108833-wildstar-is-not-hardcore

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First lets get some definitions out there.
 
Hardcore defined=unswervingly committed; uncompromising; dedicated.
 
Hardcore Gamer defined=Someone who plays video games as a primary hobby.
 
Basically to qualify as a "hardcore" gamer you have to game a lot and see gaming as part of your core lifestyle and not simply as a diversion. By this definition, a hardcore game would be one that you can sink tons and tons and tons of time into. So in reality, WOW is a hardcore game. Call of duty is a hardcore game. Any game that is designed to be played a lot over an extended period of time is a hardcore game.
 
Conversely, Wildstar is not a hardcore game. It has been made abundantly clear by people on the forums and in-game that there simply is not enough fun, rewarding content to do in the game and that people are finding no reason to log on and are leaving the game because of it. People go back to WOW because WOW is a hardcore game and sucks up their time like a black hole.
 
Wildstar is a HARD game, not a hardcore game. It offers the most challenging group content I have ever encountered and gives gamers true, challenging gameplay. People far too often confuse hard with hardcore as it relates to gaming. Along with this, people who are raid attuned are not necessarily hardcore as the attunement is not at all based around time commitment and is more centered around luck and other outside factors. This game can be very hard and very fun; but it simply does not absorb time well enough to be called a real hardcore game, and it has actually turned away many hardcore gamers because of this. Most players who have left this game left for the same reason: "I wasn't feeling rewarded for my time commitment." These players are not "filthy casuals" but are actually hardcore players who have moved on to greener pastures where they can continue to enjoy their gaming hobby that they are so passionate about. Truly casual players would really enjoy this game as it will take them up to around 144 hours to hit max level which is a lot of time if you are playing causally a couple hours here and there.
 
Now I'm not trying to cut anyone down and if you are raiding in wildstar good for you and I really hope you are having a good time. You are hardcore and so am I and so are the majority of players who choose to play mmorpgs. All I am trying to point out is that Hard and Hardcore are completely different and are frequently confused, especially regarding this game.
 
The forums show it, the dwindling server populations show it; Wildstar is not a hardcore game and does not cater to the hardcore gamer as it lacks the rewarding time sinks that define hardcore gaming. Any truly hardcore gamer will not find what he/she is looking for solely in this game. Even if you raid 5 days a week is there very much content besides raids that keeps you logging in obsessively? Wildstar is fun and quite hard, but it is not a hardcore game built to withstand all the time that hardcore gamers will want to throw at it. Maybe this will change down the line, but right now this is the case. Saying that Wildstar is a game built just with the hardcore audience in mind demonstrates false logic as it is missing many things that would keep people rewarded for the massive amounts of time they play.
 
Along with this, many players would argue that the attunement process is hardcore which is even further off base. The attunement process isn't even hard. It is simply tedious rng and drama that has nothing to do with a players commitment or dedication to the game.
 
Lets stop all this hardcore nonsense and remember the actual facts and definitions. If you are really good at wildstar then mad props to you for mastering a difficult game.
 
Wildstar is not hardcore.
 
 	
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Yeah sorry, its not hardcore, and its not hard either. Mildly challenging, sure.
 
What it is, is a Timesink. A giant, graphical, buggy mess of a timesink with very little reward structure or variety.	
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			Oh look, this thread again.	
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Oh look, this thread again.
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First lets get some definitions out there.
 
Hardcore defined=unswervingly committed; uncompromising; dedicated.
 
Hardcore Gamer defined=Someone who plays video games as a primary hobby.
 
Basically to qualify as a "hardcore" gamer you have to game a lot and see gaming as part of your core lifestyle and not simply as a diversion. By this definition, a hardcore game would be one that you can sink tons and tons and tons of time into. So in reality, WOW is a hardcore game. Call of duty is a hardcore game. Any game that is designed to be played a lot over an extended period of time is a hardcore game.
 
Conversely, Wildstar is not a hardcore game. It has been made abundantly clear by people on the forums and in-game that there simply is not enough fun, rewarding content to do in the game and that people are finding no reason to log on and are leaving the game because of it. People go back to WOW because WOW is a hardcore game and sucks up their time like a black hole.
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			YAY SEMANTICS!	
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			Yup, WOW combat is so easy and unchallenging that I got bored after doing all the dungeons and raids and use the game as nothing more than a social media like Facebook.	
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Yeah sorry, its not hardcore, and its not hard either. Mildly challenging, sure.
 
What it is, is a Timesink. A giant, graphical, buggy mess of a timesink with very little reward structure or variety.
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So your definition of a hardcore game is one where you can PuG the endgame content (of which there is a lot .. I grant you that) without much use for tactics more complicated then tank-and-spank and "don't stand in the red stuff"
 
Yet a hard game, which lets you continuously throw yourself at an encounter to get incrementily better at it, for very little reward other then "I killed it" .... that's not hard-core ??
 
I would like to point out that the opposite from hard-core is Casual.
Which of the games is more casual friendly ?? because the other one will be the hard-core game.	
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Which of the games is more casual friendly ?? because the other one will be the hard-core game.
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			Who cares? If you like it, play. If you don't, dont.	
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			We know, we know...	
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The BIGGEST blunder Carbine made was to tout the game as "Hardcore". Hardcore is cool if you are into that kind of thing but lets be honest here. The MAJORITY of players are casual. And its usually the MAJORITY of the player base that keeps a company profitable. WHY you would cater to a minority while you are trying to make a profit is completely beyond me. The idea SOUNDED bold, but now reality is slapping them in the face and they are forced to backtrack and rethink their strategy.
 
And about that advertising.....
 
I didnt even KNOW about Wildstar until a few days before release when I just happened to stumble upon it, and the website hype drew me in. In contrast, a few years ago you couldnt go ANYWHERE without seeing an ad for Borderlands 2. Its stuff like this that makes me go hrrrrrm.	
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Yeah sorry, its not hardcore, and its not hard either. Mildly challenging, sure.
 
What it is, is a Timesink. A giant, graphical, buggy mess of a timesink with very little reward structure or variety.
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First lets get some definitions out there.
 
Hardcore defined=unswervingly committed; uncompromising; dedicated.
 
Hardcore Gamer defined=Someone who plays video games as a primary hobby.
 
Basically to qualify as a "hardcore" gamer you have to game a lot and see gaming as part of your core lifestyle and not simply as a diversion. By this definition, a hardcore game would be one that you can sink tons and tons and tons of time into. So in reality, WOW is a hardcore game. Call of duty is a hardcore game. Any game that is designed to be played a lot over an extended period of time is a hardcore game.
 
Conversely, Wildstar is not a hardcore game. It has been made abundantly clear by people on the forums and in-game that there simply is not enough fun, rewarding content to do in the game and that people are finding no reason to log on and are leaving the game because of it. People go back to WOW because WOW is a hardcore game and sucks up their time like a black hole.
 
Wildstar is a HARD game, not a hardcore game. It offers the most challenging group content I have ever encountered and gives gamers true, challenging gameplay. People far too often confuse hard with hardcore as it relates to gaming. Along with this, people who are raid attuned are not necessarily hardcore as the attunement is not at all based around time commitment and is more centered around luck and other outside factors. This game can be very hard and very fun; but it simply does not absorb time well enough to be called a real hardcore game, and it has actually turned away many hardcore gamers because of this. Most players who have left this game left for the same reason: "I wasn't feeling rewarded for my time commitment." These players are not "filthy casuals" but are actually hardcore players who have moved on to greener pastures where they can continue to enjoy their gaming hobby that they are so passionate about. Truly casual players would really enjoy this game as it will take them up to around 144 hours to hit max level which is a lot of time if you are playing causally a couple hours here and there.
 
Now I'm not trying to cut anyone down and if you are raiding in wildstar good for you and I really hope you are having a good time. You are hardcore and so am I and so are the majority of players who choose to play mmorpgs. All I am trying to point out is that Hard and Hardcore are completely different and are frequently confused, especially regarding this game.
 
The forums show it, the dwindling server populations show it; Wildstar is not a hardcore game and does not cater to the hardcore gamer as it lacks the rewarding time sinks that define hardcore gaming. Any truly hardcore gamer will not find what he/she is looking for solely in this game. Even if you raid 5 days a week is there very much content besides raids that keeps you logging in obsessively? Wildstar is fun and quite hard, but it is not a hardcore game built to withstand all the time that hardcore gamers will want to throw at it. Maybe this will change down the line, but right now this is the case. Saying that Wildstar is a game built just with the hardcore audience in mind demonstrates false logic as it is missing many things that would keep people rewarded for the massive amounts of time they play.
 
Along with this, many players would argue that the attunement process is hardcore which is even further off base. The attunement process isn't even hard. It is simply tedious rng and drama that has nothing to do with a players commitment or dedication to the game.
 
Lets stop all this hardcore nonsense and remember the actual facts and definitions. If you are really good at wildstar then mad props to you for mastering a difficult game.
 
Wildstar is not hardcore.
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			Honestly at this point the only people I would take seriously if they said Wildstar was not challenging would be Enigma members. So until you're part of Engima or one of the other top Guild. Please don't post such drivel.	
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			I was going to say inb4 this becomes another Let's make excuses for WoW's success thread but I'm too late. Whatever you may feel about WoW it's still standing. Have you ever considered that maybe they are doing something right? The reasons you give range from it's super social, it's accesible(easy, baby game all code words for accesibity), it's been around so long (aka it's proven). That sounds an awful like a game I'd wanna play. Especially when I look at something like ARR which mirrors that philosophy and as a result is having great success. Maybe those guys who made WoW are on to something...	
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I was going to say inb4 this becomes another Let's make excuses for WoW's success thread but I'm too late. Whatever you may feel about WoW it's still standing. Have you ever considered that maybe they are doing something right? The reasons you give range from it's super social, it's accesible(easy, baby game all code words for accesibity), it's been around so long (aka it's proven). That sounds an awful like a game I'd wanna play. Especially when I look at something like ARR which mirrors that philosophy and as a result is having great success. Maybe those guys who made WoW are on to something...
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While I may hold the trophy and title of #1 SE fanboy, FFXIV is such a monumental disaster I can't even begin to fathom the sillyness you posted Balf.
 
1st) WoW is 'successful', but not 'good'. It is so in the same way that McDonalds is hugely 'successful' but not in the slightest bit 'good'. Both examples have inferior products that they are hugely successful at selling by making them extremely accessible to a socially manipulated audience. I've played WoW for a while, I didn't play it because it was good, I played it because many of my friends were playing it. I choked on the terrible art, the poor gameplay, and the atrocious story so I could do things with friends. They played for many of the sme reasons, but one reason that stood out was it was Easy.
 
TLDR: success =/= good
 
2nd) FFXIV's failure nearly bankrupt SE. Call a pile of *cupcake* what ever you like, it's still a pile of *cupcake*, there are various reasons for this, but here isn't the place to lay them out; you can read the old XIV forums for that. ARR was a last ditch effort to prevent financial collapse, and they did it by making their original game much easier. My favorite MMO will forever be FFXI, and I will never talk bad about SE's work... but not even fanboys like me could float XIV, and in the sense that they turned a beautiful game into a dumbed down, easymode piece of *cupcake* to lure in the masses just like WoW does, yea they copied WoW, and yea it makes money just like *cupcake* McDonalds does. 
 
You can sell a man sh!t as long as you make it easy to access and convince them it's delicious... they'll eat it up all day.
 
So, While I actually agree with you Balf (accessibility makes money in the MMO world as well as the restaurant world); the fact is a lot of us are tired of disgusting @ss big mac's and want a steak on our plates. Yea a decent steakhouse (W*) won't make as much money as McDonalds (WoW), but that says nothing about how good the product is.
 
-Naz
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			Sitting on your ass in front of a computer/TV screen is not and never will be 'hardcore'.	
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We aren't talking about Burger Joint's we are talking MMORPGs. Good is also a subjective term. Let's go with works and works better :)  Add "they are convincing you that it is good" to the list of excuses. There are more MMORPGs than ever. Yet WoW continues it's success. Why can't people ever admit that it might actually be good? This isn't the early days where competition was slim. Big name companies have tried to throw their hats in the ring and have failed. I haven't played WoW in 2 plus years. I just got bored after 6 years. The problem is people can't just say that. It has to be the things they've imagined. Same thing with the sub drops. The sub drops are happening solely because of that 1 thing they hate lol! I wish people who brought up Wow were as honest as I am, basically. Instead everyone's an angry-ex. WoW works. What Blizzard does work. Sometimes it's not about the Burger. It could be those fries:)
 
Now to XiV. XiV 1.0 and ARR(which I view them a) are completely different games. ARR has the second largest subscriber base at 2 million. You are correct. they became more woW like and guess what? It worked. Cha-ching lol:http://xivsoul.com/
 
 
P.S. Wildstar is at the stage where it needs to decide if it wants to be a high pop Accessibility game or a Low pop Hard game. Either can succeed(and be *gasp* good). 1 will definitely make more money than the other. When it's 3 A.M. and I'm heading to that Booty Call(lol) I'm not stopping at the Steakhouse is all I'm saying lol
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Your entire argument rests on a logical fallacy (argumentum ad numerum)...
 
If we are being intellectually honest, then you must accept that it is what it is.. a false argument.
 
Both XIV and WoW have flat  gameplay; other games with far fewer subs have much better gameplay (GW2, Terra, XI, etc).
 
You can hype the art and story of XIV all you want (because like all FF games its top notch) but the game itself, the mechanics and play, blow harder than Atomos
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I'll never get these "Is or Is Not Hardcore" debates, to me hardcore means a genre of music like punk rock or techno, never has a video game come to mind when hearing "hardcore".
 
http://www.di.fm/hardcore	
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I don't really care if it's hard or hardcore, but it's not rewarding, even if you manage to do something incredibly difficult, it's not rewarding, it rewards "luck" more than anything, and if you don't have luck, then you better have a lot of time to spend on this game, or you won't get anywhere.
 
that's why people go back to WoW, because if you manage to kill a "mythic" boss, you are rewarded for it, not with useless loot that 80% of the time, you throw away because the runes are awful.
 
it's good that the game is hard, I like that, but this game has not been made for a western audience, it's more like a korean MMO than anything else, with way better PVE, but that's not enough to make it desirable.
 
I really think the devs have/had gold in their hands, and they are destroying it, little by little :/	
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I don't really care if it's hard or hardcore, but it's not rewarding, even if you manage to do something incredibly difficult, it's not rewarding, it rewards "luck" more than anything, and if you don't have luck, then you better have a lot of time to spend on this game, or you won't get anywhere.
 
that's why people go back to WoW, because if you manage to kill a "mythic" boss, you are rewarded for it, not with useless loot that 80% of the time, you throw away because the runes are awful.
 
it's good that the game is hard, I like that, but this game has not been made for a western audience, it's more like a korean MMO than anything else, with way better PVE, but that's not enough to make it desirable.
 
I really think the devs have/had gold in their hands, and they are destroying it, little by little :/
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Thanks for clarifying, OP.
 
I think what Wildstar was going for the whole time was "challenging." Therefore, it's hardcore not in the sense that A)you will be draining hours and hours of your life into progressing through the content, but rather B) there's a very real chance that you might not actually be able to complete the content because you suck at the game.
 
To be fair to Carbine, they realize that not everyone has all sorts of free time to dump into their game (although there is still plenty of stuff for you to do if you want to). They still want to offer something that's challenging to their player base though, and I believe this is what they ALWAYS had intended from the outside. Just count the number of times they use the word "skill" when referring to their combat system in the dev videos. "Skill" is not investing time, it's actually playing the game well.
 
It's actually a good formula I think, because people who don't have huge amounts of excess time to play can practice to get good and progress, and those that too can just keep smashing their heads against the wall until they eventually break through.	
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Who cares? If you like it, play. If you don't, dont.
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