Guild Wars 2

Hi devs,

Problem: Players complain – FoTM too hard, too easy.

Solution: Set the starting bar lower.

Make the level 1 fractals significantly easier, while retaining the mechanic structure that carries on the harder levels. Easy enough for 80% of the players to get through a set of fractals in a short period of time (15-20 minutes per level) with minimal chance of wiping a pug group.

Scale up from here, reaching the same difficulty which currently exists at level 50, or stretch it out to 70-80 with the new headroom available.

Start end chest rewards low.. blues, for example and increase to greens, rares, exotics and eventually ascended which are the guaranteed drop quality for the most difficult of challenges.

Why?
More skilled players will quickly burn through the simple levels and soon reach content which hits their challenge space.

Less skilled players are able to get their feet wet without feeling instantly discouraged. The linear scaling of rewards is the carrot for them to keep trying, pushing themselves to get progressively better.

Schools don’t start students in grade 6 and expect them to watch videos and learn from their classmates, which is what I see in both dungeons and fractals.

Players like me, with 3700h of play, and devs, are too close to the game to understand how really challenging it is. “All or none” doesn’t cut it in a game where the customer base has such a wide range in skillsets.

In open world events, I see why “Tequatls” can’t work in this way. But, in instances, the scalability is controllable, so I don’t see any reason why the events should be made so difficult right off the bat.

You want everyone to enjoy the content? This will do it.

Example:
Pac-Man. Most people who played the game were able to get through a few levels, quickly, helping them to understand the mechanic. The game gets faster and harder, progressively, until only the truly dedicated are willing to spend the time to push further. All players “below” this level are still able to enjoy the lower difficulties. Rewards were somewhat linear: cheris, equivalent to blues, then greens, rares and eventually exotic and ascended quality-like apples and key, at the hardest amount. Hardcore and casual players were both able to enjoy playing Pac Man at their own levels, and it became one of the most famous games of all time.