Castrum Litore is not rewarding

As it stands, it’s the least rewarding Critical Engagment. Pretty much all it gives are coins and fragments, and if you’re lucky the augmentation coffers (which might as well be boxes of coins)

At the very least it should give; Exp, Mettle and Lockboxes. And really adding clusters into its drop table wouldn’t break anything. There’s legit no reason to do it outside of the armour, and that’s so sad because it’s a very cool instance

YES this a huge problem, in the EU after 1 week can barely fill up a big enough party to complete Castrum (new player joining late can't complet it, cause only a hand full are joining it, others already have what they wanted, others are giving up on trying to fill it)
..
we NEED better rewards, to keep player activ (either add mount drops there too, or some other reward/ motivation.., maybe a "golden" sphere mount drop or so just the mounts that can be received thru lockbox's)

I'm in the other end of the ship where all the additional actions are a self perpetuating addiction.

I tool around with neat combos to go around and solo stomp groups of 20-30 enemies, then I have to do Castrum again to get the skills so I can do it again.

I imagine they'll be more stuff added later. Like the next step of relic?

It's kind of shocking.
Especially since it doesn't give mettle a lot of people are waiting to even try it until they hit 15 and can't lose mettle anymore.

.. They can still lose mettle at 15.

last weekend, 4 out of 5 runs did not have enough players to complete the instance.., players that already clreared this 1-3 times don't bother anymore.., there is not enough motivation for players to grind this content (its almost as long as a 24 man, but with less rewards).

SE needs to adress this and give players more of a reason to farm this and stick thru till the end.., after 1 week Castrum is already dying

Not enough reward ? not only. I would say it should give Mettle and others stuff we already win in others CE or Fates as well.
Also
Critical Engagement are going in the way of castrum instance most of the time.
Players can't join Castrum because they are stuck in another Critical Engagement.

You will take your 10 bozo coins and you will like it! :clown_face:

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Originally Posted by EmoPanther

.. They can still lose mettle at 15.

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... WHAT?
... well frick.
As I understood it you couldn't lose mettle if it would rank you down. So after 15 you're safe.
But... well shit.
Thanks for the info.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

... WHAT?
... well frick.
As I understood it you couldn't lose mettle if it would rank you down. So after 15 you're safe.
But... well shit.
Thanks for the info.

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Yeah, you won't derank, but you can get knocked all the way back to zero if you keep dieing. And figure, you're losing like.. iirc I lose something like 17-20k every time I have to recall.

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Originally Posted by EmoPanther

Yeah, you won't derank, but you can get knocked all the way back to zero if you keep dieing. And figure, you're losing like.. iirc I lose something like 17-20k every time I have to recall.

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Oooooh.
I thought they meant you couldn't lose mettle if it pushed you beneath what you needed to hit the rank you were on.
I didn't realize how untied to each other rank and mettle were.
Thanks for the info.

Its already dead content for me ^^

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Originally Posted by TsunaYoshi

Its already dead content for me ^^

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Well to be fair, its over a week old by now. Most content outside Savage raids and the occasional extreme for some players is old content after a week. They should have put a lockout ID on it or some other way to stretch it out like Beast tribes.
I spent a couple of solid hours getting my weapon, Rank 15 and seeing all there was to see, so the patch wasnt so bad. It also coincided nicely with my sub lapsing soon.

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Originally Posted by Niyuka

Well to be fair, its over a week old by now. Most content outside Savage raids and the occasional extreme for some players is old content after a week. They should have put a lockout ID on it or some other way to stretch it out like Beast tribes.
I spent a couple of solid hours getting my weapon, Rank 15 and seeing all there was to see, so the patch wasnt so bad. It also coincided nicely with my sub lapsing soon.

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Castrum has the same problem Ocean Fishing had. If the rewards aren't there beyond the initial offering then people have less incentive to do it. Instead they've tacked on an achievement to run Castrum 50 times. This is week 2 and for the past 3 nights I always get Castrums that fail because we can't get enough people qued in. Everyone else that is behind because whatever reason is left floundering because others don't want to do it.

So I have to ask, where is the fancy mount for 50 Castrum runs? That fighter pilot mount that everyone wants that comes from random boxes, should have been in achievements there. I've heard (but can't confirm because of lack of groups) that there are field notes that drop from chests; why is the last chest at the end of the dungeon not giving you one of these guaranteed? If its a duplicate that player gets an extra random loot box. Not to mention the Bojza gear upgrades are way more expensive then Eureka gear was, but we're supposed to farm Castrum for the random drops instead? We can't because people came and saw and just don't find it rewarding and the players that like this content suffer for it.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Oooooh.
I thought they meant you couldn't lose mettle if it pushed you beneath what you needed to hit the rank you were on.
I didn't realize how untied to each other rank and mettle were.
Thanks for the info.

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FWIW, it functions like XP/level in some older MMOs, where you could go into "XP debt" due to XP loss on death. I.e., you will never lose a level (or in Bozja, rank), but you can fall below the XP (or in this case, mettle) necessary to attain that rank. So, let's say in some MMO, when you hit 21 million XP total you would be level 22, and 25 million XP total would be level 23.

In a modern game, once you hit level 22 you'd see your XP progress as '0/4,000,000' on a little progress bar, and any XP you earn would go towards that 4,000,000.

In an older game that used XP debt, you'd see your total XP, just with the upper end growing when you leveled up. So you might see "19,500,000/21,000,000" while you were level 21, and then when you hit level 22 you'd see "21,000,000/25,000,000". You'd still have to earn 4 million XP to level up, but it's not like each level is a bucket.

So if you got to 21,800,000 XP and then died enough times that you lost 2,600,000 XP... then you'd still see level 22, but your bar would now read "19,200,000/25,000,000", meaning that you now have to earn 5.8 million XP before you get to level 23 instead of just 4 million.

(In effect, going into debt on your XP, hence the term.)

Which is how Bozja works. You can hit rank 15 and you'll stay rank 15, but if you die enough times you could drop back to 0 mettle. Then when the cap is increased in a future patch, you'd have to earn all the mettle necessary to get to rank 15 again before you even started earning mettle towards rank 16.

Which is actually part of why many people seem to stop doing Bozja as much when they hit 15; there's little to gain after that point, but a surprising amount to potentially lose.

Plain and simple the castrum need to reward mettle. Why it still doesn't yet after all these band aid hotfixes boggles the mind. Quite frankly not fan of this mettle at lvl 12 you lose almost a 1k per death castrume also has too many one shot ko mechanics. You can have shell and protect and it won't stop. Might as well be a waste of a lost action. I am also convinced the lost actions don't work either. I have gone in once i won't go back til this is fixed.

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Originally Posted by Grimr

you lose almost a 1k per death.

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To be fair, the mettle gain per CE or Skirmishes do increase when done at higher ranks. Yes on first sight, the numbers may seem daunting, ie, 703k mettle for lvl 15, but i felt it has been around the same number of skirmishes required to progress from one level to the next.

How does the Castrum stands out for me, is the fact that we have multiple permutations of Lost Actions that we can experiment and have fun with in this instance. The ability to play around (similar to Blu) and having 6 healers + 2 DPS take on Lyon in a group of pugs can be quite entertaining.

(or setting personal challenges to reach 200k damage output for a afflatus misery, etc)

From an accessibility standpoint, almost everyone has access to CLL and it is not made difficult to access as compared to BA in the past. (compared to Eureka anemos, having a dungeon at end of the first area is a great step up)

As of today, even at non-peak hours (ie, from 3-6am), our data centre still see full 72/72 instance with 48/48 CLL attendance.

I know im gonna get quite a bit of backlash over this post. But sometimes i guess we have to try to stop focusing at all the negative aspects of the game, and maybe attempt to find ways to enjoy what is presented to us.

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Originally Posted by azurechicken

To be fair, the mettle gain per CE or Skirmishes do increase when done at higher ranks. Yes on first sight, the numbers may seem daunting, ie, 703k mettle for lvl 15, but i felt it has been around the same number of skirmishes required to progress from one level to the next.

How does the Castrum stands out for me, is the fact that we have multiple permutations of Lost Actions that we can experiment and have fun with in this instance. The ability to play around (similar to Blu) and having 6 healers + 2 DPS take on Lyon in a group of pugs can be quite entertaining.

(or setting personal challenges to reach 200k damage output for a afflatus misery, etc)

From an accessibility standpoint, almost everyone has access to CLL and it is not made difficult to access as compared to BA in the past. (compared to Eureka anemos, having a dungeon at end of the first area is a great step up)

As of today, even at non-peak hours (ie, from 3-6am), our data centre still see full 72/72 instance with 48/48 CLL attendance.

I know im gonna get quite a bit of backlash over this post. But sometimes i guess we have to try to stop focusing at all the negative aspects of the game, and maybe attempt to find ways to enjoy what is presented to us.

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To be fair blu is more fun than the entire southern bozja front. As for mettle currently the way skirmishes are set up they either last long enough to get there or they die in ten seconds and you just busted you ass to get there for nothing. Sure you can do ce but if you die that more lost mettle i preferred eureka way or no exp lost unless you don't get a rez. Overall i don't see the need to earn lvls when we alrdy have to lvl to 80 previously.

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Originally Posted by azurechicken

To be fair, the mettle gain per CE or Skirmishes do increase when done at higher ranks. Yes on first sight, the numbers may seem daunting, ie, 703k mettle for lvl 15, but i felt it has been around the same number of skirmishes required to progress from one level to the next.

How does the Castrum stands out for me, is the fact that we have multiple permutations of Lost Actions that we can experiment and have fun with in this instance. The ability to play around (similar to Blu) and having 6 healers + 2 DPS take on Lyon in a group of pugs can be quite entertaining.

(or setting personal challenges to reach 200k damage output for a afflatus misery, etc)

From an accessibility standpoint, almost everyone has access to CLL and it is not made difficult to access as compared to BA in the past. (compared to Eureka anemos, having a dungeon at end of the first area is a great step up)

As of today, even at non-peak hours (ie, from 3-6am), our data centre still see full 72/72 instance with 48/48 CLL attendance.

I know im gonna get quite a bit of backlash over this post. But sometimes i guess we have to try to stop focusing at all the negative aspects of the game, and maybe attempt to find ways to enjoy what is presented to us.

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I don't think the issue lies in the difficulty of the content, the population of the instances, or experimentation of actions. The fact you can wait an hour to get into Castrum only to walk away with a few coins, no mettle, no gear upgrades, no fluff (orchestration, minions, lore notes are at a very low drop rate), and no guaranteed progress on your relic for completing the pinnacle of the relic content is ridiculous. Heck you don't even walk away with a few of the random loot boxes or Bojza clusters.

Castrum is not rewarding. People are one and done on this content because there is no clear reward path. Something needs to change.

Current hotfix just killed CLL more, before people actually queue for it even on inactive hours now even with a 72/72 instance you get like 4-8/48 when it pops even without another CE active and ends up being abandoned. Either boost/add rewards on CLL or remove coin reward from Skirmishes (Keep the coin rewards on CEs).

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Originally Posted by Ygnizemz

Current hotfix just killed CLL more, before people actually queue for it even on inactive hours now even with a 72/72 instance you get like 4-8/48 when it pops even without another CE active and ends up being abandoned. Either boost/add rewards on CLL or remove coin reward from Skirmishes (Keep the coin rewards on CEs).

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I agree. People need a clear reward path with CLL. The hotfix only made the problem worse.

The problem is that Castrum just isn't worth running. What you get is ultimately maybe 10 coins. But if you take them out of the skirmishes, all of Bozjan suddenly becomes less enticing and it might kill it off even faster. I would not be surprised if the reason why they added the coins to the skirmishes and critical engagements to begin with was that people were just dropping Bozjan as a whole because they saw that the only way to get coins was from Castrum.

You get 20 coins minimum from a castrum run, potentially extra rewards from the chests. You can get a max of 26 coins (and the fragments) assuming your group rescues all prisoners. 20 coins is not worth the time investment and coordination that castrum requires. Castrum needs to not only give mettle, they need to add in lock boxes, extra coins, increased chance for the actual augments as well as more (and guaranteed) fragments. Coins should have been a drop from the onset considering you need so many for a full set of augmented gear, and overall it’s only 3 haste on each piece which serves no benefit other than to make continued grinding faster. You get to max level and complete the hardest content in order to unlock gear that makes the content easier. If you’ve already cleared it you don’t need it. The bozjan gear and its augments should have been available from the onset.

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

The problem is that Castrum just isn't worth running. What you get is ultimately maybe 10 coins. But if you take them out of the skirmishes, all of Bozjan suddenly becomes less enticing and it might kill it off even faster. I would not be surprised if the reason why they added the coins to the skirmishes and critical engagements to begin with was that people were just dropping Bozjan as a whole because they saw that the only way to get coins was from Castrum.

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You get over 20 which in hindsight just isn't worth it. Especially when you need a stupid amount like 999 for 1 augment.

"You might get an augment by a stupidly low chance if you run Castrum though..."

That's....that's dumb. Reminds me of mobile games that show off this REALLY cool item with a 0.000001% of obtaining to entice people to continue playing. It's like trying to find a real needle in a stack of fake needles. It's just painful. But OH BOY I can't wait to grind nine hundred and ninety-freaking-nine of those coins for a guarantee!!!! Whooooooooi!!!

I get grinding. But this coin "grind" feels lifeless, shallow, and is obviously just a place holder to keep the content "alive". You know what would have kept the content alive? Maybe having the relic easier to obtain in Bozja and not HW fate grinding.





I'm a bit salty.

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Originally Posted by TyrTry

I get grinding. But this coin "grind" feels lifeless, shallow, and is obviously just a place holder to keep the content "alive". You know what would have kept the content alive? Maybe having the relic easier to obtain in Bozja and not HW fate grinding.

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This. How can this be apart of relic content, yet Castrum DOESN'T give any progress to that relic?!? Huge oversight.

Maybe a buff applied at the end of castrum that would double the rewards of other Bozja fates for one hour would be enough to motivate everyone ?

Been over a month and I still can't get a group larger than 10 for this stupid CE.
No coins for me. Done with bozja until they fix this garbage.

Ever since castrum was implemented I've had trouble getting groups because no one wants to do castrum. Super annoying....

I made this thread months ago, https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...m-it-100-times...

In reflection, the biggest wall for players is the division to clear the first boss/bosses. People just don't want to co-ordinate, they just want to hit rotation kill boss, ez pz.

I think some useful changes would be:

Add mettle, like maybe 40k? The lack of mettle is a MASSIVE turn off for many, a lot of people aren't going to want to learn it on the basis that they can only lose mettle.

Increase the coin drop. It's silly, it's low, it's dumb.

Increase augment drop rate. It's INCREDIBLY LOW.

The content is gearing content, if the drop rates were low because all we got is a reward likea minion or mount, that'd be fine, but it's not, people want to do savage when it drops!

I really struggled to get a party for castrum when I tried doing it on EU early december. I can't imagine how much worse it must be by now... I ended up giving up. I hope they make it easier or more rewarding, then I'll try again.


I don't think bozja is dead content, but castrum is very much so. Eureka never felt like that when it was current, it was always active!