Guild Wars 2

RedShipRaider.9560:

Galen Grey.4709:

Proposal Overview:
Ideas on a reward system for User generated content (UGC) should this be considered viable

<snip>

As for the overall reward my idea here is if there is going to be UGC someone needs to review them for obvious reason, be it GMs or perhaps even a player group. After a play through meant to ensure content is appropriate they’ll be asked to rate the UGC fractal on a number of matrix, say length, difficulty, effort, abusive etc.. This score can then scale a reward appropriate to the overall score. If a fractal is deem to have abuse potential say its lengthy but way too easy, this could be marked and the fractal itself might then give a small end reward or no reward at all. I would not remove the fractal itself unless its inappropriate because people might have designed it for a roleplaying scenario or story heavy or something of the sort.

User generated content seems like it holds a lot of potential. But in the extreme majority of cases the quality of even the best results is subpar compared to professionally developed content.

What is suggested seems like a very labor intensive review, which has to be applied to the extreme flood of content that user generation creates. Is it really better to devote so many resources to validating what will likely turn into a small handful of good content, rather than producing high quality professional content?

Valid points that I recognize myself which is why I suggested that for review purpose it might make sense to give the task to a counsel made from actual players rather then developers. That way you dont tie up any resources and professionally produced fractals would not be impacted.

phys.7689:

—
taking things to an extent that is illogical, is illogical.
random elements increase variability and test more different types of skill sets. Its pretty hard to make something incredibly replayable without adding uncertainty. Dealing with the unknown, or having every playthrough be different does more for replayability than just having the same thing again and again.

Solving the same problem 100 times is not more of a challenge, or more entertaining than solving 100 different problems.

I am a proponent of more random elements, and unpredictability in fractals. It doesnt have to impede progress, adding random extra goals, events, and very different levels will make it a lot more entertaining and replayable. And fractals is definately the place for it.

If they wanted replayability they could for example add infinite scaling.

I don’t know how many times you have played fractals, but there definitely isn’t any unknown or different playthroughs. Even with rolling “fixed”.

As I have said before, in my opinion randomness doesn’t belong to a high end content. Eventually luck will be the deciding factor whether you can get through or not.

Look, I know you want to promote your “random extra goal” idea but could you please stop mixing it with discussion about rolling? There is a quite big difference between forced and optional randomness.

Purple Miku.7032:

Holy hell, I’ve finally found someone with the same mentality as me. Hello!!!

I’ve been trying to push forth my ideas for implementing randomization methods into dungeons for a long time. Games are much more exciting when you have a whole world to explore and they lose their excitement when you have nothing new left.

Exactly what you said.

Content with great replay value MUST have an element of surprise. Uncertainty is a good thing and makes activities more thought-provoking and engaging rather than arduous and repetative.

And what if dungeons and fractals were truly random? There could literally be zero competition. Difficulty and length of every run would be affected by luck. Lupicus records already suffer from random mob behavior. Also if the content was hard enough, then there would be a risk of getting stuck if you get some hard events.

Do you realize how much content they would have to add to keep an element of surprise? Just few random events there and there wouldn’t do because you would have already seen all of them after couple of runs. If they just tweak some enemy parameters (color, amount) then it barely makes any difference.

Personally I would rather see them working on a more skill based content. Lots of encounters could use some extra mechanics to make them more complex. Also removing linearity would be a big step for competition as it would allow different tactics.

One Note Chord.5031:

It’s too long, I agree with that. The clown car is stupid. But everything else is honestly okay imo. Aryilana made a nice comparison over here about the pressure plate room in particular: It’s like getting people to leave a cultist alive in cliffside for the arm seals.

The coherence of the forum is really off.

Reasons why that post is wrong:

Cliffside is totally unintended for many reasons….

1) I had the luck to speak with a dev fixing a gamebreaking bug (dungeon section, when any wipe aywere resulted in full spawning of chanters at arms and people said it was “intended”) ….at that point i could ask him to please adapt the chanter spawn at what players used to do…..

And he finally decided he could do that……(see it wasn t designed to be so).

2) if you say cliffside is intended than you are saying stacking and lOSing is intended….being the biggest part of how arm seal is done.

3) its clear that devs tested fractal at low level and didn t balance the higher levels…
Infact at low levels you can split the party to have players tank sides.
Or just run fast from a seal to another.

4) a fractal that for 1 year totally changed behavior if you wiped once? don t tell me it was intended.

At higher level while you can run from a seal to another any downed player or time lost will result in full healing of the seal.

That fractal thread just shows a common issue of GW2.

NO HINT on the right tactic to the point that when dulfy doesn t have a semiofficial guide, players can t reasonably discern from an exploit and the intended tactic.

That is why dev should release vid of them playing their game…..if they can t make tactic obvious enough at least show how they wanted it to be played….

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Folks,

Good discussion. I am enjoying it. The discussion about re rolling is very insightful.

I would appreciate it if you could put some ideas forward for Leader-board mechanics.

Specifically in regard to the fact that I was unhappy with us putting out Leader-boards in their previous functionality (having lots of folks sitting at lvl 50 was not ideal) and therefore the feature was held back.

Obviously we have given Level 50 Leader diversification a lot of thought but it would be awesome to hear your proposals. Note there are a lot of logic problems in the solutions in this area so please do think about associated risks.

Cheers

Chris

It’s easy highest Level achieved it’s the only fair method to make a leaderboard about high end Content ( if you make it high end Content). Just make as I proposed after a certain scale fix Fractals with fix instabilities to advance further. So anyone has cleared the same Content… Sorry I atm have a Feeling with all the ideas put around about more RNG more LORE more REWARDS… that you seem to completlty forgett what you wanted fractals to be… a place with high end PvE. All you did with mandatory AR checks reducing Levels without announcement and compensation was making Fractals easier…

I played this Content with basicaly investing Money when I rushed to 80 because I wanted to get to my Limits to the scale that is so hard that I Need a lot of time and thinking to advance…

Now over a year later I see:
- My Money wasted and Progress reseted without an explonation
- Discussions about Lore Rewards and adding more RNG to a Thing that was ment to be high end Content
- Dev’s thinking about making it open to more than 5 People

The worst about this I really thought I can forgett about all the bad things you made with this Content I invested so many hours instead of farming for a legendary. But when I see where the discussion goes and the fact most People commenting about lore more rng and everyone Needs to have everything haven’t ever played fractals on high Level ( 50 is kitten easy especially with an only gearcheck instability)

I really start to loose faith if gw2 is a game where dev’s are able to Programm high end Content for a niche Group.. instead of making it available for all…

btw Chris since you promissed :

ANY UPDATE ON FRACTAL RESET?

and sorry I tried to be constructive but I really just see that the discussion completly ignores what you wanted fractals to be. HARDCORE CONTENT and now discussion about length of Dredge , rewards and RNG is top of the list. Where actually People should think how you could provide difficulty and a fair way to make leaderbaords that aren’t grindy and stupid as the achievment leaderboards ( where the top Player Report each other for a temporary ban so they can’t get daily)…

Wethospu.6437:

phys.7689:

—
taking things to an extent that is illogical, is illogical.
random elements increase variability and test more different types of skill sets. Its pretty hard to make something incredibly replayable without adding uncertainty. Dealing with the unknown, or having every playthrough be different does more for replayability than just having the same thing again and again.

Solving the same problem 100 times is not more of a challenge, or more entertaining than solving 100 different problems.

I am a proponent of more random elements, and unpredictability in fractals. It doesnt have to impede progress, adding random extra goals, events, and very different levels will make it a lot more entertaining and replayable. And fractals is definately the place for it.

If they wanted replayability they could for example add infinite scaling.

I don’t know how many times you have played fractals, but there definitely isn’t any unknown or different playthroughs. Even with rolling “fixed”.

As I have said before, in my opinion randomness doesn’t belong to a high end content. Eventually luck will be the deciding factor whether you can get through or not.

Look, I know you want to promote your “random extra goal” idea but could you please stop mixing it with discussion about rolling? There is a quite big difference between forced and optional randomness.

Purple Miku.7032:

Holy hell, I’ve finally found someone with the same mentality as me. Hello!!!

I’ve been trying to push forth my ideas for implementing randomization methods into dungeons for a long time. Games are much more exciting when you have a whole world to explore and they lose their excitement when you have nothing new left.

Exactly what you said.

Content with great replay value MUST have an element of surprise. Uncertainty is a good thing and makes activities more thought-provoking and engaging rather than arduous and repetative.

And what if dungeons and fractals were truly random? There could literally be zero competition. Difficulty and length of every run would be affected by luck. Lupicus records already suffer from random mob behavior. Also if the content was hard enough, then there would be a risk of getting stuck if you get some hard events.

Do you realize how much content they would have to add to keep an element of surprise? Just few random events there and there wouldn’t do because you would have already seen all of them after couple of runs. If they just tweak some enemy parameters (color, amount) then it barely makes any difference.

Personally I would rather see them working on a more skill based content. Lots of encounters could use some extra mechanics to make them more complex. Also removing linearity would be a big step for competition as it would allow different tactics.

Your talking about competition, thats a bit different from replayability. In terms of having a fair competition against other players, random elements wouldnt help you. But in terms of having different/interesting challenges to deal with, and making each playthough different, random helps a lot.

now of course, if you are talking about competition, you have to have the same exact levels for every one, with the same enemies, then you can practice your mastery of learning specific and most effecient techniques, and accurately compare your performance to other people, but if we follow that path what do we have?

People doing the same 3 most effecient, most easy fractals, with the optimal party set ups, The replayability will be extremely low, except if the rewards are so good people feel they must do it.

I personally would give up a good competitive fair test type fractals for a fun/variable/semi unpredictable type fractal in a heart beat. The challenge i look for is more personal than about measuring myself against others. So for me, i dont mind if i have a harder fractal run than someone else, as long as we play well and overcome the challenges. Now, if the reward system rewards actually doing harder things, rather than mastery of the most efficient path, that, i think benefits everyone.

so yeah i think rolling isnt a great thing, i mean its only 1/4 fractals though, so it isnt the end of the world, but it doesnt add anything to fractals.

I mean the proof is there already, every one rolls swamp because it is the fastest fractal. Is it the funnest? not really, is it the most challenging? nope, is it the best designed? nope. Its the fractal that is the quickest stepping stone to getting the daily done as soon as possible.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Folks,

Good discussion. I am enjoying it. The discussion about re rolling is very insightful.

I would appreciate it if you could put some ideas forward for Leader-board mechanics.

Specifically in regard to the fact that I was unhappy with us putting out Leader-boards in their previous functionality (having lots of folks sitting at lvl 50 was not ideal) and therefore the feature was held back.

Obviously we have given Level 50 Leader diversification a lot of thought but it would be awesome to hear your proposals. Note there are a lot of logic problems in the solutions in this area so please do think about associated risks.

Cheers

Chris

It’s easy highest Level achieved it’s the only fair method to make a leaderboard about high end Content ( if you make it high end Content). Just make as I proposed after a certain scale fix Fractals with fix instabilities to advance further. So anyone has cleared the same Content… Sorry I atm have a Feeling with all the ideas put around about more RNG more LORE more REWARDS… that you seem to completlty forgett what you wanted fractals to be… a place with high end PvE. All you did with mandatory AR checks reducing Levels without announcement and compensation was making Fractals easier…

I played this Content with basicaly investing Money when I rushed to 80 because I wanted to get to my Limits to the scale that is so hard that I Need a lot of time and thinking to advance…

Now over a year later I see:
- My Money wasted and Progress reseted without an explonation
- Discussions about Lore Rewards and adding more RNG to a Thing that was ment to be high end Content
- Dev’s thinking about making it open to more than 5 People

The worst about this I really thought I can forgett about all the bad things you made with this Content I invested so many hours instead of farming for a legendary. But when I see where the discussion goes and the fact most People commenting about lore more rng and everyone Needs to have everything haven’t ever played fractals on high Level ( 50 is kitten easy especially with an only gearcheck instability)

I really start to loose faith if gw2 is a game where dev’s are able to Programm high end Content for a niche Group.. instead of making it available for all…

btw Chris since you promissed :

ANY UPDATE ON FRACTAL RESET?

and sorry I tried to be constructive but I really just see that the discussion completly ignores what you wanted fractals to be. HARDCORE CONTENT and now discussion about length of Dredge , rewards and RNG is top of the list. Where actually People should think how you could provide difficulty and a fair way to make leaderbaords that aren’t grindy and stupid as the achievment leaderboards ( where the top Player Report each other for a temporary ban so they can’t get daily)…

fractals isnt just supposed to be hardcore content, its supposed to be content that scales with your level of hardcoreness.
I agree that it could get harder, and i agree that agony design is a bit backwards, because its actually less challenging/interesting the more you have. I also agree that instabilities have been circumvented. I actually had an idea about the issue of expansion/making fractals appealing versus making fractals the type of thing that scales to your skill level greatly, ill try to do a proposal, but the system wouldnt be easy without an illustration.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Folks,

Obviously we have given Level 50 Leader diversification a lot of thought but it would be awesome to hear your proposals. Note there are a lot of logic problems in the solutions in this area so please do think about associated risks.

Personally I don’t think a leaderboard is very rewarding/ adds anything to the game. But if it were added:

1. Move the leaderboard into the game, at the moment to find the current leaderboards I google it, then I have to login, then navigate through the options I want. I can’t even see the link to the leaderboards on the website.

To make it worth something it needs to be clearly visible, i.e viewable in-game, it should also pop up at the end of the run to show where you ranked and show who is top at the moment.

2. Fractal rank and clear time are the only two conditions I can think of, It should be per fractal clear times not whole runs as there’s no way to compare those. This ranking should be applied per bracket (40-49, 30-39 etc).

3. Make it , Daily,Weekly,Monthly,All time. just like the challenge missions in GW1, also throw in a reward for beating a certain amount of players.

Potential Issues
-The suggested leader-board would be quite complex, having 4 sections with 6 tabs with 11 different sub-tabs each.
- People may feel speed clears are then required and be even more “zerk only”.
- People will attempt to fudge the system to get to the top unfairly or through cheating.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Folks,

Good discussion. I am enjoying it. The discussion about re rolling is very insightful.

I would appreciate it if you could put some ideas forward for Leader-board mechanics.

Specifically in regard to the fact that I was unhappy with us putting out Leader-boards in their previous functionality (having lots of folks sitting at lvl 50 was not ideal) and therefore the feature was held back.

Obviously we have given Level 50 Leader diversification a lot of thought but it would be awesome to hear your proposals. Note there are a lot of logic problems in the solutions in this area so please do think about associated risks.

Cheers

Chris

Proposal Overview
Most of us didn’t ask for the Leaderboards, and weren’t at all keen on the idea of it as was originally described (A ranking of whoever got to 50 first, second, third, etc). Such a leaderboard did not take any skill to get to the top of. It was merely a list of whoever could afford to take days off from work or school right after Fractured was released, and who sacrificed the most sleep.

Goal of Proposal
A Leaderboard that is more skillbased, that would spur more competition among the players. As well as include a few things that would be fun (largest attack crits) and a few things for boasting rights (most tokens collected).

Proposal Functionality
Leaderboards that are visible in-game. Perhaps as a new tab in the Hero (H) panel. The Leaderboards would list such things as
*the best times for each shard at the current max level (eg. 9:52 mins for Swamp by such and such people)
*Biggest melee attack
*Biggest spell attack
*Most number of fractals tokens on hand
*Most number of fractals tokens ever earned
*Most number of fractal weapon skins collected (included the repeats)

Associated Risks
Can’t really think of risks or Issues with this.

phys.7689:

fractals isnt just supposed to be hardcore content, its supposed to be content that scales with your level of hardcoreness.
I agree that it could get harder, and i agree that agony design is a bit backwards, because its actually less challenging/interesting the more you have. I also agree that instabilities have been circumvented. I actually had an idea about the issue of expansion/making fractals appealing versus making fractals the type of thing that scales to your skill level greatly, ill try to do a proposal, but the system wouldnt be easy without an illustration.

your right actually it was introduced as infinite scaling dungeon so even hardcore Gamers could go to they’re Limits… but It really concersn me that the Content I played in fractals over a year ago was way harder than what you are able to Play now ( even the new instabilities that make sure you have enough AR to facetank the attacks from bosses make the Content easier ) I was a 1 hit wonder back than when I failed to dodge a Boss attack or avoid it. I’m just afraid that what happens in the end is making super RNG rewards for the masses, Leaderboards that are based on how often you farm the fractal each day, and increasing the cap the same way they did last year! Yeah reseting everyone to 30 again giving 20 new instabilities and say hey you have new Content and fun playing it. Compensation for the reset will than again not happen. It’s my fear of such a Thing Happening that makes my text Sound angry and not very constructive. But still Dev’s Keep silent for over 3 months again about the reset issue Chris said he will give us an answer when he thought about it. I think it’s fair to assume that another reset is more likly to happen than having 200 scales of difficult Content to actually Play:)

Title:A dedicated Fractal team

Description and goals: -converting old GW1 dungeons to GW2 fractals;
- creating dungeons that explain why some creatures/races have vanished off of Tyria;
- converting current dungeons into fractal to make room for new one
- implement those rumoured dungeons that didn’t make the cut at launch because of time and money as fractals
- implement dungeons that are about possible futures
- removing level cap from fractals and creating appropriate challenges and rewards with each release
Proposal Functionality:
-the team would have to be at least as big as a Living World team if not as big as the PvP team combined with the WvW team
-they would ship out a monthly fractal + changes/ fixes towards existing ones(bugs appear whenever you implement something new and the should have at least a week to fix them)
Risks:
-time and money spent on a separate team
- possible distancing of members from other LS teams
- workload will be hectic is an understatement

haviz.1340:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

MokahTGS.7850:

I also would like Fractals (and to a lesser extent, Dungeons) to evolve to allow for 2-5 player scaling. I know they are currently designed for 5 people, but I’d like to see the balance code reworked in such a way that 2 people could run through a fractal and be rewarded for that level scale. Obviously 5-man fractals would reward more, but I personally just want to run through them with my wife…currently that isn’t possible.

Call it “Casual-mode” for Fractals.

Personally I would like to see Fractals be able to be 5+ as well with associated risk/reward mechanics.

Chris

In guildwars, the more people you have, the easier the game becomes. Aoe cap for example severely limits content for 5+.

Content could be created that requires the team to split up at several points throughout the fractal though. But yeah, I believe that new content would be a better fit than adjusting the current fractals.

Maybe fractals should become less of a ‘combination of 4 randomized mini dungeons’ and more of a ‘journey of exploration through the mists’…

A new fractal background structure could allow for many ideas in this thread to find a place. Such as leaderboards, (historic) lore fractals, rewards based on individual fractals, larger fractal parties and more difficult content.

phys.7689:

Your talking about competition, thats a bit different from replayability. In terms of having a fair competition against other players, random elements wouldnt help you. But in terms of having different/interesting challenges to deal with, and making each playthough different, random helps a lot.

now of course, if you are talking about competition, you have to have the same exact levels for every one, with the same enemies, then you can practice your mastery of learning specific and most effecient techniques, and accurately compare your performance to other people, but if we follow that path what do we have?

People doing the same 3 most effecient, most easy fractals, with the optimal party set ups, The replayability will be extremely low, except if the rewards are so good people feel they must do it.

I personally would give up a good competitive fair test type fractals for a fun/variable/semi unpredictable type fractal in a heart beat. The challenge i look for is more personal than about measuring myself against others. So for me, i dont mind if i have a harder fractal run than someone else, as long as we play well and overcome the challenges. Now, if the reward system rewards actually doing harder things, rather than mastery of the most efficient path, that, i think benefits everyone.

so yeah i think rolling isnt a great thing, i mean its only 1/4 fractals though, so it isnt the end of the world, but it doesnt add anything to fractals.

I mean the proof is there already, every one rolls swamp because it is the fastest fractal. Is it the funnest? not really, is it the most challenging? nope, is it the best designed? nope. Its the fractal that is the quickest stepping stone to getting the daily done as soon as possible.

It’s not about randomness not helping with competition. It’s about randomness completely killing any competitive play. You really can’t have any prestige if luck plays a big role in the outcome. For example, can you truly say you have beaten fractal scale 39 if you didn’t get Cliffside?

If people want only run same maps perhaps issue is with the maps? Increasing length of Swamp and decreasing length of Underground would be very easy to do and help a lot. No point having a bad system and forcing people to use it instead of fixing it.

Could you define fun / variable / semi unpredictable fractal? Why can’t normal fractals be fun? Do you think one well thought encounter would be less fun than a pool of simple encounters? Couldn’t variability come from multiple different instabilities with incentive to play all of them?

I will try to sum up all current ideas to fix swamp rolling.

Balance maps
Keep tweaking length (priority) and difficulty (if needed) of the maps until there isn’t big incentive to roll. Basically make Swamp longer and make Underground shorter.

Pros:

• Easy to implement, doesn’t require any new mechanics
• Doesn’t really change how the game works (so no one should get kittened)

Cons:

• May need constant tweaking to reach the best result
• May not work with some instability combinations

Balance rewards
Instead of treating all maps equally with one big end reward, split it among the maps. Longer/harder maps would have more chests during the run meaning higher rewards.

Pros:

• Simple to implement, no extra mechanics needed

Cons:

• Removes/alters concept of daily chest (unless it remains)
• May not work with some instability combinations

Force first roll
Basically once you go in, your map selection would be saved and you wouldn’t get any other map until you have completed it.

Pros:

• Would prevent rolling

Cons:

• Doesn’t actually fix the problem, getting bad roll would become even more annoying
• Needs extra mechanics (probably bugs)
• Even less freedom for people to play how they want (for example can’t go practice starting fractals, etc).

Reward first roll
Same as above except you would get some kind of benefit (additional chest, increase magic find) if you went with the first roll

Pros:

• Would keep freedom

Cons:

• Doesn’t actually fix the problem (getting a bad roll)
• Needs extra mechanics (probably bugs)

Add daily quest with map selection
Allow players to take any map they want. Add daily quest to encourage completing specific maps.

Pros:

• Would give more freedom, people could play any map they want (useful when practicing or soloing)

Cons:

• Needs extra mechanics (probably bugs)
• People could do daily only with easy combinations (would need reward tweaking)

Rework
Instead of a run of 4 maps, have a run of 1 map. Allow selection of any map. Tie instabilities directly to the maps. Make progression separate for each map.

For more detail you can check my earlier post

Pros:

• Would remove randomness -> more competitive
• Would reduce time requirement -> more casual
• Would allow better instabilities
• Would eliminate rolling
• Would support very hard content
• Would support infinite scaling while keeping it expandable

Cons:

• Would require big amount of work
• Would require some kind of progression reset/transformation
• Would be a bold change

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Current Drop table research at level 50 has Skins/Wep Box/Armor Box at about 10% each chance to drop. Rings at about 50% chance to drop with a 20% chance of nothing. For people who do Fractal 50, rings essentially also ‘nothing’ and armor boxes are essentially more ‘nothing.’ Thus, the chance of getting something useful is about 20% and that is only if you value the different color ascended weapon skins as desireable. If all you find worthwhile is fractal skins, 90% of the time you will be disappointed, ignoring the times you get a fractal skin you don’t want.

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

3. Increase Karma rewards by 3x for lower levels to encourage people to play lower levels and not just do 50 every day.

Pros: People would get rewards tangibly appropriate to the content level they are doing, and feel properly rewarded for it.

Cons: People would probably only do fractal 50 once they hit that level. Though my rebuttal would be, that would only serve to show what the rewards people actually value are, and would be at least partially countered by the Karma gain from below 50.

thanks for reading,

Nike
Death and Taxes [DnT]

Taking some ideas from the discussion. I think it’s okay in speedruns if everyone in a party wears zerker; if they can survive, then more power (and precision and ferocity) to them. Hopefully ‘if’ can become an important question.

Proposal: A fractal speedrun mode, complete with leaderboards.

Proposal Goal: to provide a way for intermediate to world-class PvE players to prove their mastery over fractal content.

Proposal Implementation: In Dessa’s Lab in fractal scale 30 or higher, players can speak to a speedrun NPC. They may pick any fractal to speedrun, and will zone into a speedrun holding pen. When all players have loaded and are ready, the holding pen disappears and the timer starts. During a speed run, no loot drops, and chests do not spawn. At certain locations in each fractal (and during certain fights, such as during the Molten Weapons test, the burn phase of the final boss of Volcanic, etc.), special targets spawn that subtract time from the clock when killed or destroyed. Once players complete the fractal, the timer stops, and they automatically exit thirty seconds later. Players cannot increase their fractal scale or reward level from a speedrun.

Each combination of fractal and instability has a bronze, silver and gold time, ideally drawn from leaderboard results. Players earn rewards based on the rank they earned; a bronze time earns only a small amount of silver, while a gold time may earn more money and possibly items. They should be pitched so that the top 90% of attempts earn the bronze time, the top 50% earn the silver and the top 20% earn the gold time. Players are told the target times, what percentile their time falls in, and the time for a nearby percentile to give players an achievable target to shoot for next time. If they are in the top 1% of players, they are instead told what rank their time earned. If players beat the record in any fractal, they unlock a cosmetic reward, such as a title and unique skin.

If a group attempts a speedrun that they’ve already attempted, their best time is displayed, and if they beat their best time, their previous time is replaced by their new time. A group of players attempting a speedrun are considered to be identical to a previous attempt already on the leaderboard if:

• three players from the previous attempt are in the new attempt;
• two players from the previous attempt are in the new attempt, and two players not in the previous attempt are in the same guild as two players in the previous attempt;
• one player from the previous attempt is in the new attempt, and all players in both the previous and new attempt are in the same guild.

Leaderboards are also available on the web and through an API.

Risks: Integrating the leaderboard with game servers to provide real-time feedback may be computationally prohibitive. Players may use the speedrun to complete the Daily Fractal Runner achievement instead of using LFG to run a full fractal. It may be difficult to make some fractals interesting to speedrun, even with time subtraction targets. Talented players may work out a way to circumvent the identical player check and fill the top slots on the leaderboard with their guild.

Tree.3916:

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

I would be for removing the Rings, but not the weapons and armor, I can always use more BIS weapons and armor to stick other skins on , and thats not likely to stop any time soon. Plus a 60% chance at the rarest skins in the game seems quite high.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Folks,

Good discussion. I am enjoying it. The discussion about re rolling is very insightful.

I would appreciate it if you could put some ideas forward for Leader-board mechanics.

Specifically in regard to the fact that I was unhappy with us putting out Leader-boards in their previous functionality (having lots of folks sitting at lvl 50 was not ideal) and therefore the feature was held back.

Obviously we have given Level 50 Leader diversification a lot of thought but it would be awesome to hear your proposals. Note there are a lot of logic problems in the solutions in this area so please do think about associated risks.

Cheers

Chris

I don’t think that fractals are well designed for a leaderboard.

Their random nature makes it difficult to really work towards a certain goal.

If we were to have the ‘quickest overall time’ then we need to get lucky with the fractals we get.

If we were to have the ‘quickest individual fractal time’ then we can’t reliably prepare for an individual fractal (except those in tier 1),

If the limit is set to ‘whoever reaches level or rank x the fastest.’ I think we may be stimulating a bad gaming habit. (Gaming for a few days straight when the new update comes out) And it wouldn’t be decided so much by skill as by the amount of time a person has available.

But! You already know that, and are asking for a good suggestion to make leaderboards work.

So… I’ll mention my idea again:

Challenge missions similar to those in GW1.

They were awesome, though too easy to exploit for a solid leaderboard. Close the exploits and you have a brilliant recipe for a PvE leaderboard.

Fractals may not be the place for this. Unless the randomness goes away, or we develop a seperate set of fractals with this competitive goal in mind.

I agree totally with The Lost Witch.

What I would rather see added instead of leader boards would be an account Fractal Profile similar to the way the PvP Panel statistics section looks & functions.

Favorite class for fractals, most played fractal, most completed fractal, fractal not finished the most, average time spent in each fractal etc, total completions by fractal level etc. There are tons of cool personal metrics that could be displayed. Modify the Fractal Frequenter acheivement a bit and you could add fractal specific titles, with the ability to track progress on them, a special title for completing dredge 100 times, a title for reaching max level, a title for completing a set number of total fractals (100, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, a gajillion etc) a title for completing a certain fractal level a certain number of times. The options here are staggering.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

I would be for removing the Rings, but not the weapons and armor, I can always use more BIS weapons and armor to stick other skins on , and thats not likely to stop any time soon. Plus a 60% chance at the rarest skins in the game seems quite high.

If you get a Magis armor skin, you would use it? I mean, I’m sure someone out there likes Magi’s stats, but for 99% of players that is a dead drop.

And 60% chance at a skin isn’t that great when you consider that there is a 1/14th chance of getting the one you want. To gear all your alts in fractal skins would still requires hundreds of level 50 dailies.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

your right actually it was introduced as infinite scaling dungeon so even hardcore Gamers could go to they’re Limits… but It really concersn me that the Content I played in fractals over a year ago was way harder than what you are able to Play now ( even the new instabilities that make sure you have enough AR to facetank the attacks from bosses make the Content easier )

I feel the same. Back when we began playing at level 40+ with only 20-25 AR, there was a real challenge on the fights, as any mistake would result in a downed, perhaps even dead, player.
Now, people can’t go in 40 without 45 AR, or they insta-die because of the instability. Because of the high level of AR people now have, most don’t care at all about agony, no need to dodge, like it’s a waste of endurance… The challenge I once felt from the higher level fractals is completely gone.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would appreciate it if you could put some ideas forward for Leader-board mechanics.

Why do we still desperately trying to put in something that Fractals doesn’t need? It was a bad idea then, it’s still a bad idea now. There were many people voicing their concerns about their fractal habits being seen by the public. The discussions went on so far as people asking if they could opt out of the Leaderboards all together. That was never addressed just like many other topics around Fractured update.

I think the idea should be just scrapped and forgotten. The time should be instead invested in redesigning one particular fractal level that doesn’t even have to be mentioned to be understood which one is being called out. Along with new rewards system and perhaps new items.

In other words, please don’t waste man-hours (which you will most likely have a finite number of, that can be put towards fractals) on something that majority of fractal players never asked for nor wanted to begin with.

Instead let’s focus on the major things: balancing and rewards, because that’s where the main issues are laying right now. Not the lack of Leaderboards.

Please, if you can discuss it with us. What would you like to see changed? How you feel about time investment in fractals?

Leaderboards
Proposal
Introduce separate challenge mode fractals and seasons to dessa’s lab
Goal of Proposal
To make fractal leaderboards compelling, rewarding and logical
How the Proposal would work.
Leaderboards with random fractal selection is difficult if not impossible to balance. Adding Special portals into Dessa’s Lab that connect to specific fractal combinations would allow players to take the time to plan out their strategy when assaulting a given set. Leaderboards could offer several different challenges for example survival or speed.

• Speed runs are straight forward, how fast can you get through the specific series of fractals?
• Survival would be similar to phase 2 of the Grawl fractal where players must defend an object or objects while fighting increasingly more difficult enemies. This could allow some cool twists on current fractals with us defending the gates of Surmia with Dulfy against the Flame Legion.

In addition to having different fractal challenge modes the leaderboards could be set up in seasons with the top teams receiving exclusive miniatures or cosmetics.

Associated Risks and Costs

• Difficult to tie into current fractal progression
• Caters to Premade groups.
• Splits the Fractal Running Community

Tree.3916:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

I would be for removing the Rings, but not the weapons and armor, I can always use more BIS weapons and armor to stick other skins on , and thats not likely to stop any time soon. Plus a 60% chance at the rarest skins in the game seems quite high.

If you get a Magis armor skin, you would use it? I mean, I’m sure someone out there likes Magi’s stats, but for 99% of players that is a dead drop.

And 60% chance at a skin isn’t that great when you consider that there is a 1/14th chance of getting the one you want. To gear all your alts in fractal skins would still requires hundreds of level 50 dailies.

That’s all and good, but what if you already have every skin you could possibly want? I’d much rather have ascended box drop than a skin these days. Those are actually worth more. And after you get every possible skin you want (since 60% chance is VERY high) after 10 runs, there would be no reason at all to bother in 50+.

Rewards
The current rewards for completing fractals are very RNG centric. Many posters have suggested several ways to improve rewards I especially like the ones that emphasize fractal relics and pristine fractal relics.
Proposal
Ascended Fractal Armor
Goal of Proposal
Reward top Tier Fractal players while giving them a project to work on.
How the proposal would work
Level 50+ fractals would drop components for ascended fractal armor. The components would have a chance to drop off bosses and chests and one would be guaranteed from the daily level 50+ fractal reward. Once they player has the specific components needed and enough fractal relics they can buy a pure piece of fractal armor from a vendor. The pure armor has infusion slots and an appropriate AC, but it has no stats. The player unlocks the stats by buying a special ascended insignias with pristine fractal relics. Each armor piece can have multiple ascended stats applied to it making it not only swap stats but particle effects as well. This armor could use the zodiac armor skin but have the bodysuit change effect based on stats following the current ascended spectrum. Since vitality gear glows blue the gem shop armor could be adjusted to have the same effect as twilight.
Risks

• System could begin to feel like a grind
• 6/6 fractal armor could become required for pug runs

Tree.3916:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

I would be for removing the Rings, but not the weapons and armor, I can always use more BIS weapons and armor to stick other skins on , and thats not likely to stop any time soon. Plus a 60% chance at the rarest skins in the game seems quite high.

If you get a Magis armor skin, you would use it? I mean, I’m sure someone out there likes Magi’s stats, but for 99% of players that is a dead drop.

And 60% chance at a skin isn’t that great when you consider that there is a 1/14th chance of getting the one you want. To gear all your alts in fractal skins would still requires hundreds of level 50 dailies.

It’s meant to be a monumental struggle to get any piece of prestige not a skin you’d waste on an alt lightly, the drop rate shouldn’t be assumed with alts in mind. It’s like gearing all your alts with a legendary. Also you misunderstood what I meant the skins would be all for the same character (I have 50 unique skined exotic stave’s all bound to my main).

I’d use mis-stated weapons, the Armor, is a separate issue around the randomness of the stat drops you get, I think a random armor piece with choosable stats would be much more effective.

Shongaqu.5279:

Leaderboards

• Speed runs are straight forward, how fast can you get through the specific series of fractals?
• Survival would be similar to phase 2 of the Grawl fractal where players must defend an object or objects while fighting increasingly more difficult enemies. This could allow some cool twists on current fractals with us defending the gates of Surmia with Dulfy against the Flame Legion.

I think both of those are lazy Solutions because they don’t really give you a challenge.
- Speedrunning is fine and you Need good Focus ect.. but still it has nothing to do with difficult Content but more with not failing to hard it prefers a specific Setup and gear to be really as fast as possible
- Defending there is not any fun in doing this you really wanna end up defending against 100+ waves just to be on top and whenever records are high enough People will have to Play at least half an hour to an hour before it actually matters…

I think it should be possible that Anet just designs Hard Bosses:) with hard instabilities… man Chris all I wanna do is WIPE yeah just wipe and get better at the game instead of facerolling!

I really have the hope that they are able to do Encounters for 5 People that are really hard. What if you had a fractal Level 100 Boss ( after that fix Fractal sets and instabilities with following conditions)

Boss Encounter scale 100 Special Boss:
-You Need to kick a certain attack otherwise whole Party gets wiped ( so everyone Needs to have an eye on the stack so he can actually get kicked)
- there is a Phase were you Need to deactivate shield ( there are 5 pannels on the floor and everyone Needs to be in a pannel to get the shield from him so he can get attacked)
- Finishing Phase at 10% all will be randomly ported into a mists 1 vs 1 Arena where he Needs to kill his Image to get back to the others. If he doesn’t succed he is not able to join the fight again
- There is a Special laserbeam that applies 1000000000000000mio agony if you don’t doge it(yeah this is no gearcheck:D)

- at 2 % there is the final test and you Need to Play the mad king says game

Rewards:
- there is a fix reward that starts a legnedary quest for a legendary fractal armor that is upgradable once you get to Level 150 where you have the same Encounter but with the isntability ( if one gets downed all die)

there you have a really kitten bossfight. I will wipe over and over but I would go on trying such a fight. Because there is a nice fix reward.. and it is not about gear but about tactics…:) Since I really think Anet can deliver such bossfights I hope they will make fractals harder with such bossfights and not with RNG, and Gearchecks or timlimits ( zerkercheck:))

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

I would be for removing the Rings, but not the weapons and armor, I can always use more BIS weapons and armor to stick other skins on , and thats not likely to stop any time soon. Plus a 60% chance at the rarest skins in the game seems quite high.

If you get a Magis armor skin, you would use it? I mean, I’m sure someone out there likes Magi’s stats, but for 99% of players that is a dead drop.

And 60% chance at a skin isn’t that great when you consider that there is a 1/14th chance of getting the one you want. To gear all your alts in fractal skins would still requires hundreds of level 50 dailies.

It’s meant to be a monumental struggle to get any piece of prestige not a skin you’d waste on an alt lightly, the drop rate shouldn’t be assumed with alts in mind. It’s like gearing all your alts with a legendary. Also you misunderstood what I meant the skins would be all for the same character (I have 50 unique skined exotic stave’s all bound to my main).

Who says its supposed to be a monumental struggle? Is that an anet quote? You are describing the world as you want it not as it is but you’re making a declarative statement that implies you’re describing it as it is. Tldr; just because you want it to be a monumental struggle does not mean it was intended to be.

Right now you have about a 0.7% chance of getting the particular fractal skin you want from a level 50 run. This isn’t a monumental struggle, its a grind beyond belief. under the system I proposed you have a 4% chance of getting the particular skin you want from a level 50 daily chest. This is is a gigantic improvement, but not a soul crushing grind. If you think a 4% chance is “too high” then I would suggest you install some Korean grinder MMOs where a 1/10,000 drop rate is considered good because clearly you enjoy grind.

Also, I would prefer the “monumental stuggle” in a game came from the content, and not from the loot table.

Romo.3709:

Tree.3916:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

I would be for removing the Rings, but not the weapons and armor, I can always use more BIS weapons and armor to stick other skins on , and thats not likely to stop any time soon. Plus a 60% chance at the rarest skins in the game seems quite high.

If you get a Magis armor skin, you would use it? I mean, I’m sure someone out there likes Magi’s stats, but for 99% of players that is a dead drop.

And 60% chance at a skin isn’t that great when you consider that there is a 1/14th chance of getting the one you want. To gear all your alts in fractal skins would still requires hundreds of level 50 dailies.

That’s all and good, but what if you already have every skin you could possibly want? I’d much rather have ascended box drop than a skin these days. Those are actually worth more. And after you get every possible skin you want (since 60% chance is VERY high) after 10 runs, there would be no reason at all to bother in 50+.

A 4% chance to get the particular skin you want is not high. After 10 runs you would have 6 skins, which is less than a 50% chance of getting the one you want. It would take a month of dailies to have a good chance of obtaining the particular skin you want. Personally, for my alts and for stacking weapons, I need about 10 more Fractal swords. Under the current system it would take me the remainder of my adult life to get that many.

An ascended box that doesn’t drop Berserkers stats is worthless. Worthless drops are a slap in the face.

LordByron.8369:

1) I had the luck to speak with a dev fixing a gamebreaking bug (dungeon section, when any wipe aywere resulted in full spawning of chanters at arms and people said it was “intended”) ….at that point i could ask him to please adapt the chanter spawn at what players used to do…..

And he finally decided he could do that……(see it wasn t designed to be so).

Unless you can provide proof then your claim holds no weight. Anyone can state that they had an alleged conversation with a dev and use it to support their argument.

Your logic is a bit off. Devs cannot foresee everything and this is especially so since they can’t test everything like it would be in a live environment. You’re missing the possibility that it could have been intended that way but the dev realized that it was too difficult at higher levels so they hanged it to ease the burden on players. Just because they change something doesn’t mean it was originally intended.

LordByron.8369:

2) if you say cliffside is intended than you are saying stacking and lOSing is intended….being the biggest part of how arm seal is done.

This statement is known as a red herring. Stacking and LOSing have nothing to do with the method for Cliffside. You’re bringing up a totally separate, unrelated to distract people from the original argument.

LordByron.8369:

3) its clear that devs tested fractal at low level and didn t balance the higher levels…
Infact at low levels you can split the party to have players tank sides.
Or just run fast from a seal to another.

Do you have evidence that they haven’t tested higher level fractals? Also, low level fractals have a rather large margin of error so new players do not get frustrated and they can progress up fractal levels where difficulty gets progressively more difficult.

LordByron.8369:

4) a fractal that for 1 year totally changed behavior if you wiped once? don t tell me it was intended.

At higher level while you can run from a seal to another any downed player or time lost will result in full healing of the seal.

I can’t tell what you’re trying to say here. Could you please rephrase or state what you said more clearly?

LordByron.8369:

NO HINT on the right tactic to the point that when dulfy doesn t have a semiofficial guide, players can t reasonably discern from an exploit and the intended tactic.

Actually most players can. Just about everyone knew the jp tactic for dredge was wrong yet they still did it.

Anyway, all of this is outside of the scope of this thread. If you’d like to discuss this further then please create a new thread or just post in the one I started a few days ago which already covers this subject.

Thanks!

Tree.3916:

An ascended box that doesn’t drop Berserkers stats is worthless. Worthless drops are a slap in the face.

Let’s not make it into another one of those Berserker vs rest. What’s something that’s worthless to you is something awesome to someone else. And vice versa with fractal skins. What I would see a worthless skin, you would find amazing. You gotta look at it with open mind. Given Berserker stats are great for many things. But if I’d get Sentinel’s or Rampager’s ascended box, I wouldn’t crap all over it either.

Removing possibility of getting certain loot in favor of another will yield to rise of attraction to one group, but fall in appearance to another. We’re trying to get everyone happy and willing to progress, not only those trying to get that one skin. Many of us already got every skin they ever wanted. With the new “skin system” I can’t even salvage them for ectos. Hence some of them become worthless.

Romo.3709:

Tree.3916:

An ascended box that doesn’t drop Berserkers stats is worthless. Worthless drops are a slap in the face.

Let’s not make it into another one of those Berserker vs rest. What’s something that’s worthless to you is something awesome to someone else. And vice versa with fractal skins. What I would see a worthless skin, you would find amazing. You gotta look at it with open mind. Given Berserker stats are great for many things. But if I’d get Sentinel’s or Rampager’s ascended box, I wouldn’t crap all over it either.

Removing possibility of getting certain loot in favor of another will yield to rise of attraction to one group, but fall in appearance to another. We’re trying to get everyone happy and willing to progress, not only those trying to get that one skin. Many of us already got every skin they ever wanted. With the new “skin system” I can’t even salvage them for ectos. Hence some of them become worthless.

I agree with Romo… I mean I got a rampager weapon box, and it was fine for an alt or in my case, my underwater weapon. I wasn’t like “Awwwwww my life stinks it’s not a berserkers!” It was “wow, I’m the only party member to get one. Cool.”

The un infused rings are another story, though. I don’t see anything wrong with taking those out of the loot table 30+

Tree.3916:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

I would be for removing the Rings, but not the weapons and armor, I can always use more BIS weapons and armor to stick other skins on , and thats not likely to stop any time soon. Plus a 60% chance at the rarest skins in the game seems quite high.

If you get a Magis armor skin, you would use it? I mean, I’m sure someone out there likes Magi’s stats, but for 99% of players that is a dead drop.

And 60% chance at a skin isn’t that great when you consider that there is a 1/14th chance of getting the one you want. To gear all your alts in fractal skins would still requires hundreds of level 50 dailies.

It’s meant to be a monumental struggle to get any piece of prestige not a skin you’d waste on an alt lightly, the drop rate shouldn’t be assumed with alts in mind. It’s like gearing all your alts with a legendary. Also you misunderstood what I meant the skins would be all for the same character (I have 50 unique skined exotic stave’s all bound to my main).

Who says its supposed to be a monumental struggle? Is that an anet quote? You are describing the world as you want it not as it is but you’re making a declarative statement that implies you’re describing it as it is. Tldr; just because you want it to be a monumental struggle does not mean it was intended to be.

Right now you have about a 0.7% chance of getting the particular fractal skin you want from a level 50 run. This isn’t a monumental struggle, its a grind beyond belief. under the system I proposed you have a 4% chance of getting the particular skin you want from a level 50 daily chest. This is is a gigantic improvement, but not a soul crushing grind. If you think a 4% chance is “too high” then I would suggest you install some Korean grinder MMOs where a 1/10,000 drop rate is considered good because clearly you enjoy grind.

Also, I would prefer the “monumental stuggle” in a game came from the content, and not from the loot table.

Alright prehaps making a statement was a mistake, I don’t like grind, but what I want is exclusivity for high end rewards, I feel there is a very no man left behind thing in Guildwars which really doesn’t fit with low distribution items or displays of skill. Personally I consider a prestige item to be something others couldn’t get even at their best, not an item they choose not to get, or just did’nt spend the time to get. It shows you’ve progressed beyond them in ability.

I’ll withdraw my complaint on your idea.

Idea
I’ve played MMO’s where I have had the only copy of an item in the entire game, that is an amazing feeling regardless of what item item is. I know that is completely nonviable for a game of this scale but what is possible would be an exclusive reward for those in the top 1% of the fractal leaderboards each month? It would give a reason to it and give a way to display the accomplishment.

LordByron.8369:

2) *if you say cliffside is intended than you are saying stacking and lOSing is intended….being the biggest part of how arm seal is done.

That’s the #puglyfe method for the arm seals. Good groups do this…

http://youtu.be/faGhrvwxObo

Dare to improve.

- Dredge fractal trouble

Remove Dredge fractal until being made to last 20 minutes. Test it through dedicated testers.

- Rolling.
Tier 1 = current Tier 1
Tier 2 = current Tier 2 + remaining Tier 1
Tier 3 = current Tier 3 (except dredge) + remaining Tier 2 + remaining Tier 1

- Rewards.
- Gold reward = fractal level x 10 silver.
- Salvage or sell ascended rings for 50 silver
- Guaranteed token for skins for fractal 40+
- Random Skin chest to be able to choose skin (increase to 10% chance to get one at 40+)
- Random ascended stuff (weapon or armor) without fixed stats to be able to chose.

That, and I will do fractals again.

@Patrikan Habaton
I like your idea for the boss fight. The idea to add an emote element to the fight was very intersting. Do you think adding non-combat elements to boss fights would encourage paying attention or simply encourage macros on your keyboard?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Savoy.6824:

Why are none of the devs discussing the over abundance of ascended rings. There have been several proposals around these but not any comments by the devs on those proposals. Are they not helpful?

Just because we don’t reply doesn’t mean that we aren’t discussion or reading the proposals and discussions being put forward in the thread. It would be a huge evolution for us as CDI members if we could just get over this ‘Assumed’ barrier.

Maybe you could talk to the web team about putting a couple of Dev Hand buttons into the forum interface just for ANet staff to use, in CDI threads particularly.

For the first button, any ANet staff could click on a little checkmark just to signify “read it” or “noted,” without expressing any view up or down on the post.

For the second button, if something from the post is good enough to make it onto The List of your takeaways from the CDI thread, then you could click a shiny green “ANet +1” for that post to let us know that you saw it and it raised your interest.

As to leaderboards, I agree with what others already have suggested that there just aren’t any “good” ways to do them for PvE. The player skill cap, by definition, is low enough that almost anyone can reach it before long, and your efficiency beyond that just depends on repetition and the gear grind. Everyone is going to wind up at “the top” of any PvE leaderboard sooner or later.

Leaderboards based on anything like clear time also will have serious negative effects, because any time you put a number in a game, two things happen: (1) people will focus on gaming that number to the exclusion of all else; and (2) demands for a minimum score on that number will become a routine screener for groups.

This will delight a small number of people. But we have enough problems already with the speedrun / zerker meta and group finder postings with truly idiotic screens like +65 AR for explorable mode regular dungeons. Imagine what will happen when “TOP 100 SPEEDRANK ONLY” becomes commonplace.

The better way to go with this would be just putting in some “torture mode” or “feat of strength” style achievements, like clearing an instance in less than an absurdly low time, doing a series of them within a low overall time with the same group and no deaths, doing a whole sequence of very different ones with no skill or gear changes in the party, and under a very low elapsed time, etc.

Romo.3709:

Why do we still desperately trying to put in something that Fractals doesn’t need? It was a bad idea then, it’s still a bad idea now. There were many people voicing their concerns about their fractal habits being seen by the public. The discussions went on so far as people asking if they could opt out of the Leaderboards all together. That was never addressed just like many other topics around Fractured update.

I think the idea should be just scrapped and forgotten. The time should be instead invested in redesigning one particular fractal level that doesn’t even have to be mentioned to be understood which one is being called out. Along with new rewards system and perhaps new items.

In other words, please don’t waste man-hours (which you will most likely have a finite number of, that can be put towards fractals) on something that majority of fractal players never asked for nor wanted to begin with.

Instead let’s focus on the major things: balancing and rewards, because that’s where the main issues are laying right now. Not the lack of Leaderboards.

Please, if you can discuss it with us. What would you like to see changed? How you feel about time investment in fractals?

Completely agree with you on this, Romo.
Leaderboard would be so useless it’s a complete waste of time to make one. And it’s not a feature the community is eagerly waiting for, so I too think it would be better to focus the ressources on more interesting things:

- first priority is to fix the various problems that were presented by many here.
- second priority would be to give some improvements that the community is waiting for (see the various proposals here for what players are really asking for).

Leaderboard is really a last priority, some people were even arguing before that it was something they didn’t want at all.

Shongaqu.5279:

@Patrikan Habaton
I like your idea for the boss fight. The idea to add an emote element to the fight was very intersting. Do you think adding non-combat elements to boss fights would encourage paying attention or simply encourage macros on your keyboard?

Hey I personally don’t Play with makros I think it is more about paying Attention. And if you want avoid Players having makros you can get a extra skillbar ( as I think you got it during haloween Event ) to make it some sort of reaction test ( you Need to press it within a certain ammount of time.

- I personally think we have nice things in place like the kick System but it isn’t used in any Encounter:)

-might be harder to implement but maybe even a quicktime Event for a Special Boss could be ok as well.

Anyway I guess there are many Ideas for intresting bossfights and I hope some of These will make it into game sooner or later.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Romo.3709:

Why do we still desperately trying to put in something that Fractals doesn’t need? It was a bad idea then, it’s still a bad idea now. There were many people voicing their concerns about their fractal habits being seen by the public. The discussions went on so far as people asking if they could opt out of the Leaderboards all together. That was never addressed just like many other topics around Fractured update.

I think the idea should be just scrapped and forgotten. The time should be instead invested in redesigning one particular fractal level that doesn’t even have to be mentioned to be understood which one is being called out. Along with new rewards system and perhaps new items.

In other words, please don’t waste man-hours (which you will most likely have a finite number of, that can be put towards fractals) on something that majority of fractal players never asked for nor wanted to begin with.

Instead let’s focus on the major things: balancing and rewards, because that’s where the main issues are laying right now. Not the lack of Leaderboards.

Please, if you can discuss it with us. What would you like to see changed? How you feel about time investment in fractals?

Completely agree with you on this, Romo.
Leaderboard would be so useless it’s a complete waste of time to make one. And it’s not a feature the community is eagerly waiting for, so I too think it would be better to focus the ressources on more interesting things:

- first priority is to fix the various problems that were presented by many here.
- second priority would be to give some improvements that the community is waiting for (see the various proposals here for what players are really asking for).

Leaderboard is really a last priority, some people were even arguing before that it was something they didn’t want at all.

Honestly I do agree with this. If a leaderboard exists, the only one that makes sense is a speed-running one, which can be fun but is not hugely interesting/motivating except to a very small portion of the playerbase. Better content/rewards/bugfixes/new fractals should be a much higher priority, because it is something that everyone can enjoy.

Length
Average fractal should be between 15 to 30 minutes to complete. With a timer. Once the timer reaches zero, the fractal collapses on itself and all players die.

Normal
Timer is longer than on hard. NPC’s have a special set of abilities. Loot is proportionate to the time and difficulty.

Hard
Timer is shorter than normal. NPC’s have a long list of offensive and defensive abilities that are selected at random at the creation of the fractal. Loot is proportionate to the time and difficulty.

People don’t want an in game speed run leaderboard. The hardcore community who would compete for such a thing are already able to track this in a way that is a lot more legit than this exploit-to-win speed run leaderboard.

Please, please, please do not devote any development resources to a leaderboard that almost no one wants.

So it looks like we’re pretty much in agreement that we don’t particularly want a leader-board with the people here so far and feel there is no effective implementation for it.

Would anyone like to voice an opinion on the yes side?

That leaderboards serve a different audience than is coming in here to chat doesn’t mean that they don’t serve any audience.

Saying they’re useless one time or a million doesn’t make it so. The question is “does adding them provide benefit to the game commiserate to the effort it requires?” Since leaderboards are little more than a database look up and some UI work for where to post/display the results, we’re not talking about a lot of work. It doesn’t have to serve a lot of people to be very worthwhile.

The problem remains structuring it in a way so that its an enduring value. The leaderboards we have now would have made an amazing 1 week event. Keeping them open eternally is more embarrassing than enticing. There’s nothing it does better for the game today than just giving people a title for reaching level 50 would, and would have done BETTER considering you could at least see a title from inside the game client…

fabipm.4359:

- Dredge fractal trouble

Remove Dredge fractal until being made to last 20 minutes. Test it through dedicated testers.

- Rolling.
Tier 1 = current Tier 1
Tier 2 = current Tier 2 + remaining Tier 1
Tier 3 = current Tier 3 (except dredge) + remaining Tier 2 + remaining Tier 1

- Rewards.
- Gold reward = fractal level x 10 silver.
- Salvage or sell ascended rings for 50 silver
- Guaranteed token for skins for fractal 40+
- Random Skin chest to be able to choose skin (increase to 10% chance to get one at 40+)
- Random ascended stuff (weapon or armor) without fixed stats to be able to chose.

That, and I will do fractals again.

This is a pretty clean band aid until more long term solutions can be implemented. Better than nothing and an easy fix for now. /approved as triage until long term solution is in place. Would anyone be against this as a short term solution?

The Lost Witch.7601:

What if, instead of a leaderboard, we had ‘bonus’ rewards for beating a fractal quickly. Or ‘bonus’ rewards for undertaking an optional extra task within a fractal. (Which occurs along the usual fractal path)

Very much like we had bonus achievements in GW1. They would not function as a way to compare ourselves with others, but they would encourage putting in extra effort.

I believe this should appeal to more players.

Anything enhancing the actual game-play and creating optional challenge is good. Leaderboards don’t bring anything like that to the game itself, but more to a website outside of the game. Which was always the issue with Living Story, until recently where lore became much more in-game driven rather than website based.

Bonus rewards are always welcome. Encouraging speed clearing is a different story. It would create a whole new wave of complaints from people being kicked due to incompetence and inability to meet specific requirement in gear. Huge amount of mobs would be ran past or skipped. And finding exploits to make the run faster and faster would be on a new high.

I love the optional challenges in missions idea which would add some flavor to each and every level. Maybe beating both bosses instead of 1, or going off course to bring a specific item to the end boss that would open a new chest. Potential is there and at the same time it would be optional for people that don’t have so much time to fully commit to a full “optional” fractal run.

Regardless, I honestly believe most of us are on the same boat when it comes to Leaderboards. They’re just not worth the time nor they’re practical in any way.

Conski Deshan.2057:

So it looks like we’re pretty much in agreement that we don’t particularly want a leader-board with the people here so far and feel there is no effective implementation for it.

Would anyone like to voice an opinion on the yes side?

I would be cool with a leaderboard if it was in game . The thing I don’t like about the leaderboards is you have to look out side the game to see them. It doesn’t make much sense for PvE though and doesn’t really go with the theme of what the Fractals are about either. Actually, I don’t want leaderboards for Fractals, but I want PvP leaderboards to be represented by an NPC or signage in The Mists.

Regarding instabilities, (my suggestion will make fotm harder) how about having random instability as you level up in tier. For example, level 30-39 will have players will have 1 random instability on them and that changes for each of the new mini 4 fractal. Level 40-49 will have 2 random instability per fractal. Level 50-59 = 3 random instabilities.

You can also group the instabilities in categories of difficulties (easy, medium, hard) and the game randomly select one from each of the difficulty categories per fractal, this way each group will be treated “fairly” in instabilities.

This will accomplish a few things: making each tier even more difficult, discouraging people from just playing a fractal level with the easiest instability (lvl 49 anyone?), the randomness of instability keep people on their toes and keep it interesting bc they don’t know what instability they’ll get next, this will also help out with leaderboards (if it’s based on fastest clearing time) because the increased in number of instabilities per tier and the randomness of the instability per fractal puts everyone more or less on an even playing field.

This suggestion, of course, will make fotm more difficult. So of course you need to fix the broken/tedious fractals cough dredge cough and also need to revamp the reward system to make it worth while for people.

Iason Evan.3806:

This is a pretty clean band aid until more long term solutions can be implemented. Better than nothing and an easy fix for now. /approved as triage until long term solution is in place. Would anyone be against this as a short term solution?

To be honest. Yes. I’m very much against any kind of short term solution when it comes to fractals. Not because I don’t want a solution to begin with, but because of a nature of fractals in eyes of developers. Fractals doesn’t have a team working on it around the clock. They don’t have people dedicated to the content. If we do get an update it is because some people from LS updates teams been moved to fractals development for short amount of time and brought right back to their usual spots the moment the content went live. Which we seen the examples of during Fractured.

Short term solutions would be made into Full term solutions even though they would be called otherwise. It’d be more of a well, it’s working for now, lets get back to more important things than fractals.

Because of that any kind of temporary fix should be put on hold and instead of using that limited time on creating short term goals, lets put it towards the bigger picture.

Romo.3709:

Iason Evan.3806:

This is a pretty clean band aid until more long term solutions can be implemented. Better than nothing and an easy fix for now. /approved as triage until long term solution is in place. Would anyone be against this as a short term solution?

To be honest. Yes. I’m very much against any kind of short term solution when it comes to fractals. Not because I don’t want a solution to begin with, but because of a nature of fractals in eyes of developers. Fractals doesn’t have a team working on it around the clock. They don’t have people dedicated to the content. If we do get an update it is because some people from LS updates teams been moved to fractals development for short amount of time and brought right back to their usual spots the moment the content went live. Which we seen the examples of during Fractured.

Short term solutions would be made into Full term solutions even though they would be called otherwise. It’d be more of a well, it’s working for now, lets get back to more important things than fractals.

Because of that any kind of temporary fix should be put on hold and instead of using that limited time on creating short term goals, lets put it towards the bigger picture.

If what you say about the fractal development team (or lack thereof) is true, then we should all be very excited about the next few months. The current LS arc is almost over, which means that some devs should be freed up to work more on fractals. Hence, this thread was created. They want a long list of things to work on, and I think we are doing a good job of giving it to them.

I just wish people would take the time to read what has already been posted before adding something “new.” So many of these posts are basically repeats of things that have already been said. If I wasn’t at work I would take them time to summarize what has already been thoroughly discussed so we could continue adding new ideas, not just repeating. Maybe tonight…

Dietere.3476:

I just wish people would take the time to read what has already been posted before adding something “new.” So many of these posts are basically repeats of things that have already been said. If I wasn’t at work I would take them time to summarize what has already been thoroughly discussed so we could continue adding new ideas, not just repeating. Maybe tonight…

True. But at the same time it really shows what the players are most focused on. Giving the amount of posts we’ve had on Dredge and Rewards made those two topic stand out way more than anything else. If only one post was made on dredge, developers wouldn’t consider it such a big issue as it is. With that in mind they can actually see how people see it from different points of view.

I am quite excited about LS taking a break and teams being reinstated to different areas for the time being. Working on a big feature patch (which I’m quite sure they’re working on right at this moment) is something this game desperately needs. I just really hope fractals is up there on that list.

On the other hand I’m gonna miss that new content every two weeks. But if the payoff is gonna be this big, then any player would be willing to take that break.