Bozja feedback thread

[VictorTheed]

How hard is it? Puppets bunker/Orborne Monastery before nerfs? Extreme? Savage?

I'm close to unlocking it

[TheGrimace]

I attempted Castrum twice today.

The first attempt, we had atleast 3 veterans who had either finished it before or who had made it to the final boss. my party was in the upper tier for Battle 1 and I enjoyed the mechanics for it a lot. Our Over-Alliance did very well until the final battle, where we lost twice because the DPS check is difficult if you're not prepared.

Attempt 2, we only had ~12 players present. Seven went above, and five of us stayed below. The lower tier battle felt much more stressful since it's essentially an escort mission, and we especially did not have the man-power to protect our charge. When area attacks prepared to nail the escort, we would try to divide the damage with each one of us trying to soak the hit, but most of the time we just ended up in a one-hit KO situation. Eventually, our charge fell and we died soon after. I don't know how the upper tier fared, but they must have died after us if they hadn't already, since most of them were seen returning soon after we did.

Castrum Lacus Litore is definitely content that, at present, feels as though it requires four parties to succeed. If more people are veterans to the content and know their strategy, maybe that can be lowered, but that feels counter-intuitive. The dungeon feels as though it needs more players, especially for the middle section where you need to rescue prisoners. It seems like Lost Death is the most popular method of speeding this along now, and more people means more chances to cast.

With the current difficulty of the dungeon, with how tough it can be to find an instance filled with people interested in participating, and with the amount of coins that are needed to upgrade equipment if you succeed in beating the Castrum, I see several different hurdles that need to be addressed. My first two complaints here are linked- you really need an appropriate amount of people to party with, or you're just wasting your time and Mettle. Having enough people can definitely trivialize a lot of the harder mechanics, but having too few people makes certain parts literally impossible. And even if upgrade items drop along with the coins that can be used for equipment upgrades, if you're unlucky you're going to be expecting to grind for a long time.

e: Oh, right, and I tried dueling Gabriel earlier too. I took him down to about 90% HP before I bit the dust. I was using Platebearer on my Ninja and had a reraise on, but I didn't properly plan out my placement of the area attacks and so I drove myself into a corner. Make one wrong move in these things and you're toast... no leeway to them.

[Duskane]

yeah i wouldnt say Castrum is Hard is more so annoying to get in
but if people are in there with there leveling job and have no idea what they are doing can be a issue

group i had got to final guy but failed Dps check mid fight
only 30 people in there

[Lium]

Having spent a decent amount of time in Bozja now, I feel like I can comment. I'm currently rank 7. I like it better than Eureka. It's more straightforward, less tedious and less punishing. I also like the setting and the atmosphere. Playing in World War I style battlezone is a nice change from the magical fantasy setting of pretty much everything else in the game. So, I think it's a nice change. It's also GREAT that I can switch jobs and level alts there.

I also like the quests and the story so far. I can't really recall Eureka's story.

The drawbacks to me are the memory drop rates and critical engagement lockouts. For the former, I was able to upgrade my weapon on my main job by just doing a couple hours of Fates in Eorzea. Guaranteed drops by completing those Fates, as opposed to Fates in Bozja where the drop rates are much lower. That seems odd to me because I thought the whole point of Bozja was to upgrade your weapon (among other things for sure, but for us non-raiders, this is the primary way to get to ilvl 500.)

The CE lockouts can be a bit frustrating. That part I think Eureka did better. Anyone could participate in killing the monster. But in Bozja you have to register but only for a limited amount of time, then click commence. I was locked out a couple times yesterday because of that system.

Overall I think it could use some tweeks, but this is a nice change of pace and I'm enjoying it.

[Ryaz]

I attempted Castrum twice today.

The first attempt, we had atleast 3 veterans who had either finished it before or who had made it to the final boss. my party was in the upper tier for Battle 1 and I enjoyed the mechanics for it a lot. Our Over-Alliance did very well until the final battle, where we lost twice because the DPS check is difficult if you're not prepared.

Attempt 2, we only had ~12 players present. Seven went above, and five of us stayed below. The lower tier battle felt much more stressful since it's essentially an escort mission, and we especially did not have the man-power to protect our charge. When area attacks prepared to nail the escort, we would try to divide the damage with each one of us trying to soak the hit, but most of the time we just ended up in a one-hit KO situation. Eventually, our charge fell and we died soon after. I don't know how the upper tier fared, but they must have died after us if they hadn't already, since most of them were seen returning soon after we did.

Castrum Lacus Litore is definitely content that, at present, feels as though it requires four parties to succeed. If more people are veterans to the content and know their strategy, maybe that can be lowered, but that feels counter-intuitive. The dungeon feels as though it needs more players, especially for the middle section where you need to rescue prisoners. It seems like Lost Death is the most popular method of speeding this along now, and more people means more chances to cast.

With the current difficulty of the dungeon, with how tough it can be to find an instance filled with people interested in participating, and with the amount of coins that are needed to upgrade equipment if you succeed in beating the Castrum, I see several different hurdles that need to be addressed. My first two complaints here are linked- you really need an appropriate amount of people to party with, or you're just wasting your time and Mettle. Having enough people can definitely trivialize a lot of the harder mechanics, but having too few people makes certain parts literally impossible. And even if upgrade items drop along with the coins that can be used for equipment upgrades, if you're unlucky you're going to be expecting to grind for a long time.

e: Oh, right, and I tried dueling Gabriel earlier too. I took him down to about 90% HP before I bit the dust. I was using Platebearer on my Ninja and had a reraise on, but I didn't properly plan out my placement of the area attacks and so I drove myself into a corner. Make one wrong move in these things and you're toast... no leeway to them.

WoL... Primal Slayer. God Slayer. Dies to one hit mechanics from random schlubs in duels. Everyone is Zenos level now.

Thats said, Bozja is better designed than Eureka, but it's also more lonely, imo, as I said in another thread. Groups don't form as often. A lot of times I can't get one or find people to invite outside of engagements. People don't interact as much. You call out a star mob and you're lucky to have 2-3 other people show up.

I feel like it gained a lot, but lost something in the process. The community. Now its all "Is Louhi (Castrum) up?" 24-7.

[Pepsi_Plunge]

Bozja is only out since 3 days. Give it a few more (the weekend is coming up) and enough people will get over level 10 to fill Castrum regularly.

[Quor]

I think this is the main intention behind it the developers thought.

Doing it by HW fates alone means you do nothing but the relic (and maybe a bit of exp.)
Whereas doing it in Bozja you can work on increasing your rank for future Bozja content, get tremendous amounts of exp for any 71-79 jobs you have, get tomestones(skirmishes & critical engagements award some), lockboxes filled with rare minions & mounts, enjoy a new zone we haven't seen 1000x over by now, engage in fights that are much more fun than any HW fate (Red Comet & the Castrum were amazing fun), all the while working on your relic, while something most important to me: doing it at level 80 with my full toolkit instead of syncing down constantly.

Doing it by Bozja gives far more bang for your buck for time spent overall, but if someone truly doesn't care for it and doesn't mind getting locked out of future Bozja content and won't regret it later, then the alternative path is there for them.

Exactly this. I'm loving Bozja so far. Just wish Castrum was a bit easier to deal with, by which I mean partioning groups to tackle the various obstacles in a manner that doesn't involve having to go down the list of players in the instance and assigning them to specific roles. Maybe some sort of option at the beginning with the two named NPC's, where each "reserves" half the group to go upstairs and half to stay downstairs.

Other than that the only thing I think that needs to be done is to fix Death screwing up rewards for some people on star mobs.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

One thing I wonder is why later Critical Engagements don't give more Lockboxes. That was something neat about Eureka: once you got further in, you had more opportunity to reap rewards by doing harder fights. You were rewarded for your strength. Here, it's just a flat two, which feels a little spiteful when the rewards are 80% Magicked Prisms and Materia. I'm not saying to tone down the drop rate on those, but if we could increase the haul of upper level battles, that'd be nice. Why does a fight like Red Chocobo, for example, reward the same thing as the easy peasy CEs in the first stretch?

[Jandor]

"We made this special area to grind relics. It has special FATEs with mechanics, we added special customization options, it has special mounts, minions, furnishings, gear & music, we even wrote a decent story-line for it. We put a lot of effort into this place!"

...

"Or you can just knock out a relic or two in a few hours doing old FATEs in HW areas. Whatever."

-----

Feels like an utterly bizarre decision. I don't really understand why they'd make it faster to get a relic by not engaging with the content they designed for it, but not only is it faster outside of Bozja, it's just fast in general. People were finished up on the day it released.

[KageTokage]

I think they already mentioned that you wouldn't be able to progress the weapon unless you finished the story in Bozja so the people who are neglecting to do so are going to be in for a rude awakening when 5.45 drops.