FF14 has abandoned their mid core players and thats why its failing.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm honestly completely confused on what the majority of the playerbase thinks midcore is. I always assumed midcore was extremes, first three savage fights, Deep dungeon, field exploration, ect. Really anything that has a bit of a challenge but not overly challenging. M6S definitely seemed out of the range of midcore, but that's a fringe case.

It basically is but there are many players that are afraid to even try out Extreme or Unreal purely on the basis of the "High-End" categorization and no other reason. Often parties ask them to look up guides or put a load of acronyms they don't understand, so they don't even try.

[Khutulun]

It basically is but there are many players that are afraid to even try out Extreme or Unreal purely on the basis of the "High-End" categorization and no other reason. Often parties ask them to look up guides or put a load of acronyms they don't understand, so they don't even try.

The fact the majority of content is handled via the duty roulette probably plays a part in this as well. There's not a lot of required social interaction in FF14, which pre-disposes players to not wanting to perform meaningful interactions. Not really something one can fix or should fix tbh, just part of FF14.

[Jeeqbit]

Not all players who don't try out extreme trials, unreal trials and savage raids are afraid to them being categorized as high-end content, it's the toxicity they don't want deal with for not able to do everything 100% perfectly all the time.

That's the same thing as being afraid. That's exactly what I mean when I say they are afraid. They are afraid of being judged or not being flawless. That's the definition of anxiety. Fearing a future possible scenario that may not even happen.

Back in Heavensward, I filled up a linkshell (128 people) in two days that was aimed at people who were anxious at trying out raids. That's how widespread this issue is. You can fill a linkshell with anxious people that want to raid but are afraid to in just days.

[Gurgeh]

That's the same thing as being afraid. That's exactly what I mean when I say they are afraid. They are afraid of being judged or not being flawless. That's the definition of anxiety. Fearing a future possible scenario that may not even happen.

Back in Heavensward, I filled up a linkshell (128 people) in two days that was aimed at people who were anxious at trying out raids. That's how widespread this issue is. You can fill a linkshell with anxious people that want to raid but are afraid to in just days.

No it is not the same at all Jeeqbit.
I cleared Ex1, Ex2, Ex3. Loved progressing. However, every time I went into a farm party it was just miserable. It wasn't fun. It was MOST often the opposite. And it was the people, their mood, the way they acted.
Then I tried Chaotic and a lot of the progress, I was seeing the same antisocial behaviours.
Then I tried Ex4 prog, and now I was similar antisocial behaviour in prog. People rowing over interpretation of strategies and performance, or worst of all just bailing prematurely.
(If I could only have one cheap fix, it would be that anyone who bails on a party is locked out of that instance for 36 hours. Griefer? vote kick or leader kick, and a kicked person cant join a party with that leader for 36 hours. None of that is hard to code.)

I can assure you that I was not 'afraid'. I have no 'fear' about getting in chat to defend someone who is being picked on. And afterwards it's not anxiousness in the slightest I feel about the prospect of requeing, its just disdain. I had good experience, and it just wasn't fun. I didn't even want to prog because I want my reward, but I also want fun, and I'm not enduring those farm parties.

I think you are deluding yourself if you don't believe that a lot of people have tried it, do accurately know it, but just don't like it. Its not midcore. Its not fear. I think you are also deluding yourself if you don't believe that for a lot of those that haven't tried it, that a lot of those if they did, would come to the same conclusion, it's not fun. It's actually unpleasant.

[Ephremjlm]

Not all players who don't try out extreme trials, unreal trials and savage raids are afraid to them being categorized as high-end content, it's the toxicity they don't want deal with for not able to do everything 100% perfectly all the time.

So I kind of want to double down on and add to your point. I personally don't get bothered by any toxicity though it can be 1 of the problems people face. For me personally I ran into other issues. I did do higher end content. It started by me completing all of the blue mage carnival stuff, then saying okay well I might as well do savage and ultimates. I studied and learned those fights (just like I would some of the blue mage fights), and what I found was that the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze, at least not for me.

My FC at the time didn't have the raiders to get a static going and quitting that FC to join another that did that would be silly and was off the table. I already spent time learning the stuff outside the game, I didn't want to have to then try to hop and find other discords (also outside the game) just to do a single instanced fight inside the game. If people want to come at me about that, that's fine, but its poor game design if that is a requirement. My last option was pugging. I remember my first time being so god damn bored. The waiting for the pug, and then actually running the fight for 3 hours just to not clear it even though by all means I knew the fight at that point. We all had the right gear for the fight but some people just couldn't do the mechanics. I get it, that some people like this kind of thing, but after continuing on that trend for a while and finally getting the clear I was over it.

I did hard fights in FFXI (also games like diablo, OSRS, etc.), and as a MIDCORE player, I liked the preparation. I liked understanding how the game needed to be played. I liked customizing my gear, and even gear swaping/role swapping when needed to fight that specific set of mobs or boss. I even liked doing skill chains syncing up with other players. This "dance" thing, while for the most part just doing the same rotation over and over because skills are just plain damage mitigation, or healing, isn't very fun to me. It's too scripted. Like I feel it COULD be fun to me on occasion, but currently the game either has piss poor easy content, or ultra scripted do this thing perfectly content with no room for any design in between, or real reason or incentive to even climb to the top.

Idk man I hope that's relevant and valuable for people to maybe understand perspecitves a little more. Plus idk afk waiting in a city and instance queuing for these things which all take us to a platform feels very "mobile" game like to me. js and no hate. It has it's place, but it shouldn't be the ONLY place.

[CNitsah]

It basically is but there are many players that are afraid to even try out Extreme or Unreal purely on the basis of the "High-End" categorization and no other reason. Often parties ask them to look up guides or put a load of acronyms they don't understand, so they don't even try.

I disagree with that. Midcore in mmo used to be those players that spend a lot of time in game, but don't participate in things that rely on heavy group organisation, like high difficulty prog, world first race, basically anything that ask you to scheldule your life around the game. Same content can be in several categories depending of how you engage with it. Old field operation were pretty casual if you only did the story, but became the definition of midcore if you farmed several relics. If you pick up extreme on the fly, it's midcore. If you do them with a static and scheldule it, it's belong to hardcore.

Casual/midcore/hardcore were terms that described the way the players engaged with the game, but now people seem to think it's some kind difficulty lvl. I feel like labelling the content as one of those losing something design wise, since the same content could be enjoyed several ways. When you design your content as midcore content, you end shrinking your window of opportunity. And the sad thing is that the dev seem to follow that thinking. That's how we ended with FTB : they wanted to design midcore content but because people continue to say midcore is extreme and low savage, it ended being far from the midcore people expected from that content. Because they reduced midcore to a few factors...

And everyone should stop with the "afraid" narrative. People are not afraid. It just ask them more than what they bother giving to the game. This mentality of player being "afraid to" is one of the thing that lead to the Chaotic and FTB fiascos, and the whole nothing to do complaints. The belief that with the right incentives, everyone will flock to those content is just wrong. There is plenty of players that have the lvl to do Extreme that just don't bother because they don't want to deal with PF or statics. There are also plenty of players that use to do extreme, savage or even ultimate that stopped because they did want to involve that much into the game anymore. Those are proof that most of the time it's not about being "afraid".

The afraid argument is something defended by dellusionnal players that don't want to accept if the people don't do those content, it's mostly because don't want to, or that have an ego problem, and somehow feel superior for being the ones "not afraid to go into harder content", and see everyone else as peasant or useless.

[Jeeqbit]

The afraid argument is something defended by dellusionnal players that don't want to accept if the people don't do those content, it's mostly because don't want to, or that have an ego problem, and somehow feel superior for being the ones "not afraid to go into harder content", and see everyone else as peasant or useless.

I've said this before, but I filled up a linkshell aimed at players anxious about trying to do this content and it filled in 2 days. I've also met loads of players that express this anxiety over the last 10 years. Maybe there are players whom are not avoiding it due to anxiety, but it is definitely one of the big reasons. People don't have confidence in their own skills etc because snapshotting gets them all the time as well.