Chaotic is midcore, in case you were wondering

Chaotic has the legs of an early expansion 2nd savage floor, like they insinuated. It's where mess-ups in the latter phases are not recoverable and will cause a wipe. It's fine though, I like this difficulty because you aren't dragging bodies to the finish line. If anything those dedicated will end up better players as a result.

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Originally Posted by technole

Chaotic has the legs of an early expansion 2nd savage floor, like they insinuated. It's where mess-ups in the latter phases are not recoverable and will cause a wipe. It's fine though, I like this difficulty because you aren't dragging bodies to the finish line. If anything those dedicated will end up better players as a result.

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It is still very much possible to drag bodies to the finish line. The randomness also means someone can potentially go through the entire fight without being targetted by a single major mechanic, which means they can die at any point in the fight as long as all 23 other people play perfect. That would only cause 1 tower to explode for 1 vuln to everyone, which isn't much.

With more than one person dying though, it largely depends on when people die, but it's very possible to carry someone that died 5 times through the fight.

so... the impossibility of pulling several players that arent able to do extrem lvl mechanics through extrem lvl mechanics makes the mechanics suddenly savage lvl?

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The reason extremes don’t fall into this despite not being mechanically much harder is for NA/EU they require time investment for strat arrangement and organisation within PF

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I feel like the obnoxiously low mount drop rates are a big problem as well. You have to run them so many times (I expect that when they moved to totems they also implied that the delayed totem pity would now be the expected way to get an EX mount and if you get if off the drop it is just a nice bonus) that most people by the time they've got theirs are far too burnt out on the instance to continue to help others until xpacs later when it's an easy unsync, even if they went in starry eyed "I'll get mine and then help others!"

On reflection this alone easily explains most of the problems seen with EX PF culture

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Originally Posted by Reylap

Hard body checks that makes prog multiple days or even months exist only in some savage floors and ultimates. Which we are already agree we consider those hardcores.

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We have this in CAR and I'm already fearing that the 24 player body check more or less is going to be the nail in the coffin for CAR making it more of a ghost town than Diadem emergency mission was before long. When you need that many and it's on SE's favorite "one player spoils it all!" design, yikes.

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Originally Posted by Reylap

The game has 0 friction during it's mainstream content making people considering wiping a raid is a too hardcore is seriously funny. Maybe we should consider that after playing FIVE expansion of 10 YEARS content, having Square baby the players this much is not a good direction.

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I would agree more IF the game didn't so heavily encourage people (especially non hardcore players) to take long breaks, and IF the game actually had a smooth consistent improvement curve.

But it does encourage breaks by design, heavily. And it does not have a smooth improvement curve, because they do things like totally change up how tells work after tens of levels of getting accustomed to the ground markers system, and roulettes skew low so even many active players are not even seeing high level casual content all that often ..

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Originally Posted by Amarande

We have this in CAR and I'm already fearing that the 24 player body check more or less is going to be the nail in the coffin for CAR making it more of a ghost town than Diadem emergency mission was before long. When you need that many and it's on SE's favorite "one player spoils it all!" design, yikes.

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This so much yeah... like either make it smaller with 4 ppl and make everyone count or do it with 24 and leave us more room...

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

And my reading comprehension still tops yours? I haven't seen a single post of anyone asking for a 24 person Savage trial. People wanted more difficult content, people wanted a more difficult Alliance raid.

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Yes yes, people always want "more difficult" content, but only if it has good rewards. Yet, whenever this content is actually difficult, and not Alliance Raid difficult, there is much wailing, and gnashing of teeth, because it's difficult. When the new exploration zone releases, and if it is on Bozja level, we will all be able to witness the "need more difficult content" crowd being chain rezzed through every encounter. Or following danger doritos.

If people's definition of "difficulty" doesn't mean "resistance and likely failure", it's a meaningless definition, especially when one isn't accustomed to real difficult content.

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

That isn't what the Chaotic turned out to be. The only difference between it and a normal raid and it's Savage equal is the 24 person player count. As far as undersized parties, was it not literally said that the chaotic would be beatable with undersized parties too?

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The community just making up stuff is the reason why I wrote the "why don't the devs listen to us?" sentence. I quite frankly don't understand this obsession with announcements and filling them with meaning, instead of judging the released content for precisely what it is. But it becomes especially egregious when the devs say "yeah, we made this 24 man fight, it has EX level mechanics, but with 24 people you will have more of a savage experience", and the community still has different expectations. At some point, it's just pathological wishful thinking.

And just to drive this point home, no, they didn't say it was "beatable with undersized parties", it was "attemptable, but mechanics will not adjust to fewer players". Which is in fact, true, as far as I know. You can zone in with 12 people, but still get towers for 24 people.

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

People can't even agree as to what midcore is at this point; heck, starting to see some people call current tier Savage and Ultimates in general as "midcore."

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You are right, people can't agree. That's why it's important to look what kind of experience the posters have (i.e. credibility), as well as the reasons they give for grading. So having people who have 0 experience in anything but normal modes, in fact by own admission often struggling in said normal mode, make a grading of content, is just nonsense. Whenever these discussions get down to specifics, you will have the "midcores" categorize long boss animation wind-ups with cast bar as some kind of really difficult experience. Or the "undodgeable aoes", i.e. mechanics which were indicated the past 5 seconds by other stuff, but without an orange marker on the floor, which only shows up after the fact to indicate where the safe spot was. So that next time, the player might actually pay attention to the real telegraph.

Asking for "more difficulty" content is fine and dandy, that's precisely how we got CODCAR. People have been criticizing the lead fight designer as "out of touch", but the reality is, from his stand point, they delivered on the requirements. They made a 24 man fight, with EX level mechanics. That's what "more difficult" means. The mechanics are "more difficult". They aren't savage level, you don't have to solve some debuff puzzle by taking towers corresponding to your debuff in quick succession, you don't have to solve some weird alchemy mechanic to turn two fires and two winds into two phoenix feathers to make a phoenix to survive a certain death mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

A lot of it is people not knowing what they want

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Yes, that is indeed the main problem. Requirements engineering wouldn't be such a highly paid profession if customers actually knew what they wanted and could write it down. If content should be "more difficult", but consequences for failure are only personal, and that a small core team of people can successfully complete the encounter on their own, than this content is only "more difficult" for those core people. The rest are decoration. There is nothing wrong with such content, or wanting to have it, but one has to be honest about it, not hiding behind some diffuse and unclear terms.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

Brother, I do not think it is that crazy of a request to have all new content fulfill this difficulty curve.

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No, it's not. But there is a difference between "content released for this expansion and current max level", and saying "there is no content currently available that sits between normal and ex level content". Further, the "why" is important, especially when the "complete lack" of this kind of content is used as a reason for why some people cannot engage with EX level stuff. At some point, if someone wants to actually do harder content, there is no other way around it than actually doing it. And yes, older extremes due to gear progression / echo / unsync, are a reasonable stepping stone. to get familiar with the basic flow of such fights. No one has to do harder content, but having a myriad excuses for not doing them is nothing to be proud of.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

If you are going to ask me "why", it is a matter as simple as there always being new content made for everyone. Why do the people that want normal or ex trial difficulty content get new stuff almost every single patch while the people who want something in between have to play scraps from old patches to even get to play the content they want? Old content will always be more dead than current content. Yes, it is possible to make groups for older content but the reality is that new content always has dozens more groups so it is easier to play it in a reasonable time frame. So yes, content being "current" is absolutely important so telling people to go play old shit is not the solution.

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Neither is pretending that the older EX content doesn't fulfill the previously stated requirement, especially for people who were unable to clear these fights on content. Notice that you have very much changed, or rather properly clarified your requirements now.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

It is super disingenuous and just feels like you are trying to be contrarian at this point. Give me some actual good arguments as to why the content being current does not matter. It matters for player activity and for players who are caught up with content.

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No, I answered with respect to your specific set of requirements. Your post is precisely what I mean when I say that the community has trouble actually knowing what they want and writing it down.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

Also why are you constantly mentioning that players can not accept that they are bad? Where in this thread has anyone who requests this gap to be filled claimed they are good at the game? It is completely irrelevant to the discussion. You are making up an imaginary forum user that claims they are good at the game but do not want to admit it, so they want midcore content?

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That's precisely the point, the majority of "we need more midcore content" posters aren't good, by their own admission. In fact, some of the reference points we have are shockingly low. But when the game designers get feedback for "content between normal and EX", they will look at their own game and implement it so that it's between normal and EX. And that means "more difficult". So people who already struggle with normal content, will struggle even more. That's the consequence of "more difficult". If it weren't, it wouldn't be "more difficult", it would just be "same old".

It's why the other often stated requirement for "more difficult" content is always that "a single person cannot end the run", with no upper limit for the number of "single person"s allowed. So, a small group of core people who have the ability to actually clear the "more difficult" content, are doing precisely that, while people without the skills necessary just get carried to get the rewards and can proudly proclaim themselves as "midcore", "better than the casuals". Take the core away, and you get Red Choctober wiping the whole instance.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

That's precisely the point, the majority of "we need more midcore content" posters aren't good, by their own admission. In fact, some of the reference points we have are shockingly low. But when the game designers get feedback for "content between normal and EX", they will look at their own game and implement it so that it's between normal and EX. And that means "more difficult". So people who already struggle with normal content, will struggle even more. That's the consequence of "more difficult". If it weren't, it wouldn't be "more difficult", it would just be "same old".

It's why the other often stated requirement for "more difficult" content is always that "a single person cannot end the run", with no upper limit for the number of "single person"s allowed. So, a small group of core people who have the ability to actually clear the "more difficult" content, are doing precisely that, while people without the skills necessary just get carried to get the rewards and can proudly proclaim themselves as "midcore", "better than the casuals". Take the core away, and you get Red Choctober wiping the whole instance.

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The "midcore" or whatever you want to call it is a bit more than that. The reason why midcore encompasses such a huge group of players of varying skill levels / commitment is exactly because the gap between Casual to Extremes is so large and there isn't much content to bridge the gap. That's where the flexibility of Bozja / Eureka's lost actions and consumable choices in a MMORPG really come into play. Moreso for Bozja, because that difficulty slider gets adjusted and adapted differently for each player compared to Extreme level difficulty in terms of ridigity and commitment during the patch cycle. If some players feel less confident, they may opt to go more into defensive and survival skills. Other players may adopt more healing or support skills, and more confident players opt for more damage.

It's not just related to a core group to benefit, but the core group also enables Extreme level players to enjoy the content because the difficulty is mostly already tailored to themselves, except with less punishment from individual mistakes that a group can cover. There's wildly different levels of content in Bozja -- from FATEs / Critical Engagements to content like Castrum Lacus Lacore (that does want a core group) and Delubrum Reginae. There's also DR Savage and Memoria Miseria released in roughly the same time, which sits at the Extreme level. All players get something out of the content they can clear.

It's also the same reason why V&C dungeons failed horribly to cater to everyone and pretty much falls into the same trap with the same group of people getting excluded.
Variant dungeons are your casual content, but it's on the lower end of casual -- even easier than regular dungeons. Everyone has access to tank mits / heals on a low cooldown. If normal dungeon content was maybe 15-20, Variant sits at 10. It's entirely designed to be soloable for the casual experience. So now you have up to 4 players with self-sustain capabilities without much difficulty.

Then the next type of dungeon is Criterion. On the scale of difficulty, it's more like 70 to 80 because they limit raises and bring up mechanics that can kill you quickly. Suddenly you have to prog, and limited raises on each character can forcibly lead to resetting and wiping very fast even for average extreme level players. However, the content is already designed within their means, it just means longer prog, acting as a way to get more accustomed to making less mistakes like Savage-level content expectations. You are not given choices in actions and flexibility in mechanics. There is usually just ~ one universal solution in execution, and that is to not screw up and die while meeting the enrage check.

The biggest thing to note is the group that wants difficulty from 30 to 60 doesn't exist here compared to exploratory content difficulties -- difficulty ends up far too punishing, commitment suddenly too high, flexibility non-existent.
Criterion Savage is Criterion with added steps that also wants BiS during its release. So difficulty and commitment goes up and turns into 75 to 90.

Chaotic falls into the same category as Criterion with the focus in progging on the latter half of the fight and just trying to get everyone to not wipe to towers. There isn't much flexibility outside of the eyes of a hardcore player who already familiarized themselves with the mechanics. It's a knowledge check and skill check. There's far less applicable solutions to lower the barrier and tackle the difficulty.

Seems it's midcore content for JP players, as their clear rates are significant higher than NA ones.
So this more of a NA/EU problem, really : Parsing culture, uptime obsession, greedy strats over safe ones and prog lying comes to mind.

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Originally Posted by Arrius

Seems it's midcore content for JP players, as their clear rates are significant higher than NA ones.
So this more of a NA/EU problem, really : Parsing culture, uptime obsession, greedy strats over safe ones and prog lying comes to mind.

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There is also the NA/EU problem of refusing to use raid finder for this fight like JP does. If someone leaves all the party leader has to do is hit the replace button. In party finder, everyone has to leave, and wait for the listing to fill in a finder deep in listings.