What is Midcore? Why does it matter?

[R041]

All I hear is that haunting yodeling refrain: riiiiicooolaaaaaa

[that's a dis on your own presumption, not on the person you're responding to in a passive-agressive way]

Yeah - Because it's just an out of touch and insane opinion for people to look at the Casual to Hardcore graph like this:






As if there's no form of middle-ground, and anyone that isn't conforming to doing the absolute soul-crushing content with a static is a Low-Tier Casual.

I mean they can have that opinion, that's fine. It just looks silly, and I only wish them the best on top of that mountain.

Funny how one person writes "Savage", and another immediately reads that as "Ultimates". There is a bit of a bias there.

Now a complaint about, I dunno, Variant instances not being casual yet, somehow, not being midcore because of Rewards ... might be interesting. Or not. (I think it's been posted to death by now).

I've always liked this short treatise on what makes a gamer 'casual', 'midcore' or 'hardcore': https://steamcommunity.com/groups/th...5033754098617/

That link for Midcore is very close to my OP. It's Mid-Something, not necessarily hardcore. But definitely not always casual. People are super aggressive about it being Casual because it can sometimes lean into Casual with Flexibility.


They said Ultimates, and I went to an extreme because I'm petty. Here lemme edit it for you.. lol

[DPZ2]

YThey said Ultimates, and I went to an extreme because I'm petty. Here lemme edit it for you.. lol

They actually wrote "savage/ultimates" in the first sentence, and the last one ended with a comment about players at "savage level" ...

You defaulted to reading 'ultimates' and apparently stopped reading anything after that. Or just plain forgot and are unwilling to admit it.

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

Anyone better than me at the game is a tryhard nolifer poopsock. Anyone worse than me is a filthy nublet casual bish.

[DPZ2]

Funny how one person writes "Savage", and another immediately reads that as "Ultimates". There is a bit of a bias there.

Now a complaint about, I dunno, Variant instances not being casual yet, somehow, not being midcore because of Rewards ... might be interesting. Or not. (I think it's been posted to death by now).

I've always liked this short treatise on what makes a gamer 'casual', 'midcore' or 'hardcore': https://steamcommunity.com/groups/th...5033754098617/

[Raikai]

At a minimum, I think we need to fix or make a new Synced Wondrous Tails.

You know, I'd love if we had that. Running unsyc'd solo just for the weekly stamps is fine and all (I do it myself when I'm running out of time), but I wish it had a good incentive to run that old EX/Savage content sync'd. Maybe changing WT would be too much of a hassle, so I'd think it could be something else, that is not messing with the Unreal mode either.

To my experience, I think the closest we have for midcore in Endwalker are the EX trials if I consider that the mechanics are slightly easier than Savages. We need something like that, but with less time involved. I thought that maybe V&C would fill that niche perfectly, but in practice the Criterion difficulty is Savage levels, while the actual Savage is even beyond that.

There's also one thing intrinsic to XIV's encounter design that may play a big factor on the devs not able to be successful delivering midcore, and is the fact that what is hard about an encounter is puzzle solving, not performance checks unless you're prog enough to clear the fight. This kind of difficulty threshold has a limited 'shelf life', because once you memorize whatever it is, it becomes trivial, whereas a performance check (like what happens for average players in WoW's Mythic+'s midcore range) is dynamic because it depends on more personal stuff like your class, gear, etc. It may facilitate a more toxic environment, but in a vaccuum it feels more interesting that how XIV handles things.

[Fawkes]

Island sanctuary is midcore.

[Rolder50]

The definition of midcore is very fluid and varies between people. In my opinion, content that requires effort to learn and clear but doesn't necessarily require a static group with a set schedule would qualify as midcore. So things that make you think but can reasonably be done with pugs.

With this definition, the content that would qualify would be like Extreme and Unreal trials, and maybe the first couple floors of Savage. There isn't much.

I think it's important because it gives something to do for people who want content that requires actual effort and skill but isn't so hard as to require you to schedule around it.\\

Edit: I like that fast food comparison up there and would equate it to Cafe Style.

[R041]

They actually wrote "savage/ultimates" in the first sentence, and the last one ended with a comment about players at "savage level" ...

You defaulted to reading 'ultimates' and apparently stopped reading anything after that. Or just plain forgot and are unwilling to admit it.

Idk if that's the gotcha you think it is, because there's no detective work needed. It would've been easier for you to just tell me I'm a PoS for being petty, but instead you chose to come up with a conspiracy theory.




Edit: (I feel like Renathras with all these edits)

It's rather unfortunate that this thread was seemingly started in good faith and has had some good discussion yet has consistent attempts of derailment by the OP. Quite bizarre.

Nature of the forums when people attack each other. You can't honestly see these responses to my post as good faith? They're mostly condescending - Anyway, read any thread and we all get a little weird after the first couple pages.

But I'll take a step back - If anyone starts some shit, then they can just hold onto that shit for themselves. I apologize for aggressively.. Memeing. lol





Edit 2: (Oh god, the walls are closing in, I have no posts left. Have mercy.)

Anyway, anyway.. I might just be a Casual. Reading all of these posts, I don't have a lot of faith in anyone knowing what Midcore is, memes or not. Especially myself. These are just things I always assumed were 'Mid', with spice.

I just know I really want content to do that can retain my sanity from both extremes of the spectrum in difficulty. So it might not necessarily mean it doesn't exist, but it sure is lackluster for me right now.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Idk if that's the gotcha you think it is, because there's no detective work needed. It would've been easier for you to just tell me I'm a PoS for being petty, but instead you chose to come up with a conspiracy theory.]

While I would agree that poster was being very "holier than thou" with their response, they do have an actual point behind their snarkiness.

You cited Bozja/Eureka as closest to Midcore, but for someone like me, they sit wholly in the casual range without "close to" being even a consideration. Every CE is brain dead easy to figure out, Dal/Castrum are both slow motion easy fights, literally the only piece of contents in either of them that i would define as 'midcore' would be Duels, BA & DRS (which are all plagued with accessibility and ease of access issues).

Which is the issue here in that what would constitute as midcore or "above casual play level skill" is going to be extremely perception-skewed on an individual basis. Nothing short of an extreme level fight is going to remotely stimulate me, so any content released to fit my 'midcore' would have to be at that difficulty minimum, but that would be way above other people's definitions and thoughts on it.

What defines "Midcore" is arguably one of the biggest issues about implementing midcore content. Since by the very vast majority of the playerbase's skill level, Alliance raids like orbonne would theoretically be "midcore", despite being ultra easy for anyone with even the slightest skill levels. Here's a thought experiment: Square has endless terrabytes worth of statistics on their playerbase, they know the skill level and what would content design would fall under various tiers of difficulty contrasted to the overall skill level of the playerbase as a whole. Perhaps in their mind, they have in fact, been implementing "midcore" content this entire time, based on the statistics of the very low overall skill of the playerbase, since that's where the data says "midcore" would land with the average skill expression of the playerbase when taken as a whole.

One needs to only spam Euphrosyne for days on end, an extremely easy alliance raid and watch the average cascade of dead bodies/vulns from failing braindead easy mechanics every run to realize just how low the skill expression of "casual" actually is, and that the midpoint between it and hardcore still sits very cleanly into "very easy" territory.

Whether midcore or not though, the game definitely could use more content like Duels, BA & DRS, but not gated behind accessibility issues. Criterion definitely had the potential to fill this role for 4 man parties, but alas.

[Berkin]

What defines "Midcore" is arguably one of the biggest issues about implementing midcore content. Since by the very vast majority of the playerbase's skill level, Alliance raids like orbonne would theoretically be "midcore", despite being ultra easy for anyone with even the slightest skill levels. Here's a thought experiment: Square has endless terrabytes worth of statistics on their playerbase, they know the skill level and what would content design would fall under various tiers of difficulty contrasted to the overall skill level of the playerbase as a whole. Perhaps in their mind, they have in fact, been implementing "midcore" content this entire time, based on the statistics of the very low overall skill of the playerbase, since that's where the data says "midcore" would land with the average skill expression of the playerbase when taken as a whole.

TBH you don't really need to categorize content to see that there's a big gap in difficulty between stuff like normal/alliance raids and extreme trials/early savage floors that's not present anywhere else in the game. That gap used to be bridged by Bozja and could have been filled by Criterion if they didn't skip straight to savage difficulty for w/e reason.

You cited Bozja/Eureka as closest to Midcore, but for someone like me, they sit wholly in the casual range without "close to" being even a consideration. Every CE is brain dead easy to figure out, Dal/Castrum are both slow motion easy fights, literally the only piece of contents in either of them that i would define as 'midcore' would be Duels, BA & DRS (which are all plagued with accessibility and ease of access issues).

This is also such an insane take to me, it's like saying you can't enjoy playing Mario anymore after beating Super Meat Boy. I always had fun doing CE's unless it was the 50th time doing so, and having cleared TOP 10x never changed that opinion, if anything I appreciate it more considering how badly designed that fight was. But I digress, to each their own after all.