Why don't YOU play HC?

I generally get maybe 2-3 hours per day to play PoE if I'm lucky so:

1. Having to re-find highest level gear on death (alternatively grind currency and trade for it but I avoid trading currently).
2. I'd probably have reached a maximum of cruel dominus in the two years I've been playing.

My overall plan is to switch to hardcore when I'm bored of standard and other non-HC leagues. Outside of that long term ambition, I dabble with hardcore leagues from time to time and do find the extra risk enjoyable.

I like playing Hc, because it adds extra excitement and gives me a greater sense of worth for what I'm achieving in Path of Exile.

Uh, so I do play Hardcore.

I used to play the perma-hardcore league, and I also played quite a bit of Nemesis. Hardcore no longer interests me because it's so incredibly easy to die to fps problems, lag, and desync in this game. I also have no desire to lose my progress, I no longer find that "thrilling", to me it's just frustrating.

I also feel like I have greater freedom in making builds in Softcore. I can experiment and try new ideas or things that I'm not sure of without defense being my absolute, #1 priority, whereas in hardcore trying out a new idea could just get me killed and make me lose countless hours of progress.

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Spodean wrote:

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.

To be fair those two also apply to standard. And with the Master Quests there is even more thrill. The thrill of completing a mission with just two seconds left or of having the exile barely surviving your puncture when you have to keep him on lowlife.

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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.

Well that is actually a good reason not to play hardcore. A lot of stuff I tried out would never work in HC. A Volls 7-charges Crit-build would just die to reflect... if it happens in standard I can laugh about how quick I destroyed myself.

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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.

Well the thing is certain builds can't even be leveled as themself in hardcore. If you level a char in standard it is fairly easy to bypass this weakness even if it endangers yourself.

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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....

That is actually a nice point :P Although I get my fair share of death-messages from races.

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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.

The point is though... thats no different than standard. Actually I hate cruel-dom. I assume if you have the ability most people might just ask someone to kill him in either league. Because killing cruel dom often means a fair amount of grinding to get a bit better gear. Maybe that is a bit less annoying with masters allowing to fill certain gear-spots but it is one thing that keeps me away from HC (well that and desync). When I meat Cruel Dominus in standard there are two options:

a) Just pick some good gear from my stash and murder him, there is no challange or anything with this, although I have to level to 50+ before, since most of the stuff has this level

b) Just kill brawl him down, the alternative to keep dying on him is keep using portal-scrolls, so the main difference is in standard you save portal-scrolls. Most bosses are fairly easy with constant porting to refill flasks... but thats also fairly annoying.

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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.

Well I get my share of HC from races. There it makes sense and a death isn't as punishing and you actually get something for playing riskier. In HC it is basically don't risk anything, which is kinda boring. In HC you basically gear and skill your char for that one desync that could kill him. There is no reason to do so in standard. I have a char that has only 3k ES and he really doesn't die except to Haku-Missions and Desync. There is no real reason to have more HP because all normal game-situations are solveable even with a glass-cannon because you often can play around dangers.

I'd love to play HC, I actually enjoyed the beyond league. However, my computer doesn't allow it. Since this game has no preload, my computer basically freezes each time i open a strongbox or summons enemies with the beyond portals.

as soon as i get myself a new computer, ill be rockin the hc leagues! Like OP said, there is nothing quite like the thrill of a hc battle.

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GodKas wrote:

Truth is alt+f4

Exactly. How can you play in a league where one can press the sequence "Alt F4". This is why I don't play HC, I simply couldn't deal with the fact that I was playing among people who use this foul practice. My alt key is broken so I couldn't even get past Cruel anyway.

I'm probably in the wrong thread since im fan of HC, but i really wanted to be part of a thread like that for a long time and so, here I am now.

I cant agree more with the gentlemen that due to their real life schedule and obligations (work/family/hobbies) have decided that Standard fits them better for many reasons : no stress of dying and moving to a completely different economy (and not losing progress as some said, since xp penalty is losing progress actually), no need to start new characters every new league or so (though they can play in the Hardcore league - but who plays there anyway :D ), they have gathered wealth and feel like "home" in their league and in general they are comfortable there.

Also i can understand those who due to slow machines or internet (i own a fucking horrible laptop, though my connection is pretty good and stable) refuse to play HC leagues in general since that means a simple skill like Discharge can pretty much mean their death with the horrendous fps drop of the afformentioned skill (and many others i should add) , or even high loading times in waypoints or other starting points of various instances that are considered safe areas make them anxious (and for a good reason since these areas are not so "safe").

I can't stand though seeing responses like desync/alt+f4/elitism. Maybe im wrong in that but i believe that 50% of the players dont even understand what desync is (well my initial thought was way more than that number actually :D) and blame it for everything. I have even saw streamers self-aclaimed HC "pros" that die to new mechanics or weird combinations of mods in mobs and claim desync was the reason they ripped. There are threads out there that give some info about that and i suggest everyone giving them a look, it will certainly help a great number of players to understand better the "desync" issue.

Elitism exists both in HC and SC (and in real life, and thats why ill try to keep it short), in different ways : The person who offers mirror services in SC has accumulated a vast amount of wealth, that person belongs in the elite when it comes to currency. Similar a person who has "2billion" dps in SC is widely believed to have made the most overpowered damage dealing build in poe and is considered by those (a small or big group of people) who are impressed by that, elite. If there is no prejudice in the meaning of Elite, thus we exclude the arrogance and megalomania that most of the community here believes that elitism characteristics are, then elitism is not a "bad" thing, its just a fact or a truth. Some people are just better than others in some particular subject, and thats the end of it.

That alt+f4 thing is what i cant get the grasp of it at all, and why it should be reason not to play HC, i mean seriously why ? Can it even be considered a reason? A million of players have been using snapshooting for ages in PoE which by my standards (and i want to believe not only mine) is cheating, and nobody in HC or SC stopped playing cause there was that mechanic, and the one thing that has been supported by GGG in the past (im talking about alt+f4, and their policy until now about the matter hasnt changes as far as i know) is preventing you from joining that league? Seriously? What kind of deranged thinking is that? Its not like its only for HC players SC can do it too, but they dont care enough about their characters to do so and thats the big truth about that, and i mean it, HC characters from experienced HC players are way more well thought of and not just copy pasted from a random "2billion dps build in the forums". After seeing countless comments like those about that, i really hope GGG puts 2-3 secs waiting time when you log out or quit, seriously, just to see what this community wil come up with after. In a not-so-funny way it belongs in the same category as legacy qq threads that have spawned so many times in those forums.

Well my post is quite long and many (if not all of you) probably stoped at "i'm and HC fan" (im kidding), anyway i wish you all to have some good and memorable gaming sessions in PoE (yes only in PoE there is not better game! :D - im kidding again), in whatever league you like more.
To the HC players that might have read this :have fun and stay safe and see you in Beyond, to the SC :well... good luck and have fun.


P.S. : I really wanted to say a lot more but i think the post is already big enough

Cuz I'm a baddie.

To be fair, people also use alt-F4 in the softcore leagues, especially at higher levels where 10% XP is not a matter of just a few minutes.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Unstable wireless.

edit: Australia.

College Internet, I hear you :/