"My game" attitudes and other "hardcore" views

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

One of the many things I've come to realize in my 26 years of gaming (roughly) is that there are the so-called "hardcore" players who actively believe that whatever game they own and play is "their" game.
I see it a lot in WoW, which I've played since the beta minus a few breaks here and there. That somehow, because Blizzard attempts to cater to all player archetypes, the "hardcore" gamers are being cheated out of "their" content. Because casuals can play and raid, this somehow breaks the game or makes it less fun. I feel that leveling the playing field so those players who cannot devote long hours of their life to experiencing the endgame content, the "casuals", is not at all a game-breaking issue. The hardcore raiders still have their top-tier content that only the truly dedicated (and sometimes real-life-challenged) can accomplish. But never does it fail to hear these "hardcore" players whine when an "easy-mode" version is released.
For one thing, its not "your game", its everyone who has bought and subscribed to it's game. And if Blizz decides those "casuals" who play less but pay the same exact price should get to experience endgame content, then I find its justified.
I will say I used to be a hardcore player back in the classic and BC days because I had less responsibility to take up my time. Now I have family and work and school that replaces much of the time I would have used for gaming, so WoW has become more of a casual experience. And it doesn't bother me one damn bit.
I do miss some of the older content like 5-man dungeons being a challenge, and I do feel Blizz may have dropped the ball on making this content way too easy (even on heroic). But overall I feel the endgame experience is scaled so everyone can play.
No player should be denied content simply because they either don't have the skill, or the time, especially if they paid for the damn game.
Thats why I feel that other games adding an easier mode isn't a sin. The "hardcore" crowd are not required to play on easy, and the less skilled crowd should be able to enjoy their experience without being locked out because they're just not as good.
I don't apply this to PVP type game modes, thats where skill should be a factor, because its competitive. We don't make good athletes sit out games because they're "too good" at them... yet.
So in short, easy mode isn't a bad thing. And "hardcore" gamers need to realize they don't own the game just because they're more skilled; they can't dictate who gets to play what and how. The game designers ultimately have that choice to lock out the less skilled or add easier modes so anyone can play.

 

[kingthrall]

You need to realize also that as much as I respect your view in that elitism breeds hatred, without conflict and a sense of superiority there would be no reason to play a game in the first place. If you boiled the very staple principles of any game it is to complete an objective which you can either win or fail. Failure even in simulators like crashing a train or letting your sims die from starvation... It is still failure.

So on that debate. Yes I am not a pro-gamer in my favorite game Myth II but I would say I am a pretty hardcore player considering I have my own youtube channel and Steam page to encourage more members and players to be involved.


Sorry no game can beat myth II in all its modifications and diversity Ive yet to see a single game with this much user contribution.

Here is one of my video's I pick this specifically for disappointing Rome total war 2 fans who want some fun with proper Greek voices. Just to clarify these are all unique and completely different units to the fantasy setting of myth II so enjoy.


Edit: I will add that I do not condone harassment in trying to abuse other players not as adept in the game, I encourage users to play this game, which is why I put up a tutorial on my channel but that said there are some real jerks out there and this will always be the case whatever multiplayer game you play.

So yeah, I am a hardcore gamer blinded or not by the fact that "MY GAME" is simply superior in nearly every way. This is why I laugh so much at LOL/Dota fans who gloat about their skills because really its a bad joke in comparison. Excuse the rant have to stoke some more fire in my post.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I completely support complaints when devs change the game half way through, you sold me a product on a certain set of features, if you take those out then you are a fucking prick, not to mention things start to border on illegal.

I get that some aren't fussed because it doesn't affect the parts you want, but now for a moment imagine the parts that you most enjoy are patched out next time around... I'd say you wouldn't be singing their praises in that case.

 

[kazann]

its because it DOES break the game and it DOES make it less fun.

You see this all the time, Devs come out saying - "we're trying to broaden our audience" - you just CANNOT broaden the audience without breaking and watering the game down, period.

Now I dont know about WoW and PVP, but when it comes to singleplayer games, especially horror and RPG games, this "Broadening of the audience" has nearly destroyed both these genres.

 

[LetalisK]

snip

...the hell is this blasphemy? By changing it so that a casual can play on an optional difficulty, you're just sullying the sanctity of gaming. I mean, it's not like they aren't allowed to play. They just have to play hardcore.

 

[Fireaxe]

The only time it's fair to really take issue with easy mode is when there is either not a good "hard mode" -- honestly I don't know why anyone would play WoW for the challenge though, it never was much more than a grindy exercise in getting x number of non-retarded people into the raid zone...

Now I dont know about WoW and PVP, but when it comes to singleplayer games, especially horror and RPG games, this "Broadening of the audience" has nearly destroyed both these genres.

Don't really agree with the RPG part of this -- solid RPGs with decent difficulty challenges are still out there in decent numbers, just can't necessarily expect it from a lot of the big name releases.

 

[Zhukov]

In my experience, hardcore gamers are a thoroughly miserable lot and their views can be safely disregarded.

I would have thought being hardcore something would mean you enjoy it more than most, but whenever I see someone self-identify as hardcore it's usually followed by a torrent of petty and childish bile.

Perhaps it's one of those vocal minority things. Maybe there's a whole bunch of hardcore types out there quietly doing their thing while the my-core-is-so-much-harder-than-yours crowd hog the spotlight.

 

[Eve Charm]

Meh I thought the problem was something that took a month to accomplish being reduced to a matter of days.

 

[Varrdy]

I can see where you're coming from but making things easier / more accessible for everyone in games smacks of the "no-one loses" mentality that seems so pervasive these days. These days, kids especially, no-one is allowed to fail; second place is first loser no more. This is so kids can be spared the embarrassment and disappointment that comes with "failure", apparently.

Sadly, what these do-gooders who dreamed up this crap fail to realise that kids NEED to experience disappointment and failure - it is the ONLY way that they will ever learn to cope with it. I'm not saying that kids should be deliberately bombarded with "You suck!" chants or grounded forever because they only got a "B" in Maths but by completely wrapping them up in cotton wool and then thrusting them into the big, wide world without a coping mechanism is a recipe for disaster.

Oops, bit of a tangent there, sorry! It is relevant though - but I think the mark has been missed when it comes to the reason why. Taking the Mass Effect trilogy as an example, the first two games had harder modes that were unlocked when you completed lesser modes. This allowed you to find your feet and then, when you had it down, ramp up the difficulty and when you complete the game on Insanity, after dying eleventy-squillion times, you feel like a BOSS! None of that was necessary though and it didn't detract from the quality of the games.

Mass Effect 3 was very different. In an attempt to suck in the most revenue, get more people on their awful Origin setup and milk those transactions, EA made sure that this game would be accessible to as many people as possible and this meddling DID affect the quality of the game. As well as Multiplayer, they also added new "modes" in which you can forget the shooty bits if you essentially want to play a shiny, 3D choose your own adventure game, or you can skip all that "plot" bollocks because it gets in the way with all the shooty bits! Again, these are all optional but in this case they DID detract from the game, as did EA rushing it out the door and that is why so many long-time ME fans were so pissed off. The game was good and in some places it was epic but we all know what happened next, don't we? If they'd forgotten about trying to appeal to everyone and left out multiplayer and different play modes then maybe they would have had more time to polish up the base game and make it the epic it was supposed to be.

Sadly, that doesn't maximise profits, which is the issue really is. By making the game easier and more accessible, it attracts more gamers and their lovely, lovely monies...which for some odd reason doesn't seem to equate to a subsequent increase in the quality of the games that made them their money.

Cynical? Yes, but I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said before.

 

[GladiatorUA]

It's not the problem of whining "hardcore gamers".
It's a problem of greed, laziness and shitty game design.
Devs have the right to do whatever they want with their game. I retain my right to call them out on all the bullshit they do.
If you want more money and no shitstorm, don't be lazy about designing your game. Taking away gameplay from "hardcore gamers" is the same or even arguably worse than not including "filthy casuals".

 

[DaViller]

I can see where your coming from but i'll still disagree. There are some games that simply should not have an easy mode.
My example for this would be dark souls.

Sure some people may want to play dark souls just for the eviroments or whatever and be turned of by having to actually fight enemys and develop survival skills ingame. But these people are the ones who never even understood what the game is about in the first place. Once you feel save playing dark souls the game loses a lot of it's oppresive atmosphere.

It would be the same as adding a mode to bayonetta in wich she is normally clothed, enemys are nolonger identifiable as angels (to not offend any christians), all sexual references or jokes are gone and her name is changed to sharon.

The best games are the ones wich don't compromise.

 

[Schmeiser]

Well i would call myself a "hardcore gamer", it's kinda boring after having to cc every possible trash in vashjir or TK to just aoeing in the later expansions. Raiding was always kinda easy but they made it even easier in the expansions couple that with the stupid pvp changes and unbalances that ruin your arena on 2500+ rating ofc the "hardcore" gamers would kinda rage. Talking about wow atm, don't care about other games.

Not that i care anymore but while i was a stupid teenager internet pixels meant a lot to me so that's why i quit, it became too easy. Bad people could climb the arena ladders and i got tired of stupid people not figuring super easy fights even after 50 tries. So ye it's kinda rage inducing i guess

A good competitive game should always balance around the top players, atleast that's what dota does and it still goes on.

I have no clue if my post actually has anything to do with your post OP but i just kinda had to vent a bit

 

[McKinsey]

One of the many things I've come to realize in my 26 years of gaming (roughly) is that there are the so-called "hardcore" players who actively believe that whatever game they own and play is "their" game.
I see it a lot in WoW, which I've played since the beta minus a few breaks here and there. That somehow, because Blizzard attempts to cater to all player archetypes, the "hardcore" gamers are being cheated out of "their" content.

Hello, hardcore player speaking here.
Your argument only applies to MMORPGs, which are transient by their very nature and are the only type of games where a conflict between "casual" and "hardcore" crowds can take place. And there is a really obvious explanation for this. See, no such thing as a "hardcore MMORPG player" exists, because "hardcore" doesn't stand for "repeating the same shite day after day for hours long". These are just dudes who've found themselves a virtual (and sometimes rather tedious) job, and they become pissed off when they see that the newcomers have it easier and don't have to suffer as much as they had.

 

[Canadish]

So, OP boils down a very complex issue of differing game design philosophy down to "anyone who disagrees with Casual gaming homogenization is just an elitist!".

I'm opposed to the idea that every game needs to be accessible to everyone. There are thousands of games out there, and the VAST majority are designed from the ground up to be for the casual audience. Very few developers are willing to try do something different and offer a product for the more experienced crowd and they've been getting way too much hostility for that.
Gaming difficulty is a problematic thing. Getting the balance RIGHT is not very easy to do, and from what I've played myself, the majority of devs screw it up. Adding an "easy mode" isn't always just a case of changing the numbers on the enemy's HP bar, infact, that's usually the worst way to handle it. It is however, the only real cost effective way of doing it.

What I'm getting from OP here is that they're desiring a culture shift to where every game is obligated to include this option so any person can experience the full game when they pick it up. This is already the case for the vast majority of games anyway, with the other major camp now being where they only have one very easy difficulty for everyone.

I don't agree with that idea. I like casual games as well, I play plenty of them. But occasionally I get an inch for some punishing challenge or something that's going to force me to think and adapt. Sometimes, I just wanna have to get good.
I feel a lot of people, OP included, misuse elitism as a buzzword in these discussions. It implies the idea of a gated community and snobbery. This just ain't true. Game difficulty is a fair platform. Anyone can get good at a game, some people take longer at it, but anyone can do it. The wonderful thing is, is that you can get better at most games by actually playing the games, even if it's just an hour every other day.
I don't agree that everyone should just be entitled to instant gratification and success in games, that creates a boring culture.
It kills discussion and people helping each other out. Bouncing tips around about how to beat tough parts of games is something that really brought us all together and you rarely see that anymore. That shared experience, the shared struggle is something kind of magical, I really don't know what the proper term for that would be. Not everyone could just beat it, there wasn't a "win button", and that made it satisfying. That's the core of what a challenge is. But it bonded people.
It also forces people to actually get better at the game. You have to learn and grow. This is a good thing, surely?

Easy Mode's just outright kill that though I feel. The removal of challenge in general has removed that from us. Games are practically tripping over themselves to make sure you succeed now and only keep up a very thin pretense of trying to stop you. Beyond: Two Souls had this problem recently. You could just put the controller down and the "game" would just carry on and the same thing would happen regardless during chase or fight scenes. We're getting into wider issues now, but this is just further putting emphasis on the gloss and shine of games and taking away from the core of what they should be about: The Player.

Now, I'm with you on your Warcraft example to some extent however, different matter entirely really. That's a game that's all about it's number-centric auto-attacks and skill plays only a very small part of the equation here. Your power was just relative to the amount of time you spent grinding for levels/gear and it had reached a point where it WAS acting as a toxic influence on people's real lives. Other people have said it before, there wasn't any real depth there anyway, just tricks to keep you playing longer and paying for more months of subscription.
I can get why the older crowd got mad though, they'd invested so much time into the game and were the ones who made it a success in the first place. They hyped it, they payed for it in it's early days, they talked about, spread word about it and made the community what it was. They just expect some loyalty from the company and developers, and that's just basic business in 99% of of other industries. ALWAYS look after your regulars.
Can't blame people for getting emotionally invested and expecting that, that's just human.

 

[shrekfan246]

Now, I'm with you on your Warcraft example to some extent however, different matter entirely really. That's a game that's all about it's number-centric auto-attacks and skill plays only a very small part of the equation here. Your power was just relative to the amount of time you spent grinding for levels/gear and it had reached a point where it WAS acting as a toxic influence on people's real lives. Other people have said it before, there wasn't any real depth there anyway, just tricks to keep you playing longer and paying for more months of subscription.

...

I'm not going to accuse you of never having played World of Warcraft, but I do get the impression that you've never seriously raided in it.

There are very few raid encounters in the game that can just be overcome by sheer overwhelming of numbers. Unless we're talking something like two tiers ahead of whatever gear that dungeon drops, and every member of the raid is geared like that.

Auto attacks in particular make up a very small portion of a class' damage, with the most probably being Rogues at ~10% per boss encounter (though that could be different, it's been a few months since I played and our Rogue switched between other classes fairly often). Sure, they've really streamlined the abilities and spells now and if you don't know what you should be pressing anymore then there's no nice way to say "You shouldn't be raiding", but you constantly have to juggle between resource management, positioning, timing, and patterns; Both of the boss and yourself. Saying there's no depth to WoW's combat is criminally misrepresenting the game.

 

[StriderShinryu]

It's not the problem of whining "hardcore gamers".
It's a problem of greed, laziness and shitty game design.
Devs have the right to do whatever they want with their game. I retain my right to call them out on all the bullshit they do.
If you want more money and no shitstorm, don't be lazy about designing your game. Taking away gameplay from "hardcore gamers" is the same or even arguably worse than not including "filthy casuals".

The best games are the ones wich don't compromise.

This pretty much covers my thoughts as well, though I wouldn't necessarily say that the best games don't compromise so much as I would say that clear and focused developer intention often results in a more enjoyable experience for those within it's sweet spot.

And, quite frankly, being that the resources for creating a game are almost always finite, it's pretty much a given that a game which casts it's net widely is going to be enjoyable for many players but not a truly memorable experience for anyone. I much prefer when a developer creates their vision as they intend it, for the audience they intend to create it for, even if I'm not in that particular demographic. Even if I don't want to play that game, it's still something I can respect. I can certainly understand why a player would feel abandoned if something that once seemed specifically targeted to them was changed in ways that targeted it towards everyone because, simply, it's by necessity not the game that they fell in love with.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Sorry, I'm an older gamer and I find this "accessibility = easier" aspect bullshit. Win or lose, we played to play, and usually never expected to get to the end of some games. I never felt I wasn't playing, or being kept out of something because Ninja Gaiden or Zelda 2 kept kicking my ass. I enjoyed my time even when I was losing. Over time, nature took it's course, I got better and rose to the challenge, and that's how life usually works.

The complaints for easy mode from players in and of themselves reek of the spoiled child that has to be winning or else there's no fun to be had, or the lazy saying that if something's hard to do then it isn't worth doing. As put off as I am by that attitude, I try to keep it out of my mind. Then someone comes along complaining about "elitism" behind the concept and I weep for humanity. We're actually getting people put off by the idea that those that face bigger challenges, take on more effort, and put in more time into something are getting more reward that those that want to take the easiest path, so much so they don't get why someone that did the work might get put off at the thought of someone getting to the same thing by having it handed to them by the developers. At worst, we get the thinly veiled insult and condemnation of the phrase "why do you have to turn something fun into work" that does nothing but try and take the elitism back by claiming you're somehow "better" by only having fun.

I don't have anything against easy modes, just the disrespectful attitude of those that seem to ask for them. You need to turn down the difficulty. Fine, no shame in that. Just don't expect to be seen on the same level as the guy beating it on very hard. I'm really starting to feel nostalgic for the days when people would try to beat Zelda without getting heart pieces, or beat Final fantasy with a single white mage. We need people to aspire to be, not encourage victory through whining.

 

[Ishal]

snip

If you think every game needs to be accessible to everyone, then we're at a disagreement, OP.

But I agree, ultimately the designers have the final say in so much as they are making the game. Blizzard is tricky, since they are both designers and publishers. Some studios are told what to do and it's difficult to tell what was their decision and what came from up top.

If you play a game that is difficult, you should try to overcome that difficulty. Keep trying, learn what you can and if the game is good, it will reward you for your patience and your efforts.

As for MMO's, that's tricky. MMO's have the added factor of guilds and other people. That community driven tribal mentality that exists among them that is repulsive, more often than not. Exclusivity and "elitism" as its perceived is basic human nature. We measure ourselves based on our peers, it's just a fact of life. Personally, while I do engage in this thinking sometimes, its not the reason I play games. I could care less what other people do, and that is mostly because I have my games that I can play. I can go play my fantasy games, and you can go play your GTA or Saints Row or whatever. But when certain games aren't made anymore, or they are changed in a certain way. Yeah, people get salty. And you would as well, if it happened to a franchise or series you liked. For whatever reason, that experience that you cherished was no longer there, you'd be salty.

So, much as I detest the hardcore hyper-competitve mindset, I can't help but still empathize with them. At least to some degree.

 

[aozgolo]

I seem to recall a game philosophy that Todd Howard (Bethesda Game Studios) said once: "Let the player win". Basically I see nothing wrong with allowing even the most casual of players to be able to reach endgame content. That being said however I emphatically applaud games that offer a deeper incentive and gated reward to more dedicated players. My go-to example would be Spyro the Dragon, nothing about the game could you consider "hard", I mean it was a platformer intended to be family friendly, but it had two endings, one basic "yeah you win" ending, and one you got if you managed to collect every gem, every dragon egg, and free every dragon in the game. Not a hard task but one that took a lot more time investment.

Similarly with MMOs I felt WoW actually did it right by offering hard modes of most dungeons, and keeping higher tiered raids still challenging. As a fairly casual raider who participated in these dungeons I can still attest that they are NOT easy for the vast majority of players, they take a lot of coordination, effort, and planning to execute properly. The real issue with MMOs and WoW in particular I feel is a different problem altogether, and the reason I quit playing.

You can spend weeks and months grinding hardcore content and pouring yourself out into completing these dungeons and ultimately all you have to show for it? You look exactly like 100 other people on your server who have done the exact same thing. Ultimately many hardcore players want to be able to stand out from the crowd, or better yet, stand above it. Easy to do in single player games, in Skyrim you're the Dragonborn, almost nobody else has this incredible power, you get all the loot, all the glory, and all the fame. In MMOs you by default share the spotlight with thousands of other heroes, and to hog any kind of limelight you either have to become a magnificent bastard or become the absolute best there is. There's very few ways to truly stand out and be awesome.

I understand this all too well as it's what kind of killed the MMO experience for me. Games pretty much started with this concept of "beat the high score" and for many gamers, that mentality still exists, if you're not in the top 10 you're not anybody and you're not having fun. Obviously not all gamers are like this, in most cases I'm not either but when you look at hardcore gamers of MMOs a lot of times you see that same reasoning, the desire to be the best at it.

One of the big things that kind of discouraged me from being a hardcore MMO player was the fact that I would literally have to have no life to be able to accomplish the level of renown and recognition I wanted, and there were only a very few rather linear paths to greatness. A few people managed success by becoming living memes, doing things outside the box, but everyone who Leeroy Jenkins a pull after Leeroy Jenkins is just a copycat.

Looking at what The Elder Scrolls Online offers one of the big incentives in PvP is that you can be emperor... really? That kind of completely discouraged me altogether. As a fan of games that involve politics I was immediately disheartened that a lofty title of "Emperor of Tamriel" goes to the most hardcore gladiator, a true might makes right scenario if I ever saw one, but few people are Genghis Khan, just because you are a master of combat and destroying everyone on the battlefield doesn't mean you have what it takes to lead. I'm getting off point here but the sheer fact that you have such an extreme level of "there can be only one" gated content that is almost exclusive to hardcore players who invest the most time in the game, it actually is a detriment to the game to players like myself who are huge fans of Elder Scrolls who really wanted to experience this.

I just feel there needs to be more avenues for standing out in MMOs, that's what the hardcore crowd really wants, it's not so much the difficulty of the content being scaled down, it's some lofty crown that only the best players can achieve and strut around like they are important. In a MMO most people don't want to be a face in the crowd, they want to stand on their boasting platform and watch the peons cheer them on.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Eh. There are good ways to be inclusive, and bad ways to be inclusive. It becomes particularly tricky with MMOs because everything is tied to a single fixed "difficulty" level. You cannot leverage an "easy mode" the way you might in a single player game.

WoW has periodically throughout it's lifespan taken turns alienating both casual players (during the "Raid or Die" era of late Vanilla and Burning Crusade) and hardcore players (as a result of heavy stream lining post WOTLK). It is a source of tremendous amusement to me that WoW, once viewed as the Fisher Price of MMOs post Everquest, is now considered one of the last bastions of hardcore play that is getting "ruined" by casual encroachment, but I digress. I think Blizzard have finally run themselves into a position of pleasing no one by trying to please everyone, but it is difficult to track the relative quality of a game that is almost a decade old and could expect to be losing players anyway due to age and mechanics fatigue.

Ideally a AAA MMO will include carrots both for casual players AND hardcore players. When WoW was hitting its stride, it did this better than any other game on the market. If you do not have the resources or capital to achieve this lofty goal, then you are best advised to specifically target either group and make a game that appeals primarily to them and no one else. Most MMOs lean heavily towards casual play now, as this is the larger market, but EVE demonstrates that there is a niche for a well supported hardcore game as well.