Bojzan Southern Front is currently impossible to complete for new/late players.

[Skyros]

Yep.

In the same boat. Wasting hours upon hours farming mettle and memories all the while with the inability to farm coins. Real legit system. Feels like Square is essentially punishing me for playing a different game and not participating in their content week 1. Only furthering insult to injury as the player-base in shout during the Castrum event act extremely rude to those asking for help to clear.

Sometimes I wonder why I put so much faith in this game.

[Midareyukki]

Honestly yeah. I've finished Bozja when it came out, so I'm definitely not in the same boat as plenty of players still are. Some weren't subbed when it was released, and others just wanted to wait.

I go back every other day because, frankly? I love Bozja. A lot! I love the story, I love the concept, and since I love lore and play a Hrothgar and I feel personally connected to my character while being in there. I already felt it was a shame that the grind there was nigh useless for the weapon itself. But at least you had players helping others level up, far more than what I used to see in Eureka. You had people invested in staying there and waiting for Castrum to pop up for the coins. And I understand that we needed a lot of coins and Castrum was designed in a strange way, meaning that you had to be lucky to get in on an instance and then a group that wouldn't wipe in there to get the coins. I get that. But the change to the FATE rewards without anything to support Castrum, which unless you're there to finish the required story you're no longer invested in, ultimately killed it.

I haven't seen anyone go into Castrum successfully in the runs I've done. Every time I go in, people are just CE farming (nothing wrong about that), but when Castrum pops, I queue for it to try to help. Because everyone had the foresight to realize that Castrum not having any incentive was going to damage players that haven't done it at least a little. All it has are coins and mandatory story progression, both of which most players are already covered for. But we can't even get more than 6 people on a good day. Some runs go by where I'm the only person who queued. And all we see on the chat are people asking for help to do Castrum and no one responding and no one going in. It's purely de-motivational, not just for the people who enjoy the content and are happy to see how Bozja and Castrum were designed, but for those that just want to finish the weapon and engage in the content to begin with.

Often I wonder if the best way to do this is to just organize runs via Discord (which seem to be dead, at least for my Data Center? Though I will be honest, I haven't checked there often.) or use Party Finder. But I haven't seen any PFs open for the exclusive reason to run Castrum, a CE that only spawns every now and then. I have friends that haven't done Castrum yet, for various reasons. And many of them have no idea how to progress. Perhaps yes, they should wait for the next weapon tier to see a spike in players. But what about after 5.0 is done and we're well into 6.0? Should we just wait to do this at all until they nerf the living hell out of it if they're not planning on being subbed for the first two months of whenever this gets briefly revived?

[Payadopa]

Yep.

In the same boat. Wasting hours upon hours farming mettle and memories all the while with the inability to farm coins. Real legit system. Feels like Square is essentially punishing me for playing a different game and not participating in their content week 1. Only furthering insult to injury as the player-base in shout during the Castrum event act extremely rude to those asking for help to clear.

Sometimes I wonder why I put so much faith in this game.

That's a shame.
I guess that's what you get when you condition players that everything must be soloable. It's sad that the community is that way and in an MMO no less. I hope you find people!

[spurious_correlator]

Castrum just really doesn't fit into the design of Bozjan Southern Front. Would make sense to either put it in the Duty Finder, or shower every form of currency that you can farm in Bozja so that people really really want to do it.

I think ideally the zone would be restructured to string the FATEs into a series where you push the army back out of each area, and then everyone does Castrum at the end, but that'd be a ton of work including rejiggering the quests so eh.

[InkB]

Honestly, giving ability to farm coins from FATEs was huge mistake.

It literally killed castrum and ANY reason to run it. Why was this not thought about?

People run it once for the quest and now they have ZERO reason to go to castrum beyond "I like challenge" which we all know is rare reason..
So if you are late or new..no one will do castrum so you can farm coins from FATEs too because some players are like "screw you, got mine"

[rxantos]

Bozja was great when it lasted.
But there is next to no reason for players to return. So is now as dead as Eureka. Same reason. No reason to go there are you can buy better equipment and get better rewards on duties.

[Flay_wind]

So, i am currently slowly pushing towards rank 15. From my experience it goes as follows. People are farming fates/CE/clusters whatever. Castrum pops. 10 people sign up. Other people continue farming w/e they were farming before.
There's no incentive to run Castrum outside of story. Yes it gives you coins and you can get deep essences from saving alll the prisoners, but it does not give any mettle whatsoever, which, imo, is one of the reasons it's unpopular.

[Vahlnir]

So, i am currently slowly pushing towards rank 15. From my experience it goes as follows. People are farming fates/CE/clusters whatever. Castrum pops. 10 people sign up. Other people continue farming w/e they were farming before.
There's no incentive to run Castrum outside of story. Yes it gives you coins and you can get deep essences from saving alll the prisoners, but it does not give any mettle whatsoever, which, imo, is one of the reasons it's unpopular.

Mettle loss in Castrum is inconsequential. You can leave it after dying maybe 4-5 times, and 15 minutes later at MOST you are back to breaking even and probably beyond. No, this is not part of the problem. Or at least it shouldn't be.

[Flay_wind]

Mettle loss in Castrum is inconsequential. You can leave it after dying maybe 4-5 times, and 15 minutes later at MOST you are back to breaking even and probably beyond. No, this is not part of the problem. Or at least it shouldn't be.

One of the reasons, not the main reason.
But it should probably give you mettle for completion regadless.

[sorawild34]

They will most likely nerf the content so it can be done with a smaller number of players like they did with Eureka, but that nerf wont come until some time after the THIRD phase of Bozja releases in 5.55. We are only just getting the second phase with the 48 man raid in February, so it wont be for a long while.