What is a hardcore game?

qweniden

Im confused by what people mean by this.

By hardcore, what are you talking about?

• Slow leveling?
• Timesinks?
• PvP focused?
• Full loot?
• Significant death penalty?
• Requires grouping?

 

 

 

gruminator

the term hardcore is so washed out and cheesy by now it has lost its meaning (in my eyes)

so all MMOs can be hardcore.

some play wow for 15 hours straight, thats hardcore if you ask me (an excample)

there are offcourse groups of people who try it inflate their E-pens by using hardcore about every little thing they take.

when a git some years back said, and he was serius, that he was hardcore casual, the word hardcore died in my world.

Ilvaldyr

It means different things to different people.

To me, it just means "not casual friendly" and refers to any game that I can't progress in without having to play many hours a week or for excessive periods of time (like 4-5 hours per session).

For example; vanilla WoW was a hardcore game because it's end-game progression was dependant on 40 man raids that took 4 hours a night, but modern WoW is no longer a hardcore game since there are numerous methods of getting competitive gear, the raids are shorter and need less people, and I can play for 2 hours/day and still find ways to improve my characters gear.

Waterlily

The term is overused and stems from personal opinion.

Hardcore is often associated with the traditional MMO like Lineage and EQ, but anyone who has played them, or any of the current MMO copies, knows that they mostly rely on time-sinks. Anyone is able to play those games if you have a minimum of social skill and aren't a complete douchebag in the game.

Hardcore for me has gotten a negative connotation when talking about MMO because I realise that there's nothing hard about grinding or playing for long consecutive hours, it's time consuming yes, but it ends there, there's no other prerequisite or skill needed to advance, just your money and a lot of....free time.

Many single player RPG are a lot more hardcore than MMO, tactical console RPG like Shining Force or story based PC RPG like Drakensang and Das Schwarze Auge are much more demanding and tactical than MMO are atm. MMO are usually very easy, although some high-end content might be "hardcore", the rest of the game is usually a joke in most MMO and just relies on monotonous grinding.

There's some skill based MMO like Street Gears which rely on keyboard skill, I guess those are more like the console RPG and can be quite challenging.

4Renziks

Hardcore is a mental illusion, to me hardcore is a term labled to a player not a game.  Hardcore are people who want to be high level and want to be there fast so they play for a long amounts of time, i was there with FFIX and learned that i dont need to be max level so quickly to enjoy myself.  Anygame can be casual, any game can be hardcore...its just the amount of hours a PLAYER decides to devote to a particular game.  

Recently i think the term casual/hardcore have been misused, today the term is used more loosely, one way i see it used is to describe the difficulty of a game.  What needs to be learn is casual does not have to be easy, and hardcore does not have to be hard.  

Remember a game is only as hardcore as it players, the players make a game hardcore, not the game itself.  Look at EVE, widely considered a "hardcore game"  but can be played very easily in short spurts of time.  

Final verdict : Hardcore is the desire to be top level, top gear, top rank, ect....in a game and as quickly as possible. 

                         Casual is a desire to play the game on ones own terms, a casual does not care about how fast he/she levels,                                  what gear they have, what rank they are, they just play the game more slowly.

I am not making any declarations about one being better than the other.  I mean who is not a littlebit jealous of high levels with top gear, but they made the sacrifices.  All games have hardcore and casual players, even non-mmo's games such as COD4...my friends play that game more than i do MMO's.  These terms of more of a perception then a reality.

LynxJSA

 

http://www.mmorpg.com/search.cfm

 

toddze

To Me:

Hardcore game is an evolved term. There is also harcore playing, which is the father of hardcore game.

Hardcore playing= spending countless hours playing a game

Hardcore game= A game that requires a person to invest time and effort into a game to advance. You may be thinking that, thats every MMO. No thats not the case. Hardcore requires more dedication you put into the game what you get out. You can play a hardcore game and not be a hardcore player. Its just that it will take a casual player longer to achieve their goals.

It a nut shell thats what it means to me

oskironmaide

i can answer this question with this picture:

 

Taroko

Simply to me hardcore is someone that puts their game and guild before real life matters.

It funny to me when I see people saying "It's FULL loot!!!1!! That's hardcore!!1!1" because that's nothing compared to some of the things I have ran into over the years of playing MMOs. An example of the many things I have seen is:

Someone that gashed open their hand minutes before a raid and wrapped their hand in some cloth and finished the raid before going to the hospital. Later found out he had 9 stiches and what not. But this is what I say is hardcore.

 

 

Loke666

Originally posted by oskironmaide


i can answer this question with this picture:
 

Uhm, is Hannah Montana hardcore now too?

Anyways to the op: Games are not hardcore, it is players that are hardcore. Any player that cares more about gaming than any other thing in life are hardcore...

No, I am not hardcore myself, a few hours a day maybe. Still, I look more "#¤%& hardcore than the lame looking kids on the above picture. But of course so do a lot of people.

hoopty

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by oskironmaide


i can answer this question with this picture:
 

Uhm, is Hannah Montana hardcore now too?

Anyways to the op: Games are not hardcore, it is players that are hardcore. Any player that cares more about gaming than any other thing in life are hardcore...

No, I am not hardcore myself, a few hours a day maybe. Still, I look more "#¤%& hardcore than the lame looking kids on the above picture. But of course so do a lot of people.

 

For a sec.You got me all excited..I thought it  was Rock and Roll Rpg..Now thats Hardcore..:)

oskironmaide

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by oskironmaide



 

Uhm, is Hannah Montana hardcore now too?

 

Hannah is super hardcore so is jhonas emo brothers.

Ok. lets do an analysis.

Dictionary: hard-core hard·core (härd'kôr', -k?r')

also adj.

1. Intensely loyal; die-hard: a hard-core secessionist; a hard-core golfer.

2. Stubbornly resistant to improvement or change: hard-core poverty.

3. Extremely graphic or explicit: hard-core pornography.

Definition: dedicated

Antonyms: indulgent, mild, moderate, soft-core, tolerant, undedicated

According to this.. on a game context a hardcore players would be #1 an intensely loyal, die hard...  we could say hardcore player is someone that is a die hard intense player????

I consider myself a hardcore player... that doesnt make me a stupid player that plays 24x7 and has no job or no life.. i consider myself hardcore enough to play games alot.. still have a life, a wife, a job, pay bills, enjoy life partay.. and whatnot..

Hardcore games are games that demand alot from players..

So dedicated players are hardcore... not people with no life other than playing games.. Example:

 

 

Reklaw

By hardcore, what are you talking about?

when I talk about Harcore it's about a certain playstyle, doesn't really matter which game as almost any game can be played Harcore, but will say this that certain games might have feature's that are more intrested for the Hardcore player ( which means someone with a hardcore playstyle)

For a gamer to be Hardcore in a MMORPG to me means that such a person knows all ins/out of the game, knows his characters/skills etc.....is very helpfull and truly a social person. But being social does not mean the hardcore player will not play solo as he will play solo but he/she could also be heavy involved with a guild/clan.

Now...for Hardcore in a single player game he/she takes the most brutal setting (settings are often "easy, medium, hard") and tries to complete the full game, meaning doing every thing that the games allows, not skipping anything, but completing it in record time nevertheless.

x_rast_x

The only consistent theme I've seen with 'hardcore' is that they're games that are designed to appeal to certain types of gamers at the expense of others and generally have a fairly high difficulty level. 

Games that try to have universal appeal are not hardcore.  Games that are defined as 'casual' in any way, shape, or form are not hardcore.  Games that appeal strongly to certain segments of the MMO market are hardcore.

I agree it's a term that's lost its meaning, like 'casual' which used to mean one who can't play very much but now seems to refer to people who have little skill in whatever game they're playing.  I've seen plenty of 30 hour a week MMO'ers call themselves casual.

Cleffy

I hate hardcore mmos, and I hate developers who cater to hardcore players.  I don't play games to prove myself by doing a repetative task a million times.  I aim to prove myself through skill instead of time sink.  Heck I play the mmo that requires the highest amount of skill for a game, NavyFIELD.  If you don't know what skill is try playing it, then try getting good at it.  Its an experience far harder then any game you will ever play currently.

Hammertime1

Hardcore should be  a game with perma-death for your character. That's the "make or break" issue for me.

But I doubt if any of the so-called "hard-core" crowd would agree with me.

Quirhid

I'm a hardcore player of casual style games. "Hardcore-style" games are too much of a boring timesink for me.

I did enjoyed a fair bit of Adom, Dungeon Crawler and Nethack but I think permadeath is say the least problematic in an MMO.

Axehilt

Hardcore means "maximize the pain, minimize the pleasure."  Olschool MMOers are by definition masochists.

Not like us new-fangled MMOers who have things totally backwards.  Maximize the pleasure!?  Minimize the pain!?!?  BALDERDASH!

(yes, this post is entirely silly.  But like any good joke it carries the ring of truth.)

x_rast_x

Originally posted by Axehilt

Maximize the pleasure!?

Raise the pleasure!

Personally in an MMO, I want pvp where if I win, someone loses something important that takes longer than 10 seconds to get back, and vice-versa, and in PvE I want content that's designed to be hard enough that not everyone can do it.  Otherwise we're all playing Fallout and seeing the same content and playing CTF in UT3, both of which are great games but don't have a monthly fee.

I suppose that makes me hardcore, but I don't really care.  If you don't like the style of MMO I like nobody is making you play it.  Which is why I always think this arguement of casual vs hardcore is a little silly.  It's not like there's not plenty of choices these days.

Yamoth

There is no such thing as a hardcore game, only hardcore gamer.

MerkWerkee

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr


It means different things to different people.
To me, it just means "not casual friendly" and refers to any game that I can't progress in without having to play many hours a week or for excessive periods of time (like 4-5 hours per session).
For example; vanilla WoW was a hardcore game because it's end-game progression was dependant on 40 man raids that took 4 hours a night, but modern WoW is no longer a hardcore game since there are numerous methods of getting competitive gear, the raids are shorter and need less people, and I can play for 2 hours/day and still find ways to improve my characters gear.

 

I agree, my definition would be something similar to that. WoW has always been the opposite of a hardcore MMO to me.

neorandom

 it aint hardcore if your life isnt at risk, so for a game to be hardcore yould have to die in real life from losing the game.

Death1942

Hardcore to me means 6+ months to reach endgame.  Games that fit this catagory include Lineage2 and EVE online.

 

aside from that anything that has particularly harsh penalties or gameplay but i have yet to come across one in an MMO setting.

Adam1902

Originally posted by qweniden


Im confused by what people mean by this.
By hardcore, what are you talking about?

Slow leveling?
Timesinks?
PvP focused?
Full loot?
Significant death penalty?
Requires grouping?

 
 
 

You could say it's a mix of the above.

Thing is, their is no such thing as a "hardcore game". Their is however, such thing as a game that appeals to a hardcore gamer. And what most of us want, you are correct. Significant death penalty (full loot is nice), and an open persistant world. No instancing what so ever, and bosses exist in this world that take large groups to take down. And PvP happens frequently around the world, including during these boss fights.

I suppose I'd be considered a hardcore gamer.

And that's the features I'd love in a game today, which aren't there anymore.

Bluff+Ziggs

Originally posted by qweniden


Im confused by what people mean by this.
By hardcore, what are you talking about?

Slow leveling?
Timesinks?
PvP focused?
Full loot?
Significant death penalty?
Requires grouping?

 
 
 

 

It can mean all of the above or none of the above, the word hardcore is now akin to terms such as cool (myriad of definitons, each person sees it differently).

Kyleran

Originally posted by Death1942


Hardcore to me means 6+ months to reach endgame.  Games that fit this catagory include Lineage2 and EVE online.
 
aside from that anything that has particularly harsh penalties or gameplay but i have yet to come across one in an MMO setting.

 

I agree, generally speaking in level based games, hardcore meant a long time to maximum level and I'll agree with L2 was one of the longest. (FFXI comes to mind as well)

I'll totally disagree with EVE because first, it really doesn't have an endgame, but if you mean moving out to 0.0 I was out there in 3 months and I was slow compared to other folks.

Some folks also call a game hardcore if it has strong death penalties including FFA PVP and full looting of characters.

I suppose so, but I just view it as a different play style, nothing particularly hard core about it. 

See, most folks just don't like hitting themselves in the head with hammer for entertainment.