No no, it's Rise OVER Run; and other Math you get wrong. [VERY Strong Opinion; Bozja]

[Deceptus]

I will read the whole thing, don't worry, but just to respond to your TL;DR:

My time in Bozja was one of the most fun times I've had in the game, period. Efficiency hardly matters when the content is FUN. Running around collecting goodies while a raid boss pops every few minutes was a great gameplay loop and it absolutely worked for me. This may be a controversial opinion, but Bozja runs miles around Eureka. If you hate Bozja then I suggest staying far, far away from Eureka because it's worse in every way possible. Bozja was a massive improvement, and I hope they go further in that direction in Endwalker.

EDIT: Okay I've read your post, and this is what I have to say:

I do think there is some validity to nerfing the time-gated mechanics in Bozja, simply because the content is older now. However, I don't think it's likely they'll do that since they still haven't nerfed Eureka in that way (strictly in terms of how long things take to spawn).

In my opinion, clearing the CE's without taking any damage in order to fight the 1v1 duel, and then clearing that duel, is one of the best feeling sensations FFXIV has ever had (and may ever have). Nothing compares to conquering a savage-level fight all on your own while dozens of people cheer you on on the sidelines. Yes, it takes a mastery of the mechanics, and you need to be hyperfocused, but that just makes it all the more rewarding.

And about the mount you're trying to get. There are some mounts in the game that take hundreds of hours to obtain. I should know because I'm currently trying to unlock every mount in the game. Al Iklil (or however it's spelled) isn't the worst. Yes, it's incredibly frustrating to rely on the RNG from the FATEs that drop the notes you need, but that's all the more reason to study up and conquer the 1v1 duels!

So, I will accept that Bozja isn't for everyone. But it's the effort you put in that makes the rewards feel so much more worth it. If you don't have the time for that, then fair enough (although I had a full-time job the entire time I progressed through Bozja/Zadnor/SaveTheQueen, and I have obtained every single achievement you can obtain from it). But it's certainly doable if you're willing to put in the time and appreciate the content for what it is.

Easiest solution: Allow BLU in the old outdated content it was meant to be played in (to include POTD, HoH, Eureka, Bozja etc etc)

[fulminating]

murder death kill isn't the one that has a duel associated, it's vigil for the lost (z1, danzig), red choctober (z2, lyon) and metal fox chaos (z3, sart)

[Nexae]

murder death kill isn't the one that has a duel associated, it's vigil for the lost (z1, danzig), red choctober (z2, lyon) and metal fox chaos (z3, sart)

With what I was read, and frankly TOLD, I really hope that isn't the case. I asked around a lot, and despite still needing record #11, I was told MDK procs a Duel.

.. so maybe add 'Bad Actors' to the number of reason Bozja should prrooooooobably still be in the hands of the Empire.

[Hasrat]

With what I was read, and frankly TOLD, I really hope that isn't the case. I asked around a lot, and despite still needing record #11, I was told MDK procs a Duel.

.. so maybe add 'Bad Actors' to the number of reason Bozja should prrooooooobably still be in the hands of the Empire.

Feels like this needs to be further addressed, because.. yeah. Regularly spawning skirmishes don't lead to duels. Critical Engagements (the ones you have to register for, the ones with a confined arena) spawn duels. And said Critical Engagements are themselves spawned by specific skirmishes, which are themselves only spawned by chain killing Garlean troops in their respective regions.

And, technically speaking, none of the duels are truly required to collect all notes. The duel notes are also available from the respective final instances (Castrum and Dalriada), albeit at a very low drop rate. I wouldn't exactly bank on them ever actually dropping.. but if duels just aren't for you..

Much like any of the other high-end hard fight content, it's always wise to do your research. Going in blind is always an option, sure, but it's only going to result in.. well, this. At least here you can watch others try and fail and maybe learn from their mistakes, but it's still a lot to process.

Also, in addition to the advice of Zadnor being for mettle farming, you'll also just plain want/need to progress simply for more Lost Actions, many of which can be quite useful in making the duels just a little bit easier.

[Themarvin]

Bozja and the content to it is absolutely fine, I just wish they made it way more relavant to do by eg. upping it to lvl90-100 ish content and for the love of everythign good, no Beastmaster or BluMage in it, as it ruins the goal of the areas of being excelent loot and leveling areas for normal jobs.

I don't get the rant, but again modern people was never brought up with any kind of grind but a silver spoon in the mouth and demanding stuff only and refusing to work on anything.

EDIT:
Losing mettle and the likes, IS NOT punishment, it is a good thing if anything, it make you stay on your toes as well well as giving the reason for people to revive you, its nothing and also don't take on stuff you can't take on, and learn by it, losing mettle increases the skill of the playerbase if anything, as well as the ability to go and help others, by eg. going towards the revive achievements as well.

[Jeeqbit]

Let's assume you want the Al'iklil: You need just 50 Field Records in total. That's it! 50 Simple drops. These are not obtained from one place, Bozja, but rather many. You need just 50 records, quick and easy right?

More or less. I got that mount when Bozja was current.

#1. Grinding Mettle to Rank 25 (Millions. Literal millions of Mettle, btw).

However, you get millions extremely quickly in the final section of Zadnor. So it's a short farm to get 20 million.

#2. Grinding the First (for Bozja) FATE-Dungeon, an instanced.. er, instance, which requires waiting for it to proc (minimum 30m)

30 minutes is nothing to gamers, but probably is to casual players.

before pairing with a random number of other players who may or may not know the fights

It was always the case that some people didn't know the fight. What was great about these CE raids is they telegraphed everything once with floor aoe indicators, then never again. So you had the opportunity to watch and learn, and if you didn't learn, then it was on you. It set a great balance between telegraphing for casual players, but not over-telegraphing, and also only telegraphing it when it was too late for more obvious stuff so that you could still learn it.

#3. Grinding Lost Finds: Imagine Loot Boxes, but imagine about 30 different kinds

Right, but these are easy to grind and you can get loads from reflect farming or using Lost Death on a boss mob or buying from the Market Board. The specific ones you want come from specific locations so that narrows it down a lot too.

#4. Grinding Specific FATEs: Oh, you know, just your standard waiting for an hour for the FATE GCD to finish, then starting the first FATE, then the next.. then the next... Then you get your FATE! ..But Hark! What's that.. it's... not a guaranteed drop?

I heard that was an issue for a specific one in the first area, but personally I got lucky and got it easily.

have to do #4 each and every time

Guess it wasn't an issue for me because others were in the area spawning it constantly. But regardless, you can afk camp until the right ones show up and then do the chain and then wait more. Surely other things you can do like discord or watching netflix or house cleaning.

to qualify, you need to take no damage from Named Attacks & AOEs, nail every mechanic every time

Mostly pretty easy. I qualified most times. A lot of people didn't and that was part of why I qualified as well. For whatever reason, other people find them hard but I didn't. Maybe I've just played for too many years.

The good thing is they listened to feedback and made it so each time you qualify you increase your notoriety. That wasn't previously the case, so you'd get people qualify 50 times and never get the duel. Now with just 2 or 3 notoriety you're probably above most other challengers.

1-3 players max

A duel is literally a 1-on-1 fight.

The only time you get practice with said fight, is if: you wait an hour, complete at least two FATEs, complete the last FATE with Impossible Aplomb, get chosen at random over everyone else (unless you solo it, then nevermind ever getting it [see below]), then you have to do more waiting, then fight.

Well true, it's a bit tedious to do this multiple times and either you have to endure the tedium of that or study via youtube. Blue Mage solo content doesn't have that issue because you can just re-queue immediately. So solo content could be done better but on the other hand, the rarity of the fight makes it a spectacle that others can watch. There would be whole crowds of people around it watching and cheering and they would get a buff for watching. It was actually entertaining to watch.

Oh! But don't make a single mistake! You won't make it. Full. Gods damned. Stop.). Why would you do this?

Challenging content in a video game. There is hardly any of it in FFXIV beside extreme/savage/ultimate which require a party. This is one of the few things we can say people can challenge themselves solo with in this game. It'd be good if we didn't get SE to remove what little challenge there is for solo players.

Guaranteed drop rate on the Field Record. Well, that and so you can tell everyone you don't have a Job (I actually don't at the moment, department was dissolved..).

You know what? Maybe this content is just for people with no job, the self-employed and people who don't occupy most of their after-work time with other activities like relationships, being a parent, or food preparation. Some people just have more time and they need content for themselves as well.

you die? You lose Mettle. You release? You lose a LOT of Mettle.

1 or 2 Skirmishes in the final Zadnor section and you've recovered it. It's not really a penalty lol.

'Murder Death Kill'

I remember doing that one more times than any other! Although it was mostly for grinding mettle.

I've solo'd it no less than five times

Only 5? I solo'd it like 100-1000 times.

That's no less than 7 hours dedicated to getting only 1 Field Record; I still don't have it.

I got all the duel field records by farming CLL and Dalriada. Rare drop, certainly more than 7 hours. I have 22 CLL runs and 31 Dalriada runs on my main character.

So now you have Final Elden Soul by Square Enix: Time-Gate Edition.

Just remember that MMORPGs are historically very time-consuming games, to the point they used to consume your entire life (including time you spend eating, showering and sleeping). This game is a lot better where time is concerned, but it's still an MMORPG and still has a degree of time-consumption in areas because of being based upon old MMORPGs that didn't respect people's time.

/teleport, 12-16-minute dungeon runs, 10-minute trial/raid pulls, cooldown resets on death, teleports back to the boss arena in dungeons, quests only asking you to kill 3 enemies, extreme trials letting you buy a mount after 99 runs. These things respect your time, but there are aspects of the game that are still inspired by older MMORPGs and consume your time and, frankly, some people are bored and want something to consume their time.

[Nexae]

Only 5? I solo'd it like 100-1000 times.

Okay, I know I'm being played here, but I have to respond: 1000 times? Really? If you've solo'd MDK One Thousand Times I'll eat my custom 'Brown is Beautiful' Converse High Tops. Hell, if you've even solo'd MDK 100 times, I'll eat my microphone's foam filter. The only reason I only solo'd it 5 times, is because people join in very quickly. Unless you're living in a ghost server, you're getting company. 1000 times, more like 1000 hollow boasts. Don't forget there's a global timer on Bozja, eventually you have to refresh your instance and get put back in with people.

Learn to contribute to a conversation, I know it's hard for a Master Lone One-Wolf Mega Army Manguy Extreme to understand, but really it's kinda sad (read: entertaining; don't stop) to read this nonsense. XD

[Jeeqbit]

Okay, I know I'm being played here, but I have to respond: 1000 times? Really? If you've solo'd MDK One Thousand Times I'll eat my custom 'Brown is Beautiful' Converse High Tops. Hell, if you've even solo'd MDK 100 times, I'll eat my microphone's foam filter. The only reason I only solo'd it 5 times, is because people join in very quickly.

Sometimes people joined, but not always. Also, sometimes it would put me in an instance solo and this was when it was new. It scales depending on the amount of others doing them. If everyone is in CLL and I'm not, then it's virtually solo content. If everyone is farming mid and I'm north, it's solo content, so I did it a lot. I can't think of any Skirmish I did more in Bozja tbh. I probably only did the Zadnor last area as much.

Learn to contribute to a conversation

I think I contributed an awful lot here. Just because everything doesn't perfectly agree with you 100% doesn't mean it is not part of the debate.

[Nexae]

I think I contributed an awful lot here. Just because everything doesn't perfectly agree with you 100% doesn't mean it is not part of the debate.

Your "contribution" here was arrogance and elitism. You came in swinging with an argument, and not a thought for debate. "Well I can do X, Y, Z. I Like X, Y, Z. I.." is not an argument for anything. Quoting every step with non-stop "gotcha" refutations isn't a debate. You're an elitist, and your contributions are as bold as they are lame. There is plenty I wouldn't have agreed with, but those points were brought up by people offering a perspective, an opinion, and even some advice, and my mind was changed. You came in with what you thought was BDE, but really was just vitriolic and hyperbole.

I have an updated appreciation for some things now, but don't take credit MLO-WMAME, it wasn't from your "contributions".

[Jeeqbit]

Your "contribution" here was arrogance and elitism.

My points included:

1. You get millions of experience points in Zadnor.
2. That learning a fight is part of the point of the content and that not all content is meant to be as easy as a dungeon.
3. That players with more time feel bored in Endwalker and would have loved a Bozja-like content that sap their time like this.
4. The point that things need to be earned sometimes, like the duel, by doing mechanics flawlessly.
5. The point that duels are unique in that they are meant to be watched like a colosseum and as such it can't be as convenient as a queue, because it wants to filter people.

I DON'T HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THE CONTENT, I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH LOCKING LORE+EXCLUSIVES BEHIND TIME DUMPS SO EXTREME THAT YOU COULD SPEND THAT SAME AMOUNT OF TIME LEARNING AN ENTIRELY NEW SKILL.

Part of the point in this game is being able to say you earned things, such as relic weapons or rare mounts.

• When people see someone with an old relic weapon, they think "oh it took a lot of time and effort to get that, I know how much work they put in". But when they see someone with a Hilidibrand relic, they don't really think that at all, because it involves less time and effort - just dumping tomestones they got anyway and clicking a quest.
• When people see the tiger, triceratops or victor mounts from hunts they think that involved a lot of time and effort - months of grinding and respect the effort. Same for the mentor roulette mount, which involves 2,000 mentor roulettes.
• When people see ultimate weapons, they think that involved a lot of time and effort progging the fight and coming close to beating it many times.

To me and to a lot of people, that is one of the things that is fun about an MMORPG. That you can show off what you worked hard to earn.

I could literally learn French in the time that it takes for some of these drops. I've heard tales of people netting around 107 FATEs for 1 single record- that's not reasonable. The same thing, 107 times?

Don't get me wrong, I don't like RNG like that really. It made me put off a similar area, Eureka, where after years of trying for 3-hour sessions, I couldn't even land a random chance at a random chance to get the drop I wanted. I had to buy the items that had too low drop rates.

I preferred the Bozja cluster system, where at least my grind was fixed and able to be planned, and I didn't feel like I was wasting my time. That said, if the grind is fixed ie. 107 is how much it takes for everyone, then that would be fine, as long as each of them is contributing to it, such as by dropping a currency or increasing an achievement.

All I'd be able to think about for the rest of my days is: 'Dodge. Rotation A. Rotation B. Half-rotation, Dodge. Icarus. Phlegma. Toxicon. Dodge. Rotation A...'

Grinding the gemstone mount has been like that with Chi and Daivadipa. You virtually have to do them 582 times to get 500 vouchers. I'm almost half-way there.

When will they nerf Eureka?

It actually did get a lot of nerfs, both while current and after. It's just that these nerfs were more to travel, experience gain, NM spawn rates and included significant buffs to elemental power and other methods to gain exp like the challenge log. I don't personally find the loot RNG fun in Pagos so I wouldn't mind that being improved a bit, but in terms of leveling through for the story, it is once again meant to be content for people who want a lot of their time occupied and zooming through it would defeat the point of it.