Guild Wars 2

maxinion.8396:

While preparation for boss battles in some way could be an interesting mechanic, crafting is, I think, the wrong way to implement this. It’s a tool which has never had anything to do with combat, and involves clicking a button (and grinding up levels outside of the dungeon). This is not really particularly interesting. One of the points in the CDI which has been really well expressed is the anti-AR grind… let’s not replace it with a “must have crafting at 500 to get the best buff” grind.

Its not actually required to do things wrong when designing an encounter . Off the cuff I’d set any actual skill requirement to a fixed value of 200 or maybe 300. When basing a scenario outcome off of crafting the critical question is “do you have the skill at all?” With 5 players with two skills each, a highly coordinated team will always answer “Yes!” PUGs will just get lucky some days.

IF I wanted to have a scaling threshold, I’d probably go with 100 + (fractal level x 5). That way you’re preloaded to go all the way up to level 80 at 500 crafting score (350 for our current cap of level 50). This would give you a TON of advance notice to decide if you wanted to build your crafting ratings for deeper dives.

On the other hand, if the mechanic was something like “interact with the mystic forge to produce a weapon of great power, while your teammates protect you from a wave of spawning enemies” (not dredge please), that could be more interesting. It would be more combat related and involved than “real crafting,” and would not gate characters based on their grind out in the main game.

Sounds like a fun encounter . I totally nominate fractals as the first place we actually SEE Zomorros in Guild Wars 2.

Highly coordinated in crafting?

Wethospu.6437:

Highly coordinated in crafting?

Why not?

If there were spread across all the fractals 8 opportunities for advantage based on having a crafting skill of 300 in the party – one for each craft – then maximally optimized teams would plan to bring along characters that cover all 8 bases (and they’d even have 2 slots to spare!). Even if those events didn’t show up in any particular run.

I come to Guildwars 2 from other games that have fairly technical raiding/dungeons They’ve had years more time to develop their body of content. Being able to derive advantage from fairly obscure choices is normal to me. WoW has a raid boss that can only be started by having several expert fishermen lure the boss out of its pool by fishing for it. An example from LotrO:

“The fight is with a great beast and its tamer – but the beast is trained to lie still while the drums are played. If you have a drummer (only one class gets it natively, but other characters can be taught via a rare drop) you can fight the tamer one man down as they drum, and then fight the beast afterwards with your whole party. IF you don’t have a drummer, you must face both bosses at the same time.”

The world of Tyria has more ways of interacting with it than “I hit it.” Using those other mechanics for inspiration can add humor, introduce variety, and create a vibrant, memorable experience – if used well. And some of those ways involve spending time in game doing other things than combat and grinding gold.

If you previously argued that people shouldn’t complain about rolling because rolling doesn’t affect anybody but the people who are doing it, you should not be arguing against having two paths (Combat Path and Puzzle/Crafting Path) to complete parts of Fractals.

It’s the same story: it doesn’t affect you, you can still keep smashing face if you like.

Mandatory puzzles are a little different and I have mixed feelings about them. Sometimes these can be fun, but other times, it just feels like drudgery. I’ve never been a big fan of the spinning lasers in Aetherblade, for example. The Old Tom fight has tears which are an interesting mechanic.

I guess I’d say it this way: small puzzle mechanics that exist as a part of fights can make the fight more than a DPS race. Having puzzles that pull you out of the fighting for awhile until you complete them can seem like a chore.

timmyf.1490:

If you previously argued that people shouldn’t complain about rolling because rolling doesn’t affect anybody but the people who are doing it, you should not be arguing against having two paths (Combat Path and Puzzle/Crafting Path) to complete parts of Fractals.

It’s the same story: it doesn’t affect you, you can still keep smashing face if you like.

Mandatory puzzles are a little different and I have mixed feelings about them. Sometimes these can be fun, but other times, it just feels like drudgery. I’ve never been a big fan of the spinning lasers in Aetherblade, for example. The Old Tom fight has tears which are an interesting mechanic.

I guess I’d say it this way: small puzzle mechanics that exist as a part of fights can make the fight more than a DPS race. Having puzzles that pull you out of the fighting for awhile until you complete them can seem like a chore.

That’s really naive.

When some people complained about rolling their issue was that they can’t play all maps or that they don’t want to know what map comes first. This is something they can clearly do on their own, no change needed.

However, situation would be different if people for example complained how people are able to get rewards or complete fractals too easily with rolling. This is clearly a global issue. If people can complete them too easily then rewards lose prestige.

I believe that alternate paths are probably necessary in content that poses a challenge to the way we build our characters. Otherwise group requirements could become really strict. Which doesn’t work out in fractals at all, since we are posed challenges through a random selection. (It would lead to kicking people in order to get a specific profession)

We need to have alternatives to make it through, like:

• Access to environmental weapons that can offer us the skills we need.
• Support NPC’s we can choose that can fill the gap in our team.
• The option to pick our path. (Ignoring what we can’t do, perhaps picking a more lenghty but less tactical fight instead.)

kozmo.8760:

Those could be nice additions. Imagine a boss where you could only challenge him if your party includes two people that are married (in game) which could be a new feature. Boss’ name would be something like “Lovers Hunter” and his aggro would be permanently set up on either of the lovers. Finally we could get an achievement with a proper aggro management system and the best part would be that anyone could be a tank, even squishy ele. Imagine the possibilities.

I disapprove of this so much that it’s difficult to restrain myself.

Adding combat mechanics that encourage internet dating…?

Haven’t ever found a more appropriate use for this gif than response to your post, tbh. This is as relevant as it gets.
http://i.imgur.com/OIHHzqO.gif

The Lost Witch.7601:

I believe that alternate paths are probably necessary in content that poses a challenge to the way we build our characters. Otherwise group requirements could become really strict. Which doesn’t work out in fractals at all, since we are posed challenges through a random selection. (It would lead to kicking people in order to get a specific profession)

We need to have alternatives to make it through, like:

• Access to environmental weapons that can offer us the skills we need.
• Support NPC’s we can choose that can fill the gap in our team.
• The option to pick our path. (Ignoring what we can’t do, perhaps picking a more lenghty but less tactical fight instead.)

There are already examples of the first in game. For example at the end of path 1 of arah the final boss shoots 1hit KO projectiles which are slow and homing. Reflects or projectile absorption are required, or chain blocks. What if you were running 5 necros? No problem theres environmental reflecting crystals in the room before so it can still be done with any party composition. I like these things (even though this particular example is very simple and boring its the concept of having something to make up for the lack of a requirement in certain party compositions).

The second idea I would have to say no to. There are too many npc related incidents and bugs in current dungeons and fractals (some completely preventing you from finishing the dungeon/fractal others just cause wipes or near wipes due to boss aggro). I would rather anet avoided using NPC dependency in all future content to avoid these issues.

Last night I was 3manning ac p3. Before the final boss our 3rd dc’d and didnt return. We failed on the initial attempt and so grast died. Whenever we tried to res him and re-engage the fight grast and tzark would immediately attack the boss regardless of what we were doing (they had half hp from just being ressed).

This ended up in repeated attempts of us failing due to grast dieing before we could kill the boss. And as Im sure you are aware colossus rumblus has an attack where boulders fall from the roof which requires grast to be alive to create a protective bubble for you. If hes dead its almost certain to cause a wipe if you dont have enough dps. We ended up ignoring the dead grast to avoid further npc trolling. So we were forced to get an extra man and burst the boss against the pillar with fgs to completely ignore the npc dependant mechanic. We had to make sure we killed it before the boulders fell (it was close and we were lying dead on the floor when the end reward popped up).

TL;DR – NPC dependency can cause incredible frustration. So please avoid it in future.

@Spoj

In regards to what you posted above, imagine what it would be like having to escort Varra Skylark from Arah P1 through a fractal.

“Why Varra… why do you have to shoot everything with your rifle. WHY. WHYYYYY!!!”

I agree. There’s especially no reason to have NPC dependency considering the basic and lazy AI implementations they all have.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Iason Evan.3806:

Guys,

Did the Fractal weapon boxes ever get added? If not, I think those should get added before any CDI stuff is implemented. If they did get added, then cool deal

We re looking at rewards now. Thanks for the reminder. I will check on this aspect of them again when I return to work on Thursday.

Which by the way will be when i summarize and close the thread )-: But then we will do a process evolution topic and then move onto our next CDI (-:

Chris

Thanks for the heads up Chris. I hope you are feeling better. Would you kindly let us know too if they are not in? Friends and I have been pushing into the 40’s (level wise in the Fractals in hopes of getting a box). Would be a shame to keep pushing for something that we don’t have a chance of getting because it isn’t in the game. Anyways, thanks!

Nike.2631:

Wethospu.6437:

Highly coordinated in crafting?

Why not?

If there were spread across all the fractals 8 opportunities for advantage based on having a crafting skill of 300 in the party – one for each craft – then maximally optimized teams would plan to bring along characters that cover all 8 bases (and they’d even have 2 slots to spare!). Even if those events didn’t show up in any particular run.

I come to Guildwars 2 from other games that have fairly technical raiding/dungeons They’ve had years more time to develop their body of content. Being able to derive advantage from fairly obscure choices is normal to me. WoW has a raid boss that can only be started by having several expert fishermen lure the boss out of its pool by fishing for it. An example from LotrO:

“The fight is with a great beast and its tamer – but the beast is trained to lie still while the drums are played. If you have a drummer (only one class gets it natively, but other characters can be taught via a rare drop) you can fight the tamer one man down as they drum, and then fight the beast afterwards with your whole party. IF you don’t have a drummer, you must face both bosses at the same time.”

The world of Tyria has more ways of interacting with it than “I hit it.” Using those other mechanics for inspiration can add humor, introduce variety, and create a vibrant, memorable experience – if used well. And some of those ways involve spending time in game doing other things than combat and grinding gold.

I like the example from LoTRO— that involves an interesting new mechanic in combat, and differentiates the fight from others (though I feel bad for the drummer… I certainly hope they have to do something other than spam 1 the entire time). It doesn’t gate the content— you can always get around it. It’s quite similar to the Cliffside seals in some ways (party goes man down to solve some issue).

The WoW mechanic, on the other hand, is… bad. I guess people like fishing in WoW? But what does this add to the fight? How does it make things more fun? Unless you think fishing is fun (I certainly don’t, and I imagine many do not), there is nothing good about this. It’s just another gating mechanism for the game.

Along those lines, requiring crafting— there’s nothing fun about it. It’s just another gating mechanism that you have to worry about when composing your team. Everything interesting that can be accomplished with crafting— construction/protection fights, gathering materials, anything else— can be accomplished without actually gating the content with a level requirement in crafting. Take for example the “Protect the Barrels” Guild Challenge: all the construction of turrets in that challenge is conceptually similar to crafting (and really just involves pressing the f key a few times), but doesn’t gate the content at all. And it is completely optional— people can just DPS normally if they prefer. Building/repairing the barriers in the Marionette is another example of this done well— people can grab the kit to build the barriers if they think it will help, or they can just DPS the fight if they are über awesome. The situations where you have choice like this are great, and teams can adjust their strategies based on their composition.

Please no additional content gating. AR is bad enough.

Nike.2631:

“The fight is with a great beast and its tamer – but the beast is trained to lie still while the drums are played. If you have a drummer (only one class gets it natively, but other characters can be taught via a rare drop) you can fight the tamer one man down as they drum, and then fight the beast afterwards with your whole party. IF you don’t have a drummer, you must face both bosses at the same time.”

The world of Tyria has more ways of interacting with it than “I hit it.” Using those other mechanics for inspiration can add humor, introduce variety, and create a vibrant, memorable experience – if used well. And some of those ways involve spending time in game doing other things than combat and grinding gold.

One of the big things GW2 wanted to change is that everyone can complete any content in the game, regardless of class/gear/etc. Adding a required drop/crafting level you need to collect before you attempt the content isn’t really in line with the goals of the game. Taking your example of the beastmaster and the pet, why not place the drums on the ground as an environmental weapon anyone can pick up? This doesn’t exclude anyone from participating and doesn’t require any external grind/luck with drops.

In my opinion crafting or anything like that has no place at all in fractals. Fractals is supposed to be the endgame of GW2 with difficult encounters and allowing you to grind outside of fractals for a chance to skip those difficult encounters goes against the reasons we play fractals in the first place.

Has anyone said “remove dredge fractal” yet?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

An interesting suggestion. But how about making it so that it doesn’t kill the player? Maybe there’s some sort of ballista on the cliff, that helps to clear the mobs during the boss battle.

Yeah, that was my first idea as well. But then again, “have someone jump to the big cannon” could be added to every single encounter, so I deliberately tried to avoid that in my examples.

I used the bomb idea because an attack from above fits a fractal with cliffs and scaffolding, and it provides an epic and funny moment. Also, I like jumping off things.

Commandeering a siege weapon would fit into Urban, digging a tunnel and placing explosives would fit Underground, and in Volcanic you might dive through lava to find a hidden Scroll of Ice that removes the burning debuff and/or lava pools in the final boss. Or something. I’m just saying that these things need variety, and they need to fit the theme of the fractal.

I have to say, I think what most high-level fractal regulars came here to do is complain about rewards, gear-gating and dredge and suggest higher difficulties, new interesting encounteres and revisions to old ones. But what it has come to is a lot of people, who I imagine don’t do the highest levels very often, suggesting things that don’t have a place in fractals at all or are directly against the wishes of the regulars and will only make things more tedious and uninteresting.

Please remember everyone, that fractals is supposed to be the place where the top of the PvE community can come to test their skill. Lore/puzzle mechanics can work in the background, but they need to make way for skill-based encounters.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

‘To provide a highly repeatable 5 man strategic instance experience that scales in difficultly as you progress in fractal levels whilst providing the opportunity to tell old and new stories from within the Guild Wars Universe.’

I interpret this to mean that the difficulty keeps scaling so only the most skilled players can beat the highest levels. But that might just be some kind of optimism that comes from my deeply buried hope that there might someday be some kind of encounter that can only be completed by actually skilled players.

dutchiez.7502:

Please remember everyone, that fractals is supposed to be the place where the top of the PvE community can come to test their skill. Lore/puzzle mechanics can work in the background, but they need to make way for skill-based encounters.

I’m curious for some dev feedback on this. Here’s what I see on the release pages…

Lost Shores – Original Release

“New Dungeon! Enter the Fractals of the Mists
Introducing a dungeon experience like no other—Fractals of the Mists! You’ll be pitted against a series of unique “fractal” mini-dungeons that get harder and harder as you progress, giving you unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great reward, including new weapon sets, a back-slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!”

Fractured Update

“Delve Into the Fractals of the Mists
Explore great moments from Tyria’s past and test your battle skills in this never-ending chain of dungeons that become more and more challenging the farther you go! Begin your battle through time and space in this infinitely challenging series of dungeons!”

Mistlock Blog – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-changes-for-the-fractals-of-the-mists/

“For those not familiar with the current structure of the Fractals of the Mists, they’re like mini-dungeons which string together and present more of a challenge as you progress. On average, a single fractal should take 20-30 minutes to complete, depending on your group and difficulty scale.”

I don’t have a ton of time to dig up more quotes, but I get the feeling the point of Fractals is that they get harder as you progress, not that they are for elite players only. There are – and should be – lots of reasons to play Fractals. There’s nothing wrong with creating content that might appeal to a wider player-base, though I agree that it needs to be done carefully. (For example, there’s no reason to force people to watch cutscenes.) Perhaps some of the alternative paths disappear in higher levels?

If you want Fractals to get more development attention, maybe a good start would be making them accessible to more players? If content is designed for 1% or less of the player-base, doesn’t that mean it will be mostly ignored by the devs?

Just a few thoughts.

EDIT: Ha, Chris responded while I was typing all this out. Thanks for preempting me, Chris…

That’s one of the reasons I love Fractals so much and why (for me) it’s such a cool concept for an MMO to have. I can happily pootle around on the lower levels and enjoy the story and not having to push myself too much after a hard days work, but shoudl i ever want that challenge…the skill climb is there with no loss to any other aspect of the instances.

Sure a couple need a bit of shortening to bring them in line with the above pillar and there aren’t that many scenarios at this time, but personally i think fractals is in a great state right now and most of the extra tweaks suggested in this CDI would take it from from being a great gaming concept to an amazing gaming concept.

Not a bad place to be in my opnion

timmyf.1490:

You’ll be pitted against a series of unique “fractal” mini-dungeons that get harder and harder as you progress, giving you unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great reward, including new weapon sets, a back-slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!

timmyf.1490:

Explore great moments from Tyria’s past and test your battle skills in this never-ending chain of dungeons that become more and more challenging the farther you go! Begin your battle through time and space in this infinitely challenging series of dungeons

timmyf.1490:

they’re like mini-dungeons which string together and present more of a challenge as you progress.

timmyf.1490:

unlimited levels of challenge, infinitely challenging, more of a challenge as you progress

Guess this is what put me on the wrong track.

Randulf.7614:

That’s one of the reasons I love Fractals so much and why (for me) it’s such a cool concept for an MMO to have. I can happily pootle around on the lower levels and enjoy the story and not having to push myself too much after a hard days work, but shoudl i ever want that challenge…the skill climb is there with no loss to any other aspect of the instances.

Exactly, players who don’t enjoy the difficulty of the higher levels can still play the lower ones and experience the same story. The only thing left to do is open up higher levels for which encounters can be designed to be more difficult and challenging, while at the lower levels the challenge would be toned down and difficult mechanics removed (such as the time-limit put on Old Tom after level 10, but on a much bigger scale).

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

You’ll be pitted against a series of unique “fractal” mini-dungeons that get harder and harder as you progress, giving you unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great reward, including new weapon sets, a back-slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!

timmyf.1490:

Explore great moments from Tyria’s past and test your battle skills in this never-ending chain of dungeons that become more and more challenging the farther you go! Begin your battle through time and space in this infinitely challenging series of dungeons

timmyf.1490:

they’re like mini-dungeons which string together and present more of a challenge as you progress.

timmyf.1490:

unlimited levels of challenge, infinitely challenging, more of a challenge as you progress

Guess this is what put me on the wrong track.

Fractals get harder as you progress. That part is true. I get the feeling you just think the ceiling should be higher. I agree. That’s fine by me. Open up the next 10, 20, 30 scales. (And remove the unavoidable AR ticks.)

But increasing the skill ceiling in higher levels doesn’t mean you can’t also do the other things that have been suggested here.

I’m going to pitch my opinion in if nobody minds:

Things that I dislike
1. Not enough variety. When there’s only around 10 fractals, it really gets boring fast. You can still roll the one that you want and you’ll rarely roll the one that you haven’t played in a while. In my opinion the fractals would have been better off if they were shorter (dredge, underground, etc are quite long), but there was significantly more of them. For starters rolling from 30 would already increase fractals appeal to me. Rolling from 50 would be ideal. Rolling from 100 would be extraordinary (so I don’t expect it ever reaching that far).
2. Ascended gating and how its dealt with. If I want to be able to progress trough fractals, I want to only do fractals to do so. Been doing 30 for a while, not a single time did I ever see a weapon or an armour drop. PReferably fractals would simply be better without such emphasis on the agony mechanic (I mean higher up mobs finally start hitting so hard that there’ strategy involved, but to get there you need to spend a lot of gold or grind a lot to get enough gear to have enough AR), but if we’re stuck with how it is, could we have a bigger chance of an ascended piece dropping to us so we could increase our AR? Or maybe we could collect a ticket a run and when we reach 50 tickets we could buy an ascended piece? Granted that’s very grindy, but really it wouldn’t be any more grindy than trying to get RNG to roll in your favour while fractaling right now.
3. The rolling a fractal mechanic could improve. The new fractals added – some of them I’ve still never rolled. I rolled Thaumanova once, the Aetherblade boss fight once. Most often I roll 3 old ones and the Molten boss fight. There’s almost no variety ever when I roll a fractal. And when you’re on your second or third you are not going to tell your teammates to leave the fractal so you could try to re-roll so maybe you could play one that you don’t get as often.
4. Repairing in fractals is awkward. I would really like one repair station at the start of each fractal. Sure, you won’t return there in the middle of the fractal, but hell it would be a wonderful improvement! Right now what ends up happening is slightly awkward – you need to log out, to be kicked out to Vigil’s keep, then repair, then go back in again and spawn dead.
Things that I like
I have to give you guys a praise for adding a guaranteed gold at the end of a fractal. I still enter fractals in hope that the RNG gods will be nice to me, but now I know that I’ll at least carry out a gold.

neutral things

I have a love hate relationship with the dredge. In one hand it’s the only fractal that will be very profitable, due to how much trash there is (in comparison to for example swamp where your only loot is going to be the boss chest), but God is it too long! Every single mechanic in it ends up annoying the groups running it and it feel like it goes on for forever! To compare I wish that it was closer to the Shaman one in length and I wish that the shaman one was closer to the dredge when it comes to trash mobs dropping consistent loot that’s not gray.

I’d also like to point out that adding combat options as a way to skip existing puzzles would also work. Don’t like the Aetherblade puzzles? Maybe you can fight a boss to open up an alternate path to the final boss fight.

Having more moments where you say “Based on our party, do we want to do X or Y?” seems like a good thing to me.

timmyf.1490:

Fractals get harder as you progress. That part is true. I get the feeling you just think the ceiling should be higher. I agree. That’s fine by me. Open up the next 10, 20, 30 scales. (And remove the unavoidable AR ticks.)

But increasing the skill ceiling in higher levels doesn’t mean you can’t also do the other things that have been suggested here.

I do think that the ceiling should be higher. But I do think this excludes some of the things mentioned in this thread. (Crafting, many boss ideas, puzzles that do not interact with combat or scale in difficulty etc.)

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

Fractals get harder as you progress. That part is true. I get the feeling you just think the ceiling should be higher. I agree. That’s fine by me. Open up the next 10, 20, 30 scales. (And remove the unavoidable AR ticks.)

But increasing the skill ceiling in higher levels doesn’t mean you can’t also do the other things that have been suggested here.

I do think that the ceiling should be higher. But I do think this excludes some of the things mentioned in this thread. (Crafting, many boss ideas, puzzles that do not interact with combat or scale in difficulty etc.)

I imagine it’s been FOREVER since you’ve done a low-level Fractal, but I always thought it was cool how the Cliffside path changes between the 1-9 (or 10?) and 10 (or 11?) and up scales. Do you think that tying different options to scales could help?

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

Fractals get harder as you progress. That part is true. I get the feeling you just think the ceiling should be higher. I agree. That’s fine by me. Open up the next 10, 20, 30 scales. (And remove the unavoidable AR ticks.)

But increasing the skill ceiling in higher levels doesn’t mean you can’t also do the other things that have been suggested here.

I do think that the ceiling should be higher. But I do think this excludes some of the things mentioned in this thread. (Crafting, many boss ideas, puzzles that do not interact with combat or scale in difficulty etc.)

I imagine it’s been FOREVER since you’ve done a low-level Fractal, but I always thought it was cool how the Cliffside path changes between the 1-9 (or 10?) and 10 (or 11?) and up scales. Do you think that tying different options to scales could help?

I actually do low-levels quite often for quick karma. And yes, that’s one of the things I’m talking about. Right now “mechanic-scaling” only happens below lvl 10 (Cliffside path, harpy knockdown, Old Tom needing tears) with the exception of the Thaumanova Fractal, which requires more objectives to be completed each tier. This is what I’m talking about, mechanical scaling for each tier. 50+ would be different from 40-50, which would be different from 30-40 and so on. It doesn’t have to be by each tier specifically but you get the idea: true difficulty scaling that only affects higher levels and is not just number tweaking and more AR slots.

dutchiez.7502:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

‘To provide a highly repeatable 5 man strategic instance experience that scales in difficultly as you progress in fractal levels whilst providing the opportunity to tell old and new stories from within the Guild Wars Universe.’

I interpret this to mean that the difficulty keeps scaling so only the most skilled players can beat the highest levels. But that might just be some kind of optimism that comes from my deeply buried hope that there might someday be some kind of encounter that can only be completed by actually skilled players.

Jumping puzzles could scale too:

• Decreasing timelimits
• Increasing jump difficulty
• Increasing puzzle lenght
• Increasing punishment for failure

Let me give an example of a boss encounter that could incorporate player choice and skill and give multiple paths for completion. I’m not going to add lore or background or anything, we’ll just call this boss Boss.

Boss is like a normal boss but has two buffs which are being applied by some sort of magical turret devices on opposite sides of the room, let’s say at 1500+ range from the boss. Turret 1 applies a Toughness buff to the boss which, like the Husks in the Wurm fight, negates most direct damage. Turret 2 applies the Condition Reflect buff to the boss, like the one from Scarlet’s Knights.

Players can “turn off” the buffs by standing on a pressure plate at the turret, but by standing on this plate, adds spawn in the vicinity.

This means a few decisions: should we turn off 0, 1, or 2 plates? Do we need players defending the player on the plate(s)? Etc.

In advanced Fractal groups, the answer will most certainly be to only turn off the Toughness turret and that player shouldn’t need any defending leaving 4 players to DPS the boss. But the encounter would still be accessible and require coordination by lower-skill groups.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Jumping puzzles could scale too:

• Decreasing timelimits
• Increasing jump difficulty
• Increasing puzzle lenght
• Increasing punishment for failure

They could, but they don’t at the moment.

timmyf.1490:

Let me give an example of a boss encounter that could incorporate player choice and skill and give multiple paths for completion. I’m not going to add lore or background or anything, we’ll just call this boss Boss.

Boss is like a normal boss but has two buffs which are being applied by some sort of magical turret devices on opposite sides of the room, let’s say at 1500+ range from the boss. Turret 1 applies a Toughness buff to the boss which, like the Husks in the Wurm fight, negates most direct damage. Turret 2 applies the Condition Reflect buff to the boss, like the one from Scarlet’s Knights.

Players can “turn off” the buffs by standing on a pressure plate at the turret, but by standing on this plate, adds spawn in the vicinity.

This means a few decisions: should we turn off 0, 1, or 2 plates? Do we need players defending the player on the plate(s)? Etc.

In advanced Fractal groups, the answer will most certainly be to only turn off the Toughness turret and that player shouldn’t need any defending leaving 4 players to DPS the boss. But the encounter would still be accessible and require coordination by lower-skill groups.

I like it, but how about this:

Change the turrets into 4Champion-Level bosses. These champions have a few melee attacks that make them challenging, and 1 range attack. They use this range attack every once in a while (differs per champion). One of these attacks buffs the bosses toughness, one of them buffs his condition resistance, one of them is a 900 range AoE oneshot but it can be reflected back to the boss and one of them gives regeneration, protection and retaliation to the boss.

These champions do not use their ranged attacks when someone is fighting them in melee. Now this fight becomes tactical and skillful. The tactic lie in your group composition. If you have a lot of reflects, obviously you are not going to disable the oneshot, but if you don’t have any or only unreliable ones you will disable it. You could ignore the champion which gives boons if you have boonstripping, e.g. mesmer or thief etc. The skill comes in the soloing of the champions, which would be attackable by only one player at a time. You could opt to kill the champions before engaging the boss, but this will take a lot longer, or you could disable one or two of the champions and deal with the other’s attacks, or disable them all and let one player fight the boss, which would obviously take even longer and might even be harder for that one player at that point. I’m aware this isn’t near a perfect scenario, I just came up with this off the top of my head.

dutchiez.7502:

I like it, but how about this:

And now do this:

Scales 1-19: No turrets, no champs
Scales 20-39: Turrets, no champs
Scales 40+: Champs instead of turrets

Or something along those lines. Now you have an interesting fight with different mechanics that change (and become more difficult) as scale increases.

But noobs are still welcome at the lower scales. Even if they click the endurance bar to dodge. ;-)

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I like Urban to. It is probably my favorite because it has great lore executed very well, and a sandbox style approach to path and combat.

I to would love to be able to have siege in this fractal (-:

I still want to see a second fractal that uses the same map as the basis for a lane defense encounter like we saw at the Marionette. Maybe change the lighting to nighttime to improve the contrast.

When you arrive you’re all transformed into Ascalonian Soldiers and order to move forward to support Commander Dulfy where you have the option of running some of her siege weapons. When the gates fall you have to fight in each of three lanes chosen randomly from all the paths on the map again with the option to rebuild/use siege that may be lying about. In the final encounter you have to keep Captain “Rally to me! RUUUAAAAGGHH!” alive for 90 seconds. Then the outnumbered buff kicks in and you fight to the death (without equipment damage) to see how many juicy loot-piñatas you can bust before you go down like a goddang HERO!

Seriously, I want my very own “Boromir moment” where victory is determined not by living to see the dawn, but by how many Charr bodies you heap up before your inevitable demise.

And using the same map saves on development overhead . That my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

This would be wonderful!

Ascalon aeterna!

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez.7502:

I like it, but how about this:

And now do this:

Scales 1-19: No turrets, no champs
Scales 20-39: Turrets, no champs
Scales 40+: Champs instead of turrets

Or something along those lines. Now you have an interesting fight with different mechanics that change (and become more difficult) as scale increases.

But noobs are still welcome at the lower scales. Even if they click the endurance bar to dodge. ;-)

I was just taking a shower and thinking about how I left this part out :P.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that could make for interesting mechanical scaling (changing the bosses/champions attacks, adding/replacing turrets and champions) and also numerical scaling (numbers on boss buffs).

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez.7502:

I like it, but how about this:

And now do this:

Scales 1-19: No turrets, no champs
Scales 20-39: Turrets, no champs
Scales 40+: Champs instead of turrets

Or something along those lines. Now you have an interesting fight with different mechanics that change (and become more difficult) as scale increases.

But noobs are still welcome at the lower scales. Even if they click the endurance bar to dodge. ;-)

I was just taking a shower and thinking about how I left this part out :P.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that could make for interesting mechanical scaling (changing the bosses/champions attacks, adding/replacing turrets and champions) and also numerical scaling (numbers on boss buffs).

I think, when talking about scaling, there are four things that are important:

1) Getting the right difficulty at the lower end so everybody can join
2) Getting the right difficulty at the upper end so elite players can differentiate themselves (with Fractals, you could argue there shouldn’t be an arbitrary upper end, but let’s leave that out for a moment)
3) Getting the right marginal difficulty so each scale up feels a little bit harder but not a TON harder
4) Potentially changing the mechanics as scale increases (or based on party comp or based on player choice) so that it always feels new and fresh

My concern – and I think the concern of a few others here – was about making sure #4 doesn’t break #1. The concerns of you fine rT and DnT folks is more around making sure that #1 and #4 don’t break #2.

I really do think it’s possible to hit all 4 of these points at the same time and hope that these things are strongly considered in future updates to Fractals.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Mikuchan.7261:

hendo.1940:

For goodness sake, stop with these puzzle suggestions, if you want to scare off what’s left of your dedicated fractal community, just throw in a bunch of obnoxious puzzles like all of the terrible suggestions in this thread and watch how nobody can be kitten d to do FOTM anymore because it will end up as Aetherpath 2.0 where it’s not worth the tedium.

For goodness sake be more constructive?
Also, the entire fractal community is doing a puzzle fractal as it’s first fractal constantly so I really don’t see the problem.
Yes, Swamp is a puzzle fractal, hate to break it to you.

Thats not the reason they do it though. Noone enjoys do the wisp puzzle. None of the pure invironmental puzzles are fun after doing them once. Puzzles arent replayable or repeatable. And even if you somehow make them randomly generated they will still eventually become boring because theres only so many iterations that can be generated. Fractals is a place where people go for difficult combat in pve. If you want environmental puzzles you should be doing jumping puzzles and guild puzzles not fractals.

I enjoy the heck out of the wisps puzzle, and not just because it is fast when you do it right. That fractal almost always gets my group laughing at ourselves. We then move on to shred whichever boss we are given.

The uncategorized fractal with it’s lightning staircase and harpies is also a blast – and a challenging set of fights.

Personally I would find 4 all-combat fractals in a row to be tiresome and boring. I suspect that the people on this thread, the ones suggesting all the puzzle fractals, would agree with me.

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez.7502:

timmyf.1490:

dutchiez.7502:

I like it, but how about this:

And now do this:

Scales 1-19: No turrets, no champs
Scales 20-39: Turrets, no champs
Scales 40+: Champs instead of turrets

Or something along those lines. Now you have an interesting fight with different mechanics that change (and become more difficult) as scale increases.

But noobs are still welcome at the lower scales. Even if they click the endurance bar to dodge. ;-)

I was just taking a shower and thinking about how I left this part out :P.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that could make for interesting mechanical scaling (changing the bosses/champions attacks, adding/replacing turrets and champions) and also numerical scaling (numbers on boss buffs).

I think, when talking about scaling, there are four things that are important:

1) Getting the right difficulty at the lower end so everybody can join
2) Getting the right difficulty at the upper end so elite players can differentiate themselves (with Fractals, you could argue there shouldn’t be an arbitrary upper end, but let’s leave that out for a moment)
3) Getting the right marginal difficulty so each scale up feels a little bit harder but not a TON harder
4) Potentially changing the mechanics as scale increases (or based on party comp or based on player choice) so that it always feels new and fresh

My concern – and I think the concern of a few others here – was about making sure #4 doesn’t break #1. The concerns of you fine rT and DnT folks is more around making sure that #1 and #4 don’t break #2.

I really do think it’s possible to hit all 4 of these points at the same time and hope that these things are strongly considered in future updates to Fractals.

This is a great post, and I think summarizes the concerns of high-difficulty players quite well. The example you guys came up with is also wonderful. A++ discussion!

maxinion.8396:

This is a great post, and I think summarizes the concerns of high-difficulty players quite well. The example you guys came up with is also wonderful. A++ discussion!

I do very much appreciate this as the highest Fractal scale I’ve ever attempted/completed is 25. So thanks!

I’m a strong believer that our different perspectives, if used constructively, can build something better than each of us individually could build.

More minds means better ideas, but the CDI will require us to put down our swords and axes for a few moments and try to find common ground. Not normally the way we react to different opinions on online forums…

I’m especially interested in our next CDI on GUILDS! <prods Chris> You heard me? GUILDS! <prod prod> ;-)

timmyf.1490:

maxinion.8396:

This is a great post, and I think summarizes the concerns of high-difficulty players quite well. The example you guys came up with is also wonderful. A++ discussion!

I do very much appreciate this as the highest Fractal scale I’ve ever attempted/completed is 25. So thanks!

I’m a strong believer that our different perspectives, if used constructively, can build something better than each of us individually could build.

More minds means better ideas, but the CDI will require us to put down our swords and axes for a few moments and try to find common ground. Not normally the way we react to different opinions on online forums…

I’m especially interested in our next CDI on GUILDS! <prods Chris> You heard me? GUILDS! <prod prod> ;-)

I, too, also really enjoyed your post. It is refreshing to see common ground.

A CDI on guilds would be great. In an email I also planted my suggestion for a forum CDI run by Danicia. I’ve recommended this numerous times, but support finally responded saying they had passed my suggestion along. Small victories!

I’m not sure if this was suggested yet or not, but what if we had the option to play fractals in a sort “infinite dungeon” mode? Instead of the traditional 3 fractals 1 boss, there was the option to play as many fractals as your team could handle, each with an increasing reward.

Multiple Ways to Pull off “Infinite Dungeon” Mode!
Option 1 Choose your starting fractal level, for example Level 10, then after each fractal you beat, it goes up 1 fractal level difficulty. This could make it especially interesting if you add random instabilities. This way, you could potentially go up forever and the further you go, the harder the challenge, but the more the reward!

Option 2 Instead of it going up in difficulty after each fractal, they could go up after every 4 (after each boss fractal). This could even be integrated into the current way fractals work. After you beat the boss you are given the option of going back to the observatory or continuing on.

Option 3 BOSS MODE! All fractals are boss fractals! They get harder the more you fight and will have different instabilties! The higher you go the worse it gets! New instabilities like… Mai suddenly showing up during the Maw fight! Maw tentacles showing up during the Mai fight! And more!

Just an idea, but it would be a fun way to change it up a little bit and potentially add a way to integrate the leaderboards; track how far your team made it.

adubb.2453:

I’m not sure if this was suggested yet or not, but what if we had the option to play fractals in a sort “infinite dungeon” mode? Instead of the traditional 3 fractals 1 boss, there was the option to play as many fractals as your team could handle, each with an increasing reward.

Multiple Ways to Pull off “Infinite Dungeon” Mode!
Option 1 Choose your starting fractal level, for example Level 10, then after each fractal you beat, it goes up 1 fractal level difficulty. This could make it especially interesting if you add random instabilities. This way, you could potentially go up forever and the further you go, the harder the challenge, but the more the reward!

Option 2 Instead of it going up in difficulty after each fractal, they could go up after every 4 (after each boss fractal). This could even be integrated into the current way fractals work. After you beat the boss you are given the option of going back to the observatory or continuing on.

Option 3 BOSS MODE! All fractals are boss fractals! They get harder the more you fight and will have different instabilties! The higher you go the worse it gets! New instabilities like… Mai suddenly showing up during the Maw fight! Maw tentacles showing up during the Mai fight! And more!

Just an idea, but it would be a fun way to change it up a little bit and potentially add a way to integrate the leaderboards; track how far your team made it.

Option 2 is already implemented. But noone has the time for that. When you finish a run the difficulty level goes up 1 and you are ported to the observatory. You can simply start a second run if you wish.

I must say that I am impressed with the way conversation has gone today. I am also saddened because right when I feel we are working so well together and being constructive, and having conversations (not just proposals), this thread will end soon. Very sad.

Thanks to everyone promoting good conversation.

And yes. We need siege in the Ascalon fractal because reasons.

Fixing the bugged forum

Spoj The Second.7680:

adubb.2453:

I’m not sure if this was suggested yet or not, but what if we had the option to play fractals in a sort “infinite dungeon” mode? Instead of the traditional 3 fractals 1 boss, there was the option to play as many fractals as your team could handle, each with an increasing reward.

Multiple Ways to Pull off “Infinite Dungeon” Mode!
Option 1 Choose your starting fractal level, for example Level 10, then after each fractal you beat, it goes up 1 fractal level difficulty. This could make it especially interesting if you add random instabilities. This way, you could potentially go up forever and the further you go, the harder the challenge, but the more the reward!

Option 2 Instead of it going up in difficulty after each fractal, they could go up after every 4 (after each boss fractal). This could even be integrated into the current way fractals work. After you beat the boss you are given the option of going back to the observatory or continuing on.

Option 3 BOSS MODE! All fractals are boss fractals! They get harder the more you fight and will have different instabilties! The higher you go the worse it gets! New instabilities like… Mai suddenly showing up during the Maw fight! Maw tentacles showing up during the Mai fight! And more!

Just an idea, but it would be a fun way to change it up a little bit and potentially add a way to integrate the leaderboards; track how far your team made it.

Option 2 is already implemented. But noone has the time for that. When you finish a run the difficulty level goes up 1 and you are ported to the observatory. You can simply start a second run if you wish.

Ahhh kitten , that’s right. I forgot it did that haha. I guess the difference would be that you could have the option in the fractal itself to just continue to the next set of fractals or go back to the observatory.

EDIT- Really?! That’s censored? It wasn’t even a swear word. Not even a little. LOL that’s just bizarre.