Guild Wars 2

I seen many threads where players discuss at length whether Guild Wars 2 is too easy or not hard enough, which tells me it’s pretty well balanced.

That being said, would it require a lot of work for Arenanet to offer various modes of play? I am not very computer literate so I am just curious.

Here is my idea:

Easy Mode: Players must purchase an Easy Mode package from the TP. They must create a new character(s) that can only play by themselves (all of Easy Mode is an instance) and have access to their Easy Mode bank which is separate from Regular Mode bank. No TP, No Ascended or Legendary but they can buy from the store with cash (bank slots, bag slots, skins for looks etc. )

Regular Mode: Stays the same. It’s a great balance, like I said.

Difficult Mode: Players must purchase an Difficult Mode package from the TP. Again, it is an instance but everything is harder but players can invite other players who purchased the Difficult Mode package to play in Difficult Instances. Player would have access to everything in Regular mode. The players can receive Titles and special rewards if this is feasible.

I am not that good at computer stuff. Is this easily done or would it require too much time and work for Arenanet to profit from it? I am thinking that some people that search for a new video game experience might base their choice on whether it is easy or a challenge.

A difficulty system is not unheard of in mmos, however the games that use them are instance based. In large open world maps, this is impractical. At best difficulties could be added to dungeons, not the core game. You would be asking people to buy one of three versions of the game only to find that it may not be the one for them. This would also divide the population of the game further, which would leave the mmo feeling even less populated. Then you would have to have devs balance those three versions. The work load as well as costs would be three times what it is now. From a business standpoint I don’t see it as worth it. In regards to difficulty throttling for dungeons, often the case this difficulty is artificial, and really doesn’t change the game itself. It may add a monster or two but more than likely inflate or deflate numbers. For some that is the difficulty the want, for others the want new mechanics and puzzles to be the definition of harder. When you are trying to make a game that appeals to a large audience you have to take these things into consideration. Its not realistic to try to please everyone, so sometimes you go with what you know works.

Adding new modes to content not already designed with it in mind is likely a non-trivial task, one that would certainly raise all sorts of bugs which would need ironing out.

Is it viable? Not in open world. I can’t see the game supporting split populations and being sustainable. In instances? Yes it is viable. We’ve already seen that Challenge modes in Fractals have proven popular and work rather well. I believe future fractals will have this as well.
I doubt we will see challenge modes on older fractals without a resdeign of said fractal. Eg, they want to re-design Jade Maw, but they don’t have time to do it atm, but a challenge mode could be incorporated during the redesign process.

As for dungeons, well they’d need redesigning too. I doubt Anet would want to just slap on a hard mode skin as it is – it would be a half hearted effort and they’d want to do it right. But, there appears to be no sign of dungeons ever being modified/revamped.

In short – it’s a lot of work to add to existing content just to add one new mode. I;d rather they balanced things to the one way, based on feedback and metrics they deem appropriate and maybe add a challenge mode where appropriate. Anything else is just needlessly complicated and people will never be satisfied anyway.

Tough to do in an open world map as players wander by and join in. Instanced missions are a lot easier.

Frankly, an easier way would be to use the existing instances, and have the easy and difficult modes add a step to damage calculation. For example, a player clicks a toggle and formulas change (the following is for example, any real formula changes might require more thought than I gave it).

Easy: Outgoing Damage = 1.5 x (Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient) / Armor
Incoming Damage = (Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient) / Armor + 500

Difficult: Outgoing Damage = .5 x (Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient) / Armor
Incoming Damage = 1.5 x (Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient) / Armor

It’s not that this approach would be without problems, but at least the devs would not be recreating two additional copies of everything in the game.

Thank you for your quick replies. I completely understand and appreciate your explanations.

Challenge modes exist for some content. I’d say that players can also choose to equip gear that isn’t as high quality to make certain content harder.

By the time you get to HoT and some other content ascended is assumed and the game can be harder even for people who are geared.

There is also difficulty based on knowledge of game mechanics but that is hard to balance around.

I’m not recommending this, but it is a way it could work:

A difficulty slider that actually imposed a penalty/boost to each character. So Easy mode might give that player +100% health. While a Hard mode might give the player -10% to all stats for example.

• The problems then become, should there be higher reward of some sort to a harder mode ? Or can people just pick the easy mode and be just “stronger and better” at everything ?
• It also creates a min/max meta thing, “Are you running hard? man you’re totally ruining it for the rest of us, and you’re the reason we’re failing!” etc.
• In case of higher/lesser rewards depending on the difficulty slider, it might be just too easy to set to hard with a max toon, and farm low level maps ?
• Having other players Carrying you. Also zerg mentality would also make hard mode a joke.
• All other players around you might run their own difficulty, which makes things hard to gauge
• Are you going to force a character to be made and run in 1 difficulty, or a slider you can change in options ? If first a lot of players get angry because they don’t want to remake their old mains, and with the later, people can just slide back and forth to abuse things.

So can’t recommend it. Any other solution is basically using the Megaserver to divide the population into 3 difficulties. But then you are dividing the entire community in 3.

The best solutions would be to either focus on Instanced content as others above me has talked about, which largely means Fractals since they’ll never bother updating dungeons.

Or to just make most maps and areas a bit of everything. Have certain areas of each map super easy, and have another side super hard so only the most hardcore dares to wander in alone, while others might need groups or even zergs to survive certain spots. This is a scaling that lets you sort of choose your own adventure, and get an ingame feel of progress through teamwork or self improvement.

Silent The Gray, I probably had GW1 in the back of my mind. That game is awesome! Miss my Heroes and Henchmen. LOL

Silent The Gray.3091:

Mitern.1563:

I seen many threads where players discuss at length whether Guild Wars 2 is too easy or not hard enough, which tells me it’s pretty well balanced.

That being said, would it require a lot of work for Arenanet to offer various modes of play? I am not very computer literate so I am just curious.

Here is my idea:

Easy Mode: Players must purchase an Easy Mode package from the TP. They must create a new character(s) that can only play by themselves (all of Easy Mode is an instance) and have access to their Easy Mode bank which is separate from Regular Mode bank. No TP, No Ascended or Legendary but they can buy from the store with cash (bank slots, bag slots, skins for looks etc. )

Regular Mode: Stays the same. It’s a great balance, like I said.

Difficult Mode: Players must purchase an Difficult Mode package from the TP. Again, it is an instance but everything is harder but players can invite other players who purchased the Difficult Mode package to play in Difficult Instances. Player would have access to everything in Regular mode. The players can receive Titles and special rewards if this is feasible.

I am not that good at computer stuff. Is this easily done or would it require too much time and work for Arenanet to profit from it? I am thinking that some people that search for a new video game experience might base their choice on whether it is easy or a challenge.

I can appreciate this idea, and here’s my take:

GW1 had a Hard Mode system, which I would love to see brought back, I’m not even sure most of the people working at Anet currently are aware such a system existed, but basically for all of your maps you had a hard mode option you could toggle on and off before leaving into your instance. For dungeons, fractals, elite areas, raids, this would be a great feature, increased reward for increased difficulty and for the love of god, DO NOT put diminishing returns on it, everything in this game has diminishing returns already, I’m sick of that being the go to development option, it’s ill-conceived and Anet knows it.

But GW1 was instanced content. It was you and your party and that’s it. That kind of system is “easier” to have difficulty levels than the open world maps of GW2.

Try doing Arah explorables solo with level 60 green gear.

The game is only as hard as you make it. I dont even get what this topic is about.

We can’t even get an easy(training/explorable/experience) and mythic(elite/rewarding/toxic) difficulties for raids.

Why not instead of all this purchase deal we pull some things from gw1. First off add extra maps that have absolutely nothing to do with the story in gw1 this maps lead to special areas, elite skills, and excellent farming and took multiple maps to reach and people would pay runners. In Gw2 these maps would lack waypoints.

Also vanquish from gw1 which was kill everything on a special instanced hardcore map. In Gw2 we have megaserver so an additional map instance filled with elites, agony, and random effects could work. Maybe pull a nightfall and make them nightmare versions of the maps that people would have to talk to a special box to talk too.

As for easy mode just make more roads for instance HoT doesn’t have traditional MMO roads to walk from point a to point b without battling through mobs. Like in WoW and any mmo roads are a mechanic and players need to leave the beaten track to see tons of mobs instead of so called roads full of knockdown based enemies and raptors.