More midcore content

[Skiros]

This game has an extremely wide gulf between casual, leveling content and "hardcore" content. I know veteran raiders like me describe Savage as midcore usually out of spite (at the lack of challenging content in the game), but it is still objectively difficult for most players. The biggest difficulty spike is also not from second floor Savage to third floor Savage, or from fourth floor Savage to Ultimate. It's from anything below Extreme to Extreme.

While the upcoming Criterion Dungeons may go a way to bridge this gap, we desperately need even more content to fill in this gap.

People are gonna get mad at me again, but that's why I'm having so much fun in Lost Ark. It has a great collection of midcore content. Content, where you are not always guaranteed a clear in Duty Finder (matchmaking), but not so hard enough that you have to dedicate 4 hours or 20 hours of 50 to clear the encounter.

1. Lost Ark's midcore content (Guardian raids and Abyssal dungeons; I haven't played enough Cube/Legion etc. to form an opinion) are genuinely challenging at minimum item level. The mechanics don't require much deciphering at all and are usually pretty obvious (with a few exceptions like Vertus being a horribly designed fight). And this is critical - so when you make mistakes and wipe, anyone with more than a few braincells can figure out WHY they wiped, and improve in the next round.

2. Improving as a player can sometimes be genuinely very easy and low pressure in Lost Ark. For Guardian Raids, you can queue in solo to learn the mechanics of the fight and practice until you're confident enough to join matchmaking, party finder, or just solo it down yourself. I think this is an awesome system that lets players who want to tackle challenging content but are afraid to do so to actually improve at their own pace without the stress of other players.

3. Midcore content also gets harder over the tiers. Meaning that, non-whales who aren't just skipping through to the maximum gear level right now have to actually do these raids one by one and slowly learn and improve from these encounters. Think of this game as an extended difficulty increase from Extreme to Ultimate, except it takes place over the entire game instead of a single tier. That's not to say that you only have Ultimate difficulty raids (Abrelshud hard) at the very end. There are always options for all players. It just means that if you go through the content bit by bit you'll get better.

---

There are quite a few downsides to Lost Ark's midcore content that I don't want to bother going through in detail. For one, Guardian raid difficulty is a tad too much for a daily system. The player-side solution is to do the lowest difficulty encounter and I think that's fine. It comes at the expense of slightly fewer rewards. There are other glaring issues that make me question the game's longevity but I'm not here to talk about Lost Ark. I'm here to talk about systems from Lost Ark that I think would work very well in FF14:

1. Make more midcore content. I don't think the Criterion dungeons will be enough. The midcore content cannot be alliance raid difficulty. It needs to be between normal/alliance raid and Extreme. These midcore content should be punishing enough that you can often wipe several times (if you're blind) and spend an hour or two in them.

2. Because the chances of a wipe are real, any reward from these midcore content should not be daily rewards. That is way too punishing IMO.

3. There should be a system for letting players improve at their own pace. Solo queueing in FF14 doesn't make sense (since it's a trinity system). Instead, I think a practice queue with less or no rewards where players are all just trying to learn the encounter can be beneficial. The reason why I am not too concerned about prog points in these practice queue is because the encounters should not be so hard as to make prog points a relevant issue. Remember, these content are below Savage in difficulty.

4. The midcore content should also get harder over time. Going forward I think SE should make Savage and Ultimates get harder over time across expansions, and not just reset the difficulty curve every expansion. Instead, incentivize and reward players for playing through previous Savage and Ultimates to slowly improve before they're ready for the current tier of Savage and Ultimate.

[Tyjacon]

What people think they want and what people actually want are two totally different things.
Adding midcore content sounds like a good idea.
But people are either going to try it and determine it's just too hard and go back to casual content or determine that it's too easy and move on to harder content.
It's just human nature.

[FrogDog]

What people think they want and what people actually want are two totally different things.
Adding midcore content sounds like a good idea.
But people are either going to try it and determine it's just too hard and go back to casual content or determine that it's too easy and move on to harder content.
It's just human nature.

Not everything needs to be for every player at every time. I don't do savage raids or extreme trials. That leaves me with very little to actually do in this game outside of roulettes, which are far too easy. Also, people can't do savage raids 24/7.

There's a gulf between what roulettes require and what savage requires, and there's not a lot of repeatable content that's meaningful.

[kpxmanifesto]

What people think they want and what people actually want are two totally different things.
Adding midcore content sounds like a good idea.
But people are either going to try it and determine it's just too hard and go back to casual content or determine that it's too easy and move on to harder content.
It's just human nature.

Nah I disagree. I think players know there's a middle-ground when it comes to content difficulty.

[Kes13a]

have to wonder if there is some daily troll post count you need to make.

I mean if Lost Ark is what you like, then play it. we dont need to make FFxiv into lost ark just so you are happy. In fact, would likely kill the game. its okay to like other games, I personally arent mad at you for it, just dont see your endless posts in a forum for a game you dislike as particularily... meaningful. you just do it for the drama... little else.

[Alestorm]

have to wonder if there is some daily troll post count you need to make.

I mean if Lost Ark is what you like, then play it. we dont need to make FFxiv into lost ark just so you are happy. In fact, would likely kill the game. its okay to like other games, I personally arent mad at you for it, just dont see your endless posts in a forum for a game you dislike as particularily... meaningful. you just do it for the drama... little else.

This is most likely a Titanmen alt, he seems to have a billion of the damned things.

[ForteNightshade]

have to wonder if there is some daily troll post count you need to make.

I mean if Lost Ark is what you like, then play it. we dont need to make FFxiv into lost ark just so you are happy. In fact, would likely kill the game. its okay to like other games, I personally arent mad at you for it, just dont see your endless posts in a forum for a game you dislike as particularily... meaningful. you just do it for the drama... little else.

While Skiros certainly has a reputation, how is this thread a troll post? Frankly, they're right. FFXIV has a dearth of longevity based content. Even the small amount it does have isn't released until almost a full year into the expansion's life cycle. The relic comes to mind as one of the few things we can actively progress throughout a given patch yet in Shadowbringers, it didn't release until 5.35. And no, I'm not counting the joke of a stage one step that only required you to have 1,000 poetics.

Why is the answer always "Well, go play x game!" If I or anyone else wanted to play Lost Ark, we would. I'd rather FFXIV actually expand on its content because that's the MMO I enjoy playing and want more reasons to play it. FFXIV isn't infallible nor is it a perfect game. It can handle some criticism even if you might disagree.

[SenorPatty]

While Skiros certainly has a reputation, how is this thread a troll post? Frankly, they're right. FFXIV has a dearth of longevity based content. Even the small amount it does have isn't released until almost a full year into the expansion's life cycle. The relic comes to mind as one of the few things we can actively progress throughout a given patch yet in Shadowbringers, it didn't release until 5.35. And no, I'm not counting the joke of a stage one step that only required you to have 1,000 poetics.

Why is the answer always "Well, go play x game!" If I or anyone else wanted to play Lost Ark, we would. I'd rather FFXIV actually expand on its content because that's the MMO I enjoy playing and want more reasons to play it. FFXIV isn't infallible nor is it a perfect game. It can handle some criticism even if you might disagree.

Agreed. Midcore criticism has existed for a long time because it's a glaring issue, not something made up only because other people played games that have it. I know the longer you play something, the more you're conditioned to accept its failings and settle for them but that's a hole we as a playerbase should make an effort to avoid. YoshiP is always looking to improve things in ffxiv, even if sometimes they're not things we agree with so let's take him up on that and try to get him to fill that midcore void.

Look, just as an example, in a pre-endwalker interview where he was asked about the possibility of a savage and/or hard 4man dgn, Yoshi states he was hesitant about implementing such a thing. Here we are now with Criterion dgns, which seems to me like a testing ground for giving a green light on its success or a red one if it's not.

[Snorky]

Drama inducing post? Check. 3 or 4 topics posted daily designed to push people's buttons? Check.
I posted in a Skiros thread in 2022, check!

[LauraAdalena]

Savage is essentially mid core content at this point. So anything at that difficulty is midcore. So like deep dungeons, which we’re getting this expac. I think most midcore people go for that or hardcore/casual content. So I think as far as it goes they’re good. Troll thread likely I know, but cmon it takes two seconds to think about.