All Bozja content should be easy and the raids should be a roulette w/ big rewards.

[TaleraRistain]

Pretty sure atleast 3-4 stages of the HW relic required you to do party content. The difference however was that you could do them completely at your own pace, since the party content was either 4man, 8man or 24man party encounters that were either current PvE content or part of roulettes, maybe even both. It was never content with an incredibly limited lifespan that forced you to rush it or run the risk of never being able to complete it.

Yeah I didn't really understand what he meant by saying you could solo it, unless he meant queueing for roulette solo. But it wasn't too much more demanding on that front that what MSQ asked of everyone. The last sentence is absolutely correct. You could go about your daily routines and get updates for ARR and HW. Maybe shorten things a bit with some extra grinding here and there when able to. You weren't supposed to be locked away in a special specific zone for ages unable to participate in anything else.

[Kathryn]

There is an issue with Castrum, it's not the difficulty its the fact that trying to get 48 people in a non alliance format to co ordinate a completion especially for first timers is difficult, I only play an hour and a half a night and we've tried twice in Castrum to get to the next step in the relic but the groups have never got past the first boss.

Our first time we went bottom and the top never had enough dps and wiped killing everyone then split, there went 3k mettle, Our second time (Yes we've only done this twice as its the only 2 times we've seen it in our available playtime) we went top and the bottom wiped then left..

I really have no hopes of getting my 1 relic per expansion this time round.

Before you say we have to play more we both work full time and due to the nature of our jobs we are frontline and have been working pretty much 7 days a week during the entirety of this damned pandemic, this content is just not player friendly in general and should be a roulette.

[Arngrim_Greyashe]

I don't want to be that person who is like "lul but everyone is terrible" but... like... have you done DF lol? I enjoy DF so I don't like dragging people for a content I appreciate they join me on, and most people are not toxic, certainly a general lax environment (which I do like), so it's generally all good for me (given you're not trying to do savage in DF, which I've done and like oof for certain bosses until echo stacks up) . . . but . . . "pay attention" is going to be out of bounds for a significant portion of people that make up that sort of hyper-casual crowd. Casual doesn't necessarily mean bad, just to be clear, as I would call my self casual mmo player at this point (I was hardcore long time ago), but a lot of people who just play to goof off and have a low stress environment are not going to find much resonance with what you just said.

Dark Souls is actually very easy too, if you pay attention. Obviously Bozja is no where near Dark Souls hard, but you should get the point. There is a level of try that will make "its easy if" be pretty invalid. Like I played Warcraft 3 ladder maps and it was easy to do well when you used hotkeys better than everyone else but I just found zipping around the map via hotkeys to soul drain the experience - I didn't enjoy what began to feel like work. Meanwhile I was pretty adapt at custom because most of them were "focus on one task well" which felt a lot less work-like to me. So it was easy to do well, because I enjoyed the effort I had to give- meanwhile it was "technically" easy for me to do well in ladder but not easy in the sense that I did not enjoy it at all (I enjoyed the story campaign, I just didn't like trying to grandmaster up because it was just work, to me, at that point).

Anyway.. point is I don't think what you said is a good sign for actually being 'easy' for the crowd I think OP is talking about (the casual DF sort of crowd). Most of the casual stuff in this game requires like 1/4 of the party to pay attention, you can have a lot of duds in a group and still complete most content.

I mean, if they want it dumbed down so badly to where the game just hands you the trophy for participating, then no, it's not that easy. But in general, the content in this game has little difficulty once you actually learn the mechanics. I haven't delved into savage stuff in years, but 24 man raids and basic dungeons aren't difficult.

[Shougun]

I mean, if they want it dumbed down so badly to where the game just hands you the trophy for participating, then no, it's not that easy. But in general, the content in this game has little difficulty once you actually learn the mechanics. I haven't delved into savage stuff in years, but 24 man raids and basic dungeons aren't difficult.

I agree with the later, well minus a few very specific bosses lol. My point was however that nearly all that content, minus the specific 24 man raid bosses that are famous now, you can pretty much do the content with a massively hobbled group that hardly works together AND it was easy to form that group (I imagine there would be a lot less issues if it was just easier to pack every group needed).

So if we are aiming for that bar (which I would agree isn't that high) then Bozja s a bit higher than that bar, and so it would make sense to "further lower the bar" IF that casual audience that has enjoyed the difficulty of that other said content was the target audience.

There have been many dungeons where it was just two people carrying the whole team, and some cases (usually only 4 group but I've had one raid and a few 8 man) where it was just one person (that person sometimes being me, hype ). Bozja has multiple issues before it can be called "as easy" as the common content is, it is however certainly not the hardest content in the game. Ultimate would like to have a word with people who think savage is hard lol, and savage is having words with Bozja XD.

[Dogempire]

Cleared Castrum today, got about 38-ish people for it and we only wiped once on the last boss because of issues with the top boss. Otherwise I probably died around 6-10 times from mechanics I didn't completely understand as did a lot of party members with all of them being first timers.

That being said, I can't help but feel I got lucky with the run going so smoothly. Only reason I think we cleared the last boss is because we had a pretty good amount of people who knew what they were doing, especially with the top laners for the final boss.

IMO I don't think they should nerf Castrum Lacus, but they should incentivize people who've done it before to run it again for the rewards, that way even if there's a lot of new people there's still a good chance things will go smoothly, even with some deaths.

[ForteNightshade]

Alright, so how do you think MSQ would fare if they forced everyone to run it at min ilvl, added a Doom mechanic that instant kills you every couple of mistakes, and takes a large chunk of your exp every time you die; or if you're 80 it takes a percentage of your Gil? Oh, and you can randomly end up in a group without tanks or healers as well....

Let's not kid ourselves, the difficulty is definitely a big part of the problem. Savage and Ultimate are supposed to be the difficult but faster means of gear progression; Bozja and the relic are the easy but grindy alternative.

Improving the rewards SUBSTANTIALLY might be a way to fix this, but it's not a realistic one, imo.

Also, the mettle argument isn't a good one. Until we know for sure there's no new resistance ranks or mettle requirements coming, mettle is still necessary.

This comparison is so off base, you're playing football on a hockey rink.

First and foremost, Lost Actions are grossly overpowered compared to anything we can do at max level, nevermind being synced down to level 50. For reference sake, tanks can burst in their openers with the proper Lost Actions higher than Black Mage. Lost Slash on Machinist alone deals upwards of 600k, which is more than double a Crit/Direct Hit Technical Step. We are leagues above i430, and thus nowhere near a min ilvl equivalent. Likewise, your Mettle equivalent is an extremely flawed Strawman. You're assuming Mettle will have some further significant impact. Presently, it does not. And it will not until 5.55 some six months down the road. Meanwhile, EXP and Gil both have value currently. You can't compare losing either on the presumption Mettle will have equal value.

Simply put, you're making massive leaps and straight up poor comparisons while ignoring the obvious. MSQ gives a disproportionate amount of rewards as compensation for putting up with lengthy cut scenes. Like I said prior, which you ignored, when those rewards weren't present, people stopped queuing. The issue with Bozja as a whole is the reward structure.

You're completely incorrect. Relics are the casual answer to endgame weapons. There's even a set of interviews on another thread on this topic on these forums where Yoshi-P outright states they are intended to be able to be completed solo without mandatory party requirements. And outside of jumping in a roulette or two (which you can still do solo technically), ARR and HW stuck to that format. They required grinds and investment, but that investment wasn't in mandatory party content. The interview is about Eureka and admitting they messed up and went against the intention.

I'll have to ask you cite said interviews because not only does it contradict their statements from Stormblood, neither the ARR and HW relics could be completed entirely solo as dungeons were mandatory for both. Nevertheless, relics have never been targeted at the hyper casual demographic but rather made approachable for them. Their primary target is the softcore players; those who typically aren't interested in Savage but may do the odd EX here and there. Grinds like this typically don't attract casual players hence why the actual casual weapons are tome.

[EtherRose]

They shouldnt be easy. But the biggest problem with Bozja is the rewards. Doing the content outside of Bozja shouldnt be faster than doing it in Bozja. My major gripe with this relic is that they are practically begging you to not be in Bozja and get the relic by doing fates and alliance roulettes.

Something needs to change because in 2 or 3 weeks Bozja will be dead content again. If you didnt do it the first 3 weeks then you will be out of luck.

They should be the same, realistically. You forget one key factor on why this happened. The community complaining about the one way "Grind" for the relics. Hence why this relic they made it two different ways to obtain it. So those who don't like the instance and prefer a more casual way to obtain the relic can do fates, etc. While those who do like the mindless grind can do Bozja constantly. But it doesn't matter anyways. All this community does is complain regardless of what they try/do.

[ReynTime]

On the topic of "DF crowd" and with people still saying Bozja is casual content... I'll still stand by that the difficulty progression the game provides for non-savage players is poorly planned if Bozja raids were indeed meant to appeal to that demographic. I'm not sure about Eureka, but regarding Bozja compared to ARR/HW relics, I thought the point of relics was to provide an alternative to "2nd best" in slot by the end of an expansion's life cycle for players who think savage raids are too challenging. Then why lock the progression of these behind content that's also considered too challenging for casual players?

It's just poorly designed. It makes the experience bad for both kinds of players. You have to deal with people failing or dragging the pace down and they have to deal with frustration of unexpected difficulty spikes when they've been carried through CEs easily or running instances that were hallways with 3 simple bosses for months or longer.


I bet all my gil if they add better rewards for Castrum, it STILL will be a pain to queue for, because yes, the difficulty is, in fact, an issue, for the average participant, because Bozja's "overworld" isn't nowhere near that hard and is rather misleading, MSQ duties have been faceroll hallways and even when slightly more challenging normal raid bosses happen these players end up successfully carried anyway.
This game at its current state is NOT doing a good job teaching players and experiencing the new raid I think it really shows now more than ever.
It shouldn't be other players' job to teach them. Game design 101 that Mega freaking Man showcased 30+ years ago. A well designed game needs to teach the player on its own. MMORPG or not.

[Colt47]

On the topic of "DF crowd" and with people still saying Bozja is casual content... I'll still stand by that the difficulty progression the game provides for non-savage players is poorly planned if Bozja raids were indeed meant to appeal to that demographic. I'm not sure about Eureka, but regarding Bozja compared to ARR/HW relics, I thought the point of relics was to provide an alternative to "2nd best" in slot by the end of an expansion's life cycle for players who think savage raids are too challenging. Then why lock the progression of these behind content that's also considered too challenging for casual players?

It's just poorly designed. It makes the experience bad for both kinds of players. You have to deal with people failing or dragging the pace down and they have to deal with frustration of unexpected difficulty spikes when they've been carried through CEs easily or running instances that were hallways with 3 simple bosses for months or longer.


I bet all my gil if they add better rewards for Castrum, it STILL will be a pain to queue for, because yes, the difficulty is, in fact, an issue, for the average participant, because Bozja's "overworld" isn't nowhere near that hard and is rather misleading, MSQ duties have been faceroll hallways and even when slightly more challenging normal raid bosses happen these players end up successfully carried anyway.
This game at its current state is NOT doing a good job teaching players and experiencing the new raid I think it really shows now more than ever.
It shouldn't be other players' job to teach them. Game design 101 that Mega freaking Man showcased 30+ years ago. A well designed game needs to teach the player on its own. MMORPG or not.

The problem isn't the difficulty, the issue is the punishment system. They could literally fix everything if the instances gave mettle per boss fight to make up for the deaths. They do have a quest that gives some for completing the new instance, but still.

[Goji1639]

This comparison is so off base, you're playing football on a hockey rink.

First and foremost, Lost Actions are grossly overpowered compared to anything we can do at max level, nevermind being synced down to level 50. For reference sake, tanks can burst in their openers with the proper Lost Actions higher than Black Mage. Lost Slash on Machinist alone deals upwards of 600k, which is more than double a Crit/Direct Hit Technical Step. We are leagues above i430, and thus nowhere near a min ilvl equivalent. Likewise, your Mettle equivalent is an extremely flawed Strawman. You're assuming Mettle will have some further significant impact. Presently, it does not. And it will not until 5.55 some six months down the road. Meanwhile, EXP and Gil both have value currently. You can't compare losing either on the presumption Mettle will have equal value.

Simply put, you're making massive leaps and straight up poor comparisons while ignoring the obvious. MSQ gives a disproportionate amount of rewards as compensation for putting up with lengthy cut scenes. Like I said prior, which you ignored, when those rewards weren't present, people stopped queuing. The issue with Bozja as a whole is the reward structure.

First, lost actions are complete RNG. The only ones I had worth using by Rank 10 were some Lost Cures, and plenty of people don't bother with them all together. They're gimmicks, and peoples first instinct is usually to ignore gimmicks. People bringing and using the correct ones does obviously make the content easier, but that's not something you can rely on.

Second, the MSQ example wasn't meant to be a direct equivalent; just an easy to grasp illustration of why difficulty matters. People are NOT going to stick with difficult content in random group scenarios, because trying to coordinate to that degree with 24 random people isn't fun. DR just isn't worth dealing with, and the rewards would have to be phenomenal for people to put up with that place for any amount of time.

I already admitted that significantly improving the rewards could work, but I just don't think that's going to happen. Making the content not terrible to run with randoms is the more likely solution.