An idea for coveted "Mid-Core" content

So there's a lot of talk of Final Fantasy needing more "mid-core" content. At a base level, I would agree. Problem is...what is "Mid-Core" to everyone? Easy and hard content are easier to design. Make something pants-on-head easy, it's easy for everyone. Make something ball-busting hard, it'll probably be hard for everyone. Mid-core, though? You ask 10 people what that is, and you'd get 10 different answers. What's fairly easy to one person might be fairly hard for another.

So here's my idea. Adjustable difficulty dungeons. Actually remember this being in ye olde Anarchy Online. Wouldn't have to be a free slider like it was in that game, just something that has a 1-10 setting. You give the dungeon a currency, like Criterion. Higher the difficulty, more currency you get. Like 10 for level one, up to 100 for level 10. Maybe have chests in the dungeon that usually give a junk item (firework type item), but a small chance for a cool item (house item, glamour, minions ect ect). Hard difficulty, better odds of getting a cool item.

So what would change with higher difficulty? Well, upping the stats of monsters is, of course, a start. You can also give enemies buffs that adds things to their attacks. For instance, maybe at mid levels, they get a "venomous" buff, that applies a poison debuff to their attacks. Just an example, you could get super crazy with this. Enemies could get more harder to resolve attacks. You could take away telegraphs for some special attacks. Have environmental hazards. Hey, that mountain you're on? Harder difficulties, it becomes a volcano. Now you get to avoid random fireball AoEs. Harder still, now they leave a DoT area for a small time. Harder still, enemies in that area have a buff that allows them to heal if hit with the AoE, or if they're in the DoT area effect. You could put debuffs on the players. This is the stuff just off of my head.

Having this system would allow people to get better at the dungeon (and game) at their own pace. Let's say you think you're pants-on-head bad, so you start at level 1. You get through it, find it's not too bad. So you do 2. Also not bad. You get to 3, and you get some pushback. You play a few times, and you get used to it, and you go to 4. Again, some pushback, but you figure it out. Go to 5. Ok, now it's getting a bit spicy. You do 6, and it's comfortably hard. Not so much that it's annoying, but enough to keep you on your feet. You try 7, and get your teeth kicked in. You keep trying, and maaaybe you eventually get through it, but you decide that 6 is about what you feel comfortable with. Fair enough! You run 6 to get your coins, meaning you get 60 coins per run. That's 50 more then you're getting back on level 1! Encourages people to get better, but still respecting that people do have a maximum cap on how good they can get. Even if your maximum cap IS one, you can still get the stuff, it'll just take you bit longer.

Anyway, it's just an idea, and just a rough one at that.

I just want slightly harder versions of dungeons and alliance raids where the bosses go straight into doing the more complicated versions of their attacks instead of having to go through the "skill A; skill B; simplified A+B" before we get to the fun part.

Bozja's critical encounters had a bit of that when they started from existing bosses but went straight into a harder version of the skills than the original fight had. No warm-ups, just straight in, learn the mechanic or better luck next time.

If Casual Content is Rouls Alliance Raids and Island Sacutaries, and Hard Core Content is Early Savage clears Savage Critireon and Ultimates, Midcore is everything else. Let me explain.

Midcore, is when you do a bit of everything, you raid but parsing and clearing week 3 isn;t your goal, clearing in 2-3 months is fine and if you get some blues and purples, cool. You like rouls and the side content is p neat, so you don't skip cutscene, and don't mind getting Crystal Tower a lot. You'll possibly do an ult if ur group feels up to it, you do hunts and grind old relics, thats midcore currently.

I think what people are looking for is more gear progression, dungeons not being so braindead and Alliance raids having the difficulty they used to have back. Critireon is a great content type that can easily fit into what Midcore is, and if it offered rewards and they affected your gear prog along with EX and Savage and tome grinding, it'd be dope.

I believe Ex raids with patch day gear should be able to serve as mid core ?
It is like "difficult content 101", an introductory to the more difficult savage raids series.

Bring back exploratory zones.

Eureka/Bozja hit this niche fairly well as they weren't too difficult (outside the specific savage duty contained in each). However they weren't designed for ppl that only had 1 functioning braincell either.

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Originally Posted by strawberrycake

Midcore, is when you do a bit of everything, you raid but parsing and clearing week 3 isn;t your goal, clearing in 2-3 months is fine and if you get some blues and purples, cool. You like rouls and the side content is p neat, so you don't skip cutscene, and don't mind getting Crystal Tower a lot. You'll possibly do an ult if ur group feels up to it, you do hunts and grind old relics, thats midcore currently.

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I feel this. I think the issue I take with labels like casual and hardcore is that they're so broad and could involve different TYPES of engagement in addition to different AMOUNTS of engagement. You could have someone who puts a lot of hours into the game, but only engages in lifestyle content. You could have someone who plays once a week, but that time is spent grinding themselves against savage raids for 8-12 hours on that one day. I don't think these two people belong in the same category. So yeah, midcore is a helpful description.

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I think what people are looking for is more gear progression, dungeons not being so braindead and Alliance raids having the difficulty they used to have back. Critireon is a great content type that can easily fit into what Midcore is, and if it offered rewards and they affected your gear prog along with EX and Savage and tome grinding, it'd be dope.

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Fr. Someone can be fully engaged with the game and want to gear up, but also get crappy RNG and take months to work toward that. That's where I was at until I threw my hands in the air and gave up on the savage grind. It feels bad to have nothing to show for the time you CAN spend doing high-end content that way.

I will say one thing,

One of the things that made alliance raids so fun at least back in the day is that they were completely unpredictable. You really just couldn't control what happened. You knew it was coming, but the way it was designed was completely random as to which choice the Boss Mob would do.

Example here:
Yazmat in the Rhidoranna Lighthouse. You can have him doing his charge attack which randomly decides which direction he's going to turn, while the Magnetic Electrolysis is going on so you have to watch your plus or minus which shrinks the field, then at the end of his prance whereever he stops, he does White Breath when he stops which could be on either side of the + or - meaning to dodge the mechanic you might be screwing yourself if he does a Cyclone next. It's totally unpredictable, crazy, and you have no idea where its coming or why.

Or the Construct 7 fight where you have no idea what you are going to get on computational mode, or when the cogs come down which lane he will take, followed immediately by Lithobrake and Dispose.

Or in Orbonne with Seraph segment where you have all 3 of the earlier bosses special moves going at once. I can still die to this day on that because there's no way to predict what is going to happen.

It's something that is different, and fresh each time you do it.

EDIT: BUT if we're talking pure midcore content, usually it is Expert Dungeons which are generally made up of the previous mechanics of the prior expansions 8-man raids and sometimes previous Alliance raids. Usually too the Normal 8-mans of the current expansion along with Alliance Raids.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

Or in Orbonne with Seraph segment where you have all 3 of the earlier bosses special moves going at once. I can still die to this day on that because there's no way to predict what is going to happen.

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That segment is extremely rigid once you map it out. There are variables like which tiles will be dangerous and who gets targeted for the fire circles, but the sequence is 100% predictable.

I think the idea could be interesting and I would be interested. I don't know too much about wow but it kind of sounds like mythic dungeons from what I have seen.

Personally, I think the game needs more content that can teach players how to play at a high level without the stress of jumping into high-end scenarios with a group of people. I know this is an MMO and some people hate the idea of solo content inside their MMO, but I would like some solo duties that range from easy to ultimate-level encounters. Also think it would be cool if they had a scenario where you could practice certain mechanics. I think this would be beneficial to the community as it would allow people who have anxiety, feel like they are slow learners, don't want to be judged, have confidence issues, or maybe they are just new players, etc. a place where they could improve and get confidence in their abilities as well as learn. There could be a parser in this place only for the sake of improvement. Although they don't have one in the sky, temple, sea, or w/e it is called so maybe not.

I was a big fan of the Bozjan duels and yet also wish they were harder. Yet these are another type of events where people would be passed up on or they passed on because either they could not do the critical engagement well enough to get an attempt or they didn't want to be judged by everyone watching and shit on when they failed the event. These at first were completely randomly selected, then they made them a queue-like system. This was much better, but still not something you could just go do whenever you wanted. Like a solo queued instance would be able to accomplish.

The great thing imo about this is it is not just for one group of players, it would be for all. Ofc if a player doesn't want to improve or challenge themselves then they won't but I think this would help break down some barriers that might be external to just "skill issues" that get thrown around a lot. While also working on "skill issues" and possibly encouraging more people into harder group content.

What is mic-core to me...

I have enough time to play this game to have easily exhausted the easier content (MSQ, dungeons, Variant, etc.) in no time at all. There's nothing else outside of the occasional glam or marketable item that I have left to get from them.

When I look at content on the opposite side of the scale, I'm left nervous. I may have the time, and at many points, the desire to engage in Savage raids, Criterion Savage, (Ultimates are beyond me right now), and even things like Extreme trials. I have the time to do them, but due to a mixture of not having a group to play with, and varying degrees of social anxiety, I stay away from them.

So where does that leave me standing? Mostly on 8/24-man content, beast tribe dailies, Criterion, exploratory content like Eureka and Bozja (including BA and Bozja's raids), and recently even crafter/gatherer relics. Things I can dedicate far more time into for their rewards, and/or that offer higher degrees of difficulty while being more lax on pressure. Outside of 8/24-man normal raids, I have yet to complete or exhaust these of their rewards entirely. By design, there's still a ton of time I could spend towards them. I guess, to me, that's 'mid-core.'

Also, I'm a huge advocate for the idea of dungeons with adjustable scaling that can be tackled alone or in a group. 100% on board with that in the future.

I think I would like more of a bridge and a better curve to go from casual to midcore to hardcore. So in a sense, casual content is just doing your roulettes, midcore content would just be exploratory zones, harder 4 man dungeons and extreme trials, while hardcore content would be Savage, Ultimates and Criterion Savage dungeons.

its not even funny anymore how people read words liks casual, mid-core or hard-core and go straight to their own subjectiv definition jumping between the scale of difficulty and the scale of time investment and mixing them up, without even thinking about what the other person is going for.

yeah unfortunately we do use the same/similar words on both scales, but that doesnt mean we cant differentiate between them



and then in terms of difficulty... sure for people doing ultimates the difficulty in extreme trials may seem like dungeon difficulty. and for people only doing msq the difficulty in extrem trials may look like ultimate difficulty.... but no matter where you stand on the scale and no matter how little brain someone has, anyone who thinks for a few seconds about it can come to the conclusion that there are differencies between them because they are differently named or because other people treat them differently.
so how does it seem so difficult to realize the gap between easy and hard?


wouldnt it make sense to have an objectiv scale (depending on the actual difficulties we have) when talking woth other people instead of projecting our own view on other people?

Just bring back exploration zones and Stormblood-style fully scaling sets of relic gear for you to obtain and improve therein. This will appease a fairly large number of people right out of the gate. Throw in some FATEs that behave like EX trials, albeit with a focus on personal responsibility rather than the usual "welp, we're gonna wipe because Steve was a micrometer out of place." Is this at least in part midcore? Maybe, maybe not. It would at least get the ball rolling on more content for casuals and theoretical midcore-players alike.

At this point it's difficult to even nail down what midcore is, since the community just can't seem to agree on it.

While I think difficulty settings is actually a pretty solid idea, isn't that effectively what normal/Extreme and normal/Savage is intended to be for trials? Isn't that what Criterion/Variant Dungeons were supposed to be?

I think you're on the right track, and I think the reason why "mid-core" is even becoming a topic of discussion is that outside of Extreme/Savage there really isn't any mid-core content. Previously, it was Eureka/BA and Bozja/CLL/Dalriada/DR that were the "mid-core" content, particularly the exploratory zones. In theory those could have been replaced with something like what you suggest for dungeons, and in theory they were with Criterions, the problem is that Criterion dungeons failed to deliver on challenging, rewarding, repeatable content--the many player open world maps of Eureka and Bozja just naturally facilitated mid-core ambitions a lot better. You could be as solo/inefficient or group/grindy as you wanted in those zones with a lot of natural variety from NM pops.

Personally, I think the switch from exploratory zones to criterion dungeons was a poor decision. Particularly when you consider the fact that not only is nothing serving the same function, but Criterion dungeons compare quite directly to Deep Dungeon which naturally is a much more developed format. They should have fleshed out Deep Dungeons more and just made Criterion Dungeons normal dungeons, not wasted all that extra dev time on extra pathing and assets and bosses.

At minimum, they should have at least tied the Relic grinds to the Criterion Dungeons. At least that would give them some lasting presence in the game.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

While I think difficulty settings is actually a pretty solid idea, isn't that effectively what normal/Extreme and normal/Savage is intended to be for trials? Isn't that what Criterion/Variant Dungeons were supposed to be?

I think you're on the right track, and I think the reason why "mid-core" is even becoming a topic of discussion is that outside of Extreme/Savage there really isn't any mid-core content. Previously, it was Eureka/BA and Bozja/CLL/Dalriada/DR that were the "mid-core" content, particularly the exploratory zones. In theory those could have been replaced with something like what you suggest for dungeons, and in theory they were with Criterions, the problem is that Criterion dungeons failed to deliver on challenging, rewarding, repeatable content--the many player open world maps of Eureka and Bozja just naturally facilitated mid-core ambitions a lot better. You could be as solo/inefficient or group/grindy as you wanted in those zones with a lot of natural variety from NM pops.

Personally, I think the switch from exploratory zones to criterion dungeons was a poor decision. Particularly when you consider the fact that not only is nothing serving the same function, but Criterion dungeons compare quite directly to Deep Dungeon which naturally is a much more developed format. They should have fleshed out Deep Dungeons more and just made Criterion Dungeons normal dungeons, not wasted all that extra dev time on extra pathing and assets and bosses.

At minimum, they should have at least tied the Relic grinds to the Criterion Dungeons. At least that would give them some lasting presence in the game.

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To me personally it feels like the Criterion/Variant duties were something bolted on as an afterthought when they realized just how much potential content they cut from the game by not adding a new exploratory zone and tacking the relic on to the Hildibrand side quest line as a low grade tomestone dump.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

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I agree to most of that. I like the idea of Criterion, but it just... needs something more? If they're going to continue into Dawntrail, I at least would like to see them made more relevant, though preferably not at the cost of something like exploration content.

Deep Dungeons... need to evolve. I like them, but after seeing Orthos adhere so closely to the blueprint they pinned with PoTD even after multiple expansions, I'm concerned for the next one we get. They could add more incentive and more rewards to it, but if it follows the exact same design we've had 3 times now, I'm going to be disappointed, personally.

As for exploratory zones, I'm of course all for getting another one, with the catch that they try to cram as many forms of activities into it as possible. I don't just want Bozja 2. I want Bozja's structure with all the fixings, but let us take gatherers and crafters into it, with a quest line for combat, crafting, and gathering respectively. Add big fates for them like Ishgardian Restoration had. Let us find exploratory treasure maps within the zone and hunt for chests. Hell, why not even Deep Dungeon's randomly generated dungeons as instanced dungeons you can stumble upon and do solo or with a party, within the exploration zone!

They have the structure for it all, and so many ideas to work with. I loved Bozja, and would love even more to see the devs take it and iterate upon it.

I just love how this game is following the same path as WoW. Literally due to the player base themselves. You can’t make anyone happy in this game.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

Personally, I think the switch from exploratory zones to criterion dungeons was a poor decision. Particularly when you consider the fact that not only is nothing serving the same function, but Criterion dungeons compare quite directly to Deep Dungeon which naturally is a much more developed format. They should have fleshed out Deep Dungeons more and just made Criterion Dungeons normal dungeons, not wasted all that extra dev time on extra pathing and assets and bosses .

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We should have gotten both honestly. I think there's another thread about lost actions in Variant Dungeons, but you could definetly make the criterion dungeons and variant dungeons in a zone like Bozja.