Zepla: The Players Endwalker Left Behind

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Originally Posted by Zairava

You don't need discord for CLL, DR, and DAL either. Sure you're going to need people but you can just make a party finder if there genuinely isn't enough people there or try again later. I can agree with Eureka being too punishing to die until you get to the max level for each area, but once you get Zadnor losing mettle is essentially meaningless since they basically throw mettle at you there

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I think it also depends on where in Eureka you are at. With echo and actions, I feel you can solo outside of max level pretty easy. But, unless you are a tank, you ideally should have a defensive action on. And set your magia board accordingly. If you are just going in with offensive (or not even any) actions and not attuning your magia board to the enemy, yea, it's gonna be rough. Anemos and Pagos, maybe it's harder? Even then, with Eureka, your weekly challenge log makes any loss of experience a pretty minor thing. You will either make the xp back, doing your current zone NMs and/or get it back with challenge log.

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

I think it also depends on where in Eureka you are at. With echo and actions, I feel you can solo outside of max level pretty easy. But, unless you are a tank, you ideally should have a defensive action on. And set your magia board accordingly. If you are just going in with offensive (or not even any) actions and not attuning your magia board to the enemy, yea, it's gonna be rough. Anemos and Pagos, maybe it's harder? Even then, with Eureka, your weekly challenge log makes any loss of experience a pretty minor thing. You will either make the xp back, doing your current zone NMs and/or get it back with challenge log.

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Fair points. Can't believe I forgot about the challenge log seeing as how I've mentioned it multiple times in the past as the reason Eureka is soloable.

Now that Eureka is going to be 3 expansions old when Dawntrail releases, I think they could start putting more measures into Eureka to make it easier on people progressing. I think a bigger addition to help people would be to let people exchange crystals for logograms inside of pyros and hydatos. As well as being able to elemental transfer other crystals into other types (Anemos -> Pagos, Pagos -> Pyros, and so forth)

For me, that's the biggest miss with EW. I miss going into Eureka and Bozja, partying up with random people, doing NM/Skirmesh/CE farming. CLL, DR and Dal. Just having a bunch of randoms come together and doing content. And then you can end up seeing familiar faces over time. EO, C/V and IS just aren't it. They are small party/solo interactions and there's no feel of being part of something larger. And that's not even getting into the relative difficulty of the Eureka/Bozja content itself, with being a step up from MSQ content (but not such a large step as going into EX or higher). The twice come ruin mechanic, for me, is awesome. It made it feel like there was some actual semblance of pressure to do the mechanics properly, without it being OHKO or instant raid wipes.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

I don't think casual should be easy all the time, I do think to a point, it should be more punishing, or at the very least should be something that does encourage players to bump up to the next level... But at the same time, I do think a lot of players have a false sense of insecurity behind it and the general expectation needed. I think it's just one of those things that a lot of players need to take a leap of faith in more than anything.

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I would go so far to say that casual content should not be a cakewalk at all. the reality is, they are stumbling over themselves by trying to make this a solo game, and sure, its well and good that a turnip with a learning disorder can complete the MSQ, but I would say many of us did not come to this game at that skill level. I am fairly sure this whole lack of complexity and content can start being traced back to when they started leaning into making the game more solo friendly. why bother learning a decent skill efficiency when you can now be a sea sponge with minimal dexterity to clear most content except extremes and savages?

Was a little surprised at the intro and her take on casuals. Around 4 minutes: "I was really surprised actually. They [casuals] don't play that much. ... They enjoy doing like very very lowkey ... easy, content. They are not looking for a challenge and perfectly happy with things going smooth ... and being able to count on that."

I'm not really sure how someone who plays games as much as she found any of this "really" surprising. Seems like common sense to me, but for her she needed comments on it. *shrug*

The core of her video seems to be about whether there is enough mid-core content, but I don't feel she adequately defines it. I think content that doesn't require a static but harder than normal? She defined Eureka and Bozja as mid-core (which I already saw a difference in opinion above that this is mid-core content), and Extremes. Her feedback is that there isn't enough at this level. I don't disagree, but she has a section on how she wishes casuals can experience raiding. But for casuals, the normal modes and 24 mans are the raid content they experience and a certain type of player isn't seeking increased time/fails/frustration.

I think the video instead would have been more focused if she spent more time and thought expressly on defining mid-core content and who that target audience is, and then having more ideas on how to produce more of it.

She shared the only options are being casual, quitting, being hardcore, or going back to old content - specifically Eureka for her. I think it would have been better to give more examples of what types of content can be added in the future to add to the mid-core offering. I guess for her it would just be adding a new Relic zone and more than 1 extreme a patch.

Curious to hear from actual people who want to be mid-core players what they want to see and what would make them content - beyond just stating we don't have enough.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

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I think I'd be more inclined to want to play EX as a Casual/Midcore player if they were more.. Random? And offered more types of rewards overall. Them just being weapon glam and mount don't make me want to repeat them 99 times with randos that only talk when they want to yell at each other. Bozja Critical Engagements hit different because they offered natural player engagement and a better reward structure due to the systems that exist in Bozja itself.

We also seriously lack any form of tutorial instances for those type of mechanics, so they're not very comfortable from the get-go. I guess you could say the Normal is the Tutorial, but eh.

Why do I get the feeling we prop up the Cash Shop by reducing the reward output for the actual encounters?

Imagine if doing this type of content were more similar to Retainer rewards, and we didn't actually have Retainers. That would actually get me digging into more of this type of content. I mean, it's why people can stomach POTD even though it's braindead after the 100th run.

Bozja itself was easy and unenjoyably grindy, but the critical encounters and raids were fun.

We really need more content that starts from the premise "you know all these mechanics from the standard fight; let's string them together faster and harder" without introducing whole new mechanics you need to practise with a team.

From what little I dipped my toe into Another Sil'dihn Subterrane, I liked the evolution of the Silkie's left/right sweep from something that was clearly labelled to something you had to watch and predict, and I would like more content that applies that kind of approach to existing mechanics. But the fight overall just had too many new and less intuitive things going on.

I would love to see a harder-but-not-savage version of things like the dungeons and alliance raids, so you can run it instead of the standard version once you're confident with the mechanics. Incentive can just be more loot in the chests.

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Originally Posted by R041

I think I'd be more inclined to want to play EX as a Casual/Midcore player if they were more.. Random? And offered more types of rewards overall. Them just being weapon glam and mount don't make me want to repeat them 99 times with randos that only talk when they want to yell at each other. Bozja Critical Engagements hit different because they offered natural player engagement and a better reward structure due to the systems that exist in Bozja itself.

We also seriously lack any form of tutorial instances for those type of mechanics, so they're not very comfortable from the get-go. I guess you could say the Normal is the Tutorial, but eh.

Why do I get the feeling we prop up the Cash Shop by reducing the reward output for the actual encounters?

Imagine if doing this type of content was more similar to Retainer rewards, and we didn't actually have Retainers. That would actually get me digging into more of this type of content.

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Yes I think the encounters all being so scripted makes them dull after you have them memorized. Some increased danger in damage output from the bosses and more variation / going off script would help a lot. Maybe instead of circles always being in exactly the same spots generally mix it up a bit too.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

Curious to hear from actual people who want to be mid-core players what they want to see and what would make them content - beyond just stating we don't have enough.

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Midcore content IMO should be the criteria of
-gear independant or not gear gated (so Savage raiders with BiS don't immediately trivialize it or have to be balanced around)
-not require any outside information (no guides, specific rotations necessary, no discord organization needed)
-easy to pick up and play through PF or LFG posts
-have no enrages or very forgiving enrages
-have environmentally telegraphed mechanics and complex mechanics akin to easy savage mechanics but with longer breaks between them

Unreal satisfies most of them, especially because it fixes one of the biggest issues I've seen in content, which is that content balanced for casual player gear progression is usually trivialized by raider BiS (Alliance Raids) and anything that's balanced for raider progression is exclusionary to casuals (Criterion)
Unreal has a forgiving enrage that allows for some flexibility, and it has a hard ilvl sync that's relatively low, so everyone is on the same starting point gear wise, which avoids the sometimes all too common issue where PF decides the actual min ilvl is way higher than SE decided it should be.

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

Midcore content IMO should be the criteria of
-gear independant or not gear gated (so Savage raiders with BiS don't immediately trivialize it or have to be balanced around)
-not require any outside information (no guides, specific rotations necessary, no discord organization needed)
-easy to pick up and play through PF or LFG posts
-have no enrages or very forgiving enrages
-have environmentally telegraphed mechanics and complex mechanics akin to easy savage mechanics but with longer breaks between them

Unreal satisfies most of them, especially because it fixes one of the biggest issues I've seen in content, which is that content balanced for casual player gear progression is usually trivialized by raider BiS (Alliance Raids) and anything that's balanced for raider progression is exclusionary to casuals (Criterion)
Unreal has a forgiving enrage that allows for some flexibility, and it has a hard ilvl sync that's relatively low, so everyone is on the same starting point gear wise, which avoids the sometimes all too common issue where PF decides the actual min ilvl is way higher than SE decided it should be.

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Thanks, this gives a nice framework to start with for sure.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

Curious to hear from actual people who want to be mid-core players what they want to see and what would make them content - beyond just stating we don't have enough.

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I honestly think that having a good exploratory zone, keeping 1 (or more but that's not going to happen sadly) extreme per patch and having an actual middle ground in Criterion as opposed to just normal, savage and savage but you're not allowed to die would be pretty good as far as midcore content goes.

I'm not exactly a midcore player though so take that as you will, those are mostly things I'd enjoy doing when not in the mood for harder content.

I think the biggest thing this thread shows is we all collectively don’t agree on what midcore actually is

We have a range of basically everything from the Diablo armament to “casually PF’ing savage” listed as midcore content and definitions are all over the place and I think that’s because ultimate pulls up the roof on difficulty far enough that it warps a lot of people’s perception of what really sits in the middle, if you ignore ultimate and make a hard savage like A8 E8 or T7S the top end of difficulty that more clearly shows that east extremes best fit the midcore section, alongside the hardest of the alliance raids like DRN and maybe Dal (mostly because of Diablo armament) and the harder CE’s (maths boss, red chocobo, etc)

I personally do not find BA to be hardcore content both in the form it’s in now and when it was originally being progged because people way overestate the effects of delevelling in eureka (especially at level 59-60 with sprite island), in terms of the bosses besides ozma they are just alliance difficulty bosses with pass fail checks on their mechanics, the most dangerous part of BA is the Bethesda hallway and ozma only seems difficult because you will get black holed if you fail and don’t proc

I wouldn't call her midcore at all. I don't think most Midcore try to or even want to try and complete an Ultimate. She is correct in that there isn't much in the way of midcore content. I'm not really sure if there ever was any. The difficulty scale for things in this game varies greatly. Pharos Sirius was midcore for its time original pre nerf Steps of Faith could also have been called midcore as even after it was nerfed people still said it was too hard. As some have said some Extremes are harder than some Savage fights.

It all depends on what you define casual, midcore and hardcore at least when it comes to a person. Do you go by difficulty in content or how much time you spend in the game? Or a bit of both? As a raider could just log in for a short period if time every week but be progging the newest raid or Ultimate. Meanwhile a person who enjoys decorating a house or their Island Sanctuary could be logged in for hours at a time yet isn't doing anything most would define as any kind of challenge.

I already put a comment on her video, but might as well drop one around here, I guess.

This whole "casual/midcore/hardcore" division is kinda messy, because while she sees Baldesion Arsenal as her midcore bridge, anything that makes me go through a Discord server to play immediately is out of my comfort zone. If something goes wrong (and on my first run, that's gonna be inevitable), I'm gonna have the risk of having some quad ultimate legend Limsa glam NPC screaming in my ear and I'm not about to risk it.
I'm not averse to dying. The two things I hate is feeling like I'm making no progress and feeling like I'm a burden to others while I'm learning, so what I'd consider my ideal "midcore bridge" has to be something that I can repeat until doing it is second nature, but that having me still learning wouldn't be a detriment to others.

What I suggested in the video is some content where you get tokens according to your individual performance. Something that doesn't stop or reset when you wipe, but rather gets delayed, while still rewarding trying to finish fast.
Some kind of "Survival" trial that has EX and/or Savage difficulty mechanics that you can learn by ramming your head against it until you figure it out. You died 17 times? You get 5 tokens. You didn't die? you get a 25 token bonus. The boss was killed too slow? No bonus tokens. You get your individual score tokens exclusively. Boss killed fast? +10 token party bonus.

Something that has rewards priced like the Gold Saucer: Some cheaper mounts, minions and emotes for newbies (like the 3k rewards from the Saucer), scaling in pricing to things like the 4 million mount from the Saucer for more dedicated players. Rewards that reward handsomely playing well while also providing a sense of progress and scaling for people that are still trying to get better.
A game mode that you can hop in at any time, completely disregarding Discord servers and Youtube tutorials, and say "I'm gonna go in and get some progress done" regardless of whether or not you ate every mechanic or if [The Ultimate Legend]������Lily Rainbowo������|Balmung decided that using a healing spell was a 0.073 DPS loss.

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Originally Posted by Eelanos

anything that makes me go through a Discord server to play immediately is out of my comfort zone

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I am the exact same way. In my opinion, content shouldn't all but require a voice chat to clear it.

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Originally Posted by Eelanos

I already put a comment on her video, but might as well drop one around here, I guess.

This whole "casual/midcore/hardcore" division is kinda messy, because while she sees Baldesion Arsenal as her midcore bridge, anything that makes me go through a Discord server to play immediately is out of my comfort zone. If something goes wrong (and on my first run, that's gonna be inevitable), I'm gonna have the risk of having some quad ultimate legend Limsa glam NPC screaming in my ear and I'm not about to risk it.
I'm not averse to dying. The two things I hate is feeling like I'm making no progress and feeling like I'm a burden to others while I'm learning, so what I'd consider my ideal "midcore bridge" has to be something that I can repeat until doing it is second nature, but that having me still learning wouldn't be a detriment to others.

What I suggested in the video is some content where you get tokens according to your individual performance. Something that doesn't stop or reset when you wipe, but rather gets delayed, while still rewarding trying to finish fast.
Some kind of "Survival" trial that has EX and/or Savage difficulty mechanics that you can learn by ramming your head against it until you figure it out. You died 17 times? You get 5 tokens. You didn't die? you get a 25 token bonus. The boss was killed too slow? No bonus tokens. You get your individual score tokens exclusively. Boss killed fast? +10 token party bonus.

Something that has rewards priced like the Gold Saucer: Some cheaper mounts, minions and emotes for newbies (like the 3k rewards from the Saucer), scaling in pricing to things like the 4 million mount from the Saucer for more dedicated players. Rewards that reward handsomely playing well while also providing a sense of progress and scaling for people that are still trying to get better.
A game mode that you can hop in at any time, completely disregarding Discord servers and Youtube tutorials, and say "I'm gonna go in and get some progress done" regardless of whether or not you ate every mechanic or if [The Ultimate Legend]������Lily Rainbowo������|Balmung decided that using a healing spell was a 0.073 DPS loss.

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You have a really warped view of what the BA discords do

As a BA host in the biggest of the discords in the nicest way possible “you are a faceless drone to us” we like helping you clear but we would never call you out for anything, we’d never blame you for anything. We just ask if you have questions then carry on and calmly ask you to do things to help us clear, the only time someone is gonna get pissy in a BA run is if a caller made a deliberately stupid call or if you are actively griefing the run (which you won’t do by accident)

The discord is mostly there to dodge BA’s entry requirements and help with the fact that ozma has personal responsibility mechanics

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I think the biggest thing this thread shows is we all collectively don’t agree on what midcore actually is

We have a range of basically everything from the Diablo armament to “casually PF’ing savage” listed as midcore content and definitions are all over the place and I think that’s because ultimate pulls up the roof on difficulty far enough that it warps a lot of people’s perception of what really sits in the middle, if you ignore ultimate and make a hard savage like A8 E8 or T7S the top end of difficulty that more clearly shows that east extremes best fit the midcore section, alongside the hardest of the alliance raids like DRN and maybe Dal (mostly because of Diablo armament) and the harder CE’s (maths boss, red chocobo, etc)

I personally do not find BA to be hardcore content both in the form it’s in now and when it was originally being progged because people way overestate the effects of delevelling in eureka (especially at level 59-60 with sprite island), in terms of the bosses besides ozma they are just alliance difficulty bosses with pass fail checks on their mechanics, the most dangerous part of BA is the Bethesda hallway and ozma only seems difficult because you will get black holed if you fail and don’t proc

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Even within Ultimate, you have a serious issue with defining what "hardcore" is either. Something like UWU and DSR having the same content designation is actually kind of insane, now that I think about it.

I think a good reason why people keep mentioning things like Diablo Armament and exploration content in general as "midcore" is because it served as a meeting ground for casual/"midcore"/hardcore players that aren't roulettes with a bit of risk. When a casual player meets a hardcore player, there is a LOT of friction because of the circumstances. Casuals can feel like they walked into the wrong neighborhood because the game just got insanely hard and punishing out of nowhere, and hardcores can feel like they are being dragged down by someone else's incompetence. In exploration, you just saw 40 people get obliterated during a Critical Engagement mechanic, and everyone finds that funny. There's value in a "shared experience and conflict" between strangers. You don't get that in casual content because it's braindead. You don't get that in hardcore content because it's the peak of the mountain, and most people have dedicated, invested groups up there.

I thought I was hardcore because I cleared ultimate, am passionate, and I can play the tank role really, really well, but I might just be a midcore player, because I can't tolerate being in high-end content all the time as the only form of engaging content, especially as it exponentially grows in complexity, memorization, and punishment. I'd much rather be out in the world leading Eureka instances and teaching other players.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I think the biggest thing this thread shows is we all collectively don’t agree on what midcore actually is

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People don't even agree on what casual and hardcore mean. Some people think casual is just not a lot of time invested, instead of the level of difficulty or seriousness or whatever. And nobody ever seems to like to be called hardcore even if they're clearing ultimates, probably because they associate the term with no-life poopsocking in other more time intensive games.

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

Midcore content IMO should be the criteria of
-gear independant or not gear gated (so Savage raiders with BiS don't immediately trivialize it or have to be balanced around)
-not require any outside information (no guides, specific rotations necessary, no discord organization needed)
-easy to pick up and play through PF or LFG posts
-have no enrages or very forgiving enrages
-have environmentally telegraphed mechanics and complex mechanics akin to easy savage mechanics but with longer breaks between them

Unreal satisfies most of them, especially because it fixes one of the biggest issues I've seen in content, which is that content balanced for casual player gear progression is usually trivialized by raider BiS (Alliance Raids) and anything that's balanced for raider progression is exclusionary to casuals (Criterion)
Unreal has a forgiving enrage that allows for some flexibility, and it has a hard ilvl sync that's relatively low, so everyone is on the same starting point gear wise, which avoids the sometimes all too common issue where PF decides the actual min ilvl is way higher than SE decided it should be.

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I know I often don't agree with you but this is something I can get behind, except for no enrages, though that's more of a preferential thing. Make it a soft enrage at least.

They need to reduce the sync'd item level for most end-game content exactly because of higher IL trivializing it, this isn't even just a savage raid gear issue it's just an inevitable thing that happens for casual content that seemingly, despite having a solution, they never put the foot forward to actually do it.

Eureka and Bozja have pretty good IL sync, and have gear exclusive to that content, so they already have that covered so long as they keep tradition.

Something I've seen brought up is "well then what use would I have for my BiS gear?". If they want to keep Criterion Savage at the above savage level difficulty I've heard it already is, then that's a step in the right direction (although I would like to reduce it to just base Savage difficulty so there's a 4-man version). But then another problem arises, what could they give those players as a reward for completing this hard-core content where the BiS matters?

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You have a really warped view of what the BA discords do

As a BA host in the biggest of the discords in the nicest way possible “you are a faceless drone to us” we like helping you clear but we would never call you out for anything, we’d never blame you for anything. We just ask if you have questions then carry on and calmly ask you to do things to help us clear, the only time someone is gonna get pissy in a BA run is if a caller made a deliberately stupid call or if you are actively griefing the run (which you won’t do by accident)

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It's not my view specifically on what BA discord does, it's what I'm afraid of facing after years of gaming. This is not a personal thing against the BA discord, this is a fear I've developed after years of playing online games, and the reason why I don't do any EX/Savage content at all.
That's why my ideal "midcore content" would be something I can check the EX/Savage trial mechanics without having to go into a Discord server. I want to gain confidence in my skills and convince myself I'm worthy before risking putting myself out there and being told by someone else that I suck and barely know where the WASD keys are.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I would go so far to say that casual content should not be a cakewalk at all. the reality is, they are stumbling over themselves by trying to make this a solo game, and sure, its well and good that a turnip with a learning disorder can complete the MSQ, but I would say many of us did not come to this game at that skill level. I am fairly sure this whole lack of complexity and content can start being traced back to when they started leaning into making the game more solo friendly. why bother learning a decent skill efficiency when you can now be a sea sponge with minimal dexterity to clear most content except extremes and savages?

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I mean inherently, some of these changes aren't necessarily overly detrimental, as you still have fundamental mechanics present in the normal mode counterpart, which do get expanded on across other tiers of difficulty. It's just a shame they were changed, but IMO, with all the content between Level 1-to-89, there's a significant amount of learning opportunities, assuming you go through the natural process of doing story > optional trials/24-man raids. - When I do talk about "I don't think it should be easy all the time is mostly just in reference to working on the pacing itself rather than the absence/removal of certain mechanics. Most encounters just feel like mechanics are far between, Take Number XXIV, sure, it lost Barrier Shift, but even when this was going on, it just felt so slow - It just literally repeats Barrier Shift, and the mechanic in execution is just walk into a tower. Encounters should feel faster-paced. Having other mechanics going on in tandem - It shouldn't matter if it's barrier shift with elements, or even barrier shift as just standard towers to soak.

For example, If I were looking at Number XXIV, I would probably have it with just standard towers, but then have another mechanic, such as a tether mechanic going on in tandem with this, e.g., have 2 pairs of players tethered to each other, first 2 players are resolved by spreading, and the other 2 by stacking. It could be you resolve the tethers, which then deal a moderate amount of damage to all players, versus potentially ongoing damage like with burning chains from Shinryu, and then have a small window to take towers, then also follow up with a stack marker to occur shortly thereafter. Or it could even be as simple as XXIV doing a massive donut AoE around the hitbox, at the same time as doing towers going off, then you can have it to where players need to resolve one and then the other in that particular sequence. instead of something such as Gale Cut which does absolutely nothing at all. You then introduce people to a fairly adequate pacing, where 1 mechanic follows another straight after, in addition to multiple mechanics going off in tandem.

Pacing IMO, has always been the biggest issue, things don't happen quickly enough, or at the very least not enough things happen in tandem... I would say this was probably the biggest hurdle I had when I initially went into Eden's Verse... I was far, far too used to everything happening at a snail's pace.

For me anything requiring that I schedule set times with 7 to 23 other people and have to give an actual time commitment moves content out of mid-core into hardcore for me.

Having to guarantee my availability at specific times would be too much for me at this stage in life.

Same with content that would require outside communication systems like discord or voice chats.

I think I would call myself a midcore player. I'm not completely casual but I'm also not ready to invest the time and energy required for hardcore content.

The one thing that really stands out to me regarding Endwalker fights is that the difficulty in Extreme and Savage seems WILDLY inconsistent. I have only dipped my toes in Savage but the fights feel like they're all over the place.

You have EX1 and EX2, both of them are very easy. But then you also have Barbariccia. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed that fight. Took our FC group of people with varying skill levels a two or three sessions to clear but it was fun. It was challenging but not insurmountable with some amount of effort. Still, Barbariccia and some of the other Extremes don't feel like they should be in the same difficulty bracket.

Savage is kind of the same, I think? P1S is very easy. It was a good "baby's first Savage" fight for me, though. P2S is probably the level of difficulty that I enjoy the most. Same as with Barbie, you can't do the fight half asleep, but it isn't particularly punishing and can be learned in a reasonable timeframe. After that, P3S follows. I don't like that fight. I ended up getting the clear recently and it was not a good time. There are people who enjoyed it, I'm sure, I just wasn't one of them. But again, P1S and P3S feel like they shouldn't both be in the "Savage" difficulty bracket.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there is some small amount of midcore content in the game, but it's a pain to identify it. We most certainly can't rely on the fight difficulty labels.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

For me anything requiring that I schedule set times with 7 to 23 other people and have to give an actual time commitment moves content out of mid-core into hardcore for me.

Having to guarantee my availability at specific times would be too much for me at this stage in life.

Same with content that would require outside communication systems like discord or voice chats.

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I think the problem here is in the environment 14 has cultivated over the years if your definition of midcore involves basically having no preplanning no communication and no outside discussion tools, just pugging in instance then really the only content devs can make that satisfy’s that is your difficult alliance raid bosses like Diablo

Even pugging easy extremes generally have FOMO and is server time dependant and a lot of people will still want to communicate

That’s a very limited window for what defines midcore (note I’m not saying you are wrong for having this opinion)

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I think the problem here is in the environment 14 has cultivated over the years if your definition of midcore involves basically having no preplanning no communication and no outside discussion tools, just pugging in instance then really the only content devs can make that satisfy’s that is your difficult alliance raid bosses like Diablo

Even pugging easy extremes generally have FOMO and is server time dependant and a lot of people will still want to communicate

That’s a very limited window for what defines midcore (note I’m not saying you are wrong for having this opinion)

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Just stating how I feel. I'm not saying people can't watch guides or anything to pre-plan/ prepare. I do that even for normals. But at the point where I have to schedule on my calendar a time I have to be available, it's no longer mid-core to me. It's hard-core to get to the point where the game has become such a priority you have to cancel plans or not make plans at certain times because you have to be online with your pre-made.

So yes I think there can be some pre-planning. The content can also require that you get a certain level of gear that isn't 40 ilvls behind current gear. Like needing 640 or 645 for current content. And you can communicate with tools in game, so I didn't say no communication.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

I want to have the need for communication, organization and pre-planning just without having to make a set schedule for it, that's about it for me when it comes to that topic.

An example is taking dispel before fighting Ovni in Hydatos because it's required for at least one person to bring it so everybody doesn't die.

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Sorry - out of posts. I think this is fair. I could compromise on communication tools - but for me the hard line is needing a static and scheduling my life around one.

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

People want no outside discussion tools required because then all control goes outside the window, you lose all protections that the TOS normally gives, since SE typically punts all out of game conflict to the players to handle.

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Honestly this didn't even cross my mind. I was more concerned with having to coordinate personal accounts outside FFXIV that I'd rather not have to share with people for mid-core content. I'm not even personally adverse to parses - I personally like them. And I think mid-core content should be challenging enough that people need to perform at a certain level. But I know parses are against the TOS so I guess finding a way to guarantee performance just isn't possible unless that rule changed.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I think the problem here is in the environment 14 has cultivated over the years if your definition of midcore involves basically having no preplanning no communication and no outside discussion tools, just pugging in instance then really the only content devs can make that satisfy’s that is your difficult alliance raid bosses like Diablo

Even pugging easy extremes generally have FOMO and is server time dependant and a lot of people will still want to communicate

That’s a very limited window for what defines midcore (note I’m not saying you are wrong for having this opinion)

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People want no outside discussion tools required because then all control goes outside the window, you lose all protections that the TOS normally gives, since SE typically punts all out of game conflict to the players to handle.
If I join a discord server for voice and get screamed at because someone's ACT says I'm underperforming, I'm forced to just take it, there's nothing I can do. All the normal protections that would stop them from doing it are not applicable.
If the discord that owns the content decrees that I have to authenticate my main account with their bots and unhide my fflogs or I can't do the content, I just have to take that because if I call up a GM they're gonna tell me they don't handle anything that happens outside the servers or officials.

It doesn't need to be no communication but it shouldn't require anything outside of the parameters of what the game client provides. Savage is hardcore content and that is perfectly puggable with no voice chat and just the in game text chat and markers.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

Just stating how I feel. I'm not saying people can't watch guides or anything to pre-plan/ prepare. I do that even for normals. But at the point where I have to schedule on my calendar a time I have to be available, it's no longer mid-core to me. It's hard-core to get to the point where the game has become such a priority you have to cancel plans or not make plans at certain times because you have to be online with your pre-made.

So yes I think there can be some pre-planning. The content can also require that you get a certain level of gear that isn't 40 ilvls behind current gear. Like needing 640 or 645 for current content. And you can communicate with tools in game, so I didn't say no communication.

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I want to have the need for communication, organization and pre-planning just without having to make a set schedule for it, that's about it for me when it comes to that topic.

An example is taking dispel before fighting Ovni in Hydatos because it's required for at least one person to bring it so everybody doesn't die.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

I want to have the need for communication, organization and pre-planning just without having to make a set schedule for it, that's about it for me when it comes to that topic.

An example is taking dispel before fighting Ovni in Hydatos because it's required for at least one person to bring it so everybody doesn't die.

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Which is actually funny because you really don’t actually need dispel if you know what you are doing on ovni, bringing dispel just makes it impossible to die

But again I think you guys have a warped view oh what’s gonna happen on discord (note I’m not saying discord should be required except maybe for old content to keep it alive), 14 players are so conflict averse if you truly are underperforming on ACT they won’t call you out for it they will just leave or just quietly kick you, things they can already do now

This video is objectively speaking, wrong.
The way she describes the casual player is awful. The leap between easy/normal content and extremes is not big. Each fight teach you as the battle goes on (Golbez is a good example), you don't need a static to clear extremes. Savage is a different thing, they do more puzzles and positioning than extremes. It's more complicated to clear Savage in party finder.

Tbh if you reached lv90 and have no main or any idea of your rotation, you need to explore more. Variant/criterion content can be great for training. We have dummies for a reason. The game does what it can do to stimulate your progress. She said "the game doens't teach you about your rotation", what else do you need? lol

As i said, weird video, feels like she started to play ANY GAME last week.

This one was made just to pay her bills.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Which is actually funny because you really don’t actually need dispel if you know what you are doing on ovni, bringing dispel just makes it impossible to die

But again I think you guys have a warped view oh what’s gonna happen on discord (note I’m not saying discord should be required except maybe for old content to keep it alive), 14 players are so conflict averse if you truly are underperforming on ACT they won’t call you out for it they will just leave or just quietly kick you, things they can already do now

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Oh, I couldn't care less about muh barse, even if someone were to call me out it just would be a silent "okay, and?" and I'd be on my merry way. I know not everyone is like that, but for me how the job is actually designed mechanically is far more important, potencies could always be adjusted.

(For the record, this is not me saying I don't care about my overall performance. I can tell if I'm doing something wrong and whether someone corrects me or not I aim to improve it)

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Originally Posted by Zairava

Oh, I couldn't care less about muh barse, even if someone were to call me out it just would be a silent "okay, and?" and I'd be on my merry way. I know not everyone is like that, but for me how the job is actually designed mechanically is far more important, potencies could always be adjusted.

(For the record, this is not me saying I don't care about my overall performance. I can tell if I'm doing something wrong and whether someone corrects me or not I aim to improve it)

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Sorry that was my bad only the dispel part was actually in relation to your comment, the rest of it about discord is as more just general for the current direction of this thread, I should have made the distinction

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I think the biggest thing this thread shows is we all collectively don’t agree on what midcore actually is

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Well, I think the upper level of midcore is content that can be done with small PF engagement and LFG on-site (f.e. all bozjan raids, CE's, world bosses, NMs). Basically the stuff that you can hop into with minimum preparation, thorough coordination, food/pots, elaborated guides, marker assigments and all other good stuff.

And the lower level of midcore is...hmm. I think, HW and SB Alliance raids looks good (before they were inevitably dumpstered by ridiculous Ilvl sync and nerfed like Orbonne). Stuff can kill you if are not careful, wipes CAN happen if many players failed, etc. But, once again, they are very quickly reduced to casual level thanks to insane Ilvl bloat.

I cannot count Nier and The Twelve raids midcore, becuase hot damn they are undertuned. (with notable mention - Red Girl from Nier 3. She still slaps surprisingly well comared to the rest of the bosses being a snoozefest). A lot of sparkles, explosions - but nothing threatening.

In summary - Midcore is a type of content that actually requires players to rub their braincells together and use their tool kit wisely. And mechanics makes you think instead of simply zerg-rushing the boss. But the punishment is much less than extreme/savage. There is room for mistakes, but not to a silly level like casual duties.

But yeah, the definition quite vague. You can easily PF some old extremes (especially with Echo stacked) in an hour or spent whole evening bashing head against Golbez (this fight is indeed hardcore)

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I personally do not find BA to be hardcore content both in the form it’s in now and when it was originally being progged

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BA is a weird case. It is actually not that difficult to be claimed hardcore, but it requires preparation and organization in order for everyone to make it through. And said room for mistakes ranges from "good enough" to "Black Holed out of the instance, lmao". And it requires you to be in voice for a proper coordination.

BA is indeed a hardcore but on the lowest level. To me it feels like an easier 40-man from old WoW. You listen to raid leader, don't do stupid stuff - this is a clear.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Bethesda hallway

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LOL, what is that part?

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Originally Posted by Elissar

This video is objectively speaking, wrong.
The way she describes the casual player is awful. The leap between easy/normal content and extremes is not big. Each fight teach you as the battle goes on (Golbez is a good example), you don't need a static to clear extremes. Savage is a different thing, they do more puzzles and positioning than extremes. It's more complicated to clear Savage in party finder.

Tbh if you reached lv90 and have no main or any idea of your rotation, you need to explore more. Variant/criterion content can be great for training. We have dummies for a reason. The game does what it can do to stimulate your progress. She said "the game doens't teach you about your rotation", what else do you need? lol

As i said, weird video, feels like she started to play ANY GAME last week.

This one was made just to pay her bills.

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I’m a long term player who regularly clears savage and I am confident in my skills as a player

I am not ashamed to admit I literally could not figure out MNK’s rotation without a guide, the tooltips were an absolute mess that made no sense to me

If I wasn’t a player who had to know what my rotation is before I even look at the roulettes what would I do press random buttons and receive no feedback I was doing my rotation so badly wrong it’s almost laughable

I on the whole agree with this video less than the previous one but the point about this game not teaching you a decent rotation (hell it doesn’t even define GCD and oGCD or healing magic for healers) is 100% in point

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there is some small amount of midcore content in the game, but it's a pain to identify it. We most certainly can't rely on the fight difficulty labels.

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The problem is if you were to poll the player base you would get many varying opinions on what is too easy, too hard, and just right. So who is correct? You can't make a separate difficulty level for every preference imaginable. At some point people have to just suck it up and make the leap or admit they're not as "midcore" as they think they are.

That being said I do agree there is an overall lack of content around the Extreme level, which I would define as midcore. If they took the middle difficulty of criterion dungeons and tuned it down a bit that could fill that gap.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

That being said I do agree there is an overall lack of content around the Extreme level, which I would define as midcore. If they took the middle difficulty of criterion dungeons and tuned it down a bit that could fill that gap.

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Yup I'd agree with all that. The big issue for me with extremes is they can feel quite repetitive once you've cleared them. There seems to be quite some variation in how people view the relic zone but I think whether you call it midcore or casual or whatever, it did provide a lot of content to engage with alongside a social experience; do agree with comments that it was weird to exclude DR from the DF system, but again it's that sort of thing they can iterate and improve on with the next zone, coupled with figuring out more ways to encourage people to do them once they cease to be current content. If the criterion dungeons were aimed at a difficulty better suited to midcore and you had the relic zone, and a revamped DD style (people had some good ideas for this from scanning the bigger thread), I think you'd have a nice suite of content with some challenge to it, outside of savage raids.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

We really need more content that starts from the premise "you know all these mechanics from the standard fight; let's string them together faster and harder" without introducing whole new mechanics you need to practise with a team.

[...]

I would love to see a harder-but-not-savage version of things like the dungeons and alliance raids, so you can run it instead of the standard version once you're confident with the mechanics. Incentive can just be more loot in the chests.

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Originally Posted by Eelanos

What I suggested in the video is some content where you get tokens according to your individual performance. Something that doesn't stop or reset when you wipe, but rather gets delayed, while still rewarding trying to finish fast.
Some kind of "Survival" trial that has EX and/or Savage difficulty mechanics that you can learn by ramming your head against it until you figure it out. You died 17 times? You get 5 tokens. You didn't die? you get a 25 token bonus. The boss was killed too slow? No bonus tokens. You get your individual score tokens exclusively. Boss killed fast? +10 token party bonus.

Something that has rewards priced like the Gold Saucer: Some cheaper mounts, minions and emotes for newbies (like the 3k rewards from the Saucer), scaling in pricing to things like the 4 million mount from the Saucer for more dedicated players. Rewards that reward handsomely playing well while also providing a sense of progress and scaling for people that are still trying to get better.
A game mode that you can hop in at any time, completely disregarding Discord servers and Youtube tutorials, and say "I'm gonna go in and get some progress done" regardless of whether or not you ate every mechanic or if [The Ultimate Legend]������Lily Rainbowo������|Balmung decided that using a healing spell was a 0.073 DPS loss.

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Fond of these ideas as well. The first one, regarding an optional higher level of difficulty of the same instance is something I've been wanting for ages. With the wider rollout of trusts in MSQ content it did seem like a good time to bring in optional modes like that.

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Originally Posted by Eelanos

The two things I hate is feeling like I'm making no progress and feeling like I'm a burden to others while I'm learning, so what I'd consider my ideal "midcore bridge" has to be something that I can repeat until doing it is second nature, but that having me still learning wouldn't be a detriment to others.

What I suggested in the video is some content where you get tokens according to your individual performance. Something that doesn't stop or reset when you wipe, but rather gets delayed, while still rewarding trying to finish fast.

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I like that idea, and I think that's perhaps also a good place to draw the line between "medium" and "hard" – the mechanics are more challenging but you can also just keep stumbling through and seeing more of the fight, and your personal failure isn't going to mean the end of the fight.

(This is what puts me off deep dungeons in particular – the huge time investment just to arrive at one try on a hard fight that you can't even re-attempt without going through everything again. I wonder if they could do something like "boss simulations" that you can try any time for zero reward/progression – only unlocking them once you've seen the real thing at least once, but then you can learn the fight without going through the slog.)

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

For example, If I were looking at Number XXIV, I would probably have it with just standard towers, but then have another mechanic, such as a tether mechanic going on in tandem with this, e.g., have 2 pairs of players tethered to each other, first 2 players are resolved by spreading, and the other 2 by stacking. It could be that the combination of all 3 of these doesn't necessarily kill, but is then followed up with a stack marker to occur shortly thereafter.

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Near and far tethers might be a bit unintuitive, unless they mark them with inward and outward arrows or something.

Though the new fight is totally built around handling attacks in tandem – it shows you attacks A and B separately and then you do a complicated A+B, which I don't think is any less difficult than the older "stand in the towers" mech, and one of the elements still uses the towers. Though I agree it could do with doing them more quickly one after the other, and less downtime between elements – maybe if it went through the three elements and then progressed to one great big "everything in sequence" attack? That could be fun.

Or as I was saying in my previous post, harder versions of dungeons could use the same skills but more rapid-fire.

(Though I think the main disappointment of remaking that fight is flavour text, specifically the loss of his "glory to the Empire!" bit at the end of the fight.)

The problem with Extremes in my opinion is, in increasing order of importance, 1) inconsistency in designed difficulty, 2) poor telegraphing of what Extreme difficulty is to unfamiliar and nervous players, 3) SE's abject failure to account for non-JP community behavior - and I put a lot of weight on #3 here.

For the average NA/EU player, Extremes are usually going to be your first serious brush with people demanding study ahead of time, people demanding specific strategies without explaining them, people regularly stroking out at people "underperforming" (which may or may not include actual underperformance), people pulling up the ladders for entry requirements, people pulling all kinds of shenanigans to scam other people into carrying them, and a few other derangements besides. The difficulty may not be a very high step in the curve, but the shift in mentality might as well be a cliff if you're not expecting it and not familiar with it - especially with how laissez-faire people are in basically all other forms of content. There is no common, communal gradient of expectations. And they've done very little to even recognize the problem, much less try to build that ladder. We can surely speculate on why - I'm sure you can guess my opinion from the content of this post - but there's no way to argue that they're doing their best in this regard.

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Originally Posted by Sindele

The problem with Extremes in my opinion is, in increasing order of importance … 3) SE's abject failure to account for non-JP community behavior - and I put a lot of weight on #3 here.
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What do you mean? How do extremes work on JP servers? I know they use duty finder for them but beyond that

I'm sure someone with more personal experience could provide more useful elucidation (or just pick at the threads of what I'm paraphrasing), but the big points in my estimation:

* A greater communally known expectation that you either have experience or have at least read a guide before queueing in - I'm not a huge fan of these expectations, but they're still a relatively known factor for the community before you start doing that level of content; ask any two NA players on whether you should watch guides before doing any content and you may well wind up with three different answers (and a death threat);
* Strat macros for everything, often with fixed positions - I know this has been making the jump more and more in recent years, but IME it's still very inconsistent in NA;
* Less insistence on 'going my own way' - the macro typically sets the script, and if it's clearly trash, it falls apart after a pull or three; in NA you're more likely to run into people who will immediately argue with your strat, argue with their position ("I'm always East though"), etc. regardless

There's certainly a tendency for people to stereotype and mythologize the experience to the (heh) extreme, but even avoiding that it's hard to deny that there are also observable cultural differences that make the gap larger for a fresh NA player by comparison. The social minefield that is NA PF play is drastically unlike anything else in the game if you don't have previous MMO experience.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I on the whole agree with this video less than the previous one but the point about this game not teaching you a decent rotation (hell it doesn’t even define GCD and oGCD or healing magic for healers) is 100% in point

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The game has a guide even to tell you what a gauge is. Recently they updated skills UI to make it clear what order you are supposed to use. You can always practice in dummies. Your next options in rotation literally shines in your hotbar. Honestly, i think FFXIV does too much, the next step is a bot that play by yourself.