I appear to have already missed the boat on bozja

[SpiralMask]

Due to lack of proper computer access (exploded, still being replaced while a friend lends me their laptop) I'd been unable to play ff14 with any regularity these last couple months.

Either way, now that I've got something that can run it and get re-subbed and back in, I try out bozja since it sounded fun on announcement and I like to try and get/keep one artifact weapon up-to-date with each expac (except eureka, since i cannot make meaningful progress into/past the second zone due to being almost universally dead, which seems to be a trend now). get to rank 10 in a few days of chasing fates around, and unlock castrum as part of the story there and look forward to actually trying it out.

Sadly it seems that in bozja, no matter how full the instance, I have yet to see a castrum get more than 18 people after a long string of begging in chat and folks joining out of pity, due to shoutchat folks saying that it's literally not worth their time (and an SOL for people who need it to complete the bozja quests like me).

I'm not super sure what to do, since I'd think that balmung's population would have at least some chance of getting enough people for it together. Is there a discord or something for bozja someone can direct me to to actually get this done?

[MPK]

You're completely screwed lmao.

It's cross world so you're not playing with only balmung people. It's just THAT dead.

The content is absolutely terrible and I doubt SE will do anything to address it any time soon.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Because a new patch just dropped, people are doing the new content. Bozja will pick up towards 4.45 when the next zone releases.

[Vahlnir]

Because a new patch just dropped, people are doing the new content. Bozja will pick up towards 4.45 when the next zone releases.

This is an issue that has been ongoing since long before this patch. Is the new patch helping things? No, probably not. But it's not because of the new patch that Castrum is hard to recruit for. There are other issues which make it a challenge.

[Goji1639]

I haven't really participated in Bozja so I may be off the mark here, but why exactly don't they just make Castrum scale based on how many people join?

It's story content; it shouldn't require you to run around begging people to help you through it, and be impassable if enough people don't join you.

[Vahlnir]

I haven't really participated in Bozja so I may be off the mark here, but why exactly don't they just make Castrum scale based on how many people join?

Because they didn't think things through is why. The issue is that Castrum isn't worth doing after doing it the first time. The rewards just aren't there.

[MikkoAkure]

SE really dropped the ball on how Castrum was implemented. After they made the fates drop coins, there was no point for anyone who has completed Castrum to queue for it again since you can lose a lot of mettle in there.

When 5.45 drops, even if they don't make any changes to how the Front works, there will be more people queuing for Castrum since it's required to continue the relic quest. Hopefully they give more incentives for others to join Castrum, but either way you're going to need to wait until 5.45.

[SturmChurro]

This is an issue that has been ongoing since long before this patch. Is the new patch helping things? No, probably not. But it's not because of the new patch that Castrum is hard to recruit for. There are other issues which make it a challenge.

Yeah, no. It's not the patch. I'm in there all the time, full instances, and the instance could be 72/72, people begging in chat, they are LUCKY to even get close to a DOZEN even registered. If a CE pops same time, what few people actually joined, withdraw.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

If the Castrum duty in Bozja is anything like the duty over in Eureka where you were basically locked out if you weren't in a premade with Discord going then I can see why people won't join for it. Even if begged. A lot of people who wanted to try that duty (in Eureka) got burned, and seeing how most of the rewards from Bozja can be grinded for without touching Castrum, I can see the lack of interest. Bad memories from Eureka basically sucked all the fun out of Bozja before it even dropped for me. Have no interest in it even now, though some of the gear is interesting.

Large, on-the-spot group instanced content has historically never gone over well in NA. Not the Diadem Emergency back in HW. Not the large instanced battle in Eureka and now, even if the Castrum content is a bit easier in Bozja, a lot of people who aren't in statics (or have established raid groups or FC's committed to doing such content) have enough PTSD flashbacks not to even want to touch that mess.

I mean, I suppose if the didn't add it people would complain that we being denied content that other regions were getting but on the whole this kind of content has always been a miss in NA and a lot of us are not convinced that it will ever get any better.

[SturmChurro]

If the Castrum duty in Bozja is anything like the duty over in Eureka where you were basically locked out if you weren't in a premade with Discord going then I can see why people won't join for it. Even if begged. A lot of people who wanted to try that duty (in Eureka) got burned, and seeing how most of the rewards from Bozja can be grinded for without touching Castrum, I can see the lack of interest. Bad memories from Eureka basically sucked all the fun out of Bozja before it even dropped for me. Have no interest in it even now, though some of the gear is interesting.

Large, on-the-spot group instanced content has historically never gone over well in NA. Not the Diadem Emergency back in HW. Not the large instanced battle in Eureka and now, even if the Castrum content is a bit easier in Bozja, a lot of people who aren't in statics (or have established raid groups or FC's committed to doing such content) have enough PTSD flashbacks not to even want to touch that mess.

I mean, I suppose if the didn't add it people would complain that we being denied content that other regions were getting but on the whole this kind of content has always been a miss in NA and a lot of us are not convinced that it will ever get any better.

When I was in Eureka back in the day, and even Borzja now. From what I gather - people actually like the content. At least the people filling up the zones each and everyday. The one place I do chat a decent amount is in these zones. Whenever I have criticized them people go straight to the defense back then, and same now. Actually, the general opinion I see is people in borzja like doing borzja. Especially the duels. It's literally the complete uselessness of doing Castrum that makes people not want to do it. Rather than popularity.

From what I've seen, lately, looks like the only way to get a clear now is one of those discord premades. That's it.