We have midcore content... just too little too late.

[Avoidy]

Mid-tier difficulty in this game is weird, because it's difficult for people to come to a consensus of what it is (I know a lot of people who felt like bozja was casual and see midcore content as EX-difficulty stuff) and there's not much incentive to run it repeatedly. Casual content and savage content has weekly incentives to do it, but ... for example, with barbariccia EX, I noticed that interest in it dried up after the first week. Not saying people completely stopped doing it, but there was this weird perception of like, if you didn't get it that first week, all the groups still running it would be awful and nobody else would want to run it. And in my experience that's how it went. For the newest EX, I noticed that getting people to run it was like pulling teeth since unlike barb ex you didn't have the savage raiders running it to get their weapon before the new raids came out, since there weren't new 8man savages. Which just left people who wanted 525 weapons or people who liked the glams. I won't speak for everyone, but I watched people struggle to fill groups in the first week, which was kind of a feelsbad moment. Even I had like, 0 interest in getting it done personally.

idk. I wish devs would experiment with (Unreal) stuff in more than just old trials. Unreal alliance raids would be cool as hell imo. The high difficulty 24-man stuff we have now is all gated behind some of the most tedious grinds in the game and then you basically have to join a discord server just to get a reliable team to go in with you. Imagine if we just had a tweaked harder version of dun scaith that anyone could just go in and do after unlocking it, complete with weekly incentives to get it done. idk dude.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

Mid-tier difficulty in this game is weird, because it's difficult for people to come to a consensus of what it is (I know a lot of people who felt like bozja was casual and see midcore content as EX-difficulty stuff) and there's not much incentive to run it repeatedly. Casual content and savage content has weekly incentives to do it, but ... for example, with barbariccia EX, I noticed that interest in it dried up after the first week. Not saying people completely stopped doing it, but there was this weird perception of like, if you didn't get it that first week, all the groups still running it would be awful and nobody else would want to run it. And in my experience that's how it went. For the newest EX, I noticed that getting people to run it was like pulling teeth since unlike barb ex you didn't have the savage raiders running it to get their weapon before the new raids came out, since there weren't new 8man savages. Which just left people who wanted 525 weapons or people who liked the glams. I won't speak for everyone, but I watched people struggle to fill groups in the first week, which was kind of a feelsbad moment. Even I had like, 0 interest in getting it done personally.

idk. I wish devs would experiment with (Unreal) stuff in more than just old trials. Unreal alliance raids would be cool as hell imo. The high difficulty 24-man stuff we have now is all gated behind some of the most tedious grinds in the game and then you basically have to join a discord server just to get a reliable team to go in with you. Imagine if we just had a tweaked harder version of dun scaith that anyone could just go in and do after unlocking it, complete with weekly incentives to get it done. idk dude.

This is really the opposite of my experience. The main difference may be that I'm on Sargatanas, which is more or less the Mateus to Gilgamesh's Balmung in terms of raiding. If you're interested in doing some tougher content, it might be worth parking your character on Aether for a few days.

[ForteNightshade]

Mid-tier difficulty in this game is weird, because it's difficult for people to come to a consensus of what it is (I know a lot of people who felt like bozja was casual and see midcore content as EX-difficulty stuff) and there's not much incentive to run it repeatedly. Casual content and savage content has weekly incentives to do it, but ... for example, with barbariccia EX, I noticed that interest in it dried up after the first week. Not saying people completely stopped doing it, but there was this weird perception of like, if you didn't get it that first week, all the groups still running it would be awful and nobody else would want to run it. And in my experience that's how it went. For the newest EX, I noticed that getting people to run it was like pulling teeth since unlike barb ex you didn't have the savage raiders running it to get their weapon before the new raids came out, since there weren't new 8man savages. Which just left people who wanted 525 weapons or people who liked the glams. I won't speak for everyone, but I watched people struggle to fill groups in the first week, which was kind of a feelsbad moment. Even I had like, 0 interest in getting it done personally.

idk. I wish devs would experiment with (Unreal) stuff in more than just old trials. Unreal alliance raids would be cool as hell imo. The high difficulty 24-man stuff we have now is all gated behind some of the most tedious grinds in the game and then you basically have to join a discord server just to get a reliable team to go in with you. Imagine if we just had a tweaked harder version of dun scaith that anyone could just go in and do after unlocking it, complete with weekly incentives to get it done. idk dude.

This is partially the side-effect of drip feeding content the way they do. People are so starved for new things to do they dogpile on whatever releases immediately. It will happen again once Deep Dungeon drops. At least with the accompanying relic there will be more meat on that bone.

As for Unreal. That remains one of the most underutilized ideas and it completely baffles me why. We've had a wealth of new players who have likely never experienced any of the older content at launch and all they've utilized it for is one EX every four months. I imagine it takes time to rescale everything up to our current level but I still think it's a wasted opportunity. Although, adding proper rewards is another problem. Criterion all but died a slow death because the reward were abysmal relative to the effect required. Especially the Savage version. So making any potential Unreal content worthwhile may be tricky.

This is a problem on both ends. Rewards did not used to be such a need. Remember older JRPGs where the reward was literally just bragging rights (like "Proof of Omega" from FF8)? Now everything needs a functional reward for some reason, you even see it in the FF mainline series (e.g., FF12's Wyrmhero Blade, which you get way too late to actually make any practical use of, but apparently, Yiazmat and Omega needed REWARDS!).

Single player games differ in that regard because both their challenge and progression are entirely at the individual player's desire. Omega can be completely curb stomped or cheesed if you know the proper setup. You're also not reliant on other players. Criterion didn't die because nobody did it. Those same players had no reason to go back, thus making it harder for newer players to find groups interested. You wouldn't have that issue with a super boss like Ruby Weapon or Omega.

It should also be noted people did complain about that "Proof of Omega" certificate being incredibly lame.