100209-hardcore-and-what-it-means

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I feel it is time to touch on what's hardcore and what isn't. From what I've been reading on the forums it has become painfully obvious that most people the dev's included have no idea what this truly means. What makes me an expert you ask? Honest answer, nothing really. All I can say is I have been playing / beta testing mmorpg's since EQ first dropped 15 years ago and have played or dabbled in most mmo's that have come out since. I've been a hardcore player, semi hardcore player and from time to time a casual player. Hell I've even played the first dota semi pro for a few years. So it's not that I am a expert, I've just been around the block more than once and everything I'm about to say is based on my own personal experience and or opinion.
 
So lets start with hardcore. I'm going to break this down into points from here on out.
 
Hardcore raiding / progression guild:           - A guild of hardcore players who want to burn through content as fast as possible. 
          - Raids 5-6 nights a week, several hours a night with no exceptions, 
          - Mandatory raid attendance. 
          - Not being able to make a raid night requires anything from a week-2 weeks notice + a doctors note. With failure to do so coming in some form of punishment ie: getting kicked from raid roster for some             set amount of time.
          - Loot council or some sort of DKP system. Trust me they suck.
 
      2: Difficulty level:
        
           - Difficult, deep game. Of course everyone's definition of hardcore / difficult is subjective. 
           - Content that requires muscle memory as a skill that can't be beat without practice.
           - High potential skill ceiling whether through base game or player made limits.
           - High skill ceiling / learning curve in general
           - Difficult, and or requiring a lot of time to progress through.
 
      3:  Grindy: 
        
           - Grinding, although not necessarily difficult to do is very time consuming and requires infinite *cupcake*ing patience . Whether it's for gear, rep, badges / elder gems, achievements, honor or prestige, whatever... you get the point, can be extremely time consuming thus could be considered hardcore.
           - Farming. Pretty much the same as above, farming for months and months several hours a day for a single piece of gear or a drop, either from a boss fight or just random mobs in the world.
 
      4:  Player attitudes:
 
           - Gold or bust attitude, using this as an example.
           - Elitism, lets use the dictionary definition shall we. 
   The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources, or in this case gaming and or ability.
   a. The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class.
   b. Control, rule, or domination by such a group or class.
   c. Practice of or belief in rule by an elite. 
   d. Consciousness of membership in or allegiance to a select group.
 
For example despite the fact I have not gotten into raiding yet in Wildstar I've done quite a bit of the 5 man content. Lets be honest, although challenging it is by no means maddeningly difficult. Meaning after a few attempts on a boss you should understand the encounter mechanics and be able to coordinate and progress past it. If you can't do that then you don't belong raiding, running vet dungeons / adventures or whatever else and should give up and go play Mario Kart or Pokemon Stadium. That's Hardcore imo. All content after a certain amount of time passes becomes mundane, it's inevitable
 
 lol  :P
 
        5: Peeing in a bottle as to not hold up the raid:
          - LOL! Gross yes but I've heard about it being done from time to time.
 
 
Basically, and as far as I am concerned it comes down to a deep seated need to label oneself or place yourself above others or the games you play as hardcore. It just reeks of needless justification and reassurance. Of course this is just my personal opinion and some won't agree and that's fine I don't expect everyone to.
 
 
So now that has been said let's touch on what's not hardcore.
 
1: Brickwalling progression:
 
  - There are many reasons this could be done but mostly from what I've seen it is due to some sort of lack of end game raid content.
 
2: Layers upon layers of RNG
 
 - Although some RNG is needed, for example rolling on a drop if more than one person needs it, or determination of what item drops from a boss or mob at that given time or encounter, or the placing of people pugging through the LFG finder. Anything more than this is unnecessary and unwarranted.
 
Placing RNG on things like 
 - Crafting, and the stats / rune slots / type of runes the slots can use, on the things you craft 
 - What stats are on a piece of gear when it drops at that given time.
 - Number of rune slots and the type of runes that can be placed in each particular slot on drop items.
 - The type of stats, number of rune slots and types of runes that can be placed in them when bought from a vendor with elder gems or any other in game currency.
 
None of this is hardcore in the least. It's frustrating, time consuming, and will do more to anger people and or push people away from a game. Basically it's just poor development decisions and in my opinion lack of foresight.
 
3: Time and money sinks.
 
  - Although needing some time and money sinks in a mmo is a necessity, having to many is place can be discouraging and drive players away. Not hardcore.
 
4: Changing drop tables /mechanics after a certain amount of time has passed
 
  - Going to use the recent loot drop changes to vet adventures and dungeons as an example (not sure this applies to the vet dungeons as well but for arguments sake I'll include them)
If this was done say in the first week of release I honestly don't think it would have caused as much of an uproar. The fact it took almost 7 weeks to change something that was never meant to be in place to begin with is completely absurd.
Nothing anyone says whether it be the dev's or other players is going to change the way some people see this. People are going to feel cheated or feel like the ones who got in before the changes and got gear were given a free ride, right, wrong or indifferent. It's going to make people feel like they have to double or triple their efforts to catch up at end game. Straight up this is only going to further frustrate and discourage people, pushing many away from the game. Once again not hardcore.
 
Now before anyone reads this as a QQ or it's not fair whine, well that's simply not the case. I've gotten a few epics before the changes to loot. Maybe not as many as the people before me but nonetheless I've still received a few drops.
 
Punishing your players for a mistake the dev's made either through the development process or just plain lack of foresight isn't fair to the player. I refuse to believe it took almost 7 weeks to notice purps were dropping more frequently than they should have been and come up with a solution for it. This should have been addressed right away or in the first week...maybe 2 weeks but that's it tops.
Also using the excuse that it was also done to reduce the gold or bust mentality and toxicity is nothing more than a cop out. You could have simply just put a 1 hour deserter debuff in place since most adventures can be done in under a hour. Hell even a 2 hour debuff would have been fine and most likely nipped this in the bud instantly. 
 
None of the above is hardcore, punishing the majority of the player base for your own errors isn't hardcore. It's a slap to the face to that majority plain and simple, and is obviously going to upset those players who for whatever reasons were unable to get into these runs before the change.
 
 
This is getting long  winded so I'm going to wrap this up with a few last thoughts.
 
Seriously, I'm starting to despise the term hardcore as applied to games and gamers. There is a core gamer. One who values gaming as a hobby and invests in it. That's it. Remember this is coming from a or former hardcore raider. It's just a title, even core gamers don't have a definition that's universally agreed upon, none of the titles do, so ultimately they don't matter.
 
No matter what category you place yourself in, be it casual or hardcore the facts remains that... Hardcore players and sometimes pvper's only make up a small percentage of the player base 20-30% maybe 35% tops with the majority being made up of casual players. I'm not suggesting make games easier or gearing towards the casual player base. I am saying however that all content should be accessible by all groups of the player base some just taking longer to get there than others but not punishing them for being casual. All companies putting out a mmo that they want to strive and turn a profit should consider this, I'm not just singling out Carbine here.
 
We're all here playing and enjoying the same game, and yes we're not always going to agree on things or certain subjects. This does not mean however we can't all get along or at least try to anyways. There is absolutely no need to troll or flame a topic, or reply someone has made to a thread because you disagree with it is nothing more then being infantile.
 
Anyways that's enough for now. Remember all this is just based on my own personal experiences and opinions, and once again I don't expect everyone to agree with this, which is fine.	
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Definitely agree on this!
Must have taken u a while to write this down more people should read this and so should carbine!	
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Definitely agree on this!
Must have taken u a while to write this down more people should read this and so should carbine!
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        5: Peeing in a bottle as to not hold up the raid:
          - LOL! Gross yes but I've heard about it being done from time to time.
 
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I want to respond to each of your points, because I have a lot to say about each of them, but I don't feel like I'll be adding much that other people will not eventually get around to saying without my help.
That in mind, the most important thing I want to respond to is that the WildStar Devs have explicitly defined what they want 'Hardcore' to mean in relation to their game.
 
The prerequisite for being Hardcore? Being willing to jump facefirst into that raid and step up to the challenge. That's it.	
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I want to respond to each of your points, because I have a lot to say about each of them, but I don't feel like I'll be adding much that other people will not eventually get around to saying without my help.
That in mind, the most important thing I want to respond to is that the WildStar Devs have explicitly defined what they want 'Hardcore' to mean in relation to their game.
 
The prerequisite for being Hardcore? Being willing to jump facefirst into that raid and step up to the challenge. That's it.
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			I agree with just about all your post, except for the labeling thing. By no means are you wrong, but I feel only having labels for either end of the spectrum is incredibly misleading and probably lead to quite a few of the issues Wildstar actually has. Under WIldstar's definition, if you are hardcore you must be raiding, everyone else is inadvertently a 'casual' player.Speaking personally, I cannot and will not commit to any conditions that will put me into a hardcore raider category (the tedious lead up really doesn't help), and although this isn't Carbine's fault, it does mean (by definition) I am not 'hardcore'. So cool, I am a casual, and there is content for me, but it is created with the literal definition of casual in mind. For sake of argument, we'll say a casual plays for 1-2 hours a day. This label doesn't really fit me as, until recently, I can and have played between 4-5 hours a day.I'm sure the tedious content in bearable when you have your sights on end game (especially when by all accounts you can skip it), but for the not hardcore, not casual player, it is incredibly painful to play repeat every day. As I've pointed out else where, I enjoyed the leveling process, experiencing new adventures, dungeons, and zones as I've gone through it, but end game just feels exceptionally limited for someone that falls into the not casual, not hardcore category like myself.Despite the currently RNG ridden systems, I think they have the 'hardcore' crowd covered pretty well, just as they do the casual (1-2 hours a day) crowd, but it is the 'inbetweeners' that are finding the game a tad lacking, and I don't doubt if the 'vocal' people reevaluate their play style / time investment outside the above two labels, they'll realize they fall into this 'third' category as well.	
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I agree with just about all your post, except for the labeling thing. By no means are you wrong, but I feel only having labels for either end of the spectrum is incredibly misleading and probably lead to quite a few of the issues Wildstar actually has. Under WIldstar's definition, if you are hardcore you must be raiding, everyone else is inadvertently a 'casual' player.
 
Speaking personally, I cannot and will not commit to any conditions that will put me into a hardcore raider category (the tedious lead up really doesn't help), and although this isn't Carbine's fault, it does mean (by definition) I am not 'hardcore'. So cool, I am a casual, and there is content for me, but it is created with the literal definition of casual in mind. For sake of argument, we'll say a casual plays for 1-2 hours a day. This label doesn't really fit me as, until recently, I can and have played between 4-5 hours a day.
 
I'm sure the tedious content in bearable when you have your sights on end game (especially when by all accounts you can skip it), but for the not hardcore, not casual player, it is incredibly painful to play repeat every day. As I've pointed out else where, I enjoyed the leveling process, experiencing new adventures, dungeons, and zones as I've gone through it, but end game just feels exceptionally limited for someone that falls into the not casual, not hardcore category like myself.
 
Despite the currently RNG ridden systems, I think they have the 'hardcore' crowd covered pretty well, just as they do the casual (1-2 hours a day) crowd, but it is the 'inbetweeners' that are finding the game a tad lacking, and I don't doubt if the 'vocal' people reevaluate their play style / time investment outside the above two labels, they'll realize they fall into this 'third' category as well.
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While I agree with most of that, I do disagree with hardcore being Grindy. There is nothing Hardcore about wasting hours upon hours getting one good item.
However part of ti also falls into the RNG catagory.	
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 I'm not suggesting make games easier or gearing towards the casual player base. I am saying however that all content should be accessible by all groups of the player base some just taking longer to get there than others but not punishing them for being casual.
 
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Definitely agree on this!
Must have taken u a while to write this down more people should read this and so should carbine!
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Carbine doesn't read the offical forms. If you want your voice heard by them you need to put it on social media... readit, facebook, twitter, and so on. 
 
 
Great post, to bad it will not get to the devs   :(
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        5: Peeing in a bottle as to not hold up the raid:
          - LOL! Gross yes but I've heard about it being done from time to time.
 
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Sometiems the Mods will pass on feedback to the devs.
Sometimes.
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Agree. Good post. I just want to add that When I first started reading this post, I started to scroll down to see how long it was and how long I scrolled for actually made me laugh, but I already read like the first 5 paragraphs so I finished it. Enough reading for today.
 
#accomplished #sosmart	
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			"Hard Core" is at best a niche market, and DOES not reflect the needs of the average gamer. You are either hard core, or not. You cant be both. Wildstar being 100% hard core would mean its death in no time. Simply put, hard core players are a MINORITY, not the majority. And profits are made investing in the majority.	
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snip
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There was a Streamer who offered to play 24hrs straight and give giveaways... one of them being said bottles mentioned above :P
 
Puts a totally different spin on the term Streamer ;)
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My two cents... up until Wildstar, "hardcore" and "casual" weren't really buzzwords that came up a lot... sure, there'd be a "hardcore" difficulty selection in games, and they might be mentioned in game articles... but they weren't always "in the foreground" kind of words.  In a short several months, the horses known as "hardcore" and "casual" have been beaten so badly, they're not just glue, nor super-glue, they may as well be "afterlife glue".
 
I still, personally, feel the best definition of hardcore/casual is time, by choice, invested by player.  The third group mention time-investment/requirement... sure, perhaps from the designers'/developers' perspective... but since the "success" of a game is measured more by how it lives, thrives, and survives with the players, along with whether or not the players are willing to stick with it and keep at it... a "hardcore" player, I feel, is one that enjoys the game enough that can or will invest 30-40+ (or at least a double-digit amount) hours a week into said game); while a casual is one that either can't or won't invest anymore than 10-20 hours or less a week into the game, either because it's not enough to keep them invested, or because they're too busy and don't feel a need to prioritize the game over other things. :ph34r:	
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I speaking of WS not every game ever. Of course there are thousands of top tier hardcore gamers, but they aren't concentrated enough to singlehandedly support a game that was almost a decade in development. 
 
I don't have to be an expert to have common sense. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cancer+treatment+industry+profits
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There are hundreds of thousands of hardcore gamers. They can appeal to any type of audience they want. You didnt take anything away from the point and you are arguing useless irrelevant information now about cancer treatment and Idc. Make your own metaphor is you are unhappy with mine. Take it as literally as you want, youre still missing the point. There is a market for hardcore gamers, however small you "think" it is, Oh' marketing experts of the forums.
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I'm hardcore casual, yo. *badass pose*
 
But seriously, being hardcore is SO boring. I tried it back in the early WoW days after being semi-hardcore for awhile in EQ. Raid almost everyday for months, do the same thing every friggin' day until you forget why you're doing it. Burn out. Quit. I guess it's just not in my nature to be so thoroughly obsessed with anything.	
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There are hundreds of thousands of hardcore gamers. They can appeal to any type of audience they want. You didnt take anything away from the point and you are arguing useless irrelevant information now about cancer treatment and Idc. Make your own metaphor is you are unhappy with mine. Take it as literally as you want, youre still missing the point. There is a market for hardcore gamers, however small you "think" it is, Oh' marketing experts of the forums.
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but they aren't concentrated enough to singlehandedly support a game that was almost a decade in development. 
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How does one just throw out statements like that, like they are experts. Im acknowledging that I know nothing more than MANY business models are based off of minorities, and however long they take to develope many thrive. I dont understand how you are arguing that point, or acting like an expert on the market of MMOs, specifically this game when you have no information on it
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Logic is lost on you. Or maybe your definition of hardcore is, anyone that plays video games. *shrug*
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I'm hardcore casual, yo. *badass pose*
 
But seriously, being hardcore is SO boring. I tried it back in the early WoW days after being semi-hardcore for awhile in EQ. Raid almost everyday for months, do the same thing every friggin' day until you forget why you're doing it. Burn out. Quit. I guess it's just not in my nature to be so thoroughly obsessed with anything.
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I'm sorry, I saw your avatar picture, and couldn't take you seriously at first, had me laughing so hard.
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I was once told that I'm not allowed to stand up from the computer till we cleared all the keepers of Ulduar on hard mode. We kept wiping on Freya at that point and haven't even tried Thorim or Mimiron yet. Turned off the computer and went to read a book.
 
Bloody hardcore tossers. :unsure:
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Is tosser really an insult? It sounds ridiculous to my american ears.
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Is tosser really an insult? It sounds ridiculous to my american ears.
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Really?  I'm actually rather fond of Brit/UK slang... seems so much more pleasant... I'd rather be called a "tosser" than a "f-er" any day... at least you can still kind of giggle and hold some dignity after being called it. xD
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Well... I am technically a tosser. It's almost a hobby.  :lol:
 
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Really?  I'm actually rather fond of Brit/UK slang... seems so much more pleasant... I'd rather be called a "tosser" than a "f-er" any day... at least you can still kind of giggle and hold some dignity after being called it. xD
 
EDIT: Well, after looking up the technical definition of the word... hehe, yeah, I can see where that might be somewhat of not quite endearing, lol.
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Come on give us a list of these giggly words! I want to impress me American friends!
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How does one just throw out statements like that, like they are experts.
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Alright, sorry folks while this thread started out innocently enough it is no longer on topic and there hasn't been any real constructive conversation about it, as such I am going to lock it. 
Thanks for the feedback.
- Team WildStar 	
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