Currently their are achievements tied to 4 boss encounters which can be considered “hard mode” (Sabetha, Slothasor, Trio, Matthias). In their best case they add a new mechanic (Slothasor), in their worst they don’t do much of anything (Matthias). Nonetheless, as is, most groups will do these achievements only once, and then never run them again as there is no real incentive to rerun them, making them both difficult to find groups for, and somewhat a waste of developer resources. This waste in resources is especially apparent from the the drastic difficulty drop from Trio being hypothetically tied to balancing for this “hard mode”, a mode people will rarely ever run (though honestly I think don’t fully believe this excuse as evidence points otherwise).
Proposed below are suggestions which will increase the prevalence of “hard mode” being run.
1. Add in repeatable achievements based on “hard mode” achievements:
This can be approached several ways, with the achievement being completed every 1-3 times you kill a specific boss on “hard mode”, or every time you kill the entire set of bosses on “hard mode” for that wing (the latter would need to exclude Spirit Vale, as Sabetha is the only one with a “hard mode”). This repeatable achievement may need to be restricted to a weekly basis to prevent reward farming.
2. Add desirable rewards to these achievements which won’t greatly hurt the economy: The easiest solution would be to give X amount of magnetite shards after the completion of the repeatable achievement. These magnetite shards would not be affected by the cap. This would provide an incentive for raiders to do the hard mode (as they are limited in the ways they can get shards after they cap), with minor affects to the economy. A potentially more economically harming reward would be a “Box of Raider’s Supplies” after killing the set of 3 bosses on “hard mode”, which would be a better long-term reward, but would need to be heavily limited to once a week.
Adding a simple repeatable achievement with proper rewards would go a long way in giving this already implemented difficulty setting more prominence in the current raid setting.