Please bring back Exploratory Zones in Dawntrail

[Aco505]

First weakness about the whole Bozja is Delubrum Reginae. It's severely downgraded because of others weaknesses that I'll talk about later on, but having to grind a 24 man dungeon isn't fun.
The savage version is a pain, not because of the content, but grabbing 48 people for the same night is harder than the said content. But lowering it to 24 players would have make it so much more manageable.

The duel are among the best content in the whole game but you're facing a lottery after a long grind to spawn the Fate. They need to be more accessible.

Consumables are very strong yet they're barely used making 90%+ Player as fragile as a chip and makes the content longer.
Either encourage the playerbase to use the consommables rather than holding them like mega elixir or make us grind for passive bonuses.

I think Delubrum Reginae is one of the best pieces of content in the game. The problem is that the Timeworn Artifact only drops from normal and Palace of the Dead, thus creating a huge bottleneck in this specific step. This doesn't happen with the last one, for instance, because it has three different ways of doing it and Dalriada gives five memories iirc as opposited to DRN's three.

I think that if they had included Savage as a possibility for dropping the artifacts or any other extra piece of content, that part would be less painful, but at the same time I suppose they thought that doing DRN would become useless if they did that.

Other than that, getting 48 people to do content is not that complicated. Plenty of Discords do one, two or more runs weekly and they're very successful. The raid also scales with a player amount as low as 24 so you can still organize it with half the number.

Lost Actions are one of the main highlights of the content but I do agree that more of them should be useful and that different builds should be encouraged for different jobs and roles. For example, some like Essence of the Gambler combined with Dynamis Dice could've been viable if the cooldown and weight of the latter had been lower and did not share it with normal tinctures.

[Heroman3003]

I think Delubrum Reginae is one of the best pieces of content in the game. The problem is that the Timeworn Artifact only drops from normal and Palace of the Dead, thus creating a huge bottleneck in this specific step. This doesn't happen with the last one, for instance, because it has three different ways of doing it and Dalriada gives five memories iirc as opposited to DRN's three.

I think that if they had included Savage as a possibility for dropping the artifacts or any other extra piece of content, that part would be less painful, but at the same time I suppose they thought that doing DRN would become useless if they did that.

Other than that, getting 48 people to do content is not that complicated. Plenty of Discords do one, two or more runs weekly and they're very successful. The raid also scales with a player amount as low as 24 so you can still organize it with half the number.

Lost Actions are one of the main highlights of the content but I do agree that more of them should be useful and that different builds should be encouraged for different jobs and roles. For example, some like Essence of the Gambler combined with Dynamis Dice could've been viable if the cooldown and weight of the latter had been lower and did not share it with normal tinctures.

Dalriada also happens naturally in the instance itself, just like CLR, and unlike DR, which you queue for outside instance exclusively. THATS its real issue - the fact that its part of Bozja, but also requires you to go outside the Bozja and just HOPE enough people are queing for it, or PF it up, which goes contrary to emergent/natural formation thing that Expeditionary Ventures had going for them. Savage, yeah, I get that, but even normal turns it into a bottleneck not just for relic grinds, its a bottleneck even for plain story progression through Bozja quests. Although this being the step where the two alternative options are equitably awful to do for relic doesn't do it any favors either.

[Aco505]

Dalriada also happens naturally in the instance itself, just like CLR, and unlike DR, which you queue for outside instance exclusively. THATS its real issue - the fact that its part of Bozja, but also requires you to go outside the Bozja and just HOPE enough people are queing for it, or PF it up, which goes contrary to emergent/natural formation thing that Expeditionary Ventures had going for them. Savage, yeah, I get that, but even normal turns it into a bottleneck not just for relic grinds, its a bottleneck even for plain story progression through Bozja quests. Although this being the step where the two alternative options are equitably awful to do for relic doesn't do it any favors either.

You will get in automatically after 10 minutes of waiting in a queue for DRN but I agree that it's "weird" compared to most content. Many people in specialized Discords will be happy to help new players do it for the first time though so in a sense it encourages participation in the way MMOs did in the past.

Not saying it's the best solution though but it's not that bad.

The main problem I see is that getting one relic requires five runs of DRN, and it can take a bit if people don't go with the best actions. This doesn't take a lot of preparation but the average player will likely not use them as optimally as possible, which will slow down the grind.

[LaylaTsarra]

I support instanced zones in 7.0 make relic fun again. Loved both Eureka and Bozja!

[Heroman3003]

You will get in automatically after 10 minutes of waiting in a queue for DRN but I agree that it's "weird" compared to most content. Many people in specialized Discords will be happy to help new players do it for the first time though so in a sense it encourages participation in the way MMOs did in the past.

Not saying it's the best solution though but it's not that bad.

The main problem I see is that getting one relic requires five runs of DRN, and it can take a bit if people don't go with the best actions. This doesn't take a lot of preparation but the average player will likely not use them as optimally as possible, which will slow down the grind.

It took me weeks (and while I do play in dead timezone of my DC, I still managed to do all the rest of Bozja naturally quickly) to get DR done with because I ended up with like 3 people total at most until I got a lucky day when I could play during peak hours and got like 12. And I dont know how it scales, but it did NOT feel doable with 3 people. Or at the bare minimum, nobody felt like it was worth time investment after spending like 10 minutes on first boss to get it down 15% hp before wiping.

[Nono_mrkb]

Totally agree the Exploratory Zones should come back on 7.x. They were good filler content between patches.
Exploratory Zones have many nice thing that 6.x lack of:
1) Easy to join and leave at anytime for solo. Also you'll feel easier to invite FC or LS member for a longer play time and little bit engaging content compare to VD/AD or Blue mage content.
2) You can easily try out any classes inside and don't need to care about iLVL.
3) Dev can implement broken and fun things and don't need to care about balance because they are addtional content. So player can play their class differently.
4) The "MMO feels" when you see entire group players wipe by mechanic in CE.

[xbahax92]

They don't even need to add whole new zones, imo. It's fine if they'd expand on the exisiting zones and add more heights/tunnels, deepen the lore and add more rewards.
It's possible to expand the island sanctuary every patch, why not existing zones with new vistas and new bosses?

[DPZ2]

People who doesn't have a elemental rank of 10 or at least a resistance rank of 10 shouldn't coment on Exploratory zones at all, just saying.

I haven't done the Exploratory zones, nor HoH. I consider them a waste of effort on the part of SE. I consider them to be the reason we don't have two dungeons per expansion patch.

Am I qualified to make that particular comment, Oh Great and Mighty Gatekeeper?

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Delubrum, Dalriada and Lacus Litore were great experiences.
And some, many even, say Baldesion Arsenal IS the best experience in the game.

Eureka and Bozja did almost nothing wrong, and gave long lasting goals and content for players all expansion cycle over.
Meanwhile savage and ultimates keep like a 2% of players busy... While the rest of the player base has to endure a limited gear progression system and reward structure in all content just to not touch the balance of that very limited and unreaching, unappealing part of the content.

Field Operations need to be back. And Savage and Ultimate raids have to pay for them.
End game has to go as it is now, is not good for anyone but a very reduced part of the player base.

Progression has to diversify, turn into a more horizontal take, with concept as "main job/class" being torn by a new progression system that allows and reward actual multiple-role progression and instances that allow for on the fly role changes to adjust to more emergent, procedimental and less repetitive content (dance fights have to go, keep em always guessing!)

[Payadopa]

All the zones should be exploratory zones. Why should we have to queue in order to find fun, challenging content we can do solo/duo/small group?

I never understood that myself. We have so many zones and yet we don't do anything in them.