What is Midcore? Why does it matter?

[Renathras]

Casuals are content with normal and extreme difficulties.

Midcore are those building up to Savages. Extremes aren't a challenge for them anymore.

Wut? o.O

"casuals" and "extremes"?

I think this is an example of someone being far enough out of the mainstream that they think the mainstream is more like them than it is.

Extremes are midcore content, and (depending on who you ask) on the higher end of midcore. No Savages are midcore aside from some of the 1/5/9 entry bosses for a tier. Generally speaking, casuals don't touch Extremes at all.

This is kind of like hearing a person who makes $500,000 a year commenting how everyone makes and spends at least $200,000 a year, not realizing the vast majority of the public doesn't even make six figures, and the poor sometimes don't even make 5. (There are tons of people that legitimately make less than $10k a year).

[R041]

I can really only think of a few pieces of content where you can run solo and have some sort of difficulty attached to it, and that's all deep dungeons. Running deep dungeons solo has been a pretty fun experience but if I were to refer to your list later, the difficulty scaling on the later floors(150-200 potd, 70-100 on everything else) would be pushing the echelons of "hardcore" gaming, because you need to be prepared with pomanders, know the mob abilities, boss abilities etc etc along with spending significant amount of time on each set of 10 floors. Other content I can think of that might qualify would be... not that much honestly, solo queueing for older extremes to see if you can clear it? BLU Carnivale maybe without looking at guides. If they allowed criterion dungeons to be soloed, I'd be all over that, I think the content itself is nice but I hate being pigeonholed into healer because no one else wants to play it. Oh I suppose duels in bozja and zadnor but that requires quite a bit of preparation and rng to get into(let's not talk about how many times I got passed over before they introduced the fame counter).

That's the problem - It's not that I always want to be solo, or solo at all. I just want the flexibility to be with people, but not force them to rely on me for my weekly constraints. That's not even a per minute thing really, it's mostly that I have to PUG, so anything requiring a dedicated group gets very fuzzy. Most things you can PUG/Duty Finder in XIV right now are so easy that nobody even wants to talk, because they know they're just going about their casual day. So I'm also asking for more random peer to peer engagement through difficulty.


This is roughly what I'm asking for:

- Less constrained (stop group locking) POTD hard floors
- Min iLvl Synced/harder Wondrous Tails that span more content overall
- Critical Engagements in open world
- Don't cycle out Unreal (Isn't this FOMO?)
- Difficulty Modifiers for Dungeons that actually change rewards.

Wondrous Tails without any form of required Sync just diminishes it so significantly, it's really frustrating.

I also think a Min iLvl Dungeon Boss Rush would be really fun, take a series from a couple dungeons and run them back to back. I genuinely think we just need to get rid of hallway trash entirely at this point though. lol

[Kyrj]

Gonna guess you mean the Zepla video sooo yeah, the lack of a Bozja/Eureka zone in EW was very noticeable. Part of the reason I liked those zones was it provided content that wasn't just braindead dungeons, a few fights were on par with EX with a couple of Bozja/Zadnor duels and DRS being comparable to the weakest Savage fights. But more importantly for me I like having a zone where it feels like an MMO outside of Limsa. Outside of hunt trains when's the last time you saw a massive group of people in Garlemald? Maybe the launch month? I just like having a zone where you see people farming mobs, doing CE's and watching people duel. You don't get that in Garlemald or in Limsa...you get RP venue spam....yay.

[Sebazy]

IMHO Arguing about what defines Midcore vs Casual or Hardcore is kind of missing the issue here.

The big problem is there isn't really any kind of consistent step up group combat content to build a new player up into Extremes and beyond. Roulette dungeons, alliance and normal modes are a face roll with next to 0 personal responsibility. Flail about on the floor as much as you want, it won't matter outside of potentially making things slower.

Suddenly you hit Extremes where enrages are a thing, personal responsibility is a thing and the need to communicate.... is also a thing. All of these pressure points all land at once.

SE have done better here. In 2.0, dungeons taught you personal responsibility, they taught you about enrages and they taught the need to communicate but most importantly, they spread these lessons out across multiple bosses and dungeons.

IMHO Alliance raids should reward players for a basic level of contribution. It doesn't have to be orange logs for loot. Just enough of a nudge to let players know what is an acceptable standard of play and what isn't. This could be something like a potency per second ranking at the end of the instance to remove gear from the equation and the reward could be as little as a simple S-F style tier ranking or as much as getting drop token towards an armor piece perhaps with more being granted for better performances? I don't think the level of the reward matters, what's important is letting players know what the game is going to expect of them as they progress through the tiers of endgame content so they are better prepared as they step up to Extremes etc.

[Jeeqbit]

IMHO Arguing about what defines Midcore vs Casual or Hardcore is kind of missing the issue here.

It is sort of relevant because it is actually fair to say that extremes are pretty midcore and many people do them that wouldn't do savage.

The problem is when someone says they are not doing any "high-end" content, either due to time or anxiety, and are left with practically nothing else to do. The problem is also when a raider wants to relax and not do something as serious or organized as a raid, but that isn't as boring and samey as the same expert roulette dungeon for months.

Having something that transitions people from the normal content to high-end content would be good and all, but it's not even all about getting them to do the high-end content, because some people just want normal content that requires more effort and time and teamwork, but that isn't asking you to go and form a static or suffer PF wiping to the same mechanic for months when you can get through it easily. What they achieved with Eureka and Bozja was something that fit that pretty well and it made the expansions feel alive, unlike where we are now where we can solo a lot of the EW content and also be done with it pretty fast.

[ZephyrMenodora]

It is sort of relevant because it is actually fair to say that extremes are pretty midcore and many people do them that wouldn't do savage.

The problem is when someone says they are not doing any "high-end" content, either due to time or anxiety, and are left with practically nothing else to do. The problem is also when a raider wants to relax and not do something as serious or organized as a raid, but that isn't as boring and samey as the same expert roulette dungeon for months.

Having something that transitions people from the normal content to high-end content would be good and all, but it's not even all about getting them to do the high-end content, because some people just want normal content that requires more effort and time and teamwork, but that isn't asking you to go and form a static or suffer PF wiping to the same mechanic for months when you can get through it easily. What they achieved with Eureka and Bozja was something that fit that pretty well and it made the expansions feel alive, unlike where we are now where we can solo a lot of the EW content and also be done with it pretty fast.

Another good take - definitely need some transition content between being able to essentially be carried by competent players and your presence not even mattering in all the normal-level content, and content where your personal accountability and skill needs to be at a certain level - while at the same time not being so challenging that people can't figure it out within a couple hours and succeed in a pug.

[Sebazy]

<snip>

Dropping the Bozja ball this expansion was a mistake for sure =(

Hopefully the positivity in the recent Famitsu interview results in us getting one for 7.x++

[TaleraRistain]

IMHO Alliance raids should reward players for a basic level of contribution. It doesn't have to be orange logs for loot. Just enough of a nudge to let players know what is an acceptable standard of play and what isn't. This could be something like a potency per second ranking at the end of the instance to remove gear from the equation and the reward could be as little as a simple S-F style tier ranking or as much as getting drop token towards an armor piece perhaps with more being granted for better performances? I don't think the level of the reward matters, what's important is letting players know what the game is going to expect of them as they progress through the tiers of endgame content so they are better prepared as they step up to Extremes etc.

I don't see this ever happening because SE expects more experienced players are going to help the less experienced players. This runs counter to that idea. They let their encounter design determine any standard of play that they want to establish. Any other standards are community driven and I find it unlikely they're going to start implementing in-game recognition of that, especially because these standards deviate widely depending on the segment of the playerbase being considered.

[Tiramu]

Rightly or wrongly I just considee a midcore player to be a casual player who occasionally engages with the harder content associated with hardcore players.

[R041]

See... the fact that you're comparing those two in the same sentence tells me that you really have no idea what midcore means to the people who want that kind of content.

The cracks are starting to show.. I even think Mr. Happy might be out of touch with what Medium / Midcore content actually looks like in an MMO - And what people may want.

I think Savage is used by Raiders to depict Midcore, sometimes even out of spite. But I accept their definition of EX and first tier as being a form of Midcore - So least we can agree there's not enough out there.

But I think it's really weird for people to consider Eureka and Bozja as Casual, when we all admit that only a about a quarter of the community has even managed to get through parts of it, whether out of some form of difficulty, or general frustration of the grind itself.