POE: Casual.. Hardcore.. What is the difference?

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syrioforel wrote:

I figure you might call a player "hardcore" if they play primarily to overcome challenge. What makes a challenge and what makes a time sink (these are not the same thing, I don't consider "found all the shrines in domination" a challenge) is subjective.

Of course it is subjective. An extraterrestrial with 36 fingers, the reaction time of a lightning bolt and an IQ of 720 will have a have a a good chuckle about our "hardcore games". Just as an elephant will consider it a challenge to simply turn on a computer.

For us though I don't see much reason for subjectiveness here, it seems to me rather a misunderstanding based on the ambiguity of the term hardcore.

Of course you can play hardcore grinders and call yourself a hardcore grinder. You can play hardcore strategy games or hardcore shooter. But these are just specifics. In each of those cases the term "hardcore" narrows the other term down.

I think there needs to be one defintion only for hardcore gamers and hardcore games. They could serve as blanket terms but I cannot see much use for it, since the specifics can mean radically different things.

So since most games first and most of all need an understanding of the rules, I think it's best to call a game with significantly more complex rules than the "standard" a hardcore game. And a player willing to get to know every nook and cranny of these rules a hardcore gamer.

PoE, then, is first of all a hardcore game. Using the shortcuts you can turn it into a hardcore grinder.

Too Long; Didn't Read (TL;DR)

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ggwp1 wrote:

Too Long; Didn't Read (TL;DR)

didn't read that but i read the thread you refer to. I'm 100% with him. DON'T listen to casuals demands. casuals WILL destroy every game they touch if the developers listen to them too much. Look at wow ... look at any game which was once great through it's addicting difficulty and now is like some cookie cutting shit ...

Casual:

Job, life, bitching wife, screaming kids, bills to pay, wants to relax by killing things and having shiny things drop.

Hardcore:

Too much time on their hands, the game is their job, expected offers of matrimony if they get to the top of the leaderboard, bills will be paid when they finally get a twitch stream going.

Thank you for a thorough examination of the casual/hardcore conondrum.

I'll give you a better reply later - currently swamped @ work.

I seem to remember reading a definition along these lines:

They're all casuals
I'm hardcore
You're a no-lifer


They're all noobs and bads
I'm skilled and knowledgable
You're a nerd and take this game way too seriously

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I definitely don't think things should be easy or automatic, but there are limits to the masochism I'm willing to endure.

I totally agree with you on this point. All game should not make the difficulty such that a player has to be masochistic to play it. Those game won't last long. But great game has that option available to those masochist as well. Eg. Invisible tetris http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo

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Angry_Steel wrote:

Casual:

Job, life, bitching wife, screaming kids, bills to pay, wants to relax by killing things and having shiny things drop.

Hardcore:

Too much time on their hands, the game is their job, expected offers of matrimony if they get to the top of the leaderboard, bills will be paid when they finally get a twitch stream going.

I think this view on "hardcore" is bullshit. The amount of time you actually play the game has zero to do with how hardcore you are. Zero! Hardcore is about how difficult you expect the game to be, and what sort of gaming experience you prefer. Someone who plays retro NES Contra for 30 minutes a week is MUCH more of a hardcore gamer than someone who's playing Farmville for an hour a day.

"Having a life" versus "being a no-lifer" is utterly separate from how hardcore you are, because the level of difficulty you're willing to endure and/or want to see from PoE is utterly separate from how much time you actually spend playing.