Hard Mode suggestions for everyone from everyone :)

[Artemis.8034]

Take up the ironman challenge , no mounts no buffs no food no potions no boosters no ascended gear or legendary use only the gear you get while leveling, and drops along the way, level all the way to 80 like that.

[Krzysztof.5973]

Making this game harder and forcing its playerbase to become better is toxic and elitist (or so I've heard) 🙃

[Fuchslein.8639]

4 hours ago, Artemis.8034 said:

Take up the ironman challenge , no mounts no buffs no food no potions no boosters no ascended gear or legendary use only the gear you get while leveling, and drops along the way, level all the way to 80 like that.

This is considered a challenge? This is how i leveld my first char 2 weeks and many more chars before pov. Minus the fact that i bough the lvl35 culture-gear and level with this till 80, so i can have more mats. 

However, leveling should not really be a challenge in my eyes.

And btw you cant use asc or legy to lvl your'e char ^^".

---

I have often made challenges for myself. E.g. M.a.m.a. solo with my ele. Or dungeons like arah or caudecus, with a friend without skipps and other exploits.

I like to challenge myself, but I don't think that something like that would go down well in gw2. For most here in the forum even dodging at strikes is too difficult of a mechanic.  

 

Edited December 20, 2021 by Fuchslein.8639

[moony.5780]

Another suggestion \(^_^)/

 

* Bonus tasks during events. Once someone finished the bonus task, everyone participating in the event gets credit for it (whatever it my be, i leave reward balancing to the developer). Would be nice if a brainless zerg could not finish them, but it need some thinking or teamwork. Because otherwise everyone would be forced by the commander do to difficult stuff, they don't like.

+ Noboby is left out

+ it's optional, so there should not be any toxic guys shouting around "Nooooobs" like it happen nowadays if an event fails.

- friends where one person is really good and the other is new, might split up during that time.

[Sobx.1758]

6 hours ago, Artemis.8034 said:

Take up the ironman challenge , no mounts no buffs no food no potions no boosters no ascended gear or legendary use only the gear you get while leveling, and drops along the way, level all the way to 80 like that.

...so something many people did (and will do) when they've started the game? 😅

Edited December 20, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Vayne.8563]

I'm glad you're enthusiastic about hard core content, but the playerbase as a whole probably isn't. And there are already hard core projects in the works for hard core players. Right now the devs are on Christmas break, followed by the lead up to the release of the next expansion. In that expansion they'll have challenge mode for strike missions.  Beyond that I'm pretty sure we'll see another story of the living world.

 

There aren't enough hard core players in this game by percentage, in my opinion, to justify fielding brand new ideas when they can't even continue to make raids due to lack of interest.  At the end of the day it looks like strikes are replacing raids. The odds of more hard core content coming out is pretty small at this time.\

Edit: Fortunately this thread contains a lot of ways to make your own game more hardcore without using developer time and resources.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Vayne.8563

[Rasimir.6239]

11 minutes ago, moony.5780 said:

Bonus tasks during events

We actually have something like that in Bjora Marches with the Trials of Koda challenges. Random (?) events spawn bonus challenges, and if those succeed, an additional bonus event will spawn. There even are mastery points attached to this (that I still haven't got, but who cares, I'm long capped on mastery anyway 😉 ).

 

In theory I like this a lot, and it's often fun to try and do the challenge. Unfortunately it all goes down the drain (like so many other ideas that could make open world a lot more interesting) once you get a couple of players involved that feel the need to optimize their gameplay. Suddenly you have people purposefully failing the challenge because they want a different one to spawn a few seconds faster, or because it interferes with their fast farming routine, or whatever other metagame they're playing on to p of my open world 😞 .

 

That's actually the biggest problem I find with a lot of ideas that are meant to make the game more interesting and/or challenging: There is a considerable number of people among the game's population that concentrate not on playing the game itself, but rather on "gaming the system" to gain what they consider optimized rewards. We've seen that several times during the game's lifetime, be it event zergs in Cursed Shore that went balistic if people didn't stick to their rotation of which events to do/fail at what point, or the infamous Queensdale champ train, to name only two of the biggest offenders.

 

GW2 is built on the idea of people enjoying the gameplay and cooperating with other players they encounter. Trying to keep that spirit of cooperation while offering challenge that won't be cheesed by the min-maxers that put gaming the system above playing the game is a really tricky business. From my point of view, ANet is doing a great job so far, but it really isn't an easy job they have here.

[Antycypator.9874]

16 hours ago, Beorn Raukar.4328 said:

How about using the downscaling system already in game.

Difficulty level should not come with damage. Increasing incoming damage isn't HARD MODE, it's unfair and annoying. Decreasing our damage by debuffs makes things slower.

 

After 5 years in GW2 I noticed that difficulty level is simply made by adding mechanics to the encounter. This is the reason Raids are more challenging than dungeons or fractals, because sometimes people have to something more than spamming skills (Sabetha, Deimos, Dhumm, Qadim and more).

A good example of difficulty level is Drizzlewood Coast — mobs can block, shadowstep to a player, stun/daze, throw some blindness, weakness, chill, cripple. This is more powerful than you think.

In Dragonfall, Shadow Monks can support their allies — it's also a good thing for difficulty. You would have to first kill the support mob (just like Dredge Protectors in Molten Boss fractal).

[moony.5780]

I think raids are failing hard, simply because of the number of player you need. If it was a 5 player instance it would be more successful like fractals. Also if it was scalable like fractals. And strikes are exactly the same.

Ometimes it's harder to find 9 player you like and want to spend hours together with...to optimise your gameplay, than actually doing the raids. It's also getting really loud an noisy with 10 player in discord or TS. And it just need 1 person to ruin the mood.

 

Gw2 is a brilliant open world game. And I think that's what most player do here (no matter if they have 2k dps or 35k). Gw2 at start supported the idea of high and low lvl player to play together by downscaling and it was a huge success. So I think that strategy need to be kept also for 80 areas. I mean that all player can play together while both have fun.

 

That's why....hardmode suggestions for everyone from everyone. 

Edited December 20, 2021 by moony.5780

[Sobx.1758]

11 minutes ago, moony.5780 said:

Ometimes it's harder to find 9 player you like and want to spend hours together with...to optimise your gameplay, than actually doing the raids. It's also getting really loud an noisy with 10 player in discord or TS. And it just need 1 person to ruin the mood.

Finding 9 players you like is hard, but the same thing doesn't apply for unspecified hardmode in OW with many more players because... Well, why?

Discord/ts is far from needed to play raids. If you want to stay on discord anyways and somehow people scream over each other (who? why?), then introduce them to the concept of using push-to-talk 😄 It really seems like you're forcefully trying to find create issues for yourself here.

11 minutes ago, moony.5780 said:

That's why....hardmode suggestions for everyone from everyone. 

Or just scale the game's difficulty properly and let the overall playerbase improve, which is vastly easier to do than anything proposed in this thread, while also making more sense and being more beneficial to the overal health/longevity of the mmorpg.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[moony.5780]

45 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Finding 9 players you like is hard, but the same thing doesn't apply for unspecified hardmode in OW with many more players because... Well, why?

Discord/ts is far from needed to play raids. If you want to stay on discord anyways and somehow people scream over each other (who? why?), then introduce them to the concept of using push-to-talk 😄 It really seems like you're forcefully trying to find create issues for yourself here.

Or just scale the game's difficulty properly and let the overall playerbase improve, which is vastly easier to do than anything proposed in this thread, while also making more sense and being more beneficial to the overal health/longevity of the mmorpg.

I'm courious about everybody's suggestions :) I would lie if I would say I don't like my own ideas, but I want everyone to share any idea.

 

And...I agree 100% with the rest of what you said ;)

Any fast suggestion without detailed thinking and developing for weeks or months will end in a disaster, so I assume most (and ofc my own suggestions) are not here to be blindly taken 100% as they are written. But they give good hints about what could be possible, and that's why I hope there will be more ideas :) Especially from anyone and any perspective, because we all play and love the same game.

Edited December 20, 2021 by moony.5780

[Sobx.1758]

18 minutes ago, moony.5780 said:

I'm courious about everybody's suggestions 🙂 I would lie if I would say I don't like my own ideas, but I want everyone to share any idea.

 

And...I agree 100% with the rest of what you said 😉

Any fast suggestion without detailed thinking and developing for weeks or months will end in a disaster, so I assume most (and ofc my own suggestions) are not here to be blindly taken 100% as they are written. But they give good hints about what could be possible, and that's why I hope there will be more ideas 🙂 Especially from anyone and any perspective, because we all play and love the same game.

Come on, that's just a dodge disguised as some vague general positivity that responds to nothing what you've quoted 😄  

So again: Finding 9 players you like is hard, but the same thing doesn't apply for unspecified hardmode in OW with many more players because... Well, why?

And why do we need some opt-in, shared (as in mixed between the players at the same time/area) hard-mode instead of gradually increasing difficulty to improve the general playerbase?

[moony.5780]

13 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Come on, that's just a dodge disguised as some vague general positivity that responds to nothing what you've quoted 😄  

So again: Finding 9 players you like is hard, but the same thing doesn't apply for unspecified hardmode in OW with many more players because... Well, why?

And why do we need some opt-in, shared (as in mixed between the players at the same time/area) hard-mode instead of gradually increasing difficulty to improve the general playerbase?

I just hate rushing in conclusions and I have a very flexible personality. I'm usually happy when others are....And I often think of what others say and change my mind :).....That's just who I am and I like it.

 

But if u want a discussion here it is :p

 

I really think it's harder to find 9 player for a content that takes 5-30 hours per week than an open world event u just randomly happen to see. Because for raids I want friendly people who just want to take it easy and slow and make experiments on builds. An OW event takes 2 min and maximum 1hour. And usually it goes without real communication, so there might be unfriendly people but nobody will ever notice.

 

About the 2nd thing you said....I think we need both, and I personally would be happy about both. But if u do everything too hard without the option to make it easy, people will stop playing because that's simply their limit of skills. They can't improve anymore because of time, disability or any other reason, which is totally ok. 

[moony.5780]

Oh one thing....OW usually scales with the amount of player in the event...instances don't. So u can solo it or play it with any amount of player.

[joneirikb.7506]

To those responding about the Ironman challenge, and that it's the same as leveling first character. I think the poster forgot to mention that "Ironman" is supposed to be that if your character die even once, you delete it and start anew.

About the idea/concept/suggestion about ramping up OW difficulty, so it actually scales upward and gets harder the further into the game you get (Like a normal video game). I personally would prefer and appreciate this, but it's been pretty clear from the player-base in the past that the majority doesn't want this, they prefer OW Tyria the way it is. So ANet are not going to do anything about this (for good and bad).

Personally I've always enjoyed free-form content that scale to the number of players, and always really disliked the rigid frames set around instanced content like dungeons, fractals etc. The 5 player limits, the set length/duration, the generally set path to follow. It feels more like a amusement park ride than anything "When you get 10 people, you can all sit down in each your 2 person wagon, and we'll start the ride."

Some of my favourite content in the game are the mini-dungeons, open world dungeon-like areas that are generally meant to be played 2-3 players, but possible to solo if you want to. And the most fun I've had with dungeons is usually trying to beat them with 1-3 players.

On the whole, I just wish the game had a difficulty slider of some sort. So people could find their own level, or change it when they run across something too hard or too easy. I fully expect a lot of the player base to just put it on the easiest setting and auto attack everything. Personally I enjoy starting on the lowest difficulty in games, and beat it and try the next difficulty setting until I hit my wall, that's my main feeling of progression in games.

/rant

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, moony.5780 said:

I really think it's harder to find 9 player for a content that takes 5-30 hours per week than an open world event u just randomly happen to see. Because for raids I want friendly people who just want to take it easy and slow and make experiments on builds. An OW event takes 2 min and maximum 1hour. And usually it goes without real communication, so there might be unfriendly people but nobody will ever notice.

Maybe join a guild?

[moony.5780]

16 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Maybe join a guild?

Not every guild can raid, because 10 player is a really high number for something that need huge preparation and coordination.

There are huge guilds, but they r definitely less fun. Especially while beeing only silent when 1 person only give commands. And in huge guilds the chance to meet people you don't like is much higher, than in a small guild which only contain real friends. And finding the right guild can take even years....

 

But you took my words from a discussion...So im wondering... you think it's easier to fill all type of hard content easier with guildmates than with random player in open world?

 

Edited December 20, 2021 by moony.5780

[Fuchslein.8639]

But in a "huge" guild its also easyer to find people who you like and with which you can gater experience. At least that is my experience regarding raids.

By the way, I personally think that instanced content would probably run better. With the prerequisite that Anet does not abandon it again after a few months and starts something new. Which will not happen, as the past has shown.

The only thing that is consistent with Anet, is the story. And by that I only mean that it is continued and not that it has a consistent story-line.

For the OW I personally can not think of anything that could be exploited. Including all your suggestions, all either invite to leech, troll and systematically exclude many hardcore casuals. And that's simply not what the OW is for.
For such things there is instanced content that exists, but is not necessary. Even if there will of course be the few voices that are pissed off because they are excluded from a few rewards. But there will always be those. I myself am often not happy about what wvw'ler get everything so easyly by just playing what they like, for which I myself have to do super nasty achievements in PVE.

It is simply not possible to make everyone happy.

But you just have to consider what kind of game gw2 is. Gw2 is not Gw1. Gw1 is still online, if you like the challenge, you can still play it. No one is stopping you.

And yes, I would like more challenging content. And by challenge I don't just mean more hp, or mechanic spam. And before anet decides to add any challenge stuff to the OW, I personally would rather they use the resources for the challenge content that already exists(like they do atm with strikes, where hopefully they stick to it a little longer) instead of starting something new and experimenting.

 

Edited December 20, 2021 by Fuchslein.8639

[Blude.6812]

On 12/17/2021 at 5:16 AM, moony.5780 said:

Thanks for the replies 🙂 they are really intresting suggestions !

I keep challanging myself a lot and i have a lot of ideas 😄 but some r new and i will try it out!

 

But actually i was intending to make very new ideas that are not possible in the game yet. Things that still need to be developed.

 

At least be honest and say 'Things that still need to developed for me'.  And there are a lot of ways to make changes to your character to the make the game harder for yourself. And again if you can't find any more ways of making the game more difficult for yourself, I would suggest it's time for a break or even retire the game.

[moony.5780]

1 hour ago, Blude.6812 said:

At least be honest and say 'Things that still need to developed for me'.  And there are a lot of ways to make changes to your character to the make the game harder for yourself. And again if you can't find any more ways of making the game more difficult for yourself, I would suggest it's time for a break or even retire the game.

Please feel free to make a suggestion you would like. Even one that I will not like even xD

I want a collection of everyone suggestions. Not more not less...if you don't believe me then it's your thing. But that doesn't mean I'm a liar.

Edited December 20, 2021 by moony.5780

[moony.5780]

1 hour ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

But in a "huge" guild its also easyer to find people who you like and with which you can gater experience. At least that is my experience regarding raids.

By the way, I personally think that instanced content would probably run better. With the prerequisite that Anet does not abandon it again after a few months and starts something new. Which will not happen, as the past has shown.

The only thing that is consistent with Anet, is the story. And by that I only mean that it is continued and not that it has a consistent story-line.

For the OW I personally can not think of anything that could be exploited. Including all your suggestions, all either invite to leech, troll and systematically exclude many hardcore casuals. And that's simply not what the OW is for.
For such things there is instanced content that exists, but is not necessary. Even if there will of course be the few voices that are pissed off because they are excluded from a few rewards. But there will always be those. I myself am often not happy about what wvw'ler get everything so easyly by just playing what they like, for which I myself have to do super nasty achievements in PVE.

It is simply not possible to make everyone happy.

But you just have to consider what kind of game gw2 is. Gw2 is not Gw1. Gw1 is still online, if you like the challenge, you can still play it. No one is stopping you.

And yes, I would like more challenging content. And by challenge I don't just mean more hp, or mechanic spam. And before anet decides to add any challenge stuff to the OW, I personally would rather they use the resources for the challenge content that already exists(like they do atm with strikes, where hopefully they stick to it a little longer) instead of starting something new and experimenting.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts:) 

 

[moony.5780]

Maybe some may misunderstand me...so here its clear.

 

Please write any suggestion or concerns and comments about suggestions. 

 

I'm happy with the game as it is, and I have a lot of ways to have fun for at least 5 more years without new content with my current guild. 

All I want are hardmode suggestions from everyone for everyone. If some suggestions are bad, fair enough just comment your concerns. Let's have a healthy and polite discussion about the topic :) if u have off-topic things u want to tell me, feel free to PM me \(^_^)/

[Sobx.1758]

On 12/20/2021 at 1:22 PM, moony.5780 said:

I really think it's harder to find 9 player for a content that takes 5-30 hours per week than an open world event u just randomly happen to see. Because for raids I want friendly people who just want to take it easy and slow and make experiments on builds. An OW event takes 2 min and maximum 1hour. And usually it goes without real communication, so there might be unfriendly people but nobody will ever notice.

On one hand, understandable. On the other though... I was under the impression we're not just talking about any current events, but specifically about the hypothetical "hard mode". One of your ideas even talks about having some bonus tasks, but if they don't need any cooperation then they'll still just end up being nothing more than zerg-fest like the current ones. If they'd be suitable for a single player to complete them for the whole group, then the chances are that not only it wouldn't be hard after all, but also it would become doubtful you'll manage to complete it by yourself, since there will be other players completing it instead (whatever that hypothetical "it", as a bonus task, would be).

Quote

About the 2nd thing you said....I think we need both, and I personally would be happy about both. But if u do everything too hard without the option to make it easy, people will stop playing because that's simply their limit of skills. They can't improve anymore because of time, disability or any other reason, which is totally ok. 

Ok and that's why I think the better idea would be having properly ramping up OW content (it's already harder in the expansions than it was in core, which is a good thing imo) with instances pushing it further. Instances (maybe "scalable", although I disagree about all of them needing to scale, I have no problem with content that's made for a specific number of players that are set to actually cooperate) with various CMs to have actual "hard modes".

I'm not sure why we need some weird shared OW environment with separate difficulty levels for each individual player and just blindly throwing ideas without considering whether or not they're even doable (or if they'll serve their intended purpose) seems pointless to me. Hence the "need to discuss", so all of these posts and ideas aren't really just empty words thrown into the void. 😉  

On 12/20/2021 at 1:23 PM, moony.5780 said:

Oh one thing....OW usually scales with the amount of player in the event...instances don't. So u can solo it or play it with any amount of player.

They can be made "scalable", like -for example- they did with drms. And really, if scaling instances (something we already have in the game) is somehow a problem, then anything mentioned in this thread is by default an unsolvable obstacle in itself.

Also you have even less control about who (and how many of them) you're playing with in open world: have a bunch of people afk around and the event scales up while you're fighting alone. I think the https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Order_of_Shadows_Seal "double event" is a good example for how scaling can easly screw up someone in OW, where you do the first event with people afking around [or not even afking, just doing anything else without directly contributing to the event], which scales it for you, while you always receive 1 token for event completion anyways and if people leave the area for the subsequent event, you gain lowest amount of tokens possible for much more work during the first event. For any other scalable event, it's just the obvious: more people around, even if not directly participating -> event scales up for you -> you still don't get help from anyone. I'm not sure how you'd want to balance anything around that and with some vague "opt-in OW hard mode" on top of it.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Sobx.1758
added 4 last words of the post

[Sobx.1758]

4 hours ago, moony.5780 said:

Not every guild can raid, because 10 player is a really high number for something that need huge preparation and coordination.

There are huge guilds, but they r definitely less fun. Especially while beeing only silent when 1 person only give commands. And in huge guilds the chance to meet people you don't like is much higher, than in a small guild which only contain real friends. And finding the right guild can take even years....

...years to find the right guild? You're not marrying it, you're just finding groups of people that want to do similar content. There's easly more "layed back" guilds in this game than you'd apparently like to admit. 😉 

And you have 5 slots for a reason. Keep one "with your few close friends only" and use the other 4 slots according to what you want to do.

 

btw notice how you try to make problems out of opposing things: first you say "10 players on discord/ts is getting really loud and noisy"... and now you're saying that "huge guilds are less fun, especially while being silent with 1 person giving commands". I mean... if you're so set on creating problems for yourself then you'll never find what you're looking for. IF you finally decide what you're looking for in the first place. (big guilds with people raiding -training or not- aren't some strict military drills btw, people are allowed to talk about whatever they want. And more often than not you don't even need to be on voice comms if you don't want to)

Edited December 20, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[kharmin.7683]

4 hours ago, moony.5780 said:

Not every guild can raid, because 10 player is a really high number for something that need huge preparation and coordination.

There are huge guilds, but they r definitely less fun. Especially while beeing only silent when 1 person only give commands. And in huge guilds the chance to meet people you don't like is much higher, than in a small guild which only contain real friends. And finding the right guild can take even years....

 

But you took my words from a discussion...So im wondering... you think it's easier to fill all type of hard content easier with guildmates than with random player in open world?

 

Yes.  That's kind of the reason for guilds is to have like-minded players who can enjoy content together.  If you don't like other guilds, you can make your own.