Player Classification

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Bozja was midcore, that's why it was so damn good. It's not midcore anymore, but when it was fresh it was common to die to critical events and specially in Castrum, Reginae, and the Zadnor content.
I found it incredible that they finally found the perfect midcore difficulty and didn't bring that back in endwalker.

Let's hope danwtrail's exploratory content isn't variant dungeon level of "walk in the park"

Bozja was casual content. People being bad doesn't make it midcore.

[Rekh]

Bozja was casual content. People being bad doesn't make it midcore.

Incorrect, in mmo context it was midcore when it was fresh content.

[Shougun]

They all shift unfortunately lol. For myself I get most use out of referring to them as:

Casual: Desires low stress, high certainty of success, time consumption may lead to stress and after a certain threshold of time likely would (for example you can make something easy but insanely grindy, this wouldn't be ideal for a casual).
Mid-core: Desires some stress, reasonable certainty of success, time consumption is unlikely to be a sole reason for stress (grinds are more likely to be fine, and the evaluation of whether the content is good or not will only use time as a multiplier to the other opinions).
Hardcore: Desires a lot of stress, sliver of success is okay, "what is time? I will probably schedule my life according to activities in the game".

On exploratory I feel at release it was mid-core, and then temporarily casual, and then to a weird limbo of "what"-core. Because expecting a casual to organize themselves outside of the game (via discords) is pretty unlikely and therefore quite a bit of the content is unachievable. Yet if you did happen to get a lot of people, it's going to be a quick and smooth ride lol.

I prefer the rolling mountain approach to things so it starts at the peak, where logical, and rolls down as new things are added. So, after some time, a new group can take part in the content. There should be a stop at some point, I don't really want to see 1 shot bosses, but for example I believe there should be a moment where you can reasonably solo savage content (starts out hard group focused, mistakes allowed group focus, smaller group, duo, then solo). Criterion (savage) should be duo and then solo-able, etc.

[CidHeiral]

So does this make me a casual? If so then what is a mid core player or hard-core player?

A casual player prefers relatively easy content with low commitment.

A hardcore player prefers challenging content.

A midcore player is a casual player in denial.

[yoshinoharu]

I have met self-identifying casual players who from my opinion were way more hardcore than some self-identifying hard-core players. Everyone has different definitions of what these things mean.

Yes, this is because, like I said, people tend to confuse content with mentality. It is still possible to approach casual content with fervor, passion, and dedication. It's not necessarily required, but a person's mentality has very little to do with whether or not the content is designed to be casual, midcore, or hardcore.

[Jeeqbit]

The answer is that, what it means, depends on what you are talking about. Context is everything.

"Casual players" is often used to refer to the fact the majority of people return to the game, complete the MSQ, then stop playing for months (you can identify this by their flower icon). Alternatively, they do play fairly regularly, but they don't engage with the game in a significant way ie. they login occasionally, do some quests, a roulette or seasonal event, but don't stick around for extensive grinds or raids and don't learn much about the game.

Sometimes, by casual, people mean "casual-mindedness". They login, but they don't engage with the game enough to learn significant nuances about the game such as snapshotting, how to gear properly, using food and damage pots, or pressing their actions and abilities in an optimal way. Their lack of knowledge means they ignore a lot of important things and content that hardcore players would know about.

Usually, the amount you play does translate to knowledge about the game. So, in a lot of cases, it is correct to say that someone with thousands of days of playtime understands the game better than someone with 100 days of playtime.

So, when they say "casual player", they do mean people who "lack basic knowledge" (not being insulting, they just didn't learn stuff yet, there's a lot to learn because it's an MMORPG).

Casual content is, thus, content you can do and then be finished with in 1 day to a week at most. If they talk about casual content, that is what they mean.

Most content is, generally, designed for casual players. It can be done relatively quick. So what they do is attach optional rewards to it that you can grind (such as mounts, minions, Triple Triad cards, glamours), which gives players a reason to play for extensive periods of time. Of course, some people find social reasons to play a lot, such as roleplaying or doing venues at housing estates.

It is the latter group (repeating content to chase rewards) that are the "hardcore" players.

Now, SE release high-end raids a lot. These can be progressed both hardcore and casually. Both of these things are common.

Can a casual player who raids be pretty knowledgeable about the game? Sure, and it's very common actually. But either they do their research, or they used to play more frequently in the past. For the ones who did their research but never played very frequently except for raids, it does show if all they did was get their information from The Balance, because all their knowledge is verbatim from there and there are significant gaps or misconceptions if you ask them about any other subject in the game. Moreover, players who only do raiding and don't play the game except that, for example, can still get completely destroyed by normal content because they don't even remember their mechanics or develop muscle memory for them.

So, yes, sometimes even someone doing content that involves understanding the game like raiding, can be included in what the person is discussing. Other times, they do just mean people who stick to MSQ content.

The arguments you've been seeing have pertained to content in this expansion, which have involved a particularly easy example. Island Sanctuary was solved by a discord server who just calculate everything so you only have to spend 2 minutes a day on it. If it's only taking 2 minutes, the argument is it is extremely casual content.

The argument is all the other content has been on the opposite end of the spectrum by requiring you to do high-end raiding, even if that's not what you're interested in. There's been more high-end raid content than in any other expansion.

So what content creators are often saying is previous expansions had middle-ground content that brought raiders and normal content players together, known as Eureka and Bozja. It bridged the gap, and definitely took more than 2 minutes of their time. It could be done hardcore, but it could also be done very casually. You could leave whenever you wanted. It made their respective expansions feel alive and social.

So does this make me a casual? If so then what is a mid core player or hard-core player?

See, if you play every single day and do a variety of content, it is that variety and repetition that ultimately builds your knowledge and experience, thus eroding the concept of being casual. Being social does help, because other people teach you things, but you will most likely encounter some of that in roulettes over time.

You also said you were farming MGP. If you're doing that in a serious way ie. chasing all the rewards, that is what a lot of hardcore players do who achievement hunt or mount hunt. Through chasing all these rewards, they go through a wide variety of content and repeat it hundreds of times, resulting in a lot of experience and knowledge.

[Asari5]

isnt it easier and more obvious if we just look at what the game has and divide it into three parts?

casual: dungeons, a-raids
mid-core: normal trials, normal raids, bozja, extrem trials
hardcore: savage raid and ultimate

you could say midcore ranges from trial to trial.

think about it: in single player games there are often different difficulties. you may play master difficulty but still think its easy. or you can play in easy mode and still think its difficult. why is it in ff14 so difficult for some people to accept that something people think is easy may not necessarily mean its casual content?

and yes i do think normal trials are easy, but there are also people who have difficulties with it

thats the content, but that doesnt completely define what we are as players. i do savage content but in a very casual way, so i dobt think i am an hardcore player.... content and player are two different things on two different scales... and we just use the same/similar words on both scales

[Avoidy]

Nobody knows.
People I know who raid a lot think EX/Savage are both midcore and think Ultimates are hardcore. Then I know people who just do EX but won't do savage, and they see EX as being midcore. Then I know people who only think you're hardcore if you do the Savage/Ultimates week1 and see people who follow guides months later as mid. Then I know people who do Ultimates but think if you do the early ultimates then you're midcore because it was harder on release. I could go on. Everyone's got their own idea in their head. Personally I think it's easiest to just classify normal as casual, ex as mid, and savage+ as hardcore. But think about what this means, lmao. It means for a "midcore" player, they only get relevant content in the form of 1 EX trial every 4 months. That's so bad, lmao.

anyway, yeah, there's no consensus. we will argue in this thread for 20 pages and still not figure it out. welcome back.

[Fawkes]

[RinaB]

Lot of replies here which is nice to see. So what I'm getting is its all subjective to each person....I do feel the devs have listened to all these complaints though because I've also seen a lot of posts saying this xpacs content is easier then ever and I have to disagree. All the mechanics in dungeons and raids this xpac are far more difficult then yorha and shb content but again...subjective. I'm seeing a lot talking about it being content related but like I said I feel the content this xpac is the hardest I've ever done (I started in SB) and I hope they don't get pressured to keep making it harder so players like myself don't become gated out of normal content. I don't care what category I fall in but because of how much of this complaining I see about all of this I don't want to see a wow cataclysm model to take over the game.