Game:

Aliens: Fireteam Elite (2021)

Duration: 1:39

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THIS VIDEO IS PART OF A WHOLE PLAYLIST

IGN interviewed Cold Iron Studios' CEO, Craig Zinkievich about the Pathogen DLC(Which is wonderful, despite having a few flaws and one point of being misleading in this interview.), before it released, and the upcoming(at the time) Hardcore Mode, they were introducing around the same time...

Expectations set.

There have also been deeper inquiries with Chris Matz, Cold Iron's Lead Systems and Combat Designer, about Hardcore, along with feedback given about it being too easy and with many design problems as a game mode that make it undesirable to play, on Cold Iron's official AFE Discord Server: https://discordapp.com/invite/aliensfireteamelite

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This stuff has been communicated to Cold Iron before, but:

Generally, Hardcore appears to be a very halfassed version of Standard difficulty, with HP modifiers to enemies. They don't appear to do more damage with their attacks, making them pretty non-threatening in general. (Likewise, environmental damage like acid does negligible damage too.)
The overall HP, while I've not tested (and I don't play with healthbars or damage floaters enabled typically, so going by feel and talking with Crimson, who does have those enabled), appears to be above Intense difficulty's values, and below Extreme difficulty's values.
As there is zero Friendly Fire in Hardcore mode, there's no incentive to avoid shooting teammates, or yourself. So Area Of Effect weapons are ridiculous.
This mostly makes the difficulty of Hardcore to max out as around Intense, depending on how much value you place on the lack of Friendly Fire. Overall enemy health is more than Intense, but less than Extreme. The lack of Friendly Fire means you can dish out far more damage with far less skill or effort.
Hardcore has no matchmaking either, so only pre-made parties can play together. (Ostensibly the lack of Friendly Fire was to avoid random trolls ruining people's games, but having both no matchmaking and no Friendly Fire makes no sense for this.)
Friendly Fire is one of the main difficulties in higher difficulties in AFE. The lack trivializes things a fair bit.

Generally with the Standard + HP modifier to enemies that's very clear in Hardcore Mode, it strongly looks like Cold Iron implemented this, whoever did got the math wrong in modifying gameplay, and then they never tested this to even check if it worked properly, because it's clearly not remotely near Insane difficulty, despite Zink's promises in the IGN interview.

It doesn't really look like cosmetic items have fully functional unlock criteria in Hardcore. Gameplay items do. DLC items do. Some of the newer cosmetic unlocks do. But it doesn't seem like most of the cosmetic-only stuff tied to difficulty does.

Hardcore Mode is trivial to cheat in by ending task of the game. (There are silly incidents like cornering yourself with 20 Runners that'll get anyone killed. Or taking on the Pathogen Queen in 5-3 one on one so she's after you nonstop.) Hard to say how that could be fixed without punishing crashes and people disconnecting. If the mode were more appealing to play, the honour system would be enough.

But that suffers from a few problems too:
1. If you die in a party, your party members cannot continue to play with out without dropping their selected Hardcore level all the way back to 1 and helping you grind up again.
2. You cannot party with anyone at a Hardcore level difficulty beyond the lowest party member. So you're forced to down level to trivialize the game to even help new players who DO want to try Hardcore.

Players should either never lose their unlocked Hardcore level, or they should be able to party and start matches with people playing Hardcore levels above their own unlocked level(and that should increase their level too). Maybe both. It's incredibly unfriendly to actually playing the game mode otherwise.

Hardcore also allows 3 downs and a huge bleed out time, rather than Insane's 1 down and fast bleedout time.
Hardcore, unlike Insane, lacks instant kills and executions, making enemies much less of a threat, too.

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Playlist of videos about Hardcore Mode:

Intro(Cold Iron IGN interview, and notes in description): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp968d8iMuw&list=PLnQqcYoxUUV32gkrUR5br0gkV-0W8BFC8&index=1
Hardcore 46: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSs6-Yap4F4&list=PLnQqcYoxUUV32gkrUR5br0gkV-0W8BFC8&index=2
Hardcore 47: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Q2hwncnw0&list=PLnQqcYoxUUV32gkrUR5br0gkV-0W8BFC8&index=3
Hardcore 48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI2byMed6L4&list=PLnQqcYoxUUV32gkrUR5br0gkV-0W8BFC8&index=4
Hardcore 49 (Game crashed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuSH1GSRL9M&list=PLnQqcYoxUUV32gkrUR5br0gkV-0W8BFC8&index=5
Hardcore 49: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTOgRkeL__k&list=PLnQqcYoxUUV32gkrUR5br0gkV-0W8BFC8&index=6
Hardcore 50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y22qs01ZOEU&list=PLnQqcYoxUUV32gkrUR5br0gkV-0W8BFC8&index=7

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