Bozja feedback thread

[Infindox]

Still finding it difficult to get into Castrum with enough people, and while I got into a Discord that's trying to set up runs, even they have difficulty becuase of the instances. I just want to finish it once, I don't care about the outfits. Hopefully it becomes more frequent towards the weekend.

[PangTong]

Haven't reached rank 10 to try Castrum yet but so far I'm pretty pleased with Bozja. It's like they took Eureka but fixed almost all the problems.

Specifically the things I like are:
- There's almost always something worthwhile to be doing so there's not much incentive to AFK. There are virtually always skirmishes/engagements up and even if you don't want/need to participate, farming random mobs for clusters and fragments is a viable activity since the drop rates are reasonable. Compare these activities to sitting around in Eureka waiting for the fate train to spawn an NM, or grinding out chain after chain of mobs for a tiny chance at a warped lockbox. Bozja is so much better.
- Critical Engagements are genuinely enjoyable since the represent the type of content XIV does best, which is carefully designed boss encounters. Some of them have actual difficulty and they help break up the monotony of farming skirmishes or mobs. Its like having an extra couple of raid tiers (normal difficulty) worth of bosses to fight.
- Lost Actions being available right from the start definitely helps make things a bit more interesting, and the new systems of getting and using the actions is much less cumbersome than Logos actions in Eureka, which were far too difficult to farm and had annoying RNG elements with equipping them. Plus you keep your equipped actions upon zoning out which makes choosing to use them much easier.
- Lockboxes and clusters give the opportunity for big rewards, but everything in the instance is tradeable, so there's no need to grind out extremely low drop chances for an exclusive item. Bad RNG can be mitigated by other people's good RNG, allowing you to buy the rewards you want at a price commensurate with the item's rarity.
- No annoying and unnecessary elemental wheel system or leveling system that affects player power makes the content much easier to approach. Progressing through ranks is quite fast and you don't have to spend too long to be able to participate in all the fights in the instance. Being able to just walk up to any mob and start fighting it without having to consider if you're leveled enough or have the right magicite loadout is refreshing.
- While some people might not like it, the system of applying for limited spaces in critical engagements takes out a lot of the player conflict when it comes to things like how long to wait for others. Plus there's ways to get priority so those who get excluded don't have as much reason to complain. Engagements happen fairly often so if you miss one, there's always more coming up.
- The penalty for death is a lot less harsh compared to Eureka which is nice considering there's still plenty of opportunity to die in Bozja. Losses can quickly be made up and its good that you can't de-rank. It's enough to feel like a penalty and make you want to avoid dying (or more specifically, releasing) but not so much that it makes you want to avoid challenging the harder stuff.
- Being able to use the instance as a source of exp for leveling jobs is really handy. I haven't tried this yet since I already have nearly every job leveled, but apparently the exp payouts are very generous.

If I had to say the things I dislike:
- Some types of fragments are too slow to farm, particularly ones where you want a large supply. Since some of these actions have limited uses or disappear when you replace them, it's hard to make the decision to use certain actions if they are rare. I feel like because their usage is limited, lost actions should be easy to acquire so that people feel like they can use them freely. I'm reluctant to use certain actions because I'm afraid I might be wasting them.
- It's a bit strange that its easier to farm relic items with HW fates than it is inside the instance that's directly related to the relic. The randomness of acquiring memories in Bozja is pretty annoying compared to the 100% chance of getting them from fates. This is ultimately going to cause participation in Bozja to drop off much more quickly than it should, since people grinding relic weapons will be doing so elsewhere.
- This also makes the new relic steps REALLY quick. While it's normal for the first relic step to be fast, this is not the first step so it's strange how unbelievably quickly you can complete them. Most of the point of relic weapon quests is just to give people something to do long-term, but I'm already hearing reports of people clearing 4+ relics a day, which is crazy.
- The 1v1 duels are a fun idea, but even though their only exclusive reward is a title and are therefore reserved for the really invested players, they don't occur often enough to give everyone who wants to challenge them a chance to do so. Even in the future when the participation in Bozja is way down, an organized group of 8 players doing engagements by themselves will still have to compete for who gets to do the duels. It just feels kind of unfair particularly since the chosen player is decided by RNG. It's also a bit nasty that the duels are basically a guaranteed loss if you don't bring in certain Lost Actions which you have to know about in advance. I like the idea posted above where the duels stay active for a period of time (say 10 minutes) and if the chosen player fails then another player who qualified can be chosen to try, repeating like this until the time limit. Alternatively, it would be great if you could buy an item with clusters that simply automatically spawns and initiates a specific duel for you, as long as its not active already. Even if this item is quite expensive, it would beat having to compete against RNG and respawn windows.
- Visually the zone is a bit dull. I know that it's a warzone but this is still a fantasy game after all, even for something that's meant to be more "realistic" it needn't just be a big mud pit.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

So after Rank 15, 1 glowy weapon and castrum down.

Positive:

I really enjoyed the difficulty of fights, its a lot of fun going into criticals solo as a pld or doing it with friends, the mashup of skills flows well and they really fun ... nothing is really "new" but it is nicely repacked.

Its very enjoyable that Rank is not related to power in a direct way, Rank 15 cant steamroll everything, and a lv 1 wont be destoryed in a fate.

Castrum is fun, bit of a steep challenge but i welcome it ... Thank you for not restricting raise like in BA.



Mixed:

Star mobs currently seam more of a hassle then worth, so maybe the rewards or difficulty needs to be looked at.

The overall scaling is extremely random lets take "murder death kill" fate as a example, sometimes i can solo it as a pld, sometimes it takes 20 ppl like 3 min to down it.


Negative:

Your Npc's are absolutely broken, the amount of times i run to a fate to see it at 90% when i arrive ... to have the single npc hero solo it. No player in sight.
Npc's should not start and win fates within 60 seconds, how about you wait till a player runs in to start the fight and then have the npc destroy it.

The critical engagement "Red Chocotober" has a black aoe that walks clockwise ... Black aoes are known for expaning rather then walking, this killed me the first time because i did not expect that.

The Area is extremely bland sadly, i know its a Combat Zone but still.

Are we finally done with these fake fights? Seeing 2 npcs attack each other while you go over a battle plan is mildly entertaining ... they have no Hp back cuz their decoration ... and they just keep swining ... throw em in the background please.


Suggestion:
Let us buy duel tickets please! I'd love to try it and i can do the first and 3rd w/o invun stacks but the chance to actually get picked well ... best i had was 1/4 and still didn't get in.

[Deceptus]

Lockboxes giving fireworks etc are just insulting.

Materia should be the lowest thing they reward. I'd rather get nothing than Indigo Star x500

[NorthernLadMSP]

This "content" makes me really question why I'm paying money to play this game.

[SieyaM]

So the drop rate on these memories is really really low, I have managed to make it to rank 5 without getting a single memory drop. That is just too low for Bozja to really be viable for a relic grind, not when there is a huge disparity in the drop rate outside of the zone. Bozja as it is is just a story zone, any actual relic grinding is going to happen outside of this zone.

[Seraphor]

So the drop rate on these memories is really really low, I have managed to make it to rank 5 without getting a single memory drop. That is just too low for Bozja to really be viable for a relic grind, not when there is a huge disparity in the drop rate outside of the zone. Bozja as it is is just a story zone, any actual relic grinding is going to happen outside of this zone.

Memories drop from mobs.
Mettle is rewarded from Skirmishes.

They're entirely separate things except for the fact that one entire Skirmish gives you the same chance as one single mob.
So it's entirely possible to rank up a ton before you get a single memory, if all you do is Skirmishes.
You need to be killing regular mobs.

[Kaurhz]

After having spent a fair chunk of time in this content already, I do want to say that in general they've succeeded where at the very least Eureka failed.. But I think skirmishes spawn too frequently and they die with fair ease.. Much like someone said I've gone to Skirmishes a lot of times just to see those from the resistance solo it with relative ease, and in a very short time frame, begs the question of why the hell I'm there if they're making that much a massacre of the skirmishes...

I'd liked to have seen 1 skirmish spawn at any given time on 1 outpost area for a maximum of 3, and then just have those spawn with relative frequency, say, every 2 minutes after the last was completed. Make them last a good 6-8 minutes, and just adjust the reward accordingly. I don't really expect to manage to hit every skirmish at any given time, but they do fall over too fast for their own good.

It would have been nice for a step to be done exclusively within Bozja. I'm fine with both steps of the relic, but I do feel something should have been exclusive to Bozja itself. Honestly; once I have capped my rank on both of my characters and completed Castrum, the only reason I'll ever step in there afterward is to grind achievements, and the mounts I have still yet to get.

With regards to Castrum, I can't help but think that it should've had a preliminary skirmish of sorts that people participate in prior to going inside, that way people aren't so afraid of entering in CEs when they 'think' that Castrum is about to pop.

I'm not entirely sure as to whether I enjoy, or do not enjoy the way enemies are 'ranked' in this comparative to how it was in, say, Eureka.. It would have been nice to have some sort of 'morale' mechanic/buff that is active on yourself whenever you go into an outpost area that you 'outrank', and I don't mean something as absurd as Eureka where it's like quadruple damage increase, and third damage received, but perhaps a 5-15% increase to damage in the open field, with 5-15% reduction in damage taken, whilst also taking a small hit to chances of getting clusters in said area. Would have made for a nice solo experience, I think. But on this particular thought, god knows how people would feel about it.

[Gojin]

bozja is so boring and I could have sworn they said if you just wanted to do story stuff you wouldnt have to go through a hassle. Castrum locks out story stuff and its a hassle, guess I'll wait a year til they nerf it like with eureka.

[EdwinLi]

bozja is so boring and I could have sworn they said if you just wanted to do story stuff you wouldnt have to go through a hassle. Castrum locks out story stuff and its a hassle, guess I'll wait a year til they nerf it like with eureka.

That was a promise but i think they may have decided to change that at some point during the development stage.

With Castrum being required, players need to be active in the instance and also be in a active one as well. Intances can lock at a certain point as well which force players to leave and find a fresh instance that gets constant supply of players.

there is also little room for mistakes due to the amount of time players are given each phase of Castrum. Players will either have room for 1 wipe or no wipes.