Quote Originally Posted by R041 View Post
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.