I've always been kinda envious of people who can be "hardcore" about a particular game or genre. I'm talking the speedrunners, the fighting game players, the rhythm game maniacs. Those who can play a game over and over again to the point of mastery; that they can love a game so much, the movement of their fingers and their eyes and their minds can become one with the game.
I've tasted a bit of this. (Of course I do. I have ADHD haha, I hyperfocus sometimes). But I never really could focus on one thing, long enough for that to be the thing. I play rhythm games, but I never got as good as the masters. I play fighting games, but never good enough to even touch competitive playing. But I do play them just enough to envision how the masters got to their place: where their skill come from, how their love for it grows.
Anyway. Arknights. I love Arknights mainly for the stories and the characters. Some of the best I've read, across all media, but to get to those stories I also got to play its deranged tower-defense game. I started out being impressed by the complexity I could, at the time, only saw bits and pieces of, and then I was frustrated by its steep learning curve, and then I learned to tolerate it, and then, eventually, I realised, I've built up a large knowledge base in my head of its many complexities.
Early on I only had a ragtag team that I had to built up elaborate strategies for, the kind of strategies that people higher-up don't need to bother with as they're already equipped with more powerful units. But as I got more powerful units myself, I realised they add to the variety of what I can do, instead of outright replacing those strategies with pure firepower. The high-difficulty missions used to be impossible; now they're playground for more elaborate strategies.
Contingency Contract is the epitome of these high-difficulty missions. You're given one stage with pretty mediocre difficulty, but you can stack up contract challenges (basically buffing the enemies/nerfing yourself/adding little twists to the stage) up to some insane shit. For which there isn't really a reward beyond some medals and bragging rights.
And oh dear. The "hardcore" fans lap them up.
And so am I! I love these! I actually apparently love doing a stage over and over again, refining my strategies down to the seconds. By the point I'm done with it, I have pretty much memorized the layout of the stage, when do which enemies show up, and how to counter them, with my own strategy.
A remarkable thing, one that speaks to just how well-designed these stages and just Arknights is particular is, is that no two people will likely have the same strategy. Having a gacha mechanics mean you'll probably end up with a different team than your friends. On top of that, you only have limited resources to build up your characters. So even if you somehow have the exact same units as your friends, you'll probably end up building those characters that your friends didn't build, and vice versa.
And yet you're not just building one DPS over another DPS; every unit genuinely do have their own quirks. And if you love the game, if you love to strategize, if you're in full agreement with the game developers in how to play the game, you'll work these quirks into your strats! Sure, on most stages, these quirks are basically superseded by pure firepower, but when you up the difficulty and your strategies go down to the minutiae, they matter a whole lot! Niche actually is nice!
This recent Contingency Contract stage I cleared is a good example of this!
https://x.com/PseudoMonious/status/1712826174810755128?s=20
The specific strategy I ended up using won't be possible without specifically Fartooth, Indigo, Ethan, and Weedy, with some major help from Stainless. I also won't have discovered this if I didn't, after I got exasperated, look up how other people did these stages. They didn't have the units I have, and I don't have what they have, so I can't just use their strategy wholesale. However, did I notice how they utilize Weedy, specifically, whom I do not have. Arknights allow you to borrow one of someone else's unit into your team, so I borrowed her and then I found a way to integrate her into mine.
In this challenge, the boss has ridiculously high ATK, to the point that he can one-shot the strongest Defender in the game even with massive DEF boost, so I basically have to throw away any strategy that involves blocking the boss. Weedy's skill can push the enemy all the way to the end of the screen; conveniently the bottom row is one long straight line, perfect to place her. Unfortunately, her skill has a long cooldown, longer than the time it takes for him to walk all the way back, so I'll need a way to stall him.
Most of the strats I found use Decel Binders, who can inflict slow. I, uhh, didn't build up any of my Decel Binders, so I was scrambling for alternatives. I tried the stage a few times with a few different alternatives until I stumbled on an old favorite, which I haven't done in a while: Ethan and Indigo. Both are mere 4-stars, and not really the type that most people would build since their main quirk is pretty niche: their attack has a chance of binding the enemy, which stops them from moving for a few seconds. Using their skills increase this chance to near-certainty.
So I don't have a lot of units who can inflict constant slow. But I can alternate between triggering Ethan and Indigo's skills to bind the boss, at least consistently enough until Weedy's skill is back online.
Ethan, Weedy, and Indigo's damage isn't the best, though. Might I be able to just stall the boss forever, chipping his life away bit by bit? Theoretically, maybe, but the longer I'm here, the more chance that something goes wrong; bind doesn't trigger when I need it too, Weedy's skill doesn't trigger fast enough before he dashes right past her and to the blue box.
Enter Fartooth, whose skill massively boost her attack and changes its range to infinitely long straight line. This is very niche and I barely use her in normal missions. But here it's perfect. While everyone's busy making sure the boss doesn't get too close, Fartooth snipe down his HP a good chunk at a time.
Oh and Stainless is here too. The machines he brings make other people's skills charge quicker; I put it on Indigo to help the bind rotation and on Fartooth for faster cycle to her skill.
And I think it's cool to point out that all these are unique to them. Units who can inflict bind is rare, and none of them as consistently as Ethan and Indigo. Other units can push enemies, but only Weedy can push all the way. Fartooth's infinitely long range is unmatched, the longest range that others can hope for is five tiles. My strat is my own, formed of the unique coalescence of what happened to me and what I have decided to do in the game. Had I not built Indigo and Ethan, if I had gotten Mostima instead of Fartooth, I have no doubt that I'd figure out a way to finish this stage too, but it would be with a completely different strategy.
And I think there's beauty in that! In the interaction between the player and the game; an indirect interaction between the player and the developers. The stories and triumphs that came out of what could be boiled down into just some random numbers, but our mind, collectively, has built into something much more.
And I realised after I've cleared all the challenges, finally getting some rest, oh. This is my hardcore game. This is what the competitive fighting game players feel. The love they have for what could just be seen as bunch of numbers and twitching muscle memory. I've found a home.
