Guild Wars 2

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-fractals-mists#.UKT2QkeP4Po.reddit

Ok so if I understood this article correctly then the difficulty level you reach in the Fractals is forever saved on your character. Obviously this seems like a great idea since people will probably hate the idea of doing level 1 with it’s small rewards over and over again. But this system comes with one very concerning drawback.

What happens to a player who decides to start running fractals later on in the game? What happens if you only reach level 80 a month later? You go to Lion’s Arch and you want to start a group. But nobody’s interested in doing level 1 anymore. Everybody’s just looking for players with level 5 or above. People might even start requesting players with really high levels like 10 even just to make sure they can handle the level 7 they’re actually planning on doing. The saved difficulty system could possibly be twisted by elitists into a player measuring system, kind of like gearscore or achievement linking works in WoW.

When you think about it, this difficulty level that players are saved to could be a worse gating system than obtaining better gear.

Granted, I may be a bit paranoid or I didn’t understand the system correctly, but when you look at the story mode in current dungeons and how it’s no longer being played because there’s no incentive to, then you have to think about what’s going to be the incentive of playing level 1 Fractals if you’ve already done it and level 2 is still pretty easy and gives better rewards.

My thoughts on what will really happen.

Due to the perma save of difficulty, it’s going to be harder to “grind” the dungeon properly. For those that want to grind the gear they will be left with 2 options once they reach the OMG AGONY point.

1. Redo that difficulty over and over and over and over failing continuously until you get the gear you need or….

2. Invite 1 low difficulty person to the party, farm till at OMG AGONY, kick a person, and repeat.

I am seeing way more people doing option 2 than I am option 1 seeing as the levels themselves will actually be less difficult in option 2 and you’ll get end boss loot chests….

Good question, all depends on the reward structure.. if doing low levels still gives ya tokens or something then there is no problem. Anet simply has to allow incentives for higher level players to sacrifice and down level from time to time.

zaxziakohl.5243:

My thoughts on what will really happen.

Due to the perma save of difficulty, it’s going to be harder to “grind” the dungeon properly. For those that want to grind the gear they will be left with 2 options once they reach the OMG AGONY point.

1. Redo that difficulty over and over and over and over failing continuously until you get the gear you need or….

2. Invite 1 low difficulty person to the party, farm till at OMG AGONY, kick a person, and repeat.

I am seeing way more people doing option 2 than I am option 1 seeing as the levels themselves will actually be less difficult in option 2 and you’ll get end boss loot chests….

Right… But according to the article “You will be able to set the difficulty for your group based on the party member with the least progress”

So you can always set your difficulty lower, you just can’t set it higher unless you all have them unlocked. This means people with higher levels won’t have problems, but people with low levels might.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/6892/Guild-Wars-2-Exploring-the-Fractals.html

It states here that the dungeon’s difficulty level will reset every week.

It also suggests, that at one point it will become too difficult to do anymore, and you’d have to look for people with lower difficulty unlocks. Which suggests some interesting consequences for people that blow through content at accelerated rate.

Edit: oh, it will reset? I missed that one. Sounds good.

Dedalus.3065:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/6892/Guild-Wars-2-Exploring-the-Fractals.html

It states here that the dungeon’s difficulty level will reset every week.

That’s the piece I was missing then.

Thank you

If for example I’m farming Fractal Relics, wouldn’t it be easier to farm “1” difficulty over and over again than progressing? They should make it so the higher the difficulty the more relics you get per chest.

it’s ‘progression’ raiding in an instance. Good idea, we’ll see if it works.

Zaber.5609:

If for example I’m farming Fractal Relics, wouldn’t it be easier to farm “1” difficulty over and over again than progressing? They should make it so the higher the difficulty the more relics you get per chest.

That probably is what they’re doing. They certainly said “better rewards” If we keep getting 5 relics per chest regardless of difficulty than that’s going to be a painful amount of dungeon runs to get all the stuff we want.

I remain cautiously optimistic.

I’ve asked for clarification over in the “Dungeons” forum. MMORPG’s article today and GUILDWARS2HUB’s article today post contradictory claims about how the difficulty scaling/locking/reset mechanics work. Hopefully someone from Anet will clear the confusion?

It should be just like current dungeons: You beat it once (story), then come back and choose a difficulty (path).

They could make it so that difficulty options are opened up by beating previous ones, or all at once. I see no reason to not allow people to go straight to max, other than there being no real “max”. What if we want to get a group, start at level 1 and just see how far we can go? What if (as mentioned above) new people want to run the dungeon, will they be forced in to harder modes just because the rest of the population is auto-saved so high? Makes no sense to me to force difficulty progression – other than trying to make people stop playing because they get to an unbeatable (for them) difficulty .

The article says: “The dungeon will remember you progress, and will poll the party’s levels when you enter, scaling the dungeon to the highest common attained level.” Does this mean if two people are at level 10 difficulty, then the whole group plays level 10? Or if the same party has the three others at level 3, then they play level 3?