The Bozjan Front is lousy, lazy content

[Xtrasweettea]

And Xtrasweettea, my complaint against both Eureka and Bozja is that you are completely isolated from the rest of the game, divorced from normal activities, and to progress in those zones you have to sacrifice keeping up on your other activities. In ARR and HW, you progressed by doing your normal activities. You could grind each step as they came out quickly if you wanted. You could also take your time. You were encouraged to go out into the world, sometimes to places you hadn't been in a long time. Nobody was asking for FATE grinding in just old zones or old raids. We simply wanted to not feel like we were pushed into playing a completely separate game and forced into a choice where we either can keep up on things like weekly tomes or get progress toward the relic.

You want to grind the relic and do your normal activities instead of making the choice to do either or. You could've been honest and just left it at that point.

The rest of the statement doesn't really back it up...

• You still had to do old dungeons and trials.
• You had to make a choice to spend your tomestones on relic pieces or spending your tomestones on whatever else you need. Meaning if you wanted better gear without spending tomestones, you had to spend gil or do other activities that could have potential weekly lockouts. So you still had to make choices on activities you wanted to do.
• You had crafting stages, which was always a complaint on these forums.
• Books, ah yes, good times

That's just the items I can think off of the top of my head.

Come to think about it, the Resistance Weapons steps actually matches much better than what ARR and HW did:

• You still get the latest tomestone while doing Bozjan activities. DR gives 40 per run. Instead of doing your daily Expert Run, you don't have to waste time doing one then the other, you can hop into DR and get tomestones and items for your weapon.
• With the breadth of the content you had to outside of Bozja for the weapon steps is literally "going out into the world, sometimes to places you hadn't been in a long time." When was the last time you stepped into Alexander Normal?
• You can take your time for Bozjan content. Hell, it's better if you did wait and not rush the weapon. Almost every step has been nerfed... and we're months away from 6.0.

[TaleraRistain]

stuff

- Back in ARR, the "old" dungeons and trials you had to do were not old. Neither were all of the HW ones. They are old now, but minus the old ATMA step, a lot was fairly current content at that time and mixed here and there with an earlier dungeon or trial. And with anima, there were later steps like running Leveling or 50/60/70 Roulette for singing clusters.
- It's been a while on ARR but the HW anima pieces were not bought with the weekly locked tomestones. It was very possible to get your limited tomestone to keep up on your gear and get purchasable anima pieces for the relic. But a lot weren't purchasable at that time.
- I personally didn't have trouble with crafting stages since I'm an omnicrafter. However, I feel they can be a bottleneck and shouldn't be the lone method to complete a step. I think what they did with treated crystal sand where they were options to get items was a perfect way to integrate them without punishing people for not wanting to interact with that part of the game.
- The books were tedious, but really only because you could only do one at at time. They got you out into the world doing FATES, hitting up overworld monsters, diving into dungeons, and even doing levequests. If you could have done multiple books at once, they would still be a grind, but a lot more streamlined. SE also seems to have learned from that, since they didn't repeat that idea with HW

But the key thing that both ARR and HW relic lines had was choices. On that step in ARR with 16 dungeons, I picked which dungeons I did in what order. Especially on the light step for both, I had numerous options on where I wanted to go to gather it. They gave different levels of light and it was my choice if I did the highest with the biggest bang or spent my time in a dungeon I loved or some mixture of both. When they closet relics away in instanced zoned with required steps involving those zones, they take away our freedom to make those choices. I've made the choice to miss out on the relics for two expansions now. I'm not happy about it. So I'm going to give them feedback that what they're doing sucks and give suggestions on how they can balance both sides.

The last time I stepped into Alexander Normal was last night. I often get them for Normal Raids and I always do them on WT. I've had a lot of fun recently because there are a lot of sprouts in them and it's wonderful to see their reactions. When was the last time you ran one?

[van_arn]

I absolutely love Bozja, and I consider it my favorite section of content in its bracket.

I *especially* prefer Bozja for leveling alts over the awful experience of POTD/HOH spamming, and hope that never returns in the same form ever again.

[Jennah]

They haven't announced anything that sounds like Eureka/Bozja for Endwalker yet - and that fills me with joy.
I'll be over the moon (heh) if they go back to the classic relic grinds.

[Shurrikhan]

They haven't announced anything that sounds like Eureka/Bozja for Endwalker yet - and that fills me with joy.
I'll be over the moon (heh) if they go back to the classic relic grinds.

Honestly, a revised version of the ARR relic grind concepts would be my favorite. Books with more choices per category, but only half of them required for completion. FATEs (ideally now with some new ones, borrowing from Critical Engagements tech), and maybe not as the sole way to progress a certain step (let alone in so RNG-dependent a manner). Rotating light bonuses. That whole shebang.

[Xtrasweettea]

stuff

Again, what you are arguing for is being able to do the relic with activities you currently do. Which is fine and understandable.

As for Alexander, last week, when I needed to complete a one-time quest for the Resistance Weapon called “Spare Parts.” There are two other sister quests called “Tell me a Story” and “A Fond Memory.” Both of those sister quests can be done in Omega Normal and Eden normal raids.

From my perspective, it seems you do not know what “normal” content can be done to complete the Resistance Weapons.

Here is a guide that I use: https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/C...stance_Weapons

The only Bozja required pieces you have to do are the ones related to completing certain pieces of storyline. Once you complete those, you never have to touch Bozja again.

[ReynTime]

Lost Actions and essences being consumables were a colossal turn-off for me.

The aesthetic of Bozja was awful. Worst looking areas in the game.

And any content that forces partying in a game where everywhere else no one likes to make parties without a PF, let alone keep that damn thing alive instead of disbanding at random, is frustrating to me.

I love the idea of hanging with parties in an open map, but all Bozja had were fates, which are on a timer, end fast, and parties are often unstable outside of CEs.

And don't get me started on the raids with their big share of dead weight not using their essences and actions.

I'd probably enjoy Bozja a lot more if the unique combat features weren't expendable and it was in a game with less anti-social pve culture.

[Shurrikhan]

I love the idea of hanging with parties in an open map, but all Bozja had were fates, which are on a timer, end fast, and parties are often unstable outside of CEs.

I think this is why I was actually more okay with Pagos than most. Heck, to an extent I preferred it to Anemos or Pyros. Pagos, at least, wasn't all FATE-trains. Would be nice if there was more to do that truly felt worth doing, or even just less likely to cause you to miss out, between FATEs in Bozja.

That being said, I actually wish any and all content that makes use of the game's multiplayer aspects didn't require than one actually be in a party to get one's full toolkit functionality. Why prevent AoE heals and buffs to work only on party members, instead of anyone we encounter and want to buff/heal? Now, obviously, there'd have to be some sort of tapering or capped effect on the AoE heals so you're not hitting 24 players with them in Alliance Raids (cap of 8 wounded allies affected, prefer own party, or maybe even with a slight nerf such that the healing is split past 5 allies affected).

Heck, I'd even like to have an optional minimalistic UI (think Alliance Raid UI, but less ugly) for players engaged or recently engaged against the same FATE or same mobs as you. Would bring out more of a sense of being out in the world among fellows.

[Tsukino]

I agree with most everyone else that the barren warzone aesthetic is extremely boring, but I feel like gameplay wise it's actually the best thing there is to do in the entire game.

Everything else has great visuals, sure, but it's the same thing every time - every dungeon is three easy bosses broken up by trash, every alliance raid is four bosses broken up by trash that is very occasionally interesting, and every patch we know exactly what to expect from all these things outside of very specific boss fight mechanics, which get old after the first week. More importantly, and I totally know why the devs do this and can't fault them for it, but every job within a role is almost completely redundant and homogenized, and there is no variety or interesting stuff to do with stats/equipment at all. The main game is barely an RPG, between new jobs starting 20 levels below the cap and boiling everything down to tank, healer, and damage with a much bigger emphasis on jumping rope than any classic RPG mechanics.

In the Save The Queen areas, on the other hand, all the fun craziness of other Final Fantasy games is back! Instant death attacks, Chainspell, the ability to run around like a lunatic, actual evasion stats, Arise - it's all super fun to use and way different depending on what people bring and what they find fun or useful to have. We even have permanent stat boosts that take quite a bit longer to work toward than actual leveling up ever has, and using the crazy scaling Echo to do things like the Dalriada with only four people is really fun too. Again, I totally understand why they "flatten" everything to avoid player discrimination and allow people to easily catch up and all that, but I'd take using cool abilities that actually make a difference over another expert dungeon any day.

[Deceptus]

Or stop artificially propping these zones up by gating relics behind them and let them stand on their own feet with the content that they provide. If they are good zones, they won't need to have relics associated with them to make people want to go there.

I think this is the biggest takeaway.

If relic materials weren't in these zones would they still be populated? I think the answer to that is a resounding NO.