The “hardcore gamer” shit is nothing but a social construct created by mainstream gaming journalism. It’s a joke that people try to adopt this kind of mentality when it has absolutely no credibility within the gaming world, and the real world. It just proves that they’re a product of their time.
Dear lord, this.
You’re right to an extent, but I don’t think that the idea is completely worthless.
There’s significant basis to worry about games losing enjoyability/depth just so they become more accessible. Some RPGs have been ditching RPG elements and have just become mediocre action games with numbers attached and fantasy elemetns. Games are sometimes excessively geared towards not scaring the player off, toward fueling some sort of power fantasy(see: boringly easy mmos/fpses) at the expense of decent levels of difficulty and it gets pretty obnoxious sometimes.
People definitely exagerrate the whole hardcore casual thing though, yeah, and attach their own unrelated bitching to it.
It didn’t really work for MK or Blazblue sadly. The latter of which actually had an amazing tutorial. MK had a decent tutorial that taught the idea of cancelling, and juggling combos, but still 50% of online was people picking scorpion, mashing 1,1,1 and then doing a random teleport or sweep. Rinse and repeat. You can’t force somebody to learn the game, not everyone is like us.
The idea that Capcom has here is to make the casual really feel like they are doing these awesome moves…make them feel cool. For example, Everybody feels like they can play tekken when they mash a few moves together. Thats a big reason of why that game is so popular sales wise. The moves “look cool” and are pretty easy to pull off for the most part. Another example, in MVC3, I have a friend who is terrible at fighting games, but loves MVC3 because he can do TAC combos, to him its amazing. When he plays me, he never even gets to do one.
The fact is, the games haven’t even got close to that level of easy where some random who picks it up can beat a practiced player. No matter how many times some bad to mid level player will come on here and say they are.
EDIT: That all said, if Capcom wanted to include a tutorial like Blazblues I would fully support that.
Exactly. People don’t realize how much of an effect that can have on a new player. To them, being able to do stuff like that can be a big boost to their confidence, which can intrigue them enough to want to know and learn more about the game.
The hardcore/casual divide absolutely does exist and is one of the most fundamental things to consider at the beginning of any design for a game or you are just going to end up with a failure.
Tutorials are still useful, and they work with casual just fine. Remember even games like Smash/Mortal Komat 9 tell casuals how to play the game, and both games are far more casual than most Capcom games are. They sold more copies than some of Capcom’s recent stuff with ease. They have more content/gimmicks than Capcom have, they still bother to shown tutorials.
There is no fucking excuse for not telling Casuals how their mechanic works, and what the game plays like. Especially if you want your mechanic to cater to anybody. Games like COD would have never gotten cash if they didn’t tell newcomers how to play the game.
Really? Do you work in the industry?
I’m studying game design, I’ve talked with a lot of people in the industry for sure.
You missed the point by a mile.
“Hardcore gamer” is not ambiguous at all. If you spend time studying a game and understanding all it’s variables, and play it for a great lenght of time, beyond what people adopting a casual attitude toward the game would, then you are hardcore toward that game. It is a very simple concept to grasp. It is not supposed to crown a particular achievement, nor is it supposed to award you a special status. It is a cold, hard fact that says nothing more and nothing else than : you played the fuck out of that game. You might be “hardcore” about some games, and adopt a more casual attitude towards other games - and that is what generally happens.
It is the people trying to somehow draw a line between what game should and shouldn’t be considered as “hardcore gamer’s games” that are uselessly attempting to deny this “status” out of some misguided sense of self worth for having different tastes than other people, and playing harder games to master. For them, “casual” is an insult - and wether or not you feel insulted by it, is irrelevant. The simple fact of the matter is that they are spewing continuous vitriol toward certain people that did nothing to deserve it except having different tastes in gaming. You might say : “Oh boo fucking woo, grow a thicker skin” and again you would be completely missing the point. Nobody gives a shit about the insult, honestly. Nobody feels personally challenged or diminished by this. Yet it’s needlessly alienating people that might otherwise realize they share a particular quality that they want to see promoted through a bigger community and bigger events. You might not hate them, you might not even particularly care : but by spewing this stupid bullshit you’re not even that emotionally invested into, you’re making people you don’t even know think you’re a retard and a tosser, and that they want nothing to do with someone capable of saying something so stupid.
What people fail to understand is this : someone with the capacity to fully invest himself in a game, whatever that game is, and master it, will be able to do well in any game if it manages to grab its attention. Not top player level of course, because that’s another set of pliers entirely, but anyone competitive in a video game can become competitive in another video game if they decide to take it seriously because, while the same set of skills might not carry over or translate perfectly in that game, they’ll have the necessary dedication to learn and pull through, all other things being equal.
This is true in a way and false in another. While the words themselves do point to a very real fact, they have been taken out of context by the media and random retards, and have been alienated from their original meaning - their new, “modern” meaning being a crock of bullshit allright.
That’s ambiguous. All it says is “to be hardcore you have to care more than a group of people that care less than you.” Which is true I guess, but only because it’s so general that it avoids defining anything itself. It’s like saying “a big thing is something that’s bigger than a small thing.” This is also generically true, but it doesn’t actually define what “big” is or what “small” is. Is my iPhone “big” because it’s larger than a penny, which is small? How many hours, exactly, does one have to play before being “hardcore”?
Well my definition would be someone who dedicates a portion of time to really learn and master a game. A casual gamer will go through a game, get the basic experience then move on, an experienced player will collect all the hidden items, finish side quests, learn build orders, combos, strategies etc past the basic.
Fighting games by my definition, pretty much require you to be a hardcore gamer if you want to get further than the single player or just messing around with friends (like playing Smash Bros as a party game).
It’s not people being “hardcore” at a certain game that seems to be the problem here. It’s dumb asses that think they are the gaming overloads of thier domain. Meaning they think they know what they’re talking about when it comes to anything gaming related. The type of people that forget video games are a hobby and not some social rank that makes them better than others. It’s crazy how many people I’ve had talk shit about sf being the same games over and over when they don’t even play those games and I do. At first I forgive that and try to explain to them in detail how they’re different and it just doesn’t regeister in their little minds. And then the shit keeps spewing about how cod and smash are better. Ugh. The thing is that even when you try to teach people,it just won’t matter because they think they’re just too “hardcore” for it. Based on experiences from people I know anyways.
Agreed. Coming to SRK isn’t fool-proof either, because some of the people Saikyo dojo give out smartass remarks, or just say things that are untrue.
Reread the sentence you quoted, there’s a quantity difference (amount of time) but there’s also a quality difference (experimentation, research of various properties and going beyond surface stuff).
Or alternatively, Tomo009’s post which spells it out clearly.
Seems like the trend for shooters these days is the lack of health bars. How long until no health bars for fighting games becomes the norm?
They should have just included a mode like Blazblue. It probably has the best tutorial mode I’ve personally seen in a fighting game. I remember DBZ:BT3 had a great one too (not a traditional fighter but a good tutorial nonetheless)
The funny thing is even after youre done with the enitre tutorial and your characters trials, if its the first time you’ve played a fighter/that kind of game you will still be confused as shit and not know what to do in battle, lol.
Because in the recent shooting games, which are arcade shooters, your health doesnt need to be shown because it will regenerate, along with the fact that in most new games you get shot a few times you’re dead. (unless its gears of war <3 or black ops with its fuckin BB guns) Also, damage is variable, based on distance and type of weaponry. You dont know that “man, I better not be at this range because that dude’s shotgun does 20 damage per bullet but at this range only 15, and its a 8 of them in a shell and I only have 100 health left” while in fighters you can be like “Ok, my life bar is pretty low, I better stick to midrange so he can throw fireballs safely to chip me out, and I better be ready to react to the tiger knee coming to chip me.”
So anyway, if theres no health bars in fighting games then thats stupid.
Bushido Blade. Just sayin. Plus you could argue no lifebar is more hardcore, since you pretty much can’t tell when someone is going to die, so you basically would either get people playing extra extra carefully, or people saying fuck it and going all out assault style on your ass.
Also wtf is with this hardcore argument? All I was saying is that yeah there are people nowadays who are lazy as shit and won’t even dedicate 15 minutes to learning shit. These are usually called casuals. If you got another term for them go ahead, I’m just using the one people always use for these types. I’m not talking about people who have a life and don’t play all day, I’m not talking about people who don’t give a shit about tournies or being a hardcore gamer. I’m talking about the kind of people who want instant gratification and for shit to be simpler in the BAD way. Hell, I’m all about simpler inputs for fighters, but I do laugh my ass off when someone acts like learning a fucking hadoken motion is some fucking hardcore finger gymnastics. That shit was hard for me as a kid and it didn’t take me that long to learn it once I practiced, and I didn’t have to sit all day in front of the screen either.
Just because you have a clear definition for what it means to you doesn’t mean that everyone else, or anyone else agrees with that definition. And in my experience, people have all kinds of wild ideas of what a hardcore gamer is, well beyond your definition.
If the best that you can come up with is you have to put in more time than most people, then sorry dawg but thats pretty fuckin ambiguous.
man you hit the hammer on the head. im not fav of the trial stuff at all. i consider myself to be way more then a novice player, granted nothing pro but i have no interested in any of the challenge or trial modes capcom has done in the past games. most the time they are super impractical.
have the story mode be the casual mode and yes story is def needed. have udon create and write an entire story