What would it take for you to like field content it you don’t currently like it?

[Atelier-Bagur]

For me, I love the lore, I find the CE's fun and sufficiently engaging, I'm an achievement hunter so that's a natural draw. The one big turn-off for me is the "action" system. I feel it basically becomes a "learn new things that aren't natural for your class but are so overpowered you have to become good with them to feel you're contributing." Having to learn new abilities that are only useful in that one zone and different from the otherwise "feel" of the class, and making those abilities so central to the content, deflates my enjoyment of it rather considerably.

CE's arent the issue. They're fun, but the problem is that when they're the only form of content. Really we can still keep all of the stuff that Eureka and Bozja had. We can keep the NMs, the Duels and the CEs and what not. That content is fine. Its the fact thats literally just it and when most of your play time is kept going from FATE to FATE and waiting for certain ones to pop rather than continue zone progression with another form of activity is where I feel current exploratory zones fail in that ambition.

I just want more fun things to do in exploratory zones and have progression feel less of a grinding chore.

[Zairava]

I already said this multiple times on various threads but what I wish exploratory content to have is more avenues of progression.

Having various quests to do (and not just milestones for it like we had for Eureka and Bozja), have gear rewards from special world bosses or dungeons you can access and not just something you acquire near the end, allow crafter and gatherer classes to contribute with zone resources as well as partcipate in timed zone scale events, have the zones be bigger and less aetheryte convenience and just overall be less of just another flavor of Fate train spam because thats 90% of current exploratory zone content.

Like the OP, I'm a exploratory zone defender.

I would enjoy this too. What we need, I feel, is something akin to old Diadem but with polish brought by Eureka and especially Bozja.

I'd also like to see more events for defense. Like defending bases from hordes of mobs.

To reference my usual simping for old Rift, there could be, for example, rifts at which timed-zone events where the enemies can spawn and will attack locale, the players would need to work together to defeat it and/or the mobs attacking the base or w/e, and those who are powerful enough through progression systems provided inside the exploratory zone, dropped from these encounters and larger scale ones as well.

[TheMightyMollusk]

For me to want to do exploratory zones, they'd have to actually be fun. Eureka and Bozja are both FATE farms sprinkled over mob grinds. They're just boring.

[OgruMogru]

That’s a totally fair criticism, eureka runs laps around Bozja in terms of area design (anemos is still probably the single best designed “area” in the entire game)

If Bozja wasn’t brown brown and brown (except Zadnor zone 2 for some reason) would you like it more

This was my issue with Bozja too. Contextually and thematically I get it but it's just so drab and uninteresting. I'm also not a fan of Matsuno's writing personally, which I also find a bit joyless [I'm sorry I know that's not a popular opinion and I totally concede that it's a "me" issue not a Matsuno issue] so it was a double whammy for me.

[Xirean]

To reference my usual simping for old Rift, there could be, for example, rifts at which timed-zone events where the enemies can spawn and will attack locale, the players would need to work together to defeat it and/or the mobs attacking the base or w/e, and those who are powerful enough through progression systems provided inside the exploratory zone, dropped from these encounters and larger scale ones as well.

Isn't that just a FATE?

[Zairava]

Isn't that just a FATE?

I thought about it, and it really does sound like a FATE, but the idea is to at least make it mildly more interesting for the instance since they will inevitably put FATE's in the exploratory zone. There was a lot more to Rift than just those, though. I'd like to be able to spawn large-scale events myself like we were able to in Rift as well. Something like the nightmare rifts that could go potentially endlessly if the players could go that long.

[CidHeiral]

I'm not a huge fan of the exploratory zones as a whole but each iteration had its own strengths and weaknesses.

In Eureka you are encouraged to work with everyone else in the instance to coordinate the prep of NM spawns. I found this teamwork fun to an extent, but ultimately you're still just grinding mobs.

In Bozja the NMs have been turned into closed off boss encounters with more interesting mechanics, but you still grind mobs to get them to spawn and to farm clusters. Unlike Eureka however there is no coordination required with anyone else at any point in the zone. If you include the raids there are a couple spots here and there where you have to work together and those are easily the highlights of the entire series. DRS especially was very fun.

If they have another go at this type of content I hope they take the best parts of both iterations.

- The little goals players are working towards should be interesting, whether that be a boss with unique mechanics or some kind of group activity everyone can participate in.

- The method to get to that goal should require communication and coordination between the people in the instance. This should be a place that brings players together in a way other areas typically do not.

Also, I think a lot of times when people talk about missing exploratory zones, what they actually mean (perhaps subconsciously) is that they miss tons of players getting together in the same area to do something as most would imagine when thinking of an MMORPG. I get that feeling myself every time I show up for an S rank hunt. They could add content like this to the normal zones or create an entirely new concept we haven't even thought of, but the main point is getting lots of players in the same place and interacting.

FFXIV is very "shove small groups of people into instances" and I don't know about you but all my favorite memories from past MMOs involve a bunch of players gathering out in the world somewhere. I can talk for hours about things that happened 20 years ago like the battles of Tarren Mill vs Southshore, the opening of Ahn'Qiraj, leveling shenanigans in Valkurm Dunes or Qufim, and so on. Meanwhile in FFXIV I can barely remember what happened last raid tier. FFXIV could definitely use more large scale group content, whether that be another Eureka/Bozja or something else.

[Xirean]

Another random thought about this. If the exploratory zones are going to be filled with FATEs (I'd prefer something else honestly) then in addition to whatever we get from them, make them drop gemstones that we can use at the existing gemstone vendors.

[Kaurhz]

- Gathering materials incorporated into the zone, so people could go there and gather, similar to how they did with Trials of the Matron.

- The above would feed into being able to craft essences, etc., - Rather than them being something exclusively obtained from farming monsters, FATEs, CEs, or the raid.

- Not so heavily oriented around FATEs. However, they accomplish this is up to them. Or at the very least the focus is on killing monsters, e.g., equivalent to Brachiosaur. Rather than on FATEs. Over half of Bozja just feels like a chore in this respect. The CEs were fun, doing CLL and Dalriada were fun, but let's face it, everything else was mediocre. - Is it one of the better pieces of content they've developed? Sure. But it's still mediocre.

- It should be a lot -- A LOT more than just FATEs -- and it certainly should amount to more than just combat.

[Supersnow845]

To people who think Bozja is overly fate focused what would you want in its place

Specifically the fact that CE’s aren’t spawned by skirmishes so you can ignore skirmishes if you really want and progress in other ways in order to join CE’s

When you really break down 14’s combat you have
-casual small group roulette content
-alliance raids
-savage

Bozja has a sum total of 43 alliance raid quality bosses (30 CE’s, 3 in CLL, 6 in DRN and 4 in dal) the savage difficulty is covered by DRS and the duels so what does that really leave, I could see hamlet defence being integrated so you are not just attacking but also defending, but otherwise in a large scale zone what other examples of 14’s combat could be added that would actually work