Why don't YOU play HC?

Before I start, in no way am I trying to bash SC players, that is not my point.

The pro's of playing HC are.

There is a tremendous thrill you get when you have just barely survived a battle.

Every piece of decent gear you get is more special than in SC. Because so much of it in HC ends up being lost to the world as it goes to SC land every time someone dies.

Your characters are built to survive more, are more thought out, glass canons are for the crazy. A lot of normal builds just do not work when you have only got the one life to live. Every death you learn from and adjust on the next play through.

Death is really not that horrible, you stash all your old gear instead of selling it. At least the weapons and critical linked pieces. Which makes it easy to level a new character. You become incredibly efficient at doing so.

Gear that might be junk in SC is actually viable in HC, just because you have to survive before even thinking endgame, meaning using your Alchemy orbs and smithstones on a weapon isn't seen as a waste if it gets you a few more levels.

Seeing high on the ladder death messages in global chat, followed by the community giving condolences such as "rip" "Reep" and "rest in pepperoni's" "Welcome to Scrubcore" etc....

A final point from me, we all play the game... over and over and over again, whether it be SC or HC, Granted the first 30 or so levels in a character can kind of drag, but that's just a few hours of playtime. The difference is that in HC, there is a challenge, thrill and reward for surviving battles without death, especially the boss battles. Beating Dom the first time with a new build is awesome.



I have been trying to talk my friend into playing HC, but he is difficult to sway, he looks at the deaths as "time wasted". But how can that be when you had such a fun time getting there in the first place.

If you haven't tried it, give it a go. It might be a whole new game for you, you just have to look at it differently. More of an old school coin-op game than a traditional pc game.

See how far you can get.



Edit:

After reading all the responses....

From what I have read the top 2 reasons are.

1) Desync.

2) Starting over after death.

Another strange reason that kept popping up is...

3) Alt-F4



-The Desync one I can kind of understand, dying to something out of your control does suck. But contrary to what many believe I do not think it anywhere near a leading cause of death, more likely than not people blame desync on a death because they cannot admit to any derping on their part.

I for 1 after 3 HC leagues have only died once to Desync. Now when it happens I back off and let the connection settle.

-Starting over really is not that bad. You are already playing the same content over and over again in order to reach max level and or get better gear.

In fact starting over fresh will give you more gratification because once again you are gaining new equipment and skill gems at a much faster rate than you were at say... level 60+

This new equipment will not be the same as the old, You might not get the ultra bad ass weapon you had previously, perhaps not pick up the same skill gems. So the gameplay will have changed on the next play through. You might also decide to go a different route or order with your passives.


- Alt-F4..... This is a strange complaint to me as a reason for not playing HC. Perhaps that competitive thing in all of us views this as "Cheating" "Unfair" etc....

But who exactly are you competing with? In HC or SC that someone hitting Alt-F4 to escape certain death affects you in what way?

The number of players that have the extreme amount of time required to actually compete in a 3 month ladder is a very very small group of dedicated players.

And this is definitely not a thing limited to the HC crowd, you think for an instant that SC players at the high levels are not doing this as well? 10% exp drop can be an hours long penalty for death.

Not going to say everyone does it, I haven't yet, tried once and finger fumbled, died anyways lol. But perhaps BECAUSE people are doing it maybe it should be considered a "Feature" since they obviously have no intention of adding a Timer like they have in MMO's to keep people from escaping from a certain death in PVP.

Perhaps even give us an in game keymap for doing just such a thing. GGG obviously treats it as "Fair Play" otherwise there would be a log out timer.


Well thanks for all the responses people, I did not expect so many.


And once again ill say it...

For those that haven't tried HC, give it a try, you may find it fun and it will certainly breathe new life into a game you obviously enjoy playing.

Simple. I don't get any thrill out of HC leagues and they never appealed to me in any game that offers them.

HC IS NOT REALLY HC... You can press escape and save yourself. SC is a luxury, you get free escape...

Because my game freezes solid every-once in a while and it usually has me die even in standard mode

Almost every my death in 3/4 month leagues is then I alt-tab on an empty location, alt tab again and I'm dead.

Here are just a few reasons I don't play HC:

1. The elitist community - streamers and power brokers
2. The game's mechanical flaws and limitations (so many sub-reasons here)
3. Solo vs Party balance
4. Damage spikes and monster balance
5. Build limitations and generic passive tree selections (Path of life nodes/CI)
6. Most of my friends don't play for reasons 1-5

Desync

I don't have that much time to play.

I like continuous progression, perfecting 1 or 2 characters, instead of restarting again every 3-4 months.

I have a bad connection, the most frequent deaths I experienced where becouse of my internet exploding or high latency.

I feel frustrated when I lose 10% of my xp (at lvl 90+ that's a lot of time...for me), I think I would start smashing things if I lose my whole character.

In SC I can at any time pretend to play hardcore, playing safe and trying to not die for some weeks, then swap to the softcore glasscannon attitude again and die multiple times at the beginning of a level.

These are my reasons not to play hardcore. I have huge fun with my friends in Standard and I hope you all have too in your leagues. :)

Cause that shet is hardcore and I don't have much interest in playing PoE from a hardcore standpoint at this time.

I do love HC games though, but you really have to be in the mood for it...

I refuse to alt-f4 or escape at every desync or near-death moment. That is way less fun to me, especially if I die to desync. Tried it a few times and all it did was aggravate me. The SC economy pisses me off, but I play mostly self found anyway.