Guild Wars 2

What would be the point of a hardmode if there were no unique rewards for beating the challenge?

Of course a hardmode should have tons of unique rewards. Else you’d get the same result as we see now when looking at the Aetherpath dungeon. Very few run it because it’s not worth the time investment. Casuals see no incentive at all to try it, work on becoming better… to risk getting killed over and over again… for what? Weaponskins with a droprate as rare as a precursor?

i’ma give you 1 example it wouldn’t work, PvP bots go fight those they should ‘resemble’ real players, but they’re pretty afwul at resembling real life players ofcourse in pve this would be semi different but not much

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

What would be the point of a hardmode if there were no unique rewards for beating the challenge?

Of course a hardmode should have tons of unique rewards. Else you’d get the same result as we see now when looking at the Aetherpath dungeon. Very few run it because it’s not worth the time investment. Casuals see no incentive at all to try it, work on becoming better… to risk getting killed over and over again… for what? Weaponskins with a droprate as rare as a precursor?

What is the point of hard mode without perma-death ? What is really “hard” if you
can die 10.000 times until you finally get through it ?
I really wonder how many people would still complain that all is too easy if we had
perma death.

Else you prove again that most people don’t really want a challenge but just better
loot, and if you getter better loot for easy content you would of cours play the
easy content instead of the annoying hard-mode that is more like a job than
having fun.

Great post with some very excellent ideas.

I would be more in support of an instanced rather than open-world Hard Mode.

I picture a portal in Rata Sum or someplace. Upon activation the player would be given a list of all Hard Mode areas available. Picking an area would teleport the player/party/squad to a Hard Mode version of that area. Hard mode should feel almost like sPvP, featuring intelligent groups of opponents, and greater rewards.

Do you realize how many threads were opened because the bell choir was hard to play? If the bell choir was hard enough to learn that you needed to open threads to complain about, I don’t think will possibility get anything harder when the easy stuff are already hard for some.

Harper.4173:

1)People like Ohoni pointed out above would be upset if they were forced to leave their comfort zone for the rewards/items they wanted.

…

These players would be outraged ( and most of them are outraged even now) that others are doing content faster / getting more or better rewards than they are.

People are already outraged that others have more time to farm X or Y train, or exploit the TP, and other things like that. The key difference between my HM proposal and the existing causes for outrage is that HM will actually be difficult, at least for a while.

Harper.4173:

Imagine if the good players would be getting even more loot while the average and below average flooded the forums with tears.

That’s already true in the game, just everything is cast in terms of “stupid RNG” instead of “good players getting better rewards”.

Personally, I find it absurd that you’re using this logic. “Doing harder stuff nets better rewards” is a gaming paradigm for decades going back to some of the very first video games. And suggesting that that paradigm be upheld in an RPG, one of the clearest genres for utilizing it is somehow bad?

Harper.4173:

2)It would segregate the player base even more.

The meta-people would create a new specific meta for each area but this wouldn’t bring about an increase in build diversity. Rather the opposite.
The ideal classes for certain situations would be asked for with specific builds and anything else would be pushed aside.

However, with different mobs having different ability sets, and different interactions (seriously, the breadth of mob variety in GW2 is astounding. It’s a shame they all play the same), the optimal build will likely a change a lot.

As a veteran who only has to play 2 builds tops on any of his characters, needing to change my build up excites me. Sure, there might be a perfect meta build. It happened a lot in GW1, but because the builds were different depending on the content you were attempting, people liked it.

Saint.5647:

I would love that. Granted it would have to be instanced to limit only 5 people to complete a map. Could open the door for some cool Solo VQ records as well. It would be pretty pointless to open world train this. More 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 and dead people who wouldn’t WP.

The more I’m reading, the more I’m on board with the idea of limited instance content, or a reduced population shard (say 25 people in the zone, instead of 100+). If it’s done that way, HM could double as Guild content, since a bunch of guild parties could get together and vanquish a zone (or farm their favorite champions).

would be a nice option, but will never happen :/

Ohoni.6057:

I would be fine with them adding a “hard mode,” but ONLY if there is no additional rewards attached to it. There can be zero-point achievements, and there can be titles attached to hard mode completions, but there should not be any bonus MF, any unique drops, any reward unlocks, or unique reward tracks. You should receive no better or additional loot for playing content on hard mode than you would on default.

If you wouldn’t want hard mode without having bonus candy for playing it, then there should not be a hard mode, full stop.

Its post like this that makes me wonder how spoiled this community is. People expect to be rewarded equally showing up to a world boss or champ train spamming 1 as doing something extremely difficult and/or require skills to execute. The so called “casual” and i use this term loosely because real casual players are not this pathetic to make excuses to justify how they don’t want to improve as a playe, already get so much reward for doing barely anything. You can even get legendaries by just the swipe of a credit card.

The hardcore players who constantly strive for harder content gets barely anything to show for compared to the people who spams 1 while alt tabbing and watching porn in farm trains. Its time anet properly balance risk/reward in this game for once.

Lifestealer.4910:

Ohoni.6057:

I would be fine with them adding a “hard mode,” but ONLY if there is no additional rewards attached to it. There can be zero-point achievements, and there can be titles attached to hard mode completions, but there should not be any bonus MF, any unique drops, any reward unlocks, or unique reward tracks. You should receive no better or additional loot for playing content on hard mode than you would on default.

If you wouldn’t want hard mode without having bonus candy for playing it, then there should not be a hard mode, full stop.

Its post like this that makes me wonder how spoiled this community is. People expect to be rewarded equally showing up to a world boss or champ train spamming 1 as doing something extremely difficult and/or require skills to execute. The so called “casual” and i use this term loosely because real casual players are not this pathetic to make excuses to justify how they don’t want to improve as a playe, already get so much reward for doing barely anything. You can even get legendaries by just the swipe of a credit card.

The hardcore players who constantly strive for harder content gets barely anything to show for compared to the people who spams 1 while alt tabbing and watching porn in farm trains. Its time anet properly balance risk/reward in this game for once.

The consequences of playing a game where glass cannon is BiS for everything and mindless farm grind is the key to most any luxury item.

This…..I actually have no problem with this. Whats described here is actually what I hoped gw2 would be from conception. When it bragged about how its mobs worked together to defeat players. I would LOVE kitten near everything you described. I doubt Id ever leave hard mode. It would also give a place where people like me that enjoy soloing very difficult content meant for groups could actually test themselves. It would also be a great place for PvErs that like group content to get the challenge many have been craving from the start.

Minos.5168:

The issue with this, in my opinion, is that Guild Wars 2 is setup entirely differently than GW1.

The fundamental differences (i.e. GW2 having live servers with mobs having respawn timers, rather than instanced servers) make “Vanquisher” stuff near impossible to implement without completely writing new code for Hard Mode.

Secondly, GW2 implemented scaling as a way to try to keep old zones relevant. (And Ascended crafting functions similarly, by still requiring low-level mats.) This isn’t the same as Hard Mode, obviously, but I think it greatly decreases the chances of it happening.

Last, but not least, Hard Mode in GW1 was fairly simple (code-wise) changes.
Buff all monsters to appropriate levels and armor. Give change the skill-bars of low-level monsters giving them elites.

TL;DR: What you’re asking (giving champs better moves, server-code changes) would require a lot of work. I don’t think it would pay off in the long run.

QFT

GW1 and GW2 are completely, utterly different. What the OP is asking for would be like asking EVE to add WOW-style instanced raids, or asking Fallen London to add 3D. It’s not only out of scope for the design, it’s fundamentally incompatible with the technology and would require a total rewrite.

I really can’t emphasize this enough. This will not be happening unless ANet spends months or years on only this, and may not even be possible.

What would be the point of a hardmode if there were no unique rewards for beating the challenge?

People claim that they would enjoy it more. If this is not true, then why bother having hard mode at all? If people just want better loot, why don’t they just ad better loot to the existing content?

Its post like this that makes me wonder how spoiled this community is. People expect to be rewarded equally showing up to a world boss or champ train spamming 1 as doing something extremely difficult and/or require skills to execute.

It’s a game, so long as everyone’s having fun, why should some people get bonus rewards for playing one way over another? If you enjoy hard mode content, great, play it. If you want better rewards, tough.

Rozbuska.5263:

It sounds great even when it will be much more difficult to make then it was in gw1. Only problem is player base in gw2 is faaaar more casual (I wish there is some word even for casual casuals) then it was in gw1 and whole dev team will drown in tears 5 minutes after this feature will launch:-D

Releasing it simultaneously with a new PvE map intended for the casual audience will help with this. It’s just having the less experienced (or less masochistic) players sitting on the sidelines watching everyone else play with a shiny new toy that’s going to lead to griping.

We’re actually not that different from infants, now that I think about it.

Ohoni.6057:

What would be the point of a hardmode if there were no unique rewards for beating the challenge?

People claim that they would enjoy it more. If this is not true, then why bother having hard mode at all? If people just want better loot, why don’t they just ad better loot to the existing content?

Its post like this that makes me wonder how spoiled this community is. People expect to be rewarded equally showing up to a world boss or champ train spamming 1 as doing something extremely difficult and/or require skills to execute.

It’s a game, so long as everyone’s having fun, why should some people get bonus rewards for playing one way over another? If you enjoy hard mode content, great, play it. If you want better rewards, tough.

Except most good games reward people appropriately for the effort they put in, for thats what good game design is.

Not only that, people will pick the path of the least resistance to get the reward, so if the reward involves farming like a zombie, most would do just that. If thats what a dev want then sure but don’t kid yourself into thinking thats healthy for the game.

This thread is very good and it should not be wasted, if Anet doesnt show its presence by commenting on a topic so popular when people like the OP dedicated A LOT of time to think and write such a good suggestions, then Anet simply doesnt respect its loyal players that want the best for the game. Thanks a lot OP, i personally like almost every suggestion you made

Except most good games reward people appropriately for the effort they put in, for thats what good game design is.

You’re confusing gameplay styles with effort. You can put in just as much effort doing easier content as harder content, it’s just different content.

Not only that, people will pick the path of the least resistance to get the reward, so if the reward involves farming like a zombie, most would do just that.

If that’s how they enjoy playing, let them. Play how you want, don’t try to change how other players enjoy playing.

Ohoni.6057:

Except most good games reward people appropriately for the effort they put in, for thats what good game design is.

You’re confusing gameplay styles with effort. You can put in just as much effort doing easier content as harder content, it’s just different content.

Not only that, people will pick the path of the least resistance to get the reward, so if the reward involves farming like a zombie, most would do just that.

If that’s how they enjoy playing, let them. Play how you want, don’t try to change how other players enjoy playing.

Are you going to tell me it takes just as much effort and skill to afk in zerg trains in open world compared to doing fractal 50?.. yea its different gameplay style but at the sametime, one is clearly much more difficult and require alot more effort from the team to succeed, whereas sitting in a farm train there is almost no effort involved at all.

Also did i say anywhere that i want to change how others play?.. i am asking for an alternative, where hardcore players get rewarded for doing hard content, so that they don’t have to mindlessly farm and spamming 1 to get good stuff?.. because atm doing difficult content gives jacksquat for reward, and when that is the case people will say this game is unrewarding and its definitely not something others would want to hear from a game.

Difficult content should always provide more reward than easier content. If you want to brainlessly farm then go ahead, let others get the rewarding content that they want.

Are you going to tell me it takes just as much effort and skill to afk in zerg trains in open world compared to doing fractal 50?..

Again, effort, skill, two completely different things. It does take exactly as much effort to do a zerg train (I’ve never seen someone able to AFK a train, so I would find that especially impressive). Fractal 50 does take more skill, but who cares? If you have the skill and interest to do fractal 50s, then do fractal 50s. If you don’t, then don’t, but there’s no reason you should be penalized for that.

Difficult content should always provide more reward than easier content. If you want to brainlessly farm then go ahead, let others get the rewarding content that they want.

What about people that want rewarding content but that don’t want difficult content?

I think that when there is talk of “hard content,” there are two types of people. There are those that want more difficult content, and there are people that want better rewards than other people. If you genuinely want more difficult content then you shouldn’t need better rewards for it. If you just want better rewards than those you consider your “lessors,” then tough.

Ohoni.6057:

Are you going to tell me it takes just as much effort and skill to afk in zerg trains in open world compared to doing fractal 50?..

Again, effort, skill, two completely different things. It does take exactly as much effort to do a zerg train (I’ve never seen someone able to AFK a train, so I would find that especially impressive). Fractal 50 does take more skill, but who cares? If you have the skill and interest to do fractal 50s, then do fractal 50s. If you don’t, then don’t, but there’s no reason you should be penalized for that.

Difficult content should always provide more reward than easier content. If you want to brainlessly farm then go ahead, let others get the rewarding content that they want.

What about people that want rewarding content but that don’t want difficult content?

I think that when there is talk of “hard content,” there are two types of people. There are those that want more difficult content, and there are people that want better rewards than other people. If you genuinely want more difficult content then you shouldn’t need better rewards for it. If you just want better rewards than those you consider your “lessors,” then tough.

Its funny that you try to separate them into groups, there are also people that want BOTH challenging content and better reward.

Also by your logic, if tomorrow anet removes all the reward from world bosses and champion mobs, you are going to tell me the exact same thing right?.. that people who afk zerk train should continue to do so and that they don’t need rewards for it?.

Just watch as those zerg trains die out completely if it follows through, same thing with challenging content, if there isn’t any reward to justify it then expect it to be ghost town in days if not weeks.

The people who want rewards but not challenging content already has them, its called the zerg afk train in silver waste and other crappy living story location. Its time the people who dedicate themselves to challenges gets something as well.

Ohoni.6057:

Fractal 50 does take more skill, but who cares? If you have the skill and interest to do fractal 50s, then do fractal 50s. If you don’t, then don’t, but there’s no reason you should be penalized for that.

You are saying harder content should not be rewarderd? That’s the reason aetherblade path is not being run as often as the other paths, that’s why CoF used to be the best way to get money, the reason the Queensdale train was so popular..

Harder content should alwaysbe awarded. It is called “risk vs reward”. The bigger the risk, the better the reward. You come of as a person who wants a legendary weapon as a daily login reward and you seem to want everything in the game, without wanting to do something hard. If that is true, no offense, but people like you are what is wrong with the current gaming generation. Easy gameplay, tutorials everywhere, being rewarderd for every little thing, etc etc.

Also, afking during a farm train is very easy. I used to watch my animes while Queensdale training and farming Orr.

—Bonus!!—
Some examples of risk vs reward in other games:
- Final Fantasy 9: Beating some boss < 12hours gives the best weapon in the game
- GW1: Unique skins in UW, FoW, Urgoz Warren, The Deep, DoA
- GW1: Higher chance of rare drops in hardmode, also the appearance of locked chests
- Titan Quest: Unique skins and more powerful weapons on Epic/Legendary setting
- WoW: Raids contain unique rewards tied to the raid

Its funny that you try to separate them into groups, there are also people that want BOTH challenging content and better reward.

And there are people who want easy content and better rewards, you can’t always get what you want.

Also by your logic, if tomorrow anet removes all the reward from world bosses and champion mobs, you are going to tell me the exact same thing right?.. that people who afk zerk train should continue to do so and that they don’t need rewards for it?.

If they enjoy it, or they should move to different activities if they find them to be more rewarding. There’d be nothing wrong with that. The point is, you shouldn’t get better rewards just because you enjoy doing more difficult content. Players who are incapable or uninterested in doing harder content should not receive lesser reward options because of that.

You are saying harder content should not be rewarderd? That’s the reason aetherblade path is not being run as often as the other paths, that’s why CoF used to be the best way to get money, the reason the Queensdale train was so popular..

You say that as if there’s anything wrong with any of that. If Aetherpath isn’t being run then it’s because people don’t want to do Aetherpath, and that’s ok. ANet shouldn’t bribe players to run content that they don’t want to run.,

Also, afking during a farm train is very easy. I used to watch my animes while Queensdale training and farming Orr.

How did you not get left behind as the train moved to new content if you were AFK? I mean, I’ve taken a break when doing content where there was downtime between events, but I had to pay attention while it was actually active.

—Bonus!!—
Some examples of risk vs reward in other games:
- Final Fantasy 9: Beating some boss < 12hours gives the best weapon in the game
- GW1: Unique skins in UW, FoW, Urgoz Warren, The Deep, DoA
- GW1: Higher chance of rare drops in hardmode, also the appearance of locked chests
- Titan Quest: Unique skins and more powerful weapons on Epic/Legendary setting
- WoW: Raids contain unique rewards tied to the raid

So it sounds like you have plenty of options if that’s the sort of content you prefer. Excellent.

Substantial new content first please.

HM was all good in GW1 but it was after the fact, fact being several meaty expansions worth of content.

GW2 doesn’t have that yet, as such I could only see the implementation of HM being used as a smokescreen to ignore the serious lack of new content. I’d be all for this in 5 years…atm…not so much.

TaCktiX.6729:

Harper.4173:

1)People like Ohoni pointed out above would be upset if they were forced to leave their comfort zone for the rewards/items they wanted.

…

These players would be outraged ( and most of them are outraged even now) that others are doing content faster / getting more or better rewards than they are.

People are already outraged that others have more time to farm X or Y train, or exploit the TP, and other things like that. The key difference between my HM proposal and the existing causes for outrage is that HM will actually be difficult, at least for a while.

Harper.4173:

Imagine if the good players would be getting even more loot while the average and below average flooded the forums with tears.

That’s already true in the game, just everything is cast in terms of “stupid RNG” instead of “good players getting better rewards”.

Personally, I find it absurd that you’re using this logic. “Doing harder stuff nets better rewards” is a gaming paradigm for decades going back to some of the very first video games. And suggesting that that paradigm be upheld in an RPG, one of the clearest genres for utilizing it is somehow bad?

Harper.4173:

2)It would segregate the player base even more.

The meta-people would create a new specific meta for each area but this wouldn’t bring about an increase in build diversity. Rather the opposite.
The ideal classes for certain situations would be asked for with specific builds and anything else would be pushed aside.

However, with different mobs having different ability sets, and different interactions (seriously, the breadth of mob variety in GW2 is astounding. It’s a shame they all play the same), the optimal build will likely a change a lot.

As a veteran who only has to play 2 builds tops on any of his characters, needing to change my build up excites me. Sure, there might be a perfect meta build. It happened a lot in GW1, but because the builds were different depending on the content you were attempting, people liked it.

Saint.5647:

I would love that. Granted it would have to be instanced to limit only 5 people to complete a map. Could open the door for some cool Solo VQ records as well. It would be pretty pointless to open world train this. More 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 and dead people who wouldn’t WP.

The more I’m reading, the more I’m on board with the idea of limited instance content, or a reduced population shard (say 25 people in the zone, instead of 100+). If it’s done that way, HM could double as Guild content, since a bunch of guild parties could get together and vanquish a zone (or farm their favorite champions).

As a preface – I actually fully support your idea and really wish they implemented a Hard Mode with unique rewards – but like I said above.

1)If people are already going mad over others making more gold than they are now ( oddly enough they don’t seem to mind the TP at all, just the faster dungeon runs) imagine how upset they would be when people were getting skins they couldn’t get.

2)The RNG nature of the loot in this game is exactly what keeps the average and below average in check. They can always write it off as " he just got lucky" in his mind. This way their idea that they’re still good and viable isn’t written off.
Ultimately this is why a lot of games decide on RNG rewards – it doesn’t upset people who couldn’t obtain good rewards in a skill based system.

Again – the paradigm is correct – but look at today’s generations of entitled gamers. I wish the search function worked and you could look up older threads where I made the same points you made.
I got a lot of hate along the lines of " you shouldn’t get better rewards than anyone else no matter what content you do because it’s unfair" and " harder content shouldn’t be more rewarding because it would pressure the casual players to try to do it and it would be hard for them".

3)Optimal build changing – sure. But that doesn’t mean that if I want a piece of armor that’s located in a place my class isn’t meta for I’m going to get it easily. Maybe a token system could fix this – i don’t know.

Sadly from what I understand the type of content you are describing is exactly the kind they said they won’t produce.
They’re going all in with the “open world”. Hopefully the raids will be decent.

Ohoni.6057:

What would be the point of a hardmode if there were no unique rewards for beating the challenge?

People claim that they would enjoy it more. If this is not true, then why bother having hard mode at all? If people just want better loot, why don’t they just ad better loot to the existing content?

Its post like this that makes me wonder how spoiled this community is. People expect to be rewarded equally showing up to a world boss or champ train spamming 1 as doing something extremely difficult and/or require skills to execute.

It’s a game, so long as everyone’s having fun, why should some people get bonus rewards for playing one way over another? If you enjoy hard mode content, great, play it. If you want better rewards, tough.

Oh god.
Because playing better or playing worse affect things.

If I’m just hitting my face on my keyboard near a world boss I should get less rewarded than the guy actually playing regardless of how much “fun” I had.

Just because it’s a game doesn’t mean that as long as we all participate we should all get equal rewards. That’s just…
Why ever bother improving at the game then?

People want harder content coupled with better rewards in order to feel they’re being challenged and also achieving something. They want to feel rewarded for their skill and ability.

Ohoni.6057:

How did you not get left behind as the train moved to new content if you were AFK? I mean, I’ve taken a break when doing content where there was downtime between events, but I had to pay attention while it was actually active.

It’s called having two screens. Taking part in a train is so brainnumbingly simple, press skill 1 and get loot. It should not even be rewarded at all.

Ohoni.6057:

The point is, you shouldn’t get better rewards just because you enjoy doing more difficult content.

In fact they should. They are doing something difficult, so they should be rewarderd. Again, it is called risk vs reward.

You should read up about it, it might open your eyes for once, instead of being scared for a challenge and starting to cry when someone gets better loot because they are doing something harder.

And as a final note.
Please understand that people need incentive to play. Harder content can feel empty and people can feel frustrated when the rewards aren’t on par with the effort and skill required to complete said content.

Look at the people complaining about terrible rewards in FOTM.

Look at dungeons before the rewards rework. Who did dungeons? Hardly anyone.
Excepting CoF P1 ( which was farmed for the rewards) none of the other dungeons were being done anymore. Even though they weren’t even that hard.
Why? Because the rewards were so bad people felt there was no point.

People enjoy playing the game – true – but what they enjoy the most is obtaining rewards ( especially in an MMO).
However it is also relevant to note that rewards are valued by rarity ( especially in MMOs) – something everyone can have becomes worthless.
Ultimately the only way to give better rewards is to give unique ones.

If I’m just hitting my face on my keyboard near a world boss I should get less rewarded than the guy actually playing regardless of how much “fun” I had.

Why? Does ANet make more money off of you? Why do you deserve better loot just because you play better? You playing better has zero impact on anyone other than yourself.

Why ever bother improving at the game then?

Because it makes you happier? If it doesn’t, then you probably shouldn’t bother.

It’s called having two screens. Taking part in a train is so brainnumbingly simple, press skill 1 and get loot. It should not even be rewarded at all.

Well that’s not AFKing then, that’s just playing distractedly. I love that about this game, I can play it while the TV’s on and still follow both. If I wanted to devote 100% of my attention I’d be playing Dragon Age instead.

In fact they should. They are doing something difficult, so they should be rewarderd. Again, it is called risk vs reward.

That’s not a fact, it’s an opinion. What you should have said is “In my opinion, they should. . ."

Please understand that people need incentive to play. Harder content can feel empty and people can feel frustrated when the rewards aren’t on par with the effort and skill required to complete said content.

Look at the people complaining about terrible rewards in FOTM.

Look at dungeons before the rewards rework. Who did dungeons? Hardly anyone.
Excepting CoF P1 ( which was farmed for the rewards) none of the other dungeons were being done anymore. Even though they weren’t even that hard.

And that’s fine/ If people don’t want to play that content then they don’t have to. It’s not a problem if some of the content doesn’t get done because people don’t want to do it. They do the content they prefer to do instead.

What IS a problem is when you have content that people don’t want to do, but you lock cool rewards behind it, so players are forced to do them if they want those rewards. A good example of this is the luminescent gear. I got the first two luminescent pieces, but haven’t got around to doing the story achievements to this latest chapter because they just seemed like such a massive hassle. And yet the collections are locked behind clearing all the achievements, so I’ll probably get around to it eventually, but I’m dreading it. I would gladly turn in 2000 badges or something to avoid having to do this chapter’s achievements.

However it is also relevant to note that rewards are valued by rarity ( especially in MMOs) – something everyone can have becomes worthless.

That’s not true. Plenty of rewards are still valuable even though everyone can have them. Hell, you can just buy Legendaries on the market and yet people still value them, because they look cool. The value is in the pieces you choose to put together into an outfit, not in how hard they are to earn.

Harper.4173:

People enjoy playing the game – true – but what they enjoy the most is obtaining rewards ( especially in an MMO).
However it is also relevant to note that rewards are valued by rarity ( especially in MMOs) – something everyone can have becomes worthless.
Ultimately the only way to give better rewards is to give unique ones.

Yes and no.

This game, like many MMO’s, has slowly become a work simulator. As such I agree. If the pays crap people will quit or find another job (game or aspect of said game) that pays better. If the rewards for doing things like dungeons are sub-par people will pass. In saying there is always 1-2 things to do that garner the most reward in just about every MMO I can think of and that’s where the mob goes…always…it’s MMO dogma.

In saying I agree that unique rewards are better but I’m of the opinion you should have thousands of unique reward options, not the handful that everyone chases after in this game. If you give players this freedom of reward structure all hierarchical restrictions become obsolete and the " 1,000,000 donkeys chasing the same carrot" is replaced by open and fun gameplay hand-in-hand with a non-materialistic community.

fireflyry.7023:

This game, like many MMO’s, has slowly become a work simulator. As such I agree. If the pays crap people will quit or find another job (game or aspect of said game) that pays better. If the rewards for doing things like dungeons are sub-par people will pass. In saying there is always 1-2 things to do that garner the most reward in just about every MMO I can think of and that’s where the mob goes…always…it’s MMO dogma.

Phrased differently, player time is limited, and people would prefer to make the best use of their limited time. Doing something difficult but unrewarding might be doable the first time for novelty value, but after that it feels like a waste of time.

In saying I agree that unique rewards are better but I’m of the opinion you should have thousands of unique reward options, not the handful that everyone chases after in this game. If you give players this freedom of reward structure all hierarchical restrictions become obsolete and the " 1,000,000 donkeys chasing the same carrot" is replaced by open and fun gameplay hand-in-hand with a non-materialistic community.

Unfortunately for that approach, the unique rewards are limited by the conscious design decision to make 90% of the rewards gainable by applying gold. This doubles as incentivizing gems>gold and potentially allowing a player to play anything, and eventually get whatever reward they want.

I’m with you, I wish there were direct, unique rewards all over the game (GW1 had that with the elite areas and their unique rewards). That’s why my suggestion advocates unique rewards, as well as a currency to allow someone to get those unique rewards even if their drop luck is absolute garbage.

Though I admit I didn’t read every part of the opening posts word by word (kitten , you put a whole lot of effort in it, but some tl;dr would be great), this is just what I thought after I finished reading.

Hard mode dungeons? Sure.
Hard mode maps? Won’t work.

Hard Mode maps just won’t work as long as there’s no unique instance for every party, since ppl tend to blobb everything down (yes, there are ways to counter this, you already mentioned the crown pavillon. But let’s be honest- how many times ppl actually did split and how many times you just sat there face-palming and soloing/duoing a boss while all the others kept zerging? I’d say the ratio was somewhere @ 20-80 at best). And this (instances for every party, besides any eventual technical issues) is something that will probably never happen, since HM maps then would be just like dungeons or fractals, just larger.
Which would then force you to deal with all the problems the existing dungeons are already- a whole lot of work to do for zero bucks.
Not that I wouldn’t like to see that, but with all the patches making the game less and less demanding and more attractiv to casuals we’ve seen in the last months (NPE, new daily system/rewards for simply loging in), Arena.Net made pretty clear that’s nothing they’re interested in.

Don’t get me wrong- would I love to see some major revamp regarding AI, loot distribution, overall challenge, etc. etc. – hell yeah!
Do I appreciate the effort you took? Ofc! It offers a great basis for discussion, at least in theory.
But do I believe that we will see just anything of it being implemented, just a tiny bit of it? No, sorry, I don’t.
Sadly they’ll rather keep simplifying the game even more, so even a trained monkey will be able to play it (and thx to rng-sus will get a precursor after hitting 80, lol).

TaCktiX.6729:

Phrased differently, player time is limited, and people would prefer to make the best use of their limited time. Doing something difficult but unrewarding might be doable the first time for novelty value, but after that it feels like a waste of time.

Agreed.

TaCktiX.6729:

I’m with you, I wish there were direct, unique rewards all over the game (GW1 had that with the elite areas and their unique rewards). That’s why my suggestion advocates unique rewards, as well as a currency to allow someone to get those unique rewards even if their drop luck is absolute garbage.

All it really equates to in this game is more skins and variation of method in attaining such.

This game is designed like a funnel in this respect. Lack of reward options hand in hand with lack of variation in regards to the most efficient way to garner said reward.

End result:TEQ parties ad nauseam for a handful of glowsticks.

City of Heroes did this right.

The suggestions are brilliant and would make this GW 2.5 for me. You even made want to play GW1 again, I still remember what a real an interesting challenge every pack of mobs have been in hard mode. The trains and zergs in gw2 are just brain-dead play in comparisson, the way you described HM is the ONLY thing thing that GW2 really needs.

They don’t have to do any other additional art or content, all they have to do is adjust the mobs and add some new reward progression for doing HM, like what you suggested. And they can start implementhing this slowly, adding features over course of the time. They can still use their artists to keep making skins for the gem shop and black lions and keep making money there, while all they need to do is just implement the HM and give us a reason to keep playing it.

I’m with you, I wish there were direct, unique rewards all over the game (GW1 had that with the elite areas and their unique rewards). That’s why my suggestion advocates unique rewards, as well as a currency to allow someone to get those unique rewards even if their drop luck is absolute garbage.

I don’t mind unique rewards, but I like to see multiple ways of earning them. Having only one path (such as completing the LW story achievements to unlock the Ascended Trinkets), means that you must do that specific gameplay element to get that specific reward, and if doing that specific gameplay does not appeal to you, then you’re sol. There should instead be several different paths to each goal, covering a variety of interests and ability levels, so that each player can take the path that most appeals to them.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t mind unique rewards, but I like to see multiple ways of earning them. Having only one path (such as completing the LW story achievements to unlock the Ascended Trinkets), means that you must do that specific gameplay element to get that specific reward, and if doing that specific gameplay does not appeal to you, then you’re sol. There should instead be several different paths to each goal, covering a variety of interests and ability levels, so that each player can take the path that most appeals to them.

In this we also agree. My main issue with most ascended gear is the functional funnel of “do <this> type of content for a reasonable chance of getting it, or hope the RNG god loves you,” especially in the case of armor and weapons.

But at the same time, having gear that is appearance-unique but stat-identical I think is important for prestige and feeling like the reward is worthwhile. Dungeon sets for a while were considered prestigious, and showed dedication to the dungeon because of how many runs had to be completed to get them. After 2 years, they’re less so due to near-ubiquity and the Wardrobe PvP/PvE merger, but that’s the idea.

Stat-wise, dungeon sets are exotics. Appearance, you can’t find them elsewhere. That’s what GW2 should have more of, not less.

Stat-wise, dungeon sets are exotics. Appearance, you can’t find them elsewhere. That’s what GW2 should have more of, not less.

I don’t know though. Specific to your example, it’s not like running a dungeon a few times is too egregious for a piece of armor, but I do wish that there were other ways to earn them, like maybe doing JPs in the region of the dungeon could also reward dungeon tokens, or they could drop from the local world bosses, that sort of thing, so if dungeon running is totally not your thing at all, but you really like the way a dungeon armor set looks, you would have options.

I do not accept “prestige” as a reason to make anything exclusive, btw, because I find the entire concept of “prestige chasing” in a game to be a little sad.

TaCktiX.6729:

That’s an overall “structure of open world” problem that I haven’t sought to solve here. I have ideas, but none of them fit under the umbrella of “not penalizing the next player who shows up,” which is an ANet design cornerstone.

Well, you need to address it, because it’s the major sticking point against any Hard Mode system. With no solution to that, you may as well not have wasted your effort typing all those posts out.

Your proposal calls for content balanced around a single party. If the maps function as open world maps, they will be zerged by full map blobs, and the difficulty will be trivialised. If you balance the content around full map blobs (like Triple Trouble), then you create a whole different set of problems.

And if you abandon the ‘open world’ aspect in favour of 5-man instances, the whole thing becomes much, much harder to create and maintain.

Olvendred.3027:

Well, you need to address it, because it’s the major sticking point against any Hard Mode system. With no solution to that, you may as well not have wasted your effort typing all those posts out.

Your proposal calls for content balanced around a single party. If the maps function as open world maps, they will be zerged by full map blobs, and the difficulty will be trivialised. If you balance the content around full map blobs (like Triple Trouble), then you create a whole different set of problems.

And if you abandon the ‘open world’ aspect in favour of 5-man instances, the whole thing becomes much, much harder to create and maintain.

Quote from early on page 2:

The more I’m reading, the more I’m on board with the idea of limited instance content, or a reduced population shard (say 25 people in the zone, instead of 100+). If it’s done that way, HM could double as Guild content, since a bunch of guild parties could get together and vanquish a zone (or farm their favorite champions).

Ohoni.6057:

I would be fine with them adding a “hard mode,” but ONLY if there is no additional rewards attached to it. There can be zero-point achievements, and there can be titles attached to hard mode completions, but there should not be any bonus MF, any unique drops, any reward unlocks, or unique reward tracks. You should receive no better or additional loot for playing content on hard mode than you would on default.

If you wouldn’t want hard mode without having bonus candy for playing it, then there should not be a hard mode, full stop.

No, no, no. This mentality of yours is the reason why GW2 and other games are going downhill. I’m sick and tired of people who basically want to get maximum rewards for minimal effort. People who take the path of least resistance yet expect to get the same rewards as the people who are willing to put more effort into something.

If I play something on hard-mode, I expect to get rewarded accordingly. Either I want to get extra gold, or extra experience points, or extra AP or better loot. Otherwise there would be no point to playing hard mode. For example: Why take 2 hours to complete a hard-mode dungeon if you can get the same reward by completing the dungeon on easy-mode which will take you only 20 min?

If GW2 is going to get hard-mode, then it should indeed be significantly harder, so hard in fact that getting wiped will be more common than making it through alive. In return the awards you get should be unique to hard-more (for example unique skins), or significantly better than playing the game on easy-mode (for example a lot more exotic and precursor drops).

Personally I think GW2 needs a better risk-reward ratio, even when no hardmode is introduced. Rewarding longer dungeons with more gold was a good start, but not nearly at the rate I would like to see.

There would be a lot of possibilities to reward people for taking a risk. Anet could introduce a challenge mode where you basically lock your character out of being able to wear better-than-white gear. Scale players back -2 levels of the current zone and the designers wouldn’t even have to design new content for hardcore players. Rewards should be appropriate of course (e.g. a new t7-crafting material that drops from mobs which are killed by players in hardmode).

How is this HM going to solve the major “issue” that the megaservers tried to solve: populated maps. If everyone is in the HM versions the normal maps will be empty and leveling will be once again lonely, the exact thing the Megaservers tried to solve. So you want them to go one step backwards now?

maddoctor.2738:

How is this HM going to solve the major “issue” that the megaservers tried to solve: populated maps. If everyone is in the HM versions the normal maps will be empty and leveling will be once again lonely, the exact thing the Megaservers tried to solve. So you want them to go one step backwards now?

Megaserver can only solve such a problem if populations remain consistently high across the game. Even now, you cannot say that. For example, from my original post non-world boss zones are general ghost towns even with megaserver.

At some point, the fact that players are not being retained to populate zones needs to be addressed, and that requires new content that addresses the core complaints of the people leaving.

My suggestion is aimed at fixing several such core complaints: skewed risk/reward curve, lack of challenge in 95% of the game, and a lack of feeling accomplished.

TaCktiX.6729:

maddoctor.2738:

How is this HM going to solve the major “issue” that the megaservers tried to solve: populated maps. If everyone is in the HM versions the normal maps will be empty and leveling will be once again lonely, the exact thing the Megaservers tried to solve. So you want them to go one step backwards now?

Megaserver can only solve such a problem if populations remain consistently high across the game. Even now, you cannot say that. For example, from my original post non-world boss zones are general ghost towns even with megaserver.

At some point, the fact that players are not being retained to populate zones needs to be addressed, and that requires new content that addresses the core complaints of the people leaving.

My suggestion is aimed at fixing several such core complaints: skewed risk/reward curve, lack of challenge in 95% of the game, and a lack of feeling accomplished.

This “HM” will simply make leveling even worse, so anyone leveling alts or new players will find an empty world with nobody to play with.

A lot of zones have a healthy population active, even those that don’t have a World Boss or a Champ train. Even those who feel emptier have a lot more people than how they were before the megaserver was added. I even see people in zones that used to be dead zones before Megaserver (like Lornar’s Pass or Diessa Plateau for example).

No, no, no. This mentality of yours is the reason why GW2 and other games are going downhill. I’m sick and tired of people who basically want to get maximum rewards for minimal effort.

This has nothing do do with “minimal effort.” This is only about making sure that the effort applied is towards activities that the player most enjoys. This is not a single activity game, where effort expended can be measured by how much or how little of the task you play. This is a game with dozens of completely different activities, and different players enjoy different activities, and may put just as much effort into different activities to very different results.

The point is, when players can spend the majority of their time doing the things they enjoy, that is a win for everyone involved. And the more time players spend doing things that they don’t enjoy, because they feel “bribed” into it by the reward structure, the more everyone loses.

If I play something on hard-mode, I expect to get rewarded accordingly. Either I want to get extra gold, or extra experience points, or extra AP or better loot. Otherwise there would be no point to playing hard mode.

The point is that you enjoy playing on hard mode. If that statement is not true then don’t play on hard mode. Nobody will mind, and the only person to which that choice matters is yourself. Make the choice that makes you happier. People play hard mode all the time in single player games in which there is no bonus reward for doing so, beyond the satisfaction of having done so.

Why take 2 hours to complete a hard-mode dungeon if you can get the same reward by completing the dungeon on easy-mode which will take you only 20 min?

If the hard mode dungeon definitely does take two hours to complete each time, never any less even when the players have the mechanics down, then it could award up to six times as much loot as the twenty minute version, but if someone completed that version six times then they should receive just as much loot as someone who does the hard mode once, and there shouldn’t be anything that can never be earned trhoguh the easier version.

There are already various armor skins and whatnot that are tied to a single type of content. HM rewards would just be another skin(s) that would be sought by people that like challenges. If you dont like challenges (HM), then you wouldnt have the skin.

The following are rewards that only have one way of getting them:
-Weapons of the Sunless (Defeat Tequatl)
-Hero Armor (PvP reward track)
-Glorious Hero Armor (Top 250? on the ladder for PvP)
-Hero and Mistforged Hero Weapons (WvW tournament)
-Fractal Weapon Skins (Fractals)
-Mawdrey (huge chain of PvE requirements involving various JPs, Dry Top, LS2 Ep 3 and 4, Fractals, and several types of crafting)
-infusing ascended rings/backpacks (Fractals)
-Various boss specific exotics (world bosses)
-Permanent Achievement Points (all of them are assigned to 1 specific action and can’t be gained any other way, for example, you cant get PvP achievements by running dungeons)
-Static/Dynamic/Synergetic Spinal Blades (LS1 Battle for Lions Arch)

these are just the ones that i can think of, im sure there are more.

It is very hard to make hard and complex content with no tank/healer/dps structure in the game. Everything becomes the old stack on the boss and dps as fast as possible.

I really loved HM back in GW1.

Some basic ideas how I would treat the differences in GW2:

1) Instanced maps, like in story instances. Would prevent zerging.
2) To make it harder, all normal mobs could become veterans. Or you should be forced to get there naked. Or your stats are simply decreased. No down-mode. Endless possibilities to increase the difficulty.
3) Of course there could be other tasks than “kill all mobs in the area”. I wouldnt mind that either, because I really loved to clear every map in GW1, but of course Anet could get a bit more creative, too.
4) The rewards could vary from new skins and titles to a new Rare Collection featuring rewards from all HM maps and rewarding a special price for successfully vanquishing all maps in HM, like a precursor or something.

It would be a perfect feature for me, because its not THAT hard to implement (all maps are already there, only some mob adjustment, instancing and creating rewards are necessary) and it would be finally some fun to play end game content.

PS: Maybe this could be another game feature that uses agony (resistance) to make it harder. Would make fractals and ascended armor a bit more worthy, but of course you should be able to increase your agony resistance without doing fracs.

@Ohoni.

A player that plays better will more often than not spend more time in game. That means he will be more exposed to gem store offers and has possibly spent more money on the game already.
A good player is a player you want to keep – because the better he is the chances is he’ll invest more time and money into the game. The more invested he becomes the higher those chances.

And that’s fine/ If people don’t want to play that content then they don’t have to. It’s not a problem if some of the content doesn’t get done because people don’t want to do it. They do the content they prefer to do instead.

The fact that entire sections of the game die off and wither is not going to be good for it.
That’s why we saw the dungeon reward revamp. That’s why they did the world bosses reward revamp.

No matter how you want to ignore it the bottom line is this : if no good rewards are associated with certain content people will not do it.
New players who want to try it out will find that that particular content is dead and you will probably lose them since they can’t experience the whole game.

There’s a reason rewards are improved. There’s a reason we have rewards in the first place.

Why bother with rewards if they don’t matter? If people played just for the enjoyment of playing GW2 shouldn’t even have rewards. Right?

The problem you’re experiencing with the SW gear isn’t really a problem. That’s not even a difficult thing to achieve. And you can grind out your badges easily anyway.
Either way – there are more examples of this and it’s not a bad thing.
People being pushed out of their comfort zone allows them to grow as players.

Also item rarity does bring value in a MMO market.
Look at the really expensive items on the TP – the fewer they are the more expensive they become and the more money people are willing to pay for them.

Legendary items – while in theory anyone can have one – are still a grind to make ( unless you straight up pay for it).

Other rare exotics are also valuable precisely because they are rare. Scarcity creates value through the projection of human vanity.

fireflyry.7023:

Harper.4173:

People enjoy playing the game – true – but what they enjoy the most is obtaining rewards ( especially in an MMO).
However it is also relevant to note that rewards are valued by rarity ( especially in MMOs) – something everyone can have becomes worthless.
Ultimately the only way to give better rewards is to give unique ones.

Yes and no.

This game, like many MMO’s, has slowly become a work simulator. As such I agree. If the pays crap people will quit or find another job (game or aspect of said game) that pays better. If the rewards for doing things like dungeons are sub-par people will pass. In saying there is always 1-2 things to do that garner the most reward in just about every MMO I can think of and that’s where the mob goes…always…it’s MMO dogma.

In saying I agree that unique rewards are better but I’m of the opinion you should have thousands of unique reward options, not the handful that everyone chases after in this game. If you give players this freedom of reward structure all hierarchical restrictions become obsolete and the " 1,000,000 donkeys chasing the same carrot" is replaced by open and fun gameplay hand-in-hand with a non-materialistic community.

Theoretically a good idea.
Practically who’s going to make all those unique items?
The Anet that has been giving us so few new weapon and armor skins since release? I mean come on – if looks are your end-game I had expected at least 1 new armor set every 2 weeks or so.

It’s not like we’re not chasing skins.

Ohoni.6057:

I do not accept “prestige” as a reason to make anything exclusive, btw, because I find the entire concept of “prestige chasing” in a game to be a little sad.

And that’s where the problem is.

The whole concept of video games is that they fulfill an empowerment fantasy.

Power over what?

1)Over AI – which you mercilessly crush over and over again to your satisfaction.
2)Over other players :

- Through cosmetics that basically say "I have more gold " or “I am better” or “I spent more time in game”.
-Through pvp that allows players to stomp others in the field of battle.

If you think that people don’t want rarer gear just to feel better about themselves because mostly nobody else has it you’re dead wrong.

The concept is a core pillar of players’ empowerment fantasy and fulfilling that fantasy is basically what all developers aim to do.
Why? For profit!

Ohoni.6057:

The point is, when players can spend the majority of their time doing the things they enjoy, that is a win for everyone involved. And the more time players spend doing things that they don’t enjoy, because they feel “bribed” into it by the reward structure, the more everyone loses.

There’s a catch here.

Let’s say you build a game. It has 100% content.

You have a player that only enjoys one aspect of it – let’s say aspect A. Aspect A consists of roughly 40% of the game.

Now you can leave this player to keep playing aspect A for as long as he wants and for as long as he enjoys himself but sooner or later he will become bored.
Now your best bet is to bait him into trying out the rest 60% of the game because there’s a chance he might like or learn to like these other parts.
In this case you’ve increased your player retention rate and gotten the most bang for your buck.

This happened to me. Before the first WvW season and the “mysterious unique end-season reward” i would never have touched WvW even with a stick.

Doing that meta ( a clear bait) made me appreciate an aspect of the game which I still play today. For fun. Because doing it for a while made me understand and eventually like it.

If that reward bait wasn’t there I wouldn’t have bothered. I’m sure there are many others.