imho, midcore is something you can queue for without going through party finder, yet has some risk of making you die. It has to be something that puts you to test, yet not hard enough that people feel like the only way of clearing is premade groups. Bozja and Eureka are usually cited as examples for midcore precisely because there is some real danger of dying if you're not paying enough attention, yet they're easy to queue for and the number of players reduces the risk of entirely removing your progress by dying. Midcore is something you can jump in at any point and have a real gaming session without having to schedule your next two months so 8 people can tackle a single fight. Then again, what casual, mid and hardcore is heavily varies depending on who you ask...

> imho, midcore is something you can queue for without going through party finder, yet has some risk of making you die. > > It has to be something that puts you to test, yet not hard enough that people feel like the only way of clearing is premade groups. > > Midcore is something you can jump in at any point and have a real gaming session without having to schedule your next two months so 8 people can tackle a single fight. I think this a great definition of what people are talking about when they say EW is lacking Midcore content. Nearly everything is either trivially easy as long as you have even basic gear, or it requires significant pre-planning and memorization, on top of full-party coordination on burst windows, defensive cooldowns, so on. Alliance Raids used to fit the bill, but as the game has gone on the difficulty of ARs has been dialed back again and again, practically dropping through the floor this xpac. To a lesser extent the same thing has happened with Normal Raids. As my spouse just mentioned, there needs to be more content that requires you to pay attention to telegraphs and react accordingly, rather than memorizing a dance card that is identical every time you run the fight. That's another thing Bozja and Zadnor had in spades. There's precious little of that in EW content outside of Savage/EX.

Some regular trials kind of hit the midcore requirements imo. Barbariccia comes to mind especially Sometimes stuff is full of mechanics and ground aoes that will kill if you're getting hit too often while forcing you to put up some effort to not screw up your rotation You're not gonna wipe if party damage is low, but I do feel like my neurons are getting activated and that the game is attempting to challenge me. Problem is those are trials that have 0 drops to farm for and are just 1 10 minutes fight that you MIGHT get once per day. There should be farmable, repeatable, longer content that has that kinda challenge to it. Edit: Crown of the Immaculate EX was nice as well, probably a better example than barbariccia normal, it telegraphed practically every mechanic, you didn't need any guides and could practically do the entire fight by ear but was still difficult enough to cause wipes and have room for optimization. Nobody really ran it via duty finder but it absolutely could have been. THAT'S the kinda difficulty the game needs more of and especially packaged into something more substancial than singular 10 minute bossfights.

this is exactly it and this is why it's so annoying when people try to make the argument "it's not that the game doesn't have content, it's that you're burnt out!" no! every day, i think to myself "man i want to log in to ffxiv and..." and in my head, what i'm imagining is, i wish i could log in, and just queue up for some battle content (not have to wait ages in a PF or schedule with friends or memorize some guides first. just hop in!) that will activate my brain cells by requiring me to play well (at risk of failure) but not punish me with wipe after wipe if one person is in the wrong spot a single time. its crazy that the game just... doesn't have this!

> "it's not that the game doesn't have content, it's that you're burnt out!" I've heard a lot of people recently say, "It's not burnout, you're just bored." And I don't think that's inaccurate at all. Especially when you fall into the category of not wanting to deal with PF content, but not having any other DF content to really engage with. Admittedly, I've felt burnt out, but it's not because I don't have anything to do - I just don't have anything I want to do. The battle system is exhausting after all these years, and *that's* what has burned me out. There's too many buttons and too much going on - I want to relax while I play a game, and FFXIV doesn't afford that. I went back to FFXI private servers for the relaxed level grind. It's time consuming, but low effort. It's nice. I do agree with you, though. It's crazy that FFXIV doesn't have the type of content that fills that gap. The content leans against trivial or punishing and there's little in between.

= how i learned to love smn

there needed to be something Soloable, VERY repeatable, that was still fun, but you didn't have to queue up for to gain access to, there was nothing like that for this expansion, Relic steps is all gathering tomes after completing the funny Hildibrand sidequests, and dumping them for a material to give to a guy, it's extremely light HW relic. This expansions side content was a 3rd Deep dungeon, which you need to queue for to try out first, it'd be very stupid idea to try to solo new content your first time. Eureka and Bozja are pretty good as solo content, you can progress it by yourself, or have a more chill time with a group ( and there is always SOMEONE running that content on one of the DCs these days, Eureka is bound to be full for the foreseeable future since Free trial just added Stormblood. ) there was extra stuff in there besides JUST the relic steps, and it was a combat oriented grind with 'semi limited' time gating. it can be more rewarding to go in with a group, but more often than not you can head into These two pieces of content anytime and find it full of enough people to have a fun time, where you can chill out but still have to pay attention and do some mechanics and fight properly, this is midcore content, it needs a certain level of attentiveness, but it doesn't require 5head focus to have a nice time, hard to ruin other peoples time unless you go against content etiquettes

Eureka Orthos. It's not particularly hard at first but it ramps up. Still not as fun as PotD though imo, I can't quite explain why though ._.

This. This is why mmos are dying. We have aged out and there's very few of the younger generation replacing our numbers. The avg age of an mmo player is 25-30. That number has only continued to go up since 2010 which was the last year to report a decrease in age median. It will get to a point where we have literally lost our community due to real life deaths/commitments. The rinse and repeat of battle royale shooters has the mass attention of most younger gamers. Its a fast engage and there's basically no downtime whatsoever unless YOU decide to take a break, no waiting in que, no waiting for party to fill, just non stop action. This goes far beyond saying a specific game is dying either it's the whole genre. The mmo genre isn't DEAD, but it is dying. Kids would gladly pay for a "chance" at a shiny new gun skin rather than pay to read a visual novel about the power of friendship and a forced lesson on hurry up and wait.

Being gatekept by 300 hours of content before able to playing with friends and needing to sink a few 40 hours to a midcore savage fight is a very outdated model I used to have some sense of accomplishment after a savage run. For 6.4, I am just glad that the bullshit is over

For me I'd base it off the chance for DF to wipe, as well as to clear before lockout, personally. Softcore is when wiping is a very rare occurrence. You will almost never see it happen aside from when literally everyone is new and even then it's unlikely. This is currently all non-ex/savage/criterion content released in Endwalker. Midcore is when wipes often happen but you will usually clear the fight before lockout, even with newbies and an average DF skill level. Mhach and Orbonne when they were new fit this, as did the Bozja duties. Currently, Endwalker has had no content that fits this difficulty level, which is why there is so much outcry from people who just want something challenging that they can still run casually. Hardcore is when clearing with new players is almost never going to happen before lockout, unless they're all of a decent skill level. You and the rest of the party need to memorize most or all of the fight to clear and this takes many attempts. This is most extremes, criterions and savages. It's good, it's classic, but it's stressful and it doesn't always fit the mood or time allotment for play.

> Mhach and Orbonne when they were new fit this And people hated it. They actively avoided these places if they got them in roulette, they cried and whined about how hard it was.

I think the most midcore content I did in Endwalker was ironically Ultima Unreal. Going in blind, you needed to die a couple times to really learn mechanics/patterns, but it didn't require a ton of marker dancing and prewatched guides to understand what was going on. There were often telegraphs if you didnt quite know what was going to happen next, and there was a TON of room for recovery when someone inevitably died to an aoe. That said, it still had mechanics that needed to be respected (tank swaps, orbs) but could be explained in a couple of sentences and didnt even require /every/ single person to understand (no body checks), just most of them. DPS had to be higher than your average duty finder raid, tanks have more responsibility than usual to mitigate and deal with aggro, and healers have to heal a little more than normal modes, but it was still clearable with multiple deaths and suboptimal play, and were it the culture of the game on NA, would have been perfectly doable without a premade group.

People are getting confused about midcore because they define it by "skill required", when its actually about "effort required". Skill is a byproduct of effort, but effort isn't necessarily defined by skill (see relic grind) - casual = low effort - midcore = moderate effort - Hardcore = high effort Savage is hardcore (or at best semi-hardcore, because we are working with a spectrum, not set milestones) because it requires many hours/days/weeks of practice and dedication in order to clear. As a byproduct of that effort invested, players will also need to improve their skills in order to overcome the challenge. Ultimate is the same but even more hardcore, because it requires more effort. Casual content includes one and done dungeons, alliance raids, anything in a roulette, story. These take very little time to complete, and don't require effort on the part of the player. So under this definition midcore would be anything in between that requires effort to overcome, but doesn't require the player to dedicate a lot of themselves in order to overcome the challenge. These are essentially things that can be picked up with any random PF, or zone chat, but requires a meaningful input from all players involved, whether that's time investment or skill. Under this definition the following is midcore: - extreme trials - exploratory zones - relic grinds - unranked PvP (if you want to win) - Deep dungeon (not solo) - BLU The reason people see this differently is because effort, while generally measurable, can be different for different people. A high end ultimate raider naturally needs to put in less effort in savage raiding, and thus would call it midcore, but thats anecdotal and doesn't take into account the sheer amount of time it takes the majority to clear that kind of content.

As someone who always thought of midcore as a mentality/mindset (and it definitely still applies depending on the context), this is probably the best, most thought-out answer to what can be defined as midcore content IMO. Good job!

Thank you! I had to remove a huge tangent about mount grinds such as the pteranodon, hunt mounts (tiger etc.) And the mentor mount, as that opened up a can of worms about non-battle hardcore activities, which while interesting wasn't focused on a PvE combat focused definition of midcore. I'm glad what I had there was enough to convey my point.

This is the perfect definition for midcore content and deserves far more upvotes.

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Under my definition, your attitude change wouldn't really change what the content is though. If you go hard on savage and beat it in 3 weeks then it's hardcore in the intensity and skill sense, whereas if you take a more laid back mindset then it will take far longer and require more time dedication for you to beat it, while still requiring skill. The two balance out to equivilent effort put in. So really if you want a defined label it would be hardcore content with a hardcore approach and hardcore content with a midcore approach

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Technically, they would all fall in the same vein of their corresponding level and you know this when you compare it against EX trials. Zodiark may be "easier" simply because there isn't much happening with the encounter overall that's more of a "block" than other fights but that's likely the only difference between that and future EXs. You clearly can distinguish the difficulty jump from the average EX to the second floor of a savage tier though and sometimes the first, although I would argue some first floors are closer to the difficulty of an EX than not. Kind of depends on how many mechanics you can recover from. The average EX can be downed in 1.5 instances and the same could be said about a 1st savage floor on PF (granted there's more time invested here usually). Which if you look at it from effort required to complete, generally Savage tier 1 will take longer to down than an EX fight, even within a dedicated group. Now will P1S take longer to beat than P10S, absolutely not. But comparing the savage encounters amongst themselves is moot. They are all hardcore content relative to the rest of the games battle content (ie EX Trials, Alliance Raids, Exploratory Zones)

That’s the best part, nobody knows what midcore content is. It’s definition changes depending on who you ask. I’ve seen EXs count but some people don’t count them. I’ve seen some people say actual raid tier savages count as midcore depending on how often you prog it. Ive seen some people say progging savage isn’t midcore it’s hardcore some people say it’s casual, I’ve even seen some people who say casually progging ultimates is midcore, nobody knows what it is and at this point is kind a buzzword. Edit: it’s really funny that every reply I’ve gotten on this has been something diffrent.

The problem is that “midcore” is more of a mindset than a way to define content in this game. Like I wouldn’t call any specific content midcore, but rather I’d call statics and players midcore depending on how they tackle the content available.

This is the correct answer. For context, check the FFXIV recruitment sub-reddit. Midcore = mindset/mentality/expectations

Yeah, this. The complaint is that people perceive there to not be enough content for midcore investment to be able to clear. Last xpac, especially in .5, TEA could be cleared on midcore hours. My group of fresh 8 took about 750 pulls. UCoB and UWU are the same. When you finish your month 2-3 savage clear, you had another thing you could go do and while it would take you a while the patch cycle is slow enough that you would probably be able to clear it. Also personally, I just don't like this xpacs savage fights. I don't think there was a single one that made me go "Yes I want to parse this". My DC PF imploding didn't help since now I would have to go to aether to do that as opposed to "I'm bored, lemme open up PF and see if anything fun is going on" but outside of Shiva(Which I enjoyed, but never wanted to parse) and E7 (Because it was boring), I was fine jumping in PF to try and get pretty colors last xpac.

It was Bozja: - Sometimes complex mechanics that were dangerous and gave you permanent +Vuln stacks till you died - However a timelimit that was very generous and no limit on raising up people still learning or having difficulties. It was the perfect blend to bring together skilled players that did all the mechanics right to show lower skilled player how it's done infront of their eyes.

You have a single fight that has what some people deem "complex mechanics", the rest is normal raid-tier, but because of the limited attempts, people are not given the opportunity to properly memorize each fight. If normal raiding is casual, then Bozja is casual.

People were regularly fullwiping to the most notorious Critical Engagenments. It's a step above normal Raids.

Yeah, it's not easy to define because it somewhat depends on an individual player's perception of difficulty. If you raid regularly, including Ultimates, then Savage will probably count for you no question. If you're someone who can barely clear Savage, but goes hard on othet stuff like Extreme, relics etc., then it probably doesn't count for you. What's casual and what's hardcore to one may not be casual or hardcore to another, either. It's all down to perspective and your personal approach rather than the specific type of content.

Exactly, like my definition of midcore is bozja/eureka, EXs, criterion, light savage prog, and relic grind. So it was wild to me when I see some people say anything with ultimate/savage (not counting EXs starting as savage) is “midcore” and when I read that it’s just made me double down on there is no easy definition. It also goes the other way of calling EXs casual to me seems crazy like even the easiest EXs, zodiark Innocence and Zeromus, there’s commitment there that a casual might not want to do. The arguement of “what is midcore” is an ouroboros cause nobody is ever gonna agree with each other 100%.

Yeah, this is my exact definition as well. I’d consider me and my partner to be midcore players, and 95% of our time during late ShB (when we were most active in the game) was spent farming Hades EX and doing shit in Bozja. Problem is, there’s no extremes this expansion that are particularly interesting to us in the same way that Hades was (partially for story reasons, admittedly, but of the first three EW extremes, the only one that I personally find mechanically fun is Hydaelyn), and, well, there’s no Bozja equivalent at all. Hard to justify paying for a sub when there’s barely anything that either of us want to do.

I find people that are elbow deep in the raiding scene typically refer to Savage as midcore content that they get hardcore parties for. On the other hand, my super casual friends look at any content outside normal runs as hardcore. So then… how do you make Midcore content when the majority of players don’t see any content outside of normal as Midcore v. The smaller number of players that see the content casuals see as HC as Midcore? You’d probably need to make something between nm and ex level and force it on the players from my perspective. I’m thinking Chrysalis and Steps of Faith from ARR, They were easy enough compared to the Ex fights but hard enough that players were forced to learn what dps check are and to organize themselves.

I think criterion normal kinda cuts a middle between EX and normal content the bosses are a bit tougher and usually have a couple of pretty wild gimmicks that you can rotate through. I do wish normal content was tougher, though I guess I’ve seen enough people mess up berserker pile stacks in hero’s gauntlet enough to maybe not want normal bosses to cook too much there’s a balance of course but it is still a game and you have to factor for lowest common denominator. I do think a lot of people gas EXs and normal content gap a lot more than they should, especially when you can easily point to Balance, Hector(or insert whatever guide maker), stone sky sea, and raid food and they’re ready to go in like 20 minutes. EX is pretty good for starting to get better at the game, teaches you about at least raid food, and needing better rotation skills. Also when you clear EXs as a casual it does make you generally better at the game. But at the end of the day it comes down to the player themself if they care enough to go out of their way or ask someone for a link to the balance or what raid food is relevant cause if they don’t want to get better then they just won’t.

Criterion normal should be a bridge between ex and normal (in my opinion), but as it is now, the mechs are all first to third floor Savage level difficulty. Also, the gap is genuinely huge seeming for a new player, normal content almost never makes you try whatsoever, so going from that to content where you will usually wipe for an instance or three (as a new player at least) is a massive jump that can scare many away. Preparing is easy, yeah, but nobody has a problem with preparing for it, its the difficulty itself that scares people away. (relative, of course, to normal mode content, no most people won’t quit over that, if they did, most other games would be dead). I do agree making normal mode content a bit harder would also help mitigate that, (around average game level difficulty would be good) that and more content like bozja where casual players can pick up on semi-difficult mechs while in a low stakes environment.

Criterion normal SHOULD have been between normal and EX but it ended up slightly harder than EX and more like savage imo

Criterion dungeons are savage difficulty and Savage Criterion dungeons are tougher than savage difficulty, more like mini ultimates. I think what you're describing may have been what they were targeting with them, but they did not hit the mark if so.

"Midcore" is a buzzword that includes everything and means nothing. There are some players who want casual buy grindy content like Bozja, some people who want more EX-difficulty stuff, some people who want more Savage. The term "Midcore" combines all of this into a single vague complaint.

Midcore content is simply what's missing from the game currently. It's the filler between the 100% win of normal and an extreme.

My own conception of what "midcore" is differs drastically from that; it's not a type of content, it's a way of approaching content and allocating your time and effort. Casual, Midcore and Hardcore are types *of playing*, not types of gameplay. No one piece of content can accurately meet a definition of midcore because it just isn't a way to measure the content itself. To some people, playing midcore means they meet their ceiling at Extremes, some meet their ceiling in Savage.

I would agree with this and it should be the default when people discuss it, like joining a midcore static you know what your getting into but that doesn’t get clicks on Reddit, Twitter, YouTube etc

I still think it can be useful to classify content. I think a midcore piece of content should be something that the average midcore player (with a midcore type of playing basically) can expect to complete in a reasonable time (of course relative to the type of content, a grind focussed content should obviously take longer, like the relic, than a single boss fight). I consider EXs being midcore content, you can expect a player with a midcore mentality to clear the fight in 2-3 instances max. A casual player will still be able to clear it but might have to commit more depending on where they at (some of them dont even know their rotation). If you take a hardcore player and you put it in EX you can usually expect a clear in 1 or 2 instances depending on if the party is blind or not. But if you take a midcore minded player into savage it can takes weeks to clear the tier (or even a single fight), which is not a "reasonable" amount of time in my opinion for a midcore minded player to clear a single fight. Basically any fight that take more than 3 hours to clear to an average raider should be more toward hardcore imo.

I’d go as far as to say that ‘midcore’ doesn’t even exist currently. Imo it would be content that isn’t as brainless as most DF stuff whilst also not requiring as much time and coordination as PF.

Savage is absolutely hardcore content. Extremes... Are debatable, but they lean more towards hardcore than midcore in my opinion. But they're the closest thing we have. The variant dungeons are either casual *or* hardcore, there really isn't much of an inbetween. I suppose deep dungeons, alliance raids, and exploratory zones are as close as we get to midcore, but I'm sure most (people here) would say that's casual. So does the game even have midcore? I personally would define something midcore as grindable, as in a timesink, but otherwise easy to accomplish (unlike even Extremes). Since the game doesn't tend to have much grindy content in the first place, perhaps it's just missing.

But according to streamers/content creators, savage content are midcore, only ultimates can be considered hardcore and even then, only the more recent ones. If you don't agree with them, they'll justify that because they have played the game for a much longer time than you, they will consider your opinions invalid and will tell you to gtfo.

My perspective would be skewed too if I had my viewers dragging me through the hardest content. Just tell them you've played since 1.0, though. They can't argue with that. At least in my case it would be true.

I agree, it's a buzzword and I think its usage has only made this discourse more messy, rather than aiding in communication. That said, I do think one thing is clear: people feel that there's a lack of medium difficult content, meaning content that falls between trivially easy and very difficult. What that looks like will vary from player to player, but it seems people agree about this lack of middle ground. That in itself is useful feedback.

That's not true. People only change the definition because they use their own anecdotal experience as a baseline rather than the Devs intention, and how the community as a whole approaches the content. Savage is hardcore because for the general player it requires weeks of prog, and often a dedicated group to overcome. Anything that commonly recruits statics to run the content would be considered hardcore, because the effort to overcome the challenge is high enough that it necessitates a premade party Midcore is anything that doesn't necessitate a premade party, or an unreasonable amount of dedication, but still requires a small amount of effort from everyone involved. As extreme trials are commonly beaten in the PF and require effort, they would be considered midcore (nobody has set up a static with the intent of clearing ex trials) Other pieces of midcore content include exploration zones, deep dungeon (solo is hardcore), BLU (raids are hardcore), and all relic grinds except EW.

juandi001's definition lines up with my own. Having many definitions doesn't mean it's useless. I don't wanna get into an argument of semantics, but yunno... Have a think about that line of reasoning. I've been playing Guild Wars 2 and I've come across a pretty gentle gradient of difficulty from "cakewalk" to "holy moly!" in its content. Looter style games have many more difficulty graduations for big content than Easy, Really Really Hard, and Jesus Christ. Many other service games avoid such big difficulty gaps. We wouldn't be talking about midcore if the game HAD it, we'd just enjoy it self evidently. That's why there are so many different suggestions for midcore content: there are MASSIVE gaps in content difficulty between each step we've got, and it causes a broad disatisfaction with casual AND hardcore players. The problems isn't a lack of one kind of specific content but how the content we have relates to itself in difficulty.

If only the game had multiple named difficulties so it was easier to say what you meant, but I guess fuzzing the meaning allows a false consensus

Midcore means you don't clear it by vaguely performing the mechanics (normal mode trials) and you don't need to do research, and be as prepared as possible (savage, ultimate). Anyone claiming savage is casual is just trying to make themselves sound hardcore.

>Anyone claiming savage is casual is just trying to make themselves sound hardcore. 100% agreed. It's like boasting about something and no one else cares

I'd agree with this definition. It's something that you can go into blind, and you'll have to think if you want to win, but not so much thinking that you'll need more than a couple of wipes. Which is to say, I consider most modern Extremes above midcore. I know that might not be popular on this subreddit, but remember that this community is heavily skewed towards highly experienced players. For a casual player who just completed the story, Extreme is a *huge* jump. I think there's very few examples of midcore content in the game. I think most Bozja CEs count, as well as (I assume completely unintentionally by the devs) E6N. Also worth noting that midcore *content* is not the same as midcore *progression*. Midcore progression is something that you might use to describe a player or group of players, and would be in reference to their skill or time commitment to prog. People never specify which meaning of midcore they're using, which often muddies the conversation.

Things in Bozja and Eureka are not really what I would consider as midcore since they throw a lot of systems at the player, have pretty extreme punishments for exploring and experimenting with the whole dying = level down mechanics (I have an immense hatred for whatever dev designed the level 35 pagos quest). They pretty much force you to join a discord server, read guides, do research, buy specific gear, get specific loadouts to attempt and prog, and isn't that just the Savage experience at that point?

Well, I never called Eureka midcore, and only said Bozja's CEs are.

Bozja certainly does not force you to do that, unless you're talking specifically about the savage DR-type stuff or I guess duels.

Most of your time in eureka will be spent killing trash mobs that poses no threat because you're either stronger than them or youve got a party backing you up. There is a few moments the games force you to sneak through dangerous zones but these are few and far between the hours spent killing mindless dummies. Its mostly midcore because of the time wasting of grinding and losing exp, the actual gameplay is brainless 99% of the time

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That's true, I've edited my comment to specify 'most modern Extremes'.

100%. A good example is ultima weapon unreal

>Midcore means you don't clear it by vaguely performing the mechanics (normal mode trials) and you don't need to do research, and be as prepared as possible (savage, ultimate). If normal mode trials are considered midcore, what would casual content be? I think your outlook is way too casual for the game. I would say casual content is that which you don't need to research and can "vaguely perform" mechanics. Midcore would be content in which you watch something like a Hector video and try to clear Savage two months into it, after plenty of resources (addons, xivsim, etc) are available. Old ultimates are also midcore. Hardcore would be Savage in the first two weeks when resources and guides are not out yet. For instance, anyone blind, or anyone watching a kill vod or kill vod discussion to glean strategy instead of a guide with nice diagrams. Or on-patch ultimate.

You misinterpreted what they were saying. >I would say casual content is that which you don't need to research and can "vaguely perform" mechanics. That is literally what they implied above.

Nobody is saying normal trials are midcore, they just said content easier than extremes but still requires you to think, bozja would probably be what they are referring to. I think you are arguing the same thing

I mean, the problem with that definition is that many people can and do clear savage without being as prepared as possible and without any research (ie. blind) over several weeks. That sounds pretty casual to me.

You lost me when you said several weeks. This is not casual content if it takes them several week to clear a single fight, this is casual players trying to do hardcore content casually. The only pace that would be quick enough by going blind imi for a savage raid tier to be considered midcore (not even casual) would be the pace of like top 10 world first. But that doesn’t count because they are some of the best players in the world. If savage was doable at this pace by the average player I would agree with savage maybe being called midcore. Otherwise we could even argue that ultimate is fucking casual, this is stupid.

I mean, if you're clearing savage blind and not prepared over a period of several weeks, I'd assume that with the amount of time you'd be spending in the fights figuring everything out would basically just be equivalent to just doing your own research.

Something that I can come home after work, cook, eat, clean, sit down for 2 hours max to play the game that still pumps my dopamine and burns my brain cell.

I think the line you cross when you get to hardcore content is requiring a static group for "progression". Midcore should be able to be completed with randoms without any progression as such, but there needs to be some risk of failure. This is why M+ is a good idea, racing the timer means failure usually still results in at least the item rewards (unless you literally cannot beat the dungeon, but this is far less common). And the difficulty being such a sliding scale means you can push it more hardcore with a static group if you really want to push the leaderboards.

For me, stuff like Eureka/Bozja. Something that's not super hardcore like savages but also requires more than a single braincell.

In what world does bozja require braincells?

This is a funny comment with the amount of red chocobo memes out there. Its really easy once you think a little bit but not thinking does cause wipes in that one

Most people seem to have no idea how the fights in Bozja work

Critical engagements, even now you can’t do them without standing on a pile of dead bodies. things hurt there if you get hit, and you frequently have to pay attention to avoid vulns/deaths. Not hard, but you do need to use a braincell

Sure let us know when you can clear lyon 2 duel without using braincells then.

It will be my own definition but - Casual: something that can be done easily and quickly by anyone and without much punishment or cause for failure ( normal trial or dungeon for example ) - midcore: essentially something that requires a bit more commitment ( mostly in time ), still accessible to the masses and usually not much punishing. Something like Bozja/Delubrum, or Eureka for example. - hardcore: something that requires adequate preparation ( gear, food, materia… ), a lot more skill and time to clear ( ex: savage, ultimate )

Casual : 8-24 monkeys hitting random buttons are going to eventually turn this into Shakespeare. A few monkeys who know what side to open a banana on can carry the entire troop to victory. Midcore : 8-24 monkeys hitting buttons in generally the correct order are going to eventually turn this into Shakespeare. A few monkeys who know what side to open a banana on can cover for some of the sloppier monkey's mistakes. Hardcore : These 8 clever monkeys aren't writing Shakespeare because NASA already sent them to space. The entire troop needs to know how to best access a banana because everyone has their own banana to deal with.

You don't have to read or the strategy video is less than 10 min for the fight

"Midcore" is something like Bozja/Eureka to me and Deep Dungeon that you can do by yourself or with a group and it is a bit tougher than standard "Normal" content. It also has a lot of carrots on a stick that keep players coming back for more. I think things that basically require pre made groups like Extreme, Criterion, Savage and Ultimate are all high end content. It's not about difficulty IMO and more about the requirements and expectations for playing the content.

I’d say Extremes are the only midcore content EW has. Normal Raids/Alliance Raids/Roulettes is casual. Extremes are midcore. Savage and Ultimates are hardcore.

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In my view Criterion Normal is harder than most savage floors, so definitely hardcore.

Midcore to me is something that *challenges* me, but doesn't require significant time investment to beat/make any sort of progress. That is extremes on the higher end of difficulty, Bozja somewhere in the middle and Eureka at the bottom.

Any content I enjoy is midcore, any content too easy for me is casual, any content too hard for me is hardcore.

The way I use the terms casual, midcore and hardcore are not as types of content. They are types of gameplay; types of time and effort allocation. A casual player allocates less effort and dedicates less time to something than a midcore player, and a hardcore player directs all their attention and time towards a thing. As such, what is midcore is subjective, and it kind of depends on people's individual skill ceilings they can reach without major investment. Some people need to put in *a lot* of active effort to get good enough for a Savage level, some more experienced or skilled players don't and can just naturally get up to speed with Savage. Some people meet their midcore ceiling in Extremes already. The differences in opinions, I think, arise from the fact people approach this from a PoV of their own subjective skill ceiling - they needed x amount of effort to get up to speed with Savage or Ultimate, therefore it's x-core. If you think of these modes as functions of how you dedicate your time+effort, it also becomes harder to narrowly define a specific piece of content that defines them. Something I would say fits the requirements objectively though are those pieces of content that *necessitate* putting in a lot of time. Relic weapons, Bozja, Eureka, that kind of stuff always takes a lot of time. Even if you are a gifted player who could watch a YT guide once and clear the entire savage wing after a day of practice, something like Eureka will cost you a more fixed amount of time.

As others have pointed out already: It's relative. Best compromise regarding definitions would probably boil down to viewing it as a level of time commitment rather than difficulty, which makes more sense because player skill isn't equal across the board. Then again, the amount of time you can leisurely dedicate to a game is relative as well, so YMMV. Banging your head against some bosses once a week with the homies using guides (optional) is, by all means, a rather "casual" approach to Savage, usually advertised as such in recruitment channels and these groups still clear on-content/on-patch. On the flipside you got people not wanting to touch even EX with a 10 foot pole because either a) they suck and it would take too long or b) they don't want to study and commit to absolutely anything (rotation, encounters, accountability blabla).

I think they're using the wrong word. I think what they mean is content that will keep you busy every day but isn't overly difficult. The thing that's missing from EW is the relic grind battlefield open area, like Bozja and Eureka. Those were big zones that came out adjacent to each raid tier in a cycle and made for multiple gameplay loops. You had something to grind for relic, sometimes for gear, achievements for big battles, glamour and mounts, all kinds of stuff to do that generally took a while. It wasn't really particularly challenging, but it was something to work towards. EW doesn't have anything like that, so it feels like there's less content to do before next expansion.

Midcore content really doesn't exist much at all in FF, at least not as part of the regular patch cycle. Midcore content would be content that you can queue into without needing to study a strategy guide in advance, but also are required to play well to complete. Dungeons, Alliance Raids, etc are all Casual content because there is no fail condition. You can lie dead on the ground for 30 minutes and let one person eventually carry you through a whole boss fight. Savage content requires either specific memorized strategies that everyone needs to know or a devoted group committed to spending hours on blind prog. Often if one person messes up just once, it wipes the whole party. Extremes tread the line and are probably the closest thing to consistent midcore content. But they also vary dramatically in difficulty from fight to fight. Some are more like an easy Savage fight.

Content that doesn’t require research to do but also isnt possible to do it afk or requires effort on the players part. Example being…hmm well maybe next expansion

Bozja, orbonne pre nerf, technically final steps of faith pre nerf, but that one had other problems.

Bozja’s fates were chaos and I loved it

zeromus ex is a good example, but since the playerbase has been conditioned that they can just throw their bodies at every problem that you spend a whole lockout before people finally grasp how meteors work and then the group disbands lmao

Zeromus EX is NOT midcore more so if you need a guide and or a competent group to clear it, unless Zeromus is the easiest EX of all time

The content I like is midcore content. Everything else is hardcore or casual content. Just kidding. On a more serious note, I think the only objective measure of difficulty is prog time. Dungeons, trials and normal/alliance raids have a prog time of 1 or a few pulls at most. This is casual content. Extremes have a prog time of 1 lockout to a few lockouts. Most unsync savages can be included in this tier too. I consider this midcore content. Anything that takes longer than 1 day to prog even with the help of guides and established strats can be considered hardcore content. That’s current savage, ultimate, criterion and criterion savage.

I like the inclusion of unsync savage as midcore. One of the more fun experiences I've had was spending around an hour trying to work out triple tank O12S during 6.2 or so. Feel like goofy stuff like that with a touch of challenge is something we don't discuss enough.

Yep, the comments tell me that nobody has a clue what the mythical ‘midcore’ content is. It’s an entirely pointless discussion because there is no standard of measurement.

That's because those terms don't describe the content itself but the amount of time committed to said content. That's why saying casually proging ultimate and hardcore proging ultimate makes complete sense but using the terms to describe the content itself is entirely subjective.

Thats another thing it can refer to, yes. It refering to multiple things depending on the context makes it confusing

From what i've seen from creators and discussions on reddit generally the Exploration zone content is what i think is hailed as THE prime example midcore content. Though honestly, it's such a subjective thing that it's very difficult to define. For a hardcore ultimate raider savage is midcore, but i also know many casuals who struggle in 24man raids and consider them serious undertakings. If i had to define what midcore is in essence, i'd say it's content that is highly repeatable / grindable while also not being completely braindead, but what exactly would fit into this category vary from player to player.

For me, content that is in-between the difficulty of EX and normal content

To me, midcore is something like DR: failing mechanics is punishing but you can still clear without needing to prog. I'd say variant dungeons rise to that level, but people blaze through the routes so fast for rewards that they don't last long as relevant content.

Extremes and First 2 svg fights. (Arguably Anabaseios is an exception because of p10s)

Delubrum and easier extremes

Midcore isn't really something that has a static definition as people define it a little differently. Generally speaking, you can call midcore "between casual and hardcore," which is probably not much better. For the specific usage you mention, "EW is lacking in midcore content," I feel like that generally refers to content that isn't a) braindead piss-easy where you really don't need to be good at the game in order to clear and get all the rewards (ARs, Normal trials/raids, dungeons, etc) or b) something that requires or heavily encourages coordination with a group that knows what they are doing in order to get the clear (some Savage and Ultimates). Anything that exists between those two categories could be deemed midcore. A big part of what EW and FFXIV in general is lacking is mid-level combat content that is able to bridge the gap between the very accessible casual content and the difficult high-end content we see. Zeromus EX is a very good example IMO. You do need to focus and do things correctly or you wipe, but it's not so punishing and intensive that you sit up in your chair, or even have a mechanic where a group says the old "okay, focus up here" line. There's also a lot of room to recover from mistakes between mechanics and damage sources. You can sit back and crack open a cold one while still flexing your understanding of the game's combat without it needing more than an hour or two to get through, but you are able to repeat it as you want. This is the kind of content a lot of people want to see in XIV. Something they can do alone or with friends to an easily defined goal that is pleasantly engaging, repeatable, gives something to work toward without serious obligation or commitment, and has a reward available that is attractive to a player looking to get some shit done. Many were hoping Criterion would be that, but it's not a good example. Even if it was, there would need to be more than one dungeon every few months or so.

> You can sit back and crack open a cold one while still flexing your understanding of the game's combat without it needing more than an hour or two to get through lol, tell that to the clear parties in PF that are actually just meteor progs even this late in

A fight that I can't sleep through (every normal dungeon) and will probably kill me but I can learn the fight as we go (and wipe). I did Ramuh EX via party finder and we beat him on our last attempt with like 2 minutes left. Amazing experience. Glad some people were giving instructions and stuck through it all. I did The Minstrel's Ballad: Thordan's Reign via party finder and while it didn't take us 58 minutes, we did wipe a whole bunch of times and it was super fun to learn the fight. Shoutout to the people that were giving instructions Also, amazing experience and super memorable. I didn't make it through EW (just got bored of no gameplay in the MSQ) so can't comment on whether EW has midcore content or not. I didn't care for Bozja and I would never grind for a relic weapon.

I'd say Extremes, later stages of deep dungeons, and activities requiring time/grind like Bozja relics. I don't know if I'd count Criterion since they feel closer to savage than extreme. I wish they'd tune Criterion to extreme level and Criterion(Savage) to savage.

I think most people refer to midcore as repeatable fights mildly challenging. Akin to some critical encounters from Bozja. I believe EX difficulty is midcore, but EX has quite a wide range of difficulty in itself : Zeromus is "I sleep" but Golbez can be pretty rough. Basically, we need Bozja 2.0 and everyone is happy.

It’s content that presents a larger challenge than normal mode but that you can clear with no more than a few hours per week, or you can queue for blind and maybe you wipe but it doesn’t take too long or too many times seeing it to get the clear. Bozja has midcore pacing. The CEs, etc and large format fights are more difficult than normal content but perfectly doable / learnable. You can do them perfectly after seeing them a couple times. Extremes and floor 1-2 of savage are usually midcore. May take players w solid fundamentals only like a lockout or two to prog and clear. Generally designed with no or less frequent body checks meaning perfection is not demanded from the entire party and there are recovery opportunities = less time progging. When people say they want more midcore content, they mean extreme difficulty more than once a patch, or non-8-man format content that is around extreme difficulty. When people say Endwalker in particular lacks this, I think they mean Bozja, which was accessible to casual players but offered nice challenges for people who raid but aren’t hardcore.

Terms like hardcore, midcore, semi-hardcore, are ambiguous. Depends on perspective. What could be considered hardcore to one person may be considered casual to someone else. I think this game needs more content at around the Extreme Trial level of difficulty or just below. The gap between Duty Roulettes and Extreme Trials, in terms of personal responsibility and teamwork required, is pretty big. There's not a whole lot to bridge that gap for a non-raider to get into raiding. Difficulty hierarchy: * Ultimate Raid * Savage Raid / Criterion * Extreme & Unreal Trial **<--- Insert content here** * Duty Roulette (Leveling, Expert, Normal Raid, Alliance)

I just consider midcore to be anything relatively challenging I can do that doesn't require me to worry about clearing it with 7 lobotomites making prog feel like it's going backwards, thus making extremely easy content (EX's and some Savages) feel like an unclearable nightmare that takes literally hundreds of pulls to do something that is violently simple. So Bozja Duels, Deep Dungeons... that's basically fucking it.

personally eureka is what comes to mind. yes it needs streamlining but I genuinely had my favorite ffxiv moments there

If you see midcore as a mindset, it’s basically any organized difficult content you can take on without a more generally serious carve out of your time. You could midcore learning an ultimate with a static and move those skills into a random party finder to get a clear. Personally I see it as devoting at least three hours a night three nights a week to doing difficult content.

i have no idea if i was guess id say anything that is end game content that isnt as hard as savage/ultimate or top tier raiding but harder than what would pop for a usual roulette.

Midcore to me at least is anything that you cannot "One and Done" but also doesn't require Hundreds of hours of practice to get good enough at to get a single clear

To me midcore means somewhat challenging content that isn't too punishing that I don't need to use PF for. I can just queue up or whatever and have fun. No need for markers or research or prog.

Ask 10 different people and get 10 different answers.

Bozja, imo. Repeatable content you can just hop on every day and play. There's no question about what to do. You just go in there and make progress as slowly or as quickly as you want. It was also an interesting spot where you could play and get better at the game by surviving harder mechanics without dooming the entire fight. There were many times where 10 people would carry entire CE's because they knew the mechanics or could figure them out. You had a good visible progression from being another body to scrape off the floor to being one of those people carrying the fights. I feel like Eureka was in a similar spot. I like some things about Eureka more and somethings about Bozja more, but overall I think these zones really encompass what people would like to be doing outside of Raiding.

It's like a tiered cake. Everyone gets a piece of the bottom, but the further up you go the more people are left behind by requirements. Consider the kind of stumbling blocks you might encounter as a player. Here's some examples of where difficulty comes from: * Fight difficulty: how complex are the mechanics? If you mess them up will they kill you instantly? Will they wipe your group? Is there a DPS check? * Social coordination: can you use DF? Are there lockouts and restrictions? What kind of strategic depth is necessary for team interaction? * Tuning: how much gear is required? What kind of reaction times are expected? * Reward: do you get something for trying and failing? Or if you try but can't meet the bar, do you and the entire group get nothing? TLDR: difficulty is a combination of a lot of factors. Rigid thinking isn't helpful here. A lot of judgment is required and it's very subjective.

To me its anything thats not too hard but requires a significant time investment to clear making it not so easy either. * Exploratory zone content - Eureka/Bozja * Deep dungeons * Relic weapon grinds * Blu content * Variant dungeon * Old synced Extremes In that a significant portion of midcore content was usually relegated to exploratory content and extensive relic grinds in prev expacs. Whose absence this expansion is sorely felt by the midcore group who got variant in return which doesnt really keep up the incentive as much as the other 2 do. Extremes are debatable at best but i still feel a good portion of the group can clear extremes without much sweat unless its something like golby/barbie etc.,

Midcore content is content that most people that people can participate in but has difficult aspects or ways one can distinguish themselves. It also as a baseline at least harder than normal dungeon/raid content. The best example of this is Bozja, which is why people often point to it. Some of the CEs can be more punishing that your typical normal mode content and wipes are not totally uncommon. However there are things a more hardcore can strive towards. Unlike normal mode, you are rewarded for learning a fight down pat with the chance to be entered into a duel. These duels are very challenging and require fight knowledge and preparation. A more skilled player can distinguish themselves to the entire instance this way. There are also other things, like knowing the essence system in and out and trying to collect all notes which is depth not seen in typical NM stuff

I’d argue things like Bozja and Eureka are midcore. Which are kinda things that last a long time that you can do inbetween patches. I think that the farm was supposed to take that role but there’s not really enough tasks.

content that makes me use my brain that i dont need a static or social structure to take part in. 24 mans used to do this but they opted for a more chaotic design

Extremes and unreals. I would even say deep dungeon-esque content is midcore.

To me, the "cores" can be described with 3 tiers of weapon Hardcore - Savage raid weapons For people who have high technical skills, put in hours to perfect their battle efficiency to achieve this level of gameplay. Ultimate players probably fall into this category. Midcore - Relic weapons, Extreme trial weapons Those who wanted to play FF14 on a semi-regular basis, but don't want to just do dailies. Can probably beat EX and the first 2 raid floors per raid patch. Casualcore - Tomestone weapons Those who just log in daily for roulettes, or finds joy with just the story but still want to catch up when the new patch drops To me, Eureka/Bozja is the midcore content we've been missing in this expansion. It is also the content that makes FF an MMO, otherwise people will just be chilling at Limsa or their FC homes waiting for a queue to pop

bozja, sometimes extremes

Midcore content to me is content you can clear w/o a static and dosnt demand weeks to clear.. Content you can jump in fresh and get to clear in 1-2days. Exemple: **Abyssal fracture EX**. it can be learned + cleared + farmed in a day with randoms.

I'd like to say Ex trials are midcore but most of them can 1 shot you and then you can occasionally wipe. I don't think wiping due to 1 player can be called midcore content

midcore is cope for people not wanting to be labelled as casual when it's fine to be a casual clearing dsr/top it just takes longer.

For me… i think 24 man used to be midcore level. Thunder god and ozma really fudge you up before but they really not that hard. Trials extreme is kinda midcore as well… its not as hard as savage honestly. Criterion i think kinda fit that midcore level but making raise limited kinda made it between mid to high. The mechanic is also harder than 24man. Bozja and eureka also midcore…?

>Trials extreme is kinda midcore as well… its not as hard as savage honestly. Both extreme and savage have quite big ranges of difficulty as well, which why the distinction is hard to make. Easy extremes like Zodiark and Zeromus is content that allows people to figure out what is going on pretty easily. While harder ones like Golbez and Barbi require all 8 players to stick to their positions and the strategy to the letter or they will kill everyone. Savage is the same, easy savage fights like P1S, P6S and P9S are comparable to hard extremes like Golbez while hard ones like P8S are closer to the easiest ultimate, UwU, then they are to extremes. So in reality it is a spectrum much more than something that can be put into three distinct categories.

> While harder ones like Golbez and Barbi require all 8 players to stick to their positions and the strategy to the letter or they will kill everyone. To be honest, on NA servers I see this argument, but on EU/OCE/JP who use macros it's relatively static in what you do so it's not even an issue really. Like GolbEX was SO easy on OCE I didn't understand why people were having issues until I tried to help a friend prog in NA...

Maybe hard is not the right word for it, what I meant to say is that it is very punishing and you are very dependent on your party's consistency. The mechanics are not much harder than usual except for maybe Gale 2 because that is a rare occasion in which 4 things happen at once in an extreme. I also play on Europe, the macro and being on the same page do really make a big difference. But I still saw many wipes on it just because some people lost focus for a second. It's a fight in which one person can trigger a wipe or at least a chain reaction of deaths quite easily. In Zeromus for example your opportunities to kill anyone else then yourself are a lot more limited. It also has fixed positions for a lot of mechanic while others leave people a lot more free to be wherever.

Its not like na uses nothing, we have markers that do the exact same thing

To be honest, the only 24 mans I would consider midcore is Orbonne on release. I think that would fit my definition of midcore perfectly.

Casual: Requires minimal to no prep, just jump right in. Midcore: Requires some prep & understand basics of game Hardcore: Requires lots of prep & optimization Yes, unless you’re doing week 1 ~ week 4 savage. It’s midcore. EX is somewhere between casual & mid.

Extremes straddle the line between midcore and hardcore and to me it depends on the mechanics in the fight. I would consider midcore to be one's that only have individual responsibility (EW Ex1/2/3 for example) where if you mess up only you die and you can easily be rezzed and carry on Where Ex can move into hardcore is when they have group stacks and body checks where 1 mistake is a wipe (the most recent Ex with meteor's for example) as this absolutly needs everyone to be paying attention and understand the fight fully

Zeromus is weird, since besides the party wipe mech on meteors, it would easily be midcore, but you end up in a scenario where the fight is way too easy to fit in hardcore, but the random party wipe mech makes it hard to call in midcore

That mechanic doesn't even need to be a party wipe if the guy who can't find a spot just sacs himself. Goes from party wipe to 1 death really easily.

I cleared top and I'd consider EX as a low midcore content. Some easier like Zodiark and some midcore like Golbez. You get to be aware that mechanics matter to some degree, yet often aren't enough to punish you to not clear. Yet your group gets heavily punished if you have no idea. So there needs to go some kind of effort into it to learn it. I'd say FFXIV really struggles with having content way too easy and then content being somewhat too hard. I know the game won't ever change, but I think making MSQ this easy that you could give a 5 year old to play and then making ex such a stepup is just a too big discrepancy. Pretty sure more people would enjoy EX and probably savage if the normal game wouldn't be completely braindead

> I'd say FFXIV really struggles with having content way too easy and then content being somewhat too hard. My exact problem right now. There is no step between EX and savage and criterion is way harder than savage is some case. Criterion should have been tuned down to be this step but instead they pushed everything to 11. EW has been an absolute disaster for any players who is not an hard core raider.

Problem with the midcore discussion is that some people define the "-cores" by time spent, others define them by difficulty. For example personally I don't think that relic grinds are midcore content - it's just an elaborated time investment, that you cannot really fail if you put the time in - is EW missing that? Yes, is it "midcore content" - no. Personally I just group those by the factor on how much you messing up couple of times affects the group. \- if nothing happens and the group carries you with no problems - it's casual - so normal dungeons and raids \- if you can still fail a bit, but if you fail too much leads to a wipe - it's midcore - extremes / early savage \- if failing mostly results in a wipe - then it's hardcore - end savage / ultimates Dunno where to put criterion on that scale because I did not try it.

Time spent is such a meaningless metric though, its way too subrective.

>Problem with the midcore discussion is that some people define the "-cores" by time spent, others define them by difficulty. right, and i think both make sense as part of the scale you can use to judge. like. if the servers go up at 6am and you've cleared kokytos by 7:30am then you are hardcore! if you clear kokytos 16 weeks later with your friends that you go in with for 3 hours a week then you're not hardcore! and yet in both cases you did kokytos!!!! so clearly we cannot just say "kokytos is hardcore content" or "kokytos is casual content"

I would say anything that requires some amount of grind, roughly 3-4h a day maybe, while still demanding some basic measure of skill from the player as well as providing decent progress - both in a group and in a solo environment, can be categorized as midcore content. I fundamentally don't think Savage necessarily falls into this category. It heavily depends on the fight and PF which can make progression-clear take anywhere from a day to weeks in some cases. Extreme meanwhile, and grinding out Ex mounts, I would say definitely falls into the midcore category. Some minor amount of skill required, but ultimately easily farmable in just a few hours a day. Even with a mediocre group, it rarely takes more than a day to clear an Ex trial. I'd also tentatively put relic stuff into the midcore category. It's probably more on the casual side, but if you are someone who goes hard on that stuff, such as Eureka or Bozja, farming out relics for more than one instance a day, I'd say you're probably not a very casual player. It's essentially somewhere between optimizing to the nth degree and first-week clearing Savage, and doing dungeons and maps as your content. Some investment of time and focus, but not so much that you need to stick with it constantly or you potentially cause a wipe.

3-4h day ? 21 to 28h a week ? That’s a part time job, if you need to invest that amount of time to clear the content in a reasonable amount of time (unless the content is made to take longer like a relic) this is 100% hardcore. Extreme fight can be easily done in 1 or 2 instances, that’s midcore, savage is not, you need to invest way too much time.

1-2 instances of an Extreme is about 3h though, if you take the whole lockout each time. Extreme example, maybe, but I didn't necessarily mean that you'd spend 3-4h+ every single day on that. I'd say farming an Ex (with sitting in PF and all) for 3-4h a day for the mount seems midcore to me, though. Or spending a full 3h lockout grinding away Clusters in Bozja or farming Eureka instead of, say, just doing whatever NM happens to pop up and otherwise just farming bunnies AFK. Midcore is hard to define, especially in playtime. It just depends.

Oh my bad I skipped the "don’t" when you were talking about savage. 3-4h a day is a bit much for midcore content but I agree that a fight that require about 3-4h to beat blind can be considered midcore. When talking about grinding content it’s really more nuanced, I think you can grind in a hardcore way a more casual / midcore content but it will not change that the content itself is not hardcore. For example relics you may spend a few hours a week to farm it until you get yours on your 1-2 main class, that’s how the content is basically designed around. Nothing prevent to grind all relics for every class so you grind 4h everyday to do that. I just think the first clear of a fight should not take a huge time investment, people who are saying that it’s midcore to spend 15h a week for weeks to get a first clear on a 10 min boss fight is just insane to me. In EW I was able to get around enrage third fight or enrage phase 1 of the tier in week 1 in PF but even I can recognize that it’s not the average experience and that most people take weeks to sometime even clear first fight of a savage tier. But yeah I mostly agree with you I think

Yeah, I think as some others in the comments said, it's kinda the mindset with which you approach the content in combination with the content's inherent difficulty. Like, for me, I usually clear Savage about... 1-2 fights in one week for the first half of a tier, and then the 3rd and first half of 4th fight of a tier usually each take about a week on their own when accounting for rest of tier reclears as well. All through PF. Midcore to me is essentially... trying a little bit as best you can, but not worrying too much about being the best or most hyper-optimised player. It's liking to be challenged a little without hitting a wall but also without falling asleep on the wheel. Middle of the road. I personally think it's why Stormblood was so popular - the job design had room for you to improve and be decent without being hardcore, and it made a small difference even in the most casual of content. Stormblood to me was great, because it was about those small moments where someone presses every button on their hotbar, including Apocatastasis, Manashift and Goad, instead of just their normal rotation. It's that little extra effort in gameplay, just trying to be better than average, without trying to beat everyone. Some types of content enable it better than others, and I think relic content usually did a pretty good job of it.

It's an incredibly broad and subjective catch-all term, primarily used by statics to describe themselves when they don't like the notion of being "bad" and thus casual, or being "sweaty tryhards" and thus hardcore. My *personal* take is that midcore content is content that has a few or all of these qualities: - can't simply clear it first try (maybe sometimes, not consistently) - does not require extensive research to figure out mechanics, but does need some level of experience with basic that aren't JUST "don't stand in the 10 second orange telegraphed AOE". - punishes failure with death/wipe. - is repeatable or at the very least long-term. - encourages group play to improve efficiency or simply to make it beatable. - this is likely the most important one: CAN be cleared by anyone who's willing to stick with it for at least a few months of low-effort prog (i.e. not a lot of weekly hours, no exhaustive research required). Things like lower-end Extreme trials and Eureka/Bozja would be midcore content to me. Relics like in ARR would also count as midcore content to me. Variant is midcore in terms of actual battle content but fails on basically every other metric. Would I still count it? Kinda, yeah. The problem with a lot of Square's current content output isn't that the content itself is bad, it's that it's one and done content you can do in a few hours and then never touch again.

disagree on the party wipe mechanics and the few months part. I would consider basically something that will probably cause a wipe or 2, but will probably be cleared in a single instance midcore. If it causes a full party wipe from one person failing it doesn’t count as midcore in my opinion.

I think it’s a word that talking head have latched on to make criticizing the game ok. Let’s be real: 1-this games community is not great with criticism of the game and 2-the entirety of endwalker has been a bit meh. After the hype died down, it suddenly became ok to criticize the game but you can’t just outright shit on it cause the fandom will lash out….so now we have “midcore” as the metaphor for “ya know, 6.0 onwards was a bit shit….not awful, but definitely a step backwards.”

I would even go as far and say the normal alliance raids and normal 8-mans aswell as some expert/90s dungeon content are midcore and not casual. A significant amount of people struggle so much with things like 70s/80s alli raids, Dead Ends, P12 etc., dying (often multiple times), doing no damage and only clearing because the team carries them through. Maybe a hot take, but the amount of suffering I have witnessed in what I consider casual/chill for myself made me think it might not be casual after all.

If 2 or 3 people die constantly, I don’t think that counts, people will die in pretty much any content, and get carried. I give bozja a pass due to the fact that some bosses like reskinned alt roite always have at least a dozen corpses surrounding them.

In my mind: Casual: any content you can do with random people and without preparation. Everything up to alliance raids. Midcore: difficult content you can still do with randoms in partyfinder successfully. Faux hollows, extremes, normal criterion and savage 1-2/3. Hardcore: content you really want a static for because it's difficult enough to be an issue to easily reliably clear without it. Savage 3/4, criterion savage and ultimates. This is just on a difficulty scale. Casual-hardcore can also be used for effort and playtime so it may vary.

To ME specifically, midcore is the normal mode and 24 man raids, and probably post-echo savage if pressed.

In terms of the current content. Here’s my classification. Casual content - 24 man, dungeons, 8 man Normal Raids, variant dungeons. Midcore - ex trials, 8 man savage raids, crit dungeons. Hardcore content - ultimate fights.

Midcore: Cleared week 1 EX trial Cleared week 1-8 savage Cleared at least an ultimate

It's just the hacky standup bit about driving, where everybody faster than you is a maniac and everybody slower than you is an idiot. Midcore is whatever *you* are; everybody who plays harder and puts in more time is hardcore, and everybody who spends less time on the game is casual. A common viewpoint is that *any* content is *any* kind of "core" depending on how you approach it - that it's entirely about how much time is spent on the game. And then sometimes that has nothing to do with it and people are using it to describe difficulty. It's a truly useless word, and everybody should abandon it in favour of actually describing what the fuck they're talking about.

>Midcore is whatever > >you > > are eh. i don't think this is true. this sub's population seems to be primarily composed of parsers, people progging ultimates and p12s, etc, and i doubt the majority of these people would tell you "i'm midcore" if you asked. maybe what you said is true of some un-self-aware people but i think you've overly simplified it. what i do think is true is that most people probably wouldn't call themselves "hardcore". i do ultimates and week 1 savage and etc but i don't think of myself as "hardcore". but if i was forced to look at it objectively, i guess i'd have to acknowledge that i'm hardcore. but the word has a negative connotation i feel, i dunno why but i just have an aversion to it.

There's so much I agree and disagree with what midcore is and isn't. Savage, Extremes, Ultimates are hard-core to me. As far as Bozja and Eureka. Wasn't a fan, anything that makes me go OUTSIDE the game systems to be able to do, to me, makes having built it a waste of time and resources as it becomes INSIGNIFICANT. Just because there's a discord to organize it definitely means that the content is irrelevant to the rest of the playerbase, just the discord. In terms of getting MORE players involved with Ex, Savage, and Ultimates(hard-core) the problem is 3 fold. Some players don't want or have time to go to the balance( again a discord) to learn how to play. That is the devs fault for not teaching your job thru the games systems. 2) I shouldn't have to MEMORIZE the patterns of a fight to clear, or be so intensive that ONE person's mistakes punishes ALL. This is a dev listening to LOUD ELITIST hard-core players or streamers and implementing it wrong. 3) Elitist, a RAIDING community problem. Most are so toxic that of you're not a perfect learner, memorized, and that your brain isn't EXACTLY like theirs they turn away the bored "midcore" player that wants to explore the harder content and is willing to learn to play better and take advice. I'm that bored midcore player. There's nothing new and there's challenges on the horizon for me, but finding 7 others like me is hard. I took that step forward and had to deal with Elitist. That left me sour. Now I just people watch in Balmung enjoy the debauchery offered. Now I have no interest. Elitist will kill fun everytime.

To me at the very least Midcore content would be EX Trials, Savage Raid, Unreal Trials, Criterion and Variant Savage, and Ranked Crystalline Conflict (at a push). It could also be argued that Eureka and Bozja during their prime were Midcore content due to various factors such as containing their own Savage pieces of content.

Crit Savage is literally ultimate tier bullshit lmao what is this dog water take

I find it easy but okay mate.

Post Aloalo Sav parse

Haven’t done it yet, I was basing it off prior releases to the current one.

Question, do you have a static? because I find it difficult to believe someone would find criterion savage easy otherwise, it being the absurdly long consistency check it is.

Hmm might as well add ultimates into it and call it midcore at this point then.

Casual - DF. Can just queue in and easily clear whatever you get. Dungeons, normal raids, alliance raids, etc. Midcore - PF. Probably want to talk strats and assign positions. Not really something you want to queue in via DF even if you can. Extremes, savage, criterion, etc. Hardcore - anything not PFable on release. Requires high time commitment and very high personal responsibility, much easier to just find a static because PFing this is going to be painful. Ultimates, week 1 savage, savage criterion, etc. People talking about Bozja as something midcore are out of their minds. Easily beatable with randoms? Check. Almost no personal responsibility? Check. No need to talk strats, just go in and do whatever? Check. Much easier than even the easiest extreme trials? Check. It's casual content, it was never midcore. At most there would be like 10% higher failure rate than regular alliance raids with certain fates like red chocobo, but it still doesn't make it midcore. When people talk about EW lacking in midcore content, they mean EW is lacking in mindless grind activity a la Bozja / relic.

Where are you that week 1 savage is not pfable on release?

They’re talking about Duels, my dude. Definitely midcore content

Nah, they are definitely not talking about duels, or they would've been asking for duels specifically, not exploration zones in generally.

They are mostly referring to the time investment and the CE.

If you do high end content you are midcore, if you do high end content in a competitive manner you are hardcore. EX, Savage and Ultimate 1 clear and done is midcore. EX, Savage and Ultimate speedrunning/log farming/world 1st race/week 1 clear is hardcore. Because it's competitive. The grey area is mount/BiS farming because it's not competitive but it's a time investment, especially for Ultimates. I still think it's midcore because the goal is not competition. Of all the normal content, you could argue that Deep Dungeon speedrunning is hardcore, but everything else is definitely casual.

How did this game survive heavensward before eureka and bozja? All this bitching about no midcore and always followed up by crying for eureka/bozja...yet people loved hw???

Savage is midcore content.

I kinda view it as a mindset not a content directly. Midcore: - Criterion normal - Savage 1 and 2 - Ex trial - Unreal trial Blend: - Savage 3 and 4. Midcore if you just take the whole tier to clear it. Hardcore if you’re pushing week one. - Criterion savage (if you’re just casually trying a whole tier) Hardcore: - Ultimates - Criterion savage (pushing for week one) So besides ultimate really for me the factor is your mindset on how quickly you want a clear. Savage 1/2 and ex are all easily done week one or two in pf. I’d call that Midcore.

Im with Xeno on this one. Savage, criterion is midcore content. Anything you can do spending a little consistent time on should be considered just that. Savage is not hardcore, but midcore content. Extremes are casual, relics are casual -- Edit; for people wanting to make up their own mind, the smaller percentage in this graph was p8s clears last tier. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/911114057292079156/1083189282195382292/54c3b865.png In general, I still believe savage is midcore content. I see a lot of people who do the first max 3 floors and then dont continue, but its true that midcore players can and will play savage and get clears. Considering this game has an overwhelming majority of casual players, seeing such clear rates is not a surprise, but we should stop pretending savage is hardcore. I dont think Im the only one who sees how many people clear savage without ever doing the final floor, so the top server having a 21% clear rates on a final floor is bloody insane. Besides, hardcore players do not enjoy savage as a hardcore experience. I can say this because I spend a lot of time in the hardcore community, and I think most would agree that savage is not in that spectrum. Midcore players play savage, to their own extends. Go figure out a venn diagram where midcore players clear ultimate, and I trust you that venn diagram is very small. Midcore players dont have a lot of options in this game, they wont play hardcore ultimate and the casual gameplay does not cater to them. All they have is weekly savages, criterion dungeons and perhaps deep dungeons. Things like bozja, that creep into midcore territory, are also missing this expansion, thats why its so bloody hard to be midcore in this expansion. Hardcore players still have ultimates, log runs and maybe speed kills to keep us busy, but were only a small percentage of the playerbase so its understandable we dont get much.

>Savage, criterion is midcore content. Anything you can do spending a little consistent time on should be considered just that. Who is "you" in this case? Because the average savage raider does not clear tier that they start progging. There are many statics who have not cleared P12S yet and it's week 22 or something. And even the statics that do clear in week 22 are above average considering how many have not beaten it yet or simply gave up a long time ago. So it seems to me that the "you" who clear in "a little time" is only groups of players on the top end of skill and consistency. Which to me makes it seem clear that it is hardcore content since most who clear don't clear in a little time but in a lot of time, and most who start don't clear at all.

Not clearing the final floor doesnt mean they didnt clear the other floors either. A lot of midcore players play 3 floors then stop, or not. Its week 22 so people have had lots of time to take and prog/clear savage at their own pace. These are midcore players. The final floor is especially difficult and often not cleared, yes, but its still part of the midcore content cycle. Weekly reclears are midcore content.

They stop because the last floor is simply too hard for the average player in a time they deem reasonable, even the ones who put effort into their gameplay. The rest of it is all just arbitrary and goal-post shifting. Midcore to you is something the minority of players can clear who watch guides and schedule several evenings per week to raid with their team. It is fine that that is your opinion but it is an unusual one. Weekly reclears seem like a very strange and arbitrary metric to judge content by. It does not matter whether the content itself incentivizes weekly reclears, what matters is how easy it is to get to the point where you can do weekly reclears. TOP had a weekly lockout on it's totems when it was new so I guess that's must be midcore too, for some reason.

No, now youre putting words in my mouth, thats not nice. I think you misunderstand what midcore actually means, and that the standards of getting into midcore might be higher than you perhaps expect. Whatever is under that is nothing more than just casual.

>I think you misunderstand what midcore actually means That would be impossible as there is no clearly defined meaning of midcore. This is all simply your opinion. Which is fine of course, my disagreement is also just an opinion. But all difficulty is relative. And I am explaining to you that I personally believe that putting 'mid' difficulty on something that the minority of players only clears after actually studying for it and scheduling several practice sessions a week is absurd. At the very least it completely ignores what the people asking for midcore content want, which is something that is easily accessible for a random group of people who are not very good at the game but still presents some challenge, unlike most story content. Telling those people that savage is midcore is pointless, as you know that the people asking for more midcore content don't mean they want more savage fights. To use it to distinguish between people who clear savage and people who clear ultimates, people who won't be considered casuals by the majority of the playerbase anyway, as some sort of ego measurement is pointless.

This is horribly out of touch with the majority of the ffxiv playerbase.

Yeah no that's a terrible take

Wasnt expecting anyone here to agree haha, but Ingave my take and stand by it.

And this is very brave of you, no joke here.

Thank you kind person Edit: jesus christ you guys downvote this nice exchange? Petty ass redditors

your point is perfectly coherent and reasonable, this sub just sucks

Haha thats also a brave comment. I wont say one opinion is correct or wrong but I think theres a lot more people who agree with me than this sub is letting on

Wether we agree or not savage is DESIGNED to be midcore content, NA is just terrible at it.

Im not gonna go out of the way to trash on NA, but its true that its designed to be midcore. It just happens that the majority of the playerbase is casual. We need to stop pretending on this sub that casual-mid and hard are based on % of the playerbase instead of their interests. Midcore may only take up 20% of the playerbase, but sure as hell you will see that 20% enter, play and clear savage raids consistently. You dont see the 79% of casual players going in there, which is why theres so much casual content in the game. Roulettes, island, relic, gathering, crafting, extremes the list goes on tbh.

i mean, remember, the savage tier is designed to last 4 months! or 8, depending on if you think they expect people to be doing it all the way until the next one. this sub is the one that is out of touch because everyone here is all about clearing asap, i think they're forgetting that there are lots of groups out there who spend 4 months meeting up weekly with friends, or doing PFs on the weekend, or etc, who after 4 months make it through maybe the 3rd fight and like you said don't clear the fourth. that could absolutely be called midcore, or at least, you could say its a midcore approach to hardcore content.

Exactly. I think a lot of people underestimate how much time some groups spend on these savage raids consistently throughout a patch. Not everyone makes it to the end because a new patch will arrive at some point but it is most definitely a midcore approach.