Guild Wars 2

Bring back Hard Mode from the first Guild Wars in one way or another. To be more specific, this is how I could see it going. Create “Hard Mode” versions of all the current PvE zones that we have where everything is scaled up to level 80. Higher health pools, stronger attacks, and smarter AI. There should be absolutely 0 hand-holding in these zones. All hearts, points-of-interests, skill points, and vistas would also be reset in these zones. Upon completion of these zones in hard mode players would get two level 80 exotics, 40 T6 mats, and 1 gold for each map completed.

Now, I don’t really know how they could possibly do this, but mobs anywhere from trash tier to boss tier need to not just be a DPS race. These fights should require strategy and thinking – especially for boss-tier mobs. Veteran mobs shouldn’t be soloable without a good deal of skill, and rounding up 10+ mobs and then solo smacking them with a GS shouldn’t result in being able to kill them before they can even hurt you.

Dynamic events would also reward more karma, money, and experience than those in Orr would. Hearts would also give more karma and experience. As for heart vendors, they would sell level 80 rare/exotic versions of all their usual gear. It would also be more expensive of course.

So, with a brand new Hard Mode world out there, what’s the motivation to 100% it? Well, when you get 100% of both the normal and hard mode versions of the world you would get a ticket redeemable for a precursor of your choice. That, plus all the karma, gold, and T6 mats you’d get along the way would give you a pretty nice boost towards making that legendary(if you want one). It wouldn’t be making the quest for a legendary that much easier either since all of these zones would be very hard. Trying to 100% a zone in hard mode by yourself should practically be a suicide wish, unless you are VERY good at playing your class.

Instead/with the hard mode world you could just add hard mode versions of the dungeons and personal story. Instead of getting a precursor ticket for the end of world completion under hard mode, give it at the end of completing hard mode personal story. The personal story should be hard enough that every combat mission should require a 5-man party. “Oh no! That takes the ‘personal’ out of ‘personal story’!” Too bad. You already have the easy soloable normal mode personal story for you to do, this is for the players who want to do harder content and be rewarded for it. None of it is required, it’s simply a harder version of everything already available.

There could also be “Elite” versions of armor and weapons that you get from dungeons or the karma vendors in Orr. They’d still look similar to what is already in-game, but they’d be different enough for somebody to spot the differences and go “Oh hey, that person must have kicked some kitten in hard mode!”. There can also be new titles, minipets, or even ranger pets that are only found in hard mode zones. Mobs in all hard mode zones would also drop items even to that which drop in Cursed Shores. So a level 80 pig in HM Queensdale would always drop level 80 gear/heavy bags/whatever a pig should drop that’s level 80-worthy.

All in all, it should be punishing, require skill and learning how to properly play your class instead of spamming 1, and most importantly – be rewarding. This wouldn’t even affect the casual players because they wouldn’t be missing out on any new content – simply harder versions of the already-available content. Yes, this would probably bring about some elitists and cause a lot of QQ from people who want everything without working for it, but I believe this would do more good than bad.

I am tired and now going to bed, so if y’all have any suggestions or opinions on this I’d love to hear them and reply to them in the morning. If there are any grammatical errors or things that aren’t explained clearly enough then I apologize and will fix them too.

Agree! I’m keeping my response short.

Thanks for the feedback! I really do think this would be among the best ways to introduce new harder and rewarding content for those who want it while not keeping anything away from the more casual of players. Of course, even the most casual of players could eventually have anything this has to offer in time – it’d just take longer since everything in “hard mode” is meant to take longer due to being more difficult. Even if people only had an hour to play a day they could still do everything it has to offer in time.

Some events could even be compared to raiding. Hard Mode temples, dragon events, and etc. would/should all be very hard and require teamwork and coordination. No more just standing in one spot to DPS a dragon since they should be more than capable of nearly 1-shotting anything within attack range. These are dragons, not bunnies, the amount of damage they should do would show that. Capturing the entrance to Arah would require a huge amount of coordination and not having every other temple capped at the time of assault would be very hindering to the assault. Right now having the other temples uncapped when assaulting Arah’s entrance is nothing but a minor annoyance, instead they should be capable of wiping groups with ease.

So not only would this introduce harder and more rewarding content to the playerbase who wants it while not keeping anything away from the casuals, but also introduce a new sort of endgame for PvE on par with raiding(almost).

As long as it gives the same rewards as “Normal” content, fine, do whatever.

Ungood.3054:

As long as it gives the same rewards as “Normal” content, fine, do whatever.

People needs an incentive to do stuff, as it has been shown to us countless times. A carrot such as lvl 80 exotics, T6 mats and a precursor at the very end, as mentioned by the OP, would totally do it.
Given the issue with precursor prices, it would be a nice fix (a lot better than most propositions we can see around, that are just trivializing the precursors).

To answer to the OP, I think it’s a fantastic idea and I hope it’ll be one day implemented.
However, I don’t think it is healthy for the game to create such a thing so soon in the game’s life. Implementing hard mode before releasing any expansions/ news dungeons/new maps would set a new norm for the difficulty for future release that might not be wished by Anet (given the casual-players friendly orientations of the game).
So, reasonably I don’t think it is imaginable/desirable to have such a feature so early but I do think it would be a formidable feature, if done correctly, in a couple of years.

Ungood.3054:

As long as it gives the same rewards as “Normal” content, fine, do whatever.

You didn’t read the post then. What is the point in having harder content if it doesn’t give unique rewards? No, it wouldn’t give anything better stat-wise, just skin-wise. Such as “elite” versions of armor and weapons which would still look close to the “normal” stuff, but have enough differences that it would stand out. One example would be having a full set of the AC “elite” dungeon armor having a ghostly glow at night, while the “normal” version doesn’t.

Titles, minipets, it would all be purely cosmetic. I truly can’t think of a single way this would be punishing the players who aren’t capable of doing the content. The only way I could see people complaining is “Whaaaa! Anet won’t give me free handouts! I want it too gimme gimme!”. I’m not saying to stop doing all this free handout stuff(such as the new Southun back items), just to give the hardcore community something to do too.

You can’t encourage players to do harder content without offering something worth their time. Of course, even the people who play “normal mode” would be able to eventually get everything that the hardcore people who regularly play “hard mode” would be able to get. It would just be harder on those less-skilled and take more time, just as rewarding and harder content should be.

EDIT:

@Minos: I agree, it might not be the best thing to implement right now since we need some new permanent content first instead of harder same-old-same-old content. After an expansion or two it would be a great time to introduce it(such as they did with the first GW). However, right now is when people are leaving because there isn’t any challenging content that is also rewarding. Either way, I personally think something should be done soon to cater to the hardcore players before they leave. Those are the kind of players who stick around with a game for years.

Ungood.3054:

As long as it gives the same rewards as “Normal” content, fine, do whatever.

rofl

Yeah, agreeing with “not better stats” because we love the elite skins, but don’t want to start that gear grind..

We do need some Hard Mode content that unlocks after completing the normal mode version of it. I’m sick of grinding the dungeons/fotm over… and over… and over…