Feedback:User/Hong/Extreme mode

People constantly grouse about hard mode being too easy due to the effect of consumables, exploitable AI, overpowered skills, and so on. Most proposed solutions involve changing hard mode in some way to remove these features. While this would indeed make hard mode harder, it also leads to the usual hassles with changing a long-established part of the game.

But there's no reason we couldn't have another mode on top of hard mode -- call it Extreme Mode or something. You would need to have vanquished an area or obtained the master's/bonus reward for a mission in HM to access EM for that area/mission. That way you could leave hard mode unchanged (or with minimal change), while opening up more opportunities for people who remain unsatisfied with GW's high-end play. Many games these days also have multiple tiers of difficulty, so it isn't really a new idea.

Some possible features to make Extreme Mode different from HM, off the top of my head:
 * No consumables allowed in EM
 * Only one PvE skill allowed, rather than 3 (I like PvE skills as a way of differentiating PvE from PvP, but that's just me; you could also ban them entirely from EM)
 * Enlarged aggro bubble for monsters, to make tanking harder
 * Monster numbers and levels remain unchanged from HM, but give each monster one of the following extra abilities, randomly chosen. All of these have.
 * Remove enchantment from targeted foe
 * Remove stance from targeted foe
 * Remove hex from self
 * Remove condition from self
 * Heal self for 100 hp
 * Interrupt target foe with next attack
 * These numbers are subject to balancing tweaks. The idea behind this specific feature is not to make monsters "harder" as such: it's to make formulaic approaches and builds less viable, and require players to be able to react to unpredictable changes. In particular, the fact that it's randomised should make it much less viable to farm in EM (although I'm sure someone will find a way eventually). If you want to farm, stay in HM.

Possible lures to get people into EM beyond "more challenge":
 * Increase the rate of dropping green/gold items
 * New skins that are only available in EM (a previous suggestion noted that there are several skins that are almost never seen, so they could be used here)
 * Completing all vanquishable areas/missions in a campaign in EM gets you a gold cape trim, like that in PvP (or maybe a different colour, if you want to differentiate PvP from PvE achievements -- say black with white edging, since people seem to like these dyes)