Guild Wars 2

First of all, I wanted to share everyone’s sentiments that SAB is absolutely wonderful, and I look forward to seeing more of it in the future! But I remember reading that hard mode is still a work-in-progress, and seeing as I will be one of the many who wishes to tackle it – I want it to be as good as possible! So I’ve put together a few ideas for the dev team to consider if they haven’t already.

1) Continuing (using continue coins) should have more of a penalty than using lives.

Assuming you aren’t planning on making hard mode a no-checkpoint system, dying and using a life should take you back to the last checkpoint as with normal mode. But when you go to the “Continue” screen and need to use a continue coin, using a coin should take you back to the beginning of the zone, resetting all checkpoints. And if you’re with a party, continuing brings you back into a “dead” state or puts you into some kind of prison where you cannot rejoin your party until they either finish the zone or use up all of their lives (in which case everyone restarts the zone). Leaving the instance and coming back would also put you into the dead/prison state to prevent exploiting.

And if you want to be especially malicious, for hard mode you might want to require players to get through an entire world before progress is saved in the world hub. Basically, the hub only lets you restart from each world’s zone 1. For example, if players get through Zone 1 & 2 of World 1 but don’t finish Zone 3 before quitting, they’ll need to start from Zone 1 when they try again.

2) Limit the rewards for completing hard mode, but make them good.

The primary reward for completing hard mode should probably be a highly-sought-after title and maybe an item useable by any race/profession. But considering that there are many people who have trouble with SAB and other jumping puzzles on normal mode, it would be good to avoid making them angry/upset by having too many rewards from content they can’t complete. The true reward for hard mode should be bragging rights.

3) Make hard mode DIFFICULT.

While this is obvious, I want to clarify by difficult I mean “old-school hard.” Those people who do want hard mode tend to be types that want to tackle and overcome almost any challenge they are given. Ideally, it should be content that only a small percentage of the player base will ever complete. And even for these skilled players, it should take much more than a few days to overcome the challenges present in this mode.

I disagree with #2 in the sense that whether people struggle with jumping puzzles or not shouldn’t be used to determine rewards. If I do SAB on hard mode then I want to be rewarded based on the effort I have to put in to complete it. I don’t want my award to be handicapped by players that are unable to do jumping puzzles.

For hard mode, I say no healing potions, max of 5 lives with shops disabled, and no continues. You MUST start from World 1, Zone 1 and rewards scale up the further you progress. Add a mandatory item needed to unlock a checkpoint. There should be a reasonable, but short time limit for each zone.

Make hard mode kaizo mario hard!

If you don’t know what that is… look it up on youtube.

Anyone know if Josh&co are working on this to release it within this month or will this also be expected to have no date in the near future?

Hard mode is already made, it’s just not implemented due to strain so it’s probably getting re-worked. It’s going to be released Soon(TM Arenanet2013)

I think what is going to happen for hard mode is. Since happy clouds help you out with rainbows. Grumpy clouds are going to make it a living nightmare for you.

Perhaps instead of rainbows. Bridges/barriers of lightning that hurt you? They’ll probably also go off in intervals to add a timing element to the jumping puzzles.

When you use a continue coin in harder modes, it should send you to the very beginning of the level like they used to in the old days.

For hard mode, you shouldn’t be able to use continue coins. Also, there should be no checkpoints. If you die it’s back to the start of the level (or world if you want).

Furthermore monsters should have no leash and chase you like the dug up bunnies. Also they should use their skills at an alarmingly faster rate – mad grenadier monkeys, machinegun snakes (that can fire on the z axis too), and perma-windmilling spiders. As for the bunnies, they should all start hostile and be able to outrun the player – same goes for snake bullets and pineapples. No more casually strolling to one side.

Should also be a timer indicating when lava will fill the level (instant fail), as well as a black wall of death that “chases” the player towards the end. Insta death if it catches you.

Rewards wise Hardcore mode should offer different baubles that can buy “Better” stuff. Dying in hardcore mode makes you lose ALL those baubles instantly.

While it makes sense to try to make every zone to allow most people to pass it, in infantile mode for instance, the best rewards from SAB don’t need to be available to everyone.

The fractels, dungeons, WvWvW rewards are available to everyone, but only the best or most dedicated players get the best rewards. It would be a much more meaningful badge of honor if you can beat SAB hard mode and 70% of everyone else can’t.

Maybe a good way to make things more difficult would be to disable checkpoints, while keeping lives and continue coins.

Better yet, the system Bungie used with Halo skulls could be fun where people can choose what difficulty elements are added. With that, the harder things got, the greater the rewards.

I just hope you consider the ping factor or only US citizens will be able to get it while you have a lot of players living in other countries with pings ranging from 200 to 400 ms who have the skills, have the will and will probably be able to get the titles even handicaped by ping, unless you make it doable only for people with 40-120ms and kitten the rest of the world off.

For hard mode, I would love it if it was really sadistic. Make some platforms, false platforms, that give way immediately when you step on them. Or have entire parts of the map collapse. Or trees that explode when you get too close to them. And bunnados everywhere. And ghosts that chase you around, so you’re always in a hurry.

Make hardmode our worst platforming nightmare… well second to Griffonrook Run of course.

Sorry guys, I just came from the early 90’s and read these comments, when most games were hard.

There is a word here that seems repeating over and over. Can anyone clarify what is ‘continue’?

An easy to implement hard mode : keep the whole game identical but reduce the player max HP to a half heart no matter what

Edit : and of course, 0 extra lives and no extra lives can be bought !

I sincerely hope “good as possible” =/ annoying as kitten and elitist.

Yeah lol I live in Western Australia and usually get 330ping +… the only thing that is killer is timed stuff that flashes on and off and when the game bugs out due to lag like on the falls (I have been sent in weird directions and even blown through land due to lag on the rapid falls level)

This said making a nightmare land with lots of jumps and maybe have a shattered version of the current levels with a cloud that constantly followed you and threw lighting bolts at you would be cool (have the red x appear, it would just stop people from ever staying on one place for too long and force speed jumping)

I blitz the sab as it is but I look forward to anything new, was a bit sad at how easy the wintersday jumping puzzle was (as fun as it was)

I would love for rewards to be quicker to obtain for those who have the skill and take more time for those who do not… Don’t lock the content just give people incentive to get better. If I can do jumping puzzles well on a 300ping connection from over here I am sure many people can too if they give themselves time.

Mind you I am also an advocate for making world bosses harder and scaling everyone up in the area that one appears to level 80 for the fight… buttt that is just me.

unknowable.8470:

Yeah lol I live in Western Australia and usually get 330ping +

If I can do jumping puzzles well on a 300ping connection from over here I am sure many people can too if they give themselves time.

Yeah I dont want them to make things easy, I just want them to keep it possible for people with ~300 ping to be able to do the content.

Cut hearts in half as a reference to Kirby:Nightmare in Dreamland, since you get the same number of hitpoints (although hearts are divided in halves). Disable continue coins, otherwise you get moved back to hub. I would say back to start of the zone, but you can access the zone from the hub anyways. Upgrade all brown snakes to green snakes. Make the Queen Bee Dog immune to whip in HM and allow him to be stunned in NM and infantile.

How about as a bubble Bobble referance if you take too long in a zone a monster who is invinceable will chase you around until you die? Good thing the monster’s kinda slow although the monsteer flies and can chase you anywhere, the only way not to die is to keep moving.

Irena.1062:

How about as a bubble Bobble referance if you take too long in a zone a monster who is invinceable will chase you around until you die? Good thing the monster’s kinda slow although the monsteer flies and can chase you anywhere, the only way not to die is to keep moving.

Oooh, I like that idea even better than the rising lava!

A exclusive skin, or everlasting version of a SAB themed tonic set.

We don’t need anything that can give any sort of advantage in the main game.

This is an easy way to make the game harder, disable dodging so that pushing forward twice or V no longer functions. True retro gameplay that way, and the game is still possible to beat without dodging once.

Nice thread, I just wanted to mention that I don’t support OP’s #2 suggestion. I don’t think any reward should be available to every type of player. There are certain things like prestige and a feeling of accomplishment that come from being able to rightfully earn good rewards that others can’t. Each niche of the game, whether it be dungeons, pvp, wvw, puzzles, story, etc, will never appeal to every single player. But because some people don’t like or can’t do puzzles, doesn’t mean people that want to do them should be denied a good reward. I’ve got a friend who hates puzzles, but loves pvp, and he is rightfully rewarded for what he can do in pvp. Should be the same for puzzles.

There’s a difference between someone being left out of a specific part of the game, and someone being left out of the entire game. Take legendaries for example: if they were easily achievable, they would be pointless. People often need solid loot for that feeling of accomplishment, and such a feeling is made better by the fact that not everyone in the game can get it. However everyone can still get something, which is what matters.

It’s not like we’re inventing a new tier of gear that only SAB masters can get. But perhaps SAB masters have the right to a cool new skin or perhaps some other creative reward that isn’t a skin or title.

Really I like OP’s #2 suggestion because alot of junk rewards for doing something hard would suck. Something like being able to give your weapon a rainbow aura that makes it shiny would be nice Rewards for hard mode should be short and sweet things that are undenyably good. Also hard mode should have it’s own currency called Ultra baubles that can’t be gotten anywhere else, as the only way to get them is to beat a boss in hard mode. You could then trade these for an even bigger list of rewards than just simply getting something for beating a hard mode boss. A big list of possible items without the ability to choose what you get would be bad.