Bozja's balance makes it brutal to rank from 8-10

Now that Bozja has been out for a few weeks I think more cracks in its inbalanced structure are beginning to appear.

I haven't been able to fully dedicate myself to Bozja, but I'm shocked that, merely two weeks after release, I'm having so much difficulty finding groups for fates in there. I'm rank 9 and it seems like there's little-to-no incentive for people rank 10+ to do fates anymore, and since most people *are* over rank 10 now, it makes it much harder to reach that rank myself as I find myself doing fates mostly alone. I've been in one instance now for over an hour sending /shouts that I'm looking for a group and I get back crickets. My only options then are to do the fates in the top part of the map solo (and risk dying and then losing mettle) OR to do fats in the lower rank areas and take much longer since they give less mettle. This is not good balance.

I think it comes down to the poor rewards structure. The lockbox rewards aren't as plentiful and the more desirable ones (the mount) are so common that the price is already down to just 1 million on my server. Combine that with the fact that you only get 2 lockboxes and only from Critical Engagements it makes people have very little incentive to even bother.

Compare that with Eureka, where most players will drop what they're doing and do literally any NM that pops, even the low leveled ones because they give crystals, logograms and a decent chunk of lockboxes and also where the more desirable lockbox rewards were much rarer than the lockbox rewards from Bozja.

It's not like "getting your relic" is even an incentive to do the fates, since they're SO much faster to do in HW fates.

Eureka's balance system for their fates creates an environment where low levels players don't feel like they're doing it solo, because there are always people around to do a fate with you whether they're in your party or not.

So what fixes can SE implement to fix this inbalance in the next part of Bozja? More lockbox drops with better lockbox rewards and make the more desirable rewards (mounts) be rarer. Have fates that drop specific things (like Cassie in Pagos). Make the relic as efficient to get from Bozja as it is from the otuside world (or MORE efficient in Bozja).

This is just...really bad.

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Originally Posted by OvernightSiren

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Are you using actions, essences and potions?

Every instance I've been to in the past few days has had people running around doing skirmishes.

Also yeah, do make use of the lost actions and essences you should be building up over time. Platebearer/Veteran is good for defense on non-taking classes. Beast is good for DPS classes that put out a lot of attacks quickly (so something like samurai or monk benefit from it a lot, but Summoner less so.) And then Lost Cure 1 or 2 is a solid choice for healing (ignore 3, it's just an AoE version of 1 with limited charges)

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Originally Posted by Stepjam

Every instance I've been to in the past few days has had people running around doing skirmishes.

Also yeah, do make use of the lost actions and essences you should be building up over time. Platebearer/Veteran is good for defense on non-taking classes. Beast is good for DPS classes that put out a lot of attacks quickly (so something like samurai or monk benefit from it a lot, but Summoner less so.) And then Lost Cure 1 or 2 is a solid choice for healing (ignore 3, it's just an AoE version of 1 with limited charges)

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Potions are much better than lost cure IMO. They also free one skill slot for something better.

wait till you get to do 10-15!

I did the whole level process solo without joining a party (outside of people inviting me in a CE, which I left after the CE was completed) and I never really used anything outside of the healing actions.

I think Bozja is pretty solo friendly, and it still felt shorter than getting to max level compared to Eureka. But that's just my opinion:)

i have my second toon 45k away from 15. Seriously leveling isn't that hard especially if you're doing one character. Hope they don't nerf that for awhile. They do need to clarify the importance of gear upgrades in my view given the purchase amount for those is simply silly and anything important for future raids there shouldn't be based on rng drop in Castrum.

I think Bozja skirmishes scale with people in the instance instead of people participating in the fates. So if your instance has people afk waiting for criticals, people farming clusters and fragments and waiting for Castrum, they're scaling up the fates for the rest and that's kinda unfair, because they have no incentive to do fates and that's understandable.

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Originally Posted by MPK

wait till you get to do 10-15!

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So that's literally the point of my post--getting there is difficult because they've made almost no incentive for anyone over level 10 to actually do the higher rank fates.

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Originally Posted by M0rrigan

I think Bozja skirmishes scale with people in the instance instead of people participating in the fates. So if your instance has people afk waiting for criticals, people farming clusters and fragments and waiting for Castrum, they're scaling up the fates for the rest and that's kinda unfair, because they have no incentive to do fates and that's understandable.

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See, that's definitely not true, because I've seen fates in the exact same instance die in seconds while other fates in that same instance take forever to kill. The scaling is beyond wonky.

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Originally Posted by OvernightSiren

See, that's definitely not true, because I've seen fates in the exact same instance die in seconds while other fates in that same instance take forever to kill. The scaling is beyond wonky.

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I haven't been around them long enough to be certain, but I think when you get the occasional squishy FATE it's because last time it spawned when people were busy with something else and didn't get to it, so that previous spawn had no or few participants.

I've seen the same exact skirmish vary from "needs a whole team" to "one guy soloed it while I was in a short cutscene expecting to tackle it after".

Edit to add: It may also be scaling by zone rather than individual skirmish, as others have suggested - the instance was clearing out at that point. Still, skirmishes in the third zone can and do scale down to being soloable, and this might actually improve as the content gets quieter - though I don't know what that's going to do for Castrum.

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Originally Posted by OvernightSiren

See, that's definitely not true, because I've seen fates in the exact same instance die in seconds while other fates in that same instance take forever to kill. The scaling is beyond wonky.

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There are 3 sections of the map, and 3 "scales". If there's a bunch of people in North but nobody in South, South fates will die quickly, while north fates will take a while.

From my experience most people are doing FATES, it's the Cluster farm parties that are hard to find and Castrum is slowly starting to decline in activity. To get a party, the way it seems to work is you do FATEs solo until a CE pops. When you get into the CE, you put "lfg" into chat and usually get a party quite fast. Most of these groups stick around and continue farming FATEs until the next CE.

A tank with Martialist is my personal favorite for Bozja, since you get tank cd's/immunes, decent damage and can take Arise for party support. Good mix of useful and unkillable.

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Originally Posted by OvernightSiren

See, that's definitely not true, because I've seen fates in the exact same instance die in seconds while other fates in that same instance take forever to kill. The scaling is beyond wonky.

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Skirmishes and CEs scale with the amount of players in the Bozja zone when they spawn. If you enter a BSF zone where there's only 6 people, you can solo some of the boss skirmishes in like 30 seconds or less. And if suddenly 66 people join the zone, the skirmishes that spawn are still scaling to the 6 people zone number, because they're already spawned. It's pretty nice.

As for your OP, all you need to do if keep chugging along with Lost Actions. Earn your mettle, do the Skirmishes in any region, try to get into the CEs. People will invite while in CE if you ask, and then sometimes they stick together, though usually not. The only thing that's not really incentivized in Bozja is teaming up long term, because everyone has 3 hours to change their mind about what they want to accomplish.

By the way, if you think Rank 8 to 10 is bad, try Rank 14 to 15. You need like 293k Mettle, and even though you get more mettle from everything the higher your rank, that's still a lotta mettle haha.

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Originally Posted by M0rrigan

I think Bozja skirmishes scale with people in the instance instead of people participating in the fates.

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Incorrect.
They scale with people in proximity when spawning.

Most easily observed if a CE is running. If the CE is on the other edge of the map, the FATE will die instantly. If the CE is close by, the FATE mobs will last an eternity.

Ranking is piss easy in there. Grab a class with instant AoE -> tag as many FATE mobs as you can -> get gold. Rinse-repeat. Make sure to take part in the CE spawning FATEs for priority buff.

Sure, having a group is nice but contrary to Eureka, it is not mandatory.

Compared to Eureka, the 1-15 grind in Bozja felt extremely tame.

It's getting into the duels and getting a set of augmented gear that's truly hellish.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Incorrect.
They scale with people in proximity when spawning.

Most easily observed if a CE is running. If the CE is on the other edge of the map, the FATE will die instantly. If the CE is close by, the FATE mobs will last an eternity.

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While that may be a factor, its definitely not the only one playing into scaling. I've noticed the boss FATE in the far NW (The tank like boss) spawn when a critical engagement was happening in the south and the only ones even remotely near it were just my cluster friend group of 8. We barely got 40% of its HP down within 5 minutes before the rest of the zerg happened along and even with the zerg, still took another 2 minutes or so to kill. Then later when it spawned again in a different instance when the gathering skirmish right near by it finished with like 40+ people, the tank's HP just melted in like 10s when following your idea, its HP should have massively scaled up due to proximity.

I've also noticed in relatively dead instances when I was farming duels, some of the FATEs, even with only 6-7 people in the instance total, still had enemies like iron-clad tanks. Full IR barely did 15% to one of the supply boxes when in most fates, enemies barely withstand 1-2 FC's. Some of the FATEs definitely have way higher tuned HP pools than other ones do, even before scaling factors in.

Early morning is great for leveling. With around 11 people in the instance I was able to easily solo skirmishes in the last area (Martialist action). Collect type skirmishes took only 6-7 items and mobs died very quickly. It's much harder to rank up during prime time, with many players afk or in Castrum and people clearing skirmishes before you can run to them.