Chaotic is midcore, in case you were wondering

[Buttobi]

The people on this forum will argue that any content that you can wipe to is hardcore

Most nuanced take in this thread HOLY

[Xrono_Amber]

Are you seriously telling people to just go do old ex trials overgeared as a solution to lack of current content?

If I understand correctly, his takes lie more in the field of "extremes already are not that hard and quite forgiving, so middle ground between them and casual content is pointless, because the goal of creating said middle ground in meaningless, it's either people want to put effort and time into learning the fight or not".

I think creating extra version of casual content but with noticeably increased damage and some speed up in the cast-times of bosses abilities can be the perfect solution for said middle ground. Maybe even with taking some abilities straight from the extreme/savage. So fight is harder, but not full blown extreme/savage.

[Buttobi]

If I understand correctly, his takes lie more in the field of "extremes already are not that hard and quite forgiving, so middle ground between them and casual content is pointless, because the goal of creating said middle ground in meaningless, it's either people want to put effort and time into learning the fight or not".

I know it's not your take, but it is such a binary way to look at this issue that I just can not agree with it.

I think creating extra version of casual content but with noticeably increased damage and some speed up in the cast-times of bosses abilities can be the perfect solution for said middle ground. Maybe even with taking some abilities straight from the extreme/savage. So fight is harder, but not full blown extreme/savage.

It is solutions like this that I like cause I do think SE can reach this middleground, they just have not tried it in a long time.

[AllenThyl]

Are you seriously telling people to just go do old ex trials overgeared as a solution to lack of current content?

"lack of current content" wasn't the point that was discussed. It was "content that difficulty wise falls between normal and EX, especially as a stepping stone into harder content", and older / outdated EX content fulfills the stated requirements. If people would spend half of the effort into learning the game as they do moving the goal posts in these quite tiresome "midcore" threads, they would have cleared 2 Ultimates by now. Again, it's the players who are fundamentally unwilling to actually get better at this game, but all this discussion about "missing midcore content" is just a smokescreen, an attempt to not be grouped with "the casuals". There is only one way to actually get better at the game, and that is sitting down and doing the work to get better at it. And no amount of game design can fix attitude.

[Buttobi]

"lack of current content" wasn't the point that was discussed. It was "content that difficulty wise falls between normal and EX, especially as a stepping stone into harder content", and older / outdated EX content fulfills the stated requirements. If people would spend half of the effort into learning the game as they do moving the goal posts in these quite tiresome "midcore" threads, they would have cleared 2 Ultimates by now. Again, it's the players who are fundamentally unwilling to actually get better at this game, but all this discussion about "missing midcore content" is just a smokescreen, an attempt to not be grouped with "the casuals". There is only one way to actually get better at the game, and that is sitting down and doing the work to get better at it. And no amount of game design can fix attitude.

Asking for current content with a decent difficulty curve is apparently "moving the goalpost". The fact you are doubling down on telling people to just go play old content overgeared and unsynced is really funny. And no amount of running old trials and savage raids can fix that.

[AllenThyl]

Asking for current content with a decent difficulty curve is apparently "moving the goalpost". The fact you are doubling down on telling people to just go play old content overgeared and unsynced is really funny. And no amount of running old trials and savage raids can fix that.

It is moving the goal post, when the previous point was only "there is no content to fill the gap between normal and EX difficulty wise". That is what I addressed. If a group of players want to start engaging with high end combat duties, but don't feel confident enough yet, then yes, doing the older stuff is precisely the stepping stone. Unsynced EX3 from EW, you can survive 4-5 exploding towers with current gear. I mean, that is precisely the difficulty that is always demanded when it comes to "midcore" content, isn't it? That one person should not be able to wipe the raid, yet the content should actually be "harder" than normal content. If you always want "current" content to be that difficulty, that would be a much different thing to ask for. At the same time, there is a legitimate question what the point of such content should even be, if it fundamentally provides the same experience as the EX from previous patches in the current expansion. After all, it will not drop gear of comparable ilvl to weekly tomes / savage. So what relevancy does the "currentness" of this content even have?

[jonimated]

The issue comes with going from Alliance to EX as you say. Tell me How do you make something more difficult than Alliance Raid but not as difficult as an EX Trial? As you approach an EX trial, which you would with this theoretical middle content sandwiched between AR and EX, you HAVE to create a sense of difficulty, and that difficulty comes in DPS Checks or Mechanical failures and wipes. There IS no middle ground without those, because absent of any wipes based on mechanic failure or DPS checks, you essentially STILL have Alliance Raid.

I can only speak to my own experience, but imo a tiered raid system with scaling rewards solves this quite elegantly. And can be done with minimal effort on the devs part (relatively speaking of course).

Taking Alliance Raid as an example: The current Alliance Raid we have now would be the base level. Fairly low ilvl requirement, low stakes, easy to recover from a potential wipe.

You then get Alliance Raid (Hard). Same raid, same bosses, mostly the same mechanics. Increase the minimum ilvl requirement, increase the ilvl of the rewards, and ramp up the damage and hp of the bosses. Add one or two new mechanics to each boss, but keep the bulk of the fights relatively the same, just harder to deal with and recover from because of the incoming damage and time the fight takes due to increased hp.

Lastly Alliance Raid (Expert). Same deal increase ilvl requirement, ilvl of reward, boss hp and damage. Add one more new mechanic per boss. Give the final boss a new phase.

I know at a glance this may seem just like the Normal Trial to Extreme Trial system we have now, but the ramp-up is way more gradual than that. Because the bulk of the mechanics are similar in a tiered raid system a player can play on a lower difficulty to essentially "train" themselves to take on a higher difficulty, or choose to go straight to the higher difficulty if they want to challenge and meet the ilvl requirement. This is currently not what we have. At this time doing a Trial on normal does not in any way prepare you for doing it on Extreme. Same with Normal Raid to Savage Raid. The two tiers are just far too different mechanically for it to be considered a true "tiered" system.

[Lilapop]

"lack of current content" wasn't the point that was discussed. It was "content that difficulty wise falls between normal and EX, especially as a stepping stone into harder content", and older / outdated EX content fulfills the stated requirements. If people would spend half of the effort into learning the game as they do moving the goal posts in these quite tiresome "midcore" threads, they would have cleared 2 Ultimates by now. Again, it's the players who are fundamentally unwilling to actually get better at this game, but all this discussion about "missing midcore content" is just a smokescreen, an attempt to not be grouped with "the casuals". There is only one way to actually get better at the game, and that is sitting down and doing the work to get better at it. And no amount of game design can fix attitude.

"if you want content between ex and savage, go do ex!"

huh

[AllenThyl]

"if you want content between ex and savage, go do ex!"

huh

"Why don't the developers listen to our feedback?"
Next time that question pops up, I will present you as exhibit B.

[Lilapop]

"Why don't the developers listen to our feedback?"

That isn't what you said at all though.