Hardcore is about risk mitigation and enduring the consequences of both bad decisions and random bad luck.

People will say that there is a lot of skill involved but really for most people HC is about builds, knowledge of the game and luck.

If people were running at the same levels vs content that they do on Live then the skill element would go up fairly dramatically but at the current HC meta for most people it is just about risk prevention and RNG.

Just like Reaper was about challenge HC is a bait and switch on human nature.