So I have a HC character, lv 64 sorc, been working hard on him, maxing the resistances and all that stuff.
Tonight me and 2 of my friends, both higher than me - lv 70 went to SoT on Elite difficulty, all went fine until we reached the final floor and they both dced/ crashed. Because SoT doesn’t allow opening portals even with 1 of my friends rejoining I was left alone to finish the SoT run, which was my very first one on the Elite difficulty.
I assume since the final SoT level was already loaded in while we were still together mobs were already scaled for 3 players and according to their levels - the mobs we were killing before were >lv 71 and they stayed that level even after my friends dced/ crashed.
Having nearly all resistances maxed out (80) I decided to try my best with the boss.
I approached his chamber, hovered my mouse over him - here he is, the lv 71 bad guy, 7 levels above me. I decided to give my best shot.
I went closer to him to fight him, he immediately froze me for what seemed like 4-5 sec (even though I had 80% frost res) and shadow dove me which removed 90% of my hp. Turtle Shell proced, he swiped again and to my horror I was standing again still with only 20% hp left and like 1 more hit away from death.
I then hit the ESC button and clicked “Go to main menu” button. Since this was still my hosted game with 1 friend online (waiting for me to finish the SoT at the Devil’s Crossing) I think the game was still happening unpaused even as I clicked the ESC button.
When I got to the main menu of the game my character was fine and alive.
I love my sorc a lot and I have spent a lot of time on her but I feel a bit guilty for logging out of death this way and so I wanted to ask your opinions.
Do you think this is cheating or am I fine and why/ why not? :undecided:
Would be hard to call it cheating, per se, as it is allowable by the game. It does seem… not hardcore, I guess. Shrug. That said, I play softcore so that I don’t risk losing all that time and effort, so my opinion is presumably of less weight in this matter.
Cheating is using dishonest means to gain an unfair advantage to succeed, namely using something outside of the actual game such as a trainer or a save editor. Since exiting out of the game is an intended feature to be used by anyone, it is not cheating. The only issue that could be had with it is a self-imposed rule.
cheating no as they game allows you to pause and exit. Just like logging out quick enough in POE is allowed including using a macro for it (even tho other macros are bannable offenses)
Obviously some feel it’s cheesy. But if you are Ok with it, then who gives a fuck what others think.
A lot of hardcore players backup their save files frequently so they can “revive” dead characters. So what you did isn’t that bad. Nothing wrong with escaping from a bullshit situation imo.
I still don’t understand why HC even exists aside to waste more time (if you wanted to abide by an honor system you could just delete any character with more than 0 deaths…)
I still don’t understand why HC even exists aside to waste more time (if you wanted to abide by an honor system you could just delete any character with more than 0 deaths…)
It’s easier when it’s formal.
As for why it exists - it’s traditional at that point. It’s also a very different experience. SC is all about endgame, legendary items, absurdly geared builds, etc. When it’s HC since you could easily lose your legendaries or absurdly rare double greens you see in every second new guide nowadays, you almost never have a perfect setup and have to use whatever you have at hands to increase your “wealth” before your character eventually perish.
I then hit the ESC button and clicked “Go to main menu” button.
I feel sore using this, but sometimes I do. Mostly when I try my characters against dangerous foes I’m not sure I could defeat to begin with. But no, I don’t use it every Oh shi- moment.
A lot of hardcore players backup their save files frequently so they can “revive” dead characters. So what you did isn’t that bad. Nothing wrong with escaping from a bullshit situation imo.
Personally I’ve always considered the HC players that use Esc or Alt-F4 to avoid death aren’t really HC in the slightest and are purely cheating for pathetic bragging rights
But…and this is the point here, you’d hit escape > main menu and didn’texpect to see your char alive.
So in this case I’d consider it a one in a million miraculous escape and as such a legitimate / non cheating survival.
Obviously further use of this I’d consider blatant cheating, but that’s just me, and this is a single player game that’s fully moddable, so “Cheating” is purely subjective
TBH, I think it’d cause less… issue, if instead of a HC mode, all characters simply started that way. At your first death, you get a notification asking if you wish to consider your character “dead” or continue on, like you’d get in old arcade games when you ran out of lives. That way, you still get “HC”, but you aren’t calling it that, so you avoid that old, unfortunate tradition.
If it weren’t for the fact that “HC” splits so many player bases, I’d not care. Thankfully it’s less prominent in GD’s smaller community, but… Since the tradition is so ingrained, it’s hard to remove that split without removing the tradition.
The thing is that removes the HC tension…as there’s a choice beyond dying whether you want to play HC or not.
I don’t play HC very often, BUT it’s a totally different game and feeling knowing that there’s NO option, choice etc from the moment you start in the world…unlike the “oh I can die and then decide” which has none of the real worry that HC and permanent death gives, not death with an option to continue after if desired.
Edit… HC isn’t just a tradition it’s a different way of playing the game, calling it a tradition sounds like it has no value in itself, but it does, it’s a valid completely different way of playing from SC. Why should a game mode be removed just because YOU don’t play it ??
A) HC is ALREADY a choice. ESPECIALLY in games like this, where you can override even the death of a HC character.
B) It feels like a different game… But it isn’t. Guess what? I play SC… And I would build NO differently for HC. Why? Because I don’t want to die in EITHER mode. NOBODY does. Some people use SC as an excuse to build insane, non-functional builds… Not everyone does. Many people would build the same in both modes… Because death is a bad thing, in both modes. The base game itself is 100% the same. The only differences are in the choices made by the player. The player does not require a separate mode to make those choices, it just makes it convenient for those that are tempted to “cheat” at being HC. In some cases, people just play HC to say that they do so, not out of specific desire to challenge themselves. Whether they wish that claim to brag, or to avoid being spat at, either way it’s hardly the idea behind the mode.
C) Real worry? There is no real worry in games like this. If you really want it back, you’ll get it in moments. And… It’s still a game. It’s not something you’re placing major significance on, it’s a hobby to spend time on, something you enjoy. The only thing at stake is time you were already, voluntarily, going to give to the game anyways. It’s a false feeling, and having the NAME, isn’t what causes it, your CHOICE is what causes it. All I’m suggesting is removing the NAME.
D) Having a “One Death” mode is traditional. Calling it HC is just what’s become common.
E) I’m not saying a “One Death” mode should be removed. I’m saying, keeping it separate from the rest of the game, ACTING as if it’s different, is a problem in many games. Thankfully, less so here… But can you honestly say that you haven’t seen HC players being rude to SC, and vice versa, in many games? It happens in every kind of game with split modes or rankings, one is seen as “better” or “harder” than the others, and thus a divide crops up in the player base, with both parts being rude to each other all the time.
If you stop making HC an entirely separate mode, and emphasize that it is in fact the exact same game, just with a choice involved… Then without that HC name to cling to, SC people can’t spit on it, and HC people can’t spit at SCs.
If you don’t give people a target, they have a hard time focusing their hatred, and they just shut up. Again, it’s not like this is terribly applicable to GD… But losing the false separation, the name, would make life a lot easier for other games.
You’re assuming I haven’t. No extra tension… Because I knew it was a choice, as it is.
If you CHOOSE to feel a false sense of tension when you play HC… Why are you incapable of doing the same when it isn’t NAMED HC?
As for the OP’s question, I’d say this has stayed surprisingly relevant. The OP was questioning the nature of HC and what was or was not cheating. As we’re discussing the nature of HC… Seems fine to me.
At the end of the day, HC, and all the “differences” of it, are voluntary choices by the player. If the OP doesn’t feel it was cheating, then it wasn’t. HC has no particular rules, and even if it did, there’s no enforcer here, just yourself enforcing the choices you voluntarily made. If you find that a character has died, and you’re upset at the time and gear lost… Perhaps you should reconsider your reasoning behind choosing HC.
All HC does is force me to play safe builds, tried it once, never again. I cannot experiment (not because of gears, I play self-found only) but because I can lose stuff that I wasted time on.
Sometimes I want to bring my spellbreaker or pyromancer to crucible just to test out their capacity and adjust them. That will not happen on HC
On this forum it’s usually the other way around - when devs do something in favour of HC players like shotgunning of ring skills or aura bugs there would be someone whining like “why Crate, HC is just a minority” or “they knew what they were playing so it’s their problem they died to some rare factor outside their control”.
Sometimes I wish HC was a default mode in GD, and those wishing to play SC needed to check “Casual” when creating a char. But only sometimes.
Edit: missed vice versa in the quote, but whatever, I made my point.
I have redone the SoT run forcing myself to do it fully without logging out no matter what. I was lv 65, the final boss was 74, there were like 20 near death situations but after 10 mins of a “round and round we go” and kiting I managed to beat him.
Of course hardcore is a choice. Like everything else in this life. Question is why you choose it. And Jaknet stated his reasons - it is subjective and you cannot take it from him :P. And yes, when playing hardcore you always have this background buzz - if you die you die. And all your items, stats, time, plans for the future will go out the window. That’s the beauty of HC. One moment you are in SoT killing the final boss, the other you are lv 1 again hitting lv 1 zombies in normal.
All HC does is force me to play safe builds, tried it once, never again.
That’s not true. I know I will get a lot of hate but, I think HC forces you to play the game it is meant to be played by making you respect every game mechanic - resistances, hp pool, all GD’s stat spreadsheets that the developers worked so hard to present to you, defensive devotion trees. So I am very sure that Hardcore encourages creativity and forces you to use what you have to the fullest in making good builds, and “safe” is merely 1 element of that.
Let me explain:
I have several 70+ SC chars and I did not feel the same… What’s the point of building resistances, picking defensive devotion trees if dying doesn’t penalize me? So I skip them altogether and become a running 1 shotting and getting 1 shot glasscannon. It is fun to mess around but that’s pretty much that - I use SC to mess around, deduct failures and apply the successes to HC. While it is true, dying in SoT or BoC can mess you up by making you make more skeleton keys… that’s pretty much it. I wish there was more to the SC death penalty, but tbh death in SC is non-existant. The only way it punishes you is by making you take a 4 min to walk back to where you died. Die, respawn, go troll again… But fun is subjective, so to each its own.
Only because you state that you haven’t…Would indicates that you haven’t, as in if you did you would…
The only hatred and spitting on I can see is from you…There’s NO other threads or comments on here slagging off either HC or SC, so why do you suddenly claim this is the case ??
Efficiency. Dying isn’t efficient. Playing softcore without worrying about death isn’t efficient. Playing softcore as though you were playing hardcore, on the other hand, is, but is less punishing should you f-up.
