What is Midcore? Why does it matter?

[Xirean]

I feel like the terms serve little value. Partially because casual is less a category a more an insult.

As far as content goes I can't really see Extremes working as anything other than above "middle". The first ones a new player gets access to can be very demoralizing given the leap in difficulty. Ramuh EX alone is just a wall if people haven't properly understood mechanics that most players at 90 would consider baseline.

-Don't stand next to tanks
-Pay attention to personal aoes
-Pay attention to the debuffs of other players
-After certain moves don't stand in specific map sections with no aoe telegraph
-Prioritize adds

Then it also has a tank swap and a tether that you don't get rid of with distance changes. That's a lot compared to every dungeon and trial before it.

[Jeeqbit]

casual is less a category a more an insult.

Although it is sort of an insult, it is a category.

Casual Players vs Hardcore Players

There are genuinely people who only play at weekends. There are genuinely people who only play 2 hours after work. There are genuinely people who just return to the game after a few months and find it challenging just to get some crafted gear for the content they joined.

I get that real life exists, but that is casual and it seems to be the majority of players. If you join an average progression or farm party in PF, guess what, they are probably going to leave after 1-2 hours. If they were going hardcore they would stick it out for 16 hours. Occasionally if you host a party, 1 or 2 people stick around and farm/prog all day with you in PF, but it is rare that someone goes that hard on things. The people who are paid to play hardcore (streamers) will easily go 16 hours.

A lot of them volunteer their actual reason for leaving as well, such as work, needing to sleep, "that's enough for today", "starting to mess up and get sleepy", so it's not like I'm guessing.

But as you see from my examples, some casuals do high-end content, but some of them bring a casual mindset to it (no knowledge of pots, no crafted gear, sub-par food).

Casual Mindset vs Hardcore Mindset

Which brings us to the difference between a casual player and a casual mindset. You can be a casual player with a hardcore mindset that prepares properly and reads tooltips, or a hardcore player with a casual mindset that just jumps into content without preparing properly. It's just that a hardcore player has had more /playtime to get the message about how the game works and that they are supposed to prepare.

Casual Content vs Hardcore Content

So then we need to look at SE designing content for these different categories of players.

A casual player might like just logging in to do casual content such as beast tribes or Island Sanctuary for the little time they have available. But on the other hand, hardcore players benefit from this because more content to fill in the sheer amount of time they have available is good. In any case it is something to pass the time while waiting for a queue or a party to fill. But clearly it is not nearly enough for a hardcore player.

A casual player might not have time for something like Eureka or Bozja, but they might. It was easy to hop in and out of at any time. Meanwhile, a hardcore player needs something to pass the time when they don't feel up to challenging content, but don't want it to be quite as braindead as an expert roulette, or things to grind out between patches.

A midcore player may never step into extreme/savage/ultimate, but still play a lot, and need something to keep them occupied such as a relic grind and Eureka/Bozja fit that. In Endwalker, they are forced to be a casual player by doing Island Sanctuary for 2 minutes, beast tribes for up to 10 minutes and an expert roulette for about 16 minutes and after that dump their tomestones and log off. Maybe an alliance raid once a week too.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Although it is sort of an insult, it is a category.

A lot of good stuff in your post. Also agree that Casual is a category and not innately in insult. I never used "casual" as an insult even when I was in top raiding guilds in other MMOs, though I know some will throw out "filthy casual" as an insult. But that's just gamer mentality that I've never really been into.

I do think midcore content and the lack thereof is important. I'd probably be a midcore player if there was such content, but as is I just limit myself to easy casual content. I have enough time to play a decent number of hours per week if I had the interest, and care enough about my performance that I'm willing to look at guides for rotations when I'm learning my class and care what my skills do.

Just not that much in XIV that really requires this that isn't at the more hardcore level.