So i’ve been playing Diablo a really long time but always SC. I didn’t understand why people would play HC knowing one wrong move (or DC) and their character and all their work is gone, poof. no way man, thats crazy.
So i finally make my first HC character , a WD, last night and i immediately think its a joke because i can’t even raise the difficulty past “expert”. it just felt way too easy. I was pancaking through rifts as i do on SC and got almost to lvl 40 really fast, until… a rift guardian with mortar popped out in the middle of an already filled screen with creeps and i die almost instantly… im just staring at my screen in disbelief for several seconds…
I don’t get mad or upset as i assumed i would. i immediately re-create another character, a barb this time. what is this feeling? i thought. i start picking up every item and examining it the second i get it for possible upgrades. i start actively crafting better gear every few levels to make sure i’m ready for anything. i start caring about gold costs and find myself praying for better drops.
It feels so much different this second time around. I normally wouldn’t care about anything until i hit lvl 70. just mindlessly speed running without any consideration to items, crafting or what im even fighting. I stopped feeling any excitement over legendary drops in SC, even at lvl 70 when i need a specific piece. i just think “its about damn time i got this”.
Instead, now at lvl 12, i walked into a rift and almost immediately find a giant gathering of goblins and i freak out with excitement. i panic as i leap to try and kill as many as humanly possible before they tele out. i almost die, but it rains items and i feel this awesome feeling i haven’t felt since… well diablo 2. lol.
I didn’t believe the hype. but HC is pretty sweet , highly recommend. <(^.^)>. Merry Christmas everyone!
I got too annoyed by the server issues, but yeah, HC does a lot of good to Diablo 3.
And is a good example of why Diablo 4 needs a survival bonus/death penalty system that covers SC too, so deaths feel like they matter again. So combat feels engaging again.
ya im only paranoid about the D/C issue as i play. i know if i die any other way, its my fault so i can’t be mad at anyone.
hey do you happen to know where the thread is that talks about fixing common freezing/dc issues in HC? i remember reading a thread last week about HC and some guy linked a bunch of fixes to help prevent common D/C issues. but now i can’t find it
I had pretty much identical experience a month or so back when I made my first HC toon, so I completely understand what you mean. I even made a post about it too:
I was pretty bummed when I screwed up and my first toon died after I safely got him to around 300 para but oh well, that’s a part of it.
Not to rain on your parede or anything… but that’s just because you’re super new into HC and you’re still afraid to lose a character so you are way more careful than you need to be.
After you actually get used to HC, which will not take that long if you played a lot of D3 already, it really isn’t that different from playing SC. You’re just gonna play a little lower difficulty so you have more leeway with errors.
playing any game in any mode is going to “get old” after a certain length of time. and yes even more so because i’ve already played D3 a lot. i’m just grateful this mode made it fun again at all for any length of time.
Thanks captain obvious. Did you come to state the obvious just to sound depressing? merry christmas.
I’ve played HC before but always kept it safe, doing it mainly achievements, though I did get to over 800 paragon in non-season.
This season, I’ve made a real go of it with my DH class. Beat a GR124 at 1100 paragon. I’m now 1300 paragon with my second character and just recently got my gear to reasonable facsimile of my first character and now I’m just leveling gems before I give 125 another try.
Lucks been with me as far as DC’s. Only had one when my old rig broke down, took two weeks to get another one.
So yeah, HC is fun. But I’m not gonna knock SC because that’s pretty fun as well.
When I play HC it will teach you more about the game. I have been playing for like 10 season. At first yes I die on doing stupid stuff. But for like 5 season I haven’t die.
I did 3 accounts and finish all three of them doing the season journey. Plus on all three of them I did HC doing the 3 gems to level to 65 for that conquest.
“HC isn’t that different from playing SC”. I have to disagree with that sorry but HC is different from SC. In SC you can do a lot of stupid stuff and die here and there. In HC you have watch everything you are doing. If you don’t Bye Bye you are done.
I was told one time I’m not playing HC right if you are not dying. I thought in HC the goal was not to die. To some people if you are not push the limit you are not playing right.
That is fine if somebody want to push the limit. I’m not going waste all that time building character to watch it die because I’m trying to play over my head. All I can say is play your way and not like some of the mindless people that play.
I have to disagree a bit. You can play HC to a close enough level in GR pushing to call it the same. The one and only difference and the reason you can’t quite push as high in HC as you can in SC (for most players) is building a bit more defensively and losing an offensive passive in exchange for a cheat death.
Other than that you can play them principally the same. At least that’s the way I am with it but it’s coming from a guy that hates dying in softcore too.
im finding everything in the game mattering way more in HC. even paying attention to exactly what monsters do what and how much damage. I never cared about any of that stuff in SC.
now my real question is. How do we get this same feeling in D4 without having to play HC? because i still really don’t want to lose all my progress just by dying… lol
I much prefer HC because it does keep me more involved. For me this game is still about role playing and the RP is more successful when I have real consequences for failing and dying. I have a HC wizard with the first Primal Deathwish I have ever found and part of me is scared to push, but I still push softly. My rule is that anytime I trigger my cheat death I try to back out and return to town until my cheat death is active again. Then I return to the rift. I never phish and I try to complete every rift I start. Sometimes you will die. Bludshed has a funny video up somewhere about some of his HC deaths. The one that cracked me is up is Perdition first appearing directly on top of his character and the game is over. Sometimes you just die by an Act of God and that is just how life is in role playing games. If you can’t handle that life is not fair, then you will struggle with both life and HC. I was D/C three times last season but was fortunate to survive all of them. Many more freezes this year, but no D/C yet. If it happens it is just an ACT of God and I start over with a new character and my backup gear. Glad you are enjoying the game and welcome to the dark side.
Besides some seasons that i play until ‘champion’ and also 2 characters at HC LvL40 (deleted long ago), i play SC only.
I’ve eternal fun, because i like the arcade mobblasting and my slow progression through finding better items and tuning my builds.
-All my characters are playing between T12 and T16 and it stays fun.
Well yes, and for this reason I stopped playing HC -) There is next to none room for experimentations, you can’t try out crazy tactics and strategies that might work, and that’s what I love in SC. Cheesy passives, shared paragon and standardized gear for everyone were another reasons.
Wait until you have a couple hundred hours into a character and are getting close to your character’s GR limit, you are having a good run, your second chance passive pops, and you have to make that decision of whether to push on or wuss out and chill in town. If you push on, your heart will pound like it never will in SC. If you succeed, everyone in the house will know it because of your screams of joy. If you fail, everyone in the house will know it because of your 4-letter word combo bonus.
I play mostly SC or HC for the simple fact most my friends play SC. HC, though, has made me a much better and focused SC player. A death from a long time HC character may make you rage quit for a while, but for me, the challenge of doing better always makes me come back.
In D2 when you’re not playing over Closed Battle net, you can always restore your save file.
When playing over Closed Battle net, you can die through no fault of your own.
In D3 – online only, you can die though no fault of your own.
In RoS and greater rifts… aside from the fact, that you can (and most likely will) die through no fault of your own, there’s also the stupidity of gimping yourself.
"Oh, I’m playing on hardcore! I’ll play it safer!, I’ll use this item, that increases my survivability instead of yet another damage multiplier; I’ll spend more on vita than I normally would, isn’t this cool, you guys?"
Whoopty doo, you gimped your character for the fake thrill of the possibility of dying though no fault of your own… really interesting gameplay…
