People who like Bozja/Eureka, I would like your input

[Jade3173]

As the title says, I’d like the help of people who enjoy Bozja or even Eureka in helping me understand what exactly it is they like. Cause from what I’ve heard it’s mostly Logorams/Lost Actions and the Critical Engagements that people enjoy and was wondering if Square could manage to put that into the overworld, the normal zones we progress through during MSQ, if you guys would still enjoy it?

A simple mockup of an idea I had, and I’ll use 5.0 zones for reference, would be that each one has about 3 Critical Engagements in them. The Tempest, being the last zone, would have something BIG in it like the Castrum CE that you need to progress the Bozja story. Now in order to join these Overworld Critical Engagements, you’d need to farm bicolor gems. Using those gems you purchase an item, maybe each zone (Lakeland/The Tempest/Il Mheg/etc) each has its own item, and when you use that item you are granted a Buff. That Buff would work one of two ways, you either need it to damage the monsters in the CE, while not used in FATEs, is something Square has coded before. The other way it could work is that you need the Buff active by the end of the CE in order to gain any rewards, much like how Twist of Fate grants you bonus EXP if you complete a FATE with it.

What you do in the Critical Engagements I’d imagine would be much like what is already in Bozja, just fitted for the area it is in. I’d go with them all being made for Lv80 though so it’s something you see at the start of the expansion and go “wow, that looks cool” and work towards it. To keep you from just steaming through it by X.2 patch though, it has an item level sync to it, maybe not as tight as Unreal, but something that keeps them biting throughout the expansion.

Now, rewards, obviously since they’re max level content, they need to reward tomestones. I would add 2 more rewards though, a simple “tricolor gem” for a guaranteed reward that can be used just like bicolor gems to buy certain things, each zone having its own set of rewards. For the other, please don’t shoot me, the Bozja/Eureka style lockboxes. In order to keep people doing these and not having them die after everyone gets their tricolor gem rewards, there needs to be some RNG loot. Could also make it that each zone drops its own lockbox so have lots of them to farm but that might be a bit much.

Spawning these CEs though, other than doing FATEs and killing overworld mobs to get them to spawn, maybe take a page out of the book on how S Rank hunts are done? Each CE has a set timer, say 5 hours or so, but if people are trying to actively spawn them, that time can get cut down to 2.5 hours or so. This way they aren’t reliant on people to spawn them, but you can help make them appear faster.

Lost Actions are a bit harder, I can think of two ways to do it at the moment. One, they are just the expansion feature and you can use them in the overworld always. I actually wouldn’t mind this, the idea of them is a fun one and overworld content can use some fun stuff in it, but not sure how badly this would influence Hunts. The other way would be that once you’ve entered the CE and clicked the Sync button, you get the Duty Action button and can use that for Lost Actions. Farming them would be via mob and FATE farming, maybe toss some in for Gatherers to get and sell on the Market Board. Could also buy them with bi/tricolor gems so you have something to buy repeatedly with the currency.

I write all of this as someone that does NOT enjoy Bozja/Eureka. I don’t want the people who enjoy it to lose the content, I just don’t want the dev team to keep sticking the relic behind it and that seems to be how they justify making a whole zone for it. This is me trying to meet in the middle, trying to keep the spirit of the instances alive, without requiring the long dev time to make a whole zone just for it.

So please, tell me what you enjoy about Bozja, do you think this system would scratch the same itch for you guys? Of what I’ve typed out here, what do you like, what have I gotten horribly wrong, what would you add/change?

TL;DR put as much of Bozja/Eureka into the overworld as possible so the relic isn’t tied to it.

[MPK]

Just delete bozja all together. They took everything bad about eureka and put it all into one place.

[E4EO]

I like both first and foremost for the grind, in Eureka with every NM killed it felt as if you were getting closer and closer to your goal of a new weapon and potentially Armour, this is how you design a good grind, make it so the players efforts are rewarded gradually, and don't make it feel like they're working towards nothing with bad RNG. The social aspect is another thing I enjoy, I detest miserable people who can't be fcked to say Hello or GG at the beginning or end of a dungeons, in Bozja and especially Eureka people are always talking about something.

Now all that applies to both, but honestly it applies more to 5.X Eureka as holy hell Sqeenix has made some bloody stupid decisions with Bozja.

First off, why does it feel like I'm working towards nothing when trying to get my artifact weapon? I did over 2 dozen CE's yesterday and got 1 loathsome memory, and I didn't even think I got a single red memory. And why is it faster to run years old, synced 50 content that everyone is sick of? Its boring, you feel like your playtime in Bozja is worthless because of the terrible RNG, its not like old school JRPG's and Eureka where you constantly feel like you're working toward a goal, instead it feels as if you're throwing sh t at the wall and hoping it sticks for hours on end.

And that's just the weapons, of you wanna get dyeable Judge Magister Armour added in the patch, you have to augment the base Bozja gear, so that's potentially hundreds if not thousands of coins for a set or two, and even with earning coins from FATEs it is still slow as all hell as your earn a whopping 1 coin from skirmishes and I think 3 from CE's, oh and Castrum for coins? Yeah, good bloody luck more then likely you'll wipe because noobs didn't watch a guide for months old content and fail at a boss. But that's not all, you also need to do the new 48 man savage likey multiple times for one piece, so you could be stuck running one of what seems to be the hardest piece of content to pog because of the sheer amount of people required! And you'll likey need to do it dozens of times over the course of days, if not weeks.

Oh, and then there's the whole losing XP that turns people off, I'm more on the fence about this as you earn little for dying and can't level down, can't level down at max either, but I can definitely see how this would turn people off.

So it all comes down to Bozjas grind being worthless compared years old content, I've given up on the relic weapons, I don't play CT raids, and I'm sure as he'll not getting the materials from Bozja. Will try to get some armour though, at bare minimum the caster chest, but the only reason why is just because I adore the Judge Magister Armour, and if this were literally any other piece of armour I'd just skip it, savage and EX can be a bloody nightmare thanks to some of the people you get, not to mention the ridiculous coin grind, so who the heck even knows if ill end up getting it after all.

[Themarvin]

I like the concept, not how part of it works and especially not how little rewarding it is towards relic grind which is ending in past content -_-

[van_arn]

I like Bozja because it's a difficulty between normal mode and savage.

I hated Eureka because it was a throwback to some of the worst design aspects of FFXI that were abandoned with XIV 2.0.

[Colt47]

My feeling about relics, Bazja, and Eureka after doing all of them at least once: They are a complete and total waste of ones time unless you really want it for the looks. The original relic weapons were a nightmare to get, and even after fixing them it is nothing but grinding forever to find some kind of glimmer of happiness at the end that you got something no one else wants to get. Everything past that point? Pretty much the same.

I mean, I've seen people who do savage say that they are BIS stats in the end of the expansion and I'm sitting here, staring at the screen, and just wondering if they got any screws loose. The amount of time those stats are going to matter are a sliver of the time needed to even get the damn thing to begin with. I can totally get behind someone taking time off to blow down savage content, but doing stuff for the stats alone? In a game where they keep increasing the item level? It really isn't worth spending time grinding into oblivion if the only result is a small boost you enjoy for a month... or maybe a month and a half.

The content life expectancy was also much better in Eureka than Bazja and this new relic. I feel like this is due to it just adding onto existing content we already did. No one wants to go do the same fates they already ground for things like Yokai watch, holiday events, and probably prior relic grinds unless they left the game for a long time and came back.

Going to mention that I'm a tired, worn out player who has been going at this game since it launched in ARR. Things got really bad during the pandemic since content got delayed, and I even went into savage raiding which was something I never would have done normally, but the content got so bad with only repetitive crafting competitions and mogtome stuff to hold us over.

[Alaray]

* I enjoy that there's a different progression system, even if it's not tied into other progression, and that it's something I can more or less do whenever I feel like it on my own.

* Since it has MB-able actions and cosmetics, there's usually some gil to be made if someone wanted to that's not just maps, or delving hard into crafting/gathering, or just gathering the second-most-recent tomestones and selling whatever hot material it is.

* Content like Castrum and the new Alliance raid keep it feeling a bit more fresh, though I do feel that Castrum should have some more incentive to run it (ie: Mettle/Exp, maybe a retroactive reward of a number of Bozjan silver coins, or something a little more interesting than a few base coins + a chance to get one of the augments).

* I'm not particularly partial to the fate grinding, I wish there was more you could do to break things up that still offer competitive progression alongside it (be it daily quests, weekly quests like Eureka eventually got, a bunny-fate-esque thing to go do for a bit to try and receive some extra rewards etc...)

* I like the CE's -- they're like, fun World Bosses. I think it'd be kinda cool if some of the more difficult ones (outside of the duels -- since they already do) could drop a mount at a low chance, or some cosmetic item, that makes re-doing them even after being Mettle capped a little more exciting in terms of the possible rewards.


I don't mind grindy content, especially when it's broken up (Skirmishes > CE's > Castrum do a somewhat good job, even if there can be some noticeable CE droughts). But it'd be nice if it could be further varied up (be it with daily quests to complete in the zone, or weekly quests, or more varied objectives -- like, say, a fate-event where you can pilot a war machina of some sort, that'd be cool)

I do feel some stuff is a bit much, like requiring 999 coins for a body augment (and 999 for the leg augment, 500 for the rest). It's... a lot, if Castrum gave you a decent chunk of it I'd be more or less fine with it, but it only gives about 20~ coins with a small chance to drop an augment.


That said, I like it overall. Bozja I like more than Eureka from a mechanical standpoint -- fights are more fun, fates are a bit more engaging than being afk while some group preps a NM, and it started off with a mini-Baldesion in the form of Castrum (Even if Delubrum Reginae [Savage] is probably more comparable).

Eureka's zones, outside of Pagos, were a bit prettier but the Southern Front is a war zone, so... I prolly can't complain much, as it does fit that theme.

Lost actions are interesting and can be fun, but by and large they're more like a side-additive to me. Especially since a lot tend to be passive buffs, which isn't inherently a bad thing, but there aren't actions that feel particularly game-changing to a class's overall function or anything like that. (I mean, I suppose, outside of the ability to use the buffs/actions to sort of fit a hybrid role, but I more mean like, an action that'd completely alter your rotation and priorities -- something that might interact with the core of the class, outside of stats alone or holding a niche use).

It's better than Eureka, and I feel like it took a lot of the good parts of Eureka to continue SE's evolution of Explorable Content.

(That said, I do wish it wasn't an instance, and could function as a zone in the overworld. Be nice to be able to sit in a queue for something and do a bit of Bozja on the side, esp if you're in a queue-type that takes a while to pop).

[SturmChurro]

..

Yeah, it seems to me they designed this new relic+armor to be long term filler grind content. Probably some content drought coming up. The weapon grind is one thing, but the armor grind is another level. I'm almost glad most of the outfits look terrible on my au ra, my tail clips through the ones with capes , and the hair I always use (pretty much only use) clips badly. I'll probably go for at minimum the healer set. I might go for the caster set too, but probably not the dyable variant. Honestly though, I doubt I'd even get the full dyable version for healer, at least not anytime soon. That grind is definitely.. pretty bad.

[TurtlesAWD]

The versatility in ways to play a job, actions to bring, items to use, etc. allows playing in ways modern MMOs often disable. It's fun to use irregular essence with lost font of power and ether kits as a dark knight for instance. It's fun - well, sorta -to bring 15 phoenix downs and resurrect an entire raid after a given pattern on Dawon's obey goes horribly wrong.

It seems like a lot of the dislike from this content stems from people not wanting to use what it gives you to do it IMO. Everyone's over here assuming "you can't just use phoenix downs in an MMO, those are for single player games, melee dps being able to resurrect everyone would be overpowered" and then they ignore the capacity to do exactly that.

So yeah the more content in that vein the better.

[Packetdancer]

Yeah, it seems to me they designed this new relic+armor to be long term filler grind content

I don't disagree, but I feel like this statement is true of all relic weapons anyway. It's not like Zodiac weapons or Anima weapons were designed to be completed in an evening, and Eureka weapons are one heck of a grind. Eureka even threw in a bonus armor grind as well!

Like it or hate it, I don't feel like the long-term grind for this should be a surprise.

I'd actually argue the new Law's Order stuff is a great deal more generous than Eureka; the pieces cost 2 or 3 of the Gold Bozjan Coins, and you can get 3 per week for just running Delubrum Reginae once.