Quote Originally Posted by Havenchild View Post
YoshiP was surprised because largely unpopular content suddenly became really popular which he himself pointed out. Unless you are implying the team chose to just not implement the most popular content in the game for an entire expansion just cause?
Per Lucky Bancho's census data:
  • Completion of Normal Abyssos across Level90 characters is 44.69%
  • Acquisition of the Island Mandragora Mount across Level90 characters is 21.69% (16.04% of total active)
  • Percentage of Level70+ characters that went at least to Eureka Pagos is 34.55% (30.38% of total active)
  • Percentage of Level70+ characters that reached Elemental Level 60 is 18.93% (16.65% of total active)
  • Percentage of Level80+ characters that went at least to Zadnor is 47.14% (38.67% of total active)
  • Percentage of Level80+ characters that reached Resistance Rank 25 is 34.80% (28.55% of total active)
  • Percentage of active character that completed the MSQ is 69.35%

So this "largely unpopular content" saw nearly 50% of the entire playerbase reach at least Zadnor. For comparison sake, the only other singular piece of content with that level of engagement is the MSQ. The supposedly unequally unpopular Eureka saw nearly 20% make it all the way to level 60, which is only obtainable by both unlocking and participating in the last zone.

Now Eureka did see a noticeable drop in participation primarily due to Pagos being widely disliked due to changes nobody really asked for. Despite those changes, nearly as many people continued to grind Eureka over Island Sanctuary. Which kind of highlights how big a flop that content was.

So... yes, by the metrics we have, they dropped what was the most popular content in Endwalker given 47% of the playerbase made it to the second zone. However, I don't ever recall Yoshida being surprised or even commenting on Bozja outside the usual. So where exactly are you getting this idea he was surprised by the supposed sudden turn around in opinion on exploratory zones?