Guild Wars 2

As i ve said before, i dont think homogenizing them to be all the same in length and difficulty is a great design. the idea is to create a lot of different experiences, with different goals, and skill sets required.

For example, swamp is one of the worst fractals for newbies to get, it requires much more knowledge, experience, and coordination than many other fractals. I remember for the first few months it was one of the most hated by far.

Swamp is actually a good fractal, now imagine they put some senseless killing in the water that uses up an additional 5 minutes, does that really make a better fractal?

Not to mention, when fractals are very varied, it creates various feelings when you get a roll. relief, a feeling of luckiness, even the feeling of OH BOY we gotta do this now, is something i dont think they should try to get rid of.

That said, they should definately reward you for overcoming greater challenges

Sorry, I probably should have explained better, but I was trying to keep it brief.

I totally agree that they shouldn’t be homogenized. I was more thinking of a triangle of the three functions, with difficulty, length, and reward on each vertices. A given fractal would be somewhere within the triangle. So homogenized would be all fractals dead center, of equal values for difficulty, length and reward. What I’d like to see, and I think what you’re suggesting, is that some be skewed towards length, possibly with lower difficulty. Others might be short and difficult, with higher reward. The point being that they’re balanced with regards to all three.

What we don’t need is the possibility of a short, easy, high reward fractal and a long, hard, low reward fractal in the same tier, which leads to people trying to optimize their runs by rerolling. I guess what I’d like to see is a holistic rebalancing of difficulty, length and reward within tiers, which would keep a given fractal fun and rewarding versus the other possibilities.

haviz.1340:

Make a video how you dodge all of the autoattacks of cultists, ascalonians, dredges, mossman, archdiviner and aetherblades. I’m not sure you are aware of that but you have 2 dodges every 20 seconds and you fight more than 1 of those mobs at the same time.

If you’re dead certain, that Berserker is not the best way to roll in high level fractals, then having leader boards based on speed clearing will NOT make it a strictly Berserker-based activity.

That was the argument raised against speed clearing as a metric. And I believe (like you) that Berserker WON’T be the singular solution to best-time runs.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Yes. Dredge fractal is the main reason why I haven’t been doing fractals for a long time. Just a thought of that fractal and knowing I would have to spend at least 40 minutes there (average skilled team on high level) completely discourages me. Honestly, if you will add some new fractals in the future you can just remove dredge now. I’m sure it won’t be missed.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

From a time/technological standpoint, would Dredge not be the faster/simpler thing to fix?

synk.8762:

As i ve said before, i dont think homogenizing them to be all the same in length and difficulty is a great design. the idea is to create a lot of different experiences, with different goals, and skill sets required.

For example, swamp is one of the worst fractals for newbies to get, it requires much more knowledge, experience, and coordination than many other fractals. I remember for the first few months it was one of the most hated by far.

Swamp is actually a good fractal, now imagine they put some senseless killing in the water that uses up an additional 5 minutes, does that really make a better fractal?

Not to mention, when fractals are very varied, it creates various feelings when you get a roll. relief, a feeling of luckiness, even the feeling of OH BOY we gotta do this now, is something i dont think they should try to get rid of.

That said, they should definately reward you for overcoming greater challenges

Sorry, I probably should have explained better, but I was trying to keep it brief.

I totally agree that they shouldn’t be homogenized. I was more thinking of a triangle of the three functions, with difficulty, length, and reward on each vertices. A given fractal would be somewhere within the triangle. So homogenized would be all fractals dead center, of equal values for difficulty, length and reward. What I’d like to see, and I think what you’re suggesting, is that some be skewed towards length, possibly with lower difficulty. Others might be short and difficult, with higher reward. The point being that they’re balanced with regards to all three.

What we don’t need is the possibility of a short, easy, high reward fractal and a long, hard, low reward fractal in the same tier, which leads to people trying to optimize their runs by rerolling. I guess what I’d like to see is a holistic rebalancing of difficulty, length and reward within tiers, which would keep a given fractal fun and rewarding versus the other possibilities.

hmm hadnt really looked at the difficulty part, but yeahi can agree with that

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

I would say so. I think the rolling thing got brought up pretty far in, in terms of number of pages in the discussion. I also think if the rolling thing were implemented and the Dredge Fractal not fixed…I know that my guild for one would be shouting not so nice things at our monitors.

The rejoicing that would happen if the Dredge Fractal were shortened to better match the amount of time it takes to do the other T3 Fractals would be immeasurable. I think you would see a spike in play akin to what you saw in pvp when you added double rank.

Id say rewards is higher priority than dredge rework. But they both need to be looked at to encourage players to start doing fractals again.

Dredge is pretty well designed, its just too long. There really doesnt need to be anything complicated to rework it. Just remove Rabsovich and the clown car.

Rewards on the other hand are completely terrible for the time it takes to complete a full run. And the difference in rewards between 10 and 49 is so small it doesnt make any sense. Id say gold should increase by 1g per tier. So doing 41-50 should reward 5g for the daily. Adding dragonite into fractals would be nice. Atm dungeon runners are forced to do wvw or open world to get their dragonite. And they have no shortage of emp fragments and bloodstone dust.

Fractal weapons need to be made noticeably more common in higher tiers and much rarer in lower tiers. So far ive heard of so many people getting them in 10-20 when previously it was impossible to get them below 20 and doing 48 definately had the best drop rates for fractal weapons. Id like to see weapon drop rate increased back to its former drop rate and the addition of the selectable weapon box asap. Also please remove uninfused rings from higher tiers and make all rings salvageable or give us the option to vendor them for 25-50silver instead of their current 5silver.

Rolling should be a very low priority problem. Its certainly not driving players away from fractals like dredge and rewards are.

videoboy.4162:

From a time/technological standpoint, would Dredge not be the faster/simpler thing to fix?

Depends very much on how it’s done.

I think my preferred solution would be to simply remove Rabsovich and company.

Then you have 3 major encounters that provide a nice pendulum swing from

Test of Durability requiring some coordination (the buttons/panel)
Test of Durability and Coordination (blasting open the door)
Test of Coordination requiring some durability (End-Bosses)

Right now the Clown Car just interrupts the flow with a big fat test of patience .

Conversely, in the Swamp Fractal I’d make Bloomhunger a mandatory mid-boss and Mossman the mandatory end-boss. The current variability does not make it a better fractal and its simply too short.

Which those two elements in place and re-rolling dead on the floor, I also very much like the idea of getting rid of the fixed tiers – make it random selection again. Some extremely long Fractals can be flagged to lock each other out (e.g. getting Cliffs prevents any other tagged choices for the rest of the run) but mostly we’re back to some real hold-your-breath mystery on what’s the next load-in will bring.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Clearly. First priorities should be Rewards rework, then Dredge rework.

By the way, Chris, could we have an update on the situation about the fractal level reset and the lack of compensation for it ?

2 months ago, you said you would spend some time thinking about how we feel and get back to us, but unless I missed it, there has been no more mention of that since then.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Clearly. First priorities should be Rewards rework, then Dredge rework.

By the way, Chris, could we have an update on the situation about the fractal level reset and the lack of compensation for it ?

2 months ago, you said you would spend some time thinking about how we feel and get back to us, but unless I missed it, there has been no more mention of that since then.

Totally forgot about that! That would be awesome Chris. Or point us in the direction of where you mentioned it if that indeed was the case and we missed it. Cheers!

Nike.2631:

If you’re dead certain, that Berserker is not the best way to roll in high level fractals, then having leader boards based on speed clearing will NOT make it a strictly Berserker-based activity.

That was the argument raised against speed clearing as a metric. And I believe (like you) that Berserker WON’T be the singular solution to best-time runs.

I’m certain berserker is the best way for any pve content, it’s the highest dps set. But it’s more risky than others. The thing that should not and is not the singular solution is a team composition. Different fractals require different team compositions to be optimal.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

If you rework rolling without fixing the Dredge fractal then that fractal would never get played because players would just skip/reroll that fractal. This would make Dredge fractal a waste. So yes to reworking Dredge first.

Why is rolling an issue? Rewards rework is at a much much higher priority to me.

And yes to large scale instance, my guild has been dying for something like that. Bring back gw1 8-man or 12-man challenging instances plz

P.S. Is there a way to create some type of ranking/polling system on here?

Nike.2631:

videoboy.4162:

From a time/technological standpoint, would Dredge not be the faster/simpler thing to fix?

Depends very much on how it’s done.

I think my preferred solution would be to simply remove Rabsovich and company.

Then you have 3 major encounters that provide a nice pendulum swing from

Test of Durability requiring some coordination (the buttons/panel)
Test of Durability and Coordination (blasting open the door)
Test of Coordination requiring some durability (End-Bosses)

Right now the Clown Car just interrupts the flow with a big fat test of patience .

Conversely, in the Swamp Fractal I’d make Bloomhunger a mandatory mid-boss and Mossman the mandatory end-boss. The current variability does not make it a better fractal and its simply too short.

Which those two elements in place and re-rolling dead on the floor, I also very much like the idea of getting rid of the fixed tiers – make it random selection again. Some extremely long Fractals can be flagged to lock each other out (e.g. getting Cliffs prevents any other tagged choices for the rest of the run) but mostly we’re back to some real hold-your-breath mystery on what’s the next load-in will bring.

It just seems that the major complaint about the Dredge, is the amount of time it takes to complete it. Each example people point out, involves a major amount of spawns. Couldn’t they just lessen the amount of spawns in those three areas, thus making a considerable reduction in the amount of time needed to complete the Fractal?

I don’t claim to know a lot about coding a video game, but it seems like they could just use the same lines of code, but change the number used to denote the amount of spawns. If that is true, it would take a lot less time than actually removing certain points altogether and then having to connect the remaining points.

spoj.9672:

Adding dragonite into fractals would be nice. Atm dungeon runners are forced to do wvw or open world to get their dragonite. And they have no shortage of emp fragments and bloodstone dust.

God yes! Please add dragonite as a reward to fractals or dungeons in general, so the dungeon runners who don’t enjoy zerging content but do enjoy having BiS gear can stop grinding temples!

videoboy.4162:

Nike.2631:

videoboy.4162:

From a time/technological standpoint, would Dredge not be the faster/simpler thing to fix?

Depends very much on how it’s done.

I think my preferred solution would be to simply remove Rabsovich and company.

Then you have 3 major encounters that provide a nice pendulum swing from

Test of Durability requiring some coordination (the buttons/panel)
Test of Durability and Coordination (blasting open the door)
Test of Coordination requiring some durability (End-Bosses)

Right now the Clown Car just interrupts the flow with a big fat test of patience .

Conversely, in the Swamp Fractal I’d make Bloomhunger a mandatory mid-boss and Mossman the mandatory end-boss. The current variability does not make it a better fractal and its simply too short.

Which those two elements in place and re-rolling dead on the floor, I also very much like the idea of getting rid of the fixed tiers – make it random selection again. Some extremely long Fractals can be flagged to lock each other out (e.g. getting Cliffs prevents any other tagged choices for the rest of the run) but mostly we’re back to some real hold-your-breath mystery on what’s the next load-in will bring.

It just seems that the major complaint about the Dredge, is the amount of time it takes to complete it. Each example people point out, involves a major amount of spawns. Couldn’t they just lessen the amount of spawns in those three areas, thus making a considerable reduction in the amount of time needed to complete the Fractal?

I don’t claim to know a lot about coding a video game, but it seems like they could just use the same lines of code, but change the number used to denote the amount of spawns. If that is true, it would take a lot less time than actually removing certain points altogether and then having to connect the remaining points.

A few pages back I suggested minor tweaks to the challenges themselves. Other than the dredge car, I don’t feel the amount of dredge is an issue. I’d like to say that my suggestions only require to go into the code and change a few values but then that could not be the case. I don’t see any real reason to not make the minor changes since they can always be reverted back if they don’t work out.

Ayrilana.1396:

A few pages back I suggested minor tweaks to the challenges themselves. Other than the dredge car, I don’t feel the amount of dredge is an issue. I’d like to say that my suggestions only require to go into the code and change a few values but then that could not be the case. I don’t see any real reason to not make the minor changes since they can always be reverted back if they don’t work out.

I like your idea too.

videoboy.4162:

It just seems that the major complaint about the Dredge, is the amount of time it takes to complete it. Each example people point out, involves a major amount of spawns. Couldn’t they just lessen the amount of spawns in those three areas, thus making a considerable reduction in the amount of time needed to complete the Fractal?

The thing to consider is that for the buttons, and blow-the-door encounters, killing all of the spawns isn’t a win condition. They don’t respawn to force you to kill more of them, they respawn to keep the pressure on while you’re doing something else entirely. Reducing the number/speed of respawns changes the difficulty throughout the process but not the length, directly.

In the clown car fight, killing all of them IS a win condition. Reducing the number of respawns changes the length directly.

dutchiez.7502:

spoj.9672:

Adding dragonite into fractals would be nice. Atm dungeon runners are forced to do wvw or open world to get their dragonite. And they have no shortage of emp fragments and bloodstone dust.

God yes! Please add dragonite as a reward to fractals or dungeons in general, so the dungeon runners who don’t enjoy zerging content but do enjoy having BiS gear can stop grinding temples!

When a system is designed with multiple currencies to require play in multiple areas/modes, rearranging things so one activity can net you all the currencies is pretty much defeating the point. It’d be easier to make everything drop Bloodstone Dust and set Vision Crystals to take 15 Bricks, eliminating Empyreal Shards and Dragonite ore entirely.

5-man instances (Dungeons & Fractals) give Empyreal Shards. I wouldn’t expect it to change. Large group activities give Dragonite. Maybe we’ll get Dragonite Ore if the 5+ player version of Fractals materializes .

Nike.2631:

videoboy.4162:

It just seems that the major complaint about the Dredge, is the amount of time it takes to complete it. Each example people point out, involves a major amount of spawns. Couldn’t they just lessen the amount of spawns in those three areas, thus making a considerable reduction in the amount of time needed to complete the Fractal?

The thing to consider is that for the buttons, and blow-the-door encounters, killing all of the spawns isn’t a win condition. They don’t respawn to force you to kill more of them, they respawn to keep the pressure on while you’re doing something else entirely. Reducing the number/speed of respawns changes the difficulty throughout the process but not the length, directly.

In the clown car fight, killing all of them IS a win condition. Reducing the number of respawns changes the length directly.

Direct or indirect isn’t really an issue, as both still reduce time.

I don’t personally have a particular problem with the Dredge Fractal. I just saw a lot of people mentioning that those three areas took a lot of time, due to the amount of Dredge spawning.
So, since “too many dredge = too much time” was their complaint, my solution was to reduce the number of dredge spawning. =)

Nike.2631:

When a system is designed with multiple currencies to require play in multiple areas/modes, rearranging things so one activity can net you all the currencies is pretty much defeating the point. It’d be easier to make everything drop Bloodstone Dust and set Vision Crystals to take 15 Bricks, eliminating Empyreal Shards and Dragonite ore entirely.

5-man instances (Dungeons & Fractals) give Empyreal Shards. I wouldn’t expect it to change. Large group activities give Dragonite. Maybe we’ll get Dragonite Ore if the 5+ player version of Fractals materializes .

“Playing” is a bit overrated word when it comes to getting dragonite. You could call it “leeching”, “autoattacking while being afk” or just “being afk while using an ember”. It’s trivial to get but it’s dull.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Dredge and Rewards.

Rerolling is a non issue.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

phys.7689:

Blaeys.3102:

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

This is something I didnt even consider as part of the discussion, but love seeing it and think it deserves more attention/discussion.

The idea of fractals with different sized groups would go over insanely well in my guild. Just last night, we had 7 people wanting to do fractals and had to arbitrarily leave two friends out of the run.

Been doing this for so many years in MMOs with 5 man content that it’s become the norm. This single change would really set GW2 apart and give us a way to better play with friends (and as a GM of a large guild, it would allow me to schedule a guild fractal night without having to worry about leaving people out).

as long as they dont balance fractals around 5+ people, i dont mind, but also you have to realize no matter what number they pick, people will get left out.

From a brain storming standpoint I think 5+ fractals would be their own entity within fractals and thus be balanced for 5+ only.

Chris

Hmm, that’s disappointing to hear. Not that I have anything against content for 5> content, but I would personally much prefer it that the time was spent balancing the content down to solos/duos/etc. as opposed to larger groups. I mean, if there is interest in spending the time rebalancing the content for a group size that’s different than the norm to begin with I would imagine you’d be hitting a much larger number of players by balancing down in size instead of up.

Put simply, balancing the content down to solos/duos would open Fractals up for everyone. Balancing the content up to, say, 10 person teams would only make Fractals appealing for the rare groups of 10, and they are already served (though to a limited degree) by the standard 5 person Fractals.

Proposal: Add a small fractal as the first fractal to stop re-rolling

Overview
Add a small fractal that’s about 1-2 minutes long without an end boss as a guaranteed 1st fractal. After that comes tier 1 fractals and the rest works as usual.
The fractal does give a little bit of loot and perhaps some fractal relics, but not so much loot that it’s worth rerolling and farming it. Just a compensation for the extra time it takes.
The fractal could for example consist of an “interference” that prohibits you from continuing into the real fractals. The interference could be fixed by the players needing to kill a few mobs and take over a capture site that will fix the interference and they can move on.
This provides an obstacle for re-rolling so that re-rolling would take approximately 1-2 minutes per try, thus discouraging it but still leaving it open as a possibility if you want to take the time. For example you might not want swamp as your first fractal if you’re new and run with people who aren’t very familiar with it’s mechanics.
To add some variety, the first short fractal could be one of a few differently themed ones that are all equally short and easy, just with a different theme that’s related to the fractal “universe”.

Goal
To get rid of re-rolling for new fractals.

Functionality
The additional normal fractal is just a new tier, like the other ones, except that it is much much shorter than the normal fractals and doesn’t have a boss in the end.

Associated risks
May get farmed if it contains too much loot.
May make it hard to run fractals solo, but fractals is designed for a party of 5 players so that shouldn’t be an issue.
May seem “out of place” if it’s not tied well into the lore of fractals.
Can be pretty boring if it doesn’t keep people busy during the time they’re there.

Why do we care so much about rerolling?

Becka Williams.4978:

Why do we care so much about rerolling?

From a purely functional point of view:
An element of fractals is randomness, that you don’t know what content you’ll be playing, re-rolling allows you to partially control that randomness bypassing the mechanic for 1/4 of the run, which is by definition an exploit.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Becka Williams.4978:

Why do we care so much about rerolling?

From a purely functional point of view:
An element of fractals is randomness, that you don’t know what content you’ll be playing, re-rolling allows you to partially control that randomness bypassing the mechanic for 1/4 of the run, which is by definition an exploit.

No, it’s not an exploit. Is it an exploit to quit when you hit the dredge fractal and start again? Should we force people to have to play the dredge fractal? Maybe we should make that the unskippable first fractal?

Becka Williams.4978:

No, it’s not an exploit. Is it an exploit to quit when you hit the dredge fractal and start again? Should we force people to have to play the dredge fractal? Maybe we should make that the unskippable first fractal?

You’re not getting it obviously. The whole point of Fractals is that it surprises you with a different assortment of Fractals every time you play it. Re-rolling for the quickest and easiest fractal bypasses this entire concept… plus it’s rather annoying.

Oh, it’s the cliffside fractal. Re-roll for swamp!

Oh, it’s urban battleground. Re-roll for swamp!

I know we’d all love to reroll every time the dredge fractal comes up, but that’s a problem with the dredge fractal specifically, not with the randomness. People should just play the fractals they’re dealt, and they should all be of comparable difficulty so people don’t feel inclined to re-roll.

A good solution would be to insert some fixed fractals of easy difficulty before the swamp, so you can’t re-roll, but all of the fractals you can get at the start are all as short and easy as the swamp is. And of course, fix the dredge fractal.

My proposal to fix the dredge fractal: Remove the ability for every dredge in that fractal to respawn!

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Becka Williams.4978:

No, it’s not an exploit. Is it an exploit to quit when you hit the dredge fractal and start again? Should we force people to have to play the dredge fractal? Maybe we should make that the unskippable first fractal?

You’re not getting it obviously. The whole point of Fractals is that it surprises you with a different assortment of Fractals every time you play it. Re-rolling for the quickest and easiest fractal bypasses this entire concept… plus it’s rather annoying.

Oh, it’s the cliffside fractal. Re-roll for swamp!

Oh, it’s urban battleground. Re-roll for swamp!

I know we’d all love to reroll every time the dredge fractal comes up, but that’s a problem with the dredge fractal specifically, not with the randomness. People should just play the fractals they’re dealt, and they should all be of comparable difficulty.

I get it. I just don’t think it’s a problem. Why wouldn’t people reroll to get swamp if they get Cliffside or dredge. Cliffside made me quit fractals, because I couldn’t take the stress of wondering if I’d get it, and then have someone bug it out because they can’t be bothered to think any harder than “kill everything.” Why do we care what other people do when it doesn’t affect us in the slightest?

My proposal to fix the dredge fractal? Make the clown car the boss, and make the suit/elemental another Maw type end boss.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

A good solution would be to insert some fixed fractals of easy difficulty before the swamp, so you can’t re-roll, but all of the fractals you can get at the start are all as short and easy as the swamp is. And of course, fix the dredge fractal.

Indeed, and even if there are several first ones to choose from, they should be so short that it’s not worth rerolling it regardless what you get. But still they should be long enough so that it’s not worth rerolling if you get cliffside or whatever after it.

Becka Williams.4978:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Becka Williams.4978:

No, it’s not an exploit. Is it an exploit to quit when you hit the dredge fractal and start again? Should we force people to have to play the dredge fractal? Maybe we should make that the unskippable first fractal?

You’re not getting it obviously. The whole point of Fractals is that it surprises you with a different assortment of Fractals every time you play it. Re-rolling for the quickest and easiest fractal bypasses this entire concept… plus it’s rather annoying.

Oh, it’s the cliffside fractal. Re-roll for swamp!

Oh, it’s urban battleground. Re-roll for swamp!

I know we’d all love to reroll every time the dredge fractal comes up, but that’s a problem with the dredge fractal specifically, not with the randomness. People should just play the fractals they’re dealt, and they should all be of comparable difficulty.

I get it. I just don’t think it’s a problem. Why wouldn’t people reroll to get swamp if they get Cliffside or dredge. Cliffside made me quit fractals, because I couldn’t take the stress of wondering if I’d get it, and then have someone bug it out because they can’t be bothered to think any harder than “kill everything.” Why do we care what other people do when it doesn’t affect us in the slightest?

You’re completely allowed to re-roll, just that it has the added penalty of having to redo the first (very small) fractal. Thus the mentality of constantly rerolling for swamp would disappear.

Yes, why do you want to punish people for doing something that doesn’t affect you in any way?

SephiSlash.6780:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Dredge and Rewards.

Rerolling is a non issue.

+1!

The biggest issue fractals has is that the rewards are RNG based. As a person who has done waaaaaaay too many fractal runs, i find the rewards are a joke. When you do a level 50 and get an un-infused ring or NOTHING you quickly start to wonder why you’re doing it. To me fixing the rewards (Weapons that are non rng) and fixing dredge should be obvious things that NEED to be done yesterday … or 6 months ago.

As for rerolling for swamp, some of that has to do with the fact that Asuran fractal is the most annoying thing in the game unless you have guardians with you. And the water fractal is perhaps the most boring fight in the game. So when you have a level that’s faster AND more interesting, ofc people are gonna reroll for it.

As for fractals that are 5+, I feel like before that happens we would need to see particle effect fixed. It’s already at the point that you can hardly see whats going on in most fights.

I feel like the future of fractals is …
1) Better Rewards
2) New levels (Guild Wars 1 missions is an AWESOME idea)
3) New instabilities
4) Less focus on agony resist.

… but that’s just my 2 cents

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Yes yes, double-yes! The sooner you fix dredge the happier the community will be.

And for the record I don’t think ‘rolling’ needs to be fixed – however if it is possible you could do some things at swamp:
a) make it a bit longer to equalize the length of T1 fractals a little bit. You could add a jungle passage after the wisps with trash mobs and some kind of puzzle, just throwing an idea.
b) boss fights – Mossman is (imo) the 2nd hardest boss of the fractals and Bloomhunger is the easiest, this could be somehow balanced a bit (make BH more difficult).
c) related to previous point, please fix the bug that allows players to bug Mossman underwater as it is a big reason for rolling swamp (who doesn’t like to afk during a boss fight?). Maybe you could make the whole underwater passage inaccesible after the boss has been triggered (like Cliffside endboss) or you could add a small jungle corridor that would make enough distance between the water and Mossman so that the boss would reset if players would go into the water but that players couldn’t abuse it to ooc/respawn/reaggro like they already do at bloomhunger.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Relativity.3264:

No more AR hardcaps
I’m skilled enough not to get hit. I can do a 49 with 0 AR. And yet, if I try to do a 40 with any less than 50 I’m toast. These AR hardcaps are just plain stupid. Who thought these up? If you need 55AR to finish a 40 you might as well remove all the agony from 41 to 49 since the agony will bearly tickle.

Completely agree here. What’s even worse is that now, with those hardcaps, people don’t even care to dodge anymore.
Before, even at max AR, you had to dodge on the higher levels, or you would die. If you had not enough AR, you could survive if you were skilled enough to dodge.

Now, you’re forced to have a minimum level of AR (because of insta 40 & 50), so much that you don’t take any damage from agony on the following 9 levels. So people don’t dodge, they just facetank the damage. And as you said, skill isn’t rewarded. It’s either you have the stuff, or you don’t…

THIS. SO MUCH.

its the only thing i absolutely hate about fractals and the game generally. Everytime i get to the boss level i feel that pure state of hate. It almost made me deinstall the game when i heard of it, if there wasnt my friends playing. Whoever thought this would be a good idea probably has no idea of… ned to stop now. It makes me too sad. Oh, and i dont want this post to be called non-constructive: Pls remove this hard cap and add skill cap (maybe related to agony resistance) instead. e.g. enemy aoe skill with 0.3 s time to dodge and +0.1 seconds more time to dodge for every 10 agony resistance.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

As others have said: Dredge, then Rewards (then the Reset – I’m not affected, but do understand and support the concern here). Everything else can flow from that.

Thank you Chris. I have some hope that I may actually run Fractals more often; Just started poking my nose in again after a longish break from it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Yes, so much yes

Just pls, fix dredge, fix it

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Dredge and rewards.

The people crying about rerolling are like the people crying about skipping trash mobs. It has absolutely 0 effect on them but they want others to play the way they want. If you don’t like rolling than just don’t do it.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Dredge and rewards.

The people crying about rerolling are like the people crying about skipping trash mobs. It has absolutely 0 effect on them but they want others to play the way they want. If you don’t like rolling than just don’t do it.

100% agree. I don’t understand why it even came up in the first place.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Rewards>>Dredge>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Rolling

Brutal Arts.6307:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Dredge and rewards.

The people crying about rerolling are like the people crying about skipping trash mobs. It has absolutely 0 effect on them but they want others to play the way they want. If you don’t like rolling than just don’t do it.

its a systemic problem, so its actually a pretty big deal as fractals goes forward.
Essentially it makes the first fractal always the same fractal forever and ever, which means they shouldnt design any new fast fractals, which makes the game mode more repetitive.

Ill be honest i hate water boss, hes boring as hell. But its not good for the development of fractals in general.

As far as the dont do it thing, thats basically a fake story. If everyone could skip the first 3 fractals and go right to the boss, theyd do it, does that mean its good for the game mode?

The issue isn’t rolling, its how disproportionately short swamp is, such that its worth spending 5 minutes rolling for it. If people were re-rolling the first fractal based on which one they had the most fun with, I guarantee this would not be an issue. People would play and let play. If you want to “fix” rolling, make swamp longer.

People throw around the word exploit in this forum like its nothing. An exploit is an offence that will get you banned. From the feedback here we know the devs know about the practice of re-rolling, and they are open to discussing the pros and cons. There’s no need to use loaded language to try and bolster your argument.

SorrowsEmbrace.8120:

The issue isn’t rolling, its how disproportionately short swamp is, such that its worth spending 5 minutes rolling for it. If people were re-rolling the first fractal based on which one they had the most fun with, I guarantee this would not be an issue. People would play and let play. If you want to “fix” rolling, make swamp longer.

People throw around the word exploit in this forum like its nothing. An exploit is an offence that will get you banned. From the feedback here we know the devs know about the practice of re-rolling, and they are open to discussing the pros and cons. There’s no need to use loaded language to try and bolster your argument.

well if you take a step back and ask the question, what would you rather fix rerolling or dredge, its essentially saying whats more important, creating a more varied experience, or making it less time consuming/annoying.

the consensus is that speed/and ease is more important than variation to most people. I blame the reward system that prioritizes speed and ease. If the rewards were based on how long/difficult it was, people wouldnt care that much about rolling the shortest/easiest, and people would be trying to get better at dredge (i admit dredge is out of balance, and designed kind of annoying)

i think the rewards is probably one of the biggest issues with fractals, id say the other major issues would be agony progression being empty, grindy and sometimes backwards, and variation/replayability of fractals.

dredge i see as more of a balance issue, than an indicator of evolution of fractals

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

As long as Dredge is fixed, personally I don’t see an issue with the rolling. I don’t care what 4 fractal levels I get as long as one of them is not Dredge. That is the extreme outlier.

I know this was just an example (some people seemed to somehow interpret this as these are the only two issues you want to work on???) but I really hope that just under fixing Dredge is the reward system.

I’d like to see a discussion on what very high-end fractal play should look like, because as it is it isn’t very clear what people are actually looking for. Apparently speedruns aren’t sufficient.

I see two possibilities:

• a very high cap – by combining two of the existing instabilities you’d be easily able to get up to a cap of 400 or so. The trick is agony; players shouldn’t be able to neuter agony as a progression mechanic, which most of the players who got higher than 50 pre-Fractured were doing, but neither should players be required to stack agony to even attempt content.
• fractal hard paths – alternate paths in each fractal players at the cap can choose to do for guaranteed rewards. The risk here is that eventually even the hard modes will become stale.

Thinking about the agony problem a little more, here’s an idea:

Proposal: Replace the agony check at the start of a boss fractal fight with a periodic enraging agony pulse that rises in intensity over the course of the fight.

Goal: Make agony less of a gear check. Make fractal play viable with insufficient agony resistance (e.g. high-level play, new players). Provide an interesting restriction on boss fights that players have the ability to overcome.

Functionality: During fractal boss fights, players are hit with a enraging agony pulse on a timer, perhaps every 30 seconds. Players can see the time until the next agony pulse on the event HUD. This agony pulse is weaker than normal, doing 1/4 of the usual damage, and starts at a lower resistance than the fractal scale, but its strength (and thus the resistance needed to negate it) increases each pulse. This would be tuned for each fight.

The maths: The agony strength of the fractal scale for the purposes of this discussion is 0. Each point of enraging agony strength does an additional 0.3% damage; this makes the point at which things start getting dicey for players around 50, with essentially a hard cap at 100. We have a few levers – where we start the strength of enraging agony, which determines how long players have before they start feeling the effect (which is basically our minimum time); how much strength goes up per pulse, which determines our maximum time; and how often pulses happen, which is also how often players get damaged (it’s probably best to set this at 30 seconds at a minimum; players need to be able to heal through it towards the end of the fight). For a relatively easy fight like Jade Maw, we could determine that we want the fight to go for about 10 minutes. If we set the starting strength at -20, and have it increase by 4 every pulse, players will start to feel it after about 3 minutes, and things will start getting tricky after 9 minutes. For a fight like the Molten Leaders, where there’s lots of damage at the start of the fight, we might determine it should only take 8 minutes, but we want players to only start feeling it after 5. So we’d set the starting strength low, say -100, and have it increase by 10 per tick.

Risks: Mostly in getting the numbers wrong. This does also change the balance of the fight, because more damage is being dealt during the fight; some bosses might need to be tuned down a little to compensate.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Rewards>>Dredge>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Rolling

That’s the idea. Number 1 ultimate highest ultra mega giga supra important priority is rewards fixing.
Rolling is the lowest ever priority and should not even be tackled : as somebody said, if maps are fixed/reworked as I suggested in another post and other players have also done, there would be no need for rolling.
Problem : Rolling.
Lazy fix : eliminate rolling
Very good idea : understand rolling exists because of so many discrepancies between maps. Harmonize maps and the need for rolling has disappeared, and you have just made players happy

The thing about re-rolling is, that you might as well always make the Swamp the first fractal if you allow it. If people are just going to keep re-rolling till they get the Swamp, might as well make the swamp the start-fractal by default… OR allow players to select their initial fractal.

All re-rolling is, is bypassing the other fractals to get the quickest one.

I echo the call for sorting out dredge, and think this should be the #1 priority for future fractals work. I have another proposal below.

Proposal Overview
Add an achievement category for doing different instabilities.
Goal of Proposal
People only tend to do the ‘easy’ instabilities at the moment. 36/37 and 49/50.
Proposal Functionality
An achievement category would be added to the Fractals section with players gaining progress towards an achievement for each fractal instability they have completed. This would encourage players to at least sample each of the instabilities in the game.
Associated Risks
Once the achievement was completed people would probably revert to the easier instabilities once again.

Exploring the mists

Proposal Overview

The fractals of the mists lobby becomes an explorable area with a lot of instances.

Goal of Proposal

The idea here is to allow more variety in the fractal experience. A journey through the mists is a magical experience where anything can happen. Our current fractal experience of 4 semi-random fractals in groups of 5 is quite a restrictive way to explore the endless opportunities of the mists. This proposal would allow devs to implement rich fractals that can’t work as dungeons in the open world and it would allow players to explore fractals in a less restricted setting.

Proposal Functionality

In short:

• The fractal lobby becomes a large explorable area.

• Dessa’s experiments keep going on. FotM will still be developed.

• Other means of navigation come up that allow us to travel to the slowly moving islands in the sky. (Such as a hot air balloon, margonite spaceship, holographic pathway, a giant in an air canoe or by simply jumping down)

• New fractal islands arrive every now and then, while we try to anchor the islands that are leaving our ‘fractal orbit’.

• Entering a fractal island would be like entering a dungeon. Each one holds one or several instances. These can vary greatly in length, group size and reward. Many of these may also appear in Dessa’s experiments. Nearly identical islands may even offer the same area in another time.

Risks

There is no room for risks in this post. Just: lots of development time required, at the expense of open world content.

I still think that making a dedicated team for Fractals (making/updating/fixing them) is the best course to go on. And with monthly new Fractal releases it would solve most if not all of the problems with fractals.