Gothic - hardcore or softcore? (split)

@Ovenall, GothicLena and VoxClamant:

I repeat:
The Gothic series is NOT a hardcore rpg with hardcore rpg elements. The Gothic series is an open world adventure/exploring game with strong rpg-elements.

You can increase the level of difficulty in the Gothic games, if you go to early to areas with enemies, that a much too hard for your current level. For many Gothic fans that is part of the fun. Forbidden zones, closed doors, secret dungeons, hard to find areas are always cool .
If you play the Gothics this way, you have to use your brain to win. Lure enemies to city gates, where you can get help. Let the big Troll fall from a bridge into a lake, so that he drowns; find some ingridients to get more power to hold a sword you have found in a secret corner of the world, find a Meteor Shower scroll to burn all the Orcs in your way, turn into a bedbug to avoid combat completely…
They are so many different approaches to reach your goals in Gothic 1-2+addon, I replayed each game at least 3 times.

The control scheme for combat in Gothic 1 & 2 is easy to master and never gets boring. I like the fact that you get better control over the weapons by gaining suitable skills.

Ehm, compared to what the modern market is offering, I'd say Gothic 1/2 are VERY hardcore - actually.

DArtagnan said:

Ehm, compared to what the modern market is offering, I'd say Gothic 1/2 are VERY hardcore - actually.

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I think HiddenX considers a hardcore RPG an RPG that has tons and tons of numbers.

As for the combat system of Gothic? It actually requires skill, that's the big difference (instead of just clicking). Once you get the hang of it, it's exceptionally fluent for an RPG. There is no hiding the fact that it has a steep learning curve though.

Well, hardcore can be many things.

Personally, I think the definition that makes most sense is that a hardcore game requires a larger investment on the part of the player - and ideally offers a corresponding reward for that investment.

In Gothic, the investment is both time and the effort to learn the combat system - as well as exploring the environment carefully. In a casual game, those things wouldn't require much - and the exploration wouldn't be especially rewarding, because the items found wouldn't be required for success. Oblivion is a good example of a casual CRPG, yet with the "illusion" of depth and complexity.

Gothic is very punishing to the new player, both in terms of the control system - and the powerful enemies. Such things demand that the player invests in learning the ropes, and will reward him for the effort.

But, if by hardcore you mean complexity, specifically - then I will concede that Gothic isn't particularly hardcore.

I just think such a definiton is wrong.

The thing that really makes Gothic hardcore is offcourse the xxx-cutscene when you visit the brothel in Khorinis

…sorry all this talk of hardcore made me say it

I'm really not getting the casual versus hardcore thing.

To me casual means there is no longtime commitment, in other words no overarching story or world. Not wether or not there's handholding in a game. It just represents that you casually play it for a few minutes between checking your e-mail and checking the news or whatever else you were doing. Or on the couch with pa, ma, bro, sis, son or daughter.

The only thing not hardcore but still sold as boxed games mostly falls into mainstream gaming. In other words there is some handholding so that new players can get used to the game and old players be made aware of the changes made by the devs.

What casual and mainstream games have in common is that their goal is to reach a mass market, and more often than not that dreaded 'streamlining' has taken place. In addition mainstream games nowadays seem to need Full VO (often sacrificing more versatile text dialogue systems).

IMHO Morrowind was more a hardcore game, you really needed to familiarise your self with the world to know how to get around, and finding a certain cave took alot of effort (no compass and no main map location marker) and often frustration. And alot of backtracking. At the end you would however have pretty good mental picture of the world in the game. You could kill an important NPC and loose the way to complete a quest. All doors were lockpickable.

Compare with Oblivion where after finding a place on foot you'd never have to find your way there again, next time you could just fast travel. There's no danger of messing up a quest by killing a certain NPC. Some doors can no longer be picked put absolutely NEED a key. All resulting in a less-open world, all so that lineair storytelling can take place within it.

Mainstream games are often multi-platform, which sometimes results into another streamline towards the most common denominator.

In other words, all that is still a major ways off from becoming "casual".

This really reminds me of a hip hop community I was part of, always talking about indie is better and how the major stars sold out. In games selling out is equal to streamlining for mainstream and thus "dumbing down" while indie games (that often are hardcore) are praised into heaven.

Gothic (G1) is hardcore to the extreme.

I play casual games all the time. I just don't want my hardcore games to find out about it (they'll get jealous)

I think most posters here equate "hardcore" with "RPGs that I like".

Now, we've got a serious problem in defining what's 'hardcore' ?

To be clear, while it might be logical to think Casual means players with less time, that is a gross misnomer, its a generally accepted fact Casual means players who want a fun and Entertaining experience without alot of time investment into the games. Just pick up, play for an hour or two, and go back to real life. It might not make sense to some, but that is the definition of it these days.

However I get that for real RPG nerds who spend hours and hours in their games, this all too common trend is a bummer but thats the price to pay for gaming becoming accepted and "Mainstream".

The Playtstation 2 signaled the end of the Golden Age of hardcore gaming, because guys it comes down to simple numbers, and you guys are in the dwindling minority, and companies in the quest for the almighty buck don't care about minorities they want the gold in the hills that is Mass Market. It might be a harsh truth, but anyone who wont accept this truth is doing a major disservice to themselves.

But fortunately there are Indie studios and GoG that rise up to give you guys what you need. I may be a hardcore RPG nerd turned Casual gamer but in my case its more because I saw this coming a mile away and got over it early before it became so widespread.

Hardcore is simple to define - its a time immersive and masochistic game that requires alot of time investment to get anywhere in, and of course doesnt hold your hand.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Now, we've got a serious problem in defining what's 'hardcore' ?

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But we have a more serious problem of defining what makes an RPG an RPG to start with.

"hardcore game" = a game which is hard to solve and complete by it's sheer intense complexity.

"a hardcore game example" = Gothic (G1) has not yet been fully completed.

"hardcore gamer" = the gamer needed to achieve mastery over the above game.

This is EXACTLY like defining what rpg means. Good luck with that.

I know which ones of my games are hardcore and which aren't. The hardcore ones keep beating up my casual ones. Poor Plants vs. Zombies gets picked on all the time.

Edit: It seems Bill and I know exactly where this is headed

Wulf said:

"hardcore game" = a game which is hard to solve and complete by it's sheer intense complexity.

"a hardcore game example" = Gothic (G1) has not yet been fully completed.

"hardcore gamer" = the gamer needed to achieve mastery over the above game.

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I don't know what hardcore means, but I know YOU are!

Investment is about more than just time, it's about focus and experience. A hardcore gamer doesn't mind that a game requires his full attention to succeed - and a hardcore game typically expects you to have played similar games before, as they generally don't go out of their way to explain mechanics in an accessible way.

It's important not to get locked down in rigid black/white terms. There's nothing inherently better or worse about being hardcore, or about a hardcore game. It's simply about getting what you want out of something, and truth be told - we all want different things, even within the subgroups of hardcore and casual gamers.

I have no problem with casual gamers or casual games, except for the fact that we "enthusiasts" are the ones who gave birth to the industry foundation, indirectly. As such, it can be somewhat painful that the casual gamers have "taken over" and are now controlling the perception of AAA developers, in terms of what games should be made. But that's about greed and monetary motivation, and not about willfully creating bad games. It's just that most people believe superfluous wealth is a more worthy goal than art - which I can only lament, but ultimately have to accept.

But I would never blame casual gamers for not wanting to invest at an enthusiast level, and I think it's very understandable that they have other interests that they prefer to commit to.

This whole "casual vs. hardcore" thing, is something I can't take seriously. It's about ignorance on both sides, and a sense of entitlement that doesn't belong. In fact, I think it's downright juvenile to create a further division based on egotistical preferences.

Calling hardcore gamers "masochistic" or casual gamers "dumb" - are both equally moronic. It displays a profound lack of understanding, in terms of what it means to want to invest, or not want to invest in something.

@GhanBuriGhan,

Perhaps - but hardcore by failure - this makes you try again, yet you still fail again and again, then you rethink reposition retack etc and still failure - but when you finaly say to yourself 'enough is enough' - hardcore doesn't really come into it - i don't know if such a thing exists "a hardcore failure" - as the wanton desire to find the solution makes "failing" as the motivator which eggs you on, to drive further yet again (and of course to fail miserably once more)

Seriously, (and intelligently) this is exactly what i want from a game - like a crime scene investigator forever altering the pieces of the puzzle and getting nowhere….yet knowing it's in there somewhere.

Wulf said:

- like a crime scene investigator forever altering the pieces of the puzzle and getting nowhere…

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Sounds very much like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

oliverh72 said:

You know, games are called GAMES cause they're meant to be fun.

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I agree completely.

However, "fun" is to some people something different than to other people.

And here we have another problem.

BillSeurer said:

But we have a more serious problem of defining what makes an RPG an RPG to start with.

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I sooooo agree!!!!

The term RPG is now used by so many gamers and developers in so many ways that the term has almost become meaningless. Diablo is an RPG, Baldur's Gate is an RPG, Elemental is an RPG, ME2 is an RPG, Bioshock 2 is an RPG, Arcania and G1-2-3 are RPGs, and I noticed this morning that my box of Cheerios has RPG elements.

If you really want to see how silly it is — I went to a DL site I use and listed their top 10 RPGs "in order of popularity": King's Bounty, Eschelon 2, Dragon Age, Din's Curse, Bioshock 2, UFO Extraterrestrial, Torchlight, Witcher, and Puzzle Quest.

I have not done the research, but my gut tells me that nearly every new game of any genre delivered in 2010 had the term "RPG" somewhere in the boilerplate description.