Guild Wars 2

The hard mode :

The hard mode is a new thing to do in gw2 – gather up 5 people and try to clean every single map to get a unique title and nice rewards.
How to do so ? just click on the little icon on the the mini map and you are switching to the hard mode, your group will get a pop up if they want to join you to handmade map.

this map is a new instance from the map where most people are on, its an instance so you will only see your
party running on the whole map. On the left top corner you see the status how far you have cleaned the map.
But care , the monsters are hitting like a truck. Even in queendale little bees are lvl 80 and are dangarous.

Oh yeah there is still a lot to do in every map, its not only killing every enemie but you remember the dynamic events. Events are triggered if you run into the certain area , they are only triggered ONCE, so try your best to help out !
You dont need to suceed the event but if you do so , you will recieve some help.

Questions & Answeres

Q: When is the mode activated?
A: Your party needs to be level 80 and your character needs to have the map on 100%

Q: So how do we clean the map ?
A: just kill every single enemy on the map – even the little white rabbits.

Q: What about world bosses?
A: World bosses are deactivated

Q: What´s the end reward?
A: If you clean every map in Tyria you get an extra title to honor your mission, in general the loot is better from the enemies and for every map cleaned you get an end chest with cool stuff

Q: What about events in the area?
A: Once you run into the normal event area they pop up

Q: Will events respawn?
A: No they won´t, you have 1 chance to succeed the event

Q: Do I need to succeed every event?
A: Nope you don’t, events aren’t included in the handmade process they just give special bonuses

Q: Which bonuses ?
A: The bonuses are different from event to event. You safed some seperaths? They might join your group and help you in the future battle. You helped the farmer on the lake ? He might have some extra bread to spare that you get more life (vita).

Q: What happens if I die?
A: If only you die, your group can revive you

Q: What happens if the whole group dies?
A: Your whole group will only be able to respond 3 times, after that you are game over and you have to restart again.

Q: Can I earn more lives ?
A: Yes hard events might give you extra lives. Maybe even little crazy Asura´s

Concerns :

C:The maps would be more empty cause people play the new content.

M:I dont think that this is a problem. This mode is just enabled for charackters with 100% map completing. and ask yourself – how many times where you running in maps you allready have done to 100% ? except for guild missions and maybe some world bosses?

C: It would requiere a lot of work for anet to change the enemies that they get hard and fun

M: Again – they got the tool to do so , if they first needed to develop a tool for that i would agree that this requieres a lot of work but look on the asura fractal dungeon. The harpiers are getting one extra skill if they are lvl 82 (?) , so they got the tool for that.

C: Events where mobs spawn again and again,thats a problem.

M: it´s easy to change the mob respawn to infitie , that´s not the problem, the problem is that the events should be one time only events and they should give something good. I gonna talk a bit more about the idea

I don’t think Anet wants to instance maps for everyone all the time.

Interesting ideas, but it’s not gonna happen.

That’s a lot of processor power I think, though I’d love a hard mode vanquish instance. I just don’t see it happening.

So you want everyone to hide inside instanced versions of the maps?

tell me where is differents if i run 60 min fractals or 30 min a dungeon or maybe 60 min into a hardmode?

The problem I foresee:

PvE mobs in GW2 are, for the most part (I like the Silverwastes mobs!), just not that interesting – adding extra health/more damage wouldn’t fix that. This mode would require them to completely redo how mobs work, maybe introduce mob ‘parties’ like GW1. If they did that, sure, but it’d also be a lot of work, work I’d rather they put into something like a Doman of Anguish difficultly dungeon/raid!

GW1 vanquishing worked because the groups of mobs were interesting and varied to fight. This would just be dredging through a map hitting mobs. It doesn’t sound fun to me, i’d rather be able to simply reset my ‘map completion’ on a character if I wanted to do something like this.

GW2 is not like GW1. You really would have no risk of failure in GW2 as the majority of the maps and enemies are incredibly easy compared to GW1.

With Guild Wars 1, the mobs never respawn. They would have to completely remake the spawning of the mobs. Not only do they currently respawn when killed but events and hearts cause mobs to spawn. So they would have to stop the regular mobs from respawning and take out all events and hearts.

While that is probably doable I can see it bugging. Mobs respawning and event/heart mobs appearing even with events and hearts removed. They likely would have to track down each case and deactivate the spawning, it would be very frustrating to spend the time killing everything and being unable to finish with bugged mobs respawning.

The idea of hardmode would be interesting, but it would basically leave new players with empty maps as experienced players would move to the hardmode sections for greater rewards.

Added some of your concers

Ok. So you are leaving in events and they only pop once. That still makes a large number of mobs to kill. In Guild Wars 1 you had to kill a max of maybe 200 or so. If you have to kill all the regular mobs, all the ambients and all the mobs of these events, for example, it will be way more than that. Even if you take out the failure events, it’s still going to be a large number of mobs and the time to kill all of them will be considerably more than a hard mode Guild Wars 1 map.

Bandits have constructed a roadblock to stop Shaemoor traffic (2)
Drive the bandits away from the windmill (2)
Kill the giant wurm tearing up Jeb’s field (2)
Protect the hay bales from bandits (2)
Prove you know a lot about Destiny’s Edge (2)
Defeat the Lady in White (3)
Drive the harpy flock from the dam (3)
Prevent the bandits from blowing up the water pipes (3)
Failure: Defend workers repairing the pumping station (3)
Protect Shaemoor’s drinking water from bandits (3)
Failure: Bring blobs of toxin to Apprentice Jameson (3)
Kill the river drake broodmother (3)
Stop the bandit thief from stealing the pumphouse blueprints (3)
Clear the orchard of spiders for Farmer Eda (4)
Kill the huge spider in Eda’s Orchard (4)
Help Farmhand Paris collect apples for Eda’s famous pies (4)
Defend Farmhand Nevin as he transports his cocooned friend to safety (4)
Defend Mepi from bandits (4)
Failure: Stop the bandits from poaching Mepi’s moas (4)
Failure: Rescue Mepi’s moa herd from the bandit caves (4)
Stop the elder earth elemental from destroying the dam (4)
Eliminate the bandit lieutenant (5)
Defend Barthol on his way to the Old Armory (6)
Defend Shaemoor Garrison from Tamini attackers (6)
Failure: Liberate Shaemoor Garrison (6)
Collect skale eggs for Assistant Chef Victor (7)
Escort the trading post caravan to Claypool (7)
Stop skritt thieves from stealing logging tools (7)
Failure: Retrieve stolen logging tools from the skritt hideout (7)
Success of either of above: Help Slim Mikhart destroy the skritt cave support (7)
Defend Altar Brook Crossing (8)
Failure: Defend Altar Brook Trading Post (7)
Failure: Drive the Tamini from Altar Brook Trading Post (7)
Success of either above two: Escort and defend workers sent to rebuild the guard tower (8)
Defend the beehives from hungry bears (8)
Protect the ranchers from bandits (8)
Failure: Drive the bandits from Curtis’s ranch (8)
Collect grub remains for Ine (9)
Slay the giant fish to protect the fishing waters (10)
Destroy the wasp queen (9)
Herd the pygmy moas into the pen (9)
Escort Moa Trainer Kappa and her pygmy moas to Beetletun (10)
[Group Event] Defeat the corrupted veteran oakheart (9)
Escort the carnival caravan to Beetletun (10)
Capture Heartwood Pass Camp from the Tamini (9)
Hold Heartwood Pass Camp (10)
Hunt and slay the giant boar (10)
Drive back the centaurs before they steal the monastery’s ale (11)
Failure: Return stolen kegs of ale to Abbot Mathias (11)
Success of either above two: Protect the brew shipment (14)
Defeat the cave troll (11)
Gather ruined grapes from Victoria’s vineyard (12)
Stop the skritt burglar before it escapes with the treasure
The Battle for Beetletun (11-13)
Defend Tunwatch Redoubt (12)
Failure: Retake Tunwatch Redoubt (12)
Destroy Holdland Camp’s weapon caches before they amass a counter attack (12)
Success: Prevent the Tamini from retaking Holdland Camp (12)
Stop the Tamini from capturing farmers (11)
Failure: Retake the farm and bring sprinkler pieces to Clarence (11)
If any farmers captured: Rescue the captive farmers (13)

Yep its enough to do and isnt that the point ? I would like to run such an experiment on the beta server just to see how long a 5 man group would need for 1 map. It might be something between 45min-120min .. It Should be that hard and rewardning aswell

Personally, I’d rather see ANet concentrate on adding to the existing world with more content that invites anybody in the area to join in, rather than spend their time re-arranging existing maps to allow people to hide away in 5-player-instances (with all the consequences of incompatible playstyles we already see in lfg these days) to do busywork in the form of mindlessly killing monster after monster.

Even if they changed next to nothing about these instanced maps aside from mob-respawn and event-respawn, it would still take considerable work to do instanced versions of all maps. As a result, we would get a “challenge” that is in no way greater than it is to go through these maps on-level today (and I’m sorry to say this, but if you understand the class and game mechanics, on-level or even below-level play of open world maps isn’t challenging at all).

Implementing real challenges (preferably in a way that reaches a large part of the player base, without resulting in mindless busywork) takes a lot of development time, regardless of whether it’s on a new or already build map. I’d rather see this development time coupled with new world design on new (or added-to) maps than see it wasted on creating challenge to fit existing maps that were never designed with that kind of challenge in mind.

Another consideration. In Guild Wars 1 the mobs show on the mini map as red dots. In this game they are invisible until you actually see them, which means if a mob or ambient is behind something it will be easily missed. In Guild Wars 1 if you missed a mob you could go over the map until the red dot appeared. Here you could have people scouring the map for one final ambient or mob that’s sitting between a bush and the map boundary, for example. Looking for that one final mob/ambient that’s hidden behind something and not visible until you see it could extend the time to clear the map by a considerable amount.

I like this idea, although a few modifications would be needed.

As already pointed out, there is a very large amount of mobs in each zone, and they respawn, some very quickly. However it might work if you just removed all the extra mobs, and just had mobs from the events, and scaled up. Having one chance at the events would be a great way to prevent farming those events. But the problem is with the event chains. If he event fails, it won’t start the next event in the chain. And if it was to just go on to the next in the event of failure, it wouldn’t make much sense.

pdavis – you probaly mean about failing an event on purpose to to have less to do to clean the whole map but you need to think the other way arround ..if you managed to suceed a row of events the bonuses are just getting better.. let´s there is an event where you first have to defend people , then build there farm up again and then killing the champ which destroyed it.. thats an event chain , you could just fail it on the first event yes , but if you for example manage to defend the seperahts , they gonna help you cleaningthe map, if you succeed the following event building the farm up again you recieve +300 vita as a bonus stat and if you manage to kill this giant champ then you get an extra life for the hardmode an all bonuses are getting multicated with 2 ..;)

kobi.5236:

pdavis – you probaly mean about failing an event on purpose to to have less to do to clean the whole map but you need to think the other way arround ..if you managed to suceed a row of events the bonuses are just getting better.. let´s there is an event where you first have to defend people , then build there farm up again and then killing the champ which destroyed it.. thats an event chain , you could just fail it on the first event yes , but if you for example manage to defend the seperahts , they gonna help you cleaningthe map, if you succeed the following event building the farm up again you recieve +300 vita as a bonus stat and if you manage to kill this giant champ then you get an extra life for the hardmode an all bonuses are getting multicated with 2 ..;)

I understand that. What I am referring to is, say you have to defend the serephs while the build defenses in their fort, then escort them to take a centaur fort, then help take the fort, then defend the fort from counter attack. If you failed to escort them, how can they take the fort? In a failed event in an event chain, the chain is broken, and can’t progress, and resets.

Having such rewards makes it so completing the chain is vital, and thats a good thing. Failing an event on purpose would be counter productive. However, events can and do fail even while attempted. So if you only have one chance at the event chain, and fail one part of if, that chain can’t continue, thus making it impossible to complete. Having scaled up mobs for events increases the likelyhood of failure by a large margin.

it´s called a hard mode tho.. ofc it shouldnt be like oh no we failed this event lets surrender.. but it should have a good amount of influence

kobi.5236:

it´s called a hard mode tho.. ofc it shouldnt be like oh no we failed this event lets surrender.. but it should have a good amount of influence

True, it is hard mode. But the events would have to be scaled for 5 person parties. Have too many mobs, like the wave events, and it could be too overwhelming and too hard to complete. It would have to be a very fine balance.

since they allready have all the tools avaible it would be so easy to test it.. Most of the events are scaling good and you could just try that every event is scaled to a partipition size of 10 , to have it hard

Hard mode is also pointless as everything is so spread out and the difficulty of the enemies is on par with a “My First MMO” game. I suggest going back to GW1 and try to vanquish a map. You’ll notice a considerable difference between GW1 and GW2.