Zepla: The Players Endwalker Left Behind

[ChrysOCE]

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

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

[Zairava]

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

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

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

[ChrysOCE]

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

[Kes13a]

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

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

[ZephyrMenodora]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[R041]

...

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

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

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

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

[Iscah]

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

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

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

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

[ZephyrMenodora]

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

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

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

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

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

[VerdeLuck]

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

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

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

[ZephyrMenodora]

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

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

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