No exploratory content

[Supersnow845]

Are they? What are the numbers like when you're in there every day?

On aether each zone still easily can get upwards of 100 people in peak hour and still generally has 10-20 in off peak, BA is still run every day. There is enough BA hosts to fight over the queue

[VelKallor]

The problem with exploratory zones is there is no system in place to keep them alive after the initial FOMO rush when everyone gets what they want and stops doing them. It's a bit ironic that Variant gets the same complaints but they have more future-proofing since they will be something that we will be able to go do at our leisure far into the future. Criterion is a little more limited but still has the factor that you can kind of choose when you want to interact with it.

The more involved aspects of exploratory content aren't designed like that. They rely either on large numbers of people to be able to get through without things like essences or lots of pre-planning and organization. They're not something you can just choose to jump into and be assured you will be able to progress. So they're popular at first when those large numbers of people are available but get more difficult to tackle when those numbers fall off. When I finally finished Eureka recently, most instances in NA prime time were lucky to field 30 to 40 people and most only when a popular NM was up. And the Echo can help but it isn't tuned high enough to make up for the loss with everything. And these are instances that have a maximum of what, 100 something?

Bozja is even worse. I've been languishing at mettle level 23 because I'm often the only person out there doing FATEs unless they lead to something. Most have gotten what they wanted from this content so there isn't a reason to go back to it and the game design makes it difficult to tackle it on your own.

Until they can fix that aspect of exploratory zones, why would they utilize development time for something designed with such a short shelf life?

Talera? I made much the same comments in this thread

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...87#post6305787

...and was roundly shouted down.

Funny how you say the same thing I did , yet we aint seeing the same responses.

Odd. Innit?

On aether each zone still easily can get upwards of 100 people in peak hour and still generally has 10-20 in off peak, BA is still run every day. There is enough BA hosts to fight over the queue
(3)

Thats nice. Now tell us what the player numbers are on other datacentres.

[Supersnow845]

Talera? I made much the same comments in this thread

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...87#post6305787

...and was roundly shouted down.

Funny how you say the same thing I did , yet we aint seeing the same responses.

Odd. Innit?




Thats nice. Now tell us what the player numbers are on other datacentres.

The person asked for how many people were in an instance and I answered, crystal, primal, light and mana also have active BA discords so it’s not like “be on aether or die”

[DixieBellOCE]

Talera? I made much the same comments in this thread

You have made the same comments multiple times, and have been shut down every single time.

Check out Content Acheivers discord for Elemental, you might actually get a surprise with how often BA runs and DR:Savage runs are being done.

Just because you don't want to go to the effort to find people to play with, it does not mean the content is dead.

[AwesomeJr44]

Thats nice. Now tell us what the player numbers are on other datacentres.

Sounds like your datacenter just sucks. Pretty much everyone keeps telling you that Eureka is alive and well but apparently it's not on your datacenter. Sucks to suck I guess.

[TaleraRistain]

Talera? I made much the same comments in this thread

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...87#post6305787

...and was roundly shouted down.

Funny how you say the same thing I did , yet we aint seeing the same responses.

Odd. Innit?




Thats nice. Now tell us what the player numbers are on other datacentres.

I think part of that might be that while I do agree with you on points often, your presentation is rather vehement and confrontational. That can put people off.

For others mentioning that there are Discords for BA and DRS, that's part of the issue. The developers aren't in charge of Discords. But for some of this content, it's in third party applications where participation in the content is organized. There isn't a lot of in-game design providing accessibility. Whereas there is more of that with Variant. Maybe they need to boost the Echo more in Eureka and and Bozja, or possibly put in some daily missions. And give some better in-game tools for organizing people for things like BA and DRS. Those would help the current situation or can be things to look at for future exploratory content.

Also Supersnow, what is your gauge of peak time? I'm also on Aether and Eureka when I was going in there recently in NA prime time most zones had at most 30 people. Pagos could go up higher if it was time for Cassie. Pyros I think is a bad example because it seems to have a really bad bot infestation. Fully half of the zone of people would just be bots waiting at the bunny FATEs. And it often wasn't the easiest thing to get a group for FATEs past Anemos so you could get the necessary credit because many were often only premades going into together or they broke up after one or two NMs.

I haven't been in Bozja too much but from what I could see in NA prime time it had less people than Eureka. I was doing FATEs in Zadnor by myself (or trying) and when I went to help a friend try to do CLL for his relic there were only 5 people signed up. Hopefully they reconsider the in-instance CEs for any future exploratory content.

Or we may get something entirely new from both exploratory and Variant that fixes the drawbacks with both.

[DixieBellOCE]

The problem with exploratory zones is there is no system in place to keep them alive after the initial FOMO rush when everyone gets what they want and stops doing them. It's a bit ironic that Variant gets the same complaints but they have more future-proofing since they will be something that we will be able to go do at our leisure far into the future. Criterion is a little more limited but still has the factor that you can kind of choose when you want to interact with it.

The more involved aspects of exploratory content aren't designed like that. They rely either on large numbers of people to be able to get through without things like essences or lots of pre-planning and organization. They're not something you can just choose to jump into and be assured you will be able to progress. So they're popular at first when those large numbers of people are available but get more difficult to tackle when those numbers fall off. When I finally finished Eureka recently, most instances in NA prime time were lucky to field 30 to 40 people and most only when a popular NM was up. And the Echo can help but it isn't tuned high enough to make up for the loss with everything. And these are instances that have a maximum of what, 100 something?

Bozja is even worse. I've been languishing at mettle level 23 because I'm often the only person out there doing FATEs unless they lead to something. Most have gotten what they wanted from this content so there isn't a reason to go back to it and the game design makes it difficult to tackle it on your own.

Until they can fix that aspect of exploratory zones, why would they utilize development time for something designed with such a short shelf life?

I mean.. Eureka right now, still has players doing it.. Even on a dead datacenter like Materia you can always find people in the zones working on their relics.

Same with Bozja, but to a lesser extent, there is always people doing something in there, mostly just cluster grinding since its easy gil. The worst part about Bozja is you cannot complete your relics without other people, where as eureka you can.

The same cannot be said for Variant dungeons, i've queued for them for a couple of days and haven't got a single pop, yes i could run them solo but that defeats the purpose of an MMO. For now i'm just doing it with FC members when we can all be online at the same time.
So why is it that 7 year old content still gets enough people to do the content with, but current content doesn't?

[Raraka]

The problem with exploratory zones is there is no system in place to keep them alive after the initial FOMO rush when everyone gets what they want and stops doing them.

I respectfully disagree with this, as I believe Cerberus and Ozma serve as the carrot on the stick to bring new players into older adventuring forays. While old content tends to get phased out as you can (for example) unsync an old raid to get a mount, the inherent progression inside adventuring forays makes skipping them directly for the reward not possible

I can at least say that my experience from starting bozja to getting my Cerberus was and will be one of the most fun things I have done in XIV. Delubrum Savage on itself probably clasifies as one of the best pieces of content in the game not because of inherent design, but by the atmosphere and sense of scale it imposes on anyone trying to tackle it

And exactly that journey is what keeps discord crews like ABBA and Lego steppers filling full raid groups for DRS, both of people trying to get their Cerberus and people that just enjoy re-running it with new players

At this point I may be almost done with bozja, missing some of the harder to obtain titles, but I keep coming back at it, I genuinely find the Lost action gameplay refreshing, so hoping into Bozja, chipping away at mettle or joining a DRS run, helping new players in the southern front farm fragments or taking over leadership in a CLL run full of first timers... I just keep coming back to it

[Supersnow845]

I respectfully disagree with this, as I believe Cerberus and Ozma serve as the carrot on the stick to bring new players into older adventuring forays. While old content tends to get phased out as you can (for example) unsync an old raid to get a mount, the inherent progression inside adventuring forays makes skipping them directly for the reward not possible

I can at least say that my experience from starting bozja to getting my Cerberus was and will be one of the most fun things I have done in XIV. Delubrum Savage on itself probably clasifies as one of the best pieces of content in the game not because of inherent design, but by the atmosphere and sense of scale it imposes on anyone trying to tackle it

And exactly that journey is what keeps discord crews like ABBA and Lego steppers filling full raid groups for DRS, both of people trying to get their Cerberus and people that just enjoy re-running it with new players

At this point I may be almost done with bozja, missing some of the harder to obtain titles, but I keep coming back at it, I genuinely find the Lost action gameplay refreshing, so hoping into Bozja, chipping away at mettle or joining a DRS run, helping new players in the southern front farm fragments or taking over leadership in a CLL run full of first timers... I just keep coming back to it

I have cleared Ozma 385 times, I still run BA almost daily and host it as much as I can

Field content has an implicit replayability the rest of the game just completely lacks

[DixieBellOCE]

I have cleared Ozma 385 times, I still run BA almost daily and host it as much as I can

Field content has an implicit replayability the rest of the game just completely lacks

Same could be said here.

Just one piece of gear to get to +2 and 2 relics to finish in Eureka and i will STILL go back and run BA because the content is actually fun, almost 7 years after it first released.

I still do BA twice a week, on a datacenter that is well below the population of any other (Materia).

And i know damn well that the same group i do BA with (Content Acheivers) run BA and DRS on Elemental DC multiple times a week.

These complainers are lazy and do not wish to actually play the game, that is the simple truth of the matter.