Why don't YOU play HC?

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Mivo wrote:

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NoNamium wrote:

I don't like to feel that I've wasted my time. If you are a streamer on the other hand, you do not waste time, since streaming is a goal in itself, but reset to zero, where I could have used my sparse time on something else, is not something I enjoy.

This is only the case if you view the situation from a materialistic perspective (the focus being on tangible, quasi-physical results). That's perfectly valid, obviously, but when I have lost HC characters, I didn't feel like I wasted my time, because the fun I had with the character didn't "un-happen".

Plus every character always accumulates currency and stuff every time you play. Even a deceased character remains alive in Standard, where his stuff can be sold and traded back to HC, if desired.

I struggled some with this back in D2 when I played, more than a decade ago. Looking back, what I remember now, though, are all the great moments of narrow escape, victory, and defeat. I don't recall anything about the softcore times in D2, but I remember my first HC death vividly, I recall how the response to it (a "fuck this, I don't care" lightning nova sorc that I had no hope for and that was created in rage, ended up being my first ever character to defeat the game in HC/hell without partying), and I remember many of the adrenaline-drenched close-death experiences.

I still mostly play softcore in PoE, but have been expanding my HC dabbling a little more lately. Desync is an issue for me, as are poorly tuned encounters where surviving is too dependent on random effects. D2 had its fair share of such problems (like FE champions until they got fixed, stair traps), but it was an overall easier, less random game (in terms of encounter difficulty). I do find it hard to get attached to my softcore characters, especially the Standard ones, because it all feels so irrelevant. 10% even at 87 is a lot, and no doubt much more severe at 92, but it's different for me.

Looking at my SC deaths, I also have to honestly say that at most one out of 20 was desync related, and all of them lockbox related (got better with an SSD). It's nearly always a result of playing poorly, taking unreasonable risks (which is fun in its own way), playing recklessly, neglecting resists on leveling characters, or general carelessness.

I can relate to the stash issue. Right now I have four different stashes, and it's really confusing. I'll probably let the temporary SC league go (just farm to buy the league-only items, then stop). HC and the HC challenge league tie in well with Standard since you can "transfer" everything down to Standard whenever you want, no waiting time. I look at the HC leagues as some kind of outposts at the frontier, and Standard as the "home planet". :)

But anyway, need to get the level 90 SC achievement out of the way. 2.5 levels to go. If I play HC too much before, I'll never get it done. It helps that I prefer to play self-found and a "make do with what I find" playstyle.

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NoNamium wrote:

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Mivo wrote:

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NoNamium wrote:

I don't like to feel that I've wasted my time. If you are a streamer on the other hand, you do not waste time, since streaming is a goal in itself, but reset to zero, where I could have used my sparse time on something else, is not something I enjoy.

This is only the case if you view the situation from a materialistic perspective (the focus being on tangible, quasi-physical results). That's perfectly valid, obviously, but when I have lost HC characters, I didn't feel like I wasted my time, because the fun I had with the character didn't "un-happen".

Plus every character always accumulates currency and stuff every time you play. Even a deceased character remains alive in Standard, where his stuff can be sold and traded back to HC, if desired.

I struggled some with this back in D2 when I played, more than a decade ago. Looking back, what I remember now, though, are all the great moments of narrow escape, victory, and defeat. I don't recall anything about the softcore times in D2, but I remember my first HC death vividly, I recall how the response to it (a "fuck this, I don't care" lightning nova sorc that I had no hope for and that was created in rage, ended up being my first ever character to defeat the game in HC/hell without partying), and I remember many of the adrenaline-drenched close-death experiences.

I still mostly play softcore in PoE, but have been expanding my HC dabbling a little more lately. Desync is an issue for me, as are poorly tuned encounters where surviving is too dependent on random effects. D2 had its fair share of such problems (like FE champions until they got fixed, stair traps), but it was an overall easier, less random game (in terms of encounter difficulty). I do find it hard to get attached to my softcore characters, especially the Standard ones, because it all feels so irrelevant. 10% even at 87 is a lot, and no doubt much more severe at 92, but it's different for me.

Looking at my SC deaths, I also have to honestly say that at most one out of 20 was desync related, and all of them lockbox related (got better with an SSD). It's nearly always a result of playing poorly, taking unreasonable risks (which is fun in its own way), playing recklessly, neglecting resists on leveling characters, or general carelessness.

I can relate to the stash issue. Right now I have four different stashes, and it's really confusing. I'll probably let the temporary SC league go (just farm to buy the league-only items, then stop). HC and the HC challenge league tie in well with Standard since you can "transfer" everything down to Standard whenever you want, no waiting time. I look at the HC leagues as some kind of outposts at the frontier, and Standard as the "home planet". :)

But anyway, need to get the level 90 SC achievement out of the way. 2.5 levels to go. If I play HC too much before, I'll never get it done. It helps that I prefer to play self-found and a "make do with what I find" playstyle.

Well it's down to a difference of opinions about what makes for enjoyable gaming I guess.
I like the end-game content and the chance of finding truely rare uniques.
To get to this content I need to tediously grind content in the game to finally be able to have this possibility.
Not progressing or being reset to zero is not a fun experience for me, thus I choose standard.
Now that said, I died 4 times in a row on standard with a loss of 40% xp on my lvl 84 character yesterday, and to me it seems that map-content above lvl 72 is just to hard.

I'm running an Arc-witch with 6L Shavronnes, Auxium, Safell's frame, the Vertex low-Life with 193% MF and arctic armor+10k evasion(flasks)+80/80/81 resists doing 15k DPS and still I get my *** handed to me when running a simple Gorge map and clicking a strong box.

To get to do this endgame, it should not be required to have such equipment and once you do, you shouldn't be able to get killed by simple monsters when leeching life(ie. energy shield)+mana leech and doing this kind of damage while having arctic armor enabled and pressing flask after regenerated flask.

So yesterday was a "soul-searching" task of me deciding wether I want to keep playing this game.

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thevdende wrote:

There is something wrong with your build if you die at lvl 84 with all that equipment.

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5) because 99% of hc players cheat by logging out if they are in danger, which is laughable

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Spodean wrote:

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.