We are missing Content between Normal and Extreme. Wrong Audience for Chaotic

[CidHeiral]

When I get Extremes in Mentor Roulette for example - and this is with loads of sprouts - I usually teach the fight and we clear it.

Granted this is with gear growth and occasionally Echo stacks, but the same thing can happen with current extremes (gear growth) and it's not that long before they add Echo stacks anyway.

Like everything, Chaotic will probably feel a lot easier as time goes on.

That has been my experience as well. There are probably a lot of people who think extremes are way too hard without ever actually attempting one. And yes I agree in regard to Chaotic.

Tbh that probably isn’t helped with Extremes having just such a large scale in difficulty themself.
Zodiark and Valigarmanda for example are barely above normal content difficulty while Endsinger was straight up cancer.

My impression at the time was that most found Endsinger EX disappointingly easy. If I recall correctly for much of the fight everyone can just follow one person that knows what they're doing.

I think with Midcore content Snow and others (me included) mean content you can jump in without a guide and still clear.
Yes there will be mistakes, there will be wipes but it is easy enough to understand and recover from mistakes.

You can do that with extremes, people often form blind prog parties for fun. They're usually tuned so you can make several mistakes and still win.

For me the perfect midcore content was all the raids in Bozja be it CLL, DR or Dalriada.
In the first and last it was the core players that neeed to know what to do while the rest was fine enough with just reacting. It was also what I want raids to be. REAL raids like storming something and not glorified boss fights.
DR was straight up individual responsibility but still challenging enough.
They were also the perfect example of easy enough mechanics made chaotic by the sheer number of players.

Could you elaborate on what in your view makes those raids midcore and the normal 8-man/alliance raids not midcore? I'm trying to understand your viewpoint but I'm not seeing that much of a distinction between the two based on your description of what you liked about them.

None of those got any criticism outside from the way to get into them so I have no idea why they just straight up abandoned that content.

The community complained constantly about both exploratory zones at the time. It was only when they were missing from Endwalker did everyone suddenly change their tune and claim to have loved them the whole time and demand their return.

I'm speaking in generalities of course but it's a moot point, they're making their return in the next patch or two. I assume they'll include similar raids as the previous ones.

[Voidmage]

I was able to tank through half of the fight completely solo after everyone died. That was possible because Endsinger was extremely forgiving and recoverable and you could get through it with lots of rez. The hardest mechanic, in my opinion, was trivialized by simply following someone that understood where to go, such as the healer and if you got hit, it was just some little vulns on the wrist. There were also ways to mitigate tower mistakes such as tank mit.
I didn't look at a guide for Endsinger. But it can be hard to understand what is going on in some fights without recording the footage and playing it back slowly to see what happened while you're not busy doing a rotation.

Not when it was new if I remember correct.
Endsinger was forgiving in the results of a screw up but it was far too easy to get ones in the first place.
Those planets when you had to run across the whole arena for example.

But you may be right. Maybe I remember it harder than it was because I did it on BLM and boy was it not fun.

With the rest:
I agree that Esuna was probably changed because of this fight.
But I am less talking about the first phase and more about the second.
Yes someone can die by towers without wiping everyone but not in the second towers.
Dying there automatically means the death of one other player because of stack / spread afterwards which is already hard enough to do because you have to depent on someone not from your group in that moment.
That can snowball far too quickly if a tank dies and the add just straight up strats murdering everyone.

The worst thing there is the rezzing in that fight though.
Good luck if you are being rezzed in the middle while you should be outside because there is no way out and even tzhe other way is annoying even with the teleport mechanic because in the time you need to get back the next mechanics have already gone out.
The mistakes are probably part of the design but they honestly overdid them.
Many agree that the main problem is towers and stack / spread. Not from a emchanic but from the punishment.
Turn those down and the raid would be good.

I am honestly just miffed because this raid is not what was needed in the game right now.
Further down the line or at release sure but right now... I fear it will have the opposide effect it wanted to have.
Instead of getting players to stay in the game it might drive some away because they think square has completely abandoned them and the growing toxity in PF is not helping.
I have never blacklisted so many players because of one content tbh.

Could you elaborate on what in your view makes those raids midcore and the normal 8-man/alliance raids not midcore? I'm trying to understand your viewpoint but I'm not seeing that much of a distinction between the two based on your description of what you liked about them.

Sure.
Normal a raids have no punishment. You can afk plenty of them with only one party allive and still clear.
Bozja raids have enrage and CLL (and Dalriada in the beginning I think?) have exclusive fights that are more challenging than the others and usually took the best players to tackle them. If those players failed it was a wipe.
Normal A raids don't have that.
The first boss in CLL also had the party split up and time their kills with each other or it would also result in a wipe but it didn't punish the whole raid when a few people screwed up.
DR had the twice comes ruin mechanic where a mistake didn't kill you but several did and made it clear for the rest who knew what to do and who didn't.
It also resulted in mistakes not just being brushed away with a vuln or damage down stack that could be carried away by a healer ro other dps but punished you individually.

You can do that with extremes, people often form blind prog parties for fun. They're usually tuned so you can make several mistakes and still win.

Like I said. The whole debate is not made easier by the pure scale of Ex difficulty across the board.
Sure you can do all blind but some are almost autopilot easy and some are on the far harder side to graps mechanics, execute them and meet the dps check.

the community complained constantly about both exploratory zones at the time. It was only when they were missing from Endwalker did everyone suddenly loved their tune and claim to have them the whole time and demand their return.

That's not true.
The community mostly complained about Bozja being boring visually and yet another fate system.
The raids themself where mostly liked but the how to get into them pissed people off and not the raids themself.
The rewards where also lackluster in the beginning where it was almost useless to do CLL more than once.

[Eyrilona]

I wish more people on here were more aware of the inherent bias that comes with their own skill level.

Let's say this were a forum on running -- There are a lot of people on this forum who are the equivalent of marine level of physical training, who can do the marathon in full gear with a load on their backs. And they mostly only hang out with their own. And they will say that doing it without all that extra weight is just easy mode -- but that means their idea of easy mode is still running a marathon, which is even proverbially already considered a peak of achievement for the more general masses.

And all the sentiment that people just want everything handed to them with no effort is much like saying that everyone who doesn't think they're up to a marathon and instead wants to enter a five or ten mile run, or go a different flavor of walking like take on a hike trail, shouldn't consider themselves worthy of being taken seriously as runners.

[Mawlzy]

I wish more people on here were more aware of the inherent bias that comes with their own skill level.

Let's say this were a forum on running -- There are a lot of people on this forum who are the equivalent of marine level of physical training, who can do the marathon in full gear with a load on their backs. And they mostly only hang out with their own. And they will say that doing it without all that extra weight is just easy mode -- but that means their idea of easy mode is still running a marathon, which is even proverbially already considered a peak of achievement for the more general masses.

And all the sentiment that people just want everything handed to them with no effort is much like saying that everyone who doesn't think they're up to a marathon and instead wants to enter a five or ten mile run, or go a different flavor of walking like take on a hike trail, shouldn't consider themselves worthy of being taken seriously as runners.

What a delightful analogy. 100% agree.

[Menriq]

How many different versions of something do we need? People are asking for things between normal and EX to help with the gap. Let's say they do that. Then there is normal --> <new version 1> --> Ex --> Savage --> Ultimate. But then people are saying that the leap between EX and Savage is too much. So then it's normal --> <new version 1> --> EX --> <new version 2> --> Savage --> Ultimate. Then another group is saying the leap between Savage and Ultimate is too much. At some point, there are just going to be too many versions.

At the same time, people are saying it's going to be "dead" content in a short amount of time, but if it was easier, wouldn't it be "dead" sooner?

[CidHeiral]

Sure.
Normal a raids have no punishment. You can afk plenty of them with only one party allive and still clear.
Bozja raids have enrage and CLL (and Dalriada in the beginning I think?) have exclusive fights that are more challenging than the others and usually took the best players to tackle them. If those players failed it was a wipe.
Normal A raids don't have that.
The first boss in CLL also had the party split up and time their kills with each other or it would also result in a wipe but it didn't punish the whole raid when a few people screwed up.

I see, thank you for elaborating. I assume the exclusive fights you're referring to are Lyon in CLL and the fire guy from Dalriada. Both are pretty simple, they just throw AOEs around the arena. It's more or less the same thing as Fafnir's wind phase in Jeuno, so I'm still a bit lost on why one would be midcore and the other not. Is it just the presence of an enrage timer? If so would you consider Jeuno midcore if it were exactly the same but every fight had an enrage?

Also, for the record the timing kills thing on the first CLL boss wasn't actually true, people just thought that was the case in the beginning and kept repeating it even after it was disproven. Killing one boss before the other just spawns infinite adds that are easy to kill. All you have to worry about is the overall enrage timer.

That's not true.
The community mostly complained about Bozja being boring visually and yet another fate system.
The raids themself where mostly liked but the how to get into them pissed people off and not the raids themself.
The rewards where also lackluster in the beginning where it was almost useless to do CLL more than once.

You say that's not true then list a number of things people complained about. I was here, I witnessed the numerous complaint threads. It's in the past so it doesn't matter now but it absolutely was the case.

[Voidmage]

How many different versions of something do we need? People are asking for things between normal and EX to help with the gap. Let's say they do that. Then there is normal --> <new version 1> --> Ex --> Savage --> Ultimate. But then people are saying that the leap between EX and Savage is too much. So then it's normal --> <new version 1> --> EX --> <new version 2> --> Savage --> Ultimate. Then another group is saying the leap between Savage and Ultimate is too much. At some point, there are just going to be too many versions.

At the same time, people are saying it's going to be "dead" content in a short amount of time, but if it was easier, wouldn't it be "dead" sooner?

Counterquestion.
What speaks against there being more content with different difficulties than we have now?
Why shouldn't normal - ex - savage be a more blurred line with other things inbetween?

Imo more options are always good for everyone.
Be it chaotic as an idea or island sanctuary or just something else. All of them have a playerbase.

If the content ends up as dead or not is a pure implemention thing.
Criterion and Eureka showed what a difference in rewards (how usefull they are) and how to get them can make.
PotD and EO showed how an implementation can effect how long the content stays alive (and imo how lazy copy paste content drives away interest).
The difficulty doesn't really dictate how long the content is alive. If the community is interested or wants something out of it then it will be and personally I would say that would also include using older content and giving it new rewards.
Edit:
There is also the factor of innovation.
Eureka Orthos was completely uninspired and nothing new (same system, more or less same pomanders and just more Allagan and as a concept in lore just straight up not needed in contrast to PotD exploring restless spirits, Gelmora and how far down you can go to blend the line between life and death) so interest died quickly.
I would even dare to say if the new field zone is just Bozja 2.0 with more or less the same logos system and exactly the same things without anything new then it might also not live long.

I see, thank you for elaborating. I assume the exclusive fights you're referring to are Lyon in CLL and the fire guy from Dalriada. Both are pretty simple, they just throw AOEs around the arena. It's more or less the same thing as Fafnir's wind phase in Jeuno, so I'm still a bit lost on why one would be midcore and the other not. Is it just the presence of an enrage timer? If so would you consider Jeuno midcore if it were exactly the same but every fight had an enrage?

Also, for the record the timing kills thing on the first CLL boss wasn't actually true, people just thought that was the case in the beginning and kept repeating it even after it was disproven. Killing one boss before the other just spawns infinite adds that are easy to kill. All you have to worry about is the overall enrage timer.

That's what I want to say though.
The mechanics are not hard but they still want you to pay attention and if too many screw up thats a wipe. Thats midcore for me. The emchanics themself don't dictate what difficulty it is (or at least not alone) but how they are mixed with the rest.
Fafnir while having more or less the same difficulty doesn't care ho many die. in the end a tank can still clear alone (even though I haven't seen it yet).
CLL if people screw up Leon it's a wipe and if the other party dies more or less also.
For me CLL had the perfect mix in asking enough of the core players and less of the rest.
It mixed both groups of players better than chaotic in my opinion.

I don't know if I would call Jeuno midcore if it had hard enrages. Personally I would say no because there is no "core" that can lead to a sure wipe like CLL.
I don't know how to formulate it. My english is not good enough for such a deep meta conversation.

You say that's not true then list a number of things people complained about. I was here, I witnessed the numerous complaint threads. It's in the past so it doesn't matter now but it absolutely was the case.

Agree to disagree then. I listed complaints about the field zone and the entrance to the raids, not the raids themself.

[Menriq]

Counterquestion.
What speaks against there being more content with different difficulties than we have now?
Why shouldn't normal - ex - savage be a more blurred line with other things inbetween?

Imo more options are always good for everyone.

I agree options are always a good thing. However, there are already complaints about there not being enough content. How many people would be happy if there was even less content because all we got for a patch was a raid with 7 different versions? Then what happens when they put a reward behind the version that is between EX and Savage, and there are people who can't do EX? I'm not saying I have the perfect answer to this, but the question remains is if the ROI is worth it, and I'm leaning towards it wouldn't be.

The mechanics are not hard but they still want you to pay attention and if too many screw up thats a wipe. Thats midcore for me.

There are clears with over 20 deaths and 70 damage downs. Are you saying then that Chaotic is midcore to you?

For me CLL had the perfect mix in asking enough of the core players and less of the rest.

What is a core player? I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'm reading this as "There needs to be enough people that can carry and we can expect less from everyone else".

[Voidmage]

I agree options are always a good thing. However, there are already complaints about there not being enough content. How many people would be happy if there was even less content because all we got for a patch was a raid with 7 different versions? Then what happens when they put a reward behind the version that is between EX and Savage, and there are people who can't do EX? I'm not saying I have the perfect answer to this, but the question remains is if the ROI is worth it, and I'm leaning towards it wouldn't be.

I am not talking about a raid with 7 different versions but about different content in difficulty for different player levels.
I also don't have a perfect answer to the reward structure. The hairstyle in chaotic being sellable was a right step imo but maybe if they added another content for a lower difficulty level where you would have gotten the same tokkens as in chaotic but way slower or just different things...

There are clears with over 20 deaths and 70 damage downs. Are you saying then that Chaotic is midcore to you?

That is getting repeated but doesn't imply anything imo.
Was the overall ilvl on the level of bis gear so the dps check was higher? Was it a usuall PF group? When did those deaths occur (phase 1 or 2?)
Chaotic would be midcore for me with half the needed players when looked at the mechanics in a vacuum. In a normal PF group with 24 people who at maximum have the raidplan? Those 20 deaths from my experience there almost always result in a wipe if in phase 2.
For me it is slightly above midcore on savage tier. But honestly what I have learned is that for others savage is midcore evn though I disagree there.

What is a core player? I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'm reading this as "There needs to be enough people that can carry and we can expect less from everyone else".

With core players I just mean for example the players who tackle Leon in CLL and the ones taking the leading role in the parrallel fight downstairs (the mvp's down there more or less).
That's what I mean.
Content where not everyone has to play perfect in fear of wiping everyone but absolutely above the normal raid content.


In the end we can all talk about all this till the heatdeath of the universe.
No one has a universal answer to what is midcore because one side only does easy content and the other side is too deep into hard content to be neutral about it (even I) and content creators are completely too much in their own bubble to form a neutral opinion.
The thing I AM sure for myself though is that we need more content on different difficulty spectrums and not just dead weight easy or savage number 2344234 and imo this expansion leasn too hard into the later side.

[Infindox]

I mean one of the first chaotic clears was with like 76+ damage downs, 15+ deaths, so that already sounds pretty forgiving for content. You can mess up at least 3 towers at any given time, if you pump heavy shields for them (not a tank LB). Factoring Tank LB massively reduces the difficulty as well but alot of people don't always use it for whatever reason. That's already enough room for error. What the complainers want is just another alliance raid in general, not one any more difficult than what we've currently had though, which is clearly not what this content was meant to be from the get go. The community is the problem. The moment they face any smidge of challenge they cry, especially if a glam is behind it.

Don't base anything on the first clear because usually those are a bunch of people who know each other and communicating with each other. That's not the general playerbase's experience, who go into PF either with some friends or alone.

And the "complainers" are doing so because there's an extreme lack of content that people can do on their own time but still be challenged at the same time, which this isn't it.