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What does hardcore mean to you?
cowboyoni
Member Posts: 36
I have seen a lot of people on here complain that EQN looks like it will cater to casual players and ignore the hardcore crowd. This honestly kinda confuses me. SF4 (street fighter 4) and it's various editions is considered a hardcore fighting game. People from around the world compete in various SF4 tournaments and it takes a long time to become good in that game. That being said you can be a casual player of that game. I am one of these casual players. I loose most my online matches but still enjoy popping the game in from time to time.
Yet when I look threw this board I seem to see a common sentiment that hardcore means there are aspects of the game that makes casual players not want to play the game. I really can't see a dev team sitting around going "Hey I got a great idea that is sure to make a bunch of people quit our game". I guess what I'm saying is I don't see why a game can't satisfy both the hardcore audience and casual audience at the same time.
All that being said, MMOs and fighting games are very different. Eve online is a notoriously difficult mmo to get into but it also has been successful and has a strong fan base. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe for an mmo to be fun for the hardcore crowd it has to be generally not fun for the casual players.
So I say again, what does hardcore mean to you 
Comments
Hardcore to me means:
Plays at least 16 hrs a day
7 days a week
Very rarely AFK time
Only take like a 10 minute breaks every 2 hours to get up to use the bathroom, stretch legs
Take a 30 minute break like every 6 hours to eat, then back to game
Always running around doing something, wether its farming, questing, pvping
Now if a player could play like that with 1 game for years to come and never run outa stuff to do... well that will prolly never happen.
Hardcore is usually considered one of three things:
1. Harsh penalties for some part of the gameplay (on death, on territory loss . . . etc)
2. Time required for advancement , often tedious and repetitious.
3. Unrestricted open PvP.
I don't necessarily agree with those sentiments defining hardcore, but generally speaking that's what self proclaimed hardcore players look at.
What you're saying (OP) about SF4 is that players who are extremely dedicated and put in a great deal of effort are hardcore, and that's what I would agree with. You can play Super Mario Bros in a hardcore manner (speed runs, 100%'ing, 0 deaths, so on), but in the end it's still an extremely accessible game that many of us beat when we were six years old - so it's very casual at the same time.
I personally don't care for open world PvP in MMO's and have been called a carebear casual for that on various occasions, but at the same time I'm pretty hardcore into Dota 2 which isn't exactly for the faint of heart as it requires a lot of dedication and practice along with in-game knowledge.
I guess we can boil it down to hardcore game = a game that requires more of it's players. More attention, more time, more effort. That's doesn't always equate to better, it just means more.
It's also a barrier to entry which is why I think people want to see it so that they can keep other players out of their level via artificial means. If a game requires 3 years to reach level cap, even if it means grinding really easy to kill mobs, most players won't have the time or patience to do that. And those who do will enjoy feeling smug knowing that others couldn't hack it.
What it means to me: number crunching, build testing, being extremely knowledgeable, dedicated, and great at my class.
What it seems to mean to many: playing 12+ hours a day.
Just wants a game that doesnt hand you everything on a silver platter and feeds it to you while the game plays itselfs with mods while yo usit back and watch it.
Most people seem to consider a game that does this as hardcore.
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
01) xp loss on death
02) average 12 months to reach max level
03) no mini-map
04) no map period
05) advancement only via group reliance
06) spawn camping for rarest items
07) no quest markers or quest log
08) 40+ person raids
09) open world conflict, either through pvp or mob tagging, kill stealing
10) requires 8+ hour gaming sessions to progress
11) requires min-maxing to shine and really stand out above your peers
12) possibility of losing corpse on death, corpse dragging
13) dungeons you can get lost in
14) no sparkly trail showing you where to run to next
15) guild membership mandatory to succeed
16) class and role reliance to succeed
17) minimal, and meaningful, fast travel - fast travel is a privilege, not a right mentality
18) non-instanced dungeons
19) willing to gear up others before yourself to progress
20) mobs that can 2-shot you are in every zone
You bring up a great point and I think, like the term "sandbox", the definition is in the opinion of the speaker. Not only that the term can change a bit depending on what it's being compared to. If someone compares hardcore to casual I think hardcore then means that the content takes a long time to complete in one sitting, since to me casual means a short amount of time is needed. If content takes a lot of work over a period of weeks that is still content for casual players, it just may take longer overall. I do think people mistakenly interchange the terms in order to make a point against a game or players.
I'm in agreement with you that no matter how hardcore a game is it should still be accessible to casual players if speaking about hard content. In fact, I'm hoping that EQN has a lot of content that is "hardcore" as it relates to difficulty since it adds a sense of worth to what you accomplishing. That said I'm family man that can only spend a few hours a night tops so I'm not hardcore.
In most cases I don't think the two terms are comparable.
H = x + y + z
Where x is the complexity of the game
y is the difficultly
and z is average time invested
Gives you rating of hardcore.
Just realized I didn't say what I considered to be hardcore.
So what I consider hardcore is how many levels of depth or complexity there is to a game. So for example a board game like chess would be on one end of the spectrum and a game like tic-tac-toe would be on the other. Things like, how long it takes to hit lvl cap or how harsh is the death penalty, imo have nothing to do with how hardcore the game is. These are just aspects of the game that people either enjoy or don't enjoy.
I't what interest me about being able to mix and mash 40 different classes in the game on your character and the removal of the traditional taunt/aggro system. This could lead to not only a lot of complexity in building your character but also a lot of depth to party setups. Though I will concede that if executed poorly these things could lead to everyone basically doing a dps role and zerg attacking all the content in the game.
It takes one to know one.
"Hardcore" is the belief system that MMORPGs should not be about having fun but instead they should be about pain and suffering because, they say, it is only rewarding to win if you lost a lot before the win.
The pain and suffering part can be anything from the lack of convenience features (no map or minimap as someone said above) to forced grouping and stacked mob pseudo AI.
It's the gaming equivalent of "no gain without pain" or "life is hard and then you die."
[mod edit]
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Awesome answer. Post of the day for me.
Hardcore example: the game employs a high level of danger and penalties when doing dungeon crawls. The rewards to get to the boss at the end of the dungeon crawl are great, but a high level of skill is required to both get there and then defeat the Named. The boss has a long respawn timer and the good drops are rare. Quick respawning of "trash" mobs, naked corpse retrievals and a long crawl are important obstacles. If the group wipes, you are basically starting all over again. The existence of these hard-to-get-to bosses don't take away from the rest of the game play environment so you can employ hardcore dungeons like this without upsetting casual players. The large amount of time taken to complete this kind of adventure prevent loot from being farmed.
Another example: Named mobs that drop the best items have extremely long respawn timers, so players need to camp the placeholders for hours and hours. Not unlike real-life fishing/hunting. Casual players don't have the time for this. But these kind of camps allow players the opportunity to earn gear they can wear or wield proudly because others know what a pain it is to obtain them.
A final example: raids take at least 4 hours. Most normal players can't spare that very often so only hardcore players get to do them.
For me hardcore means.
- Freedom but real consequencies for every action (good or bad).
- Complex mechanics that reward the smart and the knowledgeable (crafting, skill weaknesses, politics etc).
- Real depth in guild politics and meaningful social aspects of the game. (ex. Need for good relations with good player merchats, crafters or knowledgeable players in general)
- Player skilled combat that needs good reaction times, good aim and movement, good decision making and good and everchanging team tactics.
- A dangerous world. No easy mode no matter the level.
- Real consequences in case of death.
- Dynamic systems that doesnt hand you everything on a silver platter as Sanshi44 said.
Lets be honest.
Ability spamming easy mode for 15 hours in the same strategic terms and without consequences other than the time lost in case of failure/death and with no real challenge is a wrong perception of hardcore.
That's carebear grind.
Hardcore to me never meant difficulty or inconvenience or downtime or anything to do with PvP. It was simply the amount of time you could invest playing the game. I.e. at least 3 evenings doing 6 hour raids and 20+ hrs doing other things I would say was the low end of hardcore.
I usually spend a lot of time in my games, not as much these days but at least 6 hrs a day was the norm. I would never have considered myself a hardcore gamer.
Warning: This is a very generalized paintbrush, and applied quite broadly. If you consider yourself 'hardcore' you may want to skip reading the following, rather than reaching for your report button. It is only personal opinon. Thank you.
"Hardcore: Willing to self-appoint myself to the position, and eager to tell everyone who might listen how badass I am at every possible opportunity."
Sure, that's not very flattering. But I've been watching the forum antics for about three decades now. To me; "hardcore" is a synonym for "poseur". Self-aggrandizement addicts. Hubris huggers. MMOsochists.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I'm always surprised there are so many "hardcore" players. Considering the inability to procreate is one of the key factors in being hardcore you'd think they'd be a dieing breed.
It sort of flies in the face of the laws of nature.
Yeah, the first mmorpgs were a pain to play, no minimap, almost no quests so you had to grind, extremely slow leveling, etc
But the the computers were slow and the developers had few resources.
With the technology today we can have more realistic setbacks instead of making you run to your corpse for 10 minutes.
Everquest Next you can spend two months building a city, and then watch it be taken apart by a Orc invasion.
Now that is hardcore.
The only person that got it right....
"Hardcore" is the opposite of the belief system that MMORPGs should be only about having fun but instead they should also be about effort and challenge because, they say, it is not rewarding to play if you gain everything without even trying.
The gain everything without even trying can be anything from super radar maps with gps systems and auto navigation to complete ability to solo any content, no requirement to communicate with anyone and total lack of mob AI.
It's not the gaming equivalent of "gain everything without even trying" or "life is easy and everyone will get to paradise."
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre