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[ScrambledGregs]

(This post originally started out in the Odin Sphere thread but it got too big and I wanted to get the perspectives of other people who haven't played that game, too).

Allow me to rant.

GOD DAMN. Whoever designed Titania in Cornelius's epilogue in Odin Sphere needs to get cancer and die. I literally cannot beat this boss, and it took me an entire day of trying just to get to it because of the fucking ridiculous ("sup, I'm a green slime who you can only do 1 damage to unless you happen to have Napalm potions on hand"), fucking annoying ("hi, I'm a magician who will teleport each time you hit me, so it takes far too long to kill me"), and simply fucking cheap enemies ("hi, I'm a giant axe wielding guy who will almost instantly land on top of you and take a good half of your life each time I do this"). Then we have the boss, which is the same dragon you fight in Gwendolyn's first boss fight, only now he's got an army of all the annoying enemies you've been fighting all along to get to him, horrendous slowdown, and more powerful versions of the same cheap moves that pissed you off the first time.

Odin Sphere is a triumph of aesthetics over gameplay. Everything about it is amazing, but it's easy to forget you have to play the game. Despite the old school look and feel, it's got the same problem as all modern console Japanese RPGs where the difficulty of the game comes not from strategy or skill on your part but from hardcore grinding and preparation.

Do you remember in the old days when you'd play a game, and right away you'd have all the possible skills you needed?? Or at the very least, you got them as the game went along?? So if you ever got 'stuck' in the game, it was due to some defect in your skill or poor strategy?? Well, most modern RPGs are the antithesis of this. As long as you have the patience and free time, you can beat anything. The problem is that I simply do not have the time or patience anymore. I play games to relax and have fun, but I also don't want to be coddled. For example, I think that Paper Mario on Gamecube is childishly easy to the extent that I couldn't even finish it. All of my favorite games aren't hand holding fests; they work so well because the difficulty comes from trying to overcome the game's obstacles with what you're given/can acquire instead of having to waste time grinding levels or farming items.

The fact that Odin Sphere is an action RPG where reflexes and skills are worthless is most damning of all. A game like Secret of Mana or the recent 2D Castlevanias are possible to beat even if you are underleveled or don't have the right weapon/item. Remember Mega Man: sure, you were supposed to use specific weapons on each robot, but you could beat them using only the basic weapon if you were psychotic enough to try. Even something completely unique like Ico, which I recently played through, was difficult, but not unfair. You're given everything you need to overcome the game's obstacles, so if you can't figure out a puzzle or can't do a platform sequence, it's your fault and not the fact that your Grip skill isn't at a high enough level or you don't have a Potion of Crate Stacking. I often wanted to snap my controller over my knee while playing Ico, but when I finally completed certain tasks, I felt a sense of accomplishment because *I* was the one who did it, not the fact that I accumulated enough numbers or finally got the right item off an enemy I had to fight 20 times to get the right drop.

All of this ranting is my way of saying, maybe I'm just tired of hardcore games, RPGs in particular. I really, really want to love Odin Sphere, but it's so much wasted potential obscured by the problems that mar almost all modern Japanese RPGs: powerleveling overrides skill and strategy. Anymore, I feel like I'm becoming a casual gamer because I want something that's going to be fun and yet challenging for 10 to 20 hours (modern Castlevania's come to mind) or is just an open ended fun kind of game you can play over and over (stuff like Meteos or most Wii games).

Is this all just a side effect of getting older and not having the time/patience to spend on a 60 hour game, or are most modern games really just the frustrating, arbitrary time sinks that I think they are??

[rasufelle]

This is one area where I think games like Morrowind excel.  You can technically beat the game at level 20, and you can get that just by completing the main quest easy.  OR, conversely, you can run around like an idiot for 100+ hours, be an ungodly level, and still have fun playing the game because of leveled monsters and an open, gamer-friendly play environment.  No grinding, no 'have to have this skill to do this', just having fun playing the character the way you want to play them.  Neverwinter Nights is the same way: no matter what class your character, no matter how you level their abilities, there is no wrong way to play, but there's enough difficulty to keep the game fun.

[Storm Rider]

You could even argue that a game like Smash Brothers is a casual game, because it's a fighting game that doesn't require tons of combo memorization and introduces mechanics that aren't wholly based on skill, like the altering environments and random item appearances. People act like the rise of casual games is somehow something we should be upset about, but personally I don't mind playing a game that is fun to pick up and play with other people like Wii Sports or Mario Strikers Charged (which is coming out soon, and I'm pretty excited for) rather than yet another sci-fi/WW2 FPS that teenagers will spend all day online with and swear at each other with their prepubescent voices cracking. I guess this puts me in some sort of minority, or at least the minority of people who visit video game sites.

[Narr]

www.playithardcore.com

That is all.

[McTaggart]

If you don't play it fairly hardcore, it's not really worth your time (for me anyway). The things that piss me off though are those unwinnable situations. Like your level 43 hardcore paladin going down one level into the forgotten tower and getting instantly alpha striked by 7 champion dark rogue archers.

Incidently, smash bros is at the same time the greatest casual game I've ever played and one of the most fun hardcore games I've come across.

[Storm Rider]

Agreed, it really bridges the two groups in a way I don't think any other game has ever achieved. I think the only other example that comes close is Mario Kart.

[Baggy]

Funny you should say that ScrambledGregs.  There are lots of people like you out there right now.  The first generation to truly grow up with video games are all adults now, and instead of "growing out" of games like our parents thought we would/should, we are carrying them into adulthood (the largest demographic of gamers are age 18-30 now, when previously it was a lot younger).  But alas, with adulthood, comes less free time.  So now we want to play games we can sit down and have a good time playing for a half an hour or so at a time.  And something where we don't have to commit 60-100 hours to get the satisfaction of completing.

The largest growing market in games are handhelds, cell phone games, and casual games.  It makes sense why when you think about it.  We don't have time to be hardcore anymore.  Unfortunately developers often translate "casual" as "overwhelmingly easy" which are not the same thing. 

The hardcore 50+ hour RPG's audience is getting narrower and narrower.  They'll either have to adapt to those of us who would play them if we only had the time (read: shorter games without impossible challenges that require hours of levelling) or they may put themselves out of business. 

Then again, that applies mostly to Americans.  I don't read much about oversea's gaming trends. 

[Storm Rider]

Actually, Japan is shifting to casual games even more than the American market is. I can't speak for Europe, though.

[ScrambledGregs]

Japan is all over casual gaming. They keep trying to push the Wii and DS on older, non-traditional gamers in the U.S., but they've already hit that target in Japan.

[just-another-andy]

I'm a fairly casual gamer (in the sense that I spend more time outside than playing a game)
I do agree that Japan seems to be forcing casual gaming with the likes of the wii as a novelty.

to me the ultimate hardcore gamer's console would be Xbox 360 simply because of Xbox Live.

[just-another-andy]

MMOs are on a whole new level I must admit, but I still think the REAL hardcorers are on 360. the types who play FPSs all day every day for the rush are the real hardcorers, it's a new generation of players

[ackblom12]

...Ever heard of Counterstrike? If you wanna talk hardcore, let's talk about a online only FPS that's still going strong after 10 years.

As much as I love my consoles, you won't find a more hardcore gaming scene than the PC and it's fanbase. X-Box Live is doing a good job of of getting online to be an essential part of the console experience, but it's nowhere near the PC in the hardcore realm yet.

[Baggy]

When it comes down to it the difference between hardcore and casual gamers is simply that hardcore gamers are more willing to donate lots and lots of time (and usually money) to games.  It would be unfair to say that either console (I consider PC a console, its just another medium for games) is "more hardcore" than the other, because while you find more MMO's on PCs, you find more massively long RPGs on the others. 

[McTaggart]

I dunno, my definition of 'hardcore' kinda involves a certain competitiveness. Those RPGs don't really lend themselves to competition.

[Baggy]

That makes sense too.  In industry terms they are usually referencing the amount of time and dedication put into gaming when talking about casual and hardcore gamers, since the difference between the two is what becomes the problem.  Design for the hardcore audience who have the time to put into the long, difficult games while cutting out those who have jobs and other responsibilities that restrict their play time, or design for the casual audience, which while that audience is big and often has more expendable income, often cuts out the hardcore gamer who is looking for a more committed, difficult, and long term goal-oriented game?

But either translation works for its own reasons.

[ScrambledGregs]

I would say that there are Japanese games that are just as hardcore as MMORPGs, FPS's, or anything else you can name on the 360: Nippon Ichi's strategy RPGs such as Disgaea and Phantom Brave. The strategy guide for Disgaea 2 is like a fucking brick and there are all sorts of ridiculous tables, graphs, and number crunching in it. People routinely spend hundreds of hours on these guys as well.

[Baggy]

I couldn't even make it all the way through the first Disgaea!  And I put many an hour into it. Oh how I sometimes miss the the day of spending forever on an RPG. 

[just-another-andy]

I spent well over 300+ hours on the first Disgaea....I think that's when I turned round and thought to myself that I've just spent 12 and a half REAL WORLD days playing a game....wow

[Baggy]

I think it was around the same time that I was thinking the same thing.  It wasn't long after that that I began leaning towards more casual genres of gaming.

Although I'll admit I still buy the occasional RPG...they still have me hooked.  I just don't try to gain the highest level and find every secret like I used to.

[TrekkieTechie]

I really don't have the time or the money to be a 'hardcore' gamer, and I guess I'm too pragmatic to be one even if I wanted to be -- I don't think I could ever really care about something that doesn't actually exist. Don't get me wrong, I love video games, I love the escape they can provide, but devoting all my spare time to them isn't something I can handle.

I can handle Tetris while waiting in line or SSB when friends are over and we're reliving the good old after-school days, but most of the time I'm doing other things. My 'platform' of choice is the GameBoy Micro.

[Baggy]

You sir, are the future of the gaming audience!

Okay, well actually you're the present too. 

[TrekkieTechie]

I'm a Quantum Gamer.

[aeMaeth]

One could say I'm a hardcore gamer of ONE genre. that's FPS and in particular of one game/series. Half-Life. In all honesty the only game that I consider myself truely hardcore at is Counter-Strike: Source. Hardcore as in I'm going to be attending the CPL this year for it. Hardcore as I won't even be playing I'll be there to garner sponsorships for the team I'm with. Hardcore as in I've spent close to $300 in the past 2 months not on stuff for me, but to make sure my team has the equipment needed to perform at their best. Anywho, I play ALOT of other games (here recently it's been on my PSP) And the most recent RPG I played was Valkrye Profile: Lenneth, I was going to beat the Whole thing. I beat the main game got the A ending, and then proceeded through the post game, until well I hit a snag. The developers decided it was good to put a REALLY hard hitting Monster with a monster that had an attack that if it succeeded would Paralyze your entire party, the chance of this happening at the level I had my group at was about 10% I knew this prior to it actually happening so I fled when this group of monsters appeared. Flee had a 70% chance to succeed. Needless to say fuck chance happened and I got rolled, there was ONE save point at the beginning and I had spent about 20hours total in this level grinding and beating bosses. I'm not going to play back through it.

I'm sick of the shit fuck game devs that think it's a "good thing" to add a chance of insta party destruction, because this game had alot of this I had spent a bit of time equipping my group to avoid this, at the cost of reduced damage and lower HP. However the devs also thought it a good idea to make paralysis cut through all this. So yeah fuck that kind of game. So pretty much I'll stick to FF Tactics and such for my rpgs and the full FF games (Can't wait for XIII It's gonna be awsome.)

[DavidGrohl]

  There's nearly no such thing as a casual game.  Anyone can take almost any casual game and add a hardcore aspect of it.  Take minesweeper . . . beat expert under 150 seconds.  The amount of time that takes to master that ability would make you a hardcore minesweeper.  Diablo 2 . . hardcore mode.   Counter-strike, CCP tourney.  Animal Crossing -- do everything there possibly is to do.  The Sims, design the ultimate house on the ultimate lot, with the ultimate Sim (dressed in custom designed clothing and with a custom designed skin), with the highest level career.  The list can go on.

[öde]

  There's nearly no such thing as a casual game.

I'd argue, like others have in this thread, that a hardcore game requires grinding, whereas a casual game does not.

I used to be a hardcore gamer, but I finally realised that I was spending a lot of time doing repetitive tasks that weren't much fun.

Games like Guild Wars really opened up casual gaming for me. It was the first RPG I got that I could play through without spending hours in the same area, killing the same monsters so I could level up and go to the next area and do the same. I could play through the game at my own pace, building up my character steadily to face the challanges ahead. I could dither about in the same region, doing side-quests, or I could go out hunting for items, or I could just steam straight on. There was plenty further ahead to give more 'advanced' or 'hardcore' gamers satisfaction, where they could achieve more, too, but there was always the option of playing for the sake of adventuring.

[TheFuriousWombat]

I don't know if there's really a whole lot of hardcore games. A game that requires grinding might require a hardcore gamer to get far in the game but I don't think the game itself is hardcore. The only hardcore games I can think of are the really realistic turnbased strategy games on the PC. The hex based ones inspired by old board games that require all possible aspects to be taken into account from terrain to weather to trajectory. The kind of game where one move might take well over an hour. These games often have manuals a couple hundred pages in length. There are other games on a wider scale, Hearts of Iron springs to mind, that are essentially real time or turnbased recreations of times in history. Here, politics, commerce, industry, and military come together and must all be managed down to the smallest detail. These games make similar games in concept (Medieval: Total War for example) seem like child's play. In my opinion these are the only truely hardcore games. Any one can grind. Most people (and I'm in this majority) could not get far at all in games like the ones above because they require an immense amount of patience, skill, and time. That's my two cents.

[ScrambledGregs]

I think that there are hardcore games, and hardcore gamers, just as surely as there are casual games and casual gamers. The difference is that almost any game can be played 'hardcore' even if you aren't grinding--if somebody is playing Solitaire for 3 or 4 hours a day, is this not hardcore?? At the same time, casual gamers can play certain hardcore, grindy games and still have fun with them--even niche stuff like Disgaea 2 is fairly accessible if you ignore a lot of the gameplay systems and options available to you.

[TrekkieTechie]

That's a good point, Scrambled. I don't really play many console games (really, none outside N64 and GameCube), but when my friends come over and bring their XBox, we Live it up and play Halo 2. I'm terrible but I have a good time driving the Warthog on suicide missions.

[Baggy]

Yeah, you can make a casual game into a "hardcore experience" by doing all of the aforementioned things (ultra-high scores, many hours of play, etc.) but also remember that a casual game may not have been intended to be hardcore.  It was built so that it could be completed in small amounts of time without huge commitment, which is what makes it casual.  Sure one could put much more time into it if they wanted, but its not necessary to have a satisfying experience. 

That being said, I would say that the majority of games aren't designed to be hardcore or casual, but rather to appeal to both crowds.  There are a few at both ends of the spectrum (puzzle games tend to be more for the casual gamer, long RPGs tend to promote hardcore gaming), but I'd say that many games can be played casually to at least get the minimum experience, but may be played hardcore to experience the maximum experience. 

I'd say the biggest factor is the time commitment when judging hardcore-ness or casual-ness of a game, as a game can be casual and still challenging, or be easy but still take a very long time to complete(thus intended for a more "hardcore" crowd).  Calling someone a hardcore or casual gamer (when referred to in industry terms) is not about how awesome a gamer is at playing games, but about how much s/he is willing to committ to a game, be it hours or money.

[Kana]

By all means and definition I'm a hardcore gamer.  I have little to no time between work and attempting sleep, but those small parts that I get I usually spend gaming excluding social events.  The first game to take me from barely playing video games to realizing that when my eyes start stinging in pain from staring at a computer too much was Diablo 2.  While nothing in comparison to MMOs nowadays that game was a challenge simply because after your first character makes it through normal you open up Hardcore.  I never went back to softcore again and it was even at the time a challenge to make a build that would face Hell difficulty without dying - thats excluding all the crazy patches Blizzard eventually made with the Immune to EVERYTHING, Extra Fast, Extra Strong, Lightning/Cold/Fire/Poison Enchanted, Undead, Stoneskin mobs, which quite frankly were impossible.

My first MMO was Planetside which as it happens to be was a great game that could be played casually or hardcore like any FPS.  I quickly left it though for Final Fantasy XI which to this day for me is the most hardcore game I've ever played.  Besides all the grinding levelwise, craftwise, and the many more countless hours spent trying to make gil to survive in that game - once you got to end game content the real challenge started with 18 hour window spawns for super powerful mobs camped by 5 linkshells with each having 10 claimers spamming nonstop for 18 hours until their fingers bled trying to claim that monster before it popped.  Thats not even including the huge fight AFTER you claimed the damned thing.  Multiply that by about 25+ good mobs all spawning on different days, times - it was like clock work and beautiful getting it all managed (although a bit depressing in hindsight seeing that you were up until 6am camping a mob to not get it, repeating it multiple times with same results, and then going to college or work within a few hours after that only to return to repeat).  After two and a half years and in my opinion the worst expansion I've seen (Chains of Promathia, I heard Treasures of Ar-whatever was worse but I was gone by then) I took off and swore off MMOs for a while.

I did Guild Wars which is definitely a more casual game than any MMO but has its hardcore parts - but even at best quests run out and while doing repeated runs for better gear is all nice, it was pointless since levels were capped at 20 and you could have beaten the game and every mob in every area with the gear you had previously - you were just hoping to really make those Drok runs go super fast/easy.

Out of the games I played though WoW was by far the best wolf in sheep's clothing I've ever seen.  First off and knowing that I'll get crap for this, WoW is an easy game.  There is skill, it CAN be played at a hardcore level, but after FFXI, Lineage 2, Earth & Beyond, and even now Lord of the Rings:Online - its simply an easier game.  Which I think was intended to lure casual players into becoming more like hardcore players.  When you have someone saying how hard WoW is and they're working their butts off for a goal in that game, I'd say its a great time to pull them out from WoW and slap them down with a true grind fest kind of game (Lineage 2 is by far the worst game grind-wise on exp).  What's funny is that when I went to WoW, I had been away from MMOs for a year and a half.  I started up with some friends from FFXI and was 60 in under 2 months and starting end game content, then the expansion came out which I will say was more targeted to WoW's hardcore audience and I got bored fast.  All in all my total WoW experience was 6 months out of my 1 year bought subscription.  Just like Guild Wars I had fun with it, but it didn't have the real need/pull that FFXI and other games have had on me where I HAD to do X Y Z and then I could do A B C, and etc etc.  (Just to note, it took me a year and a half of serious, life wasting away time to achieve level 75 in FFXI, after that it took me 6 weeks to get my next 75 because of already having the gear, etc.  It took me less than 2 months to get to 60 in WoW from scratch...thats was one of its main drawbacks to me.  Not to mention I joined right when Rogues got nerfed to crap and it made me sad )

Personally I love trying out games.  I own a PS2, Wii, and have a pretty nice setup computer-wise.  I'll play with my brother goofy casual Wii Sports games for a while (although I can't see playing that game in marathon form unlike SSBB which I am so patiently waiting for).  I've played mostly everything from Oblivion to Civilization 4.  I prefer the hardcore games because I like the sense of achievement.  I realize the gains and everything in it is virtual, but I'm sorry being the nerd that I am - especially in FFXI it was so much fun being a level 75 Ranger and then chasing level 1 mobs to go all out on them. 

You know I was going to make a point about hardcore versus casual and this has just gone to ramblesville and beyond.  A casual forum poster would just close the window and move on to other things, but being a hardcore kind of guy I'll click POST!

[Lotus]

Hardcore gaming takes on more than one meaning today.  People who play a game like KotOR or KotOR II may play with a casual mindset, but they're hardcore in my mind when they play for the story.  It's like Baggy said how we're still playing games even as adults, because we're subtly making games more than just entertaining by the way they look on the screen by giving an array of gameplay options and excellent writing.  This creates hardcore gamers out of casual players quickly.  I don't jump on the 360 too often but when I do I hit up a game like GRAW or Kotor for the fifth time and play as strategically as possible.  I get a little lost in it and consider myself a hardcore gamer.