A little introduction about my choice for the Hardcore life:
I started to play Hardcore in Diablo 2, after some softcore characters, and I was hooked to it instantly despite all the deaths and time “lost”.
In Diablo 3 I played a softcore 20 min and changed to full HC account.
Now in Grim Dawn I’m doing the same.
I know people recommends to play at least one softcore player to know the game and the bosses, but I feel that this is a major part of playing HC. You don’t know what to expect and when a boss hit you hard for the first time and you panic a little, you have to make a quick decision with all that adrenaline bumping your body, should I stay or should I tp out??
So these are my reasons, adrenaline and challenge. Also, it helps me to not get much addicted because after a big lose (char fully geared with lots of hours invested) I stop playing for some time so I can do other things
Needless to say that I don’t consider HC mode a waste of time because sooner or later you won’t play a game more. The journey is more important than the destination
So, which are your reasons to play HC or why do you prefer SC?
I started GD in softcore and played it alot, then i took a year long break and recently came back to it and thought why not try HC. I was always afraid it would tilt me hard when i die and shied away from HC for that reason. However i wanted the game to be more challenging and HC combined with the fresh start would keep the game more interesting for me.
Turns out i was wrong about the tilting, my first toon died on lvl 78, the next two made it to 85 and are still alive and i really enjoy HC.
Even if I knew everything about the game and had all gear possible, I would still play SC. As we saw with 1.0.0.7, each patch can introduce something game-breaking that can cause the death of even the best HC character. Uniquely in 1.0.0.7’s case, it had the deadly combination of excessive monster OA and broken life steal. I bet many HC lives were claimed by that. Moreover, the patch conveyed the notion that the MP aura bug ought be fixed. But as we’ve seen from the bug reports section, it wasn’t. More HC lives needlessly lost. I could wait for the first two hotfixes for a patch to come out before applying it. But who’s to say there won’t be some significant issue remaining that wouldn’t be fixed until the 3rd hotfix or maybe the next patch? Or maybe never? Such was the case with the MP aura bug.
Once the expansion(s) is(are) released and the game fully stabilizes, I would probably consider HC. Until then, the game is too volatile for any assumption of HC viability to hold.
I can certainly see the appeal, but too many factors lead me to stay from it. Enemies critting, having a really unlucky spawn of heroes (like 4 at a time) and other factors. I just don’t like this feeling of knowing that i can die at any moment.
The funny part is that a character of mine hasn’t died since my Saboteur which was 11 characters ago. The rest have reached Ultimate and killed Nemesis without dying once.
Like the poster above said, some updates can break stuff that can lead to deaths. Like overbuffed OA and lifesteal not working against heroes.
I just personally feel absolutely no compulsion whatsoever to play Hardcore in ARPGs, in general. If I want that kind of thrill, I just go play an actual roguelike.
I play SC because I’m not a masochist with too much time on my hands. GD isn’t balanced for HC play anyway, with sudden damage spikes that can wipe your character even if you know what you’re doing.
And despite of the balancing of the game there will always be a lot of factors that can kill you. In Diablo 2 were disconnects and Bonemancer using Hostile scripts, in Diablo 3 error 3007 even in Diablo 1 you could lost your equipment if you died in a bad situation. So not afraid of game’s changes, there are worse things outside there…:eek:
I play softcore because hardcore feels boring. To me. And, certainly, we all find different things fun.
Wow this one enemy rolled the dice better than I did? Guess I should spend another 20 hours leveling this character again since I was otherwise having so much fun with it. /s
Doesn’t seem appealing. I like endgame farming and I like designing unique characters to farm in endgame. Hardcore severely limits the potential either way.
Of course, I still play softcore with the intent of not dying, and so most of my chars wind up being far tankier than many HC chars I see around. I just don’t see the point of having to redo everything because you were briefly and minutely distracted or RNG didn’t favor you one time out of a million.
Ha, I ran into 4 enemy boar heroes on new blademaster on his first foray into Ultimate the other day. They were all very fast and mean, too… Fortunately he made it by luring them 1 at a time.
I think that’s a lot of the fun for me in HC, I can be trucking right along feeling invincible, then 3 seconds later I’m dead. Helps to keep me on my toes!
