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

[Dogempire]

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.

Lost actions are actually really useful. When I ran Castrum for the first time I took lost Brave and a bunch of lost Arises on my Scholar and let me tell you, those 2.5s cast rez to full health without weakness raises came in really handy, especially with my co-healer having some as well so if either of us die we can cover the other.

Healers also have a 90% damage boost pot that lasts the entire instance, that's no joke of a damage increase. Lost brave is literally a 10 minute 5% damage boost, which again, is no joke, especially from a raider's perspective, not to mention the pots that basically turn healers into tanks.

[Goji1639]

Lost actions are actually really useful. When I ran Castrum for the first time I took lost Brave and a bunch of lost Arises on my Scholar and let me tell you, those 2.5s cast rez to full health without weakness raises came in really handy, especially with my co-healer having some as well so if either of us die we can cover the other.

Healers also have a 90% damage boost pot that lasts the entire instance, that's no joke of a damage increase. Lost brave is literally a 10 minute 5% damage boost, which again, is no joke, especially from a raider's perspective, not to mention the pots that basically turn healers into tanks.

I agree that they're strong and useful. They're also RNG drops that most people are likely to just outright ignore, because they're gimmicks that have no real relevance to the game outside of Bozja. They aren't something you can rely on to make this content work.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Tbf, the biggest roadblock in this content is only CLL
But I wouldn't advocate to make it 'easier'. No. We sorely need an endgame content that's harder than the casual faceroll content but easier than the higher end duties (extreme/savage/ultimate). Bozja provides exactly this (great concept, albeit poorly executed).
CLL's reward however is very lackluster compared to the risk on hand. If there's anything I'd like to suggest for CLL is to buff the reward, extend the starting time limit, AND make it so that replacement players can join in case some disheartened or legit trolls (yeah, they exist) bails out. Also perhaps prevent the instance from spawning additional CE while CLL recruitment is on going?

"What about Delubrum?"
Besides allowing replacement players to join in, leave everything else alone.
Make it easier? Please, no. They already provide the harder savage version. The normal version itself is very underwhelming in term of difficulties when compared to CLL, which makes me think that this is SE's way to make Delubrum (Normal) more accessible to more casual playerbase.

[ForteNightshade]

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.

If you cannot be bothered to farm a little for Lost Action drops, that's your own fault. Not only are they readily available on the market board if you absolutely don't want to farm, you can pretty easily join groups through shout chat in Bozja itself. You're effectively asking to reward players with what will become the best weapon in this expansion without also expecting them to put in a modicum of effort. "Here's your participation weapon."

And it was a poor illustration. You're presuming value that you cannot measure.

You are grossly overexaggerating Delubrum's difficulty. I've queued into it now several times where no one said so much as a word. Plenty of players were still new and yet, we cleared without too much of a fuss. Sure, people died. But we didn't need any mass coordination. Delebrum is essentially a harder 24 man. Regardless, people whined that Weeping City, Nidhogg, Shinryu, Hades, Orbonne and etc were "too hard." None of them died during their relevant life cycles because, wait for it, the rewards were tempting enough to keep people coming back. They also weren't massive either. As it currently stands, Castrum is effectively the equivalent of an EX Primal not having a mount to farm or Eden's Promise dropping no loot. In such a scenario, they'd all be dead content near instantly. Why? There's zero incentive to run them multiple times. Castrum doesn't need MSQ level rewards. It just needs something enticing.

[Goji1639]

If you cannot be bothered to farm a little for Lost Action drops, that's your own fault. Not only are they readily available on the market board if you absolutely don't want to farm, you can pretty easily join groups through shout chat in Bozja itself. You're effectively asking to reward players with what will become the best weapon in this expansion without also expecting them to put in a modicum of effort. "Here's your participation weapon."

And it was a poor illustration. You're presuming value that you cannot measure.

You are grossly overexaggerating Delubrum's difficulty. I've queued into it now several times where no one said so much as a word. Plenty of players were still new and yet, we cleared without too much of a fuss. Sure, people died. But we didn't need any mass coordination. Delebrum is essentially a harder 24 man. Regardless, people whined that Weeping City, Nidhogg, Shinryu, Hades, Orbonne and etc were "too hard." None of them died during their relevant life cycles because, wait for it, the rewards were tempting enough to keep people coming back. They also weren't massive either. As it currently stands, Castrum is effectively the equivalent of an EX Primal not having a mount to farm or Eden's Promise dropping no loot. In such a scenario, they'd all be dead content near instantly. Why? There's zero incentive to run them multiple times. Castrum doesn't need MSQ level rewards. It just needs something enticing.

I'd rather the content be easy than dead.

Requiring effort for the relic is fine. Requiring effort AND the ability to find 23 other people who are willing to tolerate a frustrating, hour long instance that eats mettle forever is not fine. Make the challenging parts of the relic SOLO content. Make the parts that require a large group something that doesn't punish people for continuing to run it over time, and maybe people will continue to run it over time. Simple stuff.

Lost Actions are honestly just kind of dumb. Too many useless ones; too much garbage to sift through; zero use outside of Bozja. People SHOULD be making good use of them, but I do understand why most aren't bothering.

Edit: My 1 and only run of DR went fine as well. Had a good group, only died a handful of times to odd mechanics, no wipes; but even after what I'd call a very successful run my reward was losing 15k mettle. Right now is when all the good players are getting their clears in, and most of them aren't going to bother going back in.

It's annoying, overlong content that punishes you for running with people who are new or inexperienced. Just nerf it. Better rewards is also a viable option, but they'd have to be MUCH better.

[Kathryn]

I've resigned myself to the fact I wont get to finish the Bozja story line... all our groups fail and disintegrate too quickly.

[Dogempire]

I agree that they're strong and useful. They're also RNG drops that most people are likely to just outright ignore, because they're gimmicks that have no real relevance to the game outside of Bozja. They aren't something you can rely on to make this content work.

I agree and disagree, because if I'm really desperate for a lost action, for instance I really wanted care fragments for lost brave, I just outright bought them off the MB

[Shougun]

Lost actions are actually really useful. When I ran Castrum for the first time I took lost Brave and a bunch of lost Arises on my Scholar and let me tell you, those 2.5s cast rez to full health without weakness raises came in really handy, especially with my co-healer having some as well so if either of us die we can cover the other.

Healers also have a 90% damage boost pot that lasts the entire instance, that's no joke of a damage increase. Lost brave is literally a 10 minute 5% damage boost, which again, is no joke, especially from a raider's perspective, not to mention the pots that basically turn healers into tanks.

I agree that they're strong and useful. They're also RNG drops that most people are likely to just outright ignore, because they're gimmicks that have no real relevance to the game outside of Bozja. They aren't something you can rely on to make this content work.

I imagine simply making them either pausable, learnable, or other types of permanent would do a lot in the way of increase their use and therefore the increase in quality clears.

While the more hardcore group is well used to using consumables (potions, food) for content I can without any doubt in my mind say that is not the rest of the population lol. And also some people, like myself, just generally well dislike losing neat things and may happen to not use something if it doesn't seem I have to (like if a game gives me hi-elxirs I'll not use it unless literally I need to or will die, I wont lose on purpose but I don't like watching items fly away unless easily, painlessly, consistently, re-obtainable). For example in Witcher their potion system mean I constantly used all my consumables because getting stuff back was easy and relatively painless (especially as the game went on, you know.. after stealing everything off the shelves of all the villages :3. . .). However if the game gave me a decoction that was like "one time only ever" you bet your bottom dollar I'd never use it unless absolutely necessary lol.

Adding some scaling, that doesn't purposefully make it much easier (a very difficult, and a bit impossible but you can get 'close', task of trying to keep a similar challenge across different sizes of groups), for less people in CLL (so if you get a small group or a big group it'll generally be do-able), and then getting far more people in general to take part in the special actions.. I think would help quite a bit.

Maybe some inspiration from FFVII or FFIX (materia / item abilities). Maybe a slot that pauses consumption, yet has a cooldown naturally- has to have some balance. Or you can learn them permanently after x use, they rank up, or whatever. There are a lot of ways to go about it. Like in FFVII you could add pretty UI elements or goofy interactions, or just be straight forward like FFIX. If you had it learned after certain number of uses you get people to use the consumables with the light at the end of the tunnel being they keep it. Lots of ways to go about it.

Of course if the focus target audience is more on the hardcore side consumable stuff is totally fine, my thought is minimal nerfing to the content that might still increase enjoyment of said content quite a bit (for the other types of players lol, not focusing on hardcore or even that medium core concept). If people didn't see CLL as such a painful gate as it would work in a high variety of player counts and then if these actions, some with pretty cool implications to your job to be fair, were far more encouraged to be used- I think a lot of your problems would be much smaller. (Actions increasing clear rates a bit since more people use them and just giving players more opportunities to goof around with unique tools, and then actually being able to consistently progress without the threat of wasted time.. both good things, that slight nerf technically being more people are using the strong actions, or that you don't need as many people for CLL since it'll scale itself more strongly to the number of people).

I think it's also okay if they want Eureka to be more mid/hardcore focused but then I think they should continue the idea in the first step for relic, as I really feel that was a good idea to keep as something hyper casual players could slowly lag behind with a neat weapon as a reward (relic usually not being 'the best' until the literal very end, savage and ultimate holding the crown for a while and are of course already focused more to that type of hardercore audience).