Hardcore... How would you define it?

[KamikazeMan]

Casuals - Players who aren't too dedicated to the game and play at their own pace. They never fully understand the game's mechanics and it takes them a long time to get through certain content because they aren't too eager to overcome it.

Hardcore - Players who go out of their way to fully understand the game's mechanics and try to master the content available. They may not necessarily be good at the game, but they're dedicated to learning and mastering it.

[OSUBuckeye4]

I've always viewed a hardcore player as someone who tries to get the most out of every hour they are logged into the world.

They don't casually run around doing "fun" things. Everything they do is a means to an end (achieving the best and/or most unique rank/gear/level/ability possible).



That doesn't mean that a hardcore player can't ever help another player out... but, they are generally performing that help for their own benefit.

Example: Helping a FC member complete a dungeon so that person, in return, can run a higher level dungeon with them and contribute to their own personal success.


That's always the difference between hardcore and casual to me. Casual players will log in and just wander around the world without any real goals in mind. Hardcore players always have a goal/agenda upon logging in.

Doesn't make one better than the other, there are good aspects of hardcore players and there are bad aspects. Some people take some of these aspects to deeper extremes than others.

[Ryios]

To me, hardcore is someone who is devoted and committed to clearing content. As such they develop an attitude that has no room for fooling around or silly mistakes "like jumping off the titan platform". This often makes them seem elitist, like they think they are better than everyone else, when in fact, they just expect other people to take it as seriously as they are and to not have their time wasted.

Hardcore players are generally well researched and prepared on new content (you tube videos, strat guides, best gear they can possibly have with their current resources, etc).

Basically, a hardcore player does everything in their power to be as good as they possibly can be. As such they are generally good people to have on a run.

However hardcore players tend to form clicks of like minded people to run content together. They end up together in the long run naturally. Because hardcore players have low tolerance for immature, trolling, or just overall bad players.

And furthermore, on pve content (bosses etc) hardcore players basically do more work than casual players. Some casual players just show up and expect someone to explain stuff to them. Hardcore players know all there is to know about a fight before they even try it, via research.

[Sadana]

Someone who is very competitive.

(I play a lot but am a very casual player. If I don't cap tomes, do dailies to get the mount asap, or farm whatever, that's okay! )

[Richiealvian]

I play over 10 hours a day back when holidays happened, but now I'm in an internship and I play 2-3 hours a day if I have time to daily and coil, sometimes less sometimes more, but mostly less. I get to the point where I clear t1-t5 in 1-2 hours and primal EX in 30 minutes after reset, but admittedly for each of them i trained for days, if not weeks for probably 10 hours straight for 3-4 days. I still consider myself somewhere in between hardcore and casual..

Because I don't treat the game very "sports" like, am generally tolerant with mistakes and despises those who doesn't care about newbies and instead of teaching them condemns them. Whenever I go into content I ask around if there's anyone new and teach them if they are. I also go into content blind, to have fun.. I often become the burden within my first few if not first few hundred runs, but as I get better I usually can perform flawlessly. I think the only video I've ever watched is of twintania, because we wiped on her for 4 weeks already. Would you consider me a hardcore or a casual? Or a hardcore turned casual? :P

[BoomerOU]

Hardcore players min/max everything as a whole. Their characters, gear choice, rotation. They may or may not play a lot, some hardcores only have a few hours a night to play, if that. But they maximize their time and plan ahead to yield the best output for their input.

Casual players play by their whim, but when focused on a goal often exhibit bursts of a hardcore mindset. However as a whole they care less about things like maximizing their dps by .7 by adjusting their rotation and generally just prefer to experience the content.

Nothing is wrong with either playstyle however.

[Tzain]

I was there when mmo players started to use the term "hardcore". Time for a Cool Story Bro!

It was 1998 and I was heavily playing Everquest. For those of you unfamiliar with Everquest raiding, it was a ton of players crawling their way through an exceptionally long dungeon to get at a very hard boss that had a low chance to drop an item. The average timeframe on most of these things measured in several hours...and that was if you didn't wipe.

Some players, like myself, were willing to spend the hours upon hours needed to drag a group into the depths of these hell holes. I cant even tell you how many raids I led to get Clerics their Epic Weapon. The players that were willing and able to do this, on weekdays, and sometimes 2 -3 times in a row were not common. The term "hardcore raiders" started to make the rounds. I can actually remember one of the first times someone said it to me, it was a descriptive value. "You've run this twice today already?! that's some Hardcore stuff right there".

Eventually the term was applied to anyone who was running the really high level raids that required massive time investment.

That's what the term Hardcore describes. Time investment per day. A casual player might hop on and play an mmo for an hour, maybe an hour and a half (length of an average movie). A hardcore player is going for 3, 4, 5 hours on a weekday and possibly doesn't sleep on a weekend preferring an excess of redbull and caffeine to pick up the slack.

Hardcore DOES NOT indicate anything to do with Skill or Experience. It does not make you superior to anyone or anything, it only describes how much time you spend playing the game in a single sitting.

So if you log in, run the hardest content in the entire game, and then log out until tomorrow when you plan to do it again? You my friend are actually CASUAL. The guy who runs all the roulettes + does a little RP + some crafting for shiggles and runs some dungeons on an alt? That's the HARDCORE one.

[Ryios]

So if you log in, run the hardest content in the entire game, and then log out until tomorrow when you plan to do it again? You my friend are actually CASUAL. The guy who runs all the roulettes + does a little RP + some crafting for shiggles and runs some dungeons on an alt? That's the HARDCORE one.

Not in FFXIV, SE Forces everyone to be casual by that definition because you can only get one primal weapon a week and can only run bcb once. So if you clear bcb in 50 minutes, then knock out the 3 primals in 30 minutes, and run CT in 60, and High Level Duty Finder to cap, bam your done for the week. There is no reason to run stuff except to help people past that point, or farm accessories on primals. If you have all the said accessories on all your jobs theres nothing to do, thus have been forced to be casual because you can't rerun bcb.

For a game to support true hardcore play, it needs to have content that is so Epically hard, that it requires massive time dumps. Everything in this game can be cleared in a night in 2 hours.

For us, we still have turn 5, but once it goes down, it will go down faster the next week. And then we'll clear it all in one night.

[Tzain]

Not in FFXIV, SE Forces everyone to be casual by that definition because you can only get one primal weapon a week and can only run bcb once. So if you clear bcb in 50 minutes, then knock out the 3 primals in 30 minutes, and run CT in 60, and High Level Duty Finder to cap, bam your done for the week. There is no reason to run stuff except to help people past that point, or farm accessories on primals. If you have all the said accessories on all your jobs theres nothing to do, thus have been forced to be casual because you can't rerun bcb.

For a game to support true hardcore play, it needs to have content that is so Epically hard, that it requires massive time dumps. Everything in this game can be cleared in a night in 2 hours.

For us, we still have turn 5, but once it goes down, it will go down faster the next week. And then we'll clear it all in one night.

TRUE. Developers do not particularly like Hardcore players when it comes to progress. They tend to screw up the timelines as they are on the outside of the averages that the developers used to build their models. Things like "myth caps" are designed to control their progress. HOWEVER this does nothing to stop their Hardcore tendencies as they will likely just move onto some other activity in the game. In your given model, The Casual player will stop after completing the content you described. They will log out or pace themselves to take a week to complete what they aim to complete. If that same player was hardcore, they'd find additional things to do. To put it overly simply, The casual player logs out when they are done with their current task. The hardcore finds another task.

By the way, I remember having this conversation with some people and the guy who backed up my description is a professional game developer for AAA titles, he even added that when developers discuss the term "hardcore", they are talking about time spent in one sitting.

FYI, Groups that work together to take the hardest current content in the game as soon as it's released have an all together different term applied to them. It varies depending on the crowd, but the most commonly used ones I've heard are "Bleeding Edge", "Progression", and (my personal favorite) "Vanguard". Seriously, Vanguard just sounds badass.

[Ryios]

By the way, I remember having this conversation with some people and the guy who backed up my description is a professional game developer for AAA titles, he even added that when developers discuss the term "hardcore", they are talking about time spent in one sitting.

Agreed, but some people are hybrids, like myself. I am hardcore when I can be, and casual when I have to be. I'm not 17 anymore, I can't play 30 hours straight and not have a job. I have a mortgage to pay and deadlines to meet on projects. But whenever time presents itself I burn it all on video games. Mostly because I enjoy too. So I'm a hybrid, and end up with a schedule of when I play. So monday-thursday it's basically 9pm to midnight or 2 am, but fri night all out play fest 10+ hours if posisble until I am to tired to see straight.

As for other stuff to do.... We leveled new characters with classes we don't have on our mains and run BCB twice, I'm still working on mine, but others in my static already have a 2nd static rolling.