Bozja feedback thread

[Derio]

Castrum rewards needs to be looked at for sure. The amount of coins it gives is not worth it considering you can get the same amount or more by doing the skirmishes and CE outside.

[Deceptus]

After the last hotfix changes I can safely say that Castrum currently is dead content. Nobody is trying to do it anymore as Skimishes and CE's will give you coins. The only reason to do it would be for either the memory collectables and the augmentation. Few care about the first and the second has such a low drop rate that it essentially non-existant (30 run, 1 augmentation for a 20 min content that only spawns every 1 hour is not attractive). Add the fact that it neither awards XP nor mettle I can see why this not attractive anymore.
Being in a full instance and only 20 people register of which only 8 show up is pretty frustrating.

They need to fix this quickly or Castrum will die off fast.

The fact you can lose mettle in there without gaining any at all is baffling to me. Who thought of that design? Why was it implemented?

Arbitrarily punishing your players leads to them not doing the content.

[Driavna]

It is frustrating no one is doing Castrum Latore anymore. It’s dead only a month after being released. I haven’t had a chance to complete it. The story is locked behind it. Eureka Anemos, for all its faults, wasn’t dead after a month. It is just sad.

This is a sad reality for a lot of content in FFXIV. If you are not around at release chances are you either can't experience it or will be way harder to find parties for it.

[Ceasaria]

The fact you can lose mettle in there without gaining any at all is baffling to me. Who thought of that design? Why was it implemented?

Arbitrarily punishing your players leads to them not doing the content.

One of the main issue for many new contents.
It's like the game designers have either no enough time to do contents, or they are not questioning themselves about every design decision.

My process would be something like this :

Castum (re)playability :
- Castrum is accessible when player reaches lvl 10
- 3 fights + 1 rooms of trash
- No xp gain
- Death penalty --> xp loses
- Actions lost and coins rewards (+ others rares)
Will the player be afraid of doing the content before reaching lvl 15 ?
- If he plans to reach lvl 15, and doesn't want to lose any xp, he will probably wait for doing Castrum.
So how to encourage him to go to Castrum before reaching lvl 15 ?
- Remove death penalty ?
- - Seems not very logical, why it's different from the field ?
- Put xp for each boss beaten
- Separate the xp progression in two parts ?
- - Lvl 1-10 in Bozja field and lvl 11-15 in Castrum ?
It add a nice replay value for Castrum, but people who want to do it once and reach lvl 15 can't do that.
So, it should be better to give xp for each boss beaten. Doing Castrum should be better to gain xp than being on the field. It should be enough and it's logical because the fights are more difficult than Fates and Critical Engagements.

From lvl 10 to lvl 15, the player needs then to do 8-12 Castrum (will depends if he farms Fates and such while waiting for Castrum to pop).

To encourage to do more Castrum, the other rewards should make it.
(Honestly, I don't agree with this, the actual rewards design is not good for encourage people to do it, but I want to end here ^^)

[MariaArvana]

It is frustrating no one is doing Castrum Latore anymore. It’s dead only a month after being released. I haven’t had a chance to complete it. The story is locked behind it. Eureka Anemos, for all its faults, wasn’t dead after a month. It is just sad.

To be fair, Anemos isn't really the most accurate comparitor here. Bozja itself is still quite active outside of Castrum, which would be the better comparison since Anemos didn't have any 48man dungeon-esque content and only field content; and the field content in Bozja is still soaring in popularity (especially the duels + cluster farms.)
The apt comparison here would be Hydatos + The Baldesion Arsenal. Which while technically was more active than Castrum, was also basically impossible to truly pug it due to it being almost exclusively ran through the BA discords. So in some sense, Castrum does achieve being infinitely more accessible. It's only issue is that the rewards are barely worth it. Fix the rewards and Castrum's popularity would soar back high again easily.

[Kewitt]

I liked this content is was just Fates for the most part but, after hitting rank 15 I haven't gone back in.
I should do a cluster farm but that isn't very fun. I could get most coins but the augmented gear doesn't really seem worth it.

Maybe if the Augmented gear gave +20 on each stat making it clearly better gear for the zone it would be worth it but .1 seconds off cooldown doesn't make a big difference.

I know, .1 second off GCD adds up over time. But being able to solo content as this stuff gets older would make a big difference.

[LalafellDown]

Boss fates are fun and should be incorporated into over world and scale depending on how many people queued to fight boss. That way if only one person queued up they can enjoy the fight and not struggle.

Items and skills in bozja should have an upgrade feature but not as a requirement to beat certain big issues or clear certain content instead fun feature to become over powered. Reason for this after reaching level 10 and beating the final mission the content gets old fast. Fates repeat on a endless cycle. Would be nice to not have to depend on getting a group together to clear the content when you can do it yourself. Also after clearing content for the thousandth time why not. Why do I need to see the same fight again and again.

Fate trains are still here except there’s no wait time. Guess it’s good, but it’s still fate trains. Collecting 20 memories each is too much. 10 or 15 is good enough to see all the content in bozja. I say this because due to bad RNG I was stuck in the middle zone at 15 memories. I’ve seen all the fates repeat in multiple cycles over and over again. I don’t see why this would be enjoyable or required. I don’t need to see the same fate for the 5th time just to fill time. I recommend the devs add more objectives and not depend on RNG.

Perhaps add some challenge logs objectives like mini achievements. Like raise some people. Here’s a memory. Heal some people 10000hp, here’s a memory. Maybe allow us to take 1 of our grand company recruits that will help us during our fights. Allowing us to grow that recruit in Bozja where they will tag along with us. Allow us to grow them unlocking powerful tag team limit break attacks combos to take down bosses and adds. Maybe with each with each weapon strike, jump, sprint, heal or sneak I gain experience in that field that boosts my attributes. Not as a requirement, but as a fun extra add on.

Maybe add some unique vehicles that unlock to players who do well. That allows them to kill things faster for a quick bonus.

[Nightshade]

As of someone who has yet to enter a single duel despite having qualified more than 30 times at minimum (I really stopped counting by that time), I feel like this is a very frustrating part of the system. There is many factors that really hurt it. I'm going to list them before talking about what could be done to rectify the issue.

1. Each duel requires a specific CE to spawn. Said CE requires a specific Skirmish to be completed. Those 3 Skirmishes happen roughly once every hour (just like Castrum). For each CE, only a single person will be allowed to take on the duel. This means everyone else has to wait another hour for another chance at a specific duel.
2. Continuing from point 1, being eligible for the duel is a challenge to begin with. Some might fluke their way in (I did once or twice in the early days) the CE fight but most of the time, you need a near perfect comprehension of the CE's "disqualifying attacks" to be able to work around and meet the requirements. It's already challenging (although not hard once you get it) as it is, but then you add in the human factor in which can get ugly (Healers abusing Rescue yet again, people holding off heals until people are no longer qualified, prioritizing dodging over killing the target, etc.).
Those do not happen all the time, but they do happen. Why people go to that extent? Because there can only be one and the lower the competition, the higher your chances of getting in. You don't get More Qualified by doing better.
3. You're qualified to try. You still have the worst aspect to deal with: the lottery pick. Either RNG is on your side or all your efforts have been flushed down. it doesn't matter what the odds are. 1 out of 12? 1 out of 4? Unless you're the ONLY one who qualified, there is a chance that you will STILL be left behind to watch.
4. Finally, this final factor, in itself, shouldn't be much of a big deal. However, BECAUSE it exists, the first 3 factors become even more frustrating. I'm talking about the unability to win the duels unless you come prepared and aware of each fight. Biggest exammple is every single duel, with small exceptions if you happen to be some specific tanks, requires Lost Manawall. If you're not a PLD and you do not have Manawall, you are doomed at arrival on all 3 duels. Here's the problem: there are people who wins the duel lottery and has NO idea what they have to do for the fight. They don't come prepared. They are doomed to lose. Those who didn't get picked and were prepared to fight for real gets to watch outside to see the last hour wasted in 30 seconds before the battle starts. I'm all for people to be allowed to fight content blind, but when doing so actually hurts other players, not because you "screwed up" their run but because they are not even allowed to do their run because you got picked instead. So when someone do get inside and they are already a lost cause, it is just soul crushing.

Solutions in the next post.

[Nightshade]

Pointing out all the problems is all well and good, but what's the solution? There's a few I thought about, but they all come down with problems of their own.

1. Up the occurences of the duels. Doing that, however, would mean the matching CEs and Skirmishes would pop more often. Every 30 mins wouldn't be good enough. Every 15 mins might do the trick, but then it would hurt Castrum even more if people could just farm the same 3 CEs every 15 minutes. It will be fixing a problem and setting another one on fire.
2. Prioritize people who has "the better chance". Needless to say, how do you even determine that? There's no way to know who is "truly qualified" and who isn't until they go in.
3. Priority Deployment like for CEs. I can see this making the problem even worse if not handled well or become very costly. A low cost would mean getting into a duel without it would be nigh impossible. A high cost, on the other hand, would fix the problem but then what is that high cost?
4. Make it individual instances instead of being in the, well, instance so everyone qualified can have a go. Yes, this could work but then the boost given to people who watched a win would no longer be a thing. Granted, said boost is very lackluster these days with most people hitting Rank 15 and considering how rare duel victories are in the first place, barely anyone knows about it. It would be the most viable sacrifice. Yet, it's still a sacrifice.

So what is the solution? Well, so far, the only one that I feel works out best is this: replace the lottery 1 pick to a lottery queue. You qualified to the duel from the past CE? Awesome. However, it's still 1 on 1 fights. Someone has to go first. Fine. But if that first person loses, why stop there? Bring in the 2nd contestant and have them have their chance. Keep going until you either reach a cap (5?), run out of qualified fighters or victory is achieved. If the first person turns out to be a hopeless dud, you still got a chance. You just have a good laugh on how silly that was instead of being bitter about losing your chance to a steam rolled performance. No one managed to win? Then at least everyone had a chance to do it but didn't pull it off because of their own failings. Someone wins before you get your chance? That's unfortunate but at least people get the win benefit (though that alone also needs to be boosted). Plus, there's a chance that the victor will not come back to do it again later if they had what they wanted be it achievements or just the win. If so, then that's one competition less to worry about for next time.

It's a real shame though because on paper, I really liked the idea of duels. It might be an online game, but it is lacking in challenging solo content outside of some Masked Carnivale fights for BLU. Duels are tough and only people with the knowledge and skills prevail from them. At least, that's how I perceive it since I can never get into one to experience it myself.

[Vickii]

This is a sad reality for a lot of content in FFXIV. If you are not around at release chances are you either can't experience it or will be way harder to find parties for it.

I don’t actually think the game is too bad for this really. The sync system and the roulettes allow you to do most content. The only things I’ve had trouble with retroactively are:

- Coils (you can solo/get a small group in PF, but not ideal way to experience it)
- Eureka (not enough people doing it to get the experience though you can grind it)
- Castrum (same)
- Current expansion extreme trials/savage raids that are not the current one (if there are any PF’s they are all requiring you to have completed the duty as they just want to farm it. No one wants to progress Titania extreme for example)
- PVP that is not daily battlefront
- The BLU mage raiding stuff

But other than that you can pretty much Unsync PF any content in the game.