What is Midcore? Why does it matter?

[CNitsah]

Mostly agree with 2 to 5.

Totally disagree with 1 though. The difference between "casual" content and "midcore" content is that "midcore" content ask some time investment. Relics used to be the most midcore content, not really difficult, but asking a lot of commitment. That said, I agree when you say the content might be done in small sessions. But let's be real, very few content in FFXIV last for more than 30 min except if you want it to (or everything goes chaotic).

I'm sure what you mean with 6. If you mean like in bozja, take a leave for a few fates because you need to do something irl, I'm for it. But when you talk about only rezing, it kinda looks like you advice leeching on the whole party. That description, depending of the content might go from "it's ok, no problems" to "get the f out".

Too me, midcore content kinda mean giving the player incentives to do the "casual" content several times to get something more out of it. Casual was playing bozja once for the storylines. Midcore is playing it lvl your job/get your relics/anything bozja has to offer other than its storyline.

[Cyanamists]

Snip for length

Hi I don't post much on the forums, mostly lurk but I've been seeing a lot of posts about mid/middle level types of content recently and want to add my 2 cents.

This entire list seems to be on the more casual part of "midcore" whatever that means. I would like to add one or two things to the list.

7. Skill floor: especially if it's going to be with other people, you need to know the basics of your job, and at least the entry mechanics of the content you're in. If you willingly go into Dalriada/CLL without any essences or appropriate lost actions, you are actively trolling and making it worse off, that applies for everyone except for those who are obviously new to the encounter. This also applies to the flexibility part of the list, while it is okay for you to play how you want, you are actively affecting how 47 other players in the critical engagement/fate/whatever by not contributing damage. There can't be complexity/social aspects and commitment wrapped up with "play the game my way". If that was true, then even a midcore player will tell you that they'll pick a monk spamming dragon kick over and over again over a whm who will only raise because while there's a chance the whm never presses a button, that mnk will at least contribute with their single damage button.

8. Failure: there has to be an element of failure, with little repercussions. Midcore is getting to the point where effort starts to matter. You don't have to be like me who liked tanking mobs in bozja just because I had essence of the beast levels of effort but something to show "I care about this content and I'm willing to try for a bit even if I fail." Extreme fights(prior to the full on body checks) are a good example of this. If someone dies, the pull can keep going until the healers can salvage it again, if we wipe, then we learn something from it and go again. If DSR is roughly 1000 pulls start to clear, TOP around 1500, savage 4th floors around 150-200, then midcore content should be somewhere around 25-75.

To clarify, I don't mean you(OP) specifically, just speaking broadly and I'm too lazy to fix it.

[R041]

Hi I don't post much on the forums, mostly lurk but I've been seeing a lot of posts about mid/middle level types of content recently and want to add my 2 cents.

This entire list seems to be on the more casual part of "midcore" whatever that means. I would like to add one or two things to the list.

7. Skill floor: especially if it's going to be with other people, you need to know the basics of your job, and at least the entry mechanics of the content you're in. If you willingly go into Dalriada/CLL without any essences or appropriate lost actions, you are actively trolling and making it worse off, that applies for everyone except for those who are obviously new to the encounter. This also applies to the flexibility part of the list, while it is okay for you to play how you want, you are actively affecting how 47 other players in the critical engagement/fate/whatever by not contributing damage. There can't be complexity/social aspects and commitment wrapped up with "play the game my way". If that was true, then even a midcore player will tell you that they'll pick a monk spamming dragon kick over and over again over a whm who will only raise because while there's a chance the whm never presses a button, that mnk will at least contribute with their single damage button.

8. Failure: there has to be an element of failure, with little repercussions. Midcore is getting to the point where effort starts to matter. You don't have to be like me who liked tanking mobs in bozja just because I had essence of the beast levels of effort but something to show "I care about this content and I'm willing to try for a bit even if I fail." Extreme fights(prior to the full on body checks) are a good example of this. If someone dies, the pull can keep going until the healers can salvage it again, if we wipe, then we learn something from it and go again. If DSR is roughly 1000 pulls start to clear, TOP around 1500, savage 4th floors around 150-200, then midcore content should be somewhere around 25-75.

To clarify, I don't mean you(OP) specifically, just speaking broadly and I'm too lazy to fix it.

I agree with these, I think those for me would sit within Complexity. There absolutely needs to be a higher floor and cost to failure. Which is why I love Eureka and Bozja. POTD can get into that when you do higher floors, but still requires a dedicated party to go through the whole thing. Wish it weren't so strict.


I can agree my Midcore might be more solo-ish oriented, so it kinda skews my perspective and wants. I wanna be around people, but I don't want to be forced to always find a group if that makes sense? I like naturally wading through events and groups, so that's more of an Open World Midcore than it is Midcore as a whole.

It doesn't detract from what others want in Midcore, because theirs could be completely party dependent, and I respect that.

[CNitsah]

Extreme fights(prior to the full on body checks) are a good example of this. If someone dies, the pull can keep going until the healers can salvage it again, if we wipe, then we learn something from it and go again. If DSR is roughly 1000 pulls start to clear, TOP around 1500, savage 4th floors around 150-200, then midcore content should be somewhere around 25-75.

I don't agree on this. I always have problem seing extremes as midcore content. They could qualify as such in term of difficulty, but not of accessibily. Because of how the players actually play. People are pushed to not use the duty finder to do extremes, but to use PF. A content you're forced to make premade party to participate is not a midcore content.

If anything, extreme stand at the limit, and depending of who you ask that question, they will see it as midcore or hardcore content. Difficulty by itself is not the only factor.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Midcore to me means challenging content that doesn't rise to the level of difficulty that results in needing a static and a schedule of progging.

The iLvL requirements and caps should be closely tailored so it's not trivialized.

Midcore should be challenging in that it requires every member's full participation. An 8-man midcore should not be completable if you have people that are regularly dead, not geared, or who can't make competent use of their class.
Healers should feel challenged by damage or status ailment output. It should require competent use of tank mitigation. It should have mechanics requiring more thought than memorizing red bubbles.

It should not be so challenging that a few mistakes can't be recovered from, or any mechanics that auto-wipe the raid if one person messes up a mechanic.

It should offer good rewards and incentives above normal content.

[Musashidon]

midcore is a myth it doesnt exist.

[Jeeqbit]

I think body checks is one of the issues. Bozja didn't have all these body checks. But the mechanics did kill you if you did them wrong. We could all resurrect eachother and use Lost Actions, but because of the fact the mechanics could all 1-shot us, it was still possible for there to be a full wipe.

And if you were one of the few survivors, all those dead people could look at you in awe. The one person there who could actually do mechanics as you walked all over their bodies dodging mechanics and carrying them through it. Maybe it would inspire them to become like that.

I also don't like how in alliance raids everyone just follows where the others go and survive, not because they know the mechanics, but because they followed everyone else. I would prefer for mechanics not to be something you can just follow others for, because mechanics that are hard in isolation become easy if you can just follow the one person who did all the maths. There were some mechanics in Shadowbringers where you couldn't just follow people, such as the "walk a certain amount of steps" mechanic in DR.

[Zairava]

I think body checks is one of the issues. Bozja didn't have all these body checks. But the mechanics did kill you if you did them wrong. We could all resurrect eachother and use Lost Actions, but because of the fact the mechanics could all 1-shot us, it was still possible for there to be a full wipe.

And if you were one of the few survivors, all those dead people could look at you in awe. The one person there who could actually do mechanics as you walked all over their bodies dodging mechanics and carrying them through it. Maybe it would inspire them to become like that.

I also don't like how in alliance raids everyone just follows where the others go and survive, not because they know the mechanics, but because they followed everyone else. I would prefer for mechanics not to be something you can just follow others for, because mechanics that are hard in isolation become easy if you can just follow the one person who did all the maths. There were some mechanics in Shadowbringers where you couldn't just follow people, such as the "walk a certain amount of steps" mechanic in DR.

This near exactly are my thoughts as well.

There should be threat, and you should be killed from doing mechanics wrong (it doesn't need to be one shot, but it should be able to kill me after 1-3 hits), but it shouldn't be the reason everybody else dies too.

Being able to follow to what essentially boils down to someone being a safety dorito is something that commonly bugs me. If the encounter already makes it possible for that to be a thing, it just enables people to be lazy and removes the satisfaction of actually learning the encounter on your own. There needs to be more mechanics where you can't just follow somebody and be fine.

[Jeeqbit]

(it doesn't need to be one shot, but it should be able to kill me after 1-3 hits)

One of the problems I find with a lot of content is that it's too lenient and it takes more than 1 hit to kill you.

A content that I really like is hunts (especially S ranks). There were some really deadly hunts when they released, such as Forgiven Pedantry where the left-right mechanic just destroyed people (even tanks at first). At release, Pauldia was also pretty deadly because people couldn't read the telegraphs and got lots of vulns, then got finished off by the raid-wide. Oh and Tyger was fantastic where even if you tried to escape the head mechanics, it 1-shotted you with its behind.

Okina used to destroy people even late into Stormblood because it had a donut aoe and nobody except me hardly knew about it. Pale Rider had a reflect mechanic so everyone ignored it and died to their own attacks.

That's the sort of stuff I like. 1-shots, but everyone can rez and the good players can shine as they walk all over the bodies.