Why don't we have Hard Mode Class Story?

[SanguineSphinx]

As much as we would all like new chapters of the Class Story right now, it's so expensive and time-consuming to produce that we know it won't happen for a while. Yet class story is where this game shines, and there's one way to bring that into the end game while we wait: Hard Mode Class Story. Once you finish Act III of your class story and companion missions, you unlock access to the Hard Mode version. This would be enormously helpful to the health of the game for several reasons:

 

- Currently, there is not a single challenge in the game for solo players. This would provide you with an opportunity to actually do something challenging with just you and your companion.

- It would give you a chance to do all of your class story straight through, without getting bogged down in side quests and other ways to level up. Most people wouldn't mind going through a class story twice, but they're going to be deterred when they need to go through the grind of leveling up just to see a story they've already seen. But if you can just go straight through your story, with challenging fights throughout, it would be a lot more appealing and reignite love for the class stories. A lot of us finished our first character's class story almost a year ago, so it'll be good to do the story again.

- It would give companions a use for endgame, since they would need to be geared fairly well to complete the challenge of the hard mode class story missions. Show some companion love. A lot of people would also love the opportunity to talk to their companions again, even if it's the same conversations, and that would go along wonderfully with the Hard Mode Class Story.

- It would be incredibly cheap and easy to produce. All this would require is a little bit of programming, without any work from writers, artists, anyone. The only real work to do would be to rebalance the stats of instanced enemies and rework boss fights to make them a bit more interesting. A couple programmers could get this done without impeding the production of everything else the teams are working on.

 

That's a lot of positive for a very cheap introduction to the game! What does everyone think? And what would be good reward ideas for finishing the hard mode class story?

[mothear]

This is from someone who only solos in this game - Whilst a lot of people may like this I suspect it is a short term thing and running through your full story in a couple of days gives what - a little over 2 weeks content. The amount of work required to do this, and then tune it correctly is probably not worth it from a developer point of view.

[sstanks]

DDO has something like that. You can create a sort of legacy character once you reach end game you can releval that character but with some bonus stats but it is harder to level them because you need double the xp.

 

It's not a bad idea and it could give people a way to switch AP.