Midcore is NOT a Difficulty setting - It's an Investment!

[CNitsah]

I feel like Eureka/Bozja are good point to define what is midcore : as much as doing it once for the story (and maybe one relic) is pretty much casual, farming it for month to get several/all of them is definitely midcore. I dare you to pretend a player that got all the SB relics is a casual player.

That doesn't mean Extreme cannot be considered as midcore but limiting it to difficulty is wrong. In the end this whole "lack of midcore content" really was a "lack of content with shelf-life content", and it became more and more obvious as the time went. I give SE credit for trying to answer the complaint, but I hope that, with the criticism about the Chaotic raid (or everything surrounding the fight itself, that's pretty well recieved by those it's aimed at), they'll realise they missed the point of the criticism. Chaotic seem to be a really good fight for those who enjoy that, but I feel it's not the right answer to the "nothing to do/lack of midcore content" complaints.

[Ardeth]

I've not found that kind of combat content interesting solely due to that. I used to have a static in like FFXI or early WoW, I can see this type of content being fun in that setting- but outside of it, the whole experience is terrible (PUG / DF when DF isn't ready for it). Wait to party, get someone lying about their ability, or worse a drama queen / king on top of it, kick them, wait for party, Steve wont learn their content specific role, Onebuttonbob is below parse, waste time both actively and passively (using food, potions, etc), have nothing to show for it, try again later, win, don't get the item you want / need, go again. Consume a lot of time that you had to carve out from things that could be more interesting. Slot a schedule in that restricts your 'real' life. Just, *gag* lol

That's where I am at as well, but to a more casual extent. I want content I can jump into and do that is more difficult than the mind-numbing slop we have for casual content. I don't want to make a premade party, and I don't want to waste my time. So the content has to be easy enough to not need that level of coordination, but hard enough to satisfy that itch. And I don't think given what I've seen over these past 11 years that SquareEnix is competent enough to do it. They weren't competent enough to see the issues of DC travel. They weren't competent enough to fix Viera and Hrothgar. And they aren't competent enough to do what I would want. All we will get is more commitment based gatekeeping PF bullshit we've been privy to for years. And I don't do that type of content. Not now, not ever. Unless you can magically make a group of non judgmental people willing to give and take constructive criticism while being able to be joined at random, you will fail to capture that market of players. Just as they have now and why they're hemorrhaging players.

[BigCheez]

Midcore is the middle ground—content that offers degrees of challenge, allowing players to invest time without requiring a rigid commitment. Examples include Deep Dungeons, Eureka/Bozja, and Variant Dungeons. These activities can be tackled solo or with friends, offering varied challenges and rewarding players’ time, not just their skill level.

Eureka/Bozja and variant dungeon require absolutely no investment whatsoever. They're "jump in and play" and content.

You're absolutely correct that midcore is not a difficulty setting, but a level of investment, but I don't understand how you can go from that to saying that exploration zones and variant dungeon are midcore content when they don't require any prep or organisation. You don't need to be invested in the content whatsoever.

I guess you could make a case for deep dungeon being midcore because a full clear is a significant undertaking but you can get all the rewards without a full clear and it's super easy for 1 person who knows what to do to carry a group through without even being in VC.

[CNitsah]

Eureka/Bozja and variant dungeon require absolutely no investment whatsoever. They're "jump in and play" and content.

You're absolutely correct that midcore is not a difficulty setting, but a level of investment, but I don't understand how you can go from that to saying that exploration zones and variant dungeon are midcore content when they don't require any prep or organisation. You don't need to be invested in the content whatsoever.

I guess you could make a case for deep dungeon being midcore because a full clear is a significant undertaking but you can get all the rewards without a full clear and it's super easy for 1 person who knows what to do to carry a group through without even being in VC.

Did you read the rest of the thread? Or even the first post? I mean half of the post talk about how those are an investment, and there was only a dozen post before yours... You're gonna tell me that farming several relics don't require investment, because it's easy to enter?

[BigCheez]

Did you read the rest of the thread? Or even the first post? I mean, you're gonna tell me that farming several relics don't require investment, because it's easy to enter?

You don't need to finish a single relic weapon to engage with the content in a meaningful way. Most players haven't completed every sidequest. Are sidequests midcore content? Most players don't have the big fish title. Is fishing hardcore? The King/Queen Bean title is incredibly rare. I guess Fall Guys is hardcore content too.

This is a very strange way to go about slapping labels on things.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

While "midcore" itself is not a new word, the term "midcore content" is one that seems to exist basically entirely within this game's community, and after reading pages and pages of forum posts and reddit threads about it, it refers to, as best as I can tell, "unicorn" content that is:

-- Long, requiring weeks or, preferably, months to complete

-- Just difficult enough to not be completely brain-dead, but not difficult enough to introduce a non-trivial risk of failure or involve personal responsibility to other players

-- Consistently rewarding

-- Fun

So basically casual content, but less crappy then the casual content we have now. Or, in other words, "I wish FFXIV were a good game for non-progression raiders." It is not, sorry. I wish it were, but basically all discourse from the last couple years points to the fact that people are just clinging on because they can't imagine not playing the game anymore, despite the fact that it isn't fun for them.

[CNitsah]

You don't need to finish a single relic weapon to engage with the content in a meaningful way. Most players haven't completed every sidequest. Are sidequests midcore content? Most players don't have the big fish title. Is fishing hardcore? The King/Queen Bean title is incredibly rare. I guess Fall Guys is hardcore content too.

This is a very strange way to go about slapping labels on things.

If you read the post litterally two posts above yours, you'd have seen that my point is "doing Eureka (or bozja) once for the story (maybe one relic) is casual territory, farming it to get several/all of them" is midcore territory. What matter is how you engage with that content : the same content can be casual or midcore depending of you engage with it. This has nothing to do with the rarety. No side quest aren't midcore or hardcore, it's casual content, the fact people don't do them is because they buffed the xp of msq so much they are useless, and most of them are unintersting. Yes Fishing can be midcore, if you try to get every fish out there, even the hard to get. No Fall Guy title isn't, because the rarity is due to the fact it's not a permanent event.

The whole point of the thread is about not sticking labels depending of type of content but how people (have the possibility to) interact with said content : that's how exploratory zone can be considered as midcore. If the same content was once and never again, it would be casual. Please don't try to put word in my mouth when you clearly didn't read the thread.

[Yeol]

When reading static recruitments, words like: casual, midcore, semi-hardcore, and hardcore are often used to describe the static. Are they only referring to the static schedule?

[CaedemSanguis]

Since I play very casually in terms of time investment and im still able to get savages/ultimates done, I think that "casual" "midcore" "hardcore" is more something about difficulty rather than time investment

I think that -> Ultimate/Last 2nd-3rd tier savage floor/Criterion Savage = hardcore -> EX/Criterion/Chaotic Raid/Savage 1st-3rd turn + X4s = midcore -> everything else is casual

[CaedemSanguis]

When reading static recruitments, words like: casual, midcore, semi-hardcore, and hardcore are often used to describe the static. Are they only referring to the static schedule?

they should refer to both schedule and skill level