Requiring Castrum Litore completion for the next Bozja area is a bad decision.

[Nezerius]

So they did completely ignore one of the biggest complaints about Eureka? Do they not realize this is still forcing people to do it, just like they forced people to do Eureka? They really need to let these types of zones stand on their own and not try to artificially prop them up by tying something like relic/resistance weapons to these zones.

Except the biggest complaint about the Eureka weapons is that you could only ever grind in Eureka to progress on the weapons. You always had to go through the same steps of obtaining enough crystals + the items from the high level NM in each of the zone (later put on a vendor to be bought with crystals). You couldn't just knock out a few FATEs while you were waiting on something else (DF queue, PF group to fill up etc.).

In other words, you had to always set time apart for it, even if you were working on your 2nd, 3rd, 4th weapon. Meanwhile, completing the story of a zone is a one-and-done deal. You do it once, and then you can choose to never enter it again when you want to work on a Resistance weapon.

[Deceptus]

Except the biggest complaint about the Eureka weapons is that you could only ever grind in Eureka to progress on the weapons. You always had to go through the same steps of obtaining enough crystals + the items from the high level NM in each of the zone (later put on a vendor to be bought with crystals). You couldn't just knock out a few FATEs while you were waiting on something else (DF queue, PF group to fill up etc.).

In other words, you had to always set time apart for it, even if you were working on your 2nd, 3rd, 4th weapon. Meanwhile, completing the story of a zone is a one-and-done deal. You do it once, and then you can choose to never enter it again when you want to work on a Resistance weapon.

Problem is that it still requires 23 other people to beat it at minimum. That's 1/3 of an instance. And once the next step comes out, Bozja Southern is going to largely be a graveyard.

Eureka was able to skirt this by not making the previous have a mandatory fight. It would be like saying in order to get into Pagos you had to kill Pazuzu, or to get into Hydatos you had to kill Penny in Pyros.

Or to get even closer, to get into Pagos you had to kill a scaled down version of Baldesion Arsenal.

The main issue is they're putting this convoluted mandatory step early in the process.

[HyperiusUltima]

Problem is that it still requires 23 other people to beat it at minimum. That's 1/3 of an instance. And once the next step comes out, Bozja Southern is going to largely be a graveyard.

Eureka was able to skirt this by not making the previous have a mandatory fight. It would be like saying in order to get into Pagos you had to kill Pazuzu, or to get into Hydatos you had to kill Penny in Pyros.

Or to get even closer, to get into Pagos you had to kill a scaled down version of Baldesion Arsenal.

The main issue is they're putting this convoluted mandatory step early in the process.

I think it's intended story-wise for those who are doing Bozja's storyline. I actually enjoyed it, believe it or not - and given how what's-their-name did X and Y in Z with A, it makes sense, but isn't the best approach.

What they wanted was for people to be able to get memories outside of Bozja so that they could get the relic up to Recollection. Also, remember how Bozja turned into a graveyard after people found out it's 100% Rate in HW? I think this is a means to make sure there's a sort of "challenge" added to the relic rather than make it be so simple to do given it's 60 FATEs and 6 Antitowers. There's been feedback, and it's being listened to by those who have been doing Bozja, hopefully. If it's worth anything they hopefully have listened to our feedback regarding Duels...because that's been a bigger issue than whining about the Savage Version of a 48-man raid.

[Gemina]

Cheer the community will have to come together to get things done. OMG, what an idea.

It is absolutely comical that after you say this, you follow up with this...

Glad I got it done when it was new content.

Sounds to me that you're not all that confident of our community once the novelty wears off of newer content. Tell me. Will you (being a member of the community) come to aid those that need to get this done for the next Bozja content? If the answer is no, then you're the last person who should be expressing sarcasm when it comes to the demeanor of the community. If it is yes, then you will be giving that aid with little to no reward for doing so since Castrum offers nothing except a requisite you have already obtained.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Problem is that it still requires 23 other people to beat it at minimum.

You can beat CLL with less people than 24 (I've cleared in a premade group of 16 + 3-4 pugs that joined when it popped in the early days of Bozja release), if everyone's on point and don't die to every aoe, essence's up and uses lost actions to supercharge everyone's damage output. You may not be saving every prisoner, but that's not mandatory to clear. I wouldn't be surprised if you could do it with 16 people, 24 is hardly the minimum. You only need 8 for Lyon + some remainder to handle the mobs in the main battle arena.

Also, while the superboss of each zone wasn't mandatory to progress the story of the zones and reach the next one, they were mandatory for the relic progression, much akin to how CLL will technically be gate-keeping the next part of the relic. And just like how they made it so that people could still complete the relic due to the Eureka zone bosses being impossible/nigh impossible to solo or low man, I have no doubts they'll do something to CLL to make sure it can be low-manned to future proof it. Just off the top of my head, they have these insanely powerful NPCs running around called the Blades, they could fit them into CLL and give them absurd stats to mow down the bosses if the game detects the player count is underneath a certain threshold. Not to mention possible 100% echo. No doubt they have something in mind with the literal terabytes to petabytes worth of metrics data they likely have showing Castrum on a decline.

Finally, I doubt Bozja will fully die out anyway, since CLL is currently the only source for the deep essence & bloodsucker/beast/whatever the healer one is essences, along with dropping Forgotten fragments that are extremely annoying to farm from star or rank V mobs. Which if the 48 man savage version is hard enough that it mandates those essences & actions for everyone, means CLL farming will become mandatory for anyone not willing to sink hundreds of thousands to millions of gil into forgotten fragments on the mb (seriously, I saw Forgotten fragments of Transcendence up to 10k/pop on some servers which gives you a 1/3rd chance of getting the essence you need) to get a good stock of the essences they need, especially if the savage version has as much replayability as BA did.

[rance-sama]

Just give Castrum XP and Mettle rewards.
Like... A lot of them.

[Gemina]

You can beat CLL with less people than 24 (I've cleared in a premade group of 16 + 3-4 pugs that joined when it popped in the early days of Bozja release), if everyone's on point and don't die to every aoe, essence's up and uses lost actions to supercharge everyone's damage output. You may not be saving every prisoner, but that's not mandatory to clear. I wouldn't be surprised if you could do it with 16 people, 24 is hardly the minimum. You only need 8 for Lyon + some remainder to handle the mobs in the main battle arena.

Also, while the superboss of each zone wasn't mandatory to progress the story of the zones and reach the next one, they were mandatory for the relic progression, much akin to how CLL will technically be gate-keeping the next part of the relic. And just like how they made it so that people could still complete the relic due to the Eureka zone bosses being impossible/nigh impossible to solo or low man, I have no doubts they'll do something to CLL to make sure it can be low-manned to future proof it. Just off the top of my head, they have these insanely powerful NPCs running around called the Blades, they could fit them into CLL and give them absurd stats to mow down the bosses if the game detects the player count is underneath a certain threshold. Not to mention possible 100% echo. No doubt they have something in mind with the literal terabytes to petabytes worth of metrics data they likely have showing Castrum on a decline.

Finally, I doubt Bozja will fully die out anyway, since CLL is currently the only source for the deep essence & bloodsucker/beast/whatever the healer one is essences, along with dropping Forgotten fragments that are extremely annoying to farm from star or rank V mobs. Which if the 48 man savage version is hard enough that it mandates those essences & actions for everyone, means CLL farming will become mandatory for anyone not willing to sink hundreds of thousands to millions of gil into forgotten fragments on the mb (seriously, I saw Forgotten fragments of Transcendence up to 10k/pop on some servers which gives you a 1/3rd chance of getting the essence you need) to get a good stock of the essences they need, especially if the savage version has as much replayability as BA did.

I'd wager that a good portion of players inside Bozja are not aware of even half of what you wrote here. Especially those who need a Castrum clear. The coordinated effort required for clearing with fewer players is a tall order, and cannot be expected from those who need Castrum for the clear. If players who have cleared it are running it, why would they be willing to forego even one prisoner? It is also risky as the loss to mettle should the instance fail is massive. Anyone less than rank 15 will feel this hit hard.

Just because it can be completed doesn't mean there are not fundamental problems with Castrum. I agree that I don't believe Bozja will die out. Bozja has incentive such as leveling and cluster farming. Castrum has little to none.

[Driavna]

I'd wager that a good portion of players inside Bozja are not aware of even half of what you wrote here. Especially those who need a Castrum clear. The coordinated effort required for clearing with fewer players is a tall order, and cannot be expected from those who need Castrum for the clear. If players who have cleared it are running it, why would they be willing to forego even one prisoner? It is also risky as the loss to mettle should the instance fail is massive. Anyone less than rank 15 will feel this hit hard.

Just because it can be completed doesn't mean there are not fundamental problems with Castrum. I agree that I don't believe Bozja will die out. Bozja has incentive such as leveling and cluster farming. Castrum has little to none.

Incentives for Castrum, if devs are not overhyping Delubrum Reginae 48m difficulty, are lost actions and chances for upgrades. Once the latter is released Castrum should get more attention. Anyway, the main factor of failure for Castrum is players not using DPS essences/items and actions. During one of the live letters, Yoshida requested players to use them and was also pointed out again for Delubrum Reginae 24m too since matched parties are not going to be role balanced.

Still, adding XP and mettle will help right now.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

I'd wager that a good portion of players inside Bozja are not aware of even half of what you wrote here. Especially those who need a Castrum clear. The coordinated effort required for clearing with fewer players is a tall order, and cannot be expected from those who need Castrum for the clear. If players who have cleared it are running it, why would they be willing to forego even one prisoner? It is also risky as the loss to mettle should the instance fail is massive. Anyone less than rank 15 will feel this hit hard.

Just because it can be completed doesn't mean there are not fundamental problems with Castrum. I agree that I don't believe Bozja will die out. Bozja has incentive such as leveling and cluster farming. Castrum has little to none.

Of course. I wouldn't expect 16 random pugs to be able to do castrum that easily. I was just pointing out that 24 players minimum is factually incorrect, and that it can be done with less if you get the right players. Just as you can get a group of 48 and still wipe & fail in castrum until it times out, players numbers are irrelevant to a point compared to player awareness & skill; the higher player numbers is really only giving more rez power for people dying to every aoe, in the grand scheme of things. But like I said in my post, Square has all the metrics of castrum they could need and a track history of future proofing older content in Eureka; I'm not worried. I can pretty much guarantee CLL will get some modification in either 5.4 or 5.45 to help aid it, not to mention CLL will likely become very important for anyone at R15 that wants to do the savage version of the next instance due to exclusive powerful fragments in CLL.

[Deceptus]

Of course. I wouldn't expect 16 random pugs to be able to do castrum that easily. I was just pointing out that 24 players minimum is factually incorrect, and that it can be done with less if you get the right players. Just as you can get a group of 48 and still wipe & fail in castrum until it times out, players numbers are irrelevant to a point compared to player awareness & skill; the higher player numbers is really only giving more rez power for people dying to every aoe, in the grand scheme of things. But like I said in my post, Square has all the metrics of castrum they could need and a track history of future proofing older content in Eureka; I'm not worried. I can pretty much guarantee CLL will get some modification in either 5.4 or 5.45 to help aid it, not to mention CLL will likely become very important for anyone at R15 that wants to do the savage version of the next instance due to exclusive powerful fragments in CLL.

Technically correct and functionally correct are two completely different things. This is the FFXIV playerbase we're talking about here, lets be honest. The "good" players aren't running Castrum anymore because they sped to Rank 10/15 when Bozja first came out, and got their rank really early, and ran Castrum then. Now they're in Cluster Groups / CE groups for coins.

Regarding buffing / nerfing the content: Look how long it took them to fix the FusterCluck that was Pagos. Lets just say my confidence in their abilities to fix it in a timely manner isn't very high.

Especially when they made the situation WORSE by putting coins in CEs which disincentivized people from running Castrum. There were much better, easier, more elegant solutions (that have been repeatedly pointed out) and they didn't do them.