Castrum is dead. Please do something, Squenix

[jamjeeshoul77]

No one runs it anymore. Making fates give coins was a HUGE mistake. It has rendered Castrum incredibly useless to the point that no one queues for it anymore. Why did you do this? Did you not foresee this happening? New players now can’t complete the story and people who enjoy Castrum or want to finish the achievement for 50 runs are SOL. You should not have to join a discord group in order to complete story content in this game. I don’t know what the solution would be, either drastically upping the drop rate of boxes, making it give exp, or just plain making it doable with less than 10 players...just please...DO SOMETHING

PLEASE DO SOMETHING

[HardcoreRaider]

This is not Square Enix's fault. It's because players are too scared of entering an instance that requires the tiniest of coordination and thinking and so they don't even try. Blame lower player skill.

[Deceptus]

This is not Square Enix's fault. It's because players are too scared of entering an instance that requires the tiniest of coordination and thinking and so they don't even try. Blame lower player skill.

It absolutely is SE's fault. They designed content where you could lose progress without gaining any progress, and then moved the incentive (coins) to content outside Castrum.

Why would anyone rank 10-15 go into Castrum outside of the single time they need it for the quest? SE completely dropped the ball on this.

[Gemina]

This is not Square Enix's fault. It's because players are too scared of entering an instance that requires the tiniest of coordination and thinking and so they don't even try. Blame lower player skill.

Sure it is. And this is coming from someone who defends the crap out of this dev team. I still recognize that they are not infallible, and they dropped the ball on this one. Big time. Bozja is a giant clusterfork, if I am to give my opinion on the content. I can't even begin to imagine how horrible Eureka must have been if this is the improved version.

As of right now, the only reason to run Castrum at all is for story completion. The duty itself is not that difficult to complete with the right amount of competent players, but you are still pretty much guaranteed to lose mettle in there, and if you are not max rank, this will delay the time it takes to get there. If they keep Castrum as is, they might as well throw it in the DF. That would give the players who still need to run it a better and more efficient chance at getting the duty cleared without worry of losing their mettle if they make even one mistake.

Players aren't scared for avoiding Castrum. It actually shows that they learn to not touch a hot stove once it burns them.

[MsMisato]

This is not Square Enix's fault. It's because players are too scared of entering an instance that requires the tiniest of coordination and thinking and so they don't even try. Blame lower player skill.

But it is indeed SE fault on this part. BAd enough its on a 1 hour timer but the reward is not worth the effort even for 26 coins. I mean why would I chance a death in Castrum to loose mettle and walk out with absolutely no mettle or xp gain to offest the loss whatsoever for the time involved in running it. Sure there is the low low rng chance of getting a piece of equipment drop or even the note for the collection but lets be honest the castrum run was not thought out at all for the long term. And know you can get a coin for each critical engagement, its simply less risk doing that with better reward opportunities such as cluster's, memory, and mettle and xp gain. SE needs to make adjustment to castrum.


As for the OP, I would look into the Bozja Discord and see if its possible to get a party together to tackle Castrum.

[Raikai]

This is not Square Enix's fault. It's because players are too scared of entering an instance that requires the tiniest of coordination and thinking and so they don't even try. Blame lower player skill.

Not really! It required coordination, yes, but people were willing to try and put the effort. A couple of weeks in, already had more people experienced with Castrum and more successful runs.

The only thing Castrum needed reward wise was a huge chunk of job experience. I have no interest in the augmented pieces, and I don't really need coins anymore for the 2 jobs I main... But I would surely run Castrum with my sub-80 jobs if it had a worthy amount of experience.

[Krojack]

This is not Square Enix's fault. It's because players are too scared of entering an instance that requires the tiniest of coordination and thinking and so they don't even try. Blame lower player skill.

For me it was more like "I can't even make it to rank 10 because I fall asleep 15mins after entering the instance."

I loved Eureka for a long time. I did a LOT of it with friends. This new content is to much like Eureka 2.0 and I can't stand it. I have completed 8 weapons already all via HW fates.

[jamjeeshoul77]

This is entirely squenix’s fault. Full groups were frequently happenijg before the coin change was patched in. As soon as they made it so fates reward coins, player engagement of Castrum drastically went down. The only point to farming Castrum after your first story run was for coins. And that incentive was pretty much entirely removed. Now people can’t even get that first story run done because less than 10 people ever join it in 72/72 player instances.

[Espritduo]

The whole castrum reward structure was incredibly short-sighted and poorly thought out. Not sure why they thought the most difficult, time-consuming, and timer-dependent content in Bozja should give the smallest rewards, even to the extent it actively punishes players for attempting it by loss of mettle. It should be the exact opposite of what it is right now - the MOST rewarding content in Bozja. Give it huge exp and mettle gains upon completing, 50 capped tomestones and 100 uncapped tomestones, 1 of each relic memory, 10 bozja clusters, and a drastically higher drop rate of augmented gear drops. I have no idea how this content is going to be functional in 5.4 when bojza is old content and the gear is no longer the best uncapped gear you can get, and I REALLY have no idea why anyone would waste their time in there come 5.45 when the new bozja content comes around. Lacum Litore is fun content, but SE just dropped the ball so hard on the reward structure I have to assume it's intentional and they just hate us and don't want us to enjoy the content they create.

[LaylaTsarra]

Castrum upon successful completionn of the duty the following should happen. Perhaps this is too much but I suspect there would be no problem getting people to run the duty.

1. Mettle reward
2, Experience reward for those leveling jobs
3. 26 Coins is probably fine if other incentives are added
4. Memory rewards at least one of each yellow, blue, red and green
5. Clusters perhaps 10
6. Increased drop rate for upgrades
7. Maintain the same drops rate for music scrolls and other current rewards.

idling in zone right now in the EU waiting to see if I can get a Castrum clear for one of my alts given it's the weekend and perhaps there will be better participation. I'd like to get it done now as opposed to waiting for the developers to get around to a hotfix. Castrum pop is about 10 minutes away. Yesterday the duty couldn't muster more that 12 on two attempts.

Edit: Gil could also be an incentive for completion like with many duties we run outside of Borzan.