What is Midcore? Why does it matter?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

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?

Nope. I hated eureka. Haven't even finished a relic in there. It's still casual content tho. The weapons were ugly imo, and so was the armor. No reason to do it and none of my friends were really into it either.



There's no real commitment to it. You never have to go back if you don't want to.



I've done potd to 200, hoh to 100. Haven't done the latest deep dungeon because I just haven't had time.



I did every bozja relic. It was very casual. Worked on it bit by bit over the years it was relevant before endwalker released.



EX trials require very little commitment and the time investment isn't much either. Less than a stint in eureka.

[Supersnow845]

I would love if they made deep dungeons are roulette, expanded the casual floors to 1-50 on HOH and EO and 50-100 on POTD and made a random set of 10 floors a completion for the roulette

Field content could be shoved into a roulette aside style “daily achievement for roulette level bonus achieved by picking a random set of say “kill 3 Zadnor CE’s or 5 pagos NM’s” even do field content is unapologetic about being non roulette content, deep dungeons feel like roulette content that’s not on a roulette (for at least the casual floors)

[TaleraRistain]

50-100 in PotD already are casual floors. That was part of what gave it longevity. First it was having just 1 to 50 available. Then the other half came out with 50 more floors to keep people busy.

It's above 100 that requires a fixed party but IIRC the party has to start at 50.

I don't really know how they could make a roulette, though. Whole idea behind them is progressing one set of floors at a time and losing your progress if you fail and a roulette would let someone skip around in floors instead of doing that build up. Though it would be nice for being able to see those sets of floors nobody is ever running.

[Jojoya]

I see Midcore as being the stepping stone between Normal difficulty and Hard difficulty . It needs to be the testing ground for a player to decide if advancing into Hard content is right for them, and provide some challenge for those who want greater than Normal difficulty but may not be able to commit to a group for Hard difficulty progression.

Normal - should be MSQ dungeons and trials. That's content everyone is intended to be able to experience.

Midcore - normal raids/EX trials. Add some more bite to the normal raids. They are the best training ground for Savage since they share some of the same mechanics already. If worried about players being able to see the raid story, add solo duties where the raid bosses would be with tomestones for rewards but no gear. Players can choose if they want to go the solo route or the raid route. Alliance raids can always be the "normal" raid for everyone to experience.

Hard - Savage

Ultra-hard - Ultimate

[R041]

ITT: Nobody wants to admit the content they don't do can still be engaging and challenging for others. And most are unwilling to look at the broader audience, only themselves.

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....

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.

That's fair - I was a bit harsh. I guess I tend to see things a little differently when I know the posters are dirty baiters. lol

I think the Food example is good, I'd probably put myself at Cafe - Restaurant level. Can I get a Cafe with Fine Dining quality food though? I'm not interested in microwaved quiche, and I don't want to sit down for 2 hours when I just want to eat a quarter of a steak at a time.

I think my needs are starting to mostly become more a question of design flexibility, and less of a difficulty issue. If you can throw me in content that's the absolute most difficult bullshit you can, but don't require body checks - I would LOVE to run against that wall over and over. It lets me dip my toes in without forcing the rest of the group to suffer at my expense, potentially causing some social issues along the way. (And boy does XIV have some of them social issues)

I'm also feeling very attacked with all of these "Casuals" being thrown around like XIV only has 2 pieces of content that ever qualifies for Mid-Hard to them. So I drew up a scale. I won't fill it in, because I'm an incapable Casual - But if anyone wants to give it a shot, go for it. I'm actually curious how other people would scale content. lol

[Cyanamists]

I think my needs are starting to mostly become more a question of design flexibility, and less of a difficulty issue. If you can throw me in content that's the absolute most difficult bullshit you can, but don't require body checks - I would LOVE to run against that wall over and over. It lets me dip my toes in without forcing the rest of the group to suffer at my expense, potentially causing some social issues along the way. (And boy does XIV have some of them social issues)

I'm also feeling very attacked with all of these "Casuals" being thrown around like XIV only has 2 pieces of content that ever qualifies for Mid-Hard to them.

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).

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

Casuals are content with normal and extreme difficulties.

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

The Hardcore are those that beat the Savages and doing or trying to do Ultimates.

That's for just dungeon/raid/trial content.

Crafters are an entirely different beast when it comes to this. Then there are the House owners and the RPers.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Casuals are content with normal and extreme difficulties.

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

The Hardcore are those that beat the Savages and doing or trying to do Ultimates.

That's for just dungeon/raid/trial content.

Crafters are an entirely different beast when it comes to this. Then there are the House owners and the RPers.

I wouldn't say casuals do Extremes. Extremes as "casual" shows probably you are harder core and view these as super easy for the people who play sporatically and aren't that invested in the game, or just like chill content.

[SophiaDL]

I wouldn't say casuals do Extremes. Extremes as "casual" shows probably you are harder core and view these as super easy for the people who play sporatically and aren't that invested in the game, or just like chill content.

Anybody can clear Extreme, when I did a tiny bit of raiding and content a few months back, I was done with the ex in about an hour or so, just by doing PF

Extreme isnt hard, it's casual content at its best, even ultimates and savage can be PF'd, technically making them midcore content and not hardcore content, there is no time constraint, no time schedule to respect, log in, jump into PF and do savage/ultimate

[TaleraRistain]

I wouldn't say casuals do Extremes. Extremes as "casual" shows probably you are harder core and view these as super easy for the people who play sporatically and aren't that invested in the game, or just like chill content.

Yeah I agree on this. Casuals don't tend to do things that live in PF. And I need to go back and do the previous ones this expansion but Golbez with his body checks definitely isn't something that more casual players are going to be tackling.

I think part of the issue is the idea that it's just time or commitment that determines the type of content something is. You can PF EX, Savage, and even some early Ultimates now I think I've seen in PF. But those pieces of content aren't casual just because they're possible with a random group in PF because there is still prep work and coordination required to be successful at them. I do think we tend to judge content level based on where we are ourselves and our own perceptions of what we are, too. I'm doing Savage this tier and having a blast but it's been very difficult to not still think of myself as casually minded because what I want most of all out of content is being able to engage with it when I want to and not feeling it's something I have to do or is a chore I need to get through.