Guild Wars 2

Proposal Overview
More gameplay diversity.

Goal of Proposal
Even if most fractals take place in different areas, make us fight different enemies, in the end it is all about killing to progress, which makes the experience very repetitive
so even if the surrounding is different in the end there is no real gameplay diversity especially combat diversity.

Proposal Functionality
Tie progressing into the fractals to dynamic events, the trick here is to vary the objective of these events (capture and hold, steal an item in the enemy base, escort…), but also to make the experience tied to choices made by the group (EX: in an escort which route to take) and finally have minors events which could start randomly make all the experience more rewarding(gameplay wise).

Associated Risks
The principal risk would be that it would be a brutal change in the habits not only for the players but also the designers(used to the actual model).
The optional events could be ignored if:
– not well implemented.( solution: ties the random events to the progression
events)
– not rewarding enough.( solution: bonus reward a the end of the fractal)

Question what do u like fractals envolve too.

My wish would be fractals become a raid instance. Where 10 man raids are possible.
Big complicated boss fights which can be done every 3 days but will give only once a week a bonus chest.

Fractals could be the test platform of non trinity related raids. ( which not mean tank builds are not useful for a certain fight there)

Make those fights hard super hard. Not tedious long but fast whit different phases.

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

We all do in one way or another. I understand it doesn’t feel AS good as winning the lottery, but it still feels good. A small win is still a win. Randomness in levels made it so you never knew what kind of a run you’ll get. Could have be an easy one or a very long one. It gave the element of surprise each time u hit that loading screen. Now it’s a harder one every time you pass that 2nd fractal. Nothing to look forward to at all.

Why it is a good thing that you don’t know what maps you will get? Is random map selection the only way to get those results?

I think the content has partially failed if some maps are there just to make you feel good when you avoid them. What about getting enjoyment for beating levels, etc?

Rising Dusk.2408:

What about the notion of a growing mistlock instability list within a tier, like I suggested above? In this way you could create uniqueness to tiers, and also use it to create difficulty. You might only ever add new creatures if one of the mistlocks was specifically about that… For instance if the entire theme of 30-39 was that Mossman stalked you the whole time. That’d give it a unique feel while simultaneously removing the silliness of people just using the easiest mistlock to rise their personal reward level and raising the difficulty as you moved up in the tiers.

So, for example:

• L30: Agonizing Expedition – Take agony damage periodically
• L31: Mist Stalker – Mossman stalks you. (L30’s Mistlock also applies)
• L32: Outflanked – Enemies do more damage when attacking you from behind or the sides (L30 and L31 still apply, meaning Mossman could sneak attack you for big damage, etc)

And so forth for the entire tier. This creates the theme that the 30-39 tier is all about being stalked and trying to keep your wits about you to unseen threats. Maybe at one point you could in that area have a Mistlock where mobs will periodically stealth themselves to add to that feel, and so forth.

This should also help reduce the burden on you guys, right?

Would this mean that L40 would be easier than L33-L39? Stacking instabilities on top of each other quickly gets out of control.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I can’t get behind the instability system. It’s still the same lame dungeon which you want to complete as fast as possible to get the loot (Yes, that’s grind and GW2 turned into a grindy game) and the instabilities just slow you down. There is not even an explanation for those instabilities storywise.

How are instabilities making that worse? Even without them people ran only same levels for daily.
Why is getting slowed down a bad thing if you find fast clears lame?

To answer that request for proposals that meet a middle ground between randomness/replayability/rewards, I had this idea after reading through the topic.

Proposal Overview
Breather “Fractal” Interludes. Short little areas between fractals on higher levels that add a breather of sorts between full fractals.

Goal of Proposal
Variety in Fractals and to bring in more players to higher level fractals, adding in something small that would increase the potential rewards and just uniqueness of fractals that aren’t present after reaching tier 3 rewards (Fractal level 31 and up).

Proposal Functionality
After every fractal add a chance to spawn into a “breather fractal” something that doesn’t count towards the three fractals you need to do prior to a boss fractal. These “breathers” can be short little cutscenes to show off some lore, a small “town” scene where we can buy various items and repair our armor (and could have unique items), could be little fields of resource nodes of various kinds. These do not need to be complicated fractals or even very large, just small little areas that can show up randomly. The lore breathers could grant a small reward for sitting there and watching it like karma, empyreal fragments, dragonite ore, etc in small amounts.

And to further help minimize the feel of inefficiency in playing. Make the quality of the breather level dependent on which fractal you did prior to it. So Dredge for example could be weighted so that it has a great chance to give you a great breather afterwords.

Some possible examples
-Lore Scenes from the Living Story
-Sneak Peak Lore from potential future lore updates (the Mists aren’t us actually being there so these could easily change)
-Random Personal Story missions with agony added in
-Random scenes from past stories that never got a chance to be told in GW1 or before it, or between GW1 and GW2. These could lead to new fractals later down the line.
-Small towns from other continents to show off other parts of the world with merchants that could sell things like recipes or materials for the crafting professions (unique stat combinations, new types of foods, raw materials for cheaper prices but in limited amounts, special potions, etc), perhaps with unique skins for weapons or armor. We could see some Canthan or Elonan towns here without Arenanet having to produce entire zones to let us see it in, or even things they have only alluded to or have in their notebooks somewhere. Heck we could even have pre-dragon Krait cities we could get a chance to look at if they wanted to do that.
-Small areas with various resource nodes (say 5-20 depending on the rarity of the node), which could include Living Story nodes like Mithril/Orichalcum veins with a chance at Azurite, Quartz Crystal Nodes, Candy Corn nodes, Toxic Seedlings, etc.
-Small areas with a world boss of some sort with agony added in scaled to be possible with a five man party that can be cleared or skipped, with something like double its normal rewards for doing it.

Associated Risks
Depending on how complex these “Breather” zones are it could take a lot of resources to produce. I would say to mitigate this to keep things fairly simple, maybe even intentionally disjointed in some cases (think sort of like Dessa’s Lab).

This could lead to a lot of incomplete runs or a lot rerolling. So to mitigate this, make it so these breather fractals can only occur after finishing two fractals or even only after having done three and it only appears between the third fractal and boss fractal. Or after getting a breather you get a debuff that prevents you and your party from getting another breather for a certain amount of time (dependent on when you get the breather, for example, getting it after the first fractal could give an hour debuff, the second 30-45 minutes, and the third could give you a 15-30 minute debuff).

I could say many instabilities push the lack of balance between professions…..that is the first thing to do when speaking of fractals…

There could be a reason why 99,99% of lvl 30+ groups have a guardian….

LordByron.8369:

I could say many instabilities push the lack of balance between professions…..that is the first thing to do when speaking of fractals…

There could be a reason why 99,99% of lvl 30+ groups have a guardian….

They should just increase the variety of encounters to deal with class differences. We need more fractals!

Ok so how to make fractal hard again:
- Fix fractals after a certain scale ( so testcrew only Need to test a few and not every combination )
- If testcrew can complete it within 2 weeks it is to easy Content ( liadri was completed by 10% over a longer time and it was still only medium rare Content:))
- Add the instability that if one gets downed he dies
- add the instability if one dies whole Group wipes
- add gw1 instability ( if the Group wipes you Need to start the fractal again)
- add bossmechanic that applies during the perio of 5 % randomly (yeah here can you use randomness because it makes it harder ) to any Player a madking says he must complete or he gets downed ( if he gets downed next Player must do it)
- make AR attacks after a certain scale deadly ( yeah AR doesn’t hit or punish you anymore so make the baseattack dmg from the attack deadly so you Need to dodge it again)
- ahh and about instabilities please Promise me you don’t make a : WIPE OUT instability at scale 100 ( your Progress get reset to scale 50) It’s just frustracting to have such things coming as a player

about RNG:

RNG is good…if used in bossfights to make em hard and only to a certain extent as metioned above.. with the reaction challenge and mad king says .. it is not good if all rewards you get are just luckbased and I can go to fractal scale 80 and have the same stuff than one on scale 10 now ( basicaly my case I never dropped the new stuff).
Less RNG in rewards and more in bossfight to a certain extent ( rng if he puts you into a madkingsays at 5% or at 7%)

Proposal Overview
Living Story Mode

Goal of Proposal
Making the lore of the past replayable

Proposal Functionality
All the solo instances in the LS can be replayed with an additional window explaining the surounding circumstances at the time. It could help new players to experience the story to this point.

Associated Risks
Little risk but little reward too.

Scorch der Juengere.7328:

Sorry for making you hopes, but I can’t explain it good enough

So here are some ideas on it.

Scenario: mentoring players that used to play lower levels and joined your group for high level play. “Low” depends on the specific case.

• “And now comes this phase, where you can be 50% faster when the players are positioned in an polyhedron with all sides having the same length. So, a bit more to the left… yeah, that’s perfect. Remember where you are for the next time. We don’t want to waste more than 2 seconds on positioning, or else we won’t be able to beat the time <player name> group set up yesterday.”
• “And now comes… what? Now, this was unexpected. Ouch. So, forget about what I just said. Suggestions on how to do this?”
• “And now comes the actual fun part. I know you are bored by all these levels that were just so easy. Believe me, you won’t make it alive through this one if you do any single mistake. Neither would we. So now it is time you show what you’ve learned.”

Feel free to modify them. I guess I’m a bit biased for the second one. They were supposed to all be extreme cases, but I’m not sure if it worked out for all of them.

Also feel free to name them and comment on which one you prefer.

Could you guys seriously stop this daydreaming? There won’t be perfectly challenging and fun content with unique surprises each time you run it.

Sure, it sounds awesome but compare it to what we currently have and think how realistic your scenario is.

Wethospu.6437:

Could you guys seriously stop this daydreaming? There won’t be perfectly challenging and fun content with unique surprises each time you run it.

This thread would be about 10 pages shorter if people thought, “is this proposal remotely possible considering development resources available?” before they hit Reply.

So, on the topic of instabilities, as a lot of people have said: Something has to been done to encourage people to run more, or ALL the instabilities. It pains me to hear that some people have seen only 2 of the 20 instabilities, purely because those 2 offer the path of least resistance(and as is the case with 49, are too high up in the list)

Re-arranging fractal instabilities in terms of difficulty would be a great first step to this, but as I suggested in this topic before, adding rewards for doing every instability(in the form of achievements, and having some form of repeatability to them so it’s not a one-off) would be -the- best way to encourage people to do so, without forcing them to do anything.

I love instabilities when they change the experience of doing a fractals run, and when they increase the difficulty of familiar encounters by adding different factors to them. Future-wise, I’d rather have 30 more instabilities than 1 new Fractal, as that would add more replayability to it all(especially if a system will be in place to do all the instabilities, as I mentioned) As long as those instabilities actually are notable, like adding a Mossman to the encounter, instead of slightly lowering the time control effects enemies, which in practice affects absolutely no encounter at all.

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

We all do in one way or another. I understand it doesn’t feel AS good as winning the lottery, but it still feels good. A small win is still a win. Randomness in levels made it so you never knew what kind of a run you’ll get. Could have be an easy one or a very long one. It gave the element of surprise each time u hit that loading screen. Now it’s a harder one every time you pass that 2nd fractal. Nothing to look forward to at all.

Why it is a good thing that you don’t know what maps you will get? Is random map selection the only way to get those results?

I think the content has partially failed if some maps are there just to make you feel good when you avoid them. What about getting enjoyment for beating levels, etc?

The randomness of not knowing what’s next is not particularly what makes me feel good when I hit that loading screen. The possibility of getting a level that I like is what makes you feel good. At this point with the Tier system we have in place, I know I’m getting a level I do not like as my third level. Doesn’t matter what I roll. Doesn’t matter what difficulty I play. Luck doesn’t play any role in this either. I will get a level I dislike, because frankly Tier 3 levels are on the bottom of my list. Randomness makes it so there’s a possibility of that not happening. And if there is a small chance, I’d rather take that that knowing it’s gonna suck every time I get that third level.

(edit to remove grammatical/spelling errors)

Scorch der Juengere.7328:

Let’s say we have 20 “random-ready” instabilities.
11 Fractals * 20 instabilities would be 220 combinations. That is already quite nice. How often do you play with the same team composition? I found that some encounters feel quite differently depending on who you have with you. That sound like a lot of combinations to explore.

There is, however, the problem that instabilities are something that, from what I’ve read, even those who are excited for them, have not reached them yet.

Perhaps instabilities can scale, as well? Instabilities that require you to spread out, can require a greater radius. When they trigger periodically, they can trigger more often. Of course, when an instability his, it might just hit harder. This would allow to also include the option of a random instability in lower levels.

Some of the instabilities have to be planned for in advance.

There is one instability that will give you increased damage with every hit. It’s bad, like really bad. To have that increased? It would seriously suck. There is another instability that gives you damage based on critical hits you do. You technically have to switch your gear and maybe retrait before going into it, cuz when you’re a zerker, the fights take forever. Another one makes it so some of the boons are converted to conditions which is a pain for some guardians if they’re not traited right.

There are many instabilities that putting them into the random rotation would make some runs a living hell. That in turn would attract the hardcore speed runners, but it would also repeal everyone else. I like doing fractals. I like challenge now and then. But I’m no masochist.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Wethospu.6437:

Could you guys seriously stop this daydreaming? There won’t be perfectly challenging and fun content with unique surprises each time you run it.

This thread would be about 10 pages shorter if people thought, “is this proposal remotely possible considering development resources available?” before they hit Reply.

I too find this frustrating, but at the same time, I have an engineering background and am able to make rough estimates of the implementation effort.

I assume that a lot of people here are just fans of the game, not coders/artists/etc, and don’t understand that they’re asking for things that would take a 10-person team months and months to complete. Or more.

The most egregious requests, if anybody is wondering, center around user-generated content/sandbox features. That is way way out of scope. Full randomly-generated content is also likely out of scope, not necessarily due to coding, but due to QA/testing.

Now, all that said, that doesn’t mean that the devs won’t find some bit of inspiration in these ideas and use a scaled down, heavily modified version. So have fun, everybody.

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I can’t get behind the instability system. It’s still the same lame dungeon which you want to complete as fast as possible to get the loot (Yes, that’s grind and GW2 turned into a grindy game) and the instabilities just slow you down. There is not even an explanation for those instabilities storywise.

How are instabilities making that worse? Even without them people ran only same levels for daily.
Why is getting slowed down a bad thing if you find fast clears lame?

Because slow clears are even more lame.
Look, I’ve played this game for over 3k hours now, most times in PvE, I’ve done all dungeons too often to find them entertaining. It bores me. I’m doing those things to get the reward.

Wethospu.6437:

Would this mean that L40 would be easier than L33-L39? Stacking instabilities on top of each other quickly gets out of control.

Yes, it would, because the instability-stacking would only apply across a tier. That said, it requires a higher level of AR immediately to go to 40, which would force players without enough AR to be doing 30-39 until they’re ready to move up. I think this way works even if 40 is technically ‘easier’ than 39 because you can create unique experiences within each tier, and I think 30 instabilities stacking would be pretty chaotic and silly. You then could have unique and interesting speed clear runs for L39, L49, and so forth because each would be a different experience. What do you think about that?

Romo.3709:

Scorch der Juengere.7328:

Let’s say we have 20 “random-ready” instabilities.
11 Fractals * 20 instabilities would be 220 combinations. That is already quite nice. How often do you play with the same team composition? I found that some encounters feel quite differently depending on who you have with you. That sound like a lot of combinations to explore.

There is, however, the problem that instabilities are something that, from what I’ve read, even those who are excited for them, have not reached them yet.

Perhaps instabilities can scale, as well? Instabilities that require you to spread out, can require a greater radius. When they trigger periodically, they can trigger more often. Of course, when an instability his, it might just hit harder. This would allow to also include the option of a random instability in lower levels.

Some of the instabilities have to be planned for in advance.

There is one instability that will give you increased damage with every hit. It’s bad, like really bad. To have that increased? It would seriously suck. There is another instability that gives you damage based on critical hits you do. You technically have to switch your gear and maybe retrait before going into it, cuz when you’re a zerker, the fights take forever. Another one makes it so some of the boons are converted to conditions which is a pain for some guardians if they’re not traited right.

There are many instabilities that putting them into the random rotation would make some runs a living hell. That in turn would attract the hardcore speed runners, but it would also repeal everyone else. I like doing fractals. I like challenge now and then. But I’m no masochist.

On the other hand after your clerification about “random-ready” instabilities, that might actually work. If it would include set of 20 random instabilities that would not affect your build in any way, that might be fun. Build breaking instabilities are bad by design as they are. They’re not fun because you have to completely strip yourself off from your familiarity and try to be as efficient as possible under given circumstances, which in some cases require you to completely retrait your build.

20 “random ready” instabilities would have to include things such as random chill, Mossman following you or random lightning strikes. Things like that. Maybe since it would include complete randomness of the Instabilities, we could also add some fun one rather than always challenging ones. Like Big Heads or Minimized characters. Let’s have fun with that. Fractals are challenging, but who said they can’t be entertaining? I would love to see my character run around Ascalon Fractal with big head. Or even do dredge level with my entire party being miniaturized.

Things that take away your options when it comes to fight are boring and tedious. And I would not want to go through them more than once. But Instabilities that ADD mechanics are more fun. Why not have one that make each boss appear randomly and follow us like Mossman? Code is already there. You’d just have to swap the boss. To maybe Mai Trin or even Bloomhunger for more “Fun” effect

Regardless, idea is somewhat interesting as long as the build-breaking instabilities would remain out of the loop.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Wethospu.6437:

Could you guys seriously stop this daydreaming? There won’t be perfectly challenging and fun content with unique surprises each time you run it.

This thread would be about 10 pages shorter if people thought, “is this proposal remotely possible considering development resources available?” before they hit Reply.

Edit: Sorry, I didn’t realise my answer became so long

I believe we should look further than the current development resources available. Changes don’t have to happen tomorrow, they can come over the years. More importantly, grand ideas can be adjusted so that they require less work but still offer a lot of the benefits. If we’re only going to offer ideas that are easy to implement, we’re closing our mind to possibilities that come from thinking big.

It is good to point out the flaws in plans, to give them a ‘reality check’, but it should not hold players back from posting their ideas. In a group-brainstorm like this, self-censorship is one of the biggest idea-killers.

As for ‘There won’t be perfectly challenging and fun content with unique surprises each time you run it.’ – Try to look at it from the perspective of someone who does fractals maybe once a week. He has leveled from 1 to 25 in the past 6 months. Fractals don’t offer anything new anymore. The only changes that came in difficulty were the increase of agony required (booooring) and the harpies tossing him off the platform (interesting/annoying).

Now unique surprises ‘each time you run it.’ would be a lot to ask, but some unique surprises would go a long way. (Say every 5 levels something new can pop up)

If you don’t play fractals every day, or more than once a day, a few surprises do make a difference. While to the veteran, they’re all old stuff.

Nearly all the players in my guild are below level 20 fractals. But to many of them, it has already become boring. Because they face the same challenges every time, and it’s going to be more than 10 levels of that still before they’ll reach instabilities. (And some extra grinding for the agony resistance)

As Scorch is trying to view fractals from the eyes of a speed clearer, you might try to view it from the eyes of a casual player. What can’t stay a surprise for you, may still be a surprise for them, since they don’t do fractals that often.

I’ll try to change views myself now as well, which might be easier for me since I have some experience on the ‘other side’:

I played GW1 PvE competitively through the challenge mission leaderboards. I knew them from start to finish to the very last detail. Often the top score would come down to luck. Which was frustrating. But the small changes that allowed for this luck were never a surprise to me, since I did them that often, I had seen all varieties. I didn’t see what the random factor had to offer there, since I could never be sure I had beaten others by strength of by luck. (Or the other way around)

Fractals are not competitive yet, however. But that would undeniably offer a great source of replayability if it also includes a persons own personal achievement track, that rewarded the player for setting a certain score. (Since then they would not only compete against you, and feel miserable for being so bad, but also against themselves, where they can see an improvement) I just think that this kind of replayability should be found in something other than the fractal system as we know it.

A seperate challenge instance that offers more variety than just a timer. That has a ‘score’ that we can try to beat. And that allows for different strategies to have their place. It will not come for free, it will require the same amount of work it’d take to create a new dungeon, and then some for the scoreboard. But I believe it would be worth the effort. The content would be available for everyone, but not everyone would compete for the top scores. Some would only compete with their guildies or themselves.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Fractals are not competitive yet, however.

This is something else I want to chime in on. If we remove randomness and enable players to choose the next fractal, then competition and our long-promised leaderboards could be a reality. The LBs could be for specific fractal combinations at specific difficulties, with the fastest team showing up at the top. This would also play well into the stacking across a tier instability suggestion I made, because players would choose tougher tiers and higher levels for greater prestige.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I can’t get behind the instability system. It’s still the same lame dungeon which you want to complete as fast as possible to get the loot (Yes, that’s grind and GW2 turned into a grindy game) and the instabilities just slow you down. There is not even an explanation for those instabilities storywise.

How are instabilities making that worse? Even without them people ran only same levels for daily.
Why is getting slowed down a bad thing if you find fast clears lame?

Because slow clears are even more lame.
Look, I’ve played this game for over 3k hours now, most times in PvE, I’ve done all dungeons too often to find them entertaining. It bores me. I’m doing those things to get the reward.

Queensdale champion train sounds like a right place for you.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yes, it would, because the instability-stacking would only apply across a tier. That said, it requires a higher level of AR immediately to go to 40, which would force players without enough AR to be doing 30-39 until they’re ready to move up. I think this way works even if 40 is technically ‘easier’ than 39 because you can create unique experiences within each tier, and I think 30 instabilities stacking would be pretty chaotic and silly. You then could have unique and interesting speed clear runs for L39, L49, and so forth because each would be a different experience. What do you think about that?

I don’t really like the idea of making gear gating even more prevalent. If you have enough gold to craft gear you can just keep doing easy levels over and over while someone has to do all the challenging stuff. Not really my definition of skill based content.

Sure, the levels would be interesting but would anyone really want to run them instead of L40 or L50?

The Lost Witch.7601:

I believe we should look further than the current development resources available. Changes don’t have to happen tomorrow, they can come over the years. More importantly, grand ideas can be adjusted so that they require less work but still offer a lot of the benefits. If we’re only going to offer ideas that are easy to implement, we’re closing our mind to possibilities that come from thinking big.

It is good to point out the flaws in plans, to give them a ‘reality check’, but it should not hold players back from posting their ideas. In a group-brainstorm like this, self-censorship is one of the biggest idea-killers.

I think people should focus on ideas and not idealism. Fun and challenging content is not an idea but an idealism. It’s like a bunch of marketing words telling nothing about the implementation.

When I was a kid I had all these cool, awesome and fun game ideas. But when I tried to implement them I realized it’s not that simple. I couldn’t just code fun or challenge in. Stuff which was meant to be fun was actually boring or easy.

As for ‘There won’t be perfectly challenging and fun content with unique surprises each time you run it.’ – Try to look at it from the perspective of someone who does fractals maybe once a week. He has leveled from 1 to 25 in the past 6 months. Fractals don’t offer anything new anymore. The only changes that came in difficulty were the increase of agony required (booooring) and the harpies tossing him off the platform (interesting/annoying).

Now unique surprises ‘each time you run it.’ would be a lot to ask, but some unique surprises would go a long way. (Say every 5 levels something new can pop up)

If you don’t play fractals every day, or more than once a day, a few surprises do make a difference. While to the veteran, they’re all old stuff.

Couldn’t same be achieved by just adding more content? Without any randomness?

Nearly all the players in my guild are below level 20 fractals. But to many of them, it has already become boring. Because they face the same challenges every time, and it’s going to be more than 10 levels of that still before they’ll reach instabilities. (And some extra grinding for the agony resistance)
—

I think this is a separate issue. Non-random elements can also apply to lower levels.

If I had to choose between loosing the randomness in fractals to allow leader-boards I’d choose to loose leader-boards. I like the randomness it stops it being as mind numbingly repetitive as dungeons.

Also I prefare indirect competition to direct, I.E I have x y z items you only managed to get item x and y as opposed to I am 5 seconds faster than you. being higher on a leader-board than someone else does nothing for me, having something someone else doesn’t is awsome.

timmyf.1490:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Wethospu.6437:

Could you guys seriously stop this daydreaming? There won’t be perfectly challenging and fun content with unique surprises each time you run it.

This thread would be about 10 pages shorter if people thought, “is this proposal remotely possible considering development resources available?” before they hit Reply.

I too find this frustrating, but at the same time, I have an engineering background and am able to make rough estimates of the implementation effort.

I assume that a lot of people here are just fans of the game, not coders/artists/etc, and don’t understand that they’re asking for things that would take a 10-person team months and months to complete. Or more.

The most egregious requests, if anybody is wondering, center around user-generated content/sandbox features. That is way way out of scope. Full randomly-generated content is also likely out of scope, not necessarily due to coding, but due to QA/testing.

Now, all that said, that doesn’t mean that the devs won’t find some bit of inspiration in these ideas and use a scaled down, heavily modified version. So have fun, everybody.

I’m an engineering graduate, an artist, and working on upping my software development skills.
QA is going to be different for most companies, pretty hard to tell what its limits are. It also can change. Has a lot to do with the process they develop, and how they used to the engine they are.

you dont need fully randomly generated content, you just need random variation, being that there are already examples of this in fractals, and dynamic events in game, it shouldnt be outside of whats possible, or even be that difficult to implement. As far as scope, its tricky to say whats out of scope, nothing and everything is the answer. They can probably do almost anything, the question is what they want to do. But its an MMO, they should be doing something, and big somethings fairly periodically. The genre generally has within it, adding new classes, zones, bosses, game modes, dungeons etc within its design on a yearly basis. for example, GW1 added 18 dungeons in EOTN in about 10 months.

So point is, yeah its within the realms of possibility, it depends heavily on what they want to do.

Conski Deshan.2057:

If I had to choose between loosing the randomness in fractals to allow leader-boards I’d choose to loose leader-boards. I like the randomness it stops it being as mind numbingly repetitive as dungeons.

Also I prefare indirect competition to direct, I.E I have x y z items you only managed to get item x and y as opposed to I am 5 seconds faster than you. being higher on a leader-board than someone else does nothing for me, having something someone else doesn’t is awsome.

Do you realize you could just roll a dice and use it select dungeon and path to run? Nothing forces you to always run same paths.

phys.7689:

—
you dont need fully randomly generated content, you just need random variation, being that there are already examples of this in fractals, and dynamic events in game, it shouldnt be outside of whats possible, or even be that difficult to implement. As far as scope, its tricky to say whats out of scope, nothing and everything is the answer. They can probably do almost anything, the question is what they want to do. But its an MMO, they should be doing something, and big somethings fairly periodically. The genre generally has within it, adding new classes, zones, bosses, game modes, dungeons etc within its design on a yearly basis. for example, GW1 added 18 dungeons in EOTN in about 10 months.

So point is, yeah its within the realms of possibility, it depends heavily on what they want to do.

I still can’t quite grasp why do you need randomness. If you want variation, wouldn’t more content and incentive to do that content achieve the same thing?

This is turning very fast into “turn fractals into speed clearing dungeons” discussion. I don’t see that being an evolution at all. That being said I don’t have anything against speed clearing dungeons, because it’s profitable.

Fractals is a whole different area. Making fractals into speed clearing dungeons would make them boring and tedious just like the dungeons you’ve been clearing. Because once you can pick what you want to run, you’d then run it over and over again for best time. How is that engaging and evolving? It is challenging, but at the same time it’s not evolving fractals in any way. Rather it’s stripping fractals of what they are based on: Randomness.

I understand speed clearing community needs new and more challenging content. But making fractals into another Arah would turn down many new players that are slowly getting interested in fractals or want to try it out.

Best scenario I can think of is making those Leaderboards you so crave go along with another mode. Let’s call it Time-Mode or something. Where you can pick your level and see how fast you can beat it. All while leaving fractals what they are. At the same time “Time-Mode” would be a great place for players to learn each level one at the time. And it would allow people like me to take my guildies that are having problems with a particular level in that mode and guide them through without doing a full set of fractals hoping to get the said level.

Fractals are already as boring and tedious as dungeons. As I said above, you can roll a dice when selecting a dungeon path for the same effect. Saying that fractals are based on randomness sounds quite absurd and I would like to see a source if you have any.

If they want to encourage variation they can quite easily add new daily quest with randomly selected dungeon paths / fractal maps to complete. Instead of forcing us to do things they should give us a reason to do those things.

Romo.3709:

This is turning very fast into “turn fractals into speed clearing dungeons” discussion. I don’t see that being an evolution at all. That being said I don’t have anything against speed clearing dungeons, because it’s profitable.

Fractals is a whole different area. Making fractals into speed clearing dungeons would make them boring and tedious just like the dungeons you’ve been clearing. Because once you can pick what you want to run, you’d then run it over and over again for best time. How is that engaging and evolving? It is challenging, but at the same time it’s not evolving fractals in any way. Rather it’s stripping fractals of what they are based on: Randomness.

I understand speed clearing community needs new and more challenging content. But making fractals into another Arah would turn down many new players that are slowly getting interested in fractals or want to try it out.

Best scenario I can think of is making those Leaderboards you so crave go along with another mode. Let’s call it Time-Mode or something. Where you can pick your level and see how fast you can beat it. All while leaving fractals what they are. At the same time “Time-Mode” would be a great place for players to learn each level one at the time. And it would allow people like me to take my guildies that are having problems with a particular level in that mode and guide them through without doing a full set of fractals hoping to get the said level.

Proper speed clearing isnt profitable in the slightest. You spend hours restarting the same dungeon path until you get a smooth run with no mistakes just to beat the current record. We do this because its fun and competative, not because its profitable.

I dislike randomness as it limits possibilies and since the tier addition to fractals ive felt like fractals are the same each day (we almost never get volcanic anymore). And we choose to start on swamp so we never get underwater. Old system we could get both which felt really good.

If I could choose what fractals then I could pick one that we havent done in a long time. Or we could pick ones which were more rewarding if we felt like it. Or if we were short on time then we could pick the easier faster less rewarding fractals. If you remove rolling and random picking of fractals you would have to fix rewards to make the much more challenging and longer fractals much more rewarding. But I think thats the right way to go personally. You could always add a random button where the game chooses for you. I think giving us choice is the real key here. Randomness just drives players away. And yes I do like variation but at the moment the randomness is reducing my variation. If I could choose myself I would certainly get a lot more variation.

Wethospu.6437:

Fractals are already as boring and tedious as dungeons. As I said above, you can roll a dice when selecting a dungeon path for the same effect. Saying that fractals are based on randomness sounds quite absurd and I would like to see a source if you have any.

If they want to encourage variation they can quite easily add new daily quest with randomly selected dungeon paths / fractal maps to complete. Instead of forcing us to do things they should give us a reason to do those things.

Source: Dictionary

frac·tal
?frakt?l/Submit
MATHEMATICS
noun
plural noun: fractals

a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

spoj.9672:

Proper speed clearing isnt profitable in the slightest. You spend hours restarting the same dungeon path until you get a smooth run with no mistakes just to beat the current record. We do this because its fun and competative, not because its profitable.

I dislike randomness as it limits possibilies and since the tier addition to fractals ive felt like fractals are the same each day (we almost never get volcanic anymore and we choose to start on swamp so we never get underwater, old system we could get both which felt really good). If I could choose what fractals then I could pick one that we havent done in a long time. If you remove rolling and random picking of fractals you would have to fix rewards to make the much more challenging and longer fractals much more rewarding. But I think thats the right way to go personally. You could always add a random button where the game chooses for you.

That’s why I’ve been saying the new Tier system does not work. Have an ability to pick 1st fractal, whatever it is you want it to be to cut down the tedious rolling and leave other 3 completely random, hence keeping the meaning of fractals true. That way you can have your speed clearing, and we can have our fractals the way they used to be.

Romo.3709:

spoj.9672:

snip

That’s why I’ve been saying the new Tier system does not work. Have an ability to pick 1st fractal, whatever it is you want it to be to cut down the tedious rolling and leave other 3 completely random, hence keeping the meaning of fractals true.That way you can have your speed clearing, and we can have our fractals the way they used to be.

I quite like this idea. It opens up the possibility for competition by using the first pick and doesnt completely remove your forced variation. Its sort of a middle ground between no randomness and completely random. But we would still need to make rewards scale better for specific fractals. Because as it stands noone is going to pick dredge or cliffside first.

So basically im in full support of going back to the old system but with the improvement of vote to pick the first fractal rather than needless rolling.

Ok if you want to make Fractals more appealing and have more ppl do them and actually focus on them I suggest the following.

Make the fractal lvl matter for more than just doing the dungeon- Add tiered rewards with max tier having special armor/weapons (not skin) with all the different stat variations to be purchasable with fractal relics.

Make Fractals that are not linear. — Although this is harder it’s worth looking into. Perhaps give options like “go to the past and save Rurik or kill his father during the invasion of ascalon”. Something that gives a scence of impact to past events and you feel like fractals give you some lore impact.

I think altering fractals drastically for a leaderboard is a waste of time, keep in mind leaderboards are something that usually at best the top 10% care about. 10% of the amount who play fractals and have unlocked max teir, and play regularly isnt that large.

I do think they can have a competitive game mode, where they remove all randomness, and let people select a fractal to get the best times, they could track the best overall times, and best time each week.

Ill be honest i would probably never play this mode, i dont really care about leaderboards, none of the people i play with care either, but i accept some do, so i could see putting some development on it.

as for some questions wethospu asked, no adding new content doesnt create variability and replayability, it creates more options, but options in reality boil down to what is optimal. First you take the goal of the player, then based on that you look at the optimal solution, the rest of the possible solutions dont figure in to variability and replayability any more, because they wont be selected.

If someones goal is to beat fractals as fast as possible once per day, the best solution would be to do the easiest/fastest fractals possible repeatedly, all other fractals wont matter. Anything in the level design that takes time, or is sub optimal, wont be done either. Many will become bored, because even if it has 1000 options, people only do 1 option. Even if all the options are the same difficulty, people will choose the one they know best, and others know best. (this is why there are only two champ trains even though many zones have champions)

You see this again and again when you take random out.
first fractal will always be swamp for 90% of players
people generally only run the easiest, least deep instabilities

when you make a game, you have to direct and limit the players wants in order to make the game more fun for everyone. The type of behaviors most players would exhibit, given freedom, dont make a good game. Take orca for example, if he was developing, he would make fractals as short and easy possible, so he could get his shinies faster. That would be as boring as hell.

spoj.9672:

Romo.3709:

spoj.9672:

snip

That’s why I’ve been saying the new Tier system does not work. Have an ability to pick 1st fractal, whatever it is you want it to be to cut down the tedious rolling and leave other 3 completely random, hence keeping the meaning of fractals true.That way you can have your speed clearing, and we can have our fractals the way they used to be.

I quite like this idea. It opens up the possibility for competition by using the first pick and doesnt completely remove your forced variation. Its sort of a middle ground between no randomness and completely random. But we would still need to make rewards scale better for specific fractals. Because as it stands noone is going to pick dredge or cliffside first.

So basically im in full support of going back to the old system but with the improvement of vote to pick the first fractal rather than needless rolling.

Yeah. Whatever they do with fractals in the coming months and however they take our responses it always comes down to one thing: Rewards. Either balance them out so they’re on par with each other or have different rewards tiers. And by different rewards tiers I don’t mean an extra green, because frankly they’re salvage trash, nothing more.
Even if balancing doesn’t happen and rewards tiers get implemented, there’s still need to do something with Dredge. That’s a point number 2 on the list before anything else, but after rewards.

spoj.9672:

Romo.3709:

This is turning very fast into “turn fractals into speed clearing dungeons” discussion. I don’t see that being an evolution at all. That being said I don’t have anything against speed clearing dungeons, because it’s profitable.

Fractals is a whole different area. Making fractals into speed clearing dungeons would make them boring and tedious just like the dungeons you’ve been clearing. Because once you can pick what you want to run, you’d then run it over and over again for best time. How is that engaging and evolving? It is challenging, but at the same time it’s not evolving fractals in any way. Rather it’s stripping fractals of what they are based on: Randomness.

I understand speed clearing community needs new and more challenging content. But making fractals into another Arah would turn down many new players that are slowly getting interested in fractals or want to try it out.

Best scenario I can think of is making those Leaderboards you so crave go along with another mode. Let’s call it Time-Mode or something. Where you can pick your level and see how fast you can beat it. All while leaving fractals what they are. At the same time “Time-Mode” would be a great place for players to learn each level one at the time. And it would allow people like me to take my guildies that are having problems with a particular level in that mode and guide them through without doing a full set of fractals hoping to get the said level.

Proper speed clearing isnt profitable in the slightest. You spend hours restarting the same dungeon path until you get a smooth run with no mistakes just to beat the current record. We do this because its fun and competative, not because its profitable.

I dislike randomness as it limits possibilies and since the tier addition to fractals ive felt like fractals are the same each day (we almost never get volcanic anymore). And we choose to start on swamp so we never get underwater. Old system we could get both which felt really good.

If I could choose what fractals then I could pick one that we havent done in a long time. Or we could pick ones which were more rewarding if we felt like it. Or if we were short on time then we could pick the easier faster less rewarding fractals. If you remove rolling and random picking of fractals you would have to fix rewards to make the much more challenging and longer fractals much more rewarding. But I think thats the right way to go personally. You could always add a random button where the game chooses for you. I think giving us choice is the real key here. Randomness just drives players away. And yes I do like variation but at the moment the randomness is reducing my variation. If I could choose myself I would certainly get a lot more variation.

You have a very specific form of enjoying the content, that is best served as an option, not as the norm.

like i said, for yall guys

fractal mode: timed competitive
requires: level 50 difficulty unlocked

player selects a version of a fractal(instability) with no random elements.
player competes for the best time in that fractal
top time/player is recorded
top player ranks are based on your rank in all fractals/instabilities
each week the top times achieved(during that week) are awarded various chests based on what % you place in(for that week).
no daily for this mode, as you never actually do a whole fractal run.
reduced fractal relics awarded slightly, but placement per week gives top players more(among other things).
still possible to place on leaderboards with regular fractal play(though unlikely versus premades tailored to each fractal)

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

Fractals are already as boring and tedious as dungeons. As I said above, you can roll a dice when selecting a dungeon path for the same effect. Saying that fractals are based on randomness sounds quite absurd and I would like to see a source if you have any.

If they want to encourage variation they can quite easily add new daily quest with randomly selected dungeon paths / fractal maps to complete. Instead of forcing us to do things they should give us a reason to do those things.

Source: Dictionary

frac·tal
?frakt?l/Submit
MATHEMATICS
noun
plural noun: fractals

a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

What’s next? A bible? Anyways, I’m up for renaming fractals if we can then have sensible discussion.

phys.7689:

—
as for some questions wethospu asked, no adding new content doesnt create variability and replayability, it creates more options, but options in reality boil down to what is optimal. First you take the goal of the player, then based on that you look at the optimal solution, the rest of the possible solutions dont figure in to variability and replayability any more, because they wont be selected.

If someones goal is to beat fractals as fast as possible once per day, the best solution would be to do the easiest/fastest fractals possible repeatedly, all other fractals wont matter. Anything in the level design that takes time, or is sub optimal, wont be done either. Many will become bored, because even if it has 1000 options, people only do 1 option. Even if all the options are the same difficulty, people will choose the one they know best, and others know best. (this is why there are only two champ trains even though many zones have champions)
—

Could also explain me how your explanation fits “having an incentive to do all content”?

i would like to see that they add extra tokens or something so that you can obtain the fraktalweapons skins more reliable.

Problem :

I’ve heared that the drop chanze of fractal weapons was like 20% before they changed the lv cap to lv 50. but thats still realy low if you are only out for a special weaponskin, i explain why. there are like 15 different weapon types and lets say you want the fraktal sword skin, now you run fraktals and you only have a chanze of 1/5 to even get a weaponskin and then >again< 1/5 * 1/15 to get the skin you want , thats about 1% to get the weapon you want and that is in > the old systhem< . in the new systhem the chanze of getting a fraktal weapon skin is 5%. so for the math its 1/20*1/15 and thats like 0,3%. theoreticaly this would mean that you have to do 300 >full< fraktals to get the weaponskin you want. assuming you need about 2h for each full fraktal run you need about 600 hours just to get the weapon and thats only the math, in reality you could be unlucky and may need to do 400 fraktals or even more.

Solution:

there should be a more reliable systhem of geting the skin you want, it should still be challanging and difficult but not like pure grind and luck. one solution would be to add vendors for fraktal weapons and you could buy them from tokens, or to higher the chanze of getting a fraktal weapon to about 20-30% . i know there are plans for implementing a fraktal container from which you can choose the fraktalweapon you want. this is a great concept if the drop rate for it isnt too low: if you put a lot of efffort in getting to lv 50 fraktals and then the chanze of getting one fraktalweaponcontainer is only 2% you feel realy cheated on because you already put so much effort in reaching the high lv and now you have to grind more to get the container. a reasonably chanze of getting one container would be like 10-15% chanze at high lv.

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I can’t get behind the instability system. It’s still the same lame dungeon which you want to complete as fast as possible to get the loot (Yes, that’s grind and GW2 turned into a grindy game) and the instabilities just slow you down. There is not even an explanation for those instabilities storywise.

How are instabilities making that worse? Even without them people ran only same levels for daily.
Why is getting slowed down a bad thing if you find fast clears lame?

Because slow clears are even more lame.
Look, I’ve played this game for over 3k hours now, most times in PvE, I’ve done all dungeons too often to find them entertaining. It bores me. I’m doing those things to get the reward.

Queensdale champion train sounds like a right place for you.

Anthony asks for opinions, I give him my opinion. You have a problem with that?
Instead of adding crude mechanics they should work on the grind so I don’t have to run 100 fractals just to get one ascended backpiece.

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

Fractals are already as boring and tedious as dungeons. As I said above, you can roll a dice when selecting a dungeon path for the same effect. Saying that fractals are based on randomness sounds quite absurd and I would like to see a source if you have any.

If they want to encourage variation they can quite easily add new daily quest with randomly selected dungeon paths / fractal maps to complete. Instead of forcing us to do things they should give us a reason to do those things.

Source: Dictionary

frac·tal
?frakt?l/Submit
MATHEMATICS
noun
plural noun: fractals

a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

What’s next? A bible? Anyways, I’m up for renaming fractals if we can then have sensible discussion.

You asked for source, I gave you the source. Renaming fractals? What’s next? Fractals are fractals because of their nature. What you’re trying to do is create a whole new content.

I’m not gonna stand by and watch something that I’ve been playing, turn into another speed clearing track. Create an extra mode if you have to, but don’t overhaul the entire system.

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

Fractals are already as boring and tedious as dungeons. As I said above, you can roll a dice when selecting a dungeon path for the same effect. Saying that fractals are based on randomness sounds quite absurd and I would like to see a source if you have any.

If they want to encourage variation they can quite easily add new daily quest with randomly selected dungeon paths / fractal maps to complete. Instead of forcing us to do things they should give us a reason to do those things.

Source: Dictionary

frac·tal
?frakt?l/Submit
MATHEMATICS
noun
plural noun: fractals

a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

What’s next? A bible? Anyways, I’m up for renaming fractals if we can then have sensible discussion.

phys.7689:

—
as for some questions wethospu asked, no adding new content doesnt create variability and replayability, it creates more options, but options in reality boil down to what is optimal. First you take the goal of the player, then based on that you look at the optimal solution, the rest of the possible solutions dont figure in to variability and replayability any more, because they wont be selected.

If someones goal is to beat fractals as fast as possible once per day, the best solution would be to do the easiest/fastest fractals possible repeatedly, all other fractals wont matter. Anything in the level design that takes time, or is sub optimal, wont be done either. Many will become bored, because even if it has 1000 options, people only do 1 option. Even if all the options are the same difficulty, people will choose the one they know best, and others know best. (this is why there are only two champ trains even though many zones have champions)
—

Could also explain me how your explanation fits “having an incentive to do all content”?

not sure what your question is here, but as for the incentives, i agree they are completely off right now, Along with make changes in variability, they need to change the incentivized behavior from doing the easiest thing as fast as possible.

This is why i suggested earlier, that fractals give out bonus gold/relics/karma based on metrics which consider
*Average time to complete fractal among players in the last 2 weeks
*Average deaths in Fractal in last two weeks
*Average times completed compared to rolled in the last two weeks.

This would mean better rewards for fractals that take longer, are more dangerous, and not often completed.

This would auto correct itself based on current trends for players. If people figure how to make a run easy, its bonus rewards go down.

the addition of an item box for say 100 fractal relics that contains a chance at similar drops to what you get in fractal daily chests, and an option to turn in fractal rewards (like wrong skins,rings, ascended boxes etc) for fractal relics would make fractal relics desireable, and combined with bonus as i mentioned, would make doing hard fractals worthwhile.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I can’t get behind the instability system. It’s still the same lame dungeon which you want to complete as fast as possible to get the loot (Yes, that’s grind and GW2 turned into a grindy game) and the instabilities just slow you down. There is not even an explanation for those instabilities storywise.

How are instabilities making that worse? Even without them people ran only same levels for daily.
Why is getting slowed down a bad thing if you find fast clears lame?

Because slow clears are even more lame.
Look, I’ve played this game for over 3k hours now, most times in PvE, I’ve done all dungeons too often to find them entertaining. It bores me. I’m doing those things to get the reward.

Queensdale champion train sounds like a right place for you.

Anthony asks for opinions, I give him my opinion. You have a problem with that?
Instead of adding crude mechanics they should work on the grind so I don’t have to run 100 fractals just to get one ascended backpiece.

they got other options for ascended backpiece now. you can get the blades one, probably for less resources/time. No offense, but i dont think its a good idea to design fractals around people getting items super easily.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Back on randomness/replayability/rewards: I think the intent has always been to make the Fractals a very replayable experience by using random to create semi-unique iterations through the content. But the extrinsic reward motivators work to the contrary, making random unfavorable for optimal gain.

I’d like to see more speculation on middle ground solutions which both add meaningful variety to the Fractals without forcing players to feel like they’re trudging through non-optimal reward paths.

Also, this is all just speculation. I’m not advocating or declaring an official re-work of any system here. Just exploring possibilities for the evolution of this and future content.

What if you gave us the option to choose a random fractal or choose a specific one? At the end of each fractal, in addition to the window that asks “Are you ready to continue?” it also gives you the chance to choose the next fractal, making one of the options “Random”.

You could even integrate the leaderboard system by turning fractals into a sort of race. There could be a timer that starts when everyone zones into the fractal, and pauses once you kill the last boss in each fractal. The leaderboard would have the top team times for each fractal level.

Wethospu.6437:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yes, it would, because the instability-stacking would only apply across a tier. That said, it requires a higher level of AR immediately to go to 40, which would force players without enough AR to be doing 30-39 until they’re ready to move up. I think this way works even if 40 is technically ‘easier’ than 39 because you can create unique experiences within each tier, and I think 30 instabilities stacking would be pretty chaotic and silly. You then could have unique and interesting speed clear runs for L39, L49, and so forth because each would be a different experience. What do you think about that?

I don’t really like the idea of making gear gating even more prevalent. If you have enough gold to craft gear you can just keep doing easy levels over and over while someone has to do all the challenging stuff. Not really my definition of skill based content.

Sure, the levels would be interesting but would anyone really want to run them instead of L40 or L50?

You might if the leaderboard played into it. You might also if each tier rewarded something meaningful that you couldn’t get in the higher tier. I don’t think it is reasonable to stack instabilities up into the 30’s of instabilities around L50 or whatever. Rewards could also be, in general, staggered to reward playing L39 instead of L40 and L49 instead of L50 so that maybe L44 and L39 have the same reward chances, but L40 is lower than L39. There are options here for that, but I think it ultimately comes down to an improved reward scheme being developed in tandem with removal of randomness.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Wethospu.6437:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yes, it would, because the instability-stacking would only apply across a tier. That said, it requires a higher level of AR immediately to go to 40, which would force players without enough AR to be doing 30-39 until they’re ready to move up. I think this way works even if 40 is technically ‘easier’ than 39 because you can create unique experiences within each tier, and I think 30 instabilities stacking would be pretty chaotic and silly. You then could have unique and interesting speed clear runs for L39, L49, and so forth because each would be a different experience. What do you think about that?

I don’t really like the idea of making gear gating even more prevalent. If you have enough gold to craft gear you can just keep doing easy levels over and over while someone has to do all the challenging stuff. Not really my definition of skill based content.

Sure, the levels would be interesting but would anyone really want to run them instead of L40 or L50?

You might if the leaderboard played into it. You might also if each tier rewarded something meaningful that you couldn’t get in the higher tier. I don’t think it is reasonable to stack instabilities up into the 30’s of instabilities around L50 or whatever. Rewards could also be, in general, staggered to reward playing L39 instead of L40 and L49 instead of L50 so that maybe L44 and L39 have the same reward chances, but L40 is lower than L39. There are options here for that, but I think it ultimately comes down to an improved reward scheme being developed in tandem with removal of randomness.

removal of random in fractals, is really not a good idea, lets be honest, 90% of people want to remove random in order to make their runs easier/predictable, that doesnt make for a non grindy/replayable dungeon, just a faster way to get rewards.

phys.7689:

removal of random in fractals, is really not a good idea, lets be honest, 90% of people want to remove random in order to make their runs easier/predictable, that doesnt make for a non grindy/replayable dungeon, just a faster way to get rewards.

It really is, though, because it means your runs are predictable. If they normalize the time for each tier, like they should (and like Anthony Orden was assuming in his last couple posts), then there could be alternate means to encourage players to play different fractals. Maybe certain ones reward certain lodestone types, maybe there are specific items acquired in each fractal that you need some number of for Fractal Armor in the future, or something along those lines. They should encourage diversity in playing through rewards, but shouldn’t force it up front. Removing that randomness is key to fractals both being more accessible to hardcore players and casual players on a time crunch.

The more I read the less excited I get about the future of fractals…

Romo.3709:

The more I read the less excited I get about the future of fractals…

Don’t worry Romo, the future of fractals is not entirely in our hands.

Just a short proposal to help with the agony resistance problem:

Proposal Overview

An AR banner

Goal of Proposal

To make it easier for friends and guildmembers to join a higher level fractal.

Proposal Functionality

Introduce an Agony Resistance Banner. It functions like a Magic Find banner, but instead it adds +5 or even +10 agony resistance. It can be bought with a combination of fractal relics and perhaps other things (guild commendations/laurels?), or found as loot from a fractal chest.

Risks

It reduces the amount of AR we need on our gear. So players may not have to grind as much. (=less time spend in the game)
Though it would probably lead to players joining their friends for that higher fractal level. (=more time spend in the game)

Rising Dusk.2408:

phys.7689:

removal of random in fractals, is really not a good idea, lets be honest, 90% of people want to remove random in order to make their runs easier/predictable, that doesnt make for a non grindy/replayable dungeon, just a faster way to get rewards.

It really is, though, because it means your runs are predictable. If they normalize the time for each tier, like they should (and like Anthony Orden was assuming in his last couple posts), then there could be alternate means to encourage players to play different fractals. Maybe certain ones reward certain lodestone types, maybe there are specific items acquired in each fractal that you need some number of for Fractal Armor in the future, or something along those lines. They should encourage diversity in playing through rewards, but shouldn’t force it up front. Removing that randomness is key to fractals both being more accessible to hardcore players and casual players on a time crunch.

I would rather they just add a competive mode, where people can select one fractal, with no random elements, rather than gutting the main attraction of the game mode. Part of the challenge/difficulty/balance of fractals is not knowing what you are going to get, and being prepared to deal with it. Once people start optimizing for each fractal type, most of the challenge/team balance and variability will be out the window.
Dungeons already are structured how you are talking about, and it has loads of problems with replayability/grind and getting certain dungeons/paths done. Fractals shouldnt hope to be dungeons, they should be fulfilling a different goal.

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

Fractals are already as boring and tedious as dungeons. As I said above, you can roll a dice when selecting a dungeon path for the same effect. Saying that fractals are based on randomness sounds quite absurd and I would like to see a source if you have any.

If they want to encourage variation they can quite easily add new daily quest with randomly selected dungeon paths / fractal maps to complete. Instead of forcing us to do things they should give us a reason to do those things.

Source: Dictionary

frac·tal
?frakt?l/Submit
MATHEMATICS
noun
plural noun: fractals

a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

What’s next? A bible? Anyways, I’m up for renaming fractals if we can then have sensible discussion.

You asked for source, I gave you the source. Renaming fractals? What’s next? Fractals are fractals because of their nature. What you’re trying to do is create a whole new content.

I’m not gonna stand by and watch something that I’ve been playing, turn into another speed clearing track. Create an extra mode if you have to, but don’t overhaul the entire system.

Nature or dictionary? Please try to choose.

Anyways, on more serious tune, in my opinion fractals are based on mini dungeons with high difficulty due to scaling. That’s their main mechanic, not random map selection. Lore wise, fractals can also refer to random nature of the maps. They have pretty much nothing in common and there’s no reasoning why we are living exactly those events.

Why do you care so much if others are able to reliably speedclear content? We can already speedclear it, just have to grind until we get lucky with rolls.

phys.7689:

Wethospu.6437:

Could also explain me how your explanation fits “having an incentive to do all content”?

not sure what your question is here, but as for the incentives, i agree they are completely off right now, Along with make changes in variability, they need to change the incentivized behavior from doing the easiest thing as fast as possible.

This is why i suggested earlier, that fractals give out bonus gold/relics/karma based on metrics which consider
*Average time to complete fractal among players in the last 2 weeks
*Average deaths in Fractal in last two weeks
*Average times completed compared to rolled in the last two weeks.

This would mean better rewards for fractals that take longer, are more dangerous, and not often completed.

This would auto correct itself based on current trends for players. If people figure how to make a run easy, its bonus rewards go down.

the addition of an item box for say 100 fractal relics that contains a chance at similar drops to what you get in fractal daily chests, and an option to turn in fractal rewards (like wrong skins,rings, ascended boxes etc) for fractal relics would make fractal relics desireable, and combined with bonus as i mentioned, would make doing hard fractals worthwhile.

Not really a question here. I just would have preferred you answering my whole question instead of cherry picking a part of it.

So if you acknowledge that they can create a system to promote all content then why do we need the random then? At least personally I don’t need any preparations to deal with random map selection. If I get map A I play it. If I get map B I play it.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives. If not difficulty scaling (or supposing difficulty scaling simply stopped at a certain level), what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

So I haven’t yet commented on this thread, but I figured I’d at least take the time to write once.

I was a player who reached scale 80 for fun before the reset because I found no other valuable PVE content in the game. Fractals, for me, was supposed to be the challenging endgame PVE content this game lacks compared to its predecessor. I loved challenging myself and my group specifically on high scale shaman.

You asked “After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder?”

The answer is, sort of. In some fights where taking SOME damage is almost unavoidable, it encourages different builds and gear to mitigate being one-shot.

I think you were perhaps asking that question rhetorically, but I would suggest that another question is more relevant. Is infinite agony building to avoid agony one-shots more valuable gameplay than skillful avoidance of regular mob one-shots during non-boss encounters?

Honestly what ruined fractals for me, besides the reset and obvious lack of care for players that worked to get to high levels, was the shift from skill-checks to gear-checks. I refuse to grind exponentially for more agony resistance gear. It’s stupid and not indicative of skill, but rather of wasted time.

I would love to see more skilled encounters. Shaman was my favorite fight before Liadri. Liadri was probably the best example of a fight that required skill that has been implemented in the game to date. I realize Westhospu put up a video where he zerked Liadri in 5 seconds, but the achievement “Light up the Darkness” should have made things a bit harder for him. Also, last time I checked he wasn’t able to solo shaman.

I want content that requires me to think. Obviously once groups get to know each other, they figure out a “best way” to do things, and the “thinking” element sort of gets pushed to the back burner, but there was just something about the shaman fight that felt unique every time I played with different people.

Game play should focus on good positioning, good timing of skills, and good synthesis between group members. It should not focus on exponential gear grinds (your new infusion system), gear checks (every 10 levels of the Mistlock Instabilities), or mindless game play (dredge clown car-I fell asleep doing this in the 70s late at night on more than one occasion.)

Good mechanics that add a sense of variability could also help. For example, what if a fractal used the movement system you guys added in the Zephyr Sanctum?