Endwalker hates casual players

[Colt47]

FFXIV is built for casual players.

There's a pretty big audience for players that want to be optimizers, but are not into the super tough challenge mode fights that they currently have in the game and that is the group that is having problems with the game right now. The intent with the weapon from savage with that extra 5 point gear boost was supposed to be a tiny perk over what people could get otherwise just by upgrade item, but they tied the item upgrade to the progression system needed to get the weapon that is five points over that, and locked everyone else out of getting the upgraded tomestone weapon until a later point as it is supposed to be a reward for those who are doing the harder content.

Optimizers aren't trying to get better gear for the sake of clearing harder content, they are doing it because they want to clear existing content faster and compete with others in the community on numeric factors. Things like how fast someone can clear a dungeon and the like are the kind of challenges they are after rather than being able to clear ultimate or kill the final tier special boss.

[Jeeqbit]

Many extremes aren't even mid-core. lol

When people use the term midcore for content, they mean content that involves more than logging in for the time it takes to complete a seasonal event, expert dungeon or island sanctuary and doesn't allow to completely turn off your brain to do it where reprisals and tankbuster mit don't matter and so on.

Extremes do actually achieve paying attention so it is midcore content. The people who don't pay attention are the ones that wipe to gales, void stardust, arctic assault and all the mechanics in the new ex. The new ex even sees wipes if there isn't good mitigation or reprisals for simple raid-wides or raid-dots, or good heals between casts.

Yes, there are midcore statics but that is specifically a term to describe how much time or commitment a static has and not necessarily the same as what midcore content is tbh.

[GTK0HLK]

Seems like a noticeable number of Users are missing the Thread Creators Point.
Almost to a Joking Degree.

The Hardcore and Casual would agree with op on the basics.

As for the Midcore. What Midcore, This game doesn't have any consistent midcore this expac.(You can argue if ExpZones are or aren't, but they are really a step between Casual and Mid)

[Payadopa]

When people use the term

Nah. You don't need to explain the term. There is pretty much no mid-core in XIV. There is either patronisingly easy or go find 7 other people and deal with their main character syndrom and parse. Because nothing says casual content more then an extreme where people demand excellency or leave after 2 to 3 pulls. The genuine casual players I know barely make it through a dungeon. Nothing wrong with it. Not everyone wants to put time into learning. But XIV only caters to the two extremes of the spectrum.

[TaleraRistain]

I think the only gnarring thing is that this Savage allegedly won't be unsync-able in 7.0 whereas traditional Savage is.

Wait, what? You mean Savage Criterion or like Anabaseios?

[Reimmi]

No, endwalker hates midcore players, lol. there's plenty to do for casuals

[Jeeqbit]

Nah. You don't need to explain the term. There is pretty much no mid-core in XIV. There is either patronisingly easy or go find 7 other people and deal with their main character syndrom and parse. Because nothing says casual content more then an extreme where people demand excellency or leave after 2 to 3 pulls. The genuine casual players I know barely make it through a dungeon. Nothing wrong with it. Not everyone wants to put time into learning. But XIV only caters to the two extremes of the spectrum.

I agree that finding 7 people, the pressure to perform and anxiety are off-putting for many players, but it does feel like midcore content.

I think the strength of eureka and bozja was that even if 75-95% of the players there couldn't do it, they could watch from the ground as a few people killed it and did all the mechanics or used certain actions correctly and this was true in NMs, CEs, CE raids and DR. There was only pressure on 8 daring people to perform against a special boss, while there wasn't much on everyone else.

To a degree, hunts and alliance raids are midcore content just because they are willing to let people die in 1 hit, knowing that the sheer amount of people there means someone will resurrect. Hunts are more rewarding because there is a mount and often gear progression tied to them. It's just that this is such standard content and if that is all there is, it isn't enough to hold the expansion together for these middle road players. Deep dungeons are also good because someone with higher aetherpool can often carry those who don't, but it didn't feel like that quite replaced what we had with Bozja, nor what we had with HoH + 4 eureka areas in Stormblood.

[Turtledeluxe]

FFXIV is built for casual players.

There's a pretty big audience for players that want to be optimizers, but are not into the super tough challenge mode fights that they currently have in the game and that is the group that is having problems with the game right now. The intent with the weapon from savage with that extra 5 point gear boost was supposed to be a tiny perk over what people could get otherwise just by upgrade item, but they tied the item upgrade to the progression system needed to get the weapon that is five points over that, and locked everyone else out of getting the upgraded tomestone weapon until a later point as it is supposed to be a reward for those who are doing the harder content.

Optimizers aren't trying to get better gear for the sake of clearing harder content, they are doing it because they want to clear existing content faster and compete with others in the community on numeric factors. Things like how fast someone can clear a dungeon and the like are the kind of challenges they are after rather than being able to clear ultimate or kill the final tier special boss.

FFXIV, like all MMOs late stage, caters to raiders hand over fist. That's why once MSQ is done, casual and midcore players are told to go play other games.

Raiders decide everything. Job design, the meta, fight design. Nearly all moment to moment gameplay you experience is driven by minmaxing raiders whose entire life is playing this game with plug-ins.

I'd also argue the only reason EW spiced up casual content a bit is because the devs were course correcting from how braindead they made the game in the effort to appease raiders about jobs and gear.

There's a hot take you can all quote and cry about.

[Ayche]

This forum was built for pretending to be victims.

[Colt47]

FFXIV, like all MMOs late stage, caters to raiders hand over fist. That's why once MSQ is done, casual and midcore players are told to go play other games.

Raiders decide everything. Job design, the meta, fight design. Nearly all moment to moment gameplay you experience is driven by minmaxing raiders whose entire life is playing this game with plug-ins.

I'd also argue the only reason EW spiced up casual content a bit is because the devs were course correcting from how braindead they made the game in the effort to appease raiders about jobs and gear.

There's a hot take you can all quote and cry about.

Like all things there's more than one axis to deal with when talking about target audiences. The only real thing that can work for classifying someone in terms of hardcore vs casual is the number of hours they put into the game, but that has nothing to do with the content that they take part in. Generally, what content people take part in revolves more around the interests of the individual. The reason I mentioned that optimizers are the ones being the least catered to has to deal with the design trends going back from the beginning to now. The content they built is good for someone who is more into the achievement of clearing things and the idea of gear is that it is supposed to be like a trophy for completing that particular piece of content. However, using numbers that impact outcomes attracts a different sort of player than someone who is after achievement.

And in end game there are casual people who do savage (used to be 6 hours a week but the last three tiers sort of forced 9 hours as the minimum), as well as people who are hardcore that do crafting (Omnicrafter that spends insane hours coming into the game to go grind out all the scrips they need and watch the market boards like hawks, so they can make the most gil possible. Usually to try and go buy a house). Heck, there are hardcore mount farmers that spend forever farming current tier cats from extremes. But I don't know what a hardcore optimizer is supposed to do other than do savage, and they probably hate doing savage because they aren't there for the fight, they are there for the gear so they can go do other content where they can experience using it.

FYI they don't like putting the upgrade item in the criterion savage for the very reason stated above: It is a source of optimization in content that is supposed to target achievement hunters. It is literally meant to be niche, but they added it due to apparent demand from the player base.