Thread: A request for your constructive suggestions on Bozja 5.45

1) Allow mettle to be gained from mobs, Skirmishes, CEs, etc. This means your only option to rank up isn't another endless FATE grind. You can do a little bit of everything and still progress or just focus on one type and still progress. This gives the zone wider appeal because players can choose how they interact with it.
2) Have daily missions for mettle.
3) Have options in the challenge log that provide mettle.
4) Make the story a solo questline. Make any group instances have either a group option for those who want it or a Trust option. People wouldn't be nearly as pissed about the relic if they did this. And there wouldn't be "bads" as someone mentioned previously in CLL because they wouldn't be forced into there. Plus the relic questline is usually pretty good and integrating it meaningfully into a zone is kind of neat.
5) Make relic drops equal both inside and outside. That way they also maintain the idea that players want in having options on where they get their relic items. But there's no reason inside should be less than outside.
6) Keep things like CLL and DR as optional content. Then they can be designed with additional challenge and remain that way for those who enjoy that sort of thing.
7) Get rid of mettle loss. Seriously, this isn't 1999. Punishing players for playing your content is not the way to get people to play your content.

1) Make Castrum the best way to earn anything after rank 10. Including mettle, clusters, relic tokens and xp.
2) Add non-tradeable cosmetic items that can be bought with a lot of gold coins. If it's something you can keep grinding and are guaranteed to get, people will keep doing the content. Unreal is proof of this.
3) Don't kill any instances. If it isn't full then you can add more people to it.

Originally Posted by Seraphor

Losing mettle isn't a punishment for playing, it's a punishment for dying. Don't die.
If you're increasing the amount of mettle you gain and the actions that award it, which I completely agree with, then there's no reason to change how mettle is lost. (although I would maybe reduce the penalty for returning to the start in Delubrum when out of combat)
It's very easy to regain any lost mettle as it is, and it serves as an incentive for those who have cleared Bozja to return to it (along with acquiring more lost actions), after all they lose mettle by dying in Delubrum Reginae.

Honestly, I'm fine with losing mettle; I agree with you there.

From a system design perspective, though, I'm less-fine with a system that can penalize but not award, because it disincentivizes people from engaging with said system. This is a problem with Castrum Lacus Litore and Delubrum Reginae; I know a lot of people who are reluctant to run them because they can lose mettle in them but not gain them.

And yes, you can go earn back mettle in the Southern Front skirmishes and CEs; it's not like it's an insurmountable penalty. But it does demonstrably decrease involvement in that content, which is content that requires buy-in and participation to make it viable for those who do want (or need, for story progression) to engage with it.

This is why CLL and DR should either do away with mettle loss, or award some rank-appropriate mettle for defeating the various bosses within. I'd prefer the latter (since it does still mean you can leave at a loss if you are incautious with mechanics), and I think the risk of 'I might lose mettle' is actually a neat factor in engaging with those; it makes them feel more like a battle with actual risk.

But even doing away with mettle loss in there would increase player engagement with that content, which I think is crucial.

Originally Posted by Infindox

1.Personally, imo, there needs to be some sort of daily/weekly reward system in there. This is also something I wish Eureka got, but they did at least put in EXP gain in the Challenge Log for that area. Maybe do something like that for mettle?

There actually is, for Delubrum Reginae; there's a weekly repeatable quest which awards you Bozjan gold coins and mettle for running Delubrum. I agree Castrum could use something similar. Immediately, if not sooner.

Originally Posted by Infindox

2. Rip Castrum out and make it queueable from outside in Gangos like DR is. Only reason is so this can be beatable in the future. I know in the LL they pointed out they know this is a bottleneck, so I'll wait to see what they come up with.

I suspect it's not 100% easy to do this, since Castrum is seemingly implemented as a FATE within a zone (albeit a FATE in a portion of the map you can't normally reach), rather than an instanced duty in its own right. I'd be surprised if it wasn't possible at all, but I imagine ripping what is likely the most complex FATE in the game out of its zone and turning it into an instanced duty isn't a simple matter of flipping a single flag in the code either.

(Unless you do something hackish like make it instanciate the entire Bozjan Southern Front, then just automatically throw everyone into the Castrum CE and force them to commence. Which would... probably work in a technical sense, yes. But I suspect there are serious downsides as well, not all of which may be visible to us; it could be things like how instanced Exploratory Zones a'la Eureka and Bozja are allocated servers when needed, versus how dungeons/raids are.)

So while I agree they need to do this, I'm not holding my breath expecting it to happen overnight. (Even if it really should have been done with 5.45, yes.)