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Am I a "bad" hardcore player? Using easy features in difficult games.

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I'm exactly like you and I just paused my game of Gradius V when I saw your thread!
You should play games however you want, the "hardcore" label is meaningless. I think there is value in doing your best not to cheat and not to play on easy mode in certain games but if you are not enjoying yourself, what's the point? Not everyone has the same gaming skills.

I used to be a fan of "cinematic" games up until a few years ago. I still enjoy some of these games ocasionally. But in the last couple of years I have been drawn more and more to arcade style games. I'm currently going through Treasure's catalog. I played Sin and Punishment 1 & 2, Gunstar Heroes. I beat Alien Soldier for the first time yesterday (a masterpiece!) and now I am playing Gradius V. I play all of these games on easy and I used save states a few times during Alien Soldier. I'm 29 and I am new to these types of games, I do my best to get good at them but my skills are still somewhat limited. But the only thing that matters to me is that I'm having fun. I'm not a speed-runner, just a casual hardcore gamer.

Same thing with the Souls games. I have beaten all of them but I usually play a magic class, as it is much easier for me. As long as the devellopers have given you the option within the game to play it a certain way, why should you feel bad about using it?
 
Play however you want, dude. I don't have the time or patience to play games like I used to but I still enjoy them. Like I really want to play all 3 Fire Emblem Fates games but I can't dedicate the time to them I used to be able to in the GCN days so I'm playing them in Phoenix mode. But I guarantee you I will still dump hundreds of hours into KoF XIV.
 
Peltz said:
OP, you're a bad person and don't deserve to post here anymore. /s

There's no wrong way to play a game as long as you enjoy yourself. Just don't cheat yourself out of the fun of playing and don't cheat online to the detriment of other players' enjoyment.

I sure as hell cannot beat most of the Metal Slug series without unlimited continues, and here I am proudly repping my love of the series with my Metal Slug avatar. The fact that I'm not the best player, doesn't mean that I don't love and appreciate the series as much as some guy who can do an insane 1 credit run of Metal Slug 3.
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I loved Metal Slug 1 and X too, but I definitely remember spamming the "insert credit" button during the final moments of X!
 
Do what you want. Your time is your own and you should make use of it how you see fit. There's no point in playing video games if you're not having fun, so do what enables your enjoyment. People who sit around judging other people for not being hardcore enough are sad individuals who are among the many groups of people I would super love to just pack up and leave this forum.
 
I don't feel you're a bad player. In the end, games are yours to have fun with and how you do so is up to you.

Some games I play very thoroughly and with higher difficulties, and others I don't. It heavily depends on the game.

One game I know I will be making easier for myself is Fallout 4. There's not much to the story or combat that I'm looking forward to, so when I (finally) start my playthrough, I'm giving myself good weapons to start, a stockpile of resources to build my settlement, and a stack of SPECIAL books so I can have basic skills now rather than grinding it out in the Wasteland for weeks before getting to where I want. I've told a few peeps who play FO4 on my friend's list that I'm gonna do this, and a few disagreed, but so what? I'll enjoy whatever game however I want. I want to explore and build settlements, not grind it out with repetitive combat that'll waste so much of my time.

A game has to mean something more to me before I spend a ton of time on it, and before I start playing on harder difficulties. Nothing wrong with being choosy on where you do either. I've sunk hundreds of hours into many games and crushed my fair share of challenges, so at this point I've got nothing to prove to anyone.
 
Your money, your time, your entertainment.

I beat the original Mega Man on the NES slowly and painfully.

On the Wii U VC? I abused the heck out of save states and still felt like I got my monies worth.
 
Tain said:
Enjoy what you enjoy. I'm probably not gonna be weighing your opinions on action games (especially arcade games) very heavily, for what it's worth.
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I've got forty years of videogaming under my belt, how terrible that my opinion would be considered lesser than the teenage guy who plays on 'Hard'. Total snobbery.
 
I will admit that I'm cheesing in certain aspects of my Hard Classic playthrough of Fire Emblem Fates on the Conquest route. In particular, using the Visit Castle feature to obtain skills and items that I wouldn't normally be able to get, like Sun Festals and putting Hoshidan Unity on my Nohr Noble Corrin. >.>
 
Cthulhu_Steev said:
I've got forty years of videogaming under my belt, how terrible that my opinion would be considered lesser than the teenage guy who plays on 'Hard'. Total snobbery.
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Yeah this kind of elitism is completely unnecessary. Play to the difficulty that is a mix of fun and feels rewarding/satisfying. Drives me up the wall whenever I see people advocate that only opinions of one side be considered satisfactory because they're the "true fans" due to fulfilling some moving goal posts of what constitutes being hardcore enough.
 
As a father for 8 months now with no time for games, just play how to like tonget the most enjoyment in the fastest way possible
 
I personally get the most enjoyment out of challenging myself. I play on the hardest difficulty almost always.

My wife on the other hand does not like to be challenged in the same way I do. She plays on normal difficulty so that it's still engaging, but doesn't brutalize her.
 
Being a hardcore player or not is neither good nor bad, it's just personal preference. I think games are a very weird place to seek validation. You can also be quite hardcore in some genres and play others casually.
 
I almost always play on the default setting. My life is challenging, I don't need validation that I did something good by moving a video game slider from normal to hard. Videogames to me are an experience and I want to see that. Not to see the same section over and over because by moving a slider from normal to hard I have 1 frame of animation to make a hit.

I will say that multiplayer would be my exception to this. I don't get much out of beating a game on hard, but I do find it fun to be challenged by real people in say Halo or Street Fighter.
 
I always play easy difficulty in games just so I crank up the difficulty when I return to them(which I rarely do). But if I may say so myself am a pretty fucking good player. Playing games on an easy difficulty does not make you bad.
 
Dude, that's silly. You know what's hard? Motherfucking life itself. Gettin paid. That's the hard shit you have to grind at and "git gud" at. That's the chore. If that's not it, then something that develops your creativity and skills is a good second option. Games? To me games are for fun. When fun turns to chores, fuck that. I didn't to real life grind for money that I spent on the game to run into a grind there as well. I don't have shit to prove to the world by what arbitrary bullshit I was willing to put up with to say I beat it, like anyone else could if they devoted the time to it. If I'm not having fun, the game has failed its purpose to me. Granted, some games can be fun in the difficulty and losses, I think fighting games are like that. Others are not, and if they are not, there is no reason to put up with that.
 
I don't think so at all. Personally I very very rarely play games on hard or even bother with the new game+ mode. I usually have the most enjoyment on normal. There are a few exceptions here and there, but making content harder generally doesn't improve my enjoyment at all.
 
Man, that title is a lot more misleading than I thought. Can a mod change it? :P

I don't feel "ashamed" of skipping difficulty or anything. I don't need validation. I just wanted to have the perspective of arcade/shmups/character action/etc. fans on playing these games in a more "casual" way, as I often hear (and agree... to some degree) that difficulty and punishment are integral part of these games.
 
The best part about being an adult is that you don't have to give a shit about what others think of you. Play however you like.
 
Dennis said:
It is an interesting question: Can you be a hardcore player if you play on Easy.

The answer is of course: No
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Thats nonsense. You telling me if a person played a game 17 hours a day every day they are a casual gamer just because for those 17 hours they played on easy? Dedicating heavy amounts of time can be described as hardcore. Think before you type.

OP, play how you want man and enjoy yourself, don't label what you do so much mate.
 
I'm at a point where the developers want to resort to throwing endless waves of enemies at me I will change it to "easy" and just plow through that section
 
I'm the same way. I know I -can- hammer it out solo if I really care enough. I remember the NES days. I just don't want to go back. For all the shit it got for the community there, GameFAQs materially improved the entire hobby of gaming.
 
I can understand not wanting to Pure Platinum Bayo but I don't understand the appeal of gimping a game with unlimited lives so you can progress, especially in arcade games where the narrative is little more than glue between stages. Completing the game doesn't have some reward unto itself, so why trivialize the parts before the end? It's like cheating just to get an achievement. I'd rather just drop a game and play something else.
 
KarmaCow said:
I can understand not wanting to Pure Platinum Bayo but I don't understand the appeal of gimping a game with savestates scumming so you can progress, especially in arcade games where the narrative is little more than glue between stages. Completing the game doesn't have some reward unto itself, so why trivialize the parts before the end? It's like cheating just to get an achievement. I'd rather just drop a game and play something else.
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When I use save states, I try to limit myself on how I use them. It's usually only in-between levels, because I can't stand going back to the beginning of a game when I run out of credits/lives/continues/etc. I used to cheese harder parts in games by using save-states constantly, but I don't do that anymore because, as you said, it removed all the tension and challenge in games.

EDIT: Woops, read too fast, you were talking about infinite lives. You're right that it can remove a lot of the fun from arcade games when you just respawn right where you were. I like arcade games where failing brings you back a bit (last checkpoint or beginning of the level), but isn't overly punitive (ex: go back to the beginning of the game if you lose your last live on the final boss). That's a hard thing to balance, and it's not necessarily compatible with the design mentality of old arcade games where the end goal was to get you to spend again and again and again.
 
Different strokes. I'm very similar to you, OP. I usually play games on the easiest difficulty available (unless I'm reviewing them). Sometimes I even use Cheat Engine to give myself more skill points, XP, currency, etc. I just find games more enjoyable that way.
 
Some people have poor motor skills, muscle memory, reaction times. All these things affect how you play games, and they manifest themselves more in games that place importance on player skill.

Think of it this way, if you're really that bad at games, you'd probably never even get to play them properly if you didn't resort to "easy features", guides, cheesing and so on.

I'm pretty sure the developers of these games are happy you bothered to even finish their games, even if you feel you didn't play them the way they intended.

People on GAF just kid with the "GIT GUD" stuff. Just enjoy the games for what they are. If the developers really didn't intend for you to play the way you did, they'd probably fix it somehow.
 
I feel you and i would not call you a "bad" hardcore player at all because you play however you want to at the end of the day. More on topic i think you do at a point start to be more and more selective in what you try to ironman if you will. Because a lot of the high difficulty high skill games require a lot of wasted time before things become second nature. Sometimes it boils down to not being worth it when you have other games sitting on your plate to finish.
 
gaboumafou said:
EDIT: Woops, read too fast, you were talking about infinite lives. You're right that it can remove a lot of the fun from arcade games when you just respawn right where you were. I like arcade games where failing brings you back a bit (last checkpoint or beginning of the level), but isn't overly punitive (ex: go back to the beginning of the game if you lose your last live on the final boss). That's a hard thing to balance, and it's not necessarily compatible with the design mentality of old arcade games where the end goal was to get you to spend again and again and again.
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On the subject of arcade games, I feel the reason why people often talking about how the best part about them is the challenge, playing for the 1cc is the one true ways to play arcade games...etc isn't so much elitism as some would blame it, but because the advent of easy access to emulations and home ports with unlimited continues really did damage the perception of that style of game, and fans of arcade design are trying to fight that. Like if you read any "professional review" of a shmup, they're fucking awful: it's insane how often you see those journos bash a shmup for being "too short and shallow" because they played with unlimited continues on the easiest setting and made no attempt to understand the game on any deeper level.

Ultimately, playing your own way if you genuinely feel you're stimulated is great. What I don't like is when clearly inept players bash a game for their incompetence and/or demand fundamental and undesirable changes to those games to cater to them, instead of accepting they may not be meant for them and that's fine - but playing on easier difficulties is not doing that. Using the multiple provisions already put in place to accomodate people who feel they don't have the skills necessary for or time investment to put into mastering Hard Games is perfectly fine in my book.
 
gaboumafou said:
When I use save states, I try to limit myself on how I use them. It's usually only in-between levels, because I can't stand going back to the beginning of a game when I run out of credits/lives/continues/etc. I used to cheese harder parts in games by using save-states constantly, but I don't do that anymore because, as you said, it removed all the tension and challenge in games.

EDIT: Woops, read too fast, you were talking about infinite lives. You're right that it can remove a lot of the fun from arcade games when you just respawn right where you were. I like arcade games where failing brings you back a bit (last checkpoint or beginning of the level), but isn't overly punitive (ex: go back to the beginning of the game if you lose your last live on the final boss). That's a hard thing to balance, and it's not necessarily compatible with the design mentality of old arcade games where the end goal was to get you to spend again and again and again.
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Yea sorry about that, I edited my post after the fact to focus on unlimited lives kinda breaking arcade games but savestate crawling is basically a more extreme version of that.

There are definitely ways to make your own custom difficulty settings with save states acting as checkpoints but many arcade games are at best, an hour long for a complete run. Your performance on the first stage should inform how you play the later levels and save states or unlimited lives allow players to ignore that arguably crucial aspect. I'm not trying to say it's some holy design of arcade games since like you said, it had a lot to do with wanting kids to put in more quarters but it's still the game design overall.
 
As hardcore of a gamer that I am, there are times where I don't want to fight with AI and game systems. I'll put a game on Normal or Easy and just enjoy the story.
 
KarmaCow said:
Yea sorry about that, I edited my post after the fact to focus on unlimited lives kinda breaking arcade games but savestate crawling is basically a more extreme version of that.

There are definitely ways to make your own custom difficulty settings with save states acting as checkpoints but many arcade games are at best, an hour long for a complete run. Your performance on the first stage should inform how you play the later levels and save states or unlimited lives allow players to ignore that arguably crucial aspect. I'm not trying to say it's some holy design of arcade games since like you said, it had a lot to do with wanting kids to put in more quarters but it's still the game design overall.
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I get what you mean. I'll sometimes try to play "legitimately" too because it definitely gives you a deeper understanding of the mechanics and knowing you could lose all your progress if you're not careful enough can be deliciously intense. It all depends on how much I love the game, how much time I want/can dedicate to it, and just how good I am at it.
 
I played Fire Emblem Fates in Phoenix/Normal. If anything it shifted the scale of tedious from trial and error to just selecting Autobattle-Blitz over and over again. It was pretty awful, would not recommend it.
 
Depends on the game. If the game is meant to be a test of skill, then you aren't getting the real experience by playing on "press A for awesome mode". On the other hand, if it's more about the story and world without much depth in gameplay, then higher difficulty is probably a waste of time.

My approach is to start off on the highest difficulty and give the game a few hours to see which kind of game it is. With a lot of modern games, so-called Hard mode isn't that hard anyway, so I may as well keep the difficulty there to get the trophy.
 
I very rarely play games on modes harder than normal unless I'm replaying them. Last game I played on hard was Wolfenstein: TNO, and I maintain that the hardest difficulty is the right way to do it
 
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