Guild Wars 2

Basically what the topic says.

I got the idea from another thread, but decided to make a new one.

As you all know the CoF1 rushs and the dredge shard. You get 1g and 60+ tokens for a 10 min run in CoF1 easy as soloing a veteran; but when entering FotM and getting the dredge shard at lvl20+ it may take more than an hour to complete it. Its design (losing players for steps to open doors, bombs, rabsovich – basically almost every stage exc the endboss) is “horrible” and definitely not fun (exc the endboss). And what do you get for it ? 10+ fractal shards and normal mobs loot.

Is it actually meant for FotM shard to be considerably longer than complete dungeon runs, while you get gold for dungeon runs and RNG^2 for FotM ?

So I’d like to see shorter dungeon paths to be somehow replaced with longer FotM shards.

Thx,
Nretep

I’d have to disagree. If I wanted to run a dungeon path, I’d run a dungeon path. Plus what happens if someone says “oh, I already ran this path and got my daily rewards, lets reroll.”

But you are right, some of the fractals last considerably longer than others. I’d prefer having each fractal get additional rewards based on it’s difficulty. If I recall, I think Anet said that they are working on making the fractals either more uniform in difficulty/time or that we won’t get shafted with 3 long fractals in a row. But I don’t think that will happen until the new fractals are introduced later this year.

I understand that you don’t want to lose your 1g + 60 tokens for 10 mins of work, but compare it to the dredge shard.
When I run FotM26 I need to clear four shards for 100 tokens, karma and 0g. If the dredge shard is in there you can calculate with 90~120 mins duration.

While the karma is nice, you need 10x the time (and difficulty) for the same or double amount of rewards. That’s unfair.
Yes, you can get Fractal weapons there, but they consume a transmutation crystal, they are really rare and you can’t even choose one. You can exotics in dungeons, too. And you can buy exotics from dungeon tokens. What can you do with fractal relics if you got all backs already?
The only real reason would be ascended boxes. Their drop rate is super low and with random stats (RNG^2). It means that farming the mats and crafting it yourself is way faster and you get the stats you want.

So … why go FotM when you can run 4 dungeons in the same time ? (CoF1, SE1, SE3, HotW1, CoE1) 4g and 240 tokens instead of 100 cheap tokens and karma.

Aren’t dungeons supposed to take more time than a single FotM shard?

I see you mistook me as a dungeon runner, I am not. I still haven’t run each path once, and maybe I’ve done CoF Path 1, 4 times since the game came out. I hate dungeons, but I love fractals.

There are plenty of different options to make fractals more viable.

1) make it so you can’t skip 75%+ of the mobs in dungeons,
2) provide an extra incentive at the end of each fractal (gold, loot, whatever)
3) make pristine and normal fractal relics more useful (let us buy all ascended items with them)
4) give us a use for ascended rings (let us salvage them, or mystic forge them into other trinkets)

I’d rather have any of those options than be forced to run a dungeon path instead of even dredge at lvl 28. And while I don’t claim to be great at fractals (only lvl 27, as I haven’t had too much time to commit to them in a long time), I’ve had plenty of dredge runs that went very smoothly at 20+ (and plenty that didn’t).

Edit: And like I said, dev’s have commented saying that they are looking at fractal balance, and we should have something like that by the end of the year.

Yeah, devs have claimed to be looking at the shard inequality issue.
But another issue (for me) would be that dungeon paths aren’t supposed to be shorter than fractal shards. That’s the reason you have to run 3~4 in a row.

And you seem to have mistook my suggestion as well.
I meant to say that when I’m in FotM and the dredge shard would’ve swapped with the SE3 path. So you run your regular 3~4 shards but the current SE3 would be a shard. And the current dredge shard would be used kitten path 3.

Balancing dungeons should’ve been done long before granting 1g per run. Skipping mobs and such should never been possible; while granting some freedom (not forcing the devs solution to puzzles). But even without any skippable part, CoF1 would be shorter than every FotM shard 10+.