Guild Wars 2

Lately, PVE players have been getting upset about the lack of end-game options available to them. New content is ideal, but perhaps Fractals can be tweaked to be more fun and rewarding so that current players can continue to enjoy them, and so that future players can have more fun working towards their rings and back.

Let’s Fix Fractals of the Mist!
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I am going to focus on 3 things.

1.) Improving the existing Rewards System

2.) Stabilizing the difficulty, time length, and FUN of various fractals.

3.) Taking into account the months of player feedback on specific fractals, bosses, and other issues.

THE REWARDS SYSTEM:

Currently, running Fractals is net loss in terms of Gold for almost everyone. Running COF p1 outpaces it immensely, and to be honest, solo farming Orr probably beats it too.

The obvious tweak is to improve loot, so I’m not going to get into that too much. I do believe that loot in general should be improved from boss chests, and that perhaps an additional item, perhaps a chance at a core or lodestone, should be added to the daily chest above 20, with improving odds of getting a lodestone the higher the level.

Here are some less obvious tweaks. I’m not suggesting that all of these be added, but some would certainly help.
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Five Fixes for Fractal Rewards:

1.) From Fractal level 30 onward, the Fractal daily chest has the chance to contain Fine Infusions. These are the infusions that offer +5 stat, +5 agony resist. Very few players ever bother to obtain these due to their high cost, and giving us a way to obtain them would get more players seeking their +30 stats they can now obtain through ascended.

2.) From level 40 onward, infused rings have a chance to drop with the Fine Infusion that corresponds to their primary stat. Red Ring of Death drops with a Mighty Infusion, for example.

3.) New Mystic Forge Recipe: 1 Fractal Weapon, 1 Shard of Crystallized Mist Essence, 3 Globs of Condensed Mist Essence, 5 Vials of Condensed Mist Essence. Gives you a random Fractal weapon of any other type than the one originally placed in the mystic forge. Or, if this is hard to program, just random Fractal Weapon, so that we can re-roll until we get the one we want.

4.) Level 40+ has a rare chance to drop Ascended Amulets and Trinkets.

5.) All Ascended Gear, including Rings, will now count as Yellow Armor for Mystic forging Purposes. 3 Ascended Rings + one yellow weapon will be a viable mystic
forge recipe for gambling for exotics/precursors. Four ascended rings will get you back a yellow armor.
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STABILIZING DIFFICULTY, TIME, AND FUN!

Volcanic Fractal:

This Fractal is considered too hard by many players, and requires specific utilities that not every class offers.

Add a second type of mob that spawns when the Shaman enters its shield called Lavalings, similar to the gravelings from Ascalonian Catacombs. (Perhaps even have them spawn from burrows until these are destroyed, to give Elementalists’ Frost Bow some utility in Fractals.)

This mob will be a small, fast melee attacker that does less damage than the current Elemental spawn and inflicts burning. It has a higher chance of spawning the lower the Fractal level.

Whenever the Shaman enters its shield, you have a 33% chance of getting the Lavalings, the Elementals, or a mixture of both.

This change is intended to reduce the need for Guardians and Mesmers to complete this Fractal, as reflects will not be quite as useful. This also allows groups who wipe on this fight multiple times the chance to get a lucky roll where they get Lavalings multiple times in a row.
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Dredge Fractal:

This is the Fractal that needs the most work. It is simply too long and tedious. It is not that it is necessarily super hard, but it adds an undue burden to players who wanted to do a Fractal run that didn’t consume an undue amount of their time.

To the left side of the initial starting puzzle, add a mini-jumping puzzle that allow players to skip the beginning puzzle as they were able to before the bug fix. Make this puzzle challenging enough that some groups will choose to do it the normal way.

Completely remove middle section with bombs and turrets. Completing the puzzle will move the players right on to the mid-boss.

End-boss health reduced by 25%.

Another important note is that the number of waves that spawn on the Dredge Midboss is simply insane. Perhaps there’s a glitch going on there, like with the Southsun Skelk. Nerf the amount of mobs that spawn by half, at least, on higher difficulties.

Cliffside Fractal:

Blowing wind and bomb stairs removed. This fractal simply takes too long and the jumping puzzles only end up being a layer of tediousness—having to sit there while two of your party members make their way up four different times. Alternatively, remove the very first boss encounter and simply allows players to start with the hammer. Perhaps both of these changes.

Tweak End-boss to be more interesting. It is a very lame fight. Perhaps consider adding Acolyte spawns with low health, but that can only be damaged by the hammer. One player, rotating, will be on hammer duty killing Acolytes/smashing the seal while the rest of the group handles the boss. Saving the hammer from the first fight would allow two players to kill Acolytes to make this go faster. In exchange, require players to both 1) Destroy the Seal, and 2) Kill the Boss.
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All Other Fractals:

Mostly the other Fractals are far more even with one another in terms of time and difficulty. Some could still use tweaks, such as lower boss health in exchange for the boss hitting slightly harder. In fact, I think you could probably stand to make some of the other Fractals more challenging in exchange for these tweaks, as you have been doing recently with the changes to Snowblind, for example.

Jellyfish Beast could use an HP reduction. Perhaps lower its health by 25%, but add a high-damage low-health mob that attacks at 66% health and 33% health— this mob needs to be kited and DPSed down. Something to keep us awake.

Mini-bosses on Harpy Fractal also need an HP reduction.

Thanks for reading, please critique and provide feedback and additional suggestions!

Edit:

Link to Reddit Thread:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1fvcim/fixing_the_rewards_time_and_fun_fractals_of_the/

Link to Dungeons Forum Thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fix-Rewards-Time-Fun-Fractals-of-the-Mist/first#post2172981

YES, but ANet will completely ignore this. They’ve never taken player feedback seriously.

I feel the trinkets and amulets aren’t really necessary, the other ways to obtain them are perfectly fine.

Player Character.9467:

I feel the trinkets and amulets aren’t really necessary, the other ways to obtain them are perfectly fine.

Perhaps you’re right. I just think it would be a nice, very small chance to provide an extra bonus to those who have reached the hardest content in the game. Of all the changes I suggest, that is perhaps the one I care least about.

I think this should more focused on suggesting fotm levels to add and not on rewards. However, I think that the chest rewards should scale better drops at certain levels like new wvw system.

The repetition is what makes it less fun. Have like for every 20 levels have different set fractals to do. Fotm was made from an accident during south sun so a similar accident can occur somewhere else.

Since fotm seams to show time travel properties. I’m looking forward to a Battle for Glint fotm where we can see snaff alive.

-Also bring back drops to Ice fractal please
-coin drop from bosses like dugion bosses

Hey there.
First of all no, I don’t think that adding more fractals is more important than fixing the old ones – ArenaNet should really focus on improving the existing content instead of pumping more problems into the game.

As I don’t agree with many of your points Hamartia I’ll just explain it step by step.

Rewards:

The first thing you do is comparing the Fractals of the Mists to the Citadel of Flames, path one. That is a bad thing to do as this path is just ridiculous in terms of money-making and it is that path that needs fixing, not the rest of the game.
Yes, the rewards for completing high level fractals should be slightly higher (after all, the fractals are the most difficult content that the game has to offer right now) but improving loot from monsters and chests is something that should be done very very carefully (for obvious reasons, e.g. “LFG Swampfarm 10+ runs”). The current system (that only gives players good rewards for killing the Jade Maw, not for everything else) is not bad because it forces players to complete four fractals to get good stuff, however the chance of getting something good from that final chest is still too low and there should be something similar for uneven levels (where you don’t get to fight the Jade Maw).

Now let’s see about the other five “fixes”.
1.) and 2.) aren’t really fixes, just workarounds – instead the prices of those fine infusions should just be reduced (they currently are way too expensive to be worth buying).
3.) is something that was mentioned countless times: We want a way to turn useless rings and fractal weapons into other rings and fractal weapons – the mystic forge is the most obvious alternative.
If ArenaNet wants to keep their hard-limited reward system with commendations and laurels – which I do not support by the way, but I understand the reasoning behind it – they won’t even consider implementing the 4th fix so it’s not worth being discussed here.
I kinda like the idea of having a way to turn useless fractal stuff into other exotics or even precursors, that would give this stuff a value if you just don’t need or want it for any of your characters. However, four ascended rings should just yield a random ascended ring as mentioned above.

Fractals:

Volcanic:
It is a good idea to add some other mob types instead of only elementals in order to reduce the need for projectile reflecting skills. That would be one of many necessary steps to make more classes viable in PvE.
But… no RNG here, please. Making such an encounter more easy with luck would enrage many players (including me).

Underground Facility (Dredge):
First of all yes, this fractal is way too long. Even so, adding a jumping puzzle would cause several problems, for example the fact that this puzzle would have to take at least as much time as the fight to open the gate – which means that on higher levels it’d have to be much longer. This and the fact that it’s a jumping puzzle would definitely encourage exploiting.
Completely removing the central area is propably too much, just remove one or two of the huge mob groups that are between the checkpoint and the next gate.
The one thing that takes the most time in this fractal is slaughtering the Dredge that come out of the carrier. Therefore, the amount of Dredge necessary to continue should be decreased, especially on higher levels.
Reducing the endboss health is ok, but not necessary in my opinion.

Cliffside:
Cliffside actually isn’t that long, the one big problem here is simply that the two arm seals can mess up a whole run if your group doesn’t pay attention. The obvious fix would be to reset the seals to their original state (removing all chanters and respawning only two of them) if the party wipes completely.
Also, it would be good to have the respawn system of the underwater fractal (party-wide checkpoints so everybody can respawn at the top once one player made it).
Your ideas for the boss are pretty good, that would definitely make the fight more interesting (and less exploitable).

Swamp:
Something that you should mention is that not just the long fractals could use some balance but also the super short ones, especially the swamp. This fractal definitely needs an additional stage (maybe a defense event for the whisps), otherwise the current “roll for swamp” will continue forever.

Aquatic Ruins (underwater):
Simply lowering the hitpoints of the jellyfish wouldn’t really improve anything as this fractal is already pretty short. Instead, this boss seriously needs a rework, it currently is one of the most boring encounters in the whole game. Even a normal trashmob is a bigger threat than this giant jellyfish.

So that’s my point of view, feel free to bash me.
Have fun,

Addi

Colossus Fractal is the worst of all… its so long compared to others…

I agree with a lot of your points.

To be honest, I just look at Swamp and Underwater as luck of the draw fractals— you got lucky easy fractals that take no brainpower.

Volcanic, Dredge, and Cliffside are the bad luck fractals. Even with these changes, they would still be the bad luck fractals— it would just be more balanced.

To be honest, I think they should just make the first fractal only spawn from the easier ones to keep people from having to reroll.

xpost from my reddit reply, will only drop it in the Suggestion thread.

A while back, I posted a proposed fix for the fractal weapon problem. While ANY change to that system would be welcome, I wanted to preserve the difficulty of getting the weapon without making it impossible, and reward those players that went the extra mile and made it to 48+ by allowing them to get their desired weapons faster than someone at 20.

Here’s the recipe. Of course the recipe can always be tweaked.

On the rest of the points, I really like them.

Well except for the ascended rings count as rares part. 20s = 1 rare armor is a pretty meh tradeoff.

On rewards, I would start giving the higher levels some increased gold/loot drops as a reward for tackling some of the most unforgiving PvE content in the game. You put a lot of time and repair costs on the line to run 48, so there should be appropriate monetary rewards for doing so.

I really like that change to the Volcanic Fractal end boss, since it stomps on some Guardian wall meta, and makes it a bit easier for lower levels, though I wonder about how their damage would scale. It probably won’t make too much of a difference at high levels, however.

Dredge Fractal

On the dredge fractal, the mid-boss “Clown Car” needs to reduce the number of clowns that pop out of it. At 48, so many come out of that car that clearing those mobs without the champion takes 20-30 minutes. The Champion also has a “large” healthpool with his nearly permanent protection and regen due to the annoying respawning veteran.

I have less issue with the end boss length than with the Clown Car.

Harpy Fractal (Cat-a Sum)

Every mob in this encounter has a ridiculous amount of health, especially the Ogre and Flame Legion Champions. Because of that, this fractal can easily take an hour. Since they also scale in damage fairly significantly, and since the fractal itself is still pretty interesting, I would recommend a decrease in the health pools to lessen the tediousness.

Most people saying fractals are to hard make them easier. Anet doesn’t want people at 50 fotm yet by AR they give us but people still have gotten up to 80. And time in dredge is compensated by a tone of drops at least 40-50 heavy bags. Swamp and water needs a lot of coordination and know what to do can take a long time if u don’t which is why they seam short. People new to fotm actual roll to avoid swamp just want to point that out.

Saying something is to hard or to long isn’t something that needs to be fixed just reward needs to be adjusted for time it takes.

And comparison fotm bosses to dugion bosses is reasonable both in difficult and length of time to fight them, that there should be a coin drop from them. Also all dugion bosses give coin drops not just cof.

As far as rewards the fact u can do a whole level 40 fotm with out getting a single rare i think is a mistake. I think rewards really only increase for daily with fotm levels an aparently intrinsic MF.

Lots of good points raised =)

kitten , you write small novels. It takes an hour to read through everything…

Edit:

But I am not complaining on your opinions, just that many people probably don’t feel like reading everything and just ignore the thread completely. I agree with you although I did not read everything…

To the loot:
Your Ideas (1,2,4,) are just workarounds. The Infusions should just be cheaper because they’re very crappy and not even worth a tenth of the materials they need.

To nr5: ascended rings and rare equipment are totally unrelated. There should be another way, or atleast they should be salvagable for 2-5 globs.

To nr3: I think this is a good idea, we definetily need a way to salvage unneeded fractal skins (and rings).

Now the loot from the chests is mostly very crappy, it should be returned to how it was before the nerf. The loot of the maw fractal is mostly fine, but it could be a bit better.

To the fractals:

Volcanic:
I think it’s fine as it is; short but very challenging. Saying that, I play as mesmer and don’t know how it is to walk around without reflect skills.

Dredge:
This Fractal is very long, and the solution to this would be to take out the first part as it is very annoying. To be honest, I don’t mind at all when this fractal comes because the loot makes up for it (once got a precursor there :P) and if you’re doing fractals you should know that it could take about 2 hours or more. The end boss is fine imo.

Cliffside:
The changes to be made here are: reduce the health of the first boss (by15-20%) because it is simply boring.
Reset of the arm seals when the group wipes.
I also like your idea for the boss fight.
Now this fractal is NOT long. However it takes group coordination which people of mostly lower levels lack. I regularily do lv48 with skilled people and we never have problems with this fractal.

Swamp:
I really like the idea of djaddi with the wisp defend event. After the wisps are collected the mobs of the swamp could turn angry and attack them. This fractal is too short compared to the others.

Aquatic fractal:
The fractal itself is fine, the boss is awful. It needs to be much more aggressive with much more damage and have less HP. This is the most boring boss in the game and it definetily needs to be reworked.

Snowblind and Ascalon fractals are fine as they are and need no changes.

Conclusion: I am VERY against making fractals easier. The difficulty is fine and if I can do it, others can too. Fractals are a lot of fun just because of the high difficulty, however they do need some rework.

And why the hell do I even write this, not like it’s gonna change anything. (looking at you ANet)

Hamartia.3421:

5.) All Ascended Gear, including Rings, will now count as Yellow Armor for Mystic forging Purposes. 3 Ascended Rings + one yellow weapon will be a viable mystic
forge recipe for gambling for exotics/precursors. Four ascended rings will get you back a yellow armor.
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/agree
Whatever, please let us consume tons of acsended rings in a bank. I hate to see the enlargement of those stocks anymore. It’s really needed asap.

I really hope that they’ll fix this in the next few months.

Recently I got LV49, so there’s no more room to get even higher, but rewards still feel pretty lame.
I’m lucky when I get a yellow in a 48 run.
I’m fine with the chance for fractal weapons, maybe a bit higher, but it’s ok

Hopefully we’ll see some of these changes in the upcoming fractals update.

Please let us salvage acsended rings. Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please Please .