Chaotic is midcore, in case you were wondering

[CNitsah]

No wonder the dev are so out of touch, if they consider content for midcore player only as a difficulty.

This is only one part of the equation. Midcore players are players that will engage with the game a lot. It's about the engagement. I always take this exemple : running eureka or bozja/zadnor once for the story (and maybe one relic) is pretty much casual : farming it for month to get several/all the relics is definitely midcore player area, despite being fairly easy (try to tell me someone that got all the SB or ShB relics is a casual player... No, just no).

The interview says that Chaotic was done in response to 2 criticism : having things to do in large group and lack of midcore content : in both case I feel they missed the point of the criticism. I feared for the new exploratory zone, when they only covered the "wanting thing to do in large group" when they removed it, and never talked about the about the shelf life part (and let's be honsest, that was the core of the criticism when it came to this complaint) : I'm now nearly sure they totally missed that and fear for the shade triangle even more. For the midcore content, I feel the criticism was more "we want thing to do that don't ask us to go to PF where it can takes an hour to fill before even start".

I feel like there was goodwill to answer the critics, but they interpreted them wrongly (player base is partially to blame, I've felt they failed to put the point on the right things when it came to the removal of exploratory zone from day one : the shelf life argument only exploded months after the complaints began). Even in Japan, despite the fight being popular, (an average of 20% clear by server, and probably as much in prog), the criticism "still content for raiders while the rest of us can continue to get bored" is fairly popular).