Bozja is a symptom of FF14 in decline.

[HardcoreRaider]

Many have already explained why Bozja, while having good ideas, ultimately was mediocre and unsatisfying content, which at times is even actively hostile to player enjoyment. It was truly not worth the wait nor was it worth trading a dungeon and the expansion's deep dungeon for this content. Unfortunately, Bozja is not an isolated failure. It is moreso a symptom of the state of FF14 overall.

Grindy, but for all the wrong reasons.

Bozja is actually pretty grindy content. In order to get a full set of upgrade to prepare for the next tier's Baldesion Aresnal-equivalent, you would need to run Castrum Lacus Litore for upwards of 100 times. Furthermore, the lost actions you get in CLL are probably going to be very useful next tier. The catch, however, is that you would need to wait for an instance or reinstance until you get it to pop. Even then, you would also need to hope that there are enough people who are interested in Castrum in order to run it. The grind therefore, lies in reinstancing and waiting. It should remind you of the days when you are progressing through Alexander but need to wait for the Paladin to get their Hallowed Ground back up. Or for the Astrologian to roll until they get double expanded Balance. You're not really doing anything other than waiting for 50% of the time you're grinding the upgrade or lost actions.

But this is a symptom of the game writ large. A lot of new side content are simply more grinds. Yoshi P stated that this game wants you to get to the fun part and not emulate the old days of FF11 where you sometimes go for hours before getting to anything interesting. Yet, most of the new content we got this expansion is just grinding given a fresh skin. Ishgardian Restoration, for example, is simply a collectable grind with 3 new procs thrown in, the difficulty actually easier than 4.1's Ala Mhigan tier. The developers now don't seem to know how to create side content that isn't simply an extended grind anymore.

FATEs forever

Bozja's skirmishes are FATEs, with the same symbols and even the same mechanics borrowed. The critical engagements are fun, but they are not much more than boss FATEs with a queue system. The claim that Bozja would be a mix between Diadem and Eureka seemed dubious at best. But even if we took the developers' claim at face value, that means Bozja still has not fundamentally shifted away from the same foundation since ARR, when relic side content relied on FATEs to drive the engagement. We've been doing FATEs for seven years, for every relic. What is even more ironic is that old-school HW FATEs are actually better for grinding the relics this time around.

When they mentioned that there will be directive based content for Bozja, much like the old Diadem missions, people expect something more than FATEs. Unfortunately, Bozja underdelivers and is a symptom of the developers' unwillingness to innovate beyond FATEs when it comes to open world or exploratory content.

RNG in the wrong places

Duels are frustrating for nearly everyone involved because of the huge RNG layer. To even get picked for a duel, you'd need to first actually find an instance where the pre-duel FATEs are up. Then you'd need to battle against a dozen people during the selection to even have a chance at doing the duel. For many players that means you'd be lucky to even do one duel per day you play.

However, if we looked at FF14's history, we see that many side content always seem to contain the worst aspects of RNG possible. In Diadem, the Coven weapons caused huge outrage as it relied on an emergency mission that was difficult to complete as it relied on you being lucky enough to be in an instance where people were willing to cooperate and knew what to do. On top of that, the Coven weapon substats were random and only a few people will ever acquire a Coven weapon at all. In Eureka, we have random substats again for the Pyros weapon if you intend to augment it. Bunny chests were also a frustrating enterprise for many involved, and you can go a day without seeing a single gold chest. With Bozja, it's now the duels. For whatever reason, FF14 cannot seem to design content without frustrating RNG.

Less content overall

If we look at Bozja in context, another issue is of course that Bozja was shifted further in time, even when we account for the effects of the pandemic. While Eureka was first launched in 4.25, the first Bozjan instance was launched in 5.35. Meanwhile, the first iteration of Diadem launched in 3.15, albeit being bad enough to be removed in a later patch. However, Bozja also replaces the deep dungeon and is possibly part of the reason why we are losing one dungeon every other patch too. At this point we have to wonder if the next relic content is going to be only fully fleshed out in 6.45, just eight months before the 7.0 expansion (if we even get there).

Bozja itself is also far shorter and less diverse than Anemos. The landscape is bland and the visual implementation seem almost rushed. Warzones don't need to look like a candy land, but it also does not have to be visually repetitive and dull. The busy pace of Bozja distracts you from how small and visually repetitive the map is. Two bright sides of Bozja are the design of CLL and the storyline. This has obviously been beefed up as compared to Stormblood. But for everything else, it just cannot be said that Bozja is meatier than Anemos. It felt cut down. Unfortunately, this also echoes the general vibe one gets from Shadowbringers. After the amazing story, there is just far less content to do as compared to Stormblood.

[KageTokage]

It's obviously one of that guy's alt accounts, but at least this post does bring up valid points even if it is copied from somewhere else.

[Clover_Blake]

I've personally enjoyed Bozja a lot, and I can tell that the devs have been working hard on it. It even comes with its own full raid (which I enjoyed a lot) and a bunch of new sets. I liked being able to access the new map areas as I leveled up, and also discovering the different Fates (which is way more exciting to me than just killing random mobs in the same spot).

To me, sentences like this one "The critical engagements are fun, but they are not much more than boss FATEs with a queue system" sound like "the critical engagements are fun, but I want to complain about everything even if I had fun".

It's okay if you don't like Bozja; just don't assume that everyone will feel the same. (To whoever actually wrote that post, if it wasn't you).

[Ceasaria]

Stormblood still is my preferred expansion because of :
- Eureka, who give us 4 complete and great zones to explore and enjoy !!!
- Doma reconstruction, where I have control here, not like in Ishgard
- Healers and tanks jobs philosophies and gameplay not destroyed
- Last time we saw Hildibrand quests
- More dungeons
- Last time we saw Deep Dungeon content
- Innovative transitions with Susano, Byakko, Suzaku and Tsukoyomi fights
- A deep and elaborated story & fights in the raids 24 Ivalice
- Apparition of Action Missions as in Susano, O2, O6, Agrias [Ivalice] fights (which has been nearly completely vanished is this expansion).

The problem with Shadowbringers, is the philosophy of Yoshida is now to give a game for casual or maybe extremely casual players.
We can see it with the simplification and rework of Healer, Tanks, Crafters and Gatherers jobs (removed of TP for DPS too).
Furthermore, they spend too much time on Blue Mage, Crafters and Gatherers jobs and contents this expansion compared to before.
Which result to have less time working in Combatants contents, which it should be the main activity in this game (I guess ?).

In this expansion, I can tell you, it's good to be a DPS and play occasionally.
This is what I'm doing now, and I have not the impression to miss many things.

Now, my thought on Bozja : The story, critical engagements and Castrum are very nice.
The music (from Ivalice) are good too.
But the map and the depth in the content is really bad.
It's really fast to finish this, can't say it's a bad point for me now, but my ancient me from the Stormblood era would laugh of it.

[batman]

Personally, Bozja isn't too bad from my experience with it, though I will say this:

• The map is poorly utilised, and the fate spawns get repetitive.
• The first section of the map is 2008 levels of brown and dull - probably why so many people find the map uninspiring/repetitive.
• It feels like a place where battles have taken place, sure, but it doesn't feel like a place that was really once lived in. There are no real stories to be gleaned from the environments I find, unlike the rest of the world where places exist for a reason.
• There are vast expanses of the 3rd section of the map that go underused, despite being some of the best looking areas of the map. I understand there was a lot of optimisation of the zone and a toning down of environmental effects for practical reasons, though it does leave the area feeling rather underbaked.
• There's no reason to really do anything other than fates, boss fates, and Castrum. S rank mobs/everything else doesn't feel like it's worth venturing for.

I mean, this may be a case of content falling victim to Covid and SE doing what they can to catch up on their development cycles. I'm okay with this if it means future installments will feel more fleshed out as they catch up on development, but only time will tell if that's the case.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I mean, this may be a case of content falling victim to Covid and SE doing what they can to catch up on their development cycles. I'm okay with this if it means future installments will feel more fleshed out as they catch up on development, but only time will tell if that's the case.

Does not excuse the poor quality of gameplay for a lot of the combat classes/jobs like Dark Knight(ESPECIALLY Dark Knight), Ninja, Monk before they announced re-work for Monk, Summoner, Physical Ranged DPS having lowest DPS to not even clear DPS checks compared to every other DPS, and LITERALLY EVERY HEALER...

[ADVSS]

I mean it has its ups and downs, one of the things I was talking to a friend about is the interesting way they did FATEs, and how this could be utilized in a future expansion. Not sure how much the crystals for FATEs in shB influenced people to do them, but from my experience, unlike ARR or HW I dont really feel like i spent any time or much at all time doing any FATEs at all in SB areas(besides the ixion one) or ShB like at all. Certainly not for levelling, in a major comparison to ARR/HW. Some interesting things that I felt we have kind of long forgotten about were things like ARR Behemoth and Odin FATEs which were really cool at the time, and maybe if they took some of the ideas from bozja to utilize the system in a way that would make either getting to aether current like areas, or land locking areas through some minor exploration progression for all the areas(including possibly a rare area-based dungeon through doing certain FATEs) could really change the dynamic besides having them just be ignored entirely(dont take this to mean that progression is area/FATE dependant) but possibly add an area side story with a background explained clearly through chains of these?) Anyway its nothing brand new under the hood from Eureka, but it is an incredible idea for levelling alts for sure(the exavt oppositte of level sync in lower level dungeons)

[Lium]

FFXIV is not a flawless game, but by every objective metric, the game is growing in both population and popularity.

[TheMightyMollusk]

My problem with Bozja is that there just isn't much incentive to keep going back unless you really love RNG. Once you finish the story and rank up, what's left? You can try to fight the RNG to get through the solo duels for titles, but personally I don't find that worth the time. The relic tokens are much faster to farm in Heavensward FATEs, and the final step is dungeon grinding, so that's almost entirely divorced from Bozja. There's the gear from Castrum coins, but it's barely above tome gear (and outright behind augmented tome gear), and hopping instances repeatedly to try to get into Castrum in the first place is just a slog. And to top it off, all of the rewards from lockboxes can be bought and sold on the marketplace, so there's little reason to bother with that RNG fest either. I guess there's leveling alt jobs for people who haven't finished that already, but I did that a year ago, so that's of no value to me.

[Rufalus]

I like many of the systems in Bozja, but similar to my other complaints with the game I'm not seeing enough new ideas in there. They said to not expect it to be like Eureka, but it's pretty much 80% like Eureka. Logograms/memories, lockboxes, FATEs, exp penalty for being KOed (why did this need to come back?), haste bonus equipment, etc. The weapon enhancement content was my one hope in an otherwise cookie cutter expansion, but they decided to rely on an existing system for this too. And the alternate method for enhancing weapons is... FATEs and dungeons outside of Bozja, like all previous 'relic' grinds. OK