration of unexpected difficulty spikes when they've been carried through CEs easily or running instances that were hallways with 3 simple bosses for months or longer.


I bet all my gil if they add better rewards for Castrum, it STILL will be a pain to queue for, because yes, the difficulty is, in fact, an issue, for the average participant, because Bozja's "overworld" isn't nowhere near that hard and is rather misleading, MSQ duties have been faceroll hallways and even when slightly more challenging normal raid bosses happen these players end up successfully carried anyway.
This game at its current state is NOT doing a good job teaching players and experiencing the new raid I think it really shows now more than ever.
It shouldn't be other players' job to teach them. Game design 101 that Mega freaking Man showcased 30+ years ago. A well designed game needs to teach the player on its own. MMORPG or not.

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The problem isn't the difficulty, the issue is the punishment system. They could literally fix everything if the instances gave mettle per boss fight to make up for the deaths. They do have a quest that gives some for completing the new instance, but still.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

This comparison is so off base, you're playing football on a hockey rink.

First and foremost, Lost Actions are grossly overpowered compared to anything we can do at max level, nevermind being synced down to level 50. For reference sake, tanks can burst in their openers with the proper Lost Actions higher than Black Mage. Lost Slash on Machinist alone deals upwards of 600k, which is more than double a Crit/Direct Hit Technical Step. We are leagues above i430, and thus nowhere near a min ilvl equivalent. Likewise, your Mettle equivalent is an extremely flawed Strawman. You're assuming Mettle will have some further significant impact. Presently, it does not. And it will not until 5.55 some six months down the road. Meanwhile, EXP and Gil both have value currently. You can't compare losing either on the presumption Mettle will have equal value.

Simply put, you're making massive leaps and straight up poor comparisons while ignoring the obvious. MSQ gives a disproportionate amount of rewards as compensation for putting up with lengthy cut scenes. Like I said prior, which you ignored, when those rewards weren't present, people stopped queuing. The issue with Bozja as a whole is the reward structure.

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First, lost actions are complete RNG. The only ones I had worth using by Rank 10 were some Lost Cures, and plenty of people don't bother with them all together. They're gimmicks, and peoples first instinct is usually to ignore gimmicks. People bringing and using the correct ones does obviously make the content easier, but that's not something you can rely on.

Second, the MSQ example wasn't meant to be a direct equivalent; just an easy to grasp illustration of why difficulty matters. People are NOT going to stick with difficult content in random group scenarios, because trying to coordinate to that degree with 24 random people isn't fun. DR just isn't worth dealing with, and the rewards would have to be phenomenal for people to put up with that place for any amount of time.

I already admitted that significantly improving the rewards could work, but I just don't think that's going to happen. Making the content not terrible to run with randoms is the more likely solution.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

First, lost actions are complete RNG. The only ones I had worth using by Rank 10 were some Lost Cures, and plenty of people don't bother with them all together. They're gimmicks, and peoples first instinct is usually to ignore gimmicks. People bringing and using the correct ones does obviously make the content easier, but that's not something you can rely on.

Second, the MSQ example wasn't meant to be a direct equivalent; just an easy to grasp illustration of why difficulty matters. People are NOT going to stick with difficult content in random group scenarios, because trying to coordinate to that degree with 24 random people isn't fun. DR just isn't worth dealing with, and the rewards would have to be phenomenal for people to put up with that place for any amount of time.

I already admitted that significantly improving the rewards could work, but I just don't think that's going to happen. Making the content not terrible to run with randoms is the more likely solution.

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Lost actions are actually really useful. When I ran Castrum for the first time I took lost Brave and a bunch of lost Arises on my Scholar and let me tell you, those 2.5s cast rez to full health without weakness raises came in really handy, especially with my co-healer having some as well so if either of us die we can cover the other.

Healers also have a 90% damage boost pot that lasts the entire instance, that's no joke of a damage increase. Lost brave is literally a 10 minute 5% damage boost, which again, is no joke, especially from a raider's perspective, not to mention the pots that basically turn healers into tanks.

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

Lost actions are actually really useful. When I ran Castrum for the first time I took lost Brave and a bunch of lost Arises on my Scholar and let me tell you, those 2.5s cast rez to full health without weakness raises came in really handy, especially with my co-healer having some as well so if either of us die we can cover the other.

Healers also have a 90% damage boost pot that lasts the entire instance, that's no joke of a damage increase. Lost brave is literally a 10 minute 5% damage boost, which again, is no joke, especially from a raider's perspective, not to mention the pots that basically turn healers into tanks.

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I agree that they're strong and useful. They're also RNG drops that most people are likely to just outright ignore, because they're gimmicks that have no real relevance to the game outside of Bozja. They aren't something you can rely on to make this content work.

Tbf, the biggest roadblock in this content is only CLL
But I wouldn't advocate to make it 'easier'. No. We sorely need an endgame content that's harder than the casual faceroll content but easier than the higher end duties (extreme/savage/ultimate). Bozja provides exactly this (great concept, albeit poorly executed).
CLL's reward however is very lackluster compared to the risk on hand. If there's anything I'd like to suggest for CLL is to buff the reward, extend the starting time limit, AND make it so that replacement players can join in case some disheartened or legit trolls (yeah, they exist) bails out. Also perhaps prevent the instance from spawning additional CE while CLL recruitment is on going?

"What about Delubrum?"
Besides allowing replacement players to join in, leave everything else alone.
Make it easier? Please, no. They already provide the harder savage version. The normal version itself is very underwhelming in term of difficulties when compared to CLL, which makes me think that this is SE's way to make Delubrum (Normal) more accessible to more casual playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

First, lost actions are complete RNG. The only ones I had worth using by Rank 10 were some Lost Cures, and plenty of people don't bother with them all together. They're gimmicks, and peoples first instinct is usually to ignore gimmicks. People bringing and using the correct ones does obviously make the content easier, but that's not something you can rely on.

Second, the MSQ example wasn't meant to be a direct equivalent; just an easy to grasp illustration of why difficulty matters. People are NOT going to stick with difficult content in random group scenarios, because trying to coordinate to that degree with 24 random people isn't fun. DR just isn't worth dealing with, and the rewards would have to be phenomenal for people to put up with that place for any amount of time.

I already admitted that significantly improving the rewards could work, but I just don't think that's going to happen. Making the content not terrible to run with randoms is the more likely solution.

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If you cannot be bothered to farm a little for Lost Action drops, that's your own fault. Not only are they readily available on the market board if you absolutely don't want to farm, you can pretty easily join groups through shout chat in Bozja itself. You're effectively asking to reward players with what will become the best weapon in this expansion without also expecting them to put in a modicum of effort. "Here's your participation weapon."

And it was a poor illustration. You're presuming value that you cannot measure.

You are grossly overexaggerating Delubrum's difficulty. I've queued into it now several times where no one said so much as a word. Plenty of players were still new and yet, we cleared without too much of a fuss. Sure, people died. But we didn't need any mass coordination. Delebrum is essentially a harder 24 man. Regardless, people whined that Weeping City, Nidhogg, Shinryu, Hades, Orbonne and etc were "too hard." None of them died during their relevant life cycles because, wait for it, the rewards were tempting enough to keep people coming back. They also weren't massive either. As it currently stands, Castrum is effectively the equivalent of an EX Primal not having a mount to farm or Eden's Promise dropping no loot. In such a scenario, they'd all be dead content near instantly. Why? There's zero incentive to run them multiple times. Castrum doesn't need MSQ level rewards. It just needs something enticing.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

If you cannot be bothered to farm a little for Lost Action drops, that's your own fault. Not only are they readily available on the market board if you absolutely don't want to farm, you can pretty easily join groups through shout chat in Bozja itself. You're effectively asking to reward players with what will become the best weapon in this expansion without also expecting them to put in a modicum of effort. "Here's your participation weapon."

And it was a poor illustration. You're presuming value that you cannot measure.

You are grossly overexaggerating Delubrum's difficulty. I've queued into it now several times where no one said so much as a word. Plenty of players were still new and yet, we cleared without too much of a fuss. Sure, people died. But we didn't need any mass coordination. Delebrum is essentially a harder 24 man. Regardless, people whined that Weeping City, Nidhogg, Shinryu, Hades, Orbonne and etc were "too hard." None of them died during their relevant life cycles because, wait for it, the rewards were tempting enough to keep people coming back. They also weren't massive either. As it currently stands, Castrum is effectively the equivalent of an EX Primal not having a mount to farm or Eden's Promise dropping no loot. In such a scenario, they'd all be dead content near instantly. Why? There's zero incentive to run them multiple times. Castrum doesn't need MSQ level rewards. It just needs something enticing.

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I'd rather the content be easy than dead.

Requiring effort for the relic is fine. Requiring effort AND the ability to find 23 other people who are willing to tolerate a frustrating, hour long instance that eats mettle forever is not fine. Make the challenging parts of the relic SOLO content. Make the parts that require a large group something that doesn't punish people for continuing to run it over time, and maybe people will continue to run it over time. Simple stuff.

Lost Actions are honestly just kind of dumb. Too many useless ones; too much garbage to sift through; zero use outside of Bozja. People SHOULD be making good use of them, but I do understand why most aren't bothering.

Edit: My 1 and only run of DR went fine as well. Had a good group, only died a handful of times to odd mechanics, no wipes; but even after what I'd call a very successful run my reward was losing 15k mettle. Right now is when all the good players are getting their clears in, and most of them aren't going to bother going back in.

It's annoying, overlong content that punishes you for running with people who are new or inexperienced. Just nerf it. Better rewards is also a viable option, but they'd have to be MUCH better.

I've resigned myself to the fact I wont get to finish the Bozja story line... all our groups fail and disintegrate too quickly.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

I agree that they're strong and useful. They're also RNG drops that most people are likely to just outright ignore, because they're gimmicks that have no real relevance to the game outside of Bozja. They aren't something you can rely on to make this content work.

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I agree and disagree, because if I'm really desperate for a lost action, for instance I really wanted care fragments for lost brave, I just outright bought them off the MB

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Originally Posted by Dogempire

Lost actions are actually really useful. When I ran Castrum for the first time I took lost Brave and a bunch of lost Arises on my Scholar and let me tell you, those 2.5s cast rez to full health without weakness raises came in really handy, especially with my co-healer having some as well so if either of us die we can cover the other.

Healers also have a 90% damage boost pot that lasts the entire instance, that's no joke of a damage increase. Lost brave is literally a 10 minute 5% damage boost, which again, is no joke, especially from a raider's perspective, not to mention the pots that basically turn healers into tanks.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

I agree that they're strong and useful. They're also RNG drops that most people are likely to just outright ignore, because they're gimmicks that have no real relevance to the game outside of Bozja. They aren't something you can rely on to make this content work.

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I imagine simply making them either pausable, learnable, or other types of permanent would do a lot in the way of increase their use and therefore the increase in quality clears.

While the more hardcore group is well used to using consumables (potions, food) for content I can without any doubt in my mind say that is not the rest of the population lol. And also some people, like myself, just generally well dislike losing neat things and may happen to not use something if it doesn't seem I have to (like if a game gives me hi-elxirs I'll not use it unless literally I need to or will die, I wont lose on purpose but I don't like watching items fly away unless easily, painlessly, consistently, re-obtainable). For example in Witcher their potion system mean I constantly used all my consumables because getting stuff back was easy and relatively painless (especially as the game went on, you know.. after stealing everything off the shelves of all the villages :3. . .). However if the game gave me a decoction that was like "one time only ever" you bet your bottom dollar I'd never use it unless absolutely necessary lol.

Adding some scaling, that doesn't purposefully make it much easier (a very difficult, and a bit impossible but you can get 'close', task of trying to keep a similar challenge across different sizes of groups), for less people in CLL (so if you get a small group or a big group it'll generally be do-able), and then getting far more people in general to take part in the special actions.. I think would help quite a bit.

Maybe some inspiration from FFVII or FFIX (materia / item abilities). Maybe a slot that pauses consumption, yet has a cooldown naturally- has to have some balance. Or you can learn them permanently after x use, they rank up, or whatever. There are a lot of ways to go about it. Like in FFVII you could add pretty UI elements or goofy interactions, or just be straight forward like FFIX. If you had it learned after certain number of uses you get people to use the consumables with the light at the end of the tunnel being they keep it. Lots of ways to go about it.

Of course if the focus target audience is more on the hardcore side consumable stuff is totally fine, my thought is minimal nerfing to the content that might still increase enjoyment of said content quite a bit (for the other types of players lol, not focusing on hardcore or even that medium core concept). If people didn't see CLL as such a painful gate as it would work in a high variety of player counts and then if these actions, some with pretty cool implications to your job to be fair, were far more encouraged to be used- I think a lot of your problems would be much smaller. (Actions increasing clear rates a bit since more people use them and just giving players more opportunities to goof around with unique tools, and then actually being able to consistently progress without the threat of wasted time.. both good things, that slight nerf technically being more people are using the strong actions, or that you don't need as many people for CLL since it'll scale itself more strongly to the number of people).

I think it's also okay if they want Eureka to be more mid/hardcore focused but then I think they should continue the idea in the first step for relic, as I really feel that was a good idea to keep as something hyper casual players could slowly lag behind with a neat weapon as a reward (relic usually not being 'the best' until the literal very end, savage and ultimate holding the crown for a while and are of course already focused more to that type of hardercore audience).