Please, please, please fix Fractals
It could have serious consequences for the poor players who drag down your runs but I agree, there has to be some kind of system that lets us know how skilled people are before partying with them. It’s an even bigger issue in FotM because a single run usually takes an hour, it’s harder to walk away from an investment you make in an FotM group than it is for most dungeon groups.
In the meantime try to get an ideal team composition with at least one guard and one war. Form groups with guildies and when you find another regular person who seems good add them to your friends list, tell them to do the same. Try to organize weekly guild runs of fractals, if your guild is active enough to do more than that even better.
Anet likely didn’t want to remove the armor stats entirely because…well,
we’ve all seen what happens in games where there’s no disadvantage to taking your pants off.
we’ve all seen what happens in games where there’s no disadvantage to taking your pants off.
I do group with guildies as much as possible but people are getting less and less interested in FotM with all the living story stuff, wvw, crafting grinds, etc. given how long it takes and the demand of skill. I see your point about it having a negative affect on poor players, but poor skill is less of an issue than poor sportsmanship. If someone gets frustrated and leaves they ruin it for the entire group.
The main issue is them leaving knocking everyone else out of the group. Even when this happens your chat log for the party is erased so unless you remember the name of the person who drops you can’t put them on your ignore list. Poor players would have to earn very skilled and dedicated groups and people would be a lot more polite. I’ve been kicked from a group at the very last fractal because the dude didn’t like what I said (which wasn’t offensive just a question on if they knew how to complete the area properly) and ruined my entire run. That’s simply unfair given my contribution to the group.
Anyway, I know fractals are designed for higher level play but given that it’s the longest and most demanding area of the game it can be made better. I feel Anet has not improved on the design since it’s release.
I feel Anet has not improved on the design since it’s release.
I can’t entirely agree with that. There have been some player-friendly improvements such as allowing people to enter Fractals higher than their personal level and groups no longer needing to be on the same server/overflow before they could join, but these things are nothing to write home about (as they should have been there at release) and there is a lot of work to be done.
For a game that is supposed to have built upon and improved systems used in other MMORPGs, it seems a pretty backward step that a party leader leaving/disconnecting resets the whole dungeon rather than leadership simply passing to another member like countless other games.
A couple of times in the last few days I have been part of groups where come the second or third Fractal, the party leader decides to take massive AFK spells without any warning, expecting the rest to 4-man and carry him to the end whilst he does god knows what else. Both times the group has jointly decided to kick the party leader and reset the instance themselves rather than A) struggling the rest of the way 4-manning it or B.) leaving the party only for the party leader to invite a few more people to finish the place for him.
Yeah its a very awkward system that doesn’t make sense. Why should the leader have that power available? In a normal MMO I can see it since thats the mainstream, but for this game with no specific role, everyone should have the same right. The voting system works in that way.
End of the year we will get some cool changes, remake etc. Maybe we will get this too.