What is Midcore? Why does it matter?

[Xirean]

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.


Edit:

You can't honestly see these responses to my post as good faith? They're mostly condescending -

I do in fact think they were engaging with you in good faith. I can see how you interpret them as condescending, but I disagree greatly with that interpretation. The meme responses however....

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.

It's all a matter of perspective really. Ask someone who does Ultimates what mid is and they will probably say Extreme. Ask someone who never does anything beyond normal raids what Hard is and they will tell you Extremes. I actually really like the food level analogy we got a few pages back. I'll probably start using that myself especially because it defines an experience as opposed to a person, which is more likely to avoid the interpretation as being an attack. Although I full expect to hear people referring to harder content in terms of hot/spicy levels

[Musashidon]

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.

there is no good faith on these forums.

just remember folks all posts are bait.

[Supersnow845]

I think too many people when trying to define midcore use their personal yard stick rather than stepping back, looking at the content, the playerbase and how much people interact with different areas and decide based on that

For example if you are someone who needs savage to feel alive so something like the dark inside extreme puts you to sleep then while that is a fair opinion you have to acknowledge that you sit at the very upper end of the playerbase, same as if you get heart palpitations on “half room cleaves the alliance raid” you are towards the lower end of the playerbase

If we take the usual thrown around figure or somewhere in the realm of 20-40% depending on server attempt savage and rank generally thrown around content on this thread

Dungeons->alliance raids->normal raids->CE’s/DRN/Dal/CLL->BA->/=extreme->DRS->savage=criterion->criterion savage=UWU/UCOB->ultimates

Then based on the numbers of players being tipped to the lower end (70% of people have finished the MSQ, 80% of those have access to Zadnor etc) I think the most objective way we could define midcore would be anything you put between normal raids and DRS exclusive, so the majority of Bozja (think you may find CE’s ridiculously easy but they have a much higher fatality rate than your average alliance raid, I’ve wiped to Diablo armament more than once), BA (BA’s only real difficulty is it’s entry and the illusion of the harsh punishment for death) and most of the extremes roughly in that order

So you have the “can put totally randomly but you need your brain on”, “can be done relatively easily if you have an effective caller, otherwise would be quite messy” and “you at least need to know what mitigation and clock spots are”

Anything easier than your average CE’s is basically a normal raid/hard trial (or a top end alliance raid boss like TGC) anything harder than your average extreme (or very specific savage floors like O1 and P1) is definitively hardcore because you have to legit prog that stuff

[Renathras]

The distinctions ARE important, and absolutely matter - think of WoW's Warlords of Draenor (WoD) expansion. It's near universally disliked for a number of reasons, but a big one is that the only things to do in it were really PvPing and raiding. There is that "The one thing it DID do well was..." argument, which is the raids. But that was it. Catering to one part of the community to, effectively, the disregard and cost of the entire rest caused a massive collapse in player numbers that was, at that time, unheard of for WoW.

So it very much does matter where the game has dearths of content for swaths of the playerbase.

The issue is defining what that is. Is someone who maxed out Ishgard Restoration and has the pterodactyl mount NOT hardcore? Their content didn't require a group but it required a massive time investment and probably outside of game research on efficient gathering and crafting and farming methods, gearing/food buffs, and probably macro generation. It's one of the most rare achievements in the game, though it doesn't require voice chat or scheduled game time. Hardcore fishers are a legend unto themselves.

Some people say Extremes and Savages are "midcore" while others laugh at the very idea of anything with a body check and enrage not being considered hardcore.

But I think people get lost in the weeds on that a bit. While trying to get more universal definitions for the terms isn't a bad idea, it misses the forest for the trees. The real question, and the matter to be concerned with, I think we can all see:

If the game has large swaths of the playerbase it's either not providing content to, or content that is quickly consumed and doesn't have longevity, this is a problem, especially if that's a large portion of the playerbase.

[Shurrikhan]

The distinctions ARE important, and absolutely matter - think of WoW's Warlords of Draenor (WoD) expansion. It's near universally disliked for a number of reasons, but a big one is that the only things to do in it were really PvPing and raiding. There is that "The one thing it DID do well was..." argument, which is the raids. But that was it. Catering to one part of the community to, effectively, the disregard and cost of the entire rest caused a massive collapse in player numbers that was, at that time, unheard of for WoW.

...This claim seems a bit odd. There was a greater difficulty range on grindable outdoor/auxiliary content, especially at the start of the expansion, than in Mists or Cata (though I would have liked to see a continuation of the Brawler's Guild, there were new additions to scratch similar enough itches) and unless attempting to full on no-life rep grind or the like there was about as much available to do/grind as in previous expansions. The Legendary Ring questline was a step down from the Legendary Cloak questline of MoP, but not really in terms of time available to be sunk in so much as just the storytelling surrounding it.

WoD's main issues were just (A) newly/comparatively low content output overall, (B) player activities that were highly resource-intensive to add but created few enjoyable play-hours especially relative to dev time required (Garrisons, Shipyards, etc.), and, perhaps most importantly, that it (C) impaled itself on its own hype (or, failure to deliver on certain promises or implied degree of quality-times-quantity).

In more objective/contextualized retrospectives, WoD tends to rate higher than it did at that time, even if not as highly as it did in nostalgia waves during the worst-perceived patches in Shadowlands; much of its overall problems was just that it promised too much for what it could actually put out.

[ValkyrieL]

Anyone remember Heavenward MSQ big dragon trial? Was that considered midcore? Because pugs were getting destroyed left/right that it had to be nerf and eventually completely changed lol.

On topic, everyone has their OWN definition of what midcore should be base on their skill levels and type of content they currently engage in that is impossible to released a content label as midcore. Everyone will judge it base on their skill level and classified as such. High end ultimate groups would label extreme as casual most likely

[Supersnow845]

Anyone remember Heavenward MSQ big dragon trial? Was that considered midcore? Because pugs were getting destroyed left/right that it had to be nerf and eventually completely changed lol.

On topic, everyone has their OWN definition of what midcore should be base on their skill levels and type of content they currently engage in that is impossible to released a content label as midcore. Everyone will judge it base on their skill level and classified as such. High end ultimate groups would label extreme as casual most likely

Steps of faith was different, the fight was terribly designed and you hit its fail condition like 5 minutes before the enrage but if you failed it you couldn’t wall yourself

Basically in the original version you had to hit the dragon with both of the dragon killers. This happened at about 4 minutes into the fight, if you missed either of them (because the execution of said mechanics was wonky and unintuitive you basically just had to stand there and wait for him to walk all the way to end of the arena and destroy the last barrier which would cause a wipe

Chrysalis is a better example of an older trial being a legit challenge for people when it was on content because it was well designed and had some interesting mechanics, steps of faith was always terribly designed

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Steps of faith was different, the fight was terribly designed and you hit its fail condition like 5 minutes before the enrage but if you failed it you couldn’t wall yourself

Basically in the original version you had to hit the dragon with both of the dragon killers. This happened at about 4 minutes into the fight, if you missed either of them (because the execution of said mechanics was wonky and unintuitive you basically just had to stand there and wait for him to walk all the way to end of the arena and destroy the last barrier which would cause a wipe

Chrysalis is a better example of an older trial being a legit challenge for people when it was on content because it was well designed and had some interesting mechanics, steps of faith was always terribly designed

Chrysalis is actually really easy. People still don't understand how it works, but it's easy.

There's one set of orbs you don't have to pop, because they spawn the sprites.

You pop sprint and Def and offensive cds before getting sucked in the middle, and you don't need the lb3 to kill the tear.
But people fall back on that as a crutch every time. Oh well.

As for savage being midcore, it is. And I say this as someone who has not cleared the tier yet because p12s is kicking my statics collective ass. If it was hardcore content, it would take hardcore statics longer than a day or two to clear it. Simple as that.

Eureka is not midcore. It's the definition of casual content. Same with bozja.

[Supersnow845]

Chrysalis is actually really easy. People still don't understand how it works, but it's easy.

There's one set of orbs you don't have to pop, because they spawn the sprites.

You pop sprint and Def and offensive cds before getting sucked in the middle, and you don't need the lb3 to kill the tear.
But people fall back on that as a crutch every time. Oh well.

As for savage being midcore, it is. And I say this as someone who has not cleared the tier yet because p12s is kicking my statics collective ass. If it was hardcore content, it would take hardcore statics longer than a day or two to clear it. Simple as that.

Eureka is not midcore. It's the definition of casual content. Same with bozja.

That’s exactly what I’m saying, you can’t judge savage being midcore based on the fact that the 5% statics clear it in a day, if you look at the way the playerbase skews, what content people engage in and how difficult people find content based on who engages with it then middle of the road extremes are about the hardest you could still call midcore content

Ultimates (especially the EW ultimates) have really shifted the window for what people who engage with them think is the average of the general playerbase

[DiaDeem]

Eureka is not midcore. It's the definition of casual content. Same with bozja.

I don't think you understand what midcore even means.
We're talking about content that doesn't put you to sleep, requires a certain level of commitment, has a long progression system you can get invested into, and it's something you can do for a long while in the game.

Casual content doesn't require any of this. You don't commit to anything, there's no real long term progression, and there's nothing inciting you to ever come back if you don't want to. Roulettes, MSQ Dungeons, MSQ Trails, etc.

Difficulty doesn't define what kind of content you're doing, rather how much commitment that content requires from you. Of course difficulty plays a part, but it's hardly the only thing.

I'm curious. Do you have your completed Elemental Armor?