Zepla: The Players Endwalker Left Behind

[Berkin]

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.

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

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

[Supersnow845]

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

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

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

[SannaR]

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

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

[Eelanos]

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

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

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

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

[Vahlnir]

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

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

[Supersnow845]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[OdinelStarrei]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Fawkes]

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

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

[Zairava]

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.

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

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

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

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

[Eelanos]

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

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

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