Chaotic is midcore, in case you were wondering

[Supersnow845]

Your original point was what does it mean by Midcore and you fixated on the boss difficulty instead of the overall aspect of the content.
I disagree with that kind of thinking, but let us play your argument a bit here.

You like an 8th man raid of roughly Ozma level of difficulty, which is exactly what a normal raid is considering that in Ozma level of difficulty, the difficulty is being masked by the fact that there are 56 players contribution to the raid.

Do you want more individual mechanics without any consequence of wiping like BA or Diablo? Yeah thats normal raids. Let me give you an example

1) P10 webs placement, tower dodging
2) E12 Titan Junction, Shiva Junction
3) M2 Lives, M3 dashes and movements
4) O5 trains, O6 paints, O3 Hali Maze

You want a mechanic that straight up kills you like AV's puddles and have some more actual enrage. Okay,

1) 4 lords Extremes are literall individual mechs that almost has no impact on the overall party.
2) Innocence
3) Valigarmanda literally only has 1 body check mech and thats the tank buster
4) All of endwalker extreme except golbez has no body checks and all individual mechs.
5) The entire Unreal content because people need to realize that majority of old trials mechs are made in an era where none of the jobs have this much leeway thanks to the amount of simplification.

Difficulty of an 8th man raid is depended on the consequences of someone dying because you rely on less people. Asking just to do BA without understanding that BA mechanics or Diablos mechanic condensed down to 8 people without any of the dead consequences is just asking for casual level raid. Because that is EXACTLY what they do to normal raids, they make Savage first, and then remove all the consequence of dying so you can clear it.

Which is your fixation on whatever true extreme is, is weird tbh because I have mentioned multiple times that extreme is doable blind in 2-3 lockout even if it had body check and someone else in this chat have already mentioned the variety of extremes that even sprouts can clear in 1-2 lockout.

Ozma at 8 man without black hole/permadeath is nowhere near as easy as your average normal raid. Because normal raids have both no penalty and are mechanically simplistic. You can make a fight’s mechanics more difficult while still having zero external punishment to the rest of the group

If you want to argue that is basically an example of an easy end extreme (which going by something like innocence) it is. I’m not saying that extremes can’t be midcore content I’m saying that they need more content in this range that is organised so that NA doesn’t immediately dump it into PF and organise starts around something that doesn’t need strats (though to be fair that isn’t really the devs fault. Though they could hide content better like if they stuck innocence extreme into field content and just called it “innocence” people probably wouldn’t have PF’ed it)

Especially since they can’t actually make extremes a consistent difficulty. Innocence and SOS released basically half a year apart

[NanaWiloh]

When comes to organization for a raid boss. Cazic thule from Everquest in my opinion still holds the crown for king of organization needed.

[Reylap]

Ozma at 8 man without black hole/permadeath is nowhere near as easy as your average normal raid. Because normal raids have both no penalty and are mechanically simplistic. You can make a fight’s mechanics more difficult while still having zero external punishment to the rest of the group

If you want to argue that is basically an example of an easy end extreme (which going by something like innocence) it is. I’m not saying that extremes can’t be midcore content I’m saying that they need more content in this range that is organised so that NA doesn’t immediately dump it into PF and organise starts around something that doesn’t need strats (though to be fair that isn’t really the devs fault. Though they could hide content better like if they stuck innocence extreme into field content and just called it “innocence” people probably wouldn’t have PF’ed it)

Especially since they can’t actually make extremes a consistent difficulty. Innocence and SOS released basically half a year apart

And how do you give zero external punishment while making mechanics more difficult? You've been talking about Ozma as a way to put difficulty, but Ozma is literally 4 phase, with 1 or 2 short mechanics that are condensed into basically donuts/chariots, line aoes, and stack markers. The only argument of difficulty is the lack of cast bar for the attack and the speed of it. Which yeah, they have a lot of things like that in extreme without wiping the party

You seem to be forgetting the fact that FFXIV have instant raises that makes any sort of difficult mechanic without zero external consequences is basically a trivial thing. How do you solve difficult mech that doesnt punish players? Suicide it. Why do you think unsync O12S during SHB and EW is using the goodbye hello world strat? Why do you think extreme is still clearable with 5++ deaths?

Your argument of NA is a cultural thing. If you're saying the perception of NA players in PF are that they are unable to think outside of the common strats for something that doesnt need strat, then you're just saying skill issue because as data have mentioned in, JP players have no problem in clearing CAR. even in week 1 when theres no clear strats to use, most of em just wing it. And that is also a weird way of adjusting difficulty. "oh some players cant decide the strat to use, so lets make a content where strat isnt required but somehow we have to make it more difficult".

That is also not a problem of making consistent difficulty. It is HARD to make consistent difficulty precisely because difficulty is SUBJECTIVE and consistency is NOT always the goal to aim for. See how being consistent is shooting themselves in the foot now with MSQ? I rather them play around with variety and sometimes tuning it a bit skewed to the hard side rather than having the same slog consistently.

[Bonoki]

Why are we suddenly considering extremes and Savages midcore? Will Ultimates be midcore next?

I have already seen some people call Futures Rewritten mid-core solely because of the high clear rates. Most raiders already view UCoB, UwU, and TEA as mid-core solely because of their age and how long everything has been solved and optimized into the ground. Like most things, it always comes down to context and perspective. By this logic, nothing with age can stay hardcore and will reduce to casual status. Savage is no different. For the first two weeks, it's viewed as Hardcore. By week 8, it's Mid-core. It seems most things are launched as hardcore and degrade to mid-core, then finally casual. And this only happens because of a surplus of available community resources and general player skills. The more tools there are to clear something, the less hardcore it's perceived.

[Supersnow845]

snip

Is your only barometer for “difficulty” “I didnt affect my party”?

I think this is our fundamental difference here. Let’s take an easy extreme (just a theoretical easy extreme) and removed mechanics that required interaction with other players so at most you kill only yourself. At most you dying contributes to the enrage. Is there really “punishment”; not really because the healers are overflowing with mana. does that mean there isn’t difficulty; in my opinion there is still difficulty because I failed the mechanic and died and i myself want the joy of doing the fight flawlessly even if if I messed it up it wouldn’t affect anyone else anyway besides the enrage

If you think that anything that makes it so that the only punishment falls on yourself constitutes a lack of difficulty then that’s fine; it’s a perfectly valid stance to have. But it’s not the stance I have.

I’d like to not be put to sleep in content that sits somewhere around a ozma without group punishment (which yes ozma has 5 defined phases don’t worry I can call ozma you don’t have to explain him to me) because he is still relatively mechanically fast, doesn’t have tells and does a lot of damage if you don’t have 5/2 or are in defensive. 9 extremes out of 10 have at least one if not more body checks and at least one mechanic that is solved with a standardised start. There is a range that exists where you pretty much don’t kill the party without a defined strat but is harder than an average normal raid (if shiva was the easiest normal rather than the hardest this would be more in what I’m asking for)

You are right my argument for NA is subjective cultural differences but this entire debate about midcore is borne from exactly that cultural subjectivity

[CidHeiral]

From my experience most people want to have a go at something harder than the usual normal mode, but aren't willing or able to commit to the amount of time it would take to learn something as difficult as savage. Half-savage would be good.

You just described extreme trials.

[Yeol]

From my experience most people want to have a go at something harder than the usual normal mode, but aren't willing or able to commit to the amount of time it would take to learn something as difficult as savage. Half-savage would be good.

You just described extreme trials.

What's interesting is that not all Extremes are designed equally. Some Extremes are easier than Savage, while others are as hard as the first or even second floor of Savage.

Savage itself is also not consistent with difficulty. Sometimes the second floor is harder than the third.

[Shougun]

You just described extreme trials.

IMO, I imagine they mean more like normal mode before its all out geared. Like the first time (like brand new expansion) people run the dungeons people tend to get hit harder, makes all the mechanics a little bit meaty without being actually "we wont win this will we?".

[Reylap]

Is your only barometer for “difficulty” “I didnt affect my party”?

I think this is our fundamental difference here. Let’s take an easy extreme (just a theoretical easy extreme) and removed mechanics that required interaction with other players so at most you kill only yourself. At most you dying contributes to the enrage. Is there really “punishment”; not really because the healers are overflowing with mana. does that mean there isn’t difficulty; in my opinion there is still difficulty because I failed the mechanic and died and i myself want the joy of doing the fight flawlessly even if if I messed it up it wouldn’t affect anyone else anyway besides the enrage

If you think that anything that makes it so that the only punishment falls on yourself constitutes a lack of difficulty then that’s fine; it’s a perfectly valid stance to have. But it’s not the stance I have.

I’d like to not be put to sleep in content that sits somewhere around a ozma without group punishment (which yes ozma has 5 defined phases don’t worry I can call ozma you don’t have to explain him to me) because he is still relatively mechanically fast, doesn’t have tells and does a lot of damage if you don’t have 5/2 or are in defensive. 9 extremes out of 10 have at least one if not more body checks and at least one mechanic that is solved with a standardised start. There is a range that exists where you pretty much don’t kill the party without a defined strat but is harder than an average normal raid (if shiva was the easiest normal rather than the hardest this would be more in what I’m asking for)

You are right my argument for NA is subjective cultural differences but this entire debate about midcore is borne from exactly that cultural subjectivity

Your idea of easy extreme is literally made up of a MAJORITY of the extreme trials except for a few ones. I did not say my judgement for difficulty is just external punishment, but you seem somehow fixated that having external punishment is somehow unacceptable as an additional layer of difficulty that pushes an extreme trial to be out of midcore. I should be asking you what the hell is wrong with body checks or wipes from failed mechs and then going again? One could argue precisely because you know what wiped you, you strive to fix that problem and its easier/clearer how to fix it.

Now you're arguing that standardized strat is the problem. At this point, your argument is not about midcore difficulty but the fact that FFXIV fights are dance recital and they stuck to that formula a bit too long. Fair enough but under those context, asking for a different type of fight is different than asking for a midcore content, you just had enough of the style. Cuz if you do the fights blind anyway, you mostly came up with similar strats to the "standard" strats, so this is not about strat but style of fights.

The fundamental difference in here is not my perception of difficulty about midcore compared to yours. Its the fact that I am pointing out that MAJORITY of harder ffxiv content is exactly what are you asking already to a certain degree IF you consider using all of the tools they give and that Extreme fights are exactly the playground of difficulty where you can get away with a lot of sloppy plays, doesnt snore players and still being able to clear the fight. Body checks in extreme can be saved with mitigations, sacrificing someone, invulning etc. Even in current ultimate, you have the abillity to even not use LB3 mechanics on phases that shouldve required LB3 mechanics (FRU Phase 5). You could even argue, during those shit moments, having to be able to save the run is sometimes what makes it fun.

So are NA players unable to do those kind of things? For me that's an issue of SE babying them to death with the casual content having 0 friction rather than "midcore" being too "hard". And maybe, skill issue.

[Stanelis]

I've always counted EX trials as midcore.
So putting Chaotic halfway between EX and Savage would imo put it as a "high midcore/low hardcore".

The chaotic raid guide is like 30 minutes long. It's definitely not midcore content (especially with a 24 players requirement).