Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I think every content should tell a story. This storytelling could be divided into small parts, a puzzle which you have to put together on your own and epic story which should be satisfying.
I want to talk about this “epic moments” a little bit more since our personal story did it all wrong. 1. The animation didn’t fit into the context. You’ve always used the standart animations which are not convincing to say atleast. The new approach as seen with Kasmeer and Marjory would be the way to go.
2. The current music doesn’t reflect what’s happening. The music has to be as satisfying as the animations have to be.
Speaking of which: This game need new music. New good music. The music has to fulfill two criteria: 1. It has to be matching the content. 2. It has to be “re-listenable”. Play the music one week at work every day. If noone goes crazy, the music is good.

i dont think the stuff we see now in LS would be good for fractals IF it takes too much time, remember fractals replayed alot. I do think its a good idea to have lots of little bits you put together for the whole story (if you choose to hunt it) like scarlets hideout, etc. Or perhaps pieces you can observe in background if you choose. It may also be good to have some hidden areas with some interesting side things happening maybe even hidden chests (like SAB but with lore and loot/events)

and yeah was just talking about the music the other day with a friend, its not bad, just way too random, and very often not related to anything happening. It doesnt serve as a storytelling element that often. Selecting specific music for certain events/places would help the game ALOT imo. But thats probably a totally different issue.

I’m fairly certain I saw a similar post from a dev in the audio subforum. This issue of the wrong music in the wrong place sounds like a big focus for them in the year ahead, which is great.

One of the the things I was thinking about the other day was how to keep linking the LS to the fractals and keep it permanent. I’m not sure how it can work to backdate the current LS beyond what they did with the 2 new boss ones (which I enjoyed immensely btw).

Lets say we had a new story beginning our journey to rid the world of Jormag and one of the first things we did was go to the tooth at Hoelbrak. Before we could damage it, an NPC would send us to the fractals to experience the first battle Vs Jormag where his tooth was knocked out. Much like the Ascalonian fractal, we would be amongst the troops (as Norn tho), perhaps protecting Asgeir Dragonrender whislt he hacks off the tooth from Jormag and then we flee from his hordes.

Much like the last fractal update, it could be the “story” one we first experience in the fractals and then would be added into the rotation.

This is just one example, based on how they did the last fractal story and is great for developing background on a story whilst keeping fractals introduced on a regular basis

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Question about progression and difficulty.

One thing that I find that sets Fractals apart from previous “elite” areas, like GW1’s DoA, FoW, and Underworld, is that Fractals is just that – bits and pieces that generally don’t make up a whole. To clarify, the goal of these previous elite areas was that they were a series of overarching quests that resulted in an end goal. You did four areas, or a chain of 11 or 13 quests, and in the end you got a massive reward chest. Fractals are different. There’s no real cohesion between what you do, and the end reward. You do whatever three Fractals are handed to you, and then the final boss. There’s no real expectation of consistency in experience, other than going in knowing you need to get three Fractals and a boss done. This is why people roll for swamp, and generally hope for the shorter Fractals – all that matters is getting to the end as quickly as you can. Think of the elite areas as one giant instance, and Fractals, rather than a single large instance, is more of a bunch of separate, mini-dungeons.

While I’m not sure this is a fair comparison to make, I want to emphasize that part of the challenge of the elite areas was not only present in the areas themselves, but was made by the players. There was a self-scaling system: solo running and split groups. You could travel with a party of 8 around the Fissure of Woe and complete the quests. It was safer, but took longer, perhaps two hours or more. What players eventually came to realize is that, with the right builds, a group could split and solo each of the quests. A party of eight could, in assuming substantially greater risk, cut down clear times to thirty minutes or less. I think Fractals lacks this sort of dynamic. There’s no way for the players themselves to modify the structure to do thing faster, albeit with more risk. I think this is why there’s such a large discussion over rewards. We’re not allowed to take huge risks outside the structure of the instance, so the speed at which we receive our rewards (and the amount of those rewards) is subject entirely to the design team’s discretion.

Imagine there were a way to cut a Fractal clear time in half, but it was twice as difficult. The skilled players would absolutely take this route, because they’re skilled enough to win without failure, while getting their rewards faster. They create their own difficulty without Anet having to do anything at all.

Part of the problem, though, is simply the way the design is structured. In an absolute sense, there’s really no “failing” in Guild Wars 2. You never completely lose a dungeon, you only die and respawn until you eventually execute correctly. With that sort of system in place, it’s much harder to design content with the expectations of greater risk. There’s a hard cap to risk – you die and try again. This is different from the risk present in GW1 where, if you died, the run was botched and you had to start over completely. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what Anet’s current stance on this is, and I won’t make assumptions. However, this all boils down to two points:

1) Part of longetivity and goal-oriented rewards is allowing players flexibility to match their risks with their rewards.

Currently, Fractals set the risks and the rewards for the player. Players can’t choose riskier ventures for faster clear times, we’re always locked into the three-fractal-then-boss cycle.

2) Difficulty is inherently tied to risk, and a cap on risk creates burdens on content, rather than skill, to be challenging.

If a party wipe sent your group out of Fractals and you had to restart fully, the notion that bosses should be capable of one-shotting players would seem silly. When there are real, significant risks for failure, you take the burden off the content to be challenging, and place the burden on the players to be skillful enough to complete challenges. While granted that the “no-kick” design allows for its own flexibilities, you must consider that taking the risk burden off of players forces you to design content that might be artificially challenging (in a world where players can’t be kicked from the instance for losing, how do you challenge those players other than making bosses that one-shot them unless they dodge?). While I don’t mean to say kick-if-fail design is the only form of this risk, it is one of the more obvious implementations.

Unfortunately, how to reconcile these problems would be beyond the scope of this post, and perhaps beyond the scope of Fractals themselves. It may be entirely possible that these issues are simply something that can’t be reconciled in the context of Fractals, or in the context of Guild Wars 2’s design. If I did have to levy suggestions, it might be first in the area of player-selected risk. For example, rather than tying instabilities to specific Fractal levels, you could tie instabilities to reward levels. Instabilities which are rated as “more challenging” would then be tied to a higher reward level, independent of the Fractal’s difficulty scale, and you would receive bonus reward for choosing a higher-challenge instability.

There could be other progression dynamics tied to this as well, with their own benefits. For example, imagine if players could choose to do two Fractals for a smaller reward. Or maybe they could choose to do five Fractals in a row, for a larger reward. There could be a system where the Fractals, rather than prompt you to move onto the next Fractal, ask if you would like to do another Fractal for an increased reward. The more Fractals you do before doing the boss Fractal, the greater the reward. If you had an extremely dedicated group who chose to do all twelve non-boss fractals before doing a boss, there would be an even larger bonus reward. Consider it a sort of “trial mode.”

Or, perhaps there could be a “boss mode.” Your party, rather than doing normal Fractals, does all three boss Fractals in a row. If you party wipes on any of those bosses, you’re sent back to the observatory. Rewards would be balanced accordingly.

These are the kinds of things that allow a customized experience and allow players to customize both their time investments, and the amount of risks they take. Imagine a combination, even. What if there were a “boss mode” where you could choose difficult instabilities for a better reward? I bet the risk-seeking players would LOVE that.

It could also work with lore, you could add “historical” or “lore” trials to the Fractals. Imagine a set of three Fractals and a boss Fractal, where each Fractal is part of of the molten dungeon, or related to the molten alliance story, and then the Fractal boss is the Molten Duo. Rewards could be related to the molten alliance content (azurite, rare chance at the molten jetpack, etc). Choose a difficult instability, and there’s a higher chance at the better molten-related rewards.

All in all, some of these things are very development heavy, and take a lot of consideration about reward balance, but they’re the kinds of thing I think could really breathe life into the progression dynamics of Fractals.

And two more, before the thread ends

Dessa and her chaser lasers

The twisted beekeeper

For more of these, and my motivation to make these, please visit my old thread here: Endgame PvE: Difficulty comes down to dodging

The game has made some progress since that thread, but I believe there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to diversity in combat challenges.

I think it would be interesting to see some fractal that deliver 5 man versions of some of the Guild Puzzles. Those are some amazing maps (love the skrit maze and the cheese shaped loot box at the end) that many players don’t get to see.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

haviz.1340:

“Lore people” will play fractals once or twice and move on to roleplay in divinity’s reach while more dedicated players will get bored because it will lack any sort of challenge except bigger numbers.

What should be done is to severely decrease the number of scales, the difference between 1 and 9 is trivial. Introduce complex mechanics for higher tiers (not just numbers) and make those god kitten cinematics skippable. Obligatory reset included.

I am so tempted to be hyper critical on this post but I won’t, as it isn’t this single comment that has been frustrating but instead a culmination of posts in the CDI.

Suffice to say this post emphasizes why this CDI has been pretty good and not great. In my opinion there have been to many posts that have either not been well thought out or the poster has not taken the time to get educated in the discussion before putting pen to paper, and more specifically too insular in terms of goal resolution instead of thinking about the broader audience.

I will leave it at that.

I am still interested in continued discussion around your boss/encounter mechanic ideas, Rewards and ways in which the fractals could be evolved moving forward to provide new types of challenge.

Cheers,

Chris

I understand and agree with your desire to merge lore and content. I think you can please all audience, the extremely casual to the extremely hardcore, with fractals. The beautiful scenery and lore of the zone will be much more appreciated in lower level fractals where the difficulty level is very low. That is pretty much the case right now. What I think needs to be worked on are the mechanics for the bosses and fractals at higher level. New challenging mechanics need to be added instead of simply making the boss hit harder. I will try to my best to present some ideas.

Volcanic fractal – For level 40-50. In the intermission phases at 75%/50%/25% after the shaman shield is down, the boss can consume the ooze that is up at will. Each ooze he eats contributes to the numbers of stacks he will have next intermission phase. So if he eats 10 oozes during this phase, it will contribute 10 more times that you have to eat him during the next intermission phase. One strategy to counter this would be to start kiting the ooze immediately as the bosses shield is down, along with putting a heavy amount of immobilize on him to prevent him from reaching the ooze. I think that also a last phase could be added at 10%, where lava rapidly starts to swarm the platform that you stand on, inching everyone closer and closer together. The boss could also have a buff called aura of the “whatever god the grawls worship” which gives allows him to take less damage the closer you are to him or making him do high damage the closer you are to him. I think you could play with this a lot, I like the idea of an extra phase added. Edit: I also think that for a last phase, it would be really cool if at the last 10%, instead of the idea I mentioned, perhaps the platform beneath you begins to shake and for a small second the boss is invulnerable so you can observe whats going on, and then suddenly the platform starts to rise as lava propels into the air. So you basically end up fighting the boss as this platform shoots up into the air, eventually reaching the top and then you finally see outside the volcano and perhaps understand a bit of what area you might be in. There has been a lot of speculation about the lore behind this specific fractal.

Urban Battlegrounds Fractal – The last boss of this fight seriously needs to be changed since it is pretty much a tank and spank(besides the tank) for the first 50% and just range bomb the last 50%. I think much much more could be done with the Ascalonian Squire. He’s very irrelevant to the fight all together. Currently the squire gives Ashym retaliation, fury, protection, or might. None of these really do anything unless you want to make them all super boons. That would be lazy though. Perhaps while the squire has the banner, Ashym sits in a very lethal state for the players, forcing us to kill the squire, and then proceed to pick up the banner ourself which would give the players a buff. However the banner would have a timer(15 seconds) and if the players are not able to push him to the intermission phase (75%) then we would be punished in some sort of way.

After trying to come up with these ideas I think that what you could do relating difficulty and mechanics is add more mechanics but reward players based on how well they execute the mechanics. I think you guys were spot on with the recent jungle wurm fight that was added. Even if you fail the event and only kill one wurm, you still get a reward. If you go all the way and kill all three decapitated heads, you get something much better(even though this wasnt necessarily the case with the wurm lol)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

haviz.1340:

“Lore people” will play fractals once or twice and move on to roleplay in divinity’s reach while more dedicated players will get bored because it will lack any sort of challenge except bigger numbers.

What should be done is to severely decrease the number of scales, the difference between 1 and 9 is trivial. Introduce complex mechanics for higher tiers (not just numbers) and make those god kitten cinematics skippable. Obligatory reset included.

I am so tempted to be hyper critical on this post but I won’t, as it isn’t this single comment that has been frustrating but instead a culmination of posts in the CDI.

Suffice to say this post emphasizes why this CDI has been pretty good and not great. In my opinion there have been to many posts that have either not been well thought out or the poster has not taken the time to get educated in the discussion before putting pen to paper, and more specifically too insular in terms of goal resolution instead of thinking about the broader audience.

I will leave it at that.

I am still interested in continued discussion around your boss/encounter mechanic ideas, Rewards and ways in which the fractals could be evolved moving forward to provide new types of challenge.

Cheers,

Chris

Thank you for this post Chris, it is nice to see that other people are frustrated too., by opinions about “lore people” and having more story in fractals…

Nevertheless, I am still posting about my wished

Alternate Shiro fractal:

Sorry, if these mechanics are perhaps not the most interesting, but I am not really good with inventing things like that, I just would love to fight side by side with Shiro
And no, even if this is Lore, I would not only play it once and than move on to roleplaying, since I don’t even roleplay, I just like having a story in my games -.-

Proposal Overview
Better rewards system.

Goal of Proposal
Make playing fractals worth more to encourage people to play. My self and others i know have all stopped playing fractals in the last couple months. Mostly because we thought it would get better on the reward end and it didn’t really feel that way. We use to run them all the time from lvls 20-40.

Proposal Functionality
We just need better rewards for time spent. You did a great job with the last update but a few things were missed and left out.

Overwhelming number of useless fractal relics, pristine fractal relics, and rings. We are now forced into a longer run which i’m okay with and enjoy but in the end i could have done multiple dungeon runs and gotten a vastly higher reward. The gold in the end feels more like a gesture then an actual reward and nothing else really has any value.

RNG fractal weapons. I gave up and moved on to other parts of the game and no longer care for these rewards. I didn’t like that about GW1 dungeons and I love your current dungeon token system. I don’t know why you went back to the old system you were trying to get away from for fractals. I was hoping this would change last fractals patch.

I think we need a token vendor that accepts relics, pristine relics that has more things for veteran players. Minis, weapons, armor, tonics anything. Rings should be salvageable (please no more bloodstone dust) or exchangeable for more of these items.

Titles based on 10 lvl tiers would be really nice as well as a finisher.

Basically give me something to grind for ! XD

Associated Risks
I really cant think of any. Your new system forces longer runs and the rewards should match the time spent. It’s unlikely people could or would farm this.

Keep up the amazing work !!!

Hello Chris

There were some boss encounters ideas thrown around at the dungeon forum. Here is the thread if you would like to take a look:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Design-a-Boss-encounter-contest/

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

So if there were a second tier “rising lava race” and the whole party gets swallowed by lava, instead of resetting the whole encounter, you roll for a new fractal from the tier 2 list (possibly getting the lava race again?).

These could be fairly tough but also fairly short for their tier – so that you’d feel an immediate desire to complete it since you’ve been given the opportunity.

Proposal Overview
Random instabilities that scale with Fractal level and don’t mess with builds.

Goal of Proposal

• Add more randomness to Fractals. This increases replayability and adds to the challenge of adjusting playstyle to the current instability.
• Adds a mean of scaling beyond damage increase of enemies.
• Allow casual players to experience instabilities

Proposal Functionality
When entering a Fractal shard, the instability for the shard is selected at random from a pool of instabilities. These instabilities have two properties: build-independence and scalability.

I think that a lot of people are too focused on trying to point out flaws in the addition of Fractal Lore. The purpose of brainstorming is to come up with ideas and then improve upon them, not shoot them down outright.

Nike.2631:

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

So if there were a second tier “rising lave race” and the whole party gets swallowed by lava, instead of resetting the whole encounter, you roll for a new fractal from the tier 2 list (possibly getting the lava race again?).

These could be fairly tough but also fairly short for their tier – so that you’d feel an immediate desire to complete it since you’ve been given the opportunity.

I think it would over complicate something that doesn’t need it. Fractals work as they are and this would likely frustrate players needlessly.

Perhaps at the highest of tiers where challenge is more paramount it would be viable, but even then I’m not sure if this would be something fractals would benefit from.

Boss encounter idea:
1) Ominous music, a trail leading to the arena, an arena that can be seen in the distance but is at the end of a serpentine road
2) We get to it and the massive doors open when we approach and close when we are in it
3) The boss makes an appearance that is over the top
4) Until 75% we can just wail at it with every thing we’ve got
5)After that, until 50% we have do disable a shield with an item that’s been made available to us because we dodged it’s charge attack
6) The battle music changes to reflect getting to 25% that the boss is dying and it will start to dish out lots of area of effect circles and lines while the arena is starting to deteriorate
7) When it gets to 0 it goes to a downed state and will go back to 25% if not stomped
Taunts: 100%- thinks it’s a god
75%- still confident but at a more humanoid level rather than a god one
50% starts to panic
25% incoherent
0%/downed laughing maniacally

Topic Title: How I believe Fractals could be evolved by adding optional objectives.

Description of Topic Feature or Goal.:
Improving re playability of Fractals levels as well as scaling difficulty in these fractals as well as improving repeating fractal levels.

Proposal Overview
Implementing Optional Objective/Achievement goals for rewards for completion rewards similar to GW1 Optional objectives.

Goal of Proposal
Some of the staleness of repeating the same dungeons with only minor differences or difficulty increases as well as giving player who have mastered the current fractals a new way to play.

Proposal Functionality
Current Achievements usually give you goals to shoot for it would be nice to seeing optional objectives set like achievements something that if beating a fractals level in x time or killing x creatures or with x deaths/downs taken rewards the players with a bonus chest upon completion. If these optional where like daily’s and randomized per each fractal run or even just each fractal zone would add to the re playability of the same dungeon levels just to complete different optional objectives.

Associated Risks
The biggest risk would be to further stigma that fractals LFG for “Elite/Pro players only” Overall I believe the changes would improve the fun and design of fractals giving players the option to go for the harder, stick with the easy goal but no bonus rewards or do partial optional objectives for partial rewards.

I think they should “remove” the instabilities from the levels and add them as gambits. The higher the level, the more gambits you can add.

Also there should be a minimum and maximum gambits you can add per tier. And may be have tiers for the gambits.

For example for levels 31-40 you have to pick at least 1 gambit tier 1 and you can add a maximum of 3 tier 1 gambits, the more you add, the better the rewards. Then for levels 41-50 you can pick a maximum of 5 gambits but you have to pick at least 2 tier 2 gambits, the other 3 are optional and can be tier 1 or 2, rewards adjusted depending on the number of gambits ans the tier of the gambits.

Randulf.7614:

Nike.2631:

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

So if there were a second tier “rising lava race” and the whole party gets swallowed by lava, instead of resetting the whole encounter, you roll for a new fractal from the tier 2 list (possibly getting the lava race again?).

These could be fairly tough but also fairly short for their tier – so that you’d feel an immediate desire to complete it since you’ve been given the opportunity.

I think it would over complicate something that doesn’t need it. Fractals work as they are and this would likely frustrate players needlessly.

Perhaps at the highest of tiers where challenge is more paramount it would be viable, but even then I’m not sure if this would be something fractals would benefit from.

Well, I was thining it would allow fractals to branch into some new challenges.

Imagine a fractal that is essentially the Wintersday jump puzzle.

I will NEVER succeed on it. If its all 5 make it, we’re going back to Dessa’s lab, because I already know the outcome – failure until our eyes bleed. If the win condition is at least 1 person makes it on the first try, awesome, I can stand at the start and cheer them on. And if we all fail, no problem it automatically moves us on to a new fractal. But if it were try-try-try-again until at least one person makes it I’d probably sit there bored off my butt for a few attempts then log out/nominate a return to Deassa lab.

When you are on the second or third fractal in a run, One Try fractals give you a way of recovering gracefully from a bad roll.

((I mean really, how many people would mind the Underground Facility Fractal being ‘One Try’ for uber-rewards and re-roll if you all wipe?))

A post i made earlier seems to have its place in the scenario description I will post it again.

Escort fractal:
The goal of this fractal is to escort a NPC, there is nothing blocking the player progression into the zone it can be freely explored also different itinerary are available.

Mandatory event:
Escort a merchant and his 3 dolyaks through the plains.
Enemies will spawn during the course of the escort trying to kill the dolyaks and the merchant.
If a dolyak dies it cannot be revived.
The merchant can be revived.
When the event finishes:

• gold reward: 3 dolyaks alive.
• silver reward: 1-2 dolyak(s) alive.
• bronze reward: no doluak alive.

Choice making:
At the beginning of the fractal players will be able to talk to the NPC and choose the itinerary.

Optional/random events:
Camps of bandits located outside of the escort routes.
Each camp is guarded by an enemy/group of enemy, the combat difficulty varies.
The camps can be destroyed by players and then captured to ensure the bandits wont come back.
The camps/event which will be up are decided as soon as the fractal is loaded.

Link between the optional and mandatory events:
If a camp/event is up bandits belonging to this one will be patrolling in a certain part of a certain itinerary.

With all this we end up with a fractal introducing quite a lot of mechanics:

• Since the escort wont start until an itinerary has been decided, and the occupied camps aren’t revealed until explored bu the player scouting to know which itinerary is the most appropriate.
• Each camp having different enemies to deal with deciding if cleaning the camp or going through the patrols is the most profitable choice to do.
• With additional reward tied to the dolyaks count at the end of the fractal spliting the group to protect the escort while dealing with the camps might be a good idea.
• The combination of camps at the start of the fractal being chosen aleatory each run through this fractal feels a little different.
• …

Well is hope that with this example I clarified my proposition enough.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Fractal-Evolution/page/21#post3722669 The original post with more description.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Suffice to say this post emphasizes why this CDI has been pretty good and not great.

I think I agree, to be honest; this was a perfect opportunity to see what kind of people play fractals and what they want out of content like this. Instead there was a lot of repetitive complaining about dredge and about ‘rewards’, with very little insight into whether the problem would be better solved by nerfing champ bags. I don’t think we really came up with any kind of solid design principles for fractals.

Anyway, encounters! I’d very much like to see fractals that take advantage of the existing setup, that these are crystallised echoes of history. I’d enjoy seeing fractals where the fractal starts turning unstable while we’re in it; fractals where two moments in history have mixed together, and fractals that reconfigure themselves while we’re inside.

I’d also like to see a fractal where we spend the majority of the fractal falling, or in the air.

I was a little disappointed when the Jade Sea fractal seemed to take a lot of its inspiration from the jade quarries, because my favourite part of the Jade Sea was the jewelled sea foam. It’s just such a striking image that it’s a shame it didn’t carry over. (And it probably could; there’s a big curved area in the Jade Sea fractal that could easily be turned into a wave.)

Merus.9475:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Suffice to say this post emphasizes why this CDI has been pretty good and not great.

I think I agree, to be honest; this was a perfect opportunity to see what kind of people play fractals and what they want out of content like this. Instead there was a lot of repetitive complaining about dredge and about ‘rewards’, with very little insight into whether the problem would be better solved by nerfing champ bags. I don’t think we really came up with any kind of solid design principles for fractals.

Anyway, encounters! I’d very much like to see fractals that take advantage of the existing setup, that these are crystallised echoes of history. I’d enjoy seeing fractals where the fractal starts turning unstable while we’re in it; fractals where two moments in history have mixed together, and fractals that reconfigure themselves while we’re inside.

I’d also like to see a fractal where we spend the majority of the fractal falling, or in the air.

I was a little disappointed when the Jade Sea fractal seemed to take a lot of its inspiration from the jade quarries, because my favourite part of the Jade Sea was the jewelled sea foam. It’s just such a striking image that it’s a shame it didn’t carry over. (And it probably could; there’s a big curved area in the Jade Sea fractal that could easily be turned into a wave.)

I think you may have missed some posts. Multiple people spoke of rewards as incentives, and not just comparitively. Let me be clear, gold isnt really the complete issue. Its also about what actions are rewarded. Also the issue of fractal relics not having much use after you get a backpiece, which makes one of the main consistent rewards of fractals not as incentivizing. Much about rewards has been discussed, but if chris has a specific question, id love to think on the specific types of things the devs are thinking about

Nike.2631:

Randulf.7614:

Nike.2631:

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

So if there were a second tier “rising lava race” and the whole party gets swallowed by lava, instead of resetting the whole encounter, you roll for a new fractal from the tier 2 list (possibly getting the lava race again?).

These could be fairly tough but also fairly short for their tier – so that you’d feel an immediate desire to complete it since you’ve been given the opportunity.

I think it would over complicate something that doesn’t need it. Fractals work as they are and this would likely frustrate players needlessly.

Perhaps at the highest of tiers where challenge is more paramount it would be viable, but even then I’m not sure if this would be something fractals would benefit from.

Well, I was thining it would allow fractals to branch into some new challenges.

Imagine a fractal that is essentially the Wintersday jump puzzle.

I will NEVER succeed on it. If its all 5 make it, we’re going back to Dessa’s lab, because I already know the outcome – failure until our eyes bleed. If the win condition is at least 1 person makes it on the first try, awesome, I can stand at the start and cheer them on. And if we all fail, no problem it automatically moves us on to a new fractal. But if it were try-try-try-again until at least one person makes it I’d probably sit there bored off my butt for a few attempts then log out/nominate a return to Deassa lab.

When you are on the second or third fractal in a run, One Try fractals give you a way of recovering gracefully from a bad roll.

((I mean really, how many people would mind the Underground Facility Fractal being ‘One Try’ for uber-rewards and re-roll if you all wipe?))

Well, another problem with this would be that players can’t reliably learn by failing if they can’t repeat the challenge. So they would only get to learn the fractal from:

• Going with a team that knows how to do this.

or

• Watching videos on youtube.

Leaving out what in my eyes is the most interesting and rewarding type of learning:

• By trying out strategies we develop ourselves.

Fractals is to me ere for two big reasons.

First off to tell side stories along with the living story o put further depth into the lore.
Secondly to provide difficult content for people who enjoy such to be challenged.

Therefore I think the evolution of fractals, simply put, should continue with its goals.

Make more fractals and make us able to chose them to be darn difficult

Cheers!

Since it haven’t been pointed out due to my knowledge and the thread is getting closed sometime today I figured I’d add this:

Proposal Overview
Urban Battlegrounds mechanics before Dulfy.

Goal of Proposal
Make the tedious “hug-the-wall-so-we-don’t-loose-vets” technique more interesting.

Proposal Functionality
When starting the level it is a very well known technique to run to the left side of the wall to get the vets follow you without engaging in any battles with Ascalonians. The reason why we don’t want them to engage is because they’re never ending spawns. Just like Dredge fractal, the never ending spawn mechanic is tedious and boring, while leaving the player thinking that there’s absolutely nothing they can do. Either make the area clear-able, oh have the vets respawn at the gate once Dulfy goes down. On the bright side the bugs from the past have been finally polished in this level.

Associated Risks
There’s no risk. Would require some coding, or simply turning off the respawn mechanic would fix it. This way the player is in charge and has the ability to actually fight through the mobs, rather than trying to tip toe around the arena.

Hi,

You said that it would take too long to implement added mechanics as you progress().

IMO the best part about dungeons is the first time you play. When you don’t know what awaits you, how to play? How to beat that path? How to adapt? If it doesn’t change it get’s boring pretty fast once you get the hang out of it

So what would you say about this approach:

1-30lvl hp and dmg scaling
30-50lvl little hp scaling and dmg with added random instabilities per each fractal (because now you can choose the easiest instabilities and ignore almost all of them that you added you would also have to remove the boring and the most hated one’s)
50-60(70?)lvl stop adding hp and dmg, and NOW add new mechanic’s to each fractal and no instabilities (so the player’s can learn the mechanics)
60(70?)+ lvl add instabilities to the new(same as added by lvl 50+) mechanics

With this approach the fractal’s would have a lot of variety and would be fresh as you progress. Ofcourse the best way would be to change mechanics every 10 levels(would be really cool) but if you really can’t do this than my suggested approach would at least a little spice the fractals up and the added mechanic’s would be played by all once they hit 50+. Also each fractal would be different because of the random instabilities that you could get.(you can keep adding them when you want)

You could also keep adding mechanics later when you have the time. You don’t need to roll them all out at the same time.

Thanks for reading my post and sorry i’m not the best english user. :P

I like fotm, however I rarely play it, since a full run takes me too much time, which I don’t have. I’m still at lvl 8 or 9 or so, since I frequently need to quit during the 2nd or w/e fractal.

Proposal Overview
Make fractal progression possible in smaller increments. If I play 4 fractal parts over 4 days, let them count to progression in some sort of way. And make a maximum on lvls u can achieve this way, for example only do this till lvl 10 or 20. Although for the boss mechanics his would mean ppl should be able to only choose a boss fractal.

Goal of Proposal
Make fractals more accessable to ppl with less time.

Proposal Functionality
Up till lvl 10/20, players can do multiple single fractals and lvl up their fotmlvl too.
Players can choose which fractal tier they wanna do, and after completion of a 1,2,3+boss fractal over a certain time, players increase their lvl.

Associated Risks
If implemented wrong, ppl will abuse this mechanic.

Lots of coding to make fractalstages choosable, and give the game memory as to which fractal a player has already done.

When fractals was first announced we were told this would be the ultimate challenge. Players would be able to go as far as their skill would let them, this would be the neverending PvE skill-check.

But it isn’t. There are multiple reasons. The biggest are, of course, artificial difficulty caps such as unavoidable Agony and the fractal level cap. I think over time Arenanet has lost sight of what fractals was supposed to be. That’s why it needs to go back to its roots.

Remove the personal level. Open up scales 1-100, or 1-150 or even 1-infinity. Allow players to choose whatever level they want whenever they want. Remove unavoidable Agony (or remove agony altogether, I don’t really see a reason to keep it like it is, at high levels you will be oneshot by bosses anyway). When players try to enter the fractals from the Observatory, give them a choice. Either pick the fractals you want to play, or get random fractals but with a little extra reward, say 20% increase in gold/karma or something along those lines. Reward each individual fractal instead of one daily chest at the end. Rewards will be based off of difficulty/time spent ofcourse. These rewards will go up the higher level you are playing. Maybe add the option to choose how many fractals you want in a row. If you play more than 4 fractals in a row, the rewards get higher and higher until you’ve done all of them in one run. Give players the option to pick which instability they want for all of their fractals in one run. Reward also based on instability, the harder ones will be more rewarding than the easier ones. This gives players complete freedom in difficulty scales, which fractals they want to play and instabilities and still rewards them accordingly.

When players enter fractals for the first time they could get some sort of tutorial for the difficulty scales, saying that it may be wise to start in the first tier (1-10) and try one level of each tier until they find the level that’s right for them.

This wouldn’t need major reworking of any game elements, I’m sure they still have the scaling algorithm for 50+ scales. This would leave room for the devs to work on new instabilities and new fractals, hopefully full of interesting bossfights with challenging mechanics and not so many puzzles and platforming parts (but that might be personal preference).

dutchiez- I think the justification for artificial caps is this: the devs would like to leave themselves the option of adding new mechanics in the future. Suppose that it just has damage and HP scaling to infinity and a group spends the next 6 months getting to Scale 231, at which point it just becomes impossible.

Well, there’s nothing new or interesting between 50 and 231, so ArenaNet decides to add new instabilities or whatever starting at 50.

Do players at 231 keep their progress, essentially bypassing all the new mechanics? Or do you reset them to 50 and force them to do it again, negating all their hard work and causing them to post on every single forum thread with a red tag (and then some) demanding compensation?

The artificial caps, in my view, exist to give the devs the ability to change things up without having to do another progression reset.

Even that issue would be solved by my rework idea (last time promotion as this closes soon).

I will list the main ideas:

• main difficulty from instabilities (and their combinations), less “artificial difficulty”
• additional stat scaling → infinite scaling while keeping expandability
• instabilities tied to maps → allows interesting instabilities, no rng
• one run consists of one map →map selection → less time required, no rng
• no rng → skill based content → allows higher difficulty
• each map has own progression → prevents instability skipping, multiple choices
• daily quests → encourages playing different maps every day

Wethospu.6437:

Even that issue would be solved by my rework idea.

Yeah, it’s a totally solvable problem, but it hasn’t been solved yet.

timmyf.1490:

The artificial caps, in my view, exist to give the devs the ability to change things up without having to do another progression reset.

That sounds like a reasonable explanation, but think about this:

Fractals consists of 3 base “elements”: difficulty scale, instability and which fractals you get to play. Right now you can only choose 1 of these, that is difficulty scale. What I’m proposing is giving players complete freedom to choose all 3 and reward them accordingly. If a group of players does scale 70 everyday, and Arenanet adds new fractals or instabilities, these players will still play scale 70, but maybe pick some of the new fractals or instabilities. There is no need at all to force them to go back and play the new content, they will play it if they like it.

Chris, et al. I would personally like to see these CDI evolve in structure. It’s very difficult to sort through key posts (besides the red tagged ones). If there isn’t a small group developing a better system to structure these, perhaps a few of us could help you guys develop something? I know i’d personally help out for free…

I’d also like to see a FAQ on these. Something that outlines the discussion in weight of production time/costs versus benefits for creating them. An example in this particular case would be ranking a rework of the dredge fractal versus re-rolling from a development perspective. While i don’t think it’s important the contributors to this thread understand the development costs, time cycle, etc. I think it would be important to direct some of the suggestions based around how difficult some feature/change might be. While there is a bit of that talk here and there from you guys, it’d be nice to see a starting bullet point of suggested feature ideas that make sense from your perspective.

Sorry for not being totally on topic, but it’s tough to sort through these discussions. Especially when so many of them can’t really be implemented (or simply don’t make sense to implement).

munkiman.3068:

While i don’t think it’s important the contributors to this thread understand the development costs, time cycle, etc. I think it would be important to direct some of the suggestions based around how difficult some feature/change might be.

We had (very briefly) discussed this earlier in the thread. My comment – and I think Chris echoed it, though I could be wrong – was something like this:

Even if the specific ideas have a huge development cost, they could serve as inspiration or background for the designers. So… user-generated content (hate to say this) is NOT going to happen. But if people seem to want it, that might make the devs look into other systems which give users more choice or control over the world.

To people participating in the CDI, my suggestion is to spend more time thinking about and explaining the REASONS you want particular features or functionality and less time thinking about the DESIGN of those features/functionality. But that, of course, is up to you.

……………………….New Fractal Ideas – The Guild Wars……………………….
One great idea for (likely a few different fractals) would be to tell stories of The Guild Wars (the actual Guild Wars that the game is named after).

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Guild_Wars

……………………….First Guild War……………………….
STORY:

• A first Guild War fractal would likely take place near the beginning of the war, helping players better understand what the Guild War is and how it began in the first place.
• Likely it could start with name-calling between Ascalonians and Krytans to set up the fractal’s context.

GAMEPLAY:

• Start out the players as scouts – randomly assigned as either Ascalonian or Krytan. This will determine the side of the map they start on.
• First, players are must survive an initial skirmish with the enemy soldiers. Then, they need to inform their leaders of the coming war that will happen now that this fighting has started.
• The goal for the players is to reach their home city across the map (which will be a scaled down version of the travel between Kryta’s capital and Ascalon’s capital).
• Players may choose to either go directly on the path where they may be ambushed by enemy soldiers, or they may choose to go around through things such as caverns where they may end up facing other things like monsters. Perhaps even add a third path around which will have the challenge of being a group jumping puzzle / puzzle for players to solve instead.

……………………….Second Guild War……………………….

STORY:

• The second Guild War fractal could be of the final decisive battle in the war that the Ascalonians win.

GAMEPLAY:

• Place the players on the losing side (Kryta) and make it an escape scenario where the players are soldiers of Kryta that have to escape and evade the armies of Ascalon.
• Getting caught could get you overwhelmed by massive amounts of soldiers and siege.
• This level would be very open and explorable and allow players to find new and different paths through a maze of a battlefield to their safety. Players might even decide to just fight through the overwhelming odds of an entire army to reach their escape.

……………………….Third Guild War……………………….
STORY:

• A fractal about the third Guild Wars could take place in Orr/Arah, before it was sunk beneath the ocean by Vizier Khilbron.

GAMEPLAY:

• Players should take the role of Orrians defending their nation against the Ascalonians and Krytans who are fighting each other in the streets of their city.
• This could be a survival fractal where the players need to hold a position in the city against multiple fronts. Krytans come from one side and the Ascalonians from another.
• The goal would simply be survival and eliminate all incoming enemies. Using powerful Orrian magic and technology, the players can set up the battlefield with their allies and siege before the survival starts (likely using a voting system to decide where allied NPCs/Siege will go).

Randulf.7614:

Nike.2631:

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

So if there were a second tier “rising lave race” and the whole party gets swallowed by lava, instead of resetting the whole encounter, you roll for a new fractal from the tier 2 list (possibly getting the lava race again?).

These could be fairly tough but also fairly short for their tier – so that you’d feel an immediate desire to complete it since you’ve been given the opportunity.

I think it would over complicate something that doesn’t need it. Fractals work as they are and this would likely frustrate players needlessly.

Perhaps at the highest of tiers where challenge is more paramount it would be viable, but even then I’m not sure if this would be something fractals would benefit from.

I actually kind of like the idea. If you succeed at this “one try” fractal, you move on to the next one…if you fail, you re-roll on the same tier (second fractal, third fractal, boss). I think the advantage to these “one try” fractals is that they should be quick ones but difficult to master. If you succeed the advantage is you basically “skip” a fractal level by having this quick one-shot take the place of a longer one…if you fail, it is quick enough where you dont really feel like you lost a lot of time.

It could make for some interesting runs.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

haviz.1340:

“Lore people” will play fractals once or twice and move on to roleplay in divinity’s reach while more dedicated players will get bored because it will lack any sort of challenge except bigger numbers.

What should be done is to severely decrease the number of scales, the difference between 1 and 9 is trivial. Introduce complex mechanics for higher tiers (not just numbers) and make those god kitten cinematics skippable. Obligatory reset included.

I am so tempted to be hyper critical on this post but I won’t, as it isn’t this single comment that has been frustrating but instead a culmination of posts in the CDI.

Suffice to say this post emphasizes why this CDI has been pretty good and not great. In my opinion there have been to many posts that have either not been well thought out or the poster has not taken the time to get educated in the discussion before putting pen to paper, and more specifically too insular in terms of goal resolution instead of thinking about the broader audience.

I will leave it at that.

I am still interested in continued discussion around your boss/encounter mechanic ideas, Rewards and ways in which the fractals could be evolved moving forward to provide new types of challenge.

Cheers,

Chris

As to the “Rewards” part of the question I will make an argument for Ascended Fractal Armor drops and using Pristine Fractal Relics to acquire it. Fractals are really the only content that still provides old school drops. What I mean is Fractal weapon skins are only obtainable by playing the Fractals. I can’t sell the weapons and I like that. If I have a Fractal weapon on a character, everyone knows where I got it. People can’t farm gold and then buy a weapon because they like the weapons but not the Fractals. It offers a way to get weapons that are prestigious in their own right and I think that line of thinking should be pursued by the dev team in the form of Fractal Armor. Rewards are a big reason why people play content. I feel like that is one of the big reasons why I play MMOs in the first place.

I feel like the devs decided to go away from that design philosophy with putting all new armor skins in the Gem Shop. It’s your game and I respect that, but that was also not how the game was originally released. Originally, there were only 3 full armor skins on the gem shop and the rest of the armor was earned by the players. That sense of reward for players has been replaced by doing the most efficient thing to earn gold and then buy the armor skin off of the Gem Shop. While I don’t mind that, it shouldn’t be the only way. We should still have armor sets we can earn. Because the Fractals weapons are already set a precedent for this type of earnable reward, I think that type of reward should be continued in the form of Full Ascended Fractal Armor Sets. If the team decides they don’t want to make it Ascended for whatever reason, then skins that act as their own transmutation stones should be considered at great length. Thank you for your time.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

haviz.1340:

“Lore people” will play fractals once or twice and move on to roleplay in divinity’s reach while more dedicated players will get bored because it will lack any sort of challenge except bigger numbers.

What should be done is to severely decrease the number of scales, the difference between 1 and 9 is trivial. Introduce complex mechanics for higher tiers (not just numbers) and make those god kitten cinematics skippable. Obligatory reset included.

I am so tempted to be hyper critical on this post but I won’t, as it isn’t this single comment that has been frustrating but instead a culmination of posts in the CDI.

Suffice to say this post emphasizes why this CDI has been pretty good and not great. In my opinion there have been to many posts that have either not been well thought out or the poster has not taken the time to get educated in the discussion before putting pen to paper, and more specifically too insular in terms of goal resolution instead of thinking about the broader audience.

I will leave it at that.

I am still interested in continued discussion around your boss/encounter mechanic ideas, Rewards and ways in which the fractals could be evolved moving forward to provide new types of challenge.

Cheers,

Chris

You anger the Fractal community by resetting their personal reward level, nerf rewards given in fractals, make no effort to fix a particularly obnoxious fractal (dredge) and by introducing fractals with constant time gating (Mai Trin + cannon phases, molten facility + weapons testing area).

You let said fractal community simmer on these problems without even giving them the slightest bit of response to let them know you even give a **** and then when your dedicated fractal community tries to maybe give you a little nudge to ignore the terrible, completely pointless suggestions which aren’t even real problems (re-rolling and lore are two things nobody even cared about until people decided to invent the problem when this thread started and everyone got their frustrations about dredge out the way) you call out their post for being uneducated, insular (and what about those people crying about zerker nerfs? Aren’t those comments insular too?) and not thinking about the broader audience.

Well I tell you what, if you “fix” re-rolling, and for the love of god I hope you don’t fix a non-issue, that won’t be thinking of the broader audience, since people like to roll swamp and you’ll drive more people away from fractals if they have to worry about getting a terrible roll of something like ascalon > cliffside > dredge at level 50.

Though to be honest, this will probably be removed for whatever reason a moderator can come up with or just ignored and swept under the rug, because who even cares about fractals or dungeons, living story for the win. Let’s only fix slaying potions when they become linked to living story, GG ANet, well played.

Just as a throw-out for an idea that someone else posted better detail on, but I second:

I would love to see the Temple of Arah prior to it being sunk. There are parts of it that simply look stunning and I would absolutely love to see it in its splendor which I dont think has ever been shown in the game (either GW1 or GW2). We could defend it from the Charr invasion, until the head priest of Arah can invoke his final countdown.

Heck, we could play priests in it as it is sinking….having to run from the water that is rising to keep from drowning (utilizing Nike’s one-shot fractal idea).

I just simply love the idea of Fractals and that it can be so open-ended to show us parts of Tyria that we only heard of in legend.

How about a Giganticus Lupicus fractal?

The battle between the Charr and the Norn that caused the Charr to stop moving north (hint: they got their butts kicked by the Norn).

Convert players into Kodan and have a Fractal dealing with them being pushed south by the forces of Jormag

Convert players to Quaggan who are being forced out of their under-sea homes by the forces of Bubbles.

There could even be some “mystery” Fractals dealing with things that we have not heard about in Lore…that will slowly be revealed in the next Living Story!

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I think every content should tell a story. This storytelling could be divided into small parts, a puzzle which you have to put together on your own and epic story which should be satisfying.
I want to talk about this “epic moments” a little bit more since our personal story did it all wrong. 1. The animation didn’t fit into the context. You’ve always used the standart animations which are not convincing to say atleast. The new approach as seen with Kasmeer and Marjory would be the way to go.
2. The current music doesn’t reflect what’s happening. The music has to be as satisfying as the animations have to be.
Speaking of which: This game need new music. New good music. The music has to fulfill two criteria: 1. It has to be matching the content. 2. It has to be “re-listenable”. Play the music one week at work every day. If noone goes crazy, the music is good.

I actually really liked the way the original fractals were. Very little “story”, it felt more like “this is an epic glimpse of something in Tyria”. I really didn’t like the inclusion of characters and allied NPCs in the new fractals. I also didn’t like that they were recent events we knew the story about. There was something so cool about not knowing who he Mossman is or how he fits into Tyria. I love going through the Snowblind fractal and just enjoying the art of the experience. I don’t need to think about characters or story, I can focus on the environment – the snowstorm, the darkness, the cold. I feel that in that fractal, this is one part of the game where I think story makes it worse.

The “story” was told through gameplay and it was very effective. The idea that your being hunted in the swamp, the traps, the Mossman appearing out of nowhere, there was something so flavourful and strong about that experience. Cut scenes, animations, named characters we know about in present day Tyria, dialogue – I think fractals are stronger without them.

I didn’t like that Thaumanova tied into current stories (I say this as someone who posts in the lore forum frequently), I really preferred the mysterious and dialogue free fractals that aren’t referenced in modern day Tyria.

I like the fact they re-use some of the temporary livings story elements like Mai Trin but I’d also like to see original content. It doesn’t have to be related directly to Tyria.. the fractals are.. well.. like a fractured sense of reality.

I just want to say 10 things:
1. I consider myself an elite player and I care about lore I enjoy reading and seeing pieces of it.
2. There is no “rule” that every piece of in-game lore must be easily accessible, I’ve played many a game where an ultra hard obscure quest had a critical piece of backstory/ interesting lore.
3. While often vilified elites are players too and having some content and rewards designed for them should not be as horrifying and taboo as some people seem to treat it.
4. One try fractals sound fun.
5. While I hate that gold is required for everything in this game it is a fact, as such a good gold reward is important in addition to whatever fractals unique rewards end up being.
6. Not all content in the game needs to be doable in under half an hour. I feel an hour block is a reasonable amount of playtime, if you cannot devote that small portion of time then perhaps doing the activity at a later point would be better.
7. Artificial difficulty is not ideal but don’t pretend it doesn’t have its uses/ isn’t necessary.
8. Encourage players to improve by preventing them getting certain rewards until they reach a certain level. Certain groups of players are lazy but have time, players will run level 1 , 100 times as opposed to running 1 level 50 if they can get the same reward.
9. You are not entitled to every reward a game has to offer no matter how badly you want it.
10. Resolve the Compensation issue, At the very least issue an apology. You took progress away from a group of players that is not easily replaceable that puts you in the wrong.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

haviz.1340:

“Lore people” will play fractals once or twice and move on to roleplay in divinity’s reach while more dedicated players will get bored because it will lack any sort of challenge except bigger numbers.

What should be done is to severely decrease the number of scales, the difference between 1 and 9 is trivial. Introduce complex mechanics for higher tiers (not just numbers) and make those god kitten cinematics skippable. Obligatory reset included.

I am so tempted to be hyper critical on this post but I won’t, as it isn’t this single comment that has been frustrating but instead a culmination of posts in the CDI.

Suffice to say this post emphasizes why this CDI has been pretty good and not great.

What about this post deserves you being “hyper critical”? Nothing.

Issue: Fractal Levels Serve to add artificial gating and artificial difficulty to players.

Fractal Levels with the same tier are exactly the same. Read that again if it seems difficult to grasp. Fractal levels within the same tier are exactly the same. Increase in tiers poses no actual increase in difficulty aside from inflation in mob stats. Rewards are not appropriately scaled.

Solution: Remove Artificial Scales

1-9 becomes very easy, 10 -19 becomes easy etc etc. In this way there are 6 scales remaining (Thus artificial gating is removed). Properly adjust mob stats(Thus Artificial difficulty is removed). Properly adjust rewards for scales. Scales 4 and above would have appropriate Instabilities generated on the initial roll that would remain constant for the rest of the dungeon.

Issues: Progress reset/RNG of Instabilities
Everyone would need to do a whole 5 fractals again. Given the way the previous reset was handled by Anet I don’t see this as a problem for the developers.

Nobody likes RNG. Consider looking at your metrics and seeing which instabilities people currently avoid and removing those.

Issue: Irrelevance of Lore in Fractals

Currently only 4 fractals have relevance to Lore in GW2. Let me define relevance as " having direct bearing on the matter in hand; pertinent"
-Ascalon
A clear story regarding the Searing. Relevant to GW/GW2
-Thurmanova
Relevant to an entire zone and LS 1/2
-Aetherblades/Mai Trin
A clear retelling of previous and now inaccessible content relevant to LS 1

The remaining fractals are not relevant. They do not serve to enhance or clarify the current LS, events (dynamic or otherwise), bosses, characters, zones or previous events in GW or between the two games. Mysteries are only fun when there are clues, as I hope the vast and enormous negative response to Scarlet Briar from July 2013- January 2014 has shown.

Solution: Going forward continue to base fractals off of adjusted previous LS material, material pertaining to GW and the time in-between GW2 while making it clear why the connection is relevant and important. Please respect player intelligence and their ability to deduce said connections when doing so.

Problems: None.

Edit- After taking a moment to look closer at the guidelines and seeing that any statements that ask the reader to deduce the obvious is a bannable offense, I am going to take the time to explain why unskippable cutscenes are bad and should never be used.

Issue: Cutscenes

Currently GW2 uses a few types of these. The talking heads you see in the personal story. This includes invincibility to the viewer as well as a skip button. Generally as long as at least one player in the instance is viewing this, the conditions necessary for the instance to begin will not trigger. Following this we have the short vista like cut scenes used to show the players something, like the colossus at the start of cliffside fractal or the asura city at the end of the asuran fractal. These also give invincibility and have a skip button.

Finally and recently introduced are the unskipable variety. These freeze your character in place not only forcing them to look completely out of place in their idle stance among whatever is going on in the scene but also are unskippable as their name suggests.

The nature of these serve to break the flow of the game (being in control of what is happening to your character , seeing what is happening and being able to react) as well as increasing iteration time

Solution: Add a skip button.

Problems: None

hendo.1940:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

haviz.1340:

“Lore people” will play fractals once or twice and move on to roleplay in divinity’s reach while more dedicated players will get bored because it will lack any sort of challenge except bigger numbers.

What should be done is to severely decrease the number of scales, the difference between 1 and 9 is trivial. Introduce complex mechanics for higher tiers (not just numbers) and make those god kitten cinematics skippable. Obligatory reset included.

I am so tempted to be hyper critical on this post but I won’t, as it isn’t this single comment that has been frustrating but instead a culmination of posts in the CDI.

Suffice to say this post emphasizes why this CDI has been pretty good and not great. In my opinion there have been to many posts that have either not been well thought out or the poster has not taken the time to get educated in the discussion before putting pen to paper, and more specifically too insular in terms of goal resolution instead of thinking about the broader audience.

I will leave it at that.

I am still interested in continued discussion around your boss/encounter mechanic ideas, Rewards and ways in which the fractals could be evolved moving forward to provide new types of challenge.

Cheers,

Chris

You anger the Fractal community by resetting their personal reward level, nerf rewards given in fractals, make no effort to fix a particularly obnoxious fractal (dredge) and by introducing fractals with constant time gating (Mai Trin + cannon phases, molten facility + weapons testing area).

You let said fractal community simmer on these problems without even giving them the slightest bit of response to let them know you even give a **** and then when your dedicated fractal community tries to maybe give you a little nudge to ignore the terrible, completely pointless suggestions which aren’t even real problems (re-rolling and lore are two things nobody even cared about until people decided to invent the problem when this thread started and everyone got their frustrations about dredge out the way) you call out their post for being uneducated, insular (and what about those people crying about zerker nerfs? Aren’t those comments insular too?) and not thinking about the broader audience.

Well I tell you what, if you “fix” re-rolling, and for the love of god I hope you don’t fix a non-issue, that won’t be thinking of the broader audience, since people like to roll swamp and you’ll drive more people away from fractals if they have to worry about getting a terrible roll of something like ascalon > cliffside > dredge at level 50.

Though to be honest, this will probably be removed for whatever reason a moderator can come up with or just ignored and swept under the rug, because who even cares about fractals or dungeons, living story for the win. Let’s only fix slaying potions when they become linked to living story, GG ANet, well played.

his point has little to do with other beefs people have, he is just saying people need to stop thinking fractals is for X. If fractals is only for you guys, anet may as well ignore it because its a small minority that cares, getting more players of varying types into fractals means it can justify more development time.

So stop thinking only about what you as an elite fractal runner wants, and start thinking about what everybody wants/doesnt know they want, but they want. Instead of trying to make fractals only for one market, make it good for you and others. While its true that you dont want to have cutscenes which stop the action, there are voluntary cutscenes, and dynamic event type interactions.

Imagine it being possible to tell lore, have a variable challenge and good replayability. Imagine that there was a smooth progression within fractals that keeps you wanting to play it more. Now try to share ideas that will make it be that.

Sure, everything is possible. But gameplay >> lore, so of course some warning bells start ringing when people talk about lore.

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez- I think the justification for artificial caps is this: the devs would like to leave themselves the option of adding new mechanics in the future. Suppose that it just has damage and HP scaling to infinity and a group spends the next 6 months getting to Scale 231, at which point it just becomes impossible.

Well, there’s nothing new or interesting between 50 and 231, so ArenaNet decides to add new instabilities or whatever starting at 50.

Do players at 231 keep their progress, essentially bypassing all the new mechanics? Or do you reset them to 50 and force them to do it again, negating all their hard work and causing them to post on every single forum thread with a red tag (and then some) demanding compensation?

The artificial caps, in my view, exist to give the devs the ability to change things up without having to do another progression reset.

my suggestion for this, is they have two types of progression
difficulty which is just a mechanical slider
and game type/mode
so you do something like

survival: difficulty 20

types of difficulty which are not linked to mechanical stat increases would have their own mode
so you might see
beginner: difficulty 50
this would have high damage/attackspeed/hp scaling but level 1-10 monster spawns and monster skills.

this is a very modular system, and they can add to it without ever having to wipe, or put new content too far away.

some content could have its own bonuses, and progression
say instability would unlock new instabilities for each one you beat, and give you +reward level while playing it.

Instability, Fear the Mossman: difficulty 50
reward level 50+11(if you beat 11 instabilities previously)

they can make the unlock requirements vary based on who the target is/how accessible they want it to be.

many people may be interested in new modes/ maps/enemies/mechanics but not interested in say, difficulty 80 content.

they can even make unlocks come from regular pve, for example unlocking lore mode/content in fractals may require doing some lore stuff in the open world. This could leverage existing content to connect it with fractals. Say finding an old letter in ascalon catacombs unlocks some events/lores in lore focused fractal mode.

it can be ambitious, but that just building possibilities, the important thing is to seperate difficulty/reward scale from varied/new content

ok, before the thread is done, let me weigh in on agony.

Agony purpose?
Its not very fun mechanic. I get why its there, Initially it was to serve as a cap on how far you can go, as well as to give a reason for repeating fractals, and a progression withing fractals.

however now that there is a hard cap, that facet of it isnt needed. its main purpose is now to give a good reason for repeating fractals, and a progression within fractals.

People like to get stronger, but agony resistance doesnt give the illusion of strength, you are not really stronger or more durable (most of the time)

Agony stat more interesting
So, make agony about gaining strength. let it increase your dmg, and make you more shiny (while in fractals) perhaps have some agony scaling skills, or make your elite power grow with agony stat. perhaps make hidden rooms or paths that require you to have X agony to pass through(switches to let your no agony buddies through of course). Perhaps foods, or special consumable items that play off your agony resistance stat
Essentially make it a stat you want to get because it increases coolness/fun mechanic, not one that negates attacks, or just kills you outright to progress. Remember, now you have a level limit. Its not as important as a hard gate tool any more

Agony Aquisition problems
is currently a bit backward, make it be more about building upwards, a lot of the current implementation is backwards
for example, if you want a shiny fractal backpack, the most effecient thing to do is not put any agony infusions or verstatile/mighty infusions in it at all till you get the full amount of fractal relics, however, thats a very bad progression, its completely bottom heavy.
rings are also similar, its best to get infused rings before you put in the regular infusion, but this means you are running around with no/small agony resistance till you get infused rings
the new agony infusion thing is the same way, best way is to keep on building and never put it in anything because you lose massive progress.

all of it is too bottom heavy:

Agony Aquisition Solution
make a fractal relic item that can remove infusions from ascended. This increases the value of fractal relics, and lets you actually upgrade as you go, for a nominal fee. Yes its a cost, but its not as prohibitive as trying to replace a versatile infusion or +5 infusion, or change from WvW bonus to fractal bonus, or have you sitting on a +6 infusion because you want to make your backpack shiny first.

you could also put this fractal extractor and agony infusions as a random drop from enemies, so people have slightly more reason to kill regular enemies

Topic Title: Past Account Bound Mini’s as Rewards and Nodes

I have been playing this game since release and I cannot always be there for events weather it be due to life or burn out. Though there are some items tied to those events that are not GEM Based on the TP that we no longer see because those events are gone. I really like what you guys did with the LA story by giving a chance at getting these old event items. I myself would really like to get some of the event nodes or none gem store event minis and even event resources that are still in use today.

Proposal Overview:
To allow a chance to get past event items from chest in FOTM. Similar to the way we have a shot at getting them for doing LA. The chance at getting these items should scale with difficulty as well as within that chance, to get a rare past event item.

Goal of Proposal:

Life happens or you just heard about Guild Wars and, but you are permanently locked from getting certain items. I think that FOTM would be a great place to to have a shot at earning past event rewards. This is much in the same was as players have a shot to get these rewards with the current LA story.

Proposal Functionality:
This will allow some event based items that are no longer available to players to be available again and have a chance to drop based on difficulty.

This might make players who were there for the events mad or devalue items that are very valuable if the drop rates for them are not handled right. Though the former does not seem to be an issue as people were happy to see old items return.

Caveth.3268:

……………………….New Fractal Ideas – The Guild Wars……………………….
One great idea for (likely a few different fractals) would be to tell stories of The Guild Wars (the actual Guild Wars that the game is named after).

Oh man how did we not think of this. Yes, fractals set during the Guild Wars please.

hendo.1940:

You anger the Fractal community by resetting their personal reward level, nerf rewards given in fractals, make no effort to fix a particularly obnoxious fractal (dredge) and by introducing fractals with constant time gating (Mai Trin + cannon phases, molten facility + weapons testing area).

And then what? That’s what’s missing here – after the obvious problems are fixed, where do fractals need to evolve to.

Re: agony discussion – as far as I’m concerned, agony is a way to have players improve their gear without introducing power creep. It’s supposed to serve as a resource sink and a long-term goal for advanced players. There are problems with this approach:

• if you have ‘enough’ agony, more agony doesn’t help you at all, whereas too little agony is a big problem. This is in contrast to magic find, where beginning players aren’t disadvantaged but players who invest resources into improving their magic find benefit more. Advanced players are more capable of gathering agony but it’s intermediate players who benefit the most from gathering it.
• the most effective way of gathering agony is with infused rings and back pieces. Earning an infusion slot is expensive, particularly for back pieces – but once you have one, it’s not especially expensive to get ‘enough’ agony. The fine-level offensive and defensive infusions use resources that intermediate players can provide, and are one of the most attractive uses for Southsun crafting materials, but are comparatively a waste of time.
• advanced players can (and should) avoid most agony attacks, except for the ones that gate boss fractals. This makes agony particularly unattractive to advanced players; they mostly don’t need it.

I’d fix this in the following ways:

• change agony resistance to provide a shield rather than a base reduction of damage. Agony ticks reduce this shield instead of dealing damage, and when the shield is reduced to 0, agony deals full damage to the player. In part, this means agony can be much more abundant without requiring a balance pass on each boss. Agony damage would have two components: a strength (how much it reduces the shield by) and a damage (how many percentage points of damage it deals). Boss agony would be very strong but do only a small amount of damage; obstacles would not be strong, but would deal much more damage.
• rebalance agony infusion recipes so that they require crafting materials instead of Thermocatalytic Reagents. Introduce a recipe to make offensive, defensive and utility infusions using agony infusions, so they contribute to the economy a little.
• introduce obstacles and AoEs that deal agony damage that can fire independent of a boss, and become more common at higher fractal scales. The idea is that players should be always feeling agony pressure even if they can dodge the boss. Some of these could be used chiefly for flavour, if agony doesn’t deal damage until players are over their threshold; things like Colossus seals or Searing crystals in the Urban Battlegrounds might deal small amounts of agony damage.
• A previous suggestion was to remove the agony check in boss fractals in favour of an enrage timer. This would also carry over here, but the design would be much simpler. Agony timer ticks would be more frequent, and not very strong, but the damage component would rise during the fight.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Nike.2631:

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

Well, another problem with this would be that players can’t reliably learn by failing if they can’t repeat the challenge. So they would only get to learn the fractal from:

• Going with a team that knows how to do this.

or

• Watching videos on youtube.

Leaving out what in my eyes is the most interesting and rewarding type of learning:

• By trying out strategies we develop ourselves.

You get to learn every time it pops. The point on these is that they be exciting – a chance to burn through that tier (comparatively) fast if you can figure it out. People will review outside strategy sources, but you’d still have hands-on opportunity to wrestle with it, and in you fail you move on quickly and look forward to your next attempt. In many respects we have the sort of scenarios I envision in place now with the dolphin segment of the Underwater Fractal – a non-combat challenge with only one player having to cross the checkpoint to secure forward progress. If you dumped the end boss of that fractal (long and largely harmless and long… did I mention long?)and made it a ‘one-try’ that you win as soon as you clear the dolphin segment, people might actually re-roll for that instead of swamp, swamp, and more swamp .

For anything actually timed, I’d also insure there is a check built into the scenario itself. Probably use something like the Siegerazer technology where the even doesn’t start until 5/5 move close to a point a short distance form the zone-in area. You don’t want ANY timers starting while someone is still looking at a load screen .

This is mostly directed at adding some non-combat oriented challenges to the fractals menu – new flavors .

Its not problem free, but it does create a framework to introduce something different. Maybe a Crafting Fractal where you do some gathering and processing against a time limit. 1-2 players run back and forth between crafting stations and the others run around in a field bringing in raw materials…. Create elaborate multi-course feast for the King of such-and-such in under 5 minutes and you win.