Endwalker hates mid-core players

[SernMoe]

Criterion is more hardcore than 7/12 savages

[VerdeLuck]

Listing Seasonal Events alongside Savage Raids seems a bit disingenuous, those are at most 2 quests that cannot be repeated, and take a total of about 10 minutes to complete and earn everything for.

[LilimoLimomo]

In Endwalkers, for causal players, there are:
Island Sanctuary
Seasonal events
MSQ and Sidequests
Dungeons
Custom Deliveries
Beast tribes
Eureka Orthos
Variant dungeons.

For hard-core players, there are:
12 Savage raids
2 Ultimates
3 Criterion Savages

For mid-core players, there are:
7 Extreme trials
3 Criterion dungeons
5 Unreal trials (not exactly new content)

I think having more mid-core content, can help players transition from causal to hard-core content, so it is not exactly only helpful for mid-core players only.

I think a lot of this becomes messy because there are numerous ways to be "casual" and numerous ways to be "hardcore", so we often disagree on this terminology. Things can be hardcore because of game difficulty, but they can also be hardcore because of things like time commitments and convenience. For some people a need to communicate can be hardcore. What some players take for granted will be a big ask for others.

For example, the most important aspect of "casual" content for me is that I can conveniently access it without devoting a lot of time or overhead to the process of getting in the door. If I would need a Party Finder or a static instead of automated matchmaking, that's hardcore content.

And in terms of difficulty, I do want to be challenged, but I don't want to be faced against something so challenging and nuanced that I'm expected to have read a guide first. Personally, I'd like something that my group of randomly matched newcomers will be able to figure out from scratch before the instance timer runs out; for my needs, that would be a good mid-core. But if there are runs entirely devoted to progging, that's hardcore. And in terms of challenge, that keeps me away from the "hardcore" side of FF14 content, even though the "casual" content has less oomph than would be ideal.

When we talk about bridging the casual vs hardcore gap, I think we too often focus entirely on difficulty and challenge and ignore these other spectrums. We think about content that gradually raises in difficulty until players are facing the game's greatest challenges, but we forget that there's no content that is capable of converting a player who doesn't want to spend 20 minutes waiting in Party Finder into someone who is fine with that; there's no well-balanced trial that is going to en masse change players' personal preferences. There are barriers that prevent players from graduating to more difficult content that have nothing to do with skill.

All of which is to say, we will never be able to solve these problems until we learn to discuss all of these different aspects of the issue. For some players, the thing that's keeping them from doing Savage content isn't a lack of skill or a desire to improve as a player, but rather that they only have limited and sporadic windows during which they can game, or that after a long day of work they just don't have the energy to talk to other people.

[SieyaM]

In Endwalkers, for causal players, there are:
Island Sanctuary
Seasonal events
MSQ and Sidequests
Dungeons
Custom Deliveries
Beast tribes
Eureka Orthos
Variant dungeons.

For hard-core players, there are:
12 Savage raids
2 Ultimates
3 Criterion Savages

For mid-core players, there are:
7 Extreme trials
3 Criterion dungeons
5 Unreal trials (not exactly new content)

I think having more mid-core content, can help players transition from causal to hard-core content, so it is not exactly only helpful for mid-core players only.

According to this list hard-core players only got 2 more things than mid-core, which doesn't seem like a lot.

[Zeastria]

Another CORE issue is also the longevity of said content, you can easily eat up most content in matters of days.
replayability is lacking and so are the rewards!.

Midcore content to me is content you can clear w/o a static and dosnt demand weeks to clear..
Content you can jump in fresh and get to clear in 1-2days.
Exemple: Abyssal fracture EX. it can be learned + cleared + farmed in a day with randoms.

[Bonoki]

So, I asked a lot of my raider friends and most of them said that they felt that Savage is Midcore and only current Ultimate (DSR and TOP, not the other three) are Hardcore.
Lately I've been getting the impression that Hardcore content is reduced to Midcore content with age and experience. Or alternatively, when something harder releases, then the previous Hardcore thing is bumped down a tier.
In the context of Savage, it's hardcore content until the world races are completed. Then it becomes Midcore content when the guides and braindead strats are made up. As people finish their 8 weeks and experience across the player base is gained, then it falls to midcore tier. After my general interactions with several people on the subject, this seems to be the case. Things aren't created with being midcore in mind, they are reduced to becoming midcore with time.

[SieyaM]

So, I asked a lot of my raider friends and most of them said that they felt that Savage is Midcore and only current Ultimate (DSR and TOP, not the other three) are Hardcore.
Lately I've been getting the impression that Hardcore content is reduced to Midcore content with age and experience. Or alternatively, when something harder releases, then the previous Hardcore thing is bumped down a tier.
In the context of Savage, it's hardcore content until the world races are completed. Then it becomes Midcore content when the guides and braindead strats are made up. As people finish their 8 weeks and experience across the player base is gained, then it falls to midcore tier. After my general interactions with several people on the subject, this seems to be the case. Things aren't created with being midcore in mind, they are reduced to becoming midcore with time.

I would guess that this is the result of having so much of the combat being scripted without deviation. It feels to me that combat in XIV is more about memorizing a pattern and executing it and not about knowing how your abilities work and when it's appropriate to use them. Jobs have very static rotations to follow without deviation and once an encounter has been learned it is simply repeating it.

[Colt47]

I would guess that this is the result of having so much of the combat being scripted without deviation. It feels to me that combat in XIV is more about memorizing a pattern and executing it and not about knowing how your abilities work and when it's appropriate to use them. Jobs have very static rotations to follow without deviation and once an encounter has been learned it is simply repeating it.

The truth is that the vast majority of people who do PF savage are not the same kind of people that do savage week 1 - week 4. The main difference is in mind-set as those who are doing week 1-4 generally aren't just blindly saying "go see video and shut up" which seems to be the mentality of the PF and a lot of statics that take a long time to clear. The fights are static, but the variable is the person and the people around them, so the real challenge in savage is identifying the pattern and then working out and making sure everyone knows what they are doing. It's not that savage suddenly becomes mid-core content later on, it's that for some people it is mid-core and others it is hard-core, and the only real measuring stick is how many hours they need before the people in the group finally figure out what they are supposed to do in relation to one another. Technically, if we go by mid-core being the ability to skip mechanics, then the first tier is the only one that really becomes mid-core under the new gear crunch and possibly the first two fights of the second tier.

[SieyaM]

The truth is that the vast majority of people who do PF savage are not the same kind of people that do savage week 1 - week 4. The main difference is in mind-set as those who are doing week 1-4 generally aren't just blindly saying "go see video and shut up" which seems to be the mentality of the PF and a lot of statics that take a long time to clear. The fights are static, but the variable is the person and the people around them, so the real challenge in savage is identifying the pattern and then working out and making sure everyone knows what they are doing. It's not that savage suddenly becomes mid-core content later on, it's that for some people it is mid-core and others it is hard-core, and the only real measuring stick is how many hours they need before the people in the group finally figure out what they are supposed to do in relation to one another. Technically, if we go by mid-core being the ability to skip mechanics, then the first tier is the only one that really becomes mid-core under the new gear crunch and possibly the first two fights of the second tier.

The problem for me is more so that no matter the content you engage in you will be hammering out the same rotation. There is no instance where you will want to deviate from the rotation that has been set in stone by both the design team and community. The only other MMO I played with any sincerity is Everquest and that had a much slower but much more flexible approach to combat. The abilities you used and how your party played could vary greatly depending on what classes happened to be present. It also took know what your abilities did and what would be appropriate to use as the situation unfolded. Everything in XIV just feels so rigid.

[Turtledeluxe]

The problem for me is more so that no matter the content you engage in you will be hammering out the same rotation. There is no instance where you will want to deviate from the rotation that has been set in stone by both the design team and community. The only other MMO I played with any sincerity is Everquest and that had a much slower but much more flexible approach to combat. The abilities you used and how your party played could vary greatly depending on what classes happened to be present. It also took know what your abilities did and what would be appropriate to use as the situation unfolded. Everything in XIV just feels so rigid.

The people who play this game the most don't care about how fun your class is to play at all. They care about one thing and one thing only-- an illusion of balance so they can fool themselves into believing this is the one game where any class is viable and there is no meta for group play, which is a total joke. There is and will always be meta party composition irrespective of balance. Their voices only grow lower when the meta is something they are OK with-- then everything is balanced and all classes are fine.

FFXIV's most dedicated players can't stand class depth or choices. Every class needs to be equally braindead and not special in any way...hence why they are being homogenized and streamlined into oblivion.