Hello, everyone,
This patch (1.09/U8) introduced two new difficulties and I started to wonder a bit about them. Just beware my English isn't great and this will be a long read. Buckle up, and enjoy the ride. (metaphors are not my strong point....)
Dragon Age, among other games, is based off of progression, and because of this the content needs constant renewal.
With that in mind, let's talk about Nightmare: This difficulty seems to be here to provide and justify exactly that, more progression. As Luke himself said (or maybe someone else, my memory isn't great) with new gear, comes new difficulties to use them on. This kind of thind is really needed, because as we get more and more advanced, the game becomes more and more stale, hence we lose the joy of conquering something - be it your next level, a personal achievement or a challenge - or the joy of gaining something - mostly loot, but banners portraits and anything we can accumulate and show of also count.
To allow this revitalization, the developers put new content to be discovered and obtained, challenges to be completed or tried out and new experiences to be had. Even if a player doesn't focus on these - let's say plays for the sake playing - because of how humans work these things still may serve as motivators; normally we have more than only one reason for doing something, in many cases we want more reasons to do something.
The problem I see here is how this seems to be implemented, mostly on HB. You see, those things I listed are only sought after and provide joy because we perceive value on them, if this value is lost, or simply not perceived, then there no longer is a reason to try and attain them. That's why balance, among other things, is important for the long term.
Now on the matter of drop chance: Some time ago, drop chance was much worse than it is now, so obtaining gear was a nightmare, which, because of how the game works, made it more difficult to explore other sections of the game. As people couldn't obtain those items, which had value, they got frustrated. Some even quit the game. Some of the ones that stayed also didn't get the gear, so for quite a while many of these were locked to playing the easiest difficulty, or struggled a lot on the harder ones, which also caused frustration and as result some more stopped playing; In both cases, value was lost. The solution to this was increasing the drop chance, which thankfully was tweaked again in this update.
A problem that may have happened again on the launch of U8, is that the new level 26 items - which are the "new" dragon weapons and rarest gear - were too rare - I've seen some say there is a 5% percent drop chance, which roughly means one super weapon per 20 dragon runs, basically you could complete 4/5 of the new dragon challenge without seeing a single weapon. Bioware actually noticed this, and Luke is to implement on the next monday a change to the drop chances. It will go from the original 5% to around 15-20% - this means, in a best case scenario, that you'll probably see a Hakkon weapon within your first five runs! Keeping this kind of balance is very important, if the new content is percieved as too inaccessible its value decreases and as a result fewer people will be seeking it. And this isn't good for anyone.
On enemy behaviour: There is a very well known and hated mechanic in this game which is called knockdown - actually there are more mechanics like this, freeze and panic for example, but I'm going to concentrate on knockdown - , basically it is the capacity of interrupting any action and incapacitating the target for some time, often even being complemented with some damage. Players have this capacity as well as enemies. Because of this, damaging knockdowns have more value than a regular ability of the same damage. To maintain this balanced, frequently they have high mana/stamina cost or long animations. Fade Cloak, for example, has a delay between its cast and the damage/knockdown, Mighty Blow has a high stamina cost and long animation and moderate damage if not cast under a special condition. Furthermore, there are enemies immune to the knockdown, like bosses and brutes. These are the limitations imposed to players, but not many are shared with the enemies. The giant, for example, is capable to knock players to death by spamming this (hulk) smash, the Red Templar Behemoth has the same capacity, although not as often. Druffalo also has this, but with a sudden move that is not blockable and because of lag many times not avoidable, causing instant death. Even more aggravating, there are NO CLASSES as of now that are immune to this effect, causing some abilities to lose value, like Fallback Plan, or causing the need to use certain abilities, limiting builds - and therefore variety.
The HeartBreak(er): This difficulty seems designed to be the ultimate challenge, which is actually great! But the way it is executed is... problematic. As I discussed before, balance is pretty important for maintaining the long-term value of the content, and HB seems to have an extreme lack of this. Enemies are able to abuse incapacitating abilities, like the RTC's Crushing Leap on the Ventaori Brute (or RTK's, i'm talking about the Red Templar boss jump thing!), or the Fade Cloak of mages - it serves as a way to resist knockdowns, or avoid damage and status effects, to which some enemies are already immune! This increases the need for abilities to counter incapacitating effects and also decreasing the value of the player's incapacitating abilities. This limits greatly the variety of classes and abilities viable for this challenge mode, much more than it makes some underused abilities like War Horn desirable.
If you take the landscape of the playerbase into consideration this gets even more aggravated. Few players will have the gear or promotes to be able to hold the damage for long enough, or have sufficient coordination to tackle this mode head on. If you just consider the challenge factor, this problem is completely acceptable, as challenges - and I'm not talking about that UI section - aren't made to be easy or accessible. They are made to be a target to be hit, something to be overcome and a source of joy when such is achieved. The issue is that the frustration of failing too many times for unbalanced reasons, or not being rewarded enough for the effort may very well harm this gamemode's longevity and how many players will play it, or actually be able to. This ends up locking part of the content, and prevents us from enjoying it at it's fullest. This is the problem that is not acceptable!
To end this chatter, I fear for how this content will turn out to be, and I ask the people from Bioware to really put these things into consideration, I don't want it to be easy, I don't want a huge nerf. Heck, I don't even know how HB will turn out to actually be (as we've been playing a easier and incomplete version). I just want to be able enjoy it, and i hope that the community is able to do so too, not only just a few players.
Thanks for anyone, that made it this far XD This was my second post ever >.> Also, sorry for any mistakes I may have committed, I'm not a game designer, neither speak English fluently, i'm just a fan (a pretty worried one) 
One final note. I'd like to thank Mortiel, he helped me to make this more coesive and supported me quite a bit. Just keep in mind, he didn't write this, and i don't represent him in any way or form. These are my ideas.
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