The Enormous Gap Between Casual and Hardcore Content

[CaedemSanguis]

I always see content difficulty this way:

Casual - Theres little to no player responsibility and agency. Performance isnt as punishable for clears and most likely you can turn your brain off for most of the time. (Dungeons, Trials, most Alliance Raids)

Midcore - Must know most every mechanic and perform to the best of your ability. Cant 100% turn your brain off and mistakes can be more punishing towards the whole encounter. (Most EXs and some Alliance Raids)

Hardcore - Every player must know every mechanic, their role, the dance and perform optimally or risk wiping the encounter even by single mistake. Player responsbility and agency is extremely high. (Savage and Ultimates)

I havent done Criterion so I dont exactly know if it falls into my Hardcore criteria but I assume it does considering the amount of feedback I hear.

Usually, the first two savage turn are very close to Ex's (except P9s & P10s which are a bit harder than usual)

[Colt47]

Okay so the reason why there is a "gap" between the "Hardcore" and the "casual" content has nothing to do difficulty. The problem is that they cut the game down into a simple "figure out where you got to stand for this mechanic" and the only two methods they got to make the fights harder is to make the damage for not figuring out where to stand higher, or obfuscating where to stand with a billion or so over the top flashy effects.

There is no way to "ease" someone into a fight that literally denies any kind of indicator on what is about to hit you. If someone gets exposed to some brand new indicator they have never seen before, it is the same as being completely blind to what to do and this idea is taken even further with savage, where they don't even show dodge indicators at all. So instead of making content that kills someone if they don't know what the marker is, they make content that does insignificant damage if the attack hits. Then, for later content they ramp up the damage from the attacks with the dodge indicators, add vuln stacks, etc. This is great except that the damage is so low on mainline content that unless it is the current content, the player barely registers anything when they get hit by a dodgeable attack. It's like the boss just said I'm firing my laser cannon, and then the player gets hit by a wet sponge. And in savage the boss doesn't even say anything, they are just standing there smiling at you and suddenly you get hit by a lead brick.

Also there is some misunderstanding on why some people want to have simpler damage rotations that SE missed. People want to have fewer buttons dedicated to strictly mainline damage because it opens up more options to do other things. Those other things in turn would likely make fights a whole lot more interesting than simply "know where to stand or die". Heck, they took away cone aoes with greater reach on warriors because it was different, increased the speed monsters move so kiting is now irrelevant, turned tanking into a mini-game of "if you don't use your mit at this exact moment you die", when it is supposed to just be a "good idea to use it", and healers got turned into little healing robots with two button attacks because SE removed every single utility option that used to exist, and heavily cut any content that could have made use of said alternative skills.

And I swear if someone wants to argue on this, then they can go tell me when the last time Foot Graze or Leg Graze was relevant in Endwalker. I'd bet they are going to cut those kinds of skills completely as button bloat and stick some fancy new rotation skill in just to complicate the bard rotation. The only non-damage, non-healing, non-mitigation skill that is even relevant anymore is sprint. Why? Because sprint lets someone get to the position they have to stand in to let the mechanic resolve faster. -_-

[Amarande]

See the problem? There is significantly more hardcore content than midcore content in Endwalker, when it should be the opposite. This not only affects players looking to transition from casual content to harder stuff, but also players that want a challenge without carving out time for a static.

Amen. The difficulty cliff is easily very stressful, and worse, it makes even starker the separation between people based on IRL situations being static-friendly enough or not, especially when you also add in the whole Duty Complete Farm separation to the mix.

XIV always felt like it should be friendlier to the person with a real life, that is its design, that is part of why we have less content in general than other MMOs: respecting your time by allowing you to take your time unlike other games that pressure you for "attendance."

Doesn't seem to work out that way though. The comparison between Mythic+ and EX (which for the most part objectively occupy a similar difficulty band) is starkest. If you start a M+ group, they will come, and you'll probably get somewhere even if you were way behind the curve starting out. EX? You get a painfully short time to get it cleared on release before almost all the competent enough players hide behind the Duty Complete fortress like Boccaccio's Decameron party (and on much the same mindset as that story, too, come to think of it, LOL). At that point you might as well just give up until next tier or even Unrestricted Party time ...

My experience with EX's this expansion have been that after the initial wave of Savage raiders have left the scene, they become very hard to clear in random PuGs.

Am I alone in believing these things a problem?

This has been a problem for a long, long time. Fight design in general leads to this issue for anything "challenging" - the onus is not on who you include but who you do NOT include in the group, in other words, you win not by having great players in your group but by carefully avoiding the folks with two left feet.

And in a randomly assembled group of 8, it takes surprisingly few "two left feet" players to make the majority of groups moot before you even enter the instance in that light. Statistical math actually puts the threshold for "most random groups are hopeless from the outset" at a point literally less than 10% of the PF pool not meeting the bar, so no wonder it seems like things flash out so rapidly.

Any attempt to make a cogent argument on this will be seized upon by the "YoU JuSt WanT a CaRRy!!!" cadre, though. I don't know what to say at this point. I'm myself not sure if I'm going to bother with PF for EX's anymore when they're current, to say nothing of Savage. It's not worth the stress, lol.

[Aldath]

I have two main concerns when it comes to casual and midcore content. It's something I often mention in the forums but the more the merrier I guess.

First, for casual content, there's a lack of longevity/repeatability. Normal trials give your absolutely no reward and dungeon gear isn't worth the grind except for glams. Casual content, the part of the game most people will likely interact with, is a once and done affair outside of roulettes.

Second, we have a meaty catalog of midcore content that only lives through an expansion and then fades away outside of very niche groups. Newer players need to go through about 200 hours of MSQ to engage in content that will be either through the mid of its life cycle or already dead when they finish current expansion MSQ. There have been attempts to make said content relevant, but they're sloppy at best. People do Wondrous Tails un synced and Unreals have a very slow content rotation that borderlines in insulting.

So, we're left with a big roster of casual content that rewards nothing, and a big roster of midcore that no one does because everyone got what they wanted already.

[Troxbark]

There's also an argument to be made that Endwalker's extreme trials are a little too hard for midcore. Take EX5 for example. That one is commonly considered an "easy" extreme. But do you really expect players taking their first steps into non-casual content to be able to handle the Flamespire Brand/Sweeping Immolation sequence? My experience with EX's this expansion have been that after the initial wave of Savage raiders have left the scene, they become very hard to clear in random PuGs.


Am I alone in believing these things a problem?

Um yeah you are alone, out of all of the EW extremes, EX5 is by far the easiest.

The ENTIRE fight and you only brought up 2 mechanics... That's why the fight is considered easy, you can use a dorito for pugation, a mechanic where the boss is literally doing nothing. The entire fight is low dmg, there's a ton of downtime, along with its generous DPS check. If this fight is too hard for midcore then this playerbase has no hope what so ever lol.

Also as far as PF is concerned, week 1 is where you get the serious raiders who want to clear. Week 2 those prog parties are now firmly farm parties. Week 3+ is where you're getting raiders who don't know their class, don't really understand mechanics, and don't particularly want to learn them either. They'll run headfirst in the same mechanic never asking any questions hoping that it will just "click" for them. I would consider this a failure on SE part for making casual content an absolute faceroll. Casual content is so easy that if there was a bar for casual, midcore, hardcare, I could place "casual" content well below the casual line.

Then there is 0 incentive to actually do any of the ex trials for regular players so the motivation for people doing them beyond an ass ugly mount is basically 0.

[Wyldkat99]

Lovely so now we've gone down to just Claiming anything you think is easy is Casual and anything you think is hard is Hardcore. Guess SE just will have to learn the hard way just like Blizz did with Cata.

[AnimaJan]

I don't see such a gap, if something we are missing more difficult content. There's only 4 savage raids and 1/2 ultimates per expansion. Though well, we are rather missing content in general, not only difficult content.

[Renathras]

Um yeah you are alone, out of all of the EW extremes, EX5 is by far the easiest.

The ENTIRE fight and you only brought up 2 mechanics... That's why the fight is considered easy, you can use a dorito for pugation, a mechanic where the boss is literally doing nothing. The entire fight is low dmg, there's a ton of downtime, along with its generous DPS check. If this fight is too hard for midcore then this playerbase has no hope what so ever lol.

No, she isn't alone.

And you're missing the point. Which is harder, something that is easy 95% of the time but puts the entire difficulty within that last 5%, or something that is steadily difficult, spreading that over the whole fight?

Ex5 is harder than Ex4 to get clears at level with players because all of the mechanics come within a roughly 45-60 second period with each of those mechanic sets having 3 overlapping mechanics that are difficult to resolve and each wave of them is a body check meaning if anyone dies, the group is more or less guaranteed to wipe.

Ex4, on the other hand, has a lot of movement and mechanics, but the damage they output is always lower (compared to ilevel of the content) than Ex5's big trio of combos, and Ex4 doesn't have any hard body check, with all the mechanics other than the flares/stack lowering in cases of dead party members, like the Mario Kart only having 2 people red and 2 people blue and 1 person nothing if you have 3 dead people going into it. E.g. it adjusts down if there are KO'd party members rather than being a body check with a guaranteed wipe if someone is dead. Ex4's mechanics, while visually a lot going on, also come out slower than Ex5's combos do. That is, there's more spacing and you tend to have a series of one mechanic at a time, not overlapping mechanics until late in the fight, and the overlaps aren't all body checks.

Ex5 is 7 minutes of nothing then 1 minute of Savage. Ex4 is a fight of Extreme level difficulty all through it. This is why Ex4 is probably midcore and a good measure of what an Extreme should be while Ex5 is a harder fight unless you can kill it before those late-encounter combinations start, because at that point, it becomes a Savage fight.

[Kisshu]

I always see content difficulty this way:

Casual - Theres little to no player responsibility and agency. Performance isnt as punishable for clears and most likely you can turn your brain off for most of the time. (Dungeons, Trials, most Alliance Raids)

Midcore - Must know most every mechanic and perform to the best of your ability. Cant 100% turn your brain off and mistakes can be more punishing towards the whole encounter. (Most EXs and some Alliance Raids)

Hardcore - Every player must know every mechanic, their role, the dance and perform optimally or risk wiping the encounter even by single mistake. Player responsbility and agency is extremely high. (Savage and Ultimates)

I havent done Criterion so I dont exactly know if it falls into my Hardcore criteria but I assume it does considering the amount of feedback I hear.

To borrow this for my own personal thoughts on it.

Casual: You can enter blind and expect to clear it in either first pull, or second pull if the fights has some type of super-wipe move (P10 knockback). Plenty of indicators to show where to stand and what to avoid.

Hardcore: You have to expect to train the fight. Clearing on first pull is very unlikely, and even clearing within first instance timer is not likely, even with a guide. Then after you learn it and get good you start farming it.

Midcore would then be somewhere in between. You clear within the first instance timer, but might have a few wipes. You need to learn the different boss abilities and have to know your own job somewhat well.
Something like the Ifrit/Titan/Garuda Hard fights back in ARR (although Titan was more a netcode challenge.)

I think the problem is that the game is going away from the learning aspect unless it's Extreme and up. But it seems like people don't really want to learn, just look at how many people stand away from ice-pillar on Amon (and not just new players).

We do have some more midcore designs in normal mode content, one example is the Ivalice raids, but also the time-delayed abilities in E2 or the portals in E7. But for EW I can't really recall that many.

I had hoped that with three difficulties in the Variant/Criterion dungeons we would have casual/mid/hardcore, but it's just casual, hardcore and hardcore+.

[caffe_macchiato]

There's largely nothing that we can do about the state of content in this game. Enough people like things as-is that they don't really care if there's no more forays or "mid-core content". Right now, FFXIV exists largely to do your dailies and log off to play other games. Many people have said repeatedly that, if you want something other than what we have, you should simply play something else. And Square Enix is listening, which is why they designed the relic grind to be as unobtrusive as possible. No more grind. The raidloggers can raidlog just like they did in World of Warcraft and everyone else can enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 or Starfield. Dawntrail will likely follow this example. It's not due to "covid" or "FF16" that they've scaled back difficulty, it's by design so that people can get their dailies in and log off.

Fortunately, there are other MMOs that offer a good mix of midcore content, but you might get called an "alt" or a "troll" if you point that out. It's funny how the most casual MMO now has its endgame consist of nothing but raidlogging while the most hardcore MMO has more casual and midcore players than ever before.