Easy vs Hard?

[arkanon]

WoW hasn't been "hardcore" for many years now. There are however, many versions of what 'easy vs hard' means exactly. Although raiding in mythic + (or whatever they're calling it these days) may be very difficult; the leveling, normal dungeon running, normal raiding, and gearing is mind numbing easy. WoW on a whole is extremely casual friendly and in fact tuned for casual game play. Its nowhere near the amount of work and commitment it used to be in the early days. Back in the 'day you used to have to really work, and scrape, and grind, and (most importantly) figure things out to progress. Leveling took centuries compared to today. Do a few quests and a few dungeons sprints these days and you'll look as cool as the next guy.

I think the main problem with WoW is that its not challenging or meaningful at all, its just plain boring. The core game has been homogenized and putrefied to the nth degree.

Classic has proven everything you have said to be fundamentally untrue. You seem to have little to no experience in retail raiding or M+ or pvp - the content has become exponentially more difficult, and the requirements are much, much higher.

[WowIsDead64]

One of the problems I have with WoW is that every feature, every possible venue of content, is measured in terms of time vs reward.

Even if I enjoy something like PVP for the sake of PVP, I would have to pick and choose what avenues of PVP would best serve my goals to progress my character, otherwise I run into feeling like I'm wasting my time in a game that is built around time vs reward. This is one of the things that makes me not really care about world PVP; it's not that it's not fun, but over time I've considered it as a waste of time.

For example, a lot of people say that if you want an easier run of content through Raiding, then just do LFR or normal runs and have your fun there. Now the problem I personally have with this answer is that if I'm a hardcore player who is running heroics/mythics and want to just have more casual fun, then running a regular raid isn't going to be that. The act of running a raid is to put in my time to get a progress-related reward, and if I'm already progressing through Heroic or Mythic then the rewards of LFR/Normal aren't an incentive to do the content. And if I'm just doing the content 'for fun' then we have to address the fact that raids themselves aren't really that much fun; they're content that is a means to an end just like doing dailies is a means to an end.

I find the carrot on the stick is often in the way of getting to enjoy things just as they are, and instead we're kind of forced into just doing the content because it gives you a +10 rep bonus or a chance at a new shiny. They add lots of fun little gimmicky fun things in the game that people would only experience once because it's tied to a quest or an achievement. Sure, maybe you can do it as many times as you want after the quest is done, but who really plays the Plants vs Zombies minigame more than once?

It's odd, because I can spend hours and days on playing a Roguelike or a Platformer that has no reward for completion, but I wouldn't even think about running casual content in WoW if it didn't offer some substantial worth to doing.

Yeah, I also have this issue. For example I could use catch-up Benthic gear to do 8.0 WQ content easily. Problem is - it would feel like I waste my time.

Ah, you define hardcore just by the game itself? Right that clears a lot of misunderstandings, thanks

I can relate to not always wanting to put time into something that is difficult. Sometimes I just want to relax and do stuff without really thinking too much about it. Like, I like really good movies but I don't always want to watch them because to me, a good movie requires my full attention. At times I just want some cliché action with predictable plot and good visuals.

I'm curious though, would a speedrunner of Terraria be hardcore or is that out of the question since the game itself defines what is hardcore and Terraria is not (correct me if I'm wrong here)?

Sidenote, I have not played Terraria but defeating Cthulhu sounds like a feat :P

You should clearly understand, that speedrunning requires lots of preparations. So guy above said, that lots of preparations = hardcore. It's not 100% right, but preparations => effort, you put into game. And effort = hardcore.

As you can see in this video, lots of nuances should be taken into account to do proper speedrun. Including exploits. Because, for example, duping is allowed in Journey mode, but in expert mode it shouldn't be, so it's some sort of exploit. Or invulnerability exploit. Or spawn limit exploit. Casual just don't have time to learn all that info, that isn't needed for ordinal gameplay. And I don't even mention, that at the end speedruns usually mean grinding proper RNG.

[Noctiphobia]

Easy vs hard is a completely different axis than casual vs hardcore. For example raids in vanilla were hardcore (i.e. you had to spend a lot of time to be get money, gear, etc. that you needed to do them), but easy (i.e. if you actually had gear to do it, the only challenge was getting 40 people to do anything rather than the actual encounter). Current WoW is kind of casual (i.e. a typical person has enough time to stay relevant, although there are some mechanics in place that work in contrast to that) and hard (i.e. a very small percentage of players is capable of killing a mythic boss while wearing the gear that was intended for the fight; most players can't even do that while outgearing the boss, save for maybe a first boss in a raid tier).

[Lazuli]

I don't like content that is 'hard' (bosses impossible to solo) in open world, but I love hard content instanced. I work a lot of graveyard and I'm NA, some shit I simply cannot do. Not only that, some open world 'hard' content means once the initial rush of groups doing it dissipates we tardy fuckers are left to rot, even during day time . Its not easy to find a group for open world on 'dead' content in WoW: achievements, bosses, quests, etc.

I can find plenty of players for events in GW2 at 4 in the morning and even get some metas done, yet WoW which supposedly has way more players can't muster a group to get a world boss dead in uldum. it actually doesn't make any sense to me.

[Celestraza]

Quitting Wow due to it becoming way too casual unfriendly in two recent xpacks and playing other games has made me think. When game is easy, yeah, I start to feel, that some game mechanics are pointless in it. For example if Death Stranding would be harder, all that equipment wouldn't be so pointless. Or if ETS2 would be harder, may be carefully choosing orders, routes, building garages in proper cities and buying proper trucks for proper tasks would be more meaningful. But at the same time easier game allows me to play the way, I want it to be played. For example Journey mode in Terraria allows me to disable corruption soft-timer and focus on terraforming and customizing, rather than playing according to intended scenario. Or Civ1, where I liked to conquer whole world and then terraform it again, so I needed to trigger "no game over on conquering whole world" bug and play on easiest difficulty.

What do you think? Blizzard cater to more hardcore crowd. They have some intended way of playing their game and they don't want to allow you to play it your way. Competitive nature of MMO is one of the factors, I guess. They say "It's ok to play street football, but don't expect any indulgences, if you come to world championship - you need to obey common rules". But at the end is it right approach? I'm ready to pay money for game just to be able to play it my way. Doesn't Wow need that Journey mode too?

P.S. I don't want to start this "casual vs hardcore" discussion, as it's purely subjective. According to definition "casual player" - is player, who plays Tetris/Lines/Solitaire/Candy Crush (depending on your year of birth) during his lunch on work. I'm not THAT casual. I play for 2-3 hours every day and even more of weekend. And I play much harder games, than this, including online ones, such as competitive shooters. But this clearly shows, that MMO's standard of so called "casual" player is very high vs reality. May be YOU don't see it, but game has became much harder and less casual friendly, than it was back in previous xpacks. For example all that scaling, that keeps difficulty on constant "intended" level and doesn't allow you to pick your preffered level of difficulty, as it was back in old times, when you were able to little bit outlevel and overgear it. And also all that borrowed power mechanics, that take your base power away from you and force you to grind it back in RNG/Time-gated fashion. Etc. And I don't see any radical changes in SL. May be just 1-2 steps back to what we had in Legion. It's clearly not enough.

I don't think the game is casual unfriendly or casual friendly. The difficulties seem fine to me.

The problem is all the crap surrounding content. Being forced to grind boring borrowed powers every tier and being forced to do the most tedious boring crap the game has to offer.

[Solero]

These people are the reason wow is in such a bad state atm

[Zephire]

You should clearly understand, that speedrunning requires lots of preparations. So guy above said, that lots of preparations = hardcore. It's not 100% right, but preparations => effort, you put into game. And effort = hardcore.

I'm totally aware that it takes a lot of preparations to speedrun, and also practice etc.

What if I prepare a lot before I go to slay the Ender Dragon in Minecraft (last boss-ish)? I can do that over a very long time while exploring, building and crafting. What's the difference between that and what the speed runner does, if any? Speed runner is just doing it efficiently over a shorter more compressed time period, right? That's what's hardcore? Spending a lot of time in a game over a short time period? Then we're back to the example of me running heroic dungeons for several hours a day vs raid log for mythic N'zoth twice a week. The HC runner would be more hardcore, right?

Hardcore for me would be if you dedicate yourself to something very intensively over a short or long period of time. No matter how difficult what you do is. Be it completing a Dark Souls game naked without a single death or doing a simple workout routine over and over each day.

[WowIsDead64]

I don't like content that is 'hard' (bosses impossible to solo) in open world, but I love hard content instanced. I work a lot of graveyard and I'm NA, some shit I simply cannot do. Not only that, some open world 'hard' content means once the initial rush of groups doing it dissipates we tardy fuckers are left to rot, even during day time . Its not easy to find a group for open world on 'dead' content in WoW: achievements, bosses, quests, etc.

I can find plenty of players for events in GW2 at 4 in the morning and even get some metas done, yet WoW which supposedly has way more players can't muster a group to get a world boss dead in uldum. it actually doesn't make any sense to me.

Oh, yeah, I've almost forgotten about it. Current design has another problem. If you're casual, you do content slower than other players, so you fall behind them, or you just want to replay this content later, on alt for example, at some point this content becomes dead and you no longer can complete it solo. This is big downside for group and pseudo-group (where group requirement is implicit) content. Dunno, what is intention and pros behind such kinds of content, if cons are so big. May be Blizzard want to force so called "interaction" on players? Because they think, that it's fun? May be they have so few players, that they have to force them into newer and newer content via killing older ones? I don't know. Blizzard think, that their shiny cross-realm LFD fixes this problem. But it actually doesn't. As waiting for 1hr for group to kill some rare for your quest chain within just 10 seconds - isn't fun gameplay. Yeah?

Broken Shore for example. I returned to game not long before 7.2. So I fell behind "main stream". And when I reached this content and wanted to do class mount stuff - this content had already been DEAD. And I also couldn't do it solo, because it was way too overtuned and, I guess, intended to be done in LFG groups. I completed 2-3 mounts, but couldn't do this content any longer. And as Argus had similar design, it's destiny was exactly the same.

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I'm totally aware that it takes a lot of preparations to speedrun, and also practice etc.

What if I prepare a lot before I go to slay the Ender Dragon in Minecraft (last boss-ish)? I can do that over a very long time while exploring, building and crafting. What's the difference between that and what the speed runner does, if any? Speed runner is just doing it efficiently over a shorter more compressed time period, right? That's what's hardcore? Spending a lot of time in a game over a short time period? Then we're back to the example of me running heroic dungeons for several hours a day vs raid log for mythic N'zoth twice a week. The HC runner would be more hardcore, right?

Hardcore for me would be if you dedicate yourself to something very intensively over a short or long period of time. No matter how difficult what you do is. Be it completing a Dark Souls game naked without a single death or doing a simple workout routine over and over each day.

It's about "effort" anyway. Dunno, how to explain it better. It's like doing something against "nature". Overcoming yourself. Like sport. If you "just play easy game" - then it's causal. If you do something via some "unnatural" way, like grind perfect RNG just to do things 1s faster - then it's hardcore. You don't play the game. You try to achieve some result. You put effort into it. Not just entertain yourself. It's hard to explain, but it should be obvious.

Running just to keep yourself healthy or just for fun is one thing. Doing it to beat world record is completely different. It requires lots of training, that is unnecessary for ordinal life. It can be called professional. It can be called your job. It can hurt your health and cause traumas. Doing it may seem easy for people, who just watch it from outside. But it would be really hard to do the same for them. Because they have many IRL problems, that prevent them from doing it. Same with hardcore games. Is setting 1s faster WR worth learning all that exploits, tricks, nuances and playing 24/7 to grind that perfect run for you? I guess, no. No, if you aren't streamer, who don't have a job and therefore can play 24/7 and earn money from donations. Is beating Mythic boss worth dealing with higher difficulty level? Is that 24/7 AP grind worth that +0.00000001% DPS? If it's worth, then you're hardcore. If not - casual.

[Markerr]

WoW is as casual friendly as it ever was!

[msdos]

A Bethesda game with mods to control the difficulty is the perfect level of difficulty. I'll use Fallout 4 and 76 as examples.

Those games are exactly as hard as you want them to be, that's why I always go back. In Fallout if things get too tough, I fall back to a settlement or camp, think things through, maybe hunker down for the night (have mods that make night too dark), then try a different approach. It doesn't get much better than that, that's the essence of raiding and dungeon crawling. Plus it's more of a full experience.

You should try 76 out tbh. People talk a lot of smack on it because of the bugs, but it isn't an easy game by any stretch and you have to put work in to it before you're not wondering why you're not demolishing like the guy next to you, because that happens a lot in that game.
You will be chilling and see a demi god come up and destroy everything in sight and wonder why that isn't you. Unlike WoW, where you are that demi god after reading icy-veins page and grinding 3 diff things for 999 hours.
There's a grind in 76, but you can fast travel and if you party up it gets cut in half. Unlike in Classic where if you party up or join a guild you aren't sure if you'll be cucked on loot or not.

[Zephire]

It's about "effort" anyway. Dunno, how to explain it better. It's like doing something against "nature". Overcoming yourself. Like sport. If you "just play easy game" - then it's causal. If you do something via some "unnatural" way, like grind perfect RNG just to do things 1s faster - then it's hardcore. You don't play the game. You try to achieve some result. You put effort into it. Not just entertain yourself. It's hard to explain, but it should be obvious.

Running just to keep yourself healthy or just for fun is one thing. Doing it to beat world record is completely different. It requires lots of training, that is unnecessary for ordinal life. It can be called professional. It can be called your job. It can hurt your health and cause traumas. Doing it may seem easy for people, who just watch it from outside. But it would be really hard to do the same for them. Because they have many IRL problems, that prevent them from doing it. Same with hardcore games. Is setting 1s faster WR worth learning all that exploits, tricks, nuances and playing 24/7 to grind that perfect run for you? I guess, no. No, if you aren't streamer, who don't have a job and therefore can play 24/7 and earn money from donations. Is beating Mythic boss worth dealing with higher difficulty level? Is that 24/7 AP grind worth that +0.00000001% DPS? If it's worth, then you're hardcore. If not - casual.

So... much effort + little gain = hardcore?

It very much isn't "obvious" or I would not asking so much^^ You might do speedruns just for fun as a hobby while still having a everyday life with work etc.

Too me it sounds like everyone set their own standard as to what is hardcore and not which in turn makes some things hardcore for some but not for others. That's why it's not obvious. It's all in the eye's of the beholder.

[WowIsDead64]

So... much effort + little gain = hardcore?

It very much isn't "obvious" or I would not asking so much^^ You might do speedruns just for fun as a hobby while still having a everyday life with work etc.

Too me it sounds like everyone set there own standard as to what is hardcore and not which in turn makes some things hardcore for some but not for others. That's why it's not obvious. It's all in the eye's of the beholder.

Exactly! Hardcore = low reward/effort ratio. But in this case reward is much wider term, than just "epics per second". It's about how overall how satisfying this game is. Rewards are just part of this feeling.

UPD Hmm. Reward/effort isn't correct. That's, why I talk about effort only as measure of hardcore. Why? Because "reward" is subjective. Hardcore players are satisfied, when they do harder content. Therefore reward/effort ratio can be exactly the same both for casual and hardcore player. Only effort differs.

So overall current game just isn't satisfying. Because all of a sudden Blizzard has narrowed spectrum of players, they see as their target auditory. They think, that it's challenge, competition and power growth - are 3 major things, that make their game satisfying. It's just wrong. There are many other players, who play for other reasons.

[Zephire]

So overall current game just isn't satisfying. Because all of a sudden Blizzard has narrowed spectrum of players, they see as their target auditory. They think, that it's challenge, competition and power growth - are 3 major things, that make their game satisfying. It's just wrong. There are many other players, who play for other reasons.

What did wow have before, that it doesn't have now? Or did it never have it?

[WowIsDead64]

What did wow have before, that it doesn't have now? Or did it never have it?

I've already given that answer. Strait smooth way for casual player to progress without suffering from "preparation" period, that can take whole casual content time, i.e. when casual reaches "comfort zone" - he has nothing more to do there. How many times, should I repeat it? Hard 4.0 heroics back in Cata were considered extremely hardcore. MOP dailies were considered extremely hardcore. And now compare them with post-Legion content, like Broken Shore, Argus, Nazjatar, Maw, Torghast, etc. They're JOKE. This is how Wow has changed during recent xpacks. Only fact, that this kinds of content are full of non-soloable rares/elites/mini-bosses/just-big-mobs/large-mob-packs and Blizzard constantly trying to make them mandatory via removing all ways to skip them, i.e. flying, ground mounts, etc. - tells everything about this content.

And now do you remember WotLK, where only thing, casual needed to do - badge runs through heroics. Or Cata 4.3, where players were able to get catch up gear in 3 new 5ppls (that was fun by itself) and then just straight to LFR. Or WOD, where Garrison+Tanaan combo was just perfect casual content and therefore WOD would have been the best xpack ever made, if only it would have had such content on release + even more such content in content patches.

[Demithio]

Classic has proven everything you have said to be fundamentally untrue. You seem to have little to no experience in retail raiding or M+ or pvp - the content has become exponentially more difficult, and the requirements are much, much higher.

You're only talking about ONE aspect of the game.

[arkanon]

You're only talking about ONE aspect of the game.

Raiding, pvp, and m+ is only one aspect of the game?

[Zephire]

I've already given that answer. Strait smooth way for casual player to progress without suffering from "preparation" period, that can take whole casual content time, i.e. when casual reaches "comfort zone" - he has nothing more to do there. How many times, should I repeat it? Hard 4.0 heroics back in Cata were considered extremely hardcore. MOP dailies were considered extremely hardcore. And now compare them with post-Legion content, like Broken Shore, Argus, Nazjatar, Maw, Torghast, etc. They're JOKE. This is how Wow has changed during recent xpacks. Only fact, that this kinds of content are full of non-soloable rares/elites/mini-bosses/just-big-mobs/large-mob-packs and Blizzard constantly trying to make them mandatory via removing all ways to skip them, i.e. flying, ground mounts, etc. - tells everything about this content.

And now do you remember WotLK, where only thing, casual needed to do - badge runs through heroics. Or Cata 4.3, where players were able to get catch up gear in 3 new 5ppls (that was fun by itself) and then just straight to LFR. Or WOD, where Garrison+Tanaan combo was just perfect casual content and therefore WOD would have been the best xpack ever made, if only it would have had such content on release + even more such content in content patches.

This is what I don't understand. What do you mean by "preparation"? Many rares are solable, given gear (maybe class as well). You get gear from many sources such as WQ, dungeons, raids, arena, visions, AH. You also have a weekly chest with currency for Azerite pieces.

Yes, it's a long grind to get mythic level of Azerite if you only do a m+ at level 2 but you'll get it, eventually. Yes, it takes a while to get good corruptions. Yes, it's time consuming.

Would it all be solved if you could farm X justice badges per week through different means, ranging from dungeons to raids to pvp with which you could buy gear?
Is it the time investment that is off-putting? It's also progress. Especially as a casual who doesn't do organized raids you'll have a lot of things to do to progress, all by yourself.

I'm pretty flexible and indifferent to many things so it might be impossible for me to understand what you mean. Don't take it personal^^

[Stormwolf64]

It's about time they ramp up the difficulty some. Doesn't have to be hard, but it has to go from easy to normal at the very least.

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The MoP-dailies were never considered "hardcore", they were considered a big chore since there were so many of them.

Yep, this is right.

[Shinrael]

Raiding, pvp, and m+ is only one aspect of the game?

Raiding and M+ are the PvE combat endgame. Rated BGs and Arenas are the PvP combat endgame.

What about outdoor world combat endgame? What about outdoor world non-combat endgame (such as Lucid Nightmare puzzle)? What about leveling content? What about solo instanced combat endgame (well we have Torghast in SL)?

[WowIsDead64]

The MoP-dailies were never considered "hardcore", they were considered a big chore since there were so many of them.

Yeah, wasting at least one hour of time on mandatory daily tasks on a top of things, player had been doing before...isn't more hardcore?