What is Midcore? Why does it matter?

[CNitsah]

Mostly agree with 2 to 5.

Totally disagree with 1 though. The difference between "casual" content and "midcore" content is that "midcore" content ask some time investment. Relics used to be the most midcore content, not really difficult, but asking a lot of commitment. That said, I agree when you say the content might be done in small sessions. But let's be real, very few content in FFXIV last for more than 30 min except if you want it to (or everything goes chaotic).

I'm sure what you mean with 6. If you mean like in bozja, take a leave for a few fates because you need to do something irl, I'm for it. But when you talk about only rezing, it kinda looks like you advice leeching on the whole party. That description, depending of the content might go from "it's ok, no problems" to "get the f out".

Too me, midcore content kinda mean giving the player incentives to do the "casual" content several times to get something more out of it. Casual was playing bozja once for the storylines. Midcore is playing it lvl your job/get your relics/anything bozja has to offer other than its storyline.

[Cyanamists]

Snip for length

Hi I don't post much on the forums, mostly lurk but I've been seeing a lot of posts about mid/middle level types of content recently and want to add my 2 cents.

This entire list seems to be on the more casual part of "midcore" whatever that means. I would like to add one or two things to the list.

7. Skill floor: especially if it's going to be with other people, you need to know the basics of your job, and at least the entry mechanics of the content you're in. If you willingly go into Dalriada/CLL without any essences or appropriate lost actions, you are actively trolling and making it worse off, that applies for everyone except for those who are obviously new to the encounter. This also applies to the flexibility part of the list, while it is okay for you to play how you want, you are actively affecting how 47 other players in the critical engagement/fate/whatever by not contributing damage. There can't be complexity/social aspects and commitment wrapped up with "play the game my way". If that was true, then even a midcore player will tell you that they'll pick a monk spamming dragon kick over and over again over a whm who will only raise because while there's a chance the whm never presses a button, that mnk will at least contribute with their single damage button.

8. Failure: there has to be an element of failure, with little repercussions. Midcore is getting to the point where effort starts to matter. You don't have to be like me who liked tanking mobs in bozja just because I had essence of the beast levels of effort but something to show "I care about this content and I'm willing to try for a bit even if I fail." Extreme fights(prior to the full on body checks) are a good example of this. If someone dies, the pull can keep going until the healers can salvage it again, if we wipe, then we learn something from it and go again. If DSR is roughly 1000 pulls start to clear, TOP around 1500, savage 4th floors around 150-200, then midcore content should be somewhere around 25-75.

To clarify, I don't mean you(OP) specifically, just speaking broadly and I'm too lazy to fix it.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Midcore to me means challenging content that doesn't rise to the level of difficulty that results in needing a static and a schedule of progging.

The iLvL requirements and caps should be closely tailored so it's not trivialized.

Midcore should be challenging in that it requires every member's full participation. An 8-man midcore should not be completable if you have people that are regularly dead, not geared, or who can't make competent use of their class.
Healers should feel challenged by damage or status ailment output. It should require competent use of tank mitigation. It should have mechanics requiring more thought than memorizing red bubbles.

It should not be so challenging that a few mistakes can't be recovered from, or any mechanics that auto-wipe the raid if one person messes up a mechanic.

It should offer good rewards and incentives above normal content.

[R041]

Hi I don't post much on the forums, mostly lurk but I've been seeing a lot of posts about mid/middle level types of content recently and want to add my 2 cents.

This entire list seems to be on the more casual part of "midcore" whatever that means. I would like to add one or two things to the list.

7. Skill floor: especially if it's going to be with other people, you need to know the basics of your job, and at least the entry mechanics of the content you're in. If you willingly go into Dalriada/CLL without any essences or appropriate lost actions, you are actively trolling and making it worse off, that applies for everyone except for those who are obviously new to the encounter. This also applies to the flexibility part of the list, while it is okay for you to play how you want, you are actively affecting how 47 other players in the critical engagement/fate/whatever by not contributing damage. There can't be complexity/social aspects and commitment wrapped up with "play the game my way". If that was true, then even a midcore player will tell you that they'll pick a monk spamming dragon kick over and over again over a whm who will only raise because while there's a chance the whm never presses a button, that mnk will at least contribute with their single damage button.

8. Failure: there has to be an element of failure, with little repercussions. Midcore is getting to the point where effort starts to matter. You don't have to be like me who liked tanking mobs in bozja just because I had essence of the beast levels of effort but something to show "I care about this content and I'm willing to try for a bit even if I fail." Extreme fights(prior to the full on body checks) are a good example of this. If someone dies, the pull can keep going until the healers can salvage it again, if we wipe, then we learn something from it and go again. If DSR is roughly 1000 pulls start to clear, TOP around 1500, savage 4th floors around 150-200, then midcore content should be somewhere around 25-75.

To clarify, I don't mean you(OP) specifically, just speaking broadly and I'm too lazy to fix it.

I agree with these, I think those for me would sit within Complexity. There absolutely needs to be a higher floor and cost to failure. Which is why I love Eureka and Bozja. POTD can get into that when you do higher floors, but still requires a dedicated party to go through the whole thing. Wish it weren't so strict.


I can agree my Midcore might be more solo-ish oriented, so it kinda skews my perspective and wants. I wanna be around people, but I don't want to be forced to always find a group if that makes sense? I like naturally wading through events and groups, so that's more of an Open World Midcore than it is Midcore as a whole.

It doesn't detract from what others want in Midcore, because theirs could be completely party dependent, and I respect that.

[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.

[CNitsah]

Extreme fights(prior to the full on body checks) are a good example of this. If someone dies, the pull can keep going until the healers can salvage it again, if we wipe, then we learn something from it and go again. If DSR is roughly 1000 pulls start to clear, TOP around 1500, savage 4th floors around 150-200, then midcore content should be somewhere around 25-75.

I don't agree on this. I always have problem seing extremes as midcore content. They could qualify as such in term of difficulty, but not of accessibily. Because of how the players actually play. People are pushed to not use the duty finder to do extremes, but to use PF. A content you're forced to make premade party to participate is not a midcore content.

If anything, extreme stand at the limit, and depending of who you ask that question, they will see it as midcore or hardcore content. Difficulty by itself is not the only factor.

[Musashidon]

midcore is a myth it doesnt exist.

[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.

[Jeeqbit]

I think body checks is one of the issues. Bozja didn't have all these body checks. But the mechanics did kill you if you did them wrong. We could all resurrect eachother and use Lost Actions, but because of the fact the mechanics could all 1-shot us, it was still possible for there to be a full wipe.

And if you were one of the few survivors, all those dead people could look at you in awe. The one person there who could actually do mechanics as you walked all over their bodies dodging mechanics and carrying them through it. Maybe it would inspire them to become like that.

I also don't like how in alliance raids everyone just follows where the others go and survive, not because they know the mechanics, but because they followed everyone else. I would prefer for mechanics not to be something you can just follow others for, because mechanics that are hard in isolation become easy if you can just follow the one person who did all the maths. There were some mechanics in Shadowbringers where you couldn't just follow people, such as the "walk a certain amount of steps" mechanic in DR.

[Xirean]

I think we need to make a distinction between difficulty and time. I see some in here saying more time investment raises the content to Mid, but if that's the case then there is an argument for the MSQ itself to be Mid. I know quite a few RP players who never finish the story purely because of how long it is.

If it's about difficulty then it can be a combination of mechanic complexity, mechanic abundance, and general punishment level.

For me personally I don't consider Bozja to be welcoming because of both the abundance of death and punishment of it; regardless if the group I'm in succeeded at the FATE or not. Even if we win, if it's too hard it can still be a wall for an individual in my opinion.