Exploration Content: Salvation or Stopgap?

[Eraden]

As long as they are a separate instance while also changing how the game works, I will dislike exploratory content.

Take things from there and put them on the actual overworld maps. Don't cut people off from the rest of the game with an instance.

Mao agrees. Mao likes how GW2 does explorations. Mao nots sure can be done with FFXIV though. Explorations locked to MSQs and forces player to plod alongs. Was Mao biggest complaint abouts MSQs. Explorations and Gatherings so heavily restricteds. To makes matters worse, system as is currently makes Gatherings little bits borings. Being led to new areas like cow to new pasture is nots excitings. What IS excitings is going to places that are DANGEROUS and using wits to plunder resource nodes and gets out alive. By time MSQ allows entry into new area, is no more danger.

[Fawkes]

The biggest problem is that it wasn't replaced by something of equal scale. We got variant dungeons instead, which are basically a regular dungeon but you click on some stuff to make the boss mechanics different.

Next expansion we'll probably still get variant dungeons, but not as many of them.

[DiaDeem]

...but I also remember when those expansions were current people badmouthing them ALL THE TIME

Let me put it this way: Sure, haters complained, yet the zones were always filled, and if you ever played them actively, everyone just seemed to be having fun. There will ALWAYS be people who complain about whatever, but both Eureka and Bozja were always active, even now. Eureka should be completely dead right now, but people are still grinding stuff there all the time, at least in Primal.

Now... how many people are still running Sil'dihn?

Good content survives the haters. Dead content can't keep even the veterans.

And it pains me to say this because I really enjoyed the Variant Dungeons, but the implementation is just lackluster.
Also: Having Variant and Deep Dungeons doesn't mean we shouldn't have an Exploratory Zone or a Trail Series

Anyway...

[Supersnow845]

Lucky brancho stats showed that Bozja was at the time of Zadnor being released the most engaged with content in the game outside of the roulettes

70% of capped players who had finished the MSQ had access to Zadnor, 55% of MSQ completed characters had completed Dal by the 5.58, 26% of MSQ completed characters had cleared dal 10 times

This numbers are legit monstrous, you are rivalling the completion rate of the normal raid tier for the equivalent expansion on content that could take weeks for the average player to cap, how anyone could argue that Bozja is anything but a runaway success I have no idea

[Jeeqbit]

when those expansions were current people badmouthing them ALL THE TIME

I remember this too. I was virtually the only Eureka defender on this forum back in Stormblood. Everyone booed my posts. Yet once we got to Endwalker, suddenly everyone was a big fan of Eureka.

So let's ask who was actually spending their time in Eureka back then. The answer is that people who didn't have much time (such as an hour or two after work), did not like wasting hours of their time waiting for an NM. It wasted their whole evening and they did not have that sort of time. I knew people who were complaining and I know that they only had a few hours after work.

Then there are the achievement hunters. The ones who would spend weeks grinding every relic for every job. They were in Eureka all the time doing light farming and things like that. At the end of it, they were very proud to show off their what was it, 17-18 relics? Something that would leave a lot of people in awe with how much work it is.

I think the achievement hunter types also complained, because they were burning themselves out doing it all at once, but amongst all their complaints, I saw a lot of laughing and fun being had, actually. Because all sorts of things happened at NMs, Skirmishes, CEs and so on. In their case I think it was a combination of doing too much at once, and not acknowledging how much fun they were actually having. It took seeing the alternatives in Endwalker, to discover how good they had it.

[ForteNightshade]

Most of the Eureka criticism came during Pagos, which was an unmitigated disaster at launch. There's no denying how horrendously implemented it was, and very much clouded the opinion of Exploratory zones for a good while. So why did it fail so spectacularly? Ironically, for somewhat similar reason we're seeing so much negativity now: the dev team listening to a small minority of players and being stubbornly stuck in their "vision."

Pagos saw the devs go out of their way to break NM trains as a viable option, which is something a handful of JP players whined about. They further necessitated the "mob farm" method but with absolutely ludicrous amounts—all because they wanted a FFXI vision, something spearheaded by one of the XI developers working on Pagos. Additionally, they delayed logos actions because "we didn't want to overwhelm players still getting accustomed to Eureka." The end result was a boring slog of a zone that emphasised the absolute worst elements of FFXI in game with systems not designed for that type of grind, and without a cool gimmick to offset some of the negative reception. To say they had egg on their face would be a laughable understatement—especially when they slowly scaled back every single change made. Adding to the insult, players eventually brute forced NM training before subsequent patches made it the best method again.

In an effort to please some of the FFXI crowd, they pissed off a lot more players. Just like now they've focused almost exclusively on the hyper casual players who feel entitled 15+ relics but don't want to spent much extra time getting them. In both scenarios, these are a minority demographic that had a much bigger ripple effect than they likely anticipated.

Now before anyone jumps, I specifically denoted "hyper casual" because just like the midcore and hardcore players there are smaller subsets of players within those categories. Most casual players aren't necessarily looking for handouts or can't press 123. They simply don't care about the higher end content or have less time to play. However, they still want to work towards something like a hardcore player does.

[Jeeqbit]

Most of the Eureka criticism came during Pagos, which was an unmitigated disaster at launch.

I think I played it after only one NM nerf and a change to how you get Light (and it had many more nerfs after that because people still thought the spawn rate was too low).

Pagos wasn't really an issue even then. I saw NMs spawn often enough and it was fun navigating the dragons to get to them. People had a big issue with the terrain and how the dragons would kill them, but in my opinion, that's a skill issue. The whole point was learning to walk past them and the danger of doing so.

People complained about Light being hard to farm, but I simply joined a dragon farm party and got light real fast. I also got Light at a decent rate just from NMs. All these issues must have only been an issue for people that only had a few hours a week to play. In fact I only even went in there once a week for 3 hours and did it casually and had no problem.

The biggest issue with Pagos in my opinion was farming for the very rare drops and things like Copycat Bulb. I went in there for years after it released for 3 hour sessions and never even passed the first layer of RNG to have a chance of getting it. It was so hopeless that I just bought it, because after years of trying to earn it myself, it just wasn't worth it. I prefer the cluster system from Bozja where you had a fixed grind to get a lot of the rewards and you knew exactly how long it would take to get the clusters.

[Supersnow845]

It’s why despite me liking eureka more than Bozja Bozja was unequivocally the more healthy content for the design of the game

You could make progress the second you walked into the zone whether that was a skirmish that was up in your current highest zone, a CE that was recruiting when you zoned in or just a favourable weather condition to farm sprites (when dust btw)

I’d say bozja’s only misstep was tying the relic to at least clearing DRN even though it was possible to do the relic entirely outside of Bozja otherwise, if they made that distinction Bozja would have close to perfect

[Snorky]

I like Bozja best even the zone is butt ugly, eureka was just a bit to chaotic for my tastes. I agree there should be more of this content in the game. Bozja seemed to flow more for me asking to group was easy people invited you. I am looking forward to going back there with my ninja.

[Renalt]

The thing with any content that is different from others is you'll always get one person saying they love it while another screaming at the top of their lungs that they hate it.

You will never please everyone so just do what you want to do.