The Enormous Gap Between Casual and Hardcore Content

[Absimiliard]

I'm not sure if I'd count Ex as midcore.

It depends on the EX. Some are very approachable, while others will almost certainly massacre most randos trying to complete them.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The first couple of savage fights are still mid ore.



I think the problem is the definition 9f mid core has changed as the games life has progressed.



As more casual players have joined, they see ex as insurmountable and savage as even worse.



Back in 2.0-4.x, ex content was done by a lot more people, casual savage statics and groups were a thing. Heck, I was queueing for some ex fights in df in stormblood.

[Absimiliard]

The first couple of savage fights are still mid ore.



I think the problem is the definition 9f mid core has changed as the games life has progressed.



As more casual players have joined, they see ex as insurmountable and savage as even worse.



Back in 2.0-4.x, ex content was done by a lot more people, casual savage statics and groups were a thing. Heck, I was queueing for some ex fights in df in stormblood.

I might add that people were nowhere near as antisocial back then. Now, grouping with others is seen as a chore by a fairly large portion of the player-base. Some just full on won't do it, and so they are bitter because they view it as being locked out of specific content types.

People are on average a lot busier now than they used to be, to boot. This can make getting any kind of static, casual or otherwise, all but impossible. For some it even makes just being online during their DC's active hours a challenge.

[Payadopa]

It depends on the EX. Some are very approachable, while others will almost certainly massacre most randos trying to complete them.

Exactly. Some are just too punishing. You do one mechanic wrong (like one out of 8 people) and everyone dies. Personally, that's just artificial difficulty for the sake of it. Keep that to ultimates. It's more fun to mess up but being able to *recover* from it. As a healer I just do my thing and then we wipe because that's how it's designed. In a real midcore fight you would be able to die, raise and heal a lot and still (maybe) make it. And a lot of ex fights just don't fulfill that criteria.

[Jeeqbit]

I might add that people were nowhere near as antisocial back then. Now, grouping with others is seen as a chore by a fairly large portion of the player-base. Some just full on won't do it, and so they are bitter because they view it as being locked out of specific content types.

That's always been so because back in Heavensward it was easy to find players with that anxiety as well if you made a PF targeting them. It was part of the reason they even changed the difficulty of savage to what alexander creator is. Once they got it there and saw participation increase, they said how they were happy with where they had got it.

It was actually even harder to do the content then, because you didn't have cross-world PF, so if you were on a low population world then you would have more problems.

To solve that, there were raid FCs, some of which had a toxic environment and weren't very inviting to new players, because they wanted to be the #1 raiders.

It wasn't as simple as going to discord or reddit to find a static either because you couldn't even party across worlds and discord only came into widespread use at a certain point.

People are on average a lot busier now than they used to be, to boot.

I don't agree with this point. People have always been busy. The people who were not busy were the people without a job, or with a lot of spare time between work or education days. I've no doubt that is still the case. The majority of people have always been busy and casual.

Now, maybe the game did not appeal to as many casual players in the past, but there were still lots of them in the past for sure and there was always a massive increase in players during the evening for obvious reasons.

[CrazyDude]

I'd argue if there are bodychecks that are extremely hard to recover from, then that content is more hardcore (savage-like).
I would put Golbez in here for his meteor mechanic, but not the rest (have not tried to the new one). I'd say that most extremes are midcore though if and when they are recoverable, albeit, less optimized. When they aren't, then it's more hardcore just because there's a bodycheck which expect you execute the mechanic precise. Bodychecks are savages ways of creating that artificial difficulty. So that would make Golbez would be like a savage-lite (a savage with a few less steps).

See, that was the problem I had with EX5. Despite the fight being very easy for an extreme, Sweeping Immolation can be either stack or spread. If you got the stack variant right after Flamespire Brand in a PuG group, it was usually a wipe because a lot of people died to Brand.

I think optimally EX's should have difficult mechanics but very lenient bodychecks (if any).

[Katish]

See, that was the problem I had with EX5. Despite the fight being very easy for an extreme, Sweeping Immolation can be either stack or spread. If you got the stack variant right after Flamespire Brand in a PuG group, it was usually a wipe because a lot of people died to Brand.

I think optimally EX's should have difficult mechanics but very lenient bodychecks (if any).

I agree 100%. Unless the goal is to educate the populace to get in the habit for even more difficult fights in the future. But with the design choices, it's the opposite I'd say (them making the more harder fights even more easier). Would not be surprised if the next Ultimate we get gets cleared healerless again. Or worse, healers become 1000% replaceable (I would welcome it, it would show the flaws of the class and it would be something to finally get them to do something about it.)

[Bonoki]

Nobody knows what Midcore even means and that's why it's hard to make content for it. The community can agree on casual content. The community can agree on hardcore content. But most of us don't agree on what defines midcore content.

[DrWho2010]

I'm still of the mind that the devs provide the content, but a lot of it is up to the community to organize around it and improve together. The game shouldn't be hand holding your way through up to ultimate content.

But the selfish and somewhat toxic, anti-social environment that NA/EU PF/DF can be makes it a wall to overcome. Just look at the way JP handles it, it's why they have more clear rates, because randos can come together easier than here.

[CrazyDude]

The first couple of savage fights are still mid ore.



I think the problem is the definition 9f mid core has changed as the games life has progressed.



As more casual players have joined, they see ex as insurmountable and savage as even worse.



Back in 2.0-4.x, ex content was done by a lot more people, casual savage statics and groups were a thing. Heck, I was queueing for some ex fights in df in stormblood.

I guess my issue there is that even Extreme Trials are a really big step up from casual content. You go from having to try to wipe to content that takes a pretty big effort to clear in PuGs. The first floor of a Savage Raid tier, maybe. But definitely not always the second (P10S would be a pretty awful Extreme Trial).


I would definitely agree with the other stuff you said though. I was never around pre-ShB, so I don't know how much easier they are now compared to then, but extreme trials seemed to really go off the rails during that expansion compared to prior. Usually it was just the extreme released in the X.1 patch that was arguably hardcore (Thordan, Shinryu). Nidhogg and Sephirot are rough too, but almost all the ARR EX trials are nothing compared to the ones in ShB/EW. Harder content has become harder while casual content has stayed mostly the same.


Should they add a new "Hard" tier in between?