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

[Fawkes]

Honestly one of the most revealing things in these midcore threads is how many people think it's completely okay to have the rest of the party (especially the healer) make up for their mistakes and think that if you die it only affects you

That's the most fun part about playing healer.

[CaedemSanguis]

Investment doesn't mean time. A casual group will be more invested in the group than the content regardless of how much total time they spend progging the content. A hardcore group will be more invested in clearing the content than the players and may kick players for poor performance if it helps them clear faster, etc.

So a casual with no raid xp, if he wants to "clear fast" then he becomes a hardcore ?

[CaedemSanguis]

Kind of, but I think it's more a case of a certain skill level being required for hardcore raiding. If someone can't play their job well, learn mechanics quickly, execute mechanics consistently, and focus for long sessions, they just won't be accepted into hardcore groups because these things are required to prog content quickly, which is the goal.

Someone could raid casually but be very good at the game and someone could have a hardcore approach to the game and not be very good. I've definitely seen plenty of both.

To my mind, when you're referring to a content being casual/midcore or HC, you're referring to a difficulty level

when you're referring to statics, you're referring to both a schedule & skill level

finally when referring to someone, I think it's best to use the time investment (even if you'll find "HC casual" and "Casuals HC" this way)

[Azurarok]

That's the most fun part about playing healer.

Yeah I really don't mind carrying people to the finish. It feels good to be one of the last ones standing at the end, too. Likewise, I rather not be afraid of being the one to ruin the run the entire time either.

Most people playing this game are giving it an active effort to try, and if I'm a healer I'd like to be able to keep encouraging them to. Restarting a fight from the beginning is much more discouraging, and since we're usually farming these things anyway, it's more productive for both the 'good' player to be able to consistently finish content and the 'bad' player to learn the content through subsequent runs instead of having the entire team stopped every time we hit a rough patch.

[CidHeiral]

I just wish their mechanics and structure of mechanics weren't so convaluted. Like the boss raises his right fist and starts casting "big hit," you see the marker, and you dodge it. But then they have the boss lift their fist and have no marker. It still casts "Big hit," but the player doesn't get the same marker structure and dies. Because the marker popped up at the very last second, and they can't dodge it. Now, the simple solution is to focus the boss and watch the cast/boss, but the majority of people aren't going to do that and die. Or the mechanics straight up has no telegraph happens for a minute straight requires you to memorize it and you die to it. I just wish we got more common sense mechanics even if the only solution to making them harder is making them faster.

I don't mean to sound rude but how is it not common sense to think "the boss flattened me after raising his fist, I'll look out for his fist raising next time"? If someone can't piece together something that simple it seems like normal mode is exactly where they should be.

[Ardeth]

I don't mean to sound rude but how is it not common sense to think "the boss flattened me after raising his fist, I'll look out for his fist raising next time"? If someone can't piece together something that simple it seems like normal mode is exactly where they should be.

I'm not saying it's impossible to do. It's just mixed signaling. If you do it one way and then take it away, why is it still there for other things? If markers are too easy, why do we still have them? Why haven't we moved to cast bars and 1 millisecond of the marker? That's my issue. Pick one and stick to it. I know it's going to be a mechanic fiesta regardless, but can you at least be consistent. If you trained me 100 levels to dodge a marker, don't remove a marker. It's just moronic.

[Shougun]

I just wish their mechanics and structure of mechanics weren't so convaluted. Like the boss raises his right fist and starts casting "big hit," you see the marker, and you dodge it. But then they have the boss lift their fist and have no marker. It still casts "Big hit," but the player doesn't get the same marker structure and dies. Because the marker popped up at the very last second, and they can't dodge it. Now, the simple solution is to focus the boss and watch the cast/boss, but the majority of people aren't going to do that and die. Or the mechanics straight up has no telegraph happens for a minute straight requires you to memorize it and you die to it. I just wish we got more common sense mechanics even if the only solution to making them harder is making them faster.

But I'm a casual. When I do content, I like to learn that stuff and not spoil it with a video. Understandably, people don't want to waste their time. So if we need harder solo content, maybe. I'm not sure, but what I can say is that the current system sucks. It not fun, and it leaves me playing the game less and less as time goes on.

FFXIV does fairly well telegraphing info compared to other MMOs, but I do think we can improve that further.

For example abilities that can't be dodges (but the markers are there for your info) are a different color / visual style. This allows you to know that you could NOT have dodged it at the point of seeing it, stop trying that- this skill requires anticipation.. or lore interpretation it requires you to utilize your echo. They have markers for most concepts (like "thats going to do alotta damage"), just some bosses don't have them (due to when they were made) - assign someone to make those consistent (allow us to help by allowing a report missing telegraph UI).

Some other textures / effects might be interesting. Like one that indicates a sequence / series of actions (not talking #s like the boss target dash mechanics, just means that 'this ground marker has more to it than just this, like eruption on ifrit'), or the speed at which they will occur.


I might suggest that, if they've done it via a way that can use this, the functions for bosses automatically develop this info. "damage player(2, 3, 4, 10, skill effect), etc etc" and the other UI related functions just sees "triggers 8 effects within 2 seconds" means give it a fast animation speed, undodge-able coloring, with a sequence texture. The point of mentioning that, is because I think when content is first new, particularly, hardcore focused content... don't give all that info (also don't put it into machine memory, only server side). This way those players, who like that fresh learning experience, will get it, and once the guides are being made the game just follows suit. If you don't want the info after that, just remove your echo buff .



I am not sure how exactly I'd like to categorize content types, but I am unsatisfied with just one words (casual, mid, hard). I would probably mix in required player, skill requirement and #, and then increments of expected substantive progress.


So for example 8 party group, 4 veteran, 1 hour. Using this as a goal of design but also a metric to look at if I missed the mark. This tells me I want 8 players, 4 of which need to be veteran, and on average players will experience substantive dopamine hits every hour. So like ultimate might be 8, 8 masters, 12-36 hours. My personal preference is probably set at dynamic scaling of 1 to X, 1 to 1/3 * X, veteran, 15 minutes to 1 hour. Where typically the content is either or "also" scaling to size of group, and only 1/3 really have to know whats up (playing 'well', but no memorization required).

[CidHeiral]

I'm not saying items impossible to do. It's just mixed signaling. If you do it one way and then take it away, why is it still there for other things? If markers are too easy, why do we still have them? Why haven't we moved to cast bars and 1 millisecond of the marker? That's my issue. Pick one and stick to it. I know it's going to be a mechanic fiesta regardless, but can you at least be consistent. If you trained me 100 levels to dodge a marker, don't remove a marker. It's just moronic.

That's like saying "goombas have been walking at me the whole game up to this point, why are they flying at me now?" It's to mix things up. It's part of the challenge. Aren't midcore players saying they want a little more challenge?

[Lilapop]

What about the slowly growing number of people who consider Savage casual content?

[Akonyl]

The best part of discussions about "midcore content" is people thinking they finally nailed down a definition for what "midcore" really means.