The short answer is no. It's not too much to ask.
In fact, it may be too little to ask.
It's not correct to say that how hard you hit the drums doesn't make any difference...it makes an enormous difference.
Being a "hard hitter", how hard you hit the drums, looking like you're hitting hard and hitting hard to get a particular drum sound are often relevant factors.
For some music, playing the drums lightly but turning up the volume on the kit through the PA doesn't sound right. It may be only loud but still sound "tippy-tappy"
Sometimes the music requires it, sometimes the show requires it.
I can play very loudly and look like I'm half asleep. After looking at several videos of our band playing many months ago, I concluded that the way I looked while playing some of our heavier rock songs was quite boring and not entertaining. I started adding a little extra motion and some exaggerated movements to my playing without really changing up my sound and volume. Nothing extreme but it definitely made an impact on having the audience be more into it and I could see the crowd start moving right away, much more than before. The energy was sort of contagious.
The moniker "hard hitter" has always seemed a bit ridiculous to me. IMO, the range between hitting softly and very hard is not that big. Not in the physical sense that is.
Look at Jose Pasillas from Incubus. He's about 5'0" tall and probably 110 lbs soaking wet. He certainly sounds like a hard hitter to me. I'm 6'4" and 245 lbs. I could use rebar for drumsticks if I had to. Almost anyone can hit a drum or a cymbal and max out the sound it produces.
There are so many things that go into it that it would probably be better to redefine what you're looking for and expand on the "hard and fast" requirement to get the kind of drumming you're looking for.