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

[Xapapetsu]

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.

I've been told by the casual playerbase that the new dungeons are not casual, they're midcore, and I was told normal raids are midcore because the casual players don't do them.

Honestly I think the playerbase is divided on what midcore even is.

I agree we need more content that is slightly challenging, I'd say fights that might take roughly 25-50 pulls blind to clear and is easy to get into, but I know a lot of the playerbase disagrees with me on that.

[NanaWiloh]

MMO BOSS fights are all with few exceptions scripted. In FF14 case its just far far more obvious then others that the fights are scripted.

[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.

[Valence]

The root cause of this is that they made jobs too easy and fights too hard.

That's the real truth behind everything. This company has a tendency to double down on dubious designs to a point where they corner themselves into completely lopsided systems like we have today.

[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.

[FuturePastNow]

I am never going to do any piece of content in this game that requires memorizing a 20 page raidplan

[ShadowyZero]

not even the casuals get good stuff anymore lmao and when they do they are expected to no life the game to get anywhere an get something good XD which is why many of them turned to roleplaying and modding to cope with the fact the game is stale and boring for them.
really the only midcore things we get are extreme trials, pvp and eureka like field content that require at least some critical thinking skills and effort.
other wise the harder core audience has savage, ultimates, unreal, chaotic, delriada, baldesion arsenal, deep dungeon hard modes, and even criterion dungeons.
so idk you kinda have to tell me which group is more suppressed and a after thought XD

[Raikai]

attempts at new combat still aren't really bringing people back.

What new combat...? Honestly, it feels almost insulting that the reason we didn't get a better job design is because of what we got in Dawntrail (supposedly after 7.2).

Combat still looks the same to me. Better than Endwalker? Sure is, but still adheres to the same old formula of over-scripted fights with mirrored mechanics and symmetrical spots matching the ground tiles. Cleave left, then right? You got it! I may be told naive, but from what was hyped during the Fanfests, I truly expected big changes and not some occasional moments like the M2S beelines or M6S adds.

That's the real truth behind everything. This company has a tendency to double down on dubious designs to a point where they corner themselves into completely lopsided systems like we have today.

And that's an issue directly related to shelf life.

Jobs being interesting have much more than encounters being interesting, because in XIV's formula, reclearing high end fights is the epitome of boredom because almost nothing challenges you anymore. So reclears become just a chore to get the weekly item you need, and after that you just stop doing that specific fight at all. Reclears would be much more engaging in the current paradigm if jobs had more meat on their bones and were more distinct from each other, especially the healers.

[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.

[Valence]

I am never going to do any piece of content in this game that requires memorizing a 20 page raidplan

This is what a lot of people categorizing extreme trials and sometimes even savage as midcore tend to miss.

Either way, beyond everybody having different metrics for what is softcore, midcore and hardcore (time spent, preparation, difficulty, execution, coordination, whatever floats your boat), what the OP did was using those words instead of actual metrics that aren't used as wedge issues by the playerbase: the main difference between two main types of content in the core PVE of the game right now is raidplan vs no raidplan. One can blind prog extremes and up, but the fact that you still have to write even if just in your head those multiple pages of raidplans is something that pushes a lot of the playerbase away, and I'm saying this as a player that has raided for a long time, they also do push me away especially today in DDR lalaland. The tragedy is that it becomes extremely difficult to actually challenge players in such an environment today without immediately jumping into heavy raidplan territory for the very reason that there is no difficulty left at the RPG battlesystem level and the job's difficulty.

There is also a secondary metric that people already hinted at that is recoverability of fights, which goes hand in hand with the aforementioned RPG battlesystems we have lost: if it's a body check or an instant wipe mechanic, it's automatically going to push away the same population that doesn't want to deal with that kind of binary difficulty. The current issue is that it's very hard to provide casual difficulty or complexity because those systems have been completely removed from the game (resource management, party synergy, and a sustain based job/party system). It wasn't rare before ShB to have parties crumble down and wipe not because of bodychecks or gotcha mechanics, but because the party slowly got overwhelmed by damage and mechanics, or was left with no MP to continue, which offered a much more organic level of difficulty than BRAINLESS <<<< OR >>>> HARDCORE.

What new combat...? Honestly, it feels almost insulting that the reason we didn't get a better job design is because of what we got in Dawntrail (supposedly after 7.2).

Combat still looks the same to me. Better than Endwalker? Sure is, but still adheres to the same old formula of over-scripted fights with mirrored mechanics and symmetrical spots matching the ground tiles. Cleave left, then right? You got it! I may be told naive, but from what was hyped during the Fanfests, I truly expected big changes and not some occasional moments like the M2S beelines or M6S adds.

Yes honestly the only thing Dawntrail actually introduced is a much faster pace with overlapping mechanics relying more on often obnoxious visual cues from the boss or the arena, and call it "new encounter design".