Guild Wars 2

Let’s face it, for anyone that has learned how to play this game the way it’s meant to be played PVE is a steamroll and dungeons are easy mode !

Now hear me out before you yell no,

Say you have 100% world completion or you have completed a certain dungeon or all dungeons for that matter.

For dungeons:
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to have a [Hard Mode] option ?
with an increased rewards table of course !

For PVE:
I know the world scales you down relevant to the level of the area, which is still steam rolling if you know how to play your character.

Now, wouldn’t it be great to be able to select [Hard Mode] and be down leveled even further and ramp up the rewards for you ?

Imagine [Hard Mode] World completion !
get 4 gifts of exploration instead of 2 or something extra, now that is awesome.

No. Nerf yourself instead of having the entire game give you a hardmode, create a hardmode for yourself.

Instead of equipping your best gear, equip gear 10-20 levels bellow your level. Use a weapon you’re unfamiliar with an such. There’s no need for the developers to alter droprates for a few completionists in their favor, it would be downright unfair because other (newer) players wouldn’t have the same privilege, or rather they would be unable to.

Nah. Instead spending time implementing a hardmode while there is still a bazillion bugs to be fixed in the game, just make a hardmode for yourself.

Need a Hard Mode → Go to WvW

TwiceDead.1963:

it would be downright unfair because other (newer) players wouldn’t have the same privilege, or rather they would be unable to.

Why, as a new player all you have to do is get completion to access hard mode, even now after 7 years in GW1 you still have to complete normal mode
to access hard mode. You clearly are just talking about equality w/o a clue as to what you’re talking about !

I also see you never played GW1 hard mode.
it is a valid more harder version of the game for those that have completed certain aspects of the game.

I’m not saying introduce it right now, more like in the near future.

Abigor.4952:

Need a Hard Mode -> Go to WvW

Zerg fest does not equal hard mode sorry.
also did I mention PVP at all NO I did NOT !

I’m talking PVE sir !

And NO I do NOT consider WvW a PVE environment !
any environment where there’s player versus player action is technically and literally Player Vs Player NOT PVE !

No there is no but possibility there !
Can you kill another player? yes, than that is a pvp environment period !
as enjoyable as that is mind you

Latinkuro.9420:

Abigor.4952:

Need a Hard Mode -> Go to WvW

Zerg fest does not equal hard mode sorry.
also did I mention PVP at all NO I did NOT !

I’m talking PVE sir !

And NO I do NOT consider WvW a PVE environment !
any environment where there’s player versus player action is technically and literally Player Vs Player NOT PVE !

No there is no but possibility there !
Can you kill another player? yes, than that is a pvp environment period !
as enjoyable as that is mind you

Chill=), you needed more difficulty I suggest WvW, you don’t want it ok np, find challenges for yourself then go alone on group events/ complete dungeons alone etc. You want more rewards for being able to complete harder challenges, what happens when hard mode will be easy for you, brutal mode? impossible? and then everyone will complain that they can’t complete certain dungeons because they are too difficult…

want harder dungeons? get naked, find some pugs. get in.

Saulius.8430:

want harder dungeons? get naked, find some pugs. get in.

get kicked, silently weep and complain about the community in the forums.

Hard Mode in the open world could be tricky to implement because of a variety of factors. For one, how can one tell if one player has activated hard mode while those surrounding that player do not? If anything, the hard mode-enabled player could be carried around by those who do not have hard mode enabled.

Then again, I suppose you could make Hard Mode-only overflow servers for each zone. It might work that way. The surrounding events would have to be harder and mostly zerg-proof.

Hard Mode in dungeon content might be easier to implement since those areas are mostly controlled in a certain segments of the world. In that case, I would imagine that Hard Mode version of those dungeons might award Ascended gear instead of Exotics. It could work that way.

Forget what twice dead is mumbling, he don´t understand at all your sugestion.

The simples problem with hard mode is. MORE INSTANCES. Every map is a big instance in one server. The moment you need to make new instances it will make more use of machine resource, net code, net band, etc… More costs to ANET and the need of more incoming.

For a P2P without sub work it´s necessary a minimum use of resources so if it has a low incoming just cut superfluous costs and the life continues. If they have high incoming YAY! new ping pong board…

A hard mode with a increased chance of drops can be good for people who played GW1 and understand how it works (no its not necessary to drop ascended ou uberpowerful +10000000000000 all stats) but it can be something without resources to put on.

evolverzilla.2359:

Forget what twice dead is mumbling, he don´t understand at all your sugestion.

On the contrary, you don’t understand what I’m saying.

At the moment, why not just get some less than level appropriate gear (say, 7 levels less), and then do stuff? That’s what I tend to do.

However, I agree that they need to make scaling harsher, and events in higher levels harder.

I saw these hard mode/challenge mode ideas kill instances in other MMOs so no thank you. We just need a few more dungeons with a little more difficulty. Here’s the thing, when you get good enough to steamroll hardmode then what do we suggest for next? Epic mode? There is a point of no vertical progression.

Raine Akrune.8416:

I saw these hard mode/challenge mode ideas kill instances in other MMOs so no thank you. We just need a few more dungeons with a little more difficulty. Here’s the thing, when you get good enough to steamroll hardmode then what do we suggest for next? Epic mode? There is a point of no vertical progression.

How do they kill instances? And how is having MORE people in the world a bad thing?

In GW, the Hard Mode was created by increasing mob level, giving them extra skills ect.

Maybe a toggle that makes your effective level lower, slightly increases cooldowns, reduced endurance rate, reduced armour, constant health degen in combat, +50% XP, Karma and coin ect.

That would make it exclusive to the player without affecting others.

@Twice dead
What you are saying is, for people to feel acomplishment they must act against the logic and give nothing in return except do something against of logic.

Yeah, very clever.

And if ANY TIME you ever played GW, you will know something about what HARD MODE is for a GW1 player, instead of just mumbling that people must act like idiots just to feel acomplishment.

Hard mode is not about powerful itens, its more about better rewards. GW1 has a cap for everything so you never have something better just because you do something harder, it´s more getting a better chance to get a new sprite or a perfect rune or a rare polymock piece.

So before telling something more just know what people are talking about instead telling them to shut off.

And in GW1 newer players have to complete 100% of something to enable hard mode, so it was never a problem for anyone.

@Thedaybish
For any moment you try to understand the logic it wil require? The server machine will have to compute not only normal players nerfs or buffs, monster damage, monster getting damaged, degens, regens. You need to create all of this again but for hard mode players. Even using the same instance they will have to create 2 different process for every player if they change constantly it will be hell to the system. And imagine how many people can bug because the system cannot reset their status because some unexplainable event.

So if you use the same instance you have to double ONE machine resource and expect lots of bugs (and lots of human resources to solve them) because kitten happens all time or make separate instances and double the machines, the net band…

In GW1 was easy to do that because an instance use less resources the more time the gamer played them. So it was easy to put more instances on a same machine. But in GW2 monsters respawn all time, events occurring and restarting all time the instance will use 99% of the resources dedicated to her almost all the time if it´s full. And it´s not a real world where you can just copy and paste some documents and put them on a less used disk because the time to make this work in a instance + necessity will just make everything worse. Imagine frostgorge sound, it´s almost empty all time, they put in a less demand server, them come claw and it comes full, imagine the time to copy all the instance to a more demand server. Impossible.

So the only way to implement a hard mode is for dungeons only without turn this a real money sinker. Open world hard mode will always be a resource devouring monster.

evolverzilla.2359:

@Twice dead
What you are saying is, for people to feel acomplishment they must act against the logic and give nothing in return except do something against of logic.

Yeah, very clever.

And if ANY TIME you ever played GW, you will know something about what HARD MODE is for a GW1 player, instead of just mumbling that people must act like idiots just to feel acomplishment.

Hard mode is not about powerful itens, its more about better rewards. GW1 has a cap for everything so you never have something better just because you do something harder, it´s more getting a better chance to get a new sprite or a perfect rune or a rare polymock piece.

So before telling something more just know what people are talking about instead telling them to shut off.

And in GW1 newer players have to complete 100% of something to enable hard mode, so it was never a problem for anyone.

You just proved yourself wrong. You didn’t understand.

What I am saying is Hard Mode is unnecessary to give players who have already accomplished a lot even easier access to good content. It makes the game economy totally imbalanced. We would start seeing level 1’s running around with rare sets sold for 10 gold had this persisted a year (although level 1 rare’s doesn’t exist as far as I know). This is not Guild Wars 1, deal with it.

If you want a tougher more challenging experience, i’m telling you to make your own challenges instead of having the developers create a mode for a certain few people.

Players acting like idiots is what you regard a person giving himself a challenge? So what? If it’s fun for them and they don’t ruin for other people what’s the problem?

I was not speaking of getting BETTER items, I was speaking of getting MORE of the better stuff. If you want to get better stuff, purchase a magic find booster for 150 gems in the store, or get one from a black lion chest or something of the like.

So is this topic on a hard mode specifically for the challenge or for the increase in drop rate for easier access to the good stuff? If it’s for the challenge BY ALL MEANS by my guest! You don’t need hard mode for a challenge. If it’s for more rewards, then i’m not for it.

Also I’m not telling anyone to shut off, so far I’ve remained rather civil unlike my usual standards. Like you, I am expressing my opinion without claiming that you are attacking people.

Having a Hard Mode could extend the life of the game and offer players more of an end game.

The only real option for a Hard Mode would include instanced areas. The open world would require far too much coding to figure out how to have both Hard Mode and Normal Mode players in it at the same time.

So….if we’re talking ONLY about instanced areas….that means dungeons, and possibly your personal storyline. For now, let’s limit this little experiment to Dungeons.

Dungeons could EASILY have a Hard Mode added to them. One option would be to change them all to lvl 80 dungeons. Everything would scale in difficulty. If an enemy in a lvl 20 dungeon is level 24, that same enemy in the lvl 80, Hard Mode version, would now be level 96. The problem with this would be the higher level dungeons, specifically Arah. It is already a lvl 80 dungeon.

A better option would be to use the, currently existing, “down-leveling” technology to “up-level” you and the dungeon. In order for it to be Hard Mode, you and the Dungeon could be “up-leveled” differently. Let’s use the example above again and see how it could affect the lvl 20 and lvl 80 dungeons.

Let’s assume that Hard Mode means that the level required to enter goes up by 50%. That would mean the previous lvl 20 dungeon becomes a lvl 30 dungeon and the lvl 80 dungeon becomes a lvl 120 dungeon. Now to truly make it Hard Mode, while YOUR level to enter the dungeon goes up by 50%….the level of the enemies inside goes up by 60-75%.

Other assumptions:
1. Hard Mode could only be entered after all paths of all dungeons have been completed.
2. Rewards would scale according to the difficulty at which the dungeon was increased. (We still run into an issue with Arah, because now if the lvl to enter is 120, items that drop would have to be lvl 120.)
3. Fractals of the Mist would need to be handled slightly differently as it already scales in difficulty as you play through it. (This COULD be a way for ANet to test out the mechanics of an ever increasing dungeon difficulty without modifying the current dungeons)

I have faith in ArenaNet. They added Hard Mode to GW1 and extended its life by doing so. With Hard Mode would come new achievements. With new content would come new areas for Hard Mode.

I can’t believe this isn’t something they already have in their “back pocket”. It isn’t needed yet though.

Once ANet develops a proper “dungeon finder” or “LFG” tool for us to use, my guess is that Hard Mode won’t be far behind.

Have faith. Be patient. Enjoy the game. (You realize this is a game….right?)

Magic Find Gear = Hard Mode. Increased challenge + rewards. I thought this was common knowledge?

@Twicedead
And how someone will be level 1 with 100% completion? Please can you explain it to me? Even to complete some dungeons you have some level cap to play it in a normal mode without be killed by one shot, i can´t even imagine how it will work to play as LV1 complete normal and hard as LV1… or you have a real good friends to put you in a 20 slot bag or kill every single mob in the dungeon in normal and hard, just for you to get rare itens at level 1…

Sorry you are telling nothing with sense to me.

People making stupid things like confronting a boss naked in a dungeon inf front other players to receive nothing is real stupid, it´s not acomplishment. Is like those world records some people made like stay in a poll fulled with kitten for a month or something like that.

And give a player something more to do when we have nothing more is a good way to keep people playing but it can be a dubious concept for some people and I will not waste more of mi time trying to make anyone understand my point of view.

Bye.

evolverzilla.2359:

@Twicedead
And how someone will be level 1 with 100% completion? Please can you explain it to me? Even to complete some dungeons you have some level cap to play it in a normal mode without be killed by one shot, i can´t even imagine how it will work to play as LV1 complete normal and hard as LV1… or you have a real good friends to put you in a 20 slot bag or kill every single mob in the dungeon in normal and hard, just for you to get rare itens at level 1…

Sorry you are telling nothing with sense to me.

People making stupid things like confronting a boss naked in a dungeon inf front other players to receive nothing is real stupid, it´s not acomplishment. Is like those world records some people made like stay in a poll fulled with kitten for a month or something like that.

And give a player something more to do when we have nothing more is a good way to keep people playing but it can be a dubious concept for some people and I will not waste more of mi time trying to make anyone understand my point of view.

Bye.

You didn’t get my point. o_o

People have more than one character, and can easily share gear between them. Get one character to 100% completion, use him/her as a moneymaker then the rest of the characters will be handheld through the rest of the game since level 1. That’s how.

Again i’ll ask are we doing this for the challenge or for the rewards? Turning this game to hard mode won’t necessarily make it any harder whatsoever since the AI in this game isn’t exactly smart, more often than not it’s easily countered, that’s part the reason the game is so kittening easy.

I like your arrogance by the way, sorry for wasting your precious time even though you yourself made the choice to read my posts… If they are such a waste of time, why bother?

TwiceDead.1963:

People have more than one character, and can easily share gear between them. Get one character to 100% completion, use him/her as a moneymaker then the rest of the characters will be handheld through the rest of the game since level 1. That’s how.

Again i’ll ask are we doing this for the challenge or for the rewards? Turning this game to hard mode won’t necessarily make it any harder whatsoever since the AI in this game isn’t exactly smart, more often than not it’s easily countered, that’s part the reason the game is so kittening easy.

Isn’t that every game ever though? I mean, even now, you can provide armour for your lower level characters. Hard Mode wouldn’t change that.

As for the AI, yeah, it’s better than a lot of games (mobs actually try to avoid AoE, and will attack those that are the biggest threat), but encounter mechanics could be improved.

That being said, a toggle that adds harsher conditions on the player for increased rewards (constant health degen in combat, reduced Endurance regen, reduced buff duration, increased debuff duration harsher scaling, reduced armour, reduced damage, increased cooldowns [things that can’t be controlled by the player]) for increased rewards (exp, Karma, coin, constant MF)

Surely something like that would be reasonable?

I liked hard mode in GW 1. It could be easy to implement by simply having the game prompt you to choose a difficulty from a main hub then load you in that particular server instance. Hard or Normal. Scaling does add a modicum of difficulty but I think hard mode goes beyond that.

I can’t recall if hard mode was available after map completion or if it was after your story was complete and you ascended? I do remember farming hard mode on my ele an w though. it was quite fun.

I noticed someone mention resources due to multiple instances for a zone? If you added hard mode with the current set up there would be only two instances. Normal and Hard. In GW1, which was free, every player went into their own instance ever time they left a hub. Not sure which would pertain to a bigger drain on resources. It worked on the free model in GW1 i dont see why it cant work here.

It can’t be for the loot as world drops currently scale to up to your level regardless of where you are roaming.

It seems many posters here don’t get the concept of Hard mode with reference to GW1

Hard mode can be implemented in this game regardles sof a persistent world.

Each server can be given 2 channels.

1 = normal
2 = Hard (everything is level 80+)

Once you are level 80 you can choose to enter hard mode channel 2 for harder fights, better rewards drops etc.

GW1 had hard so I see no reason why GW2 cant create a form of it …even using above said idea/method.

There are 3 ways of implementing Hard Mode as I see it, two of which are fairly valid options without increasing the upkeep costs of the server:

1) Nerf the player in normal instances to make the opponents feel harder, give him bonus to MF, EXP, Karma (Like +50% each or something.)
-0.75x to toughness, vitality and power for example
-Require the mob to target the player or his party (which is restricted to HM) on its death for it to drop loot.

2) Have HM instances of each map for each server. Or have HM instances as overflow’s between every server. Make mobs more difficult. This will increase the upkeep costs, as there are more instances.

3) Make the HM mode a classic GW1 style’d mode, where the instances are created for every player/team. As it was in GW1. (I believe the players hosted those instances?) This will also allow for adding Vanquish achievements. Oh, and let the dead mobs stay dead. Scale the biggest and baddest bosses down a bit, so they are soloable in this mode. Buff regular mobs to make it “HM” worthy.

@TwiceDead
You’re making very little sense to me, sorry. Could you explain, in detail, just how is HM a bad thing? And what do you think HM means?
And please, don’t claim you could substitute actual content with player generated content in game that doesn’t really support player generated content. If that was enjoyable for the community, there wouldn’t be any other map than lions arch where people would just “/me enters a dungeon” “/me fights a boss monster” “/me wins barely” “/me finds loot” “/me sells loot” “/me buys better gear” all day long. This isn’t quite that kind of role playing.

Just wear all MF gear then.

I had made a post a fortnight ago outlining in detail suggestion for a self adjustable level downscaler to voluntarily increase difficulty for the player in return for a magic find bonus (but with restrictions in presence of ‘normal’ participants). But unfortunately due to the short attention spans of the typical forum dweller, no one cared to actually read that post and contribute. But at least the HM idea isn’t entirely lost here.

Upscaling mobs for a separate HM server won’t work for the simple reason of segregating the community even further (looks at fractals and their level design; LFG fotm lv34 anyone?). Downscaling yourself makes more sense although you’ll have to work a little harder to earn that gold contribution considering your weaken state compared to a normal moder.