Finally something to be hyped about

[Renathras]

Of course, there is. We got fewer dungeons, and no exploration zones like Eureka or Bozja,

Come on, this is where we use small samples of content to make our point and subsequently ignore newer areas of content because it doesn't conform to the narrative. (If it isn't obvious I am being sarcastic with the above)

Read my posts if you doubt this, but I'm not one of the naysayers. But to be fair, exploration/field/open world content like Eureak/Bozja is honestly my favorite content in the game. I feel it has the most replayability of any zones in the game. Once you've cleared MSQ in normal zones, the only thing to go back for is you want to level using FATE's (you can do this in Bozja instead anyway from 71-90), want to collect Bicolor gemstones (I'm sitting on 1,000 right now as it is - the cap is WAY too low for me to want to do that, and I have no idea why the cap is that low or they aren't a token item I can stack in my inventory instead), or are doing Hunt Trains (I do the marathon post-reset each week to cap tomes for the week then pretty much just relayed S Ranks that spawn on my server to slowly work towards the achievements - and the spawns on those have pretty long CDs). If you're a completionist, you can clear every single sidequest...but let's be honest, NO ONE clears every single sidequest, and that's a one-time thing you can't do again and again anyway outside of NG+ MSQ. Then you can MIN/BOT/FSH, but the really good stuff is all on timed nodes.

There's nothing you can really work towards for character progression in terms of all the things I care about - gear, minion collecting, and mount collecting - that's really repeatable in most normal zones. All of that stuff is relegated to instanced content, not the open world.

Then you have exploration zones. These tend to have a ton of things to get. There are mounts, minions, and gear. Off the top of my head, Bozja has 3 gear sets, and two of them upgrade with specialized Bozja stats. There's around half a dozen mounts and at least that many minions, several emotes, lore notes to gather, and the Relic weapons, which have four stages/different models for glam. And if you've done all that, some of the stuff you can farm you can also MB, like the hairstyles, mounts, and minions, cosmetic gear (not that anyone REALLY wants a dozen corsages, but some people do actually buy the things on the MB), the stuff you can buy with clusters, and people will even buy Lost Action items. You can also use Bozja to level alt Jobs, and to get decent level 80 gear that also often makes good glam options for 90, 100, and so on.

So in terms of just raw replayability, exploration content does have that more than honestly any other content in the game.

I feel like the Island Sanctuary is going to try to fill this void, but I'm not sure it will because I'm not sure it will have the "farm for profit" or "get serviceable current end-game gear". And by "not sure", I mean "pretty sure it won't", especially on the gear.

The bigger issue is that part of the replayability of Bozja/Eureka is the social experience, pick-up-groups, etc, and IS won't have those things going for it.

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So I'm not a naysayer, and I am cautiously optimistic, and I get these forums are a "maximum negative" (a guy is trying to say Yoshi P insulted people by joking we'd fill up 800 glam slots) and so on. But I am a bit sore about the loss of an Exploration zone, since that honestly IS my favorite content in this game.

But I'll wait for IS and Hildi's Relics and see how I like them.

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Though I do agree that the people trying to doomsay everything are grumpy guses that are choosing to be grumpy. "It's not new unless it's an entirely new TYPE of content they've never done before"? Really? That's a ridiculous metric, especially for patch (rather than new expansion, where things can be more extensively reworked) release. Look at any major MMO and their patches. They seldom add entirely new TYPES of content, and when they do it within an expansion, it's OFTEN relatively minor things like a "selfie-stick camera".

And people aren't "white knights" if they merely disagree with you. Some of you folks seem to live under perpetual doomclouds.

We're getting new content, it IS new content, that much is clear. Whether everyone will like it or not, that's more up for debate. Like I don't enjoy stuff like Farmville and have never played Animal Crossing, so I haven't been excited for Island Sanctuary at any point up to now. It seems we may be getting it INSTEAD OF social exploration/field zones like Eureka/Bozja which I love, which kind of frustrates me.

...but I'm also willing to wait until it comes out and give it a try. It may turn out I hate it, but it could also turn out to be something I enjoy. There has been stuff added to the game before I didn't think I'd be interested in but that turned out to be pretty fun. There are other things they added that I'm still not interested in to this day. But that's the nature of the beast. Poisoning the well with pre-disappointment, then being disappointed when it comes out because you primed yourself to be, is a pretty sorry way to live your life. If you're feeling that, it might be time to take a step back, take a breath, and come back with fresh eyes.

Especially since this patch has ARGUABLY something for everyone. Even Eureka/Bozja lovers MIGHT get something they enjoy from IS. And at the very least, will give us some new things to farm now that we're all capped on Astronomy Tomes/gear and have all been farming at least part of Pande Savage for 6 months now.