Chaotic is midcore, in case you were wondering

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Originally Posted by localareanetwork

The people on this forum will argue that any content that you can wipe to is hardcore

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Most nuanced take in this thread HOLY

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

Are you seriously telling people to just go do old ex trials overgeared as a solution to lack of current content?

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If I understand correctly, his takes lie more in the field of "extremes already are not that hard and quite forgiving, so middle ground between them and casual content is pointless, because the goal of creating said middle ground in meaningless, it's either people want to put effort and time into learning the fight or not".

I think creating extra version of casual content but with noticeably increased damage and some speed up in the cast-times of bosses abilities can be the perfect solution for said middle ground. Maybe even with taking some abilities straight from the extreme/savage. So fight is harder, but not full blown extreme/savage.

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Originally Posted by Xrono_Amber

If I understand correctly, his takes lie more in the field of "extremes already are not that hard and quite forgiving, so middle ground between them and casual content is pointless, because the goal of creating said middle ground in meaningless, it's either people want to put effort and time into learning the fight or not".

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I know it's not your take, but it is such a binary way to look at this issue that I just can not agree with it.

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Originally Posted by Xrono_Amber

I think creating extra version of casual content but with noticeably increased damage and some speed up in the cast-times of bosses abilities can be the perfect solution for said middle ground. Maybe even with taking some abilities straight from the extreme/savage. So fight is harder, but not full blown extreme/savage.

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It is solutions like this that I like cause I do think SE can reach this middleground, they just have not tried it in a long time.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

Are you seriously telling people to just go do old ex trials overgeared as a solution to lack of current content?

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"lack of current content" wasn't the point that was discussed. It was "content that difficulty wise falls between normal and EX, especially as a stepping stone into harder content", and older / outdated EX content fulfills the stated requirements. If people would spend half of the effort into learning the game as they do moving the goal posts in these quite tiresome "midcore" threads, they would have cleared 2 Ultimates by now. Again, it's the players who are fundamentally unwilling to actually get better at this game, but all this discussion about "missing midcore content" is just a smokescreen, an attempt to not be grouped with "the casuals". There is only one way to actually get better at the game, and that is sitting down and doing the work to get better at it. And no amount of game design can fix attitude.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

"lack of current content" wasn't the point that was discussed. It was "content that difficulty wise falls between normal and EX, especially as a stepping stone into harder content", and older / outdated EX content fulfills the stated requirements. If people would spend half of the effort into learning the game as they do moving the goal posts in these quite tiresome "midcore" threads, they would have cleared 2 Ultimates by now. Again, it's the players who are fundamentally unwilling to actually get better at this game, but all this discussion about "missing midcore content" is just a smokescreen, an attempt to not be grouped with "the casuals". There is only one way to actually get better at the game, and that is sitting down and doing the work to get better at it. And no amount of game design can fix attitude.

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Asking for current content with a decent difficulty curve is apparently "moving the goalpost". The fact you are doubling down on telling people to just go play old content overgeared and unsynced is really funny. And no amount of running old trials and savage raids can fix that.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

Asking for current content with a decent difficulty curve is apparently "moving the goalpost". The fact you are doubling down on telling people to just go play old content overgeared and unsynced is really funny. And no amount of running old trials and savage raids can fix that.

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It is moving the goal post, when the previous point was only "there is no content to fill the gap between normal and EX difficulty wise". That is what I addressed. If a group of players want to start engaging with high end combat duties, but don't feel confident enough yet, then yes, doing the older stuff is precisely the stepping stone. Unsynced EX3 from EW, you can survive 4-5 exploding towers with current gear. I mean, that is precisely the difficulty that is always demanded when it comes to "midcore" content, isn't it? That one person should not be able to wipe the raid, yet the content should actually be "harder" than normal content. If you always want "current" content to be that difficulty, that would be a much different thing to ask for. At the same time, there is a legitimate question what the point of such content should even be, if it fundamentally provides the same experience as the EX from previous patches in the current expansion. After all, it will not drop gear of comparable ilvl to weekly tomes / savage. So what relevancy does the "currentness" of this content even have?

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

The issue comes with going from Alliance to EX as you say. Tell me How do you make something more difficult than Alliance Raid but not as difficult as an EX Trial? As you approach an EX trial, which you would with this theoretical middle content sandwiched between AR and EX, you HAVE to create a sense of difficulty, and that difficulty comes in DPS Checks or Mechanical failures and wipes. There IS no middle ground without those, because absent of any wipes based on mechanic failure or DPS checks, you essentially STILL have Alliance Raid.

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I can only speak to my own experience, but imo a tiered raid system with scaling rewards solves this quite elegantly. And can be done with minimal effort on the devs part (relatively speaking of course).

Taking Alliance Raid as an example: The current Alliance Raid we have now would be the base level. Fairly low ilvl requirement, low stakes, easy to recover from a potential wipe.

You then get Alliance Raid (Hard). Same raid, same bosses, mostly the same mechanics. Increase the minimum ilvl requirement, increase the ilvl of the rewards, and ramp up the damage and hp of the bosses. Add one or two new mechanics to each boss, but keep the bulk of the fights relatively the same, just harder to deal with and recover from because of the incoming damage and time the fight takes due to increased hp.

Lastly Alliance Raid (Expert). Same deal increase ilvl requirement, ilvl of reward, boss hp and damage. Add one more new mechanic per boss. Give the final boss a new phase.

I know at a glance this may seem just like the Normal Trial to Extreme Trial system we have now, but the ramp-up is way more gradual than that. Because the bulk of the mechanics are similar in a tiered raid system a player can play on a lower difficulty to essentially "train" themselves to take on a higher difficulty, or choose to go straight to the higher difficulty if they want to challenge and meet the ilvl requirement. This is currently not what we have. At this time doing a Trial on normal does not in any way prepare you for doing it on Extreme. Same with Normal Raid to Savage Raid. The two tiers are just far too different mechanically for it to be considered a true "tiered" system.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

"lack of current content" wasn't the point that was discussed. It was "content that difficulty wise falls between normal and EX, especially as a stepping stone into harder content", and older / outdated EX content fulfills the stated requirements. If people would spend half of the effort into learning the game as they do moving the goal posts in these quite tiresome "midcore" threads, they would have cleared 2 Ultimates by now. Again, it's the players who are fundamentally unwilling to actually get better at this game, but all this discussion about "missing midcore content" is just a smokescreen, an attempt to not be grouped with "the casuals". There is only one way to actually get better at the game, and that is sitting down and doing the work to get better at it. And no amount of game design can fix attitude.

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"if you want content between ex and savage, go do ex!"

huh

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

"if you want content between ex and savage, go do ex!"

huh

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"Why don't the developers listen to our feedback?"
Next time that question pops up, I will present you as exhibit B.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

"Why don't the developers listen to our feedback?"

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That isn't what you said at all though.

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Originally Posted by jonimated

I can only speak to my own experience, but imo a tiered raid system with scaling rewards solves this quite elegantly. And can be done with minimal effort on the devs part (relatively speaking of course).

Taking Alliance Raid as an example: The current Alliance Raid we have now would be the base level. Fairly low ilvl requirement, low stakes, easy to recover from a potential wipe.

You then get Alliance Raid (Hard). Same raid, same bosses, mostly the same mechanics. Increase the minimum ilvl requirement, increase the ilvl of the rewards, and ramp up the damage and hp of the bosses. Add one or two new mechanics to each boss, but keep the bulk of the fights relatively the same, just harder to deal with and recover from because of the incoming damage and time the fight takes due to increased hp.

Lastly Alliance Raid (Expert). Same deal increase ilvl requirement, ilvl of reward, boss hp and damage. Add one more new mechanic per boss. Give the final boss a new phase.

I know at a glance this may seem just like the Normal Trial to Extreme Trial system we have now, but the ramp-up is way more gradual than that. Because the bulk of the mechanics are similar in a tiered raid system a player can play on a lower difficulty to essentially "train" themselves to take on a higher difficulty, or choose to go straight to the higher difficulty if they want to challenge and meet the ilvl requirement. This is currently not what we have. At this time doing a Trial on normal does not in any way prepare you for doing it on Extreme. Same with Normal Raid to Savage Raid. The two tiers are just far too different mechanically for it to be considered a true "tiered" system.

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I said this in a different thread, but it applies here.

I agree options are always a good thing. However, there are already complaints about there not being enough content. How many people would be happy if there was even less content because all we got for a patch was a raid with 7 different versions? Not only that, but now (even in this thread) you'll want content between EX and Savage, which mean even more versions. That's not even opening the can of worms of the ilevel of the rewards between all the different versions.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

I said this in a different thread, but it applies here.

I agree options are always a good thing. However, there are already complaints about there not being enough content. How many people would be happy if there was even less content because all we got for a patch was a raid with 7 different versions? Not only that, but now (even in this thread) you'll want content between EX and Savage, which mean even more versions. That's not even opening the can of worms of the ilevel of the rewards between all the different versions.

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I'm not sure why often in this community suggesting something new also means that we don't get something we already have. That doesn't have to be the case. FFXIV is big enough, and makes enough money, that it's possible to have everything. SE putting forth the people, funds, and effort to actually do that is another matter entirely. I just don't think we should ever be dismissing suggestions on the grounds that it may remove something we already have and enjoy. It's possible to have both things.

Also I want to be clear my suggestion never included 7 different raid versions. It was 3. And I never suggested having content between EX and Savage. I don't want that. I think the current difficulty jump between EX and Savage is perfectly fine. Perhaps someone else did in this thread, I don't know, but please don't conflate my suggestions with someone else's.

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Originally Posted by jonimated

I'm not sure why often in this community suggesting something new also means that we don't get something we already have. That doesn't have to be the case. FFXIV is big enough, and makes enough money, that it's possible to have everything. SE putting forth the people, funds, and effort to actually do that is another matter entirely. I just don't think we should ever be dismissing suggestions on the grounds that it may remove something we already have and enjoy. It's possible to have both things.

Also I want to be clear my suggestion never included 7 different raid versions. It was 3. And I never suggested having content between EX and Savage. I don't want that. I think the current difficulty jump between EX and Savage is perfectly fine. Perhaps someone else did in this thread, I don't know, but please don't conflate my suggestions with someone else's.

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But your suggestion is in the same vein as theirs. That's seeing the forest for the trees. You suggest content between AR and EX. Others want content between EX and Savage. You are saying the current difficulty jump between EX and Savage is fine, and others aren't. Meanwhile, people are saying the jump from AR to EX is fine, and you are saying it isn't.

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Originally Posted by jonimated

FFXIV is big enough, and makes enough money, that it's possible to have everything.

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I work in a similar field and I can tell you with certainty that your description is most definitely not how that works. You always have to work with limited time, resources, and typically a lot of red tape and approvals to get anything done. That's why the devs will often say something is "impossible" and then end up doing it later. They didn't mean it was literally impossible, they just couldn't allocate the time and resources previously and then were able to shuffle things around to make it happen later.

To be clear you should still leave feedback to ask for whatever you want. I'm just clarifying that adding things like a new difficulty absolutely will impact existing content and/or potential other types of new content they would have to kick down the road or abandon entirely.

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Originally Posted by Menriq

I agree options are always a good thing. However, there are already complaints about there not being enough content. How many people would be happy if there was even less content because all we got for a patch was a raid with 7 different versions?

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Not gonna lie, hate this line of thinking so much. Yes, resources are limited. But it is the company's problem to allocate finances and recruit people. I have no desire to excuse them with the phrase “well, they can only do so much content, if you want more, you need to take stuff away from someone else”. This game isn't some side project or in a support state. It's their main game and their main source of revenue. So we need to demand more content from it.

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Originally Posted by Xrono_Amber

Not gonna lie, hate this line of thinking so much. Yes, resources are limited. But it is the company's problem to allocate finances and recruit people. I have no desire to excuse them with the phrase “well, they can only do so much content, if you want more, you need to take stuff away from someone else”. This game isn't some side project or in a support state. It's their main game and their main source of revenue. So we need to demand more content from it.

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Sure but we can also be realistic about our expectations. For all the money XIV has made over the years, it's not like the amount of content per patch has changed dramatically and usually centers around 1- 3 items and the rest bug fixes and additions of glam/mounts/minions/emotes. Expecting much more considering nothing has really changed, even since the SHB influx, is a wild fallacy.

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Originally Posted by jonimated

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I don't necessarily disagree with such an approach if they had the bandwidth to do it without sacrificing anything else, however respectfully I don't think this would be popular with XIV's playerbase at all for a few reasons.

1) This playerbase complains about difficulty increases consistently. While you would think that a scaling difficulty would fill the transition, what would instead happen is that the content on the higher end would be dead outright and those same complainers would stay on the bottom tier because they are adverse to challenge, hence why they struggle with things like CAR or don't participate in general EX/Savage or harder content. If they are already unwilling to embrace the harder content, what's stopping them from staying at the bottom? That doesn't fix the content drought they "feel" nor allow them to graduate into harder content.

2) Drops on the harder tiers would have to be exclusive to the harder versions, which is something else the playerbase consistently complains about. (Look at savage mount drops, car mounts etc)

3) Development of such content, which would need new mechanics, rebalancing and testing for each tier will take more time and likely eclipse diverse deployment of different types of content. I can only imagine the uproar people would have when they see a patch have the same content deployed 3 times and still wondering as the party that doesn't care about that "wheres the content for me"

You have to operate from the mindset first that this playerbase is accustomed to babyfied content no matter how many people on these forums try and cry otherwise.
They cry they are lacking content, you point out the world of raiding is awaiting them to jump into at their leisure with vast amounts of content, considering they didn't touch any of it, and they cry it's too difficult and time consuming.

You give them longform content and they complain it's too grindy.

You point out that it is impossible to satisfy this playerbase and they give you the ol "XIV playerbase is not a monolith"

This playerbase is adverse to challenge of all forms, that again, it cannot braindead through. I've been playing since 2.0 and have never felt "there's nothing to do in XIV" but that's also because I actively engage with all the content it offers.

For an MMO thats described as a ThemePark MMO, you sure have a majority of people that only like to get on 1-2 rides. That's simply the truth.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

sinp

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I think we just fundamentally disagree on the type of content the game actually has to offer, and who it is serving. Which is fine. This game has a lot of players and not everyone is going to see everything the same.

While I can agree there isn't necessarily a lack of overall content, I think there is a lack of content that servers the entire player base equally. Not everyone is going to want to do all content. I would argue there isn't a single FFXIV player who does literally everything (outside of chronic completionists of course). Everyone only does what appeals to them as a player. Currently we have the ultra-easy content which can be done with little to no effort at all. Then there is the difficult content which requires multiple hours to kill a single fight, for potentially multiple days or even weeks for some people.

I disagree about your point that the player base is adverse to challenge. There's certainly some people for whom challenging content just doesn't appeal to, but as a general sweeping statement I think that's fundamentally untrue. There is a large portion of the player base who isn't being served. Players who crave a challenge, would otherwise have the skill required to be able to clear Extreme/Savage content, but lack the ability to commit the large amount of time required to do so. I know there's a lot of folks out there who would just dismiss this group and say something flippant like "Well the game just isn't for them then. They should leave.", but I don't think that's the right attitude.

I believe an MMO as wide-reaching as FFXIV has a responsibility to serve as many players as possible, and that an MMO as large as FFXIV can do it successfully without sacrificing it's current content. A tiered raid system can achieve this, but it's certainly not the only way to do it. I think there are adjustments that can be made to something like Variant Dungeons which could allow them to fill the gap very easily with little effort. With a few tweaks Deep Dungeons could also fill that gap. It's not impossible. The game already has the seeds to be able to do this.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

Expecting much more considering nothing has really changed, even since the SHB influx, is a wild fallacy.

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It's more of the demand at this point. I don't "expect" them to do more by themselves. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they would try to do even less in future or add even more time between patches. Just because they don't want to do something doesn't mean we had to stop asking for it. How many years passed while we still lack hat-compatibility? Five, if I'm not mistaken. Yet I would still join people who rightfully demand it.

I manage my expectations, I don't expect miracles. But also I will not lower my demands which they can fulfill because they're not fundamentally impossible.

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Originally Posted by jonimated

I can only speak to my own experience, but imo a tiered raid system with scaling rewards solves this quite elegantly. And can be done with minimal effort on the devs part (relatively speaking of course).

Taking Alliance Raid as an example: The current Alliance Raid we have now would be the base level. Fairly low ilvl requirement, low stakes, easy to recover from a potential wipe.

You then get Alliance Raid (Hard). Same raid, same bosses, mostly the same mechanics. Increase the minimum ilvl requirement, increase the ilvl of the rewards, and ramp up the damage and hp of the bosses. Add one or two new mechanics to each boss, but keep the bulk of the fights relatively the same, just harder to deal with and recover from because of the incoming damage and time the fight takes due to increased hp.

Lastly Alliance Raid (Expert). Same deal increase ilvl requirement, ilvl of reward, boss hp and damage. Add one more new mechanic per boss. Give the final boss a new phase.

I know at a glance this may seem just like the Normal Trial to Extreme Trial system we have now, but the ramp-up is way more gradual than that. Because the bulk of the mechanics are similar in a tiered raid system a player can play on a lower difficulty to essentially "train" themselves to take on a higher difficulty, or choose to go straight to the higher difficulty if they want to challenge and meet the ilvl requirement. This is currently not what we have. At this time doing a Trial on normal does not in any way prepare you for doing it on Extreme. Same with Normal Raid to Savage Raid. The two tiers are just far too different mechanically for it to be considered a true "tiered" system.

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To be fair, this is what the majority of players thought chaotic alliance would be when they saw the announcement slide. But then it was revealed to be 1 boss only, and from one of the most overused alliance raids that everyone is sick of and on top of that around savage difficulty. I am not joking, you could physically feel the disappointment in the chat if you were there.

It would already be a huge improvement for an increased difficulty alliance raid if the bosses skip the "let me show you what mechanics i have for the first 5 minutes" phase.
That is perfectly fine for normal alliance, but if we ever do an increased difficulty, they should completely skip that part.

I would also argue that probably the best outcome would be to delete "Main scenario" roulette because it does not serve any real purpose anymore and make a "Max level Alliance Roulette" where every raid is lvl100 so people can actually use their whole kit in older fights. Put moogle tomestone-like system in place for rewards and you instantly created a long form content that most people can enjoy and participate in.

Unreal trials should also not rotate out, just release new ones, but that is another can of worms entirely.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

They cry they are lacking content, you point out the world of raiding is awaiting them to jump into at their leisure with vast amounts of content, considering they didn't touch any of it, and they cry it's too difficult and time consuming.
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For an MMO thats described as a ThemePark MMO, you sure have a majority of people that only like to get on 1-2 rides. That's simply the truth.

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Or maybe it's because they also abandon most of attractions to rot away while relatively regular providing updates to just 2 of them. First being usual dungeons, trials and raids, things for casuals. Second being extremes, savages and ultimates for hardcore audience.

I did both of them. What other rides I supposed to take at this point? Gold Saucer with recent addition of Blunderville after....how many years? Oh, also with voice-acting to mahjong. It's so stale it's actually kinda impressive. In a bad sort of way. And it can be the perfect place to not only test new animations and expressions, like they do with Manderville quest-line, but also just add new mini-games for people. Hell, just bring mini-games from inn's toy box and chess with checkers and it's already would be better, never mind updates to chocobo racing or lord of verminion.

And you might say "why they would bother with it if not many players interact with it in the first place", to which I would reply "people don't interact with it precisely because Square Enix don't put enough effort in it." PVP also was pretty much dead before relatively recent updates to it.

FF14 described as a theme park, yes. And if you're a new player, you have lot of things to do. But even in this case, most "rides" you can take will not change anymore. And new ones take painfully long to come out. Why we don't have new exploration zone from the start of the expansion is beyond me.

I do enjoy extremes and savages. But I already cleared current tier, for example. Cleared it a good while ago. What other rides I supposed to take in this case? We need more content, both casual and hardcore. And something in the middle, because why the hell not.

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Originally Posted by Xrono_Amber

Or maybe it's because they also abandon most of attractions to rot away while relatively regular providing updates to just 2 of them. First being usual dungeons, trials and raids, things for casuals. Second being extremes, savages and casuals for hardcore audience.

I did both of them. What other rides I supposed to take at this point? Gold Saucer with recent addition of Blunderville after....how many years? Oh, also with voice-acting to mahjong. It's so stale it's actually kinda impressive. In a bad dort of way. And this place can be the perfect place to not only test new animations and expressions, like they do with Manderville quest-line, but also just add new mini-games for people. Hell, just bring mini-games from inn's toy box and chess with checkers and it's already would be better, never mind updates to chocobo racing or lord of verminion.

And you might say "why they would bother with it if not many players interact with it in the first place", to which I would reply "people don't interact with it precisely because Square Enix don't put enough effort in it." PVP also was pretty much dead before relatively recent updates to it.

FF14 described as a theme park, yes. And if you're a new player, you have lot of things to do. But even in this case, most "rides" you can take will not change anymore. And new ones take painfully long to come out. Why we don't have new exploration zone from the start of the expansion is beyond me.

I do enjoy extremes and savages. But I already cleared current tier, for example. Cleared it a good while ago. What other rides I supposed to take in this case? We need more content, both casual and hardcore. And something in the middle, because why the hell not.

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Its a shame we dont scream at them for Blitzball in the Gold Saucer for like 5-7 years...oh wait we do. Best we got was a "no".

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

That isn't what you said at all though.

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Your reading comprehension is simply abysmal, which is in fact a problem that plagues many of these discussion within this community. The developers in the live letter categorized the difficulty of CODCAR as "savage level", yet a sizeable amount of the community was somehow under the impression, that it would be even less difficult than EX. A fact that was essentially nothing but wishful thinking.

And all these "midcore" discussions are also plagued with the community's general inability to actually express what they really want, but more importantly, WHY they want it. The argument that was made was this: "What "complainers" want is more content that falls between normal and ex trial difficulty.". And when I pointed out that older EX fulfill these fulfill these requirements (due to a combination of gear progression and echo), then suddenly the content has to be "current", with 0 explanation of why that is now important, or what "current" even means. I mean, the DT EX1 and EX2 are now easier than when they launched, people now have access to gear 30 ilvl higher than what was available at launch, and you get some echo. Are these not "current" anymore? And why does "currentness" matter, when the loot that dropped there was only relevant in the very short time span when they were the only available high end content?

The whole "we want more difficult content" is nothing but a smokescreen. It's a dishonest requirement. Because throughout all these discussions, it becomes increasingly clear that the "midcores" don't want more difficult content that they need to clear, they want more difficult content that others can clear for them, while taking credit (and more importantly, the rewards)for "beating" harder content. Because that is precisely the consequences of encounter design where a small group of people can "salvage" the run, as it's euphemistically called. It's why the body check of CODCAR is so negatively received, because it means that everyone has to properly do the mechanics. In other words, all the "midcore" content that is always oh so wished for, is basically EX content, but tuned for undersized parties. A minority of the party with the chops for progging hard fights are responsible for whether or not the fight is cleared, while everyone else is basically decoration, and only make an encounter go faster.

The FF14 community has a major attitude problem when it comes to participation in any battle content. So long as it's "cleared", there is very little self-reflection done, much less a steady interest in self-improvement. Not a day goes by when I don't have to ask at least 1 dps in SB+ dungeons to use their AoE abilities. Not even their correct rotation or 2 min buffs and all that, just basic AoE. Why would there even be so many people in the first place, especially without sprout icons and several jobs at lvl 100? Because for the community, "clearing" is good enough, even if it takes longer than with trusts who are deliberately tuned to be worse than the worst imaginable player party. This whole "there is no content between normal and EX, which means I have 0 opportunity to learn how to do harder content" is a self-soothing lie.

If the community wants content that has complex mechanics but only personal consequences, with the encounters being tuned for undersized parties, then it needs to ask for that. Not make up some nebulous batch of requirements just because many people can't face the fact that they aren't actually as good at the game as they imagine themselves to be.

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

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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. 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?

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." A lot of it is people not knowing what they want, but knowing they want something different which if that's the echo chamber, this will get a lot worse before it gets better, if it does at all. Not to mention the blind faith that the exploration zone will be the "casual content that will redeem dawntrail."

Yes... the clear is ever the goal. This isn't new. People see a cleared and can probably do it again, so why would anyone choose to "self-reflect" if their only goal is a clear? If someone clears, they know they can clear, and knowing they won't personally wipe 8 other people because their small toe is on the wrong pixel, there is literally no motivation for self improvement. Not saying this is cool or good, but that's how it is. I agree that people could be more specific as to what exactly they want out of future encounters, but I don't think anyone asked for the Chaotic as it is now, but you can correct me if I'm wrong.

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Originally Posted by Lilapop

people wanted a more difficult Alliance raid. That isn't what the Chaotic turned out to be.

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That's exactly what Chaotic IS though.

Probably shouldn't claim to have better reading comprehension then have these two comments right next to each other.

I think I posted this elsewhere, but the issue is that newer content in the game has only two modes:

- Walk in the park/run half asleep
- Needs guide and/or static to even try

There's no middle ground. Call it whatever you wanna call it, but as long as there's no in-between, it doesn't really make a difference what word you use to describe content in the game.

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

I think I posted this elsewhere, but the issue is that content in the game has only two modes

- Walk in the park/run half asleep
- Needs guide and/or static to even try

There's no middle ground. Call it whatever you wanna call it, but as long as there's no in-between, it doesn't really make a difference what word you use to describe content in the game.

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This is what it boils down to

It doesn’t matter if you consider EX midcore or not because it’s not the problem people have

If you wanna say “what you should be asking for is casual content to not be as easy as it is” then sure but that’s still not really the issue

We can all see where the biggest “gap” in content is it doesn’t matter what you actually call said content

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

And all these "midcore" discussions are also plagued with the community's general inability to actually express what they really want, but more importantly, WHY they want it. The argument that was made was this: "What "complainers" want is more content that falls between normal and ex trial difficulty.". And when I pointed out that older EX fulfill these fulfill these requirements (due to a combination of gear progression and echo), then suddenly the content has to be "current", with 0 explanation of why that is now important, or what "current" even means. I mean, the DT EX1 and EX2 are now easier than when they launched, people now have access to gear 30 ilvl higher than what was available at launch, and you get some echo. Are these not "current" anymore? And why does "currentness" matter, when the loot that dropped there was only relevant in the very short time span when they were the only available high end content?

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

This is a live service game and if you are caught up with the content then it would be nice to have the current content appeal to you as well. I can not believe how adamant you are on telling people to just play old content unsynced/overgeared if they want content that was designed to be played on patch for the reasons stated above. 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.

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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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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Insecurity.

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Originally Posted by Havenchild

That's exactly what Chaotic IS though.

Probably shouldn't claim to have better reading comprehension then have these two comments right next to each other.

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Surely chaotic is a trial?

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.