Chaotic is midcore, in case you were wondering

[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.