Guild Wars 2

I understand there are people who find PvE difficult and they can party on in Exp and story mode all they like, but there are a significant core of people, like me, who think the current dungeons are too easy. This is the only pve form of endgame, and the only thing I’d call remotely challenging is Arah… and the things you’ve just nerfed. If I didn’t like WvW I honestly don’t know what I’d be doing in this game right now. I guess there’s high fractals but it’s repeditive and dull and passing it is really just a series of gimmicks, so I’d burn out on that quick.

The obvious solution is some kind of hard mode for dungeons. Maybe just one path, called “Hard path”. It could be marked with a little star, so people who play with no brain and one hand won’t attempt it and cry. It would be balanced for level 80’s with exotics in every dungeon. Exp could stay your same old and be balanced according to whoever complains on the forums. And I don’t mean “hard” in the sense that anet seem to think is hard – that if we give a normal mob 99999 HP it’s suddenly difficult for some reason – but actually difficult. Actually requiring personal skill instead of min/maxing for maximum DPS build because the dungeons are so easy that you’re just going for maximum DPS to get them over and done with faster.

“Hard” is pretty simple. It’s not a damage sponge. As an anonymous user put it: “I want to be kept on my toes, but I don’t want my toes to get RSI because I’m doing the same thing for 30 minutes”.

Things that could be seen as “Hard” and put into a hard mode:

-Trash mobs that require teamwork/strategy to kill:
CM, Arah. These two dungeons both have mobs that actually require utility to take down. The CoF magg defence room (Something recently removed) is another – the smokelord can’t just be killed with 5 zerkers warriors like half the dungeons in this game. The main thing here is that they actually have attacks that matter, as opposed to just more damage. I’ll still remember the time that I was stuck in a risen sentinel’s ring with no stability (used) and a putrifyer heading for me, and a teammate had to use Binding Blade to pull the putrifyer back. Teamwork. Skill. Attention. Y’know, because there’s 5 people in dungeons?

-Bosses that require personal skill to pass:
Pretty much just awareness, skill use and dodging timing passes as “personal skill”. I’m half asleep in bosses like the flame effigy because all you do is stand there and autoattack. Lupi is an example. Kholer is up there. Alpha is an example. The Evolved Grawl Shaman is an example. HotW bosses and overland dragons are NOT an example. Simin is certainly not an example.

-Fights that recquire communication and teamwork:
SE P1. I still remember the first time I pugged that. A warrior, two engis, a necro, and a guardian. As each wave came, me and the two engis would stack vulnerability on a single inquest, then the necro would use Epidemic to spread it to the other two. The necro would use plague or a blind field to try to eliminate the attacks the inquest made. The warrior would use a hammer to lock them down while well of darkness was not up. The engi’s would stack might using blast finishers in a fire field. The guardian and necro were working overtime to heal any attacks that got through. When we got to the bot, the necro used Spectral Grasp to pull it away from the gate, then the guardian used Binding Blade to pull the inquest together then we bursted them together. If any more waves came, we’d kill them using the same, previous method, then work on the robot.
All that, now? Gone. SE p1 is just now another mindless farming path. CoF P2’s “kite room” was also similar if you actually fought like a man, CoF P3’s defence event was up there too. I’ve got a great idea: Let’s remove every semblance of teamwork in a kittening game where there is a team in a dungeon – we’ll just encourage the warrior babbies who only know two buttons: FGJ and 100 blades. kitten any form of utility, this is Guardian Warriors 2. I say this, and I main a warrior.

-No exploits and minimal skipping:
Seems clear enough.

It’s like Anet have given in and are 100% catering to casuals for dungeons, even though these casuals are just using dungeons to farm for a legendary and then will quit because they don’t actually like the game.

It seems logical to me: Story Mode: A mode for those who want to take in the atmosphere of a story. Explorable mode: A mode for those who are there to farm. Hard mode: A mode there for those who are wanting a real challenge worthy of “endgame”.

And because everything in this kitten game seems to need some kind of reward, whether it’s fun or not, it could give either 180 tokens or a unique skin or some crap like that.

I usually auto pilot AC when I run it. Just ran it after the patch was laughing at how little brain work it took to do and that I read a few posts complaining about it.

So yeah I would love this.

Dyroth.5063:

I usually auto pilot AC when I run it. Just ran it after the patch was laughing at how little brain work it took to do and that I read a few posts complaining about it.

So yeah I would love this.

All I’m asking for is something truly challenging. Arah is pretty good on that front but it still suffers from damage sponge or exploit syndrome in a lot of fights.

I really like your ideas, OP. I was just telling someone I wish arah had a more challenging path. And I actually said exactly that I didn’t just mean hard as in more HP. I want the mobs to have more abilties and skills, and better AI. I want them to move out of feedback and to dodge to evade also. Maybe that’s asking for too much. I really enjoy a challenge. I really don’t even mind if the rewards are the same as all the other paths as long as it’s fun and challenging.

This is only Phase one. They already know it’s easy. They will be bumping up the dungeons later but there are giving players a chase to get through it without all the exploits.

One thing i like is not res rushing. Some groups are finding it more difficult. I wish more groups clear mobs so they have a fall back point.

I hate TA becuase of this run run mentality. I dont feel that i have beaten any dungeon in the game becuase it feels so unexplored. Don’t matter how many times I have done them.

(I know this is not the case)
What If precusors were hidden in some remote corner of the dungeon. 99% of us would never know. Yet people would still complain how hard they are to get.

I am for harder comtent and anything that makes us do them.

People complained about this months monthly becuase they had to find JP. We didn’t even have to actually do them.

I hated jp becuase I had a weak graphic card. It made the simplest jump puzzles impossible. Some I would be agaisnt if you were force to do them. (I have a new laptop and can play even WVW with everything on high).

Serraphin Storm.2369:

This is only Phase one. They already know it’s easy. They will be bumping up the dungeons later but there are giving players a chase to get through it without all the exploits.

One thing i like is not res rushing. Some groups are finding it more difficult. I wish more groups clear mobs so they have a fall back point.

I hate TA becuase of this run run mentality. I dont feel that i have beaten any dungeon in the game becuase it feels so unexplored. Don’t matter how many times I have done them.

(I know this is not the case)
What If precusors were hidden in some remote corner of the dungeon. 99% of us would never know. Yet people would still complain how hard they are to get.

I am for harder comtent and anything that makes us do them.

People complained about this months monthly becuase they had to find JP. We didn’t even have to actually do them.

I hated jp becuase I had a weak graphic card. It made the simplest jump puzzles impossible. Some I would be agaisnt if you were force to do them. (I have a new laptop and can play even WVW with everything on high).

It’s a pipe dream, but I’d also like to see everything be really dynamic. I.E You’re presented with a number of semi-random paths to your objective and you get to choose how you get there. Example: You could either go past kholer, or go through a really difficult JP. If your group is bad at JP’s, you could fight kholer.

Perhaps a system that would need some serious balancing and tweaking, but you get the idea.

At first I thought this was going to be another random rant post, but I read it all and found it very interesting.

I havn’t played this game nearly as much as I wanted to, so I’ve yet to try the dungeons, but your stories and ideas really got to me. That is how I want a game to be.

oh look, another thread of someone who needs to tell everyone how easy he finds arah and how he wants a hard mode..

the things you claim are lacking and think be nice to have (forced teamwork, dodgeing, awareness of boss animations) are exactly what make a dungeon easy. once you’ve done it a few times. first time I ran into kohler I found him an incredibly hard boss.. now I pretty much sleep through the encounter (especially on nekro with stability on shroud activation). I still find him one of the best bosses in game, as he clearly (when he’s not hiding inside a wall) telegraphs his attacks and its easy to dodge, as long as you watch him but does devestating dmg if you dont. also, if you make a mistake, you can save yourself by using a stunbreaker, so there even is a backup strategy.
right now I find lupi hard. I’ve only done him once in a decent group (I did die a few times) and the next time I was in a team which couldn’t survive more than 10 seconds of phase 2, ressing an ally was usually what killed me. I fully expect lupi becomes relatively easy after a few tries as well.. though it might be harder finding a group now to learn.. and thanks to 3+ minutes of running with swiftness (yes I know, only path 1 is this long) until you reach him, it’s very inefficient to learn how he behaves.

so to all the ’I’m too good for this game, give me hardmode’-pros, the only way to make this game really hard would be by adding a lot of rng to the bosses. as soon as a boss is unpredictable, he gets harder. as long as they follow a routine, they won’t challenge you forever.

on the other hand, learning a bosses mechanic and going from wipe after wipe to nearly sleeping through the encounter is something lots of players like. it lets them feel like they mastered this battle. making the battles harder will only alienate players which are trying for the first few times to learn how it goes.

if you really want challenge, maybe you shouldn’t search it with scripted, so called AI and just go play tpvp to get your behind kicked… is it so hard to understand? typical game AI can’t challenge a human forever. even if they could make it so, it would only alienate the more casual players in favour of a few players who really like constant challenge.

i will say the same thing which i posted in one other thread.
The dungeons had become pathetic aoe fest and hae been nerfed to the ground.I think Anet want more casuals.That is my personal opinion only.

moiraine.2753:

i will say the same thing which i posted in one other thread.
The dungeons had become pathetic aoe fest and hae been nerfed to the ground.I think Anet want more casuals.That is my personal opinion only.

Nothing wrong with casuals. Some casuals are highly skilled, some hardcore players are pathetically useless. Overall, I think ANet is telling people to stop doing fractals given how they hardcapped it.

Oranisagu.3706:

oh look, another thread of someone who needs to tell everyone how easy he finds arah and how he wants a hard mode..

Nah, just someone who wants something that isn’t faceroll easy in the kitten endgame.

Oranisagu.3706:

so to all the ’I’m too good for this game, give me hardmode’-pros, the only way to make this game really hard would be by adding a lot of rng to the bosses. as soon as a boss is unpredictable, he gets harder. as long as they follow a routine, they won’t challenge you forever.

I’m sorry, but did you even read what I wrote? There were already sections that are pretty hard but they’ve removed them. Arah is pretty hard. Bosses like Lupi are pretty hard. But this is an extremely small amount of pve endgame. Are you honestly suggesting that dungeons stay some kind of robotic routine that everyone just does over and over again for money? Why? Are you some kind of hipster hating on anyone looking for a challenge?

Oranisagu.3706:

on the other hand, learning a bosses mechanic and going from wipe after wipe to nearly sleeping through the encounter is something lots of players like. it lets them feel like they mastered this battle. making the battles harder will only alienate players which are trying for the first few times to learn how it goes.

Brilliant game design! Tricking people into thinking they’re good even though they’re not learning anything, they’re just running back when they die and following routine.
Can I reiterate this? players who do not want to do hard mode, can avoid doing hard mode. Nothing here should give any signifigant reward in terms of gold, maybe soemthing subtle and cosmetic as a reward for finishing, but the pve farmlords can continue their cof 1 mindless zerging all they wish.

if you really want challenge, maybe you shouldn’t search it with scripted, so called AI and just go play tpvp to get your behind kicked… is it so hard to understand? typical game AI can’t challenge a human forever. even if they could make it so, it would only alienate the more casual players in favour of a few players who really like constant challenge.

I do play tpvp/spvp quite often actually, you can’t assume that just because I play pve as well that I don’t do pvp. I’ve won 6 of 13 tournaments entered. I’m also an avid semi-high level comp dota player that has subbed for teams like nth and I play on a team myself. It’s not relevant, but you seem to think tpvp is relevant to this thread so I thought I’d throw that in there for some reason. If we’re throwing pvp modes into it, pvp has longevity, wvw has longevity, but there is nothing really difficult enough outside of arah to really attempt doing for pve players

As for AI not being able to challenge a human… bullkitten. What you’re basically saying is that no video game in history has ever been difficult that isn’t multiplayer. Dark/Demon’s souls? Quake? Hell, even IWBTG for the JP side of things. You’re also implying that there was any effort put into difficulty on some bosses, like the kittening flame effigy, which is flat out wrong when there are things that can be genuinely challenging even after doing it a few times like Lupi or high level Grawl Shaman in the game.

Stop being in denial.

Writetyper.1985:

Nah, just someone who wants something that isn’t faceroll easy in the kitten endgame.

you missed my whole point. after enough practice, everything becomes faceroll easy. some things will still seem to be hard because you’re dependent on other players (say CoF 3), but if you take away this factor by playing with the same team all the time, even this stuff becomes mindnumbingly easy.

as long as the mechanics don’t change randomly, people will get to know them and it will become easy for them, all the while new players will find them hard, until they figure it out.

I know, you want an optional hard mode, the problem is, hard is relative. some players will always find it easy. that’s why I brought up tPvP. if pve content is too easy for you, this is the natural extension. making pve harder only shuts out more players with lower skills.

Writetyper.1985:

I’m sorry, but did you even read what I wrote?….

I did read it, but you seem to misunderstand my post (probably because I was to agressive, sorry ’bout that). every challenge you point out is no challenge after a while. if you get a good enough group together, everything will become easy after a few iterations.

Writetyper.1985:

Brilliant game design! Tricking people into thinking they’re good even though they’re not learning anything, they’re just running back when they die and following routine…

I explicitly state how going from wipe after wipe to having an easy time (nearly sleeping through) feels like mastering the battle. not zerg-ressing. that’s the first stage of learning: you make mistakes. then you get better and don’t die that often.. and then, maybe you get even better and don’t die at all. it IS progress, even if it is with kohler and you find him way to easy, he’s the maximum some players can handle and they have a right to be proud to be able to beat him. don’t look down on others, just because they lack the reaction/hand-eye-coordination you have.

Writetyper.1985:

I do play tpvp/spvp quite often actually…

then you already have a gamemode which is challenging for you.. why do you need the rest of the game to be as challenging? I like how there’s quite a bit of stuff to do for every player, even easy dungeons (AC, CoF1/2) to get cheap gear.

Writetyper.1985:

As for AI not being able to challenge a human…

yes, you’re right. it’s possible to create some form of challenge with relatively simple ai, by making every mistake deadly. reduce reaction time. reduce ways to mitigate damage (like lupis trap. dodgeing doesn’t work, you need to be faster or have stability/teleport up) it’s still the same. learn the routine and work it, otherwise you’ll die.
I also agree that some of the ‘stupid’ bosses really need a rework, but that patch should already be in the works, as they’ve stated.
It’s possible to create a boss with a really challenging AI, its probably just very expensive compared to a simple routine (and they didn’t even do that right every time, as you stated). comparing shooter AI isn’t really a prime example, as there it’s just a question of speed/accuracy, not outsmarting/playing someone.

so yeah, I am a hipster hating on everyone who wants a challenge if they want it in a way that’s detrimental to other players. I’m all for people looking for challenge, I support it fully, if its absolutely optional (like troll event in ac is a bit harder than the rest of the dungeon and optional) but I’d prefer they put some effort into fixing bugs (too small aoe circles etc) first, instead of making harder content.
also, for every change to give more challenge, they should also make a change lowering the bar on an entry level. for example lupi. they could make him slightly different each way. on path 1 i.e. he would just not reset at all. this would make path 1 (with a new waypoint near him) the path for new players to learn how to fight him, so when they enter path 2 they are ready for this fight when he will reset for each stage (you have to get him to the next stage without a wipe). other paths he will reset normally.
this would allow people to actually learn the fight instead of spending hours running, repeating the phases they can beat reliably etc.

sorry, giant wall of text..
tl;dr: I don’t disagree with your idea of optional content, I’m questioning how it can/should be done and point out how every hard thing gets easier after practice, no matter the level of skill of the player.

I still like lupi but the most other bosses I have seen are a first try kill. Only lupi and Kholer were different. I died many times before I was able to kill them. I’d love to have a Path in every dungeon were evry boss would be like that. A hard mode like sugested above would be great. I know even this paths will get easy with time but still, for the first atempts they would be difficult. The trial and error system in boss fights is missing. Thats the problem. Realy. I hate PVP so I won’t play PVP. Does that mean I am not allowed to have some challenge in the game?

The optional content you are looking for has been there all along. You have the option to make encounters harder/more difficult. Run dungeons solo, use less than optimal gear, use less than optimal stats, do higher level fractals w/less AR, don’t take advantage of exploits/skipping…the options go on and on.

So I HAVE to use weaker items if I want a challenge, that’s not really fair.

Yes, I think It’s Bull. For those of us that enjoy the game by just playing and not trying to farm gold for hella exotics to make things easier. I NEVER buy any gear off trading post until i hit a lvl 80. And then, its only moderate gear, most of the time, not even rares. So yes, dungeons for me are challenging no matter which character I’m on. So, i agree with the first post saying that there should be a HARD mode for those that have all the free time in the world to farm for exotics and leave the rest of it alone.

Skalef.6140:

So I HAVE to use weaker items if I want a challenge, that’s not really fair.

You don’t have to…but it’s your option. There are a multitude of ways of self imposing challenge…..seems pretty fair that if you want added challenge you have the option.

On the flip side the only option for making things easier is exploiting which carries the threat of bans.

Which one seems more fair?

Essence Snow.3194:

The optional content you are looking for has been there all along. You have the option to make encounters harder/more difficult. Run dungeons solo, use less than optimal gear, use less than optimal stats, do higher level fractals w/less AR, don’t take advantage of exploits/skipping…the options go on and on.

Are you serious ? So, if I love boxing, and if I love a good challenge, I should fight my 6y old little brother with only one finger ? Where is the fun in that ? Where do I have to learn something ? Where do I have to become better than the opponent/machine ? Where is the progression ?

Czinczar.3786:

Essence Snow.3194:

The optional content you are looking for has been there all along. You have the option to make encounters harder/more difficult. Run dungeons solo, use less than optimal gear, use less than optimal stats, do higher level fractals w/less AR, don’t take advantage of exploits/skipping…the options go on and on.

Are you serious ? So, if I love boxing, and if I love a good challenge, I should fight my 6y old little brother with only one finger ? Where is the fun in that ? Where do I have to learn something ? Where do I have to become better than the opponent/machine ? Where is the progression ?

Isn’t that rhetorical? The fun is in beating him with 1 finger vs unbound w/ 2 fists. Overcoming a “handicap” (imposed challenge) is something embraced in most every sport.

Every MMO will get progressively easier with time. It is a rare (and generally horrible) decision to make a game harder. This is simply a factor of appealing to the masses.

Some people really enjoy hard games with challenge. A quick look at steam achievements for “completed the game in hard mode” or anything similar will show you, however, that type of players is a marginal minority at best. Most people like something to be just challenging enough that you can fail if totally mess up, not challenging enough that you actively need to be awesome to win.

MMOs appeal to the players who want challenge by releasing content that is tuned to be super difficult, allowing the best players to complete this content first. Then the dial it back to make it more accessible so that most players can complete it, and finally make it so trivial you would need to TRY to fail. Then they release new content that is super hard. It’s the circle of life! It’s the same in every MMO and apart from the few people who like to complain about how they are elite and no one should be able to do the same content of them ever, it works really well. The best of the best get to barge about how they did everything first but Joe blow newbie knows he’s never going to be “locked out” of any content given time.

People here arguing for “dungeons should only be hardmode” should go take a careful look at the short history and disaster that is The Secret World. They had a philosophy of “dungeons should be really hard, and the best rewards should come only from mastering the hardest tier of dungeons (Nightmare mode).”

Here’s what happened. TSW went from subscription-based to FTP inside a record 4 months. Funcom’s stock tanked. The game is on lifesupport. The original lead designer is gone. Monthly content rollout is laughably small.

Why? Because the best possible tier of gear (Purple) was available only from token drops in NM dungeons. You had to unlock two previous tiers of dungeons to get to this point, and pass a somewhat tough “gatekeeper” challenge solo. You needed a seriously good group of 5 people to get through all 6 bosses of an NM dungeon. You needed, essentially, a static group, not a PUG. Of generally ‘leet’ players.

So guess what all this meant? Effectively, most casual players hit an effective brick wall in vertical progression VERY fast. Most casual PUGS and casual guilds could get through the 2nd hardest tier (Elite mode), but couldn’t get going on Nightmare mode. Effectively, most casual players were locked into only blue gear at max, which equates in GW2 to being forced to wear only yellow rares and never, ever be able to get your hands on orange exotics or higher.

What you guys are asking for would create the same situation here. It’s the CASUAL players who pay the bills, my friends. Not the very few hardcore leets who cry that there isn’t a hard mode strong enough for their tastes. Well, TSW was full of such leets with the same cry, and look where it got them (and Funcom).

Anet knows better, and that’s why GW2 is the new 800-lb gorilla on the MMO block.

Edit: and before you argue “but you can get exotics here without doing any dungeons at all!” Nope. Wrong. I cannot get my hands on L80 exotic P/V/T weapons any other way than by farming tokens in AC and one other dungeon. There are a lot of stat combos on certain types of gear that are available ONLY through dungeon vendors and nothing else.

Hard Mode does exist I do them every dungeon run it seems. It’s called getting a random group together that is undergeared and how no idea what to do.

wait for most players to hit a brick wall casual players buying gems aint gonna be super “elite” since the super elite can buy gems off gold. cant even find group now for dungeon) takes 3 hours to find a ta group. 1 hour to get an ac group and fail hard. oh well lol. hope people dont start rage quitting and leave. aint no fun playing with only the “elites” in an artificial enviroment. :/

The dungeons are finally getting to the point where they should be. While i run with an extremely organized group, everyone does not have that luxury.

Asking for paths to be made harder or add harder content is only for a small group of people, its just a bad idea.

All content should be doable by a pug group, Anet has done a great job doing this and they are striding in the right direction with the new updates.
Infact, there are still a few encounters that are stiff tough example Dwayna.

The better suggestion will be to take the harder paths and add better rewards to it, like P4 of Arah can give double tokens or something.

OP, I also like your ideas. I also think bosses with huge HP made no sense, I think it should be a more quick, but more challenging battle by giving the boss more powerful abilities, but lowering his HP.

As much as I despise the OP’s elitism, I do agree with him that we need some kind of difficulty scaling. There’s no escaping the fact that something accessible to the majority of players is not going to be remotely interesting to perfectionists. Everyone wants a dungeon just hard enough for them and too hard for everybody they consider beneath them.

I’d be looking at a numeric scale kind of like fractals. The higher you go the faster, more powerful and randomised the boss is. Then smooth it out and try to avoid situations where one highly ranked players will cause a boss to suddenly pull out sackfuls of doom (like p2 and p3 Alpha).

Last night, I did two runs of Twilight Arbor and two of Crucible of Eternity with pugs. TA seems about right where it is as one of the first three dungeons as is Path 1 CoE. Path 2 and 3 are still very difficult to pug due largely to Alpha but also the gimmick bosses (evolved destroyer is incredibly stupid). Which is fine I think; there’s one path that a pug can make it through and better groups can attempt 2 or 3.

I agree the game is super easy currently, probably one of the most easy MMO I played so far. We really need a hard and a super hard mode with increased rewards (cosmetic progression).

FOTM is probably the hardest you can go atm.

I don’t understand… FotM is pretty much everything you asked for. You even reference several encounters in dungeons which are what you ask for. I don’t like the idea of adding a HM simply because it may be optional, but people are going to want unique or better rewards for doing it (they don’t want the challenge, they want to feel elite, better than others) which usually results in the other content becoming dead. Look at the number of people running FotM over existing dungeons, simply because the loot is much better (and the rings were only found there, which may as well still be the case looking at laurel acquisition and prices). Another thing I dislike about your proposal is the desire for a shift towards design which favours certain mechanics, like your frequently referenced guardian greatsword pull. Most classes have something to offer, but look at how high level FotM is strongly favouring certain party set ups because of unique skills those classes offer (Feedback, Wall of Reflection, Portal etc). One of the problems with designing content to be more reliant on these things is that classes which don’t have equal access to the favoured mechanics will be forced out of the meta. As much as the game belongs to guardian and mesmer players who love playing in “high end” and more difficulty content which almost requires the use of some of these tools, the game also belongs to players of classes which don’t have those tools. We are already seeing a kind of soft trinity forming in the game, I don’t want to see the devs design for it even more.

MangoMan.3218:

OP, I also like your ideas. I also think bosses with huge HP made no sense, I think it should be a more quick, but more challenging battle by giving the boss more powerful abilities, but lowering his HP.

You got it. Hell, at this stage I’d just be happy with the regular dungeons but everything has double damage and half HP.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

FOTM is probably the hardest you can go atm.

Shiren.9532:

I don’t understand… FotM is pretty much everything you asked for.

In the original post (I’ll admit, I made it while I was pretty mad so it seems extremely elitist, but the gist is still there) I mentioned that fotm is extremely robotic. Because of the way it scales – just more health and damage – everyone is doing the same thing, just for longer. Past level 26 it’s just chaining reflects and damage mitigation while kiting for days. That’s not hard in itself – just tedious, really. It’s a good try, but really, fotm is not built for replayability or scaling this high.

Malediktus.9250:

I agree the game is super easy currently, probably one of the most easy MMO I played so far. We really need a hard and a super hard mode with increased rewards (cosmetic progression).

This game was advertised as not being like other MMOs, so I don’t see why we have to compare it to one. I just want hard content in itself, no need to say “this is harder than raids from wow!”

Optimally I’d also like to see 2-3 man dungeons, there’s more room for tactics with less people – more keeping each other alive with well selected boons and utils, less 5 warriors using FGJ on practical autoattacks.

Nailed it with the cosmetic only progression though. I don’t want to see people complaining that “hard mode is too hard and I can’t get muh ascended helmet from AC hard mode!”, there for fun/challenge/fun in the challenge and purely that.

shaktiboi.5194:

People here arguing for “dungeons should only be hardmode” should go take a careful look at the short history and disaster that is The Secret World. They had a philosophy of “dungeons should be really hard, and the best rewards should come only from mastering the hardest tier of dungeons (Nightmare mode).”

Read the above quote. That is a horrible horrible idea. Honestly I’m against gear tiering at all, but it being limited at exotics/ascended is the lesser of two evils (since traditional MMO players seem to be unable to play a game where they can convince they’re better than someone else because they’ve grinded for bigger numbers).

I wouldnt be against 4 (?) difficulty tiers like in secret world, as long as each tier would only add cosmetic progression. Maybe make nightmare mode reward legendary grade stuff, but then it would have to be really hard and take weeks to figure out all the tricks to make it to the end.

And…there it is….exclusive rewards. It was bound to come out sooner or later.

Essence Snow.3194:

And…there it is….exclusive rewards. It was bound to come out sooner or later.

I would honestly not be in favour of any rewards if it would cause people to feel entilted to them even though they couldn’t finish it. If you’re implying I would want a hard mode just for exclusive rewards to “prove” I’m some kind of superior player, then no, that’s not what I meant. This is the first MMO I’ve played and I’ve noticed that people tend to not do ANYTHING that doesn’t have some kind of a reward, even if it’s fun, becuase of the MMO mentality of grinding for pointless stuff. Even just a subtle reward would encourage people to do it.

I totally agree with OP. What is wrong with the thinking that casuals who aren’t skilled enough on their first few tries to fail and quit a dungeon completely? That’s how everything works; its how people get motivated to do better.

What the feline is with everyone expecting bottom feeder hand outs in games these days?

Writetyper.1985:

Essence Snow.3194:

And…there it is….exclusive rewards. It was bound to come out sooner or later.

I would honestly not be in favour of any rewards if it would cause people to feel entilted to them even though they couldn’t finish it. If you’re implying I would want a hard mode just for exclusive rewards to “prove” I’m some kind of superior player, then no, that’s not what I meant. This is the first MMO I’ve played and I’ve noticed that people tend to not do ANYTHING that doesn’t have some kind of a reward, even if it’s fun, becuase of the MMO mentality of grinding for pointless stuff. Even just a subtle reward would encourage people to do it.

If players truly want harder content, then why do you need to “encourage people to do it?”

The idea of the game is to be fun.And how is non stop doing a mechanic with only 5 or 10 same people fun.MMORPG are about making new friends,meeting different cultures and sharing the fun.How many new players will now stick to learn to play the harder dungeons.Theyll be just kicked from parties because people almost never have time to teach others.Even now many people stopped playing and the game is at its start.Making dungeons harder untill you understand their mechanics doesnt mean making the more interesting.And as other said casual players pay the bills and make the game more fun.Because most of the hardcore players are arrogant bots..this is the sad truth.

I too was disappointed the dungeons were made easier. The dungeons are GW2s raids, they should be suitably difficult.

And I don’t think skins as exclusive rewards are too toxic, especially as the current explorable skins are quite pretty

Either way, people would probably be happy with a passive 50-100% magicfind (you’d probably need to gear non-mf to do the dungeon at all) would be enough of a reward to run hard mode.

Nah, normal mode should allow res-rushing and hard mode should not allow res-rushing.

Newbies go to normal mode while experienced players go to hard mode.

The first time I ran into Kholer he was a hard boss too….it was back in April/May of last year. Scorpion Wire with no start-up animation straight into Daggerstorm. Good thing my guild had 3 brain cells and learned what stability and stun breakers were. I miss that version of him, kept me busy and on my toes.

Papaj.9035:

The first time I ran into Kholer he was a hard boss too….it was back in April/May of last year. Scorpion Wire with no start-up animation straight into Daggerstorm. Good thing my guild had 3 brain cells and learned what stability and stun breakers were. I miss that version of him, kept me busy and on my toes.

Lol, I ran around the columns back then slowly dpsing him to death.

emikochan.8504:

I too was disappointed the dungeons were made easier. The dungeons are GW2s raids, they should be suitably difficult.

And I don’t think skins as exclusive rewards are too toxic, especially as the current explorable skins are quite pretty

Either way, people would probably be happy with a passive 50-100% magicfind (you’d probably need to gear non-mf to do the dungeon at all) would be enough of a reward to run hard mode.

1. 100% magic find does nothing, it would have to be 500%+ MF to be meaningful. Still just finding better random junk items you end up salvaging is useless.
2. I rather have 0% MF, since I never noticed MF improving my loot at all