Permanent death.

OP means when you die theres no rez or respawn, your char is deleted.

Maybe only without rez and without healing
Obviously not the part where your char is deleted

They should try hard mode bosses or something. Where you do something to activate it (like freeing ALL the spirits in the fire citadel or clearing it without dying), and it'll tweak the bosses to be even more challenging. I think hardcore mode will discourage people if someone possibly spend real money on CE to get geared out, then from one unlucky lag spike it could all disappear instantly.

EDIT: Someone beat me to lag point

um...I don't see the point of this in this game...delete yourself if it means that much to you. Also, I don't know about anyone else but this lags occasionally and at worst crashes. Even if I had the skill, it's no good if your computer ends everything randomly.

As far as rewards for a mode like this, we don't even have any sort of accomplishment awards in this game that'd be much simpler (like pvp leaderboards, most minerals or something). So I doubt you'll see this any time soon if ever until they show some sort of willingness to give rewards for competitive things.

Well, Diablo 2 hardcore mode just added a challenge. It had its own server, ladder, and economy. If you were level 99 in HC, you knew that person was solid since you can't just deck him out and cow/baal/tristram run all day. But since SK doesn't have any levels or ladder/leaderboard, only way to know someone was good is if they had a fang of vog or something you can't just buy. They could disable or limit buying CE in hardcore. It's not a bad idea, but I don't think it'll draw enough interest for developers to get $$ or for players to join. Since I already mentioned D2, I wanted to say I really like the hard modes like what WoW offers. They make it so hardcore raiders have something to challenge them, while the casual gamers still able to have a realistic goal too.

A basic example of what SK could do as a hard mode on Vanaduke is making him spawn more zombies, slag guards, enemies doing 15% more damage and having 15% more life, adding more fire/falling debris and more bullets during helm phase. Activating this mode could be as simple as pushing a hidden button, and the rewards for completing it is more heat/crowns + always dropping 5 (maybe more?) tokens.

About the lag, try restarting your game often. I have heard SK leaks memory and that might be what is causing your crashes? I only lag because my internet isn't very stable..

You know in depth 29? How that Knight dude says that he sent his scouts into the core but never came back? I bet that would be the hardcore mode of SK! I really want to checkout the Clockworks core and maybe never come back! Who knows! Maybe the Knights never returned because they found lots of life time supply of CANDY!

Who still considers this a good idea?

No, seriously, what about this idea appeals to people? Specifically the people I'm addressing in this thread. While I have a lot of respect for the amount of courage required in temporary art types (sand castles and the like), I never understood the draw to spending days and days logged in only to have the possibility that a bad set of circumstances could wipe away everything?

I would play this if playing in hardcore mode allowed for faster advancement.

Not that I need to be rewarded for it, but putting in a month of effort only to scratch T2 and die would become tedious really quickly.

Alternately, don't delete the account, but give each player an item that is lost forever if they die while equipped with it. The item accumulates an infinite amount of heat, though gaining levels does nothing for it. The player who accumulates the most heat with it before perishing is declared the winner. Add some restrictions to prevent that player from playing T1 forever at no risk.

I don't see SK as targeting casuals. The graveyard levels and danger rooms suggest 3R is willing to put out for players looking for a more challenging. The game design contains some leeway for more casual play, but it doesn't seem like the primary intended audience.

Cute character designs do not alone determine the type of players intended to play a game. Conker's Bad Fur Day taught us this years ago.

I like the idea of a hardcore server in addition to the language servers. I haven't bought CE yet, though I did start from early opening so I've been playing a month and a day. In another month, I'll have seen all the existing adventure content, and all that will be left is building alternate 5* sets for amusement. Of course, more content is probably (hopefully) coming, but... it is true that the game's content can be run through very quickly. People that have an edge on me by actually spending money on CE have already done everything that can be done. A hardcore server gives a new way to approach that content. It's certainly not for everybody, of course. It's really a way of replaying the game with an added challenge to spice it up. If new content comes out slowly enough, I'd likely play hardcore mode for that reason.

Of course, the competition for being the first to grab a health capsule would be severe, heh.

A twist on it would be to allow health revives as 'in game ressurection' but not allow auto-revive (when the party escapes) nor energy revives. Health revives are kind of an in-character action, after all. This would mean that death would be a whole party at a time, of course (or if your teammates callously abandon you, of course.) Soloing would then be extra-risky in a way.

My only concern is that right now you can easily be killed by a network outage, since a disconnected player still takes damage. Not too big a deal when it's so easy to revive, but in hardcore mode it would matter a lot. That would need to be redesigned, certainly.

I could see this working a couple different ways but with a few tweaks.

You could implement it like Guild Wars does (and maybe WoW?). "Hard Mode" is available after you meet certain conditions. Since SK doesn't really have a campaign/story line I'd say you have to have all 5* gear AND have beaten JK and Vanaduke since those are the only bosses at the moment. Then when you enter a gate there's an additional option of entering in Hard Mode. Hard Mode would offer better mat drops, more crowns, and heat, but all enemies act like they do in Tier 3. Enemies in Tier 1 have the equivalent damage and health of Tier 3 enemies, and they just get stronger as you go further down. Your damage of course stay the same. It is called hard mode for a reason. You can not invite people into the party that do not have access to hard mode if you are playing in hard mode.

Or you could create a separate server for the Hardcore players. Separate auction house (when implemented), guilds, and Knights. CE can still be shared between it and your regular Knights. You wouldn't be able to mail or actually interact with any Knights not on the hardcore server (to prevent you mailing your hardcore character items mostly). Your party can revive you, moving to the next floor does not and you can't revive yourself. Death and no revive means your character is deleted.

~Gwen