The Bozjan Front is lousy, lazy content

...and yet I wouldn't be surprised if they spent a fair bit of development capital designing it. Honestly, my complaints about the zone are pretty much wholesale:

• It's just FATE grinding by another name. Except, of course, that these FATEs are spread far apart, you cannot fly, and the map itself is clearly designed to frustrate rapid movement. I know that you can (and should) get the item that buffs mount speed slightly, and - were the terrain itself designed well - I wouldn't even miss flight. It's simply that this isn't particularly good ground for ripping right along at a good clip.
  
  
• Speaking of ground, it's ugly - so ugly that I cannot understand was the Bozjans are fighting for, precisely. This doesn't appear to be, like, no man's land between two lines - it's not, say, the trenches of WWI (which were exceedingly desolate strips of desolate mud tucked between otherwise fertile and still-productive farmland). It's like the whole of Bozja is just... oil-drenched, magitek-infested ruins. And, at that point, I literally do not understand what people are fighting for. Moreover, from the perspective of a purely gaming experience, this feels a bit too much like mini Torghast and mini Argus all over again - IE, why am I spending so much time locked in a little piece of very ugly terrain? YMMV (and will vary, of course), but with so much beauty to be had in FFXIV, it sucks to spend hours wiling away my time in a hell cauldron.
  
  
• There are too many systems. And yes, you learn (or should learn) what they all do rather quickly. But it leads to a constant stream of questions in shout chat relating to how the zone functions which frankly shouldn't be there. There should be one currency; you shouldn't have to go see the officer every time you need to level up; the menu should be better explained by the game than it is. I get the feeling that a lot of people dip a toe into BF and immediately recoil because it just looks to convoluted, and that's a shame, since the rewards are pretty decent (and we could use the bodies).
  
  
• It's just boring. There are too few encounters, and those encounters produce the same experiences again and again. There are enemies everywhere, but unless you're actively grinding the stupid clusters, those enemies are merely a nuisance that disrupt movement. Things get slightly more interesting when you reach level 10 and move onto the dungeon, etc., but I can never really shake the feeling like I'm playing a poor-man's, non-PvP version of Guild Wars 2's RVR... like, it's just a ruinous, non-competitive, anonymous slog.

Sorry. As I said, YMMV. But I don't think this was a particularly excellent addition to FFXIV.

I had a great time in Bozja myself and I found it far from "lazy" (quite the opposite). This is a subjective matter.

Took me a lot of time to get into it (went in when patch was live then never got back to it until a couple of month ago) because I also found the area VERY UGLY.
But there is some good content locked behind this area unfortunately so I still recommend plowing through.

The bosses are great, everything else is unfortunately too stale.

Large open areas with no thing notable going on, with generic fates.

I mean all the engagements and the raids and all that i kinda like but the aesthetics...bozja is the most ugly zone i have ever seen and i know it is a battlefield but heck it's really really bad.

Feels like they can get only one part right at the same time, Eureka was beautiful...Bozja has better mechanics and especially no light farm...xD

Now we just hope they find a way to let Eureka and Bozja come together and we get the perfect relic grind in Endwalker...hopefully...

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

I mean all the engagements and the raids and all that i kinda like but the aesthetics...bozja is the most ugly zone i have ever seen and i know it is a battlefield but heck it's really really bad.

Feels like they can get only one part right at the same time, Eureka was beautiful...Bozja has better mechanics and especially no light farm...xD

Now we just hope they find a way to let Eureka and Bozja come together and we get the perfect relic grind in Endwalker...hopefully...

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I wouldn't have minded the aesthetics at all if it wasn't JUST an open pit. If there was a 'front line' and then, like, forest and hamlets scattered on either side, with baggage trains, etc. moving to the trenches, that would have been really cool. But it's just nothing but wasteland.

War huh, what is it good for? Absolutely, nothing~

Critical engagements are great! Everything else is lackluster. I'm really over fate farming.

Seeing all the raid bosses and meme enemies, like the red chocobo, pop up as remixed encounters feels fresh and so very good. Need a lot more of that and a lot less of mindless aoe spam.

I mean if it wants to be a warzone...the last dungeon of Stormblood showed exactly how it could look like.

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

I mean if it wants to be a warzone...the last dungeon of Stormblood showed exactly how it could look like.

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That's actually a good point, Ghimlyt Dark looks significantly more interesting than Bozja does, despite both being "just warzones".


But besides that I just don't see all that much reason for the zone itself to exist. You're just running around a visually uninteresting wasteland, doing activities that you've been doing for years already, to acquire arbitrary currency for rewards that could've just as easily been put into other content.


The raids are nice, not gonna deny that, and with raids I mean CLL and DR, can't say much about Dalriada atm. I actually like the idea of the party splitting up to complete separate objectives or environmental hazards, the normal alliance raids could use some more of that variety.
But those raids would've been just as good without Bozja as a zone even existing. You could just as easily put all the rewards into the 3 raids, delete the zone and not much of value would be lost.

Bozja is ugly and boring, the Castrums are fun, the story is also good IMHO. I do it for my WHM relic weapon. But i do it only for one weapon. For other weapons the extreme grind fest is not worth the effort. :(


Cheers

I mean at least the weapons look better than the stormblood ones. The last step of the Eureka weapons looked like they took the shisui (underwater dungeon) weapons and just put much sparkle on them. Never understood the design choice of the last step, i know they wanted to go with a waterlike look cause the last zone was about that but heck...they look ugly and the glow on them too...

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Originally Posted by Ranaku

I mean at least the weapons look better than the stormblood ones. The last step of the Eureka weapons looked like they took the shisui (underwater dungeon) weapons and just put much sparkle on them. Never understood the design choice of the last step, i know they wanted to go with a waterlike look cause the last zone was about that but heck...they look ugly and the glow on them too...

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Let's be fair though, SB relic is a low bar to jump when it comes to looks.

Thankfully, this time around the first two stages have something nice for almost every class.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

Let's be fair though, SB relic is a low bar to jump when it comes to looks.

Thankfully, this time around the first two stages have something nice for almost every class.

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This is true. Not a fan of the last stage, though. I think the entire idea of crystal weapons is kind of ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

This is true. Not a fan of the last stage, though. I think the entire idea of crystal weapons is kind of ridiculous.

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Wait its crystals? I was under the impression that its some techno/fantasy/laser forcefields being projected around the weapon for whatever reason. Looking at their arrangement on bladed weapons I assumed for cutting assistance.

Tried a bit and insta quit.
Boring and ugly.

I deeply hope, they will go back to the roots when it comes to the relic grind.

I dont understand what was so wrong about the ARR and HW relics and why does it need a big instanced area. Why not doing that stuff in the open world? And why do I need to level all over again?

They tried something new with Eureka. But at the end, it was just leveling and fates. And with the addition of new skills and stuff, it became a mess.

Bozja feels a bit better than Eureka, because its not extremely huge and you dont have to switch elements (which was annoying). But at the end, it was just leveling and fates, too. And new skills of course.

The problem here is, that you mostly spent your time waiting. Wait for critical engagements or castrum. Bozja itself is not a pretty zone. Its a boring wasteland.

Eureka is like Palace of the Dead, while Bozja is like Heaven on High.
The first implementation (Eureka, PotD) was something new. Not perfect, but at least visual appealing. The second (Bozja, HoH) is just a lame copy-paste from the original. More simple, shorter, but far away from being an improvement.

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Originally Posted by Clover_Blake

I had a great time in Bozja myself and I found it far from "lazy" (quite the opposite). This is a subjective matter.

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I think the OP's descriptor ("lazy") had more to do with Bozja's hours/quality of design work put in --> hours of player grind pulled out, not that players are necessarily being lazy or that the content experience itself feels like a hot summer afternoon better spent lounging about one's porch or the like...

My only real issue with Bozja is the boring zone. Everything else to me is an upgrade over that horrible Eureka system. The biggest advantage Eureka had over it was the variety of zones.

Real ones only use Eureka for money making. The amount of gil I've made off of selling Cassie earrings, Copycat Bulb minions and Eureka mounts has me set for at least two more expansions.

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Originally Posted by Puremallace

The biggest advantage Eureka had over it was the variety of zones.

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And bunnies!

I enjoyed the two Bozjan instances as well. I agree that SF's aesthetics is a bit bland, and if they wanted to go for warzone, might as well amp the background action like in Ghlimyt Dark (sp?). Zadnor is actually pretty fine, I think.

The raids are interesting, however the main activities could've used a bit more polish.

- We should get EXP and Mettle from random mob kills too. This would make farming clusters and spawning Skirmishes more rewarding. I think they could also had a Challenge Log system like in Eureka.
- Skirmishes need to have their location pointed on the map 30s BEFORE it starts (while on that small scene that happens), so players have actual time to get there and participate.
- Eureka had more interesting "miscellaneous" events going on the maps, like bunny fates, or the sprites that buffed you up. Those add a lot of flavor to the maps, and can be a reason for people to roam around.
- Lost Actions are fine, but I wish we had more 'out of the box' ones like Flarestar or Lost Assassination... Most of them are just passive buffs.

Everyone has their own subjective opinion.
I frankly loved Bozja WAY more then Eureka. I didnt need to beg people for help and get ignored and waste hours of my life to play catchup on my ALT in Bozja.
Meanwhile, when Eureka came out I had to work for a week straight and start it later...when I had free time to start, everyone was max level and farming High Level NM Trains, nobody wanted to help out noobs that came in late. Getting Exp was WAY to slow, some people said powerlevel by joining the trains and getting minimum rewards...which helped, but still took forever because you get next to nothing from level descrepency. Then I got deleveled when trying to get to an area and got 2 shoted by an enemy...and people just ran past me even when I called out my location for a rez.

So many will tell me how great Eureka was, and I envy all of you can say that, because my experience was nothing but pain. Im lucky that years layer and after the completion of Bozja, so many have downtime and have gone back to Eureka. Things are nerfed, things are buffed, gains are better, and the community seems way more n00b friendly and more people are willing to help.
So I finally got through it.
I just hate it took about 4 years...

bozja's fun aside from the boring map design, though zone 2 of zadnor looked ok

The overall idea isn't terrible, but the reliance on essences and other consumables quickly and completely destroyed whatever promise it had.

They basically tried to pad the content with an endless cycle of RNG and grinding the overworld to be able to contribute significantly in the dungeons, and most of the community saw right through it; the result being people didn't bother with consumables and the content became tedious and overbearing as a result.

Now replace essences and other consumables with an additional skill tree that unlocks abilities permanently as you level up in the overworld and you have the foundation for an actual fun experience.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

The overall idea isn't terrible, but the reliance on essences and other consumables quickly and completely destroyed whatever promise it had.

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It's hit and miss for me. I actually like the idea of having supplementary and complementary additional actions, though I'd prefer they act more like toolkit actions rather than something so insulated or overpowered. The passives, though, I hate... at least in their current implementation; I don't see the point in tuning content around non-choices like them.

If Diadem, Eureka, and Bozja had been used to their full potential, I'd hardly be doing anything else. But instead, each has seemed like minimum development work put in for maximum player hours/grind provided, and that's a bland and sour taste. I dabbled in Diadem and somewhat enjoyed Eureka despite that, but I just had zero desire to go through what quickly became clear as more of the same, just in the least interesting zone yet, with Bozja.

Bozja (and Zadnor) for me were a step up from Eureka because I can actually do the content without harassing anyone else to do so. Eureka is only slightly enjoyable now since they nerfed the whole thing to the ground, pre-nerf Pagos was the only thing this game ever had that made me want to stop playing.
That being said my complaints with Bozja are that the rewards aren't quite as good as Eureka. The coins in Zadnor are the worst offenders; you can get that XII-looking gear but pretty soon you have everything and then... Nothing else to spend it on. The lockboxes of Eureka you could at least make some money off, here you barely get anything. And don't get me started on the judge gear and DRS... I know Eureka has a similar set from BA but it was for stats and the gear looks exactly the same, and there's reason to go into BA more then once becuase of rewards, not like DRS where there's no reason to run it more then once to get your Cerebrus mount (which SE cheaped out on the orginal design I've seen where you carried people in their mouths, shame ;;).

Essences and different loadouts are fun in Bozja in my opinion. It's Eureka but better for lost actions. I'm definitely heading back to Bozja once Endwalker drops.

The only thing I don't like about Bozjan is....why we don't get mettle/exp when killing regular mobs? That's really odd and a decision and don't understand

I totally am enjoying Bozja/Zadnor, way better than Eureka (which I didn't dislike, either)

So this is one of those problems where you have a game that is really damn good, and people play literally all the great story content really fast. So, in the interest of making sure there is at least something to do in the game for those long time loyal players, they make grind content like the Diadem (Heavensward), Eureka (Stormblood), and now Bazja (Shadowbringers).

Other content that fits into this bill is Ultimates, Savage Raiding, Crafting and Gathering, and Housing (assuming you survive the wrath of the RNG god and get a house with the luck of 5000 Pagaga clones).

It is grindy and boring because it has to last long enough for the devs to get out more content before players consume it all. Heck, a lot of time it isn't enough since Hardcore raiders can chew through savage in two weeks and dedicated crafters have penta-melded resources stockpiled because they literally sit there, churning stuff, every minute for hours. Yes, that guy named Bob the Mighty sitting there by the Market Board and summoning bell has spent hours making that stack of HQ Strength Tinctures that you blow through in about 3-4 bad raid nights wiping to an angry laser spewing nightmare.

Bazja had a ton of problems, but it was largely the punishing nature of losing resources on new content. The day DR dropped was like the beach of Normandy, and I'm pretty sure everyone was glad you couldn't LOSE your rank on that one. :)

I really like Bozja because you are doing many stuff with many people but everyone have different priorities which make it interesting and very lively, and in the long run, you can solo everything with some skill and dedication which is good, meaning you can help newer player to get through faster

The one I love the most is the raid (castrum, Delibrium and the one in zadnor), all are awesome and the only thing I dislike is just the fact that not everyone can enjoy it because you need to do bozjan leveling first

Starting doing eureka right now, hope for the best XD

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Originally Posted by Ravor

I really like Bozja because you are doing many stuff with many people but everyone have different priorities which make it interesting and very lively, and in the long run, you can solo everything with some skill and dedication which is good, meaning you can help newer player to get through faster

The one I love the most is the raid (castrum, Delibrium and the one in zadnor), all are awesome and the only thing I dislike is just the fact that not everyone can enjoy it because you need to do bozjan leveling first

Starting doing eureka right now, hope for the best XD

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Yeah it's one of those things where you have to be in the mood and have goals set for it. Like wanting to max out all your buffs or getting Relic completed. Otherwise, it doesn't have a lot to offer since it's a closed system.

I'd love it if

- the zone looked better
- the systems were more intuitive
- all players got into a raid group automatically
- no tough aggro mobs everywhere, designed to be a nuisance
- no death penalty

I mostly agree. I am at the Zadnor grind part of my relic now (30 FATES, 15 CEs in each zone of Zadnor for a total of 90 FATES and 45 CEs, give or take some CEs where I do Normal Raid roulette instead).

It's a slog, it stops being fun very quickly.

I don't unilaterally hate the content though. It has some good ideas but they need some streamlining. I wouldn't necessarily mind seeing it iterated on.

I've enjoyed it, I just wasn't a fan of the aesthetic but that's it.

I will say that probably the ONLY thing I hated about Bozja, was the loss of Mettle on Death. Thankfully Zandor happened and Mettle gains skyrocketed, so then most Mettle I lost was EASILY regained.
Ok That and...the 1 time Only Grinds for the Resistance Weapon. Those Grinds...SUCKED. So glad they were smart...and Nice enough to only make us do them 1 time, otherwise Id only have 1 ShB Relic.

The Diadem was lousy lazy content.
Eureka was... content.
Bozja is... An ugly-ishque yet slightly better content.

I think they are onto something. Eventually. We will get there. I think they should just combine a lot of features of both, there are a lot of forms to add more horizontal progression to those zones that reward players.

For me Bozja is automatically better than Eureka just because i can level up classes and i have options to "build" my job, unlike the rest of the world where im the same as everyone else. Is one of those things i hope they embrace and give more depth to it.
But yeah, Eureka was indeed more pretty and some of their dinamics maybe a bit more fun, but i really like the critical engagements that are actually challenging instead of being just damage sponge big FATE like in Eureka.


The Theming of the Southern Front is great, in fact it IS a pretty map: A war-torn land where weapons of mass destruction were used. In fact i would have liked to see more of that in Zadnor, like, more ruins more fire, more trenches. Instead we got quite the boring average map, is like an asset exposition: Jungle textures, sand textures, etc.

Aside the imperial ships and the Dalriada looming, the map really has nothing going for it: Is not well designed, is not a good looking map, is not well Themed.

I liked it well enough. I still wish they just made that kind of content open world like maybe just adding the zones to the list of aetherytes so I can pop in and out while queueing or waiting for other things. The instances have their problems but Castrum and Dalriada were still pretty fun. Delubrum Reginae can get gone and stay gone.

I agree with everyone that the zones were ugly as sin. It took me forever to notice there is an actual day/night cycle in there cause it's so gloomy I thought it was just perpetual night time for aesthetic reasons lol.

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Originally Posted by hobostew

I liked it well enough. I still wish they just made that kind of content open world even if it meant just adding the zones to the list of aetherytes so I can pop in and out while queueing or waiting for other things. The instances have their problems but Castrum and Dalriada were still pretty fun. Delubrum Reginae can get gone and stay gone.

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Unless it were the full thing, and every time you go in you use the diferent platforms altering the order of the encounters and giving it more rewarding exploration and some randomization element to combat the tedium. In fact if it were like that i would say: "At last XIV has a raid".
The ivalician-esque ruins, the Vagrant Story feel of the whole place is great.

It lasted till i noticed it was yet another glorified corridor.