Castrum Lacus Litore declining participation

[SturmChurro]

Yeah. It really is sad to see. I'd love to do Castrum, but I refuse to do it with less than 25. Sure, people have claimed to have done it with much less, but I have never personally seen it done with less than that. Right now, with the new players outnumbering veterans 10-1 in that instance, it is just very unlikely to see it actually done. Most can't make it past the first boss, let alone anything beyond that. Like you said, people should be fighting to get in.

I'm usually running cluster farms, so I don't really queue my party for anything, but I do queue for it whenever I'm available. At the very least to make the numbers look better, so maybe others will join and fill it. I went in the other day for an attempt with 24. It failed at first boss, unfortunately it looked like most of the new people went top and were dying constantly. Some guy was spamming chat nonstop with revives, it was actually really annoying, but I digress.

People think just like that though, they won't bother going in with less than 24 MAYBE 23, but no less than that, at least not that I've seen. If they can't get that 24 it empties out quick, even if it was close. They designed all of borzja with the whole intention of people fighting to do things in zone - including castrum - but the only thing people actually fight for is duels. Duels, I've seen some big arguments in chat multiple times over that.

This is what I mean, big problem. We had a good amount for this castrum, then this started. No point staying registered, with so little. The instance has the choice of either or. Both 48, but CE fills up almost immediately, over the supposed big raid. I wonder how a lot of people will continue the story, I don't remember Eureka being locked out like this. They'd probably have to completely gut it (Castrum), or something.

[Reinha]

This is a nice and simple way to show that Castrum needs a mettle reward.

[Vahlnir]

This is a nice and simple way to show that Castrum needs a mettle reward.

Mettle is a non issue. Adding mettle gains alone would NOT fix this. It would just be the coin debacle all over again. Why run Castrum for x amount of mettle when you can do Fates/CEs and earn more in less time? That said, they should probably add it into the mix anyway, along with other things. Mostly other things though.

[Reinha]

Why run Castrum for x amount of mettle when you can do Fates/CEs and earn more in less time?

Obviously the mettle reward should be big enough, duh. It should be the best way to get mettle after rank 10.

[Flay_wind]

Obviously the mettle reward should be big enough, duh. It should be the best way to get mettle after rank 10.

How big are we talking about? 5x, 10x of the highest rank CE?

[Arg0n]

Why should rank 15 player need mettle in castrum?
The reward should be much more like that. More coins, items for relic and better dropchance for upgrades.

But hey, after severly months still nothing changed. I think Square Enix just don't care anymore

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

How big are we talking about? 5x, 10x of the highest rank CE?

Make each boss of Castrum give 2x the amount of mettle of a CE, while also nullifying any mettle loss while in Castrum. Would be a quick and easy solution, since it'd be undisputedly the best way to get mettle, with no worries if you die too much.
But yeah, mettle alone wouldn't suffice, since rank 15's wouldn't need it.

Make each boss drop memories, buff droprates on augments, give like 20 lockboxes for completion, give each boss EXP if you're under 80, double the amount of coins you currently get from it, etc. Castrum should be completely unmatched in time to reward ratio for pretty much everything in Bozja. People should be fighting over the chance to get in, not seeing it as a waste of time.

[Sacred-Oblivion]

They'll have to fix Castrum eventually. They wouldn't do all that work to create a "one and done" type of raid. They probably just want to balance it so that it's attractive to roughly half the instance, but not the whole instance. They could easily fix it so that max participation queues 48/48 every time it pops and people instance hop to find castrum again, but maybe they don't want to fix it that way. They probably just want it to be one of many different things to do in bozja, like cluster farm groups, fate/ce grind groups, etc. It's harder to balance it in that way, which would explain why it's taking longer for them to implement changes.

[SturmChurro]

I think it's probably too late at this point for them to fix it. People who can will be largely moving onto Borzja 2 or whatever. Even if you upped the rewards right now, it would be obsolete by that patch. All they can do now, is probably make it easier for new players to get a clear.