Guild Wars 2

I’ll try to keep this brief.

In Guild Wars 1, Hard Mode was unlocked for each of the game’s campaigns after you completed the final mission. You had the option of activating it before you went out to quest, and it made the enemies in every one of the game’s zones boost themselves up to max level, with stronger stats, better skills, and better loot. It made it so that literally every zone was worth completing and playing in to at least some extent after finishing a campaign, and IMO greatly improved the longevity and challenge of the game.

Given the complaints about the current level 80 situation pertaining to Orr and the fact that there’s really no other viable place for 80s to go to make money – or at least enough money to cover their traveling costs, given how much of your earnings in this game comes from vendoring blues and greens – re-implementing some sort of hard mode seems like the perfect solution, to spread players out and make sure they keep seeing all of the beautiful places in Tyria, while being properly rewarded.

But how would it work? Obviously, zones aren’t instanced in Guild Wars 2, so upscaling the mobs is not an option. However, downscaling exists, and the way I envision hard mode in GW2 working is essentially an extension of the downscaling system. Basically, once you reach 80, you get a Hard Mode toggle somewhere in the UI. When it’s toggled off, going back to lower leveled zones works as it does now; you get zone-appropriate crafting mats and loot.

Enabling Hard Mode, however, sets you to 4 levels below the normal downscaled level (or more, depending on the region) for every area you visit. You don’t hit as hard, and mobs hit you harder. It’s a challenge. In exchange, you receive level 80 gold, loot, and crafting mats from creatures you kill. The system is completely optional, and ideally relatively easy to toggle on and off (some other considerations might be necessary, like being unable to toggle it in combat, or needing a few kills or set amount of time to “ramp up” to Hard Mode to prevent exploitative play, but these are secondary balance concerns that don’t need to be covered in depth for a simple suggestion post).

Maybe they already have this in mind, and are waiting to implement it until there’s a strong population of 80s and the leveling zone populations are more sparse, but it seems like a badly needed feature that’s well-supported by the game’s existing systems to me.

Many missions take you to “instances” in normal leveling zones. If anything, there could be an “instance” entrance 1 for each zone that puts you there where you get harder mobs instead of just scaling you to hell. I do miss hardcore mode though, it kept old instances around a bit longer to hold onto that challenge.

+1
I like the idea of downscaling even more (made similar sugegstion) but I think that for some professions downscaling more then 4 lvls will be lethal

In lower lvls i do get 74-80 loot sometimes. For example in the Fire elemntal on the loose event in Metrica Provinces.

Zyrhan.3180:

I’ll try to keep this brief.

In Guild Wars 1, Hard Mode was unlocked for each of the game’s campaigns after you completed the final mission….

I actually like the idea that the OP has given. I already like being able to go to lower leveled areas with my engineer and still have a decent challenge from mobs, but this would make it that much better. The only thing I would mention is that maybe a background percentage depending on where you are as to how much loot or mats you get. Because even 1-15 zones are a little easier and forgiving even 4 levels below the mob. At least with my engineer.