Exploration Content: Salvation or Stopgap?

People in some threads (here and Reddit) are mentioning the lack of Eureka/Bozja content in EW as a big failing, and a lot of the doomposting emphasizes this point (along with some others, but this is a big one).

I love Bozja and Eureka and think there should be one in every expansion.

...but I also remember when those expansions were current people badmouthing them ALL THE TIME. Moreover, this implies that ShB and SB sucked OTHER THAN Eureka and Bozja, as that's the only difference between them and EW.

So how does that make sense?

Is FFXIV carried entirely by Eureka and Bozja?

How does one explain that logic when they were both some of the most divisive and complained about content when they were live? Was it just a case of "You don't know how good you have it until it's gone"?

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Is FFXIV carried entirely by Eureka and Bozja?

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Well, no. I find repetitive content like this dull and skipped both of these. I'd rather unsub and do something more thrilling.

I'm not saying that for some people, this content adds a lot of value to their subs and desire to log in. So....nice for them I guess.

As for your other points....
1. Certain posters will find a negative spin on litterally anything and everything XIV does. Doesn't matter what it is - they will be here unhappy. It's a contstant and not a variable lol.
2. Some people may not realize what they had until they lost it, and are comparing this content to what we have now in EW.
3. Different posters: The people posting who hated this content may not be the same people speaking well of it now that it's gone.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

doomposting

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There is no need to engage with this thread with sincerity.

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

There is no need to engage with this thread with sincerity.

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To be fair, I could say the same thing about the author of a "XIV doesn't care about us so we don't have to care about XIV" thread when that author will probably spend hours and hours caring enough to be here constantly lol.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

To be fair, I could say the same thing about the author of a "XIV doesn't care about us so we don't have to care about XIV" thread when that author will probably spend hours and hours caring enough to be here constantly lol.

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The difference: one calls out the developers. The other disparages and insults other players on the forum.

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

The difference: one calls out the developers. The other disparages and insults other players on the forum.

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Okay that's fair :) I can accept this.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

...but I also remember when those expansions were current people badmouthing them ALL THE TIME. Moreover, this implies that ShB and SB sucked OTHER THAN Eureka and Bozja, as that's the only difference between them and EW.

So how does that make sense?

Is FFXIV carried entirely by Eureka and Bozja?

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It might sound crazy, but people do enjoy combat content involving other players in a game that is also labeled as a MMO.

Pretty sure a lot of people enjoyed and praised Bozja itself. The "badmouthing" was about the systems surrounding it that people were unsatisfied with. Such as relic weapon materials being easier to acquire outside (fate farming) of the content it revolved around, everything being brown upon brown, the difficulty getting the 1v1 duels, and the awful way they ended the series.

As far as I know, a lot of people loved the critical engagements, extra "alliance" raids that came with the content, and lost actions making jobs feel different inside the field content.

Let's also not forget that Bozja has had some of the highest participation rate of any content in the game.

Love them or hate them, Eureka and Bozja were at least something to do.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

...but I also remember when those expansions were current people badmouthing them ALL THE TIME. Moreover, this implies that ShB and SB sucked OTHER THAN Eureka and Bozja, as that's the only difference between them and EW.

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Of course people would complain about them. Because in these locations, the player is expected to... play the game! And play it on the level "above average". And because average players can't stand any adversity in XIV, they decided to blame the content instead. Classy move.

No that both Eureka and Bozja didn't had any design problems, hell no... SE are also very quilty of making poor decisions about some parts of exploratory missions (remember +150% permanent Echo in Eureka and Grand CLL Content Bottleneck)

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Originally Posted by Renathras

So how does that make sense?

Is FFXIV carried entirely by Eureka and Bozja?

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XIV was carried by the story and decent gameplay until the two latest expansions. And yeah, Exploratory misisons are a good content to bother people with, so, they were pulling their weight alright.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Was it just a case of "You don't know how good you have it until it's gone"?

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Right on the money

As long as they are a separate instance while also changing how the game works, I will dislike exploratory content.

Take things from there and put them on the actual overworld maps. Don't cut people off from the rest of the game with an instance.

The biggest problem is that it wasn't replaced by something of equal scale. We got variant dungeons instead, which are basically a regular dungeon but you click on some stuff to make the boss mechanics different.

Next expansion we'll probably still get variant dungeons, but not as many of them.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

...but I also remember when those expansions were current people badmouthing them ALL THE TIME

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Let me put it this way: Sure, haters complained, yet the zones were always filled, and if you ever played them actively, everyone just seemed to be having fun. There will ALWAYS be people who complain about whatever, but both Eureka and Bozja were always active, even now. Eureka should be completely dead right now, but people are still grinding stuff there all the time, at least in Primal.

Now... how many people are still running Sil'dihn?

Good content survives the haters. Dead content can't keep even the veterans.

And it pains me to say this because I really enjoyed the Variant Dungeons, but the implementation is just lackluster.
Also: Having Variant and Deep Dungeons doesn't mean we shouldn't have an Exploratory Zone or a Trail Series

Anyway...

Lucky brancho stats showed that Bozja was at the time of Zadnor being released the most engaged with content in the game outside of the roulettes

70% of capped players who had finished the MSQ had access to Zadnor, 55% of MSQ completed characters had completed Dal by the 5.58, 26% of MSQ completed characters had cleared dal 10 times

This numbers are legit monstrous, you are rivalling the completion rate of the normal raid tier for the equivalent expansion on content that could take weeks for the average player to cap, how anyone could argue that Bozja is anything but a runaway success I have no idea

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when those expansions were current people badmouthing them ALL THE TIME

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I remember this too. I was virtually the only Eureka defender on this forum back in Stormblood. Everyone booed my posts. Yet once we got to Endwalker, suddenly everyone was a big fan of Eureka.

So let's ask who was actually spending their time in Eureka back then. The answer is that people who didn't have much time (such as an hour or two after work), did not like wasting hours of their time waiting for an NM. It wasted their whole evening and they did not have that sort of time. I knew people who were complaining and I know that they only had a few hours after work.

Then there are the achievement hunters. The ones who would spend weeks grinding every relic for every job. They were in Eureka all the time doing light farming and things like that. At the end of it, they were very proud to show off their what was it, 17-18 relics? Something that would leave a lot of people in awe with how much work it is.

I think the achievement hunter types also complained, because they were burning themselves out doing it all at once, but amongst all their complaints, I saw a lot of laughing and fun being had, actually. Because all sorts of things happened at NMs, Skirmishes, CEs and so on. In their case I think it was a combination of doing too much at once, and not acknowledging how much fun they were actually having. It took seeing the alternatives in Endwalker, to discover how good they had it.

It’s why despite me liking eureka more than Bozja Bozja was unequivocally the more healthy content for the design of the game

You could make progress the second you walked into the zone whether that was a skirmish that was up in your current highest zone, a CE that was recruiting when you zoned in or just a favourable weather condition to farm sprites (when dust btw)

I’d say bozja’s only misstep was tying the relic to at least clearing DRN even though it was possible to do the relic entirely outside of Bozja otherwise, if they made that distinction Bozja would have close to perfect

I like Bozja best even the zone is butt ugly, eureka was just a bit to chaotic for my tastes. I agree there should be more of this content in the game. Bozja seemed to flow more for me asking to group was easy people invited you. I am looking forward to going back there with my ninja.

The thing with any content that is different from others is you'll always get one person saying they love it while another screaming at the top of their lungs that they hate it.

You will never please everyone so just do what you want to do.

Most of the Eureka criticism came during Pagos, which was an unmitigated disaster at launch. There's no denying how horrendously implemented it was, and very much clouded the opinion of Exploratory zones for a good while. So why did it fail so spectacularly? Ironically, for somewhat similar reason we're seeing so much negativity now: the dev team listening to a small minority of players and being stubbornly stuck in their "vision."

Pagos saw the devs go out of their way to break NM trains as a viable option, which is something a handful of JP players whined about. They further necessitated the "mob farm" method but with absolutely ludicrous amounts—all because they wanted a FFXI vision, something spearheaded by one of the XI developers working on Pagos. Additionally, they delayed logos actions because "we didn't want to overwhelm players still getting accustomed to Eureka." The end result was a boring slog of a zone that emphasised the absolute worst elements of FFXI in game with systems not designed for that type of grind, and without a cool gimmick to offset some of the negative reception. To say they had egg on their face would be a laughable understatement—especially when they slowly scaled back every single change made. Adding to the insult, players eventually brute forced NM training before subsequent patches made it the best method again.

In an effort to please some of the FFXI crowd, they pissed off a lot more players. Just like now they've focused almost exclusively on the hyper casual players who feel entitled 15+ relics but don't want to spent much extra time getting them. In both scenarios, these are a minority demographic that had a much bigger ripple effect than they likely anticipated.

Now before anyone jumps, I specifically denoted "hyper casual" because just like the midcore and hardcore players there are smaller subsets of players within those categories. Most casual players aren't necessarily looking for handouts or can't press 123. They simply don't care about the higher end content or have less time to play. However, they still want to work towards something like a hardcore player does.

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Originally Posted by Xirean

As long as they are a separate instance while also changing how the game works, I will dislike exploratory content.

Take things from there and put them on the actual overworld maps. Don't cut people off from the rest of the game with an instance.

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Mao agrees. Mao likes how GW2 does explorations. Mao nots sure can be done with FFXIV though. Explorations locked to MSQs and forces player to plod alongs. Was Mao biggest complaint abouts MSQs. Explorations and Gatherings so heavily restricteds. To makes matters worse, system as is currently makes Gatherings little bits borings. Being led to new areas like cow to new pasture is nots excitings. What IS excitings is going to places that are DANGEROUS and using wits to plunder resource nodes and gets out alive. By time MSQ allows entry into new area, is no more danger.

My own thought on Bozja was that there were three main problems:

1) It was MORE efficient to gather relic mats outside of Bozja than in. It should have either been equal or Bozja have the slight edge.
2) Despite being group content, for some reason, the high content/achievements were tied to Duels, which were solo affairs. I get wanting challenging content, but when you cut people out, it's not MMO/community anymore.
3) There were several bottlenecks (CLL, DR, and to a MUCH lesser extent, Dal; and CLL was even worse to start since the rewards were so little and you lost so much Mettle from dying, people wouldn't do it a second time); even now, the DR step is almost impossible to do to get those shards, so you have to solo PotD for them (though you can do floor 51-60 with somewhat relative ease, the drop rate isn't great...though I've gotten one from floor 1-10 before, so it IS possible...)

4) A lesser problem, but the environments were dreary (yes, warzone, I understand, BUT...) and kinda samey palate from the first and second zones. Part of this may have been covid (imagine if the second zone had all been exploring the underground ruins and fortress around DR with DR being the CLL of the zone?) as they did say they had to cut a zone/the middle zone, but Eureka zones are distinct other than Pagos and the first half of Pyros. Anemos, Pagos/half Pyros, the other half Pyros, and Hydatos are all different, which helps decrease boredom and the feeling of samey-ness.

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Originally Posted by Noumenon

The difference: one calls out the developers. The other disparages and insults other players on the forum.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

Okay that's fair :) I can accept this.

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The one problem with this: I'm not the one insulting other players on the forum here, Noumenon. And you just lied/accused me in another thread as being known to report brigade people, something I not only haven't ever done, but have never even been accused, much less "known for", doing before you just did it today.

As I said there, I'm known here for many things - long posts, foot in mouth, stubbornly trying to have good faith discussions in the face of hecklers and bullies - but report brigading people is not something I'm known for, no matter you trying to sell that lie.

When you're lying and insulting other players in most of your posts, and I'm not, then that's the difference here:

Not to mention you were quick to shoot down my thread pointing out Thras/Titanalt was not me. Very suspect.

One calls out the developers and lies, disparages, and insults other players on the forum, while the other, me, try to have good faith discussions and debates, as I'm doing so here with you trying, yet again, to bad faith derail what would otherwise be a good discussion:

Is FFXIV carried by Eureka/Bozja type content?

How does this make sense when the content is very unpopular when it goes live?

I think the thing you miss here ren (while I do agree with your point that a lot of the rewards for massive group content were tied to the duels which was strange design) is that the content wasn’t very unpopular, it just had a lot of agressive posting online about it

Bozja has always had fantastic stats as long as we have had stats for Bozja, the bottlenecks were messy I agree, it’s why I’m glad they fixed them, I don’t think relics being better outside Bozja was good or bad, it definitely helped cater to people who didn’t like relic zones

Oh, I agree.

It's what I say about (a lot but not ALL) of the complaints and complainers now. There are always people who will complain.

What I'm more pointing out is that there's not a situation where some groups aren't saying doom. But you know I like Eureka/Bozja already. I was just thinking "Was that the only thing I enjoyed in ShB and SB?" and my personal answer was no. While it was something I enjoyed, especially in SB (since I had more time to play once I got out of the military; when Eureka was current I didn't get to spent much time there for that reason), it wasn't the reason I stayed subbed. Especially in ShB, where we didn't even get Bozja until the expansion was half-over.

I 100% think not having one is bad and EW has proven it. And I 100% want more in the future. And I also want them tied to the relic (I don't mind there being a tomestone "second 'relic' glowy weapon" for the hypercasuals, but I want a relic grind, too). I do think we've seen reason they should decouple the tome weapon from clearing 7 weeks of normal fights. But I think there should be Exploration Zones and relic weapons (AND ARMOR!!!) tied to them.

I just think people need to be sober minded about all this and go in with eyes open, not occluded by various shaded goggles.

Fair enough?

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Most of the Eureka criticism came during Pagos, which was an unmitigated disaster at launch.

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I think I played it after only one NM nerf and a change to how you get Light (and it had many more nerfs after that because people still thought the spawn rate was too low).

Pagos wasn't really an issue even then. I saw NMs spawn often enough and it was fun navigating the dragons to get to them. People had a big issue with the terrain and how the dragons would kill them, but in my opinion, that's a skill issue. The whole point was learning to walk past them and the danger of doing so.

People complained about Light being hard to farm, but I simply joined a dragon farm party and got light real fast. I also got Light at a decent rate just from NMs. All these issues must have only been an issue for people that only had a few hours a week to play. In fact I only even went in there once a week for 3 hours and did it casually and had no problem.

The biggest issue with Pagos in my opinion was farming for the very rare drops and things like Copycat Bulb. I went in there for years after it released for 3 hour sessions and never even passed the first layer of RNG to have a chance of getting it. It was so hopeless that I just bought it, because after years of trying to earn it myself, it just wasn't worth it. I prefer the cluster system from Bozja where you had a fixed grind to get a lot of the rewards and you knew exactly how long it would take to get the clusters.

I'll say that I believe that people had their own reasons for enjoying, or not enjoying, content like Eureka and Bozja. I've done both, personally, and enjoyed Eureka for what it was though I didn't enjoy Bozja outside of some character stuff before and after their Fates (and I'm not going to pretend they're anything other than Fates).

I loved what Eureka was and even more enjoyed the "overworld mobs are actually threatening until you sufficiently level". The. . .elemental wheel was a very weird addition but otherwise I enjoyed it. Absolutely no one else in my circle of friends enjoyed it but I had fun enough that I went through it alone. My gripe about Eureka came from the relic. While I loved the relic armor the fact that the relic system was tied purely to Eureka was horrible and alienated people who don't enjoy that kind of content. Prior relics, ARR and HW, weren't gated behind 1 specific kind of content, it tried to touch as much as it could from the expansion of its release. While I was able to get the relic because I enjoyed Eureka it certainly wasn't fair to those who didn't. It's not content that everyone would, or should, enjoy.

Come Bozja I was actually pretty excited for it at the start. I loved Final Fantasy Tactics (not Advanced or Advanced II or even the Lions War remaster) so it having the completion of the FFT Raids being a requirement I was very Looking Forward To It. Until I reached the camp and. . .had to go through the whole ordeal with Cid. It was a lot of red flags about the kind of story I was about to see unfold. And, of course, they once again tied the relic to it. This time it at least wasn't AS BAD as Eureka. You can fulfill the grindy bits of relic system outside of Bozja but you were still forced to engage thoroughly with Bozja to progress it. You can't get your relic without Bozja. You can't progress stages of your relic without progressing Bozja and if you wanted to finish your relic, you have to finish Bozja. So, once again, for the people who didn't enjoy this type of content, but wanted to get their relic, they're back in the same boat as they were in Eureka.

I'm just gonna go ahead and state that Bozja and Eureka, while are the same TYPE of content, how they function are very different. 90% of the map in Bozja was not threatening outside of very specific areas with one-shot type mobs. From the get-go, it was very different from Eureka and the "customizable skillsets" that were added in the later half of Eureka was available at the start in Bozja and, while in a better form that what we had in Eureka, it was also a thing I didn't particularly like in Eureka.

After experiencing Bozja, I left and wouldn't come back until the mount achievement for all the notes was released. I wanted the mount, so I came back and collected all the notes in what I'd arguably say was the worst grind I've experienced in XIV in my years playing it - and I couldn't even collect more than 2 ATMA for several months when that terrible system released. I only came back for the mount and never touched it again after I got it.

That type of content certainly won't save or break an expansion. Heavensward is a testament to that due to it not ever being referenced when people are giving EW crap for its lack of it because you can give people PTSD just uttering HW Diadem for those that were there for it.