Bozja is the single most popular non roulette content in the games history, it’s just about the furthest thing from unpopular content can get
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I believe there are a few main reasons for the FFXIV population decline. There is a not insignificant number of people (and growing) who have become exhausted with the job and battle mechanics, and general homogenization and lack of complexity or decision-making within the game combat. Folks looking for a game which requires more than pattern memorization are starting to look elsewhere.
There's also the argument for lack of casual and/or mid-core content. Also lack of any long form grindable content. SE has done a pretty good job with bringing the more difficult "party finder" content to the game, but that even now is only servicing a small portion of the playerbase. The larger majority currently has nothing to do, and hasn't pretty much since DT launch. They are steadily leaving the game due to lack of content. This has always been strange to me because FFXIV is a big enough game, and makes enough money to have a team capable of putting out content for all types of people without sacrificing what they are already doing. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Everyone can be served, but that's not happening.
On a personal note my sub is expiring tomorrow and I have no intention or renewing it. I may come back for 7.2, but we'll have to see what that patch actually provides. If there simply isn't enough to do I won't bother, and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. This may turn out to be a "wait for 8.0" situation, but we'll see.
Yeah, clearly the waiting time for Delubrum is so fast, it totally proves your point.
The zones themselves have become more popular during EW but the content was not received well. The only reason that pushed people in it were the relics and that's probably true for today also.
Delubrum popped pretty fast and regularly throughout the entirety of ShB since its release (Did 255+ runs on patch it was a blast). They only started thinning out at the tippy end of 5.58 and becomes more PF oriented past 6.05'ish.
Delubrum was already mostly a pf things during ShB particularly after they increased the rewards, it was a nice way to farm relics when you could do it in 15min, and during that time you could find 10+pf during peak hours.
But Bozja himself got extremely criticized during those patch, it's only because it was the new content with relics that it got a lot of people in it (and it was better than eureka for casual to jump in and out regularly). It's recent success is not even comparable to player activity during release but people in it now likes it better than the one during release.
Everything gets “extremely criticised” on launch
It still has a interaction rate that dwarfs other content and that interaction rate includes aspects of Bozja that the relic doesn’t incentivise
36% of people who entered Bozja at least once cleared dal more than 10 times. That is insane, the game offers no reward for clearing dal more than once and 36% of people who entered Bozja cleared it 10 times or more. Over 70% of people who entered Bozja made it to Zadnor. 69% of players who were level 80 in ShB attempted Bozja. These are monstrous numbers. It rivals eden normal for on patch interaction
It wasn't solely a PF thing, the PFs mainly existed because SE is bad at itemization and made the good DPS essences too rare, and made the gap between a full team with good essences vs DF with little to no essences too wide. It could take like an hour and a half in DF.