Don't do chaotic raid again

[ForteNightshade]

Savage being midcore content is the greatest lie being told on these forums, and people truly believe that. Its incredible.
Just because you can clear a tier after months does not make it "midcore". Most people can clear any game if they keep banging their head against it and practice playing. That is the player improving/learning, not the game being easy/midcore/casual.

As for whether Unreal and Extreme are midcore - that is definitely debatable. To me, they are not, because they require a certain amount of organization and are not simply "drop in" content.
All these examples though, Unreal, Extreme, and Savage, have a trouble with replayability and longevity.

What this game is lacking, imho, is repeatable, unorganized group battle content. Where you jump in, you do your thing without needing any pre asigned spots, and then its GG and leave. In that vein, I have yet to do more than one lockout of Chaotic, but it seems like at least in P1 you don't exactly need to organize yourself with other party members. A lot of personal responsibility there however, and its very punishing if you make a mistake. We'll see how that develops in the future.

With the exception of the 4th fight, you can certain argue Savage is midcore content, albeit on the higher end of that proverbial spectrum. It requires organization and far more consistency than something like Bozja but with rare exceptions is still very approachable even for pretty inexperienced players. I mean, my group cleared P1S back in EW with 7 deaths (one of them brick) and 27 damage downs. Yes, some of those resulted in deaths so they don't, technically, count, but it just goes to show how forgiving the earlier fights are. This was week 1, by the way.

While I get the idea of midcore being "drop in" kind of content, when you stand back a little, Eureka/Bozja are relatively easy. You can die but said death is often insignificant. Heck, I've seen four people finish off the Red Chocobo after everyone else died. That usually isn't what people would consider midcore, where your death can happen yet doesn't have much of an impact. I think the bigger problem here is the casual side of the game has become too casual, which clouds perspective. A lot people wouldn't consider casual content to be "Fisher Price levels" either, but that's where dungeons and the like have landed.

For example sake, let's look at Baldur's Gate and its difficulty options. Everyone considers Balanced to be the "casual" playthrough. It's relatively easy but still forgiving whereas Tactician ups the stakes a little. Very few considered it challenging, hence what let to Honor Mode. Which can also be made easy... if you already know everything about the game or look up strategies before. Going in relatively blind, you will almost certainly die to at least a couple Legendary Actions. Some require very specific tactics/builds to trivialize, or good adaptive habits.

Applying this analogy to XIV, you have a pretty reasonable "Casual" (Balance), "Midcore (Tactician) and "Hardcore (Honor Mode) philosophy. Except there's one more option I haven't mentioned yet: Beginner. This widely buffs the players and makes the game incredibly simplistic. You'd have to go out of your way to lose any fight. The BG3 devs have even commented they added that mode specifically for story focused players who want limited stress or dislike combat. Sound a little familiar?

The MSQ, dungeons and the like aren't casual content but essentially XIV's version of "Beginner." And it's this slide that has caused such a rift in the community. Now I do think Chaotic might be a touch too difficult if it's intended to be a long term fixture even if I do like it myself, but the problem, in my opinion, are the lack of any long form content, period. Making Chaotic easier wouldn't accomplish much because you'd farm the rewards quickly and have nothing to do again, much like what happened with Jeuno. Instead, if it released alongside say, the relic grind. Everyone has something to, hopefully, enjoy. That's what XIV has been terrible at. Not at all helped by only servicing one side of the playerbase.

The company's had multiple consecutive quarterly reports with a significant decrease in earnings. They either don't care that they're losing money or have their heads too far up their asses to try and fix it.

While Square Enix as a whole is failing, FFXIV has remained profitable pretty much since it's revival. Dawntrail was still boasting around one million active subs as of the last unofficial census. It has noticed dips, particularly from how few people came back during the free login campaign (worst in the game's history) but still nowhere near enough they'd be panicking. So as it pertains to XIV itself, Menriq is correct: money talks. And enough people are still content with the game. Speaking anecdotally, many friends of mine don't feel there's anything wrong with XIV at the moment. They just quietly play other games and are content to pop on XIV to run roulettes, RP or whatever. Meanwhile, a couple closer friends and I have repeated complained how bored we've been and how DT may be the last expansion for us.

Suffice it to say, opinions are very divisive but people are still playing.