Guild Wars 2

One other thing that would make fractals more interesting (or less boring) is variety within the instance. Good examples are dredge and swamp currently.
Dredge has either the cannon or bomb room, which ofc can be abused with stealth skipping, but you get it and both of endbosses are really similar, but still have some unique flavor.
Swamp is the same with both the wisp part and the endbosses. However these need to be balanced out later on, because while Bloomy is so faceroll it hurts meanwhile Mossman is one of the most dangerous boss in the game.

I would like to point that instead of variety within in the instance it could also be outside of the instance.

Not that it would make much difference with current implementation.

Nike.2631:

Then post something inspiring instead of poo-pooing other people’s conversations.

Give me an interesting idea and I’ll elaborate on it.

I’ve got an idea for the 40+ mistlock instabilities. When running a fractal, a random mursaat will appear and hit you with spectral agony and then disappear.
Lore-wise they can move in and out of the mists with ease and since the mists reflect past, present and future with all possible timelines it is possible for them to do that. Dessa can even comment on that: “Hey, what was that?” or “Whose there?”.

So …. are we gonna have a summarize before the thread closes ?

Since the thread is closing soon I’m just going to give a summary of my thoughts on every subject:

Rewards: Should definitely be looked at. The way it is right now doing higher levels is actually less rewarding than doing lower levels. Improve ascended/skin drop rates in higher levels, lower the ring drop rate and maybe make higher levels give karma too. Replacing the empyreal fragments with dragonite would be a nice change too for the dungeon regulars. I don’t think adding profession-specific rewards before anything else is the way to go, but if it doesn’t take away from any other aspect of fractals I wouldn’t mind it. Also adding ascended earrings/amulets to the pristine merchant would be a nice change and would incentivize a lot of players to do fractals.

Difficulty: More scales need to be opened up with higher difficulty. I would like to see AR reworked. Removing it completely would be my first suggestion, but removing the unavoidable boss Agony would be a great change. New fractals should have encounters that scale mechanically at higher difficulties instead of only changing numbers. There should be less puzzles that just stay the same at every level. Removing randomness would be a good thing. Also changing the way fractals are grouped would be benificial to the player experience in my opinion (rewarding per fractal based on difficulty, choosing which/how many fractals to do in one run/choosing instabilities and being rewarded more for harder ones).

Dredge: Make it shorter, less annoying, remove it. Do something!

Rolling: I don’t see it as an issue, so leave it as is.

Reworking current encounters: I’d personally rather see new encounters which keep in mind and try to avoid the flaws of previous encounters before any big reworks.

Crafting: I think people shouldn’t need to do things in the game outside of fractals to partake in fractals.

Keep in mind these are just my personal opinions of things.

Just some thoughts to spruce up a boss encounter:

The Legendary Boss has three Elite “henchmen”. When the henchmen spawn they gain a 10 minute retaliation boon. They also try to stick extremely close to the main boss so AoE or even melee cleaves are likely to prompt savage damage feedback. There are three locations scattered around the perimeter of the room that can grant a fixated agro buff (as seen in the Aetherblades Twilight Arbor path).

Strategies include getting one or more of the fixated buffs and kiting the Elites away from the boss (an ideal job for Rangers…) or striping the retaliation boons as the henchman don’t have the means to reapply them.

Upscaling can include periodically reapplying retaliation and having the fixation buff sites move around randomly.

I really like how dutchiez made his summary.

So here are my remarks. Without long justification. Contains no facts, just my opinion.

Agony:
Right now, I don’t see the point of the unavoidable agony being there.

There should always be a method to avoid agony, even if it puts a lot of extra work on the player to do so. In fact, I think to succeed in the highest levels it should be mandatory to use these extra methods. I would have loved to see more discussion on these. As far as I know, my suggestions (shield and bubble-device) are the only ones in this regard.

Agony resistance, on the other hand, should allow the non-hardcore players to reach these highest level later on—at a point where even higher levels are opened up for the hardcore players.

Difficulty:
I think the way it currently scales is fine. Mechanic changes to fights in higher levels are certainly welcome and maybe necessary to avoid the problem that the stat-scaling of enemies has a limit.

I would like to see more randomness added to the fights. I would be especially interested to see a fight were something random can happen while fighting (not in the lowest tier). At the moment, the only occurrence of such a thing I know of is the random transformation of Mossman. However, I have not noticed any difference in these but the visuals.

Additional Paths:
Variety (through randomness) and choice should be a goal of Fractals development. Not necessarily in the lowest tier, but starting from level 11. Variety should feel different (e.g., the two paths in Underground Facility feel different, while the paths in Urban Battlegrounds don’t).
This also includes different methods to solve encounters or optional methods to do some extra work to get a benefit.

Instabilities:
Really nice idea, but with very limited influence on play.
If it is possible to find a set of instabilities that do not aim at punishing certain builds, but instead at punishing unawareness, I would prefer one of them selected at random per Fractal. It should always be possible to circumvent the effects of instabilities by some additional effort (being aware).

If the current system stays, I think an achievement for doing all instabilities is a good way to go.

Rewards:
Good from my point of view.

I don’t think that pure gold is the way to go, especially not if it is only bound to the completion of the last Fractal (which encourages players to run through the Fractals).
Instead of increasing drop rates of ascended equipment and Fractal skins I would prefer if this just naturally happens through opening up higher levels.

I would like to be able to get/craft/buy something that allows me to get my guild people with low agony resistance into Fractals. My favourite idea so far is The Lost Witch’s Agony resistance banner. Agony resistance food (non accountbound) would be similar.

1-2-3-boss:
I think this is okay. A finetuning of what Fractal belongs to which category is helpful. I woul actually only exchange Aetherblade with Cliffside.

Lore:
I prefer the enigmatic Fractals. I think people should be given the opportunity to find out what is going on, instead of throwing the context at them. Interactable objects that give some short text seem to be a promising way.

I just wanted to drop in my 2c before this CDI closes. I realise I’m a rather small voice in amongst 30 pages of conversation and discussion, but I think it’s fair you should hear things from a non-fractaleer.

I don’t know if this has been raised in the thread so far but here are some perspectives of a person who either doesn’t like it or doesn’t know how to get better at it, in order for it to grow on them.

PUG’s
Most of the time this is the only way I can get a group going. Some of the lower level groups (1-10) are actually quite good because we can work together and help each other out to achieve the goal. So far I’ve seen there’s a fair bit of expectation beyond this point, however. When dealing with groups (11-20+) you’re supposed to know what to do and when to do it. What I can’t get through to any of these groups is that I don’t play like they do; I’m slower at actions because I play differently and I’m slow on the uptake of what’s going on in these fast-paced conditions. The bottom line is that I don’t have enough experience at this to know what to do properly and timely, but the attitudes of these groups makes me not want to progress any further. Also I don’t like to be carried through a map – I’d like to be as good as the rest of the team, but that doesn’t, and probably won’t happen.

Agony
I’ve gotten up to fractal level 10. I’m proud of that accomplishment because I never thought I’d get that far. Progressing beyond this, however, I’m at odds with. I know people on here will argue that you need agony resist beyond L10 and for someone who plays like I do, they’re probably right. For most others they probably won’t need it until later on.

What I’m most concerned with is this: If I go beyond the level that I’m comfortable with, and somehow make it into the 20’s, 30’s, etc. and I make myself a new Ascended armour set and an infused backpiece, and all is well until a new balance patch comes in that completely nullifies my build and, more specifically, my armour. We know that another one is on the way and this is part of the very reason I’m resisting making ascended armour, because I have no use for such a large outlay and minimal gains unless it’s needed. So perhaps another character becomes more useful for fractals instead and to pick it up with that character you have to get it geared up as well, etc.

I’m sure this is all part of a grand plan for a massive gold sink, but it’s also a frustrating experience for me knowing that I’ll probably never really enjoy something that was supposed to be good end-game content.

Chris one thing you never replied to…
Are you going to do something about the necessity of a guardian for fractals?

Even if its true you can play without, it becomes 10 times harder…
Having 2 makes a fractal 50 easier than a 20 with 0 guardians….

This is possibly the worst issue of fractal..99,9% parties will wait for a guardian to start (you can check i think).

LordByron.8369:

Chris one thing you never replied to…
Are you going to do something about the necessity of a guardian for fractals?

Even if its true you can play without, it becomes 10 times harder…
Having 2 makes a fractal 50 easier than a 20 with 0 guardians….

This is possibly the worst issue of fractal..99,9% parties will wait for a guardian to start (you can check i think).

The problem is neither the fractal nor the guardian. The problem is that the guardian is the only class who can offer all defensive buffs, most offensive buffs, reflections and conditionremove. Because of that he is the perfect addition to a head-on offensive party.

I know but since balancing guardians for PvE is not even Worth asking at least i’d like fractal to be adjusted to not have those mandatory.

For me its the first priority since it really cause lot of groups to not even starting…..

Waited 2 hours to find a lvl 49-50 (pug) Group Yesterday…all disbanded becuase it seems no gaurdians were online.

LordByron.8369:

I know but since balancing guardians for PvE is not even Worth asking at least i’d like fractal to be adjusted to not have those mandatory.

For me its the first priority since it really cause lot of groups to not even starting…..

Waited 2 hours to find a lvl 49-50 (pug) Group Yesterday…all disbanded becuase it seems no gaurdians were online.

Its a balance issue. Not a fractal issue. Theres not much point bring it up here.

LordByron.8369:

I know but since balancing guardians for PvE is not even Worth asking at least i’d like fractal to be adjusted to not have those mandatory.

For me its the first priority since it really cause lot of groups to not even starting…..

Waited 2 hours to find a lvl 49-50 (pug) Group Yesterday…all disbanded becuase it seems no gaurdians were online.

But you have at least 5 slots. You could always create a guardian.

Anyway I’ve run fractals with no problems with 2 eles, a thief, and 2 warriors. No issues.

It is a fractal issue since they said they Balance with content in PvE rather than balancing professions…..

You cant fix it without completely reworking the guardian or buffing the group defense of all other classes considerably. You can design encounters with less reflects in mind and allow blinds, weakness, chill to have more effect so other classes are much more effective in group defense, but guardians would still be the king of defense in pve.

Either way its a balance issue and not a fractal issue. But i suppose you could ask for less reflect heavy encounters at the least, which is fair enough.

I would say that it’s just the perception of the pugs. Personally i find thieves way more useful, if they know what to do. Also check out obal’s full warrior runs on lvl49. They still breeze trough content with ease. =]

edit: forgot the link …

Yeah guardians are by no means needed for a smooth run. But they do make things ridiculously easy when you have 1 or 2 really good guardians.

I know I am both late to reply and reiterating something I have already said (way back on about page 2 or something) but I feel it needs to be said as the topic has come up again in the 2 dozen or so pages since.

In regards to lore in fractals.

Don’t sell the community short by asking for the living story replays to be put in fractals. There are quite a few players that love the living story updates and crave the ability to replay various things from the living story. These players should not have to endure tier 1 and 2 fractals only to hope that the LS chapter they want to replay comes up on tier 3.

Replaying living story chapters should never rely on RNG or beating ‘A’ first so you can hope to play the content you want.

I was very disappointed about that the MF & aetherbalde dungeon were only added to fractals. The living story should be replayable something like this:

Also I hope using the +1 system was enough to show support for things as I really didn’t have the time required to participate this time.

P.S. 5 man marionette that some players discribed. (One description was by Nike somwhere in this thread)Make it happen. (Just not in a fractal)

P.P.S the idea someone put forth about more gear like the fractal back piece. Make that happen too. An upgradeable piece of gear from basic to infused ascended to cosmetic. Very cool.

Oh and 1 more idea to refresh before thread closure.

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

Favorite class for fractals, most played fractal, most completed fractal, fractal not finished the most, average time spent in each fractal etc, total completions by fractal level etc.

There are tons of cool personal metrics that could be displayed.

Modify the Fractal Frequenter acheivement a bit and you could add fractal specific titles, with the ability to track progress on them(Like PvP rank or WvWvW rank titles), a special title for completing dredge 100 times, a title for reaching max level, a title for completing a set number of total fractals (100, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, a gajillion etc) a title for completing a certain fractal level a certain number of times, various titles for reaching various fractal levels etc.

The options here are staggering.

The title for the dredge completion: Dread of the Dredge teehee

I like your ideas.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Yeah guardians are by no means needed for a smooth run. But they do make things ridiculously easy when you have 1 or 2 really good guardians.

Despite as Always lot of people feels the compulsion to write something similar to L2P or show off its skill…

I strongly believe raw numbers will say Guardians are almost mandatory for fractal 30+…

Can you run without them? yes
Will people do it? No because its way longer and painful….

Its not only boons but also line of warding, healing, regen, stability, cond cleanse and the ressing abilities all in one….

Suggestion:
Mechanics (boon stripping etc) to balance professions.

Risk:
nothing if balanced properly.

P.S. also as a personal joke i would love bosses to spawn minions stealing banners if left unattended and using themselves >.> as counter to stacking.

I would really like to see the boon stripping system improved. Currently it feels for a majority of PVE that boon stripping is a futile effort. Most enemies I encounter in Fractals either:

• Don’t use boons at all.
• Have boons that already last short, and wear off naturally by the time you finish casting.
• Have no notable effect on combat, and can easily be ignored.
• Are reapplied the moment you remove them.
• Can’t be interrupted when being applied, or have no clear tell.

I remember in GW1 that boon removal was sometimes crucial. There were some bosses that were extremely hard to defeat if you didn’t remove their boons (Glint’s Crystal Hibernation for example, or Kanaxi’s Nightmare Refuge), or prevented them from using them in the first place (interrupts). This added a lot of strategy to the combat. In Fractals (and also in a majority of the PVE), it doesn’t feel like boon removal plays any part at all.

Of Agony Resistance and Reward rework

Fractals are clearly gear gated content and hopefully there aren’t many people who would disagree with me on that matter. Agony resistance was supposed to help less skilled players on hard encounters but truth is that nowadays it is just dividing players between those who paid money for their weapons/armors/backpacks/infusions and those who didn’t. There are several places in FotM that impose brutal AR check and simply all they do is favor high AR players. You are actually forced to have AR high else u might become liability for the team. Not to mention that there is no way anyone lets u enter lvl 49 daily without having at least 55 AR minimizing threat level of potential bad player causing problems to absolute minimum- taking 1% health pool dmg per 1 agony tick =)

Giving horrendous amount of AR to players is leading obviously to numerous abuses since agony attacks tick for 1% on almost all players playing fotm nowadays. Players melee: Mossman, bloomhunger, legendary archdiviner, captain ashym, stand in corner on aetherblade last boss being hit MANY times with lasers, take into face several flame shaman arrows and never dodge dredge powersuit. People pretty much melee or sometimes range stuff having agony icon next to their face on my UI most of the time. Players got so confident in their gear that guardians on many boss fights dont even bother putting reflects as they consider it so useless lol. I play fractals 1 to 3 times per day and over last couple of months I haven’t seen a group even bothering to dodge any attack that had agony resistance. All this means that you can basically put into party at lvl 40+ person that started playing couple days ago, give that person AR and some basic instructions and u should do pretty well.

The basic idea of this dungeon was to make it challenging. There are many ppl who made it to lvl 80 in old system having no AR at all. High AR promotes melee setup as meta class composition and utterly kills all variety. If u check lfg majority of pug groups run pretty much 1 guard 3 war 1 ele or 1 guard 3 war 1 mes or simply 1 guard 4 wars- where 1 person in party has usually thief alt in case dredge happen.

The reason ppl play that way is obvious. Decent performance versus casual mobs, being able to tank some of boss attacks and very good ratio DPS/survival. It is more comfortable to run tankier class with better dmg being also able to use rez banner in case meleeing goes horrible. No one really cares about any sort of agony attacks cuz they hit players for 1%. You can get away with being terrible player as long as u play warrior/guard and have 55+ AR. The only thing u have to care about are those sporadic normal attacks. Truth is that warriors running almost full zerk on majority of boss attacks go down to 20-30% hp then they use heal and are back to full hp after couple of seconds (Players on much squishier classes die in 1 hit for instance. Maybe think about reducing slightly dmg that hits squishier professions? Also playing melee class setup is decent while dealing with aggro due to being able to survive all those nasty dmg spikes… ). Playing this way is some sort of grotesque joke. People melee everything without being able to actually wipe. I understand that it is fun to do it at first but after several weeks of playing with such invincible teams I am quite reluctant to play in fractals as it became braindead zone. Running melee on warrior required VERY HIGH SKILL in the past when people had to be careful about agony, atm EVERY warrior can do that and I don’t think it is caused by the fact that players got better…

There should be agony scaling system which makes ppl take 20 to 30% hp per tick no matter how high AR they are running. Person with 70 AR for example should be downscaled to 40 AR while playing lvl 49. It would make things much more fair and would promote some skill and actually learning the fractals. Also developers could introduce anti melee or anti range system to make fights challenging: if more than the 3 people melee boss makes unavoidable attack that wipes group doing facetank. It would be also nice to do it on fights where going full range is trivial. What is more it would be point where developers could offer community decent rewards because people would play content being skilled and having knowledge not because players facetank stuff with their gear and tanky class and therefore they want epic rewards thinking they did something amazing doing trololol on lvl 49. If we really do want improved rewards we honestly have to make such sacrifice. Let’s face it: try to imagine getting more than 3 or maybe 5 gold for run that takes between 40 to 90 minutes depending on how capable your team is and what maps u get. Run where u melee bosses tanking agony and normal attacks where u move between corners to face another aggro.

I seriously don’t see that rain of gold happening .

What is the point in agony attacks if u take 1% dmg on health pool? Wouldn’t it better be to remove those completely in this case? Why developers did put great effort into designing boss fights if they allowed us to remove the whole threat and challenge by using our weapons, armors and trinkets? How can we expect and demand rewards to be higher than what we have in Arah if players abuse dungeon mechanic and get win using their gear not their hands?

As far as rewards are concerned try to make real reason why people play fractals and make it reason that will drag whole community including most vehement wvw players. Most people don’t play fractals for gold anyway. Tonics? Several new armor and weapon skins, backpack, some special recipes, bigger chance of ascended chests and fotm weapons? Basically give them stuff which is unique and amazing. Make it that people can exchange those pristine relics for those super unique items for instance. People make money in dungeons anyway. Improving gold reward won’t be enough reason to drag people however it makes our effort more enjoyable and I favor it of course, heh. I think there are many ways of encouraging people to play fractals that don’t require giving people only gold/exotics/rares/cores and etc. Give ppl 10 new armors exchangeable for some fotm mats and relics, give people option to get 20 new backpacks, weapons. I really dunno about the rest but I guess u get the idea.

Minor/ major fixes & little suggestions:

-change flame shaman camera as it used to be cuz is impossible to see anything properly

-make flame shaman appear more often as it is one of the best fights in whole game

- let people choose 1st map that they want

-never allow that any party gets cliffside + dredge together on their run

-Let ppl get their fractal weapons! introduce chests with fractal weapons once u release higher levels where players can pick what they want since drop rate was nerfed to the ground. It would be also nice to maybe buy weapon using 50-100 pristine relics as those got really no use(imho fair deal). Also u could introduce weapon mystic forge way where ppl can mix 3-4 weapons so they get 1 that they really want.

-make Charr npcs smarter in ascalon fractal

-fix new mossman bug

-cut down HP of ettin and shaman on uncategorized fractal because the only way to die there is to fall asleep as u fight HP pool

-reduce HP of jellyfish in water fractal

-make reflect of legendary archidviner more visible(some magnetic aura animation?) all we see is protection buff which is for most players misleading

-no more account bound exotics

-give some little token of appreaciation to people who love this game and reached lvl 80(might be some tonic or something really symbolic)

-never reset players again with their level cuz community was basically raging and that is certainly not making you trustworthy

-dredges(ahh.. why don’t u let ppl use blind on them? :P)

Spoj The Second.7680:

Bart just seems to have an enormous ego because he got to fractal 80. While that is impressive it doesnt mean he should undervalue the difficulty in using full dps gear, full melee in fractals. The game could and should be a lot harder in high fractals but its still not something someone should smirk at considering how few people can survive consistantly in such situations. Making fractals a lot harder would satisfy me and im sure Bart aswell. But the community has a very large player base with players from all different skill levels. Most of which have extreme difficulty at learning very simply tells.

Anyway Bart, that was my point. Its not completely faceroll (you are exaggerating). You have to dodge or you will face plant. Any class in a dps spec other than warrior gets 1 shot in fractal 49 if they take an arch diviner auto attack to the face without aegis or some other decent damage mitigation (I could be slightly wrong about this but I know my necro does if I dont use DS). So for people who arent very experienced it is very unforgiving and not something you should look down on.

While you don’t need to offend me since we sit in the same boat,
at least you agree on my points.

I wouldn’t say going up to lvl 80 was impressive, it took us like 2 weeks in our summerbreaks but it was a hell lot of fun. I like how people evolve while content gets harder by thinking out of the box. Using different equipment, runes, consumable, weapons, skills which never had a use before. After collecting all 19/19 fractal wpns, some more thn 15 times, like the 1h sword and after over an infinite time spent on fractal runs, I saw mostly everything to even exchanging the grawl shamans arrow with an valentine’s rose. I give credit to people who are innovative like running 3 orbs by a time in the swamp fractal. I tried it by myself right after since I never took the trap into consideration. I found the idea brilliant. My point is just killing lupicus naked or getting bored by dps checks on a poor arah veteran or doing a dungeon path in 6min or 7min shouldn’t be my endgame content even if coming up with sth like the portal action in caudecus manor is quite a creative idea.

You say the community has a very large player base with players from all different skill levels. Most of which have extreme difficulty at learning very simply tells.

It’s true but for those there are already existing levels going up from 1 to 50.
I’m the co-leader of a guild including about 40 people who all got up to fractal lvl 80
and have spent a significant time to have an idea how fractals should work.
So while I’m focusing more on pvp and wvw content at the moment I see myself at least as a reasonable person to speak up for a wide playerbase including my friends.

While the community made very good points over 30 pages, which I really appreciate
the consensus at the moment is only

1. Shorten the dredge fractal
2. Make rewards appropriate to the time spent
(Everyone who gets an uninfused ring after completing a lvl 49 daily just doesn’t feel
rewarded in any accurat manner.)
3. If the agony grind should remain after another fractal overhaul, Chris you should
take into consideration to make other ascended gear (mainly weapons and armor)
accessible through pristine fractal relics.
4. Also I see every 2-3 months people complaining about how hard it is to aquire the
right fractal weapon everyone wanted. It took me over 1000 fractal runs to get my
fractal greatsword doing 5 fractal 49 dailys a day, having 5 characters above 50 and
getting 2 fractal skins on an average of 5 runs per day.
5. There are also tiny fixes and polishments which won’t require too much of a rework
like fixing the camera in some encounters like the grawl fractal.
6. So I don’t really see why not opening up the level scale for people like you and me
who like to have some harder content. We should get back to the roots where
animation telling and doding ment a thing we don’t need higher agony past 50 to
make the dungeon more difficult. There are a lot of ways to improve it.
7. The instabilities are a good point, imagine they apply a new one on every single
stage of fractals, how would it be? People would actually go for their level.
8. You can make instabilities with anti stacking or anti ranged mechanics, where only
three people are allowed to melee and two have to be in a 600 range so you can t
stack up or you will trigger some kill mechanic. The possibilities are wide open.
9. It’s also simple to fix the rolling part at the beginning of fractals by simply making a
5min instance where you have a short boss encounter and kill some trash mobs
before the actual fractal starts. No one would take those 5min all over to simple roll
for it again.

I just want to say I’m happy for playing this game since it makes a lot of fun even if it needs some polishment. I know the way from discussing and implementation is long but I’ve already seen changes going on for the last two years. So it makes me hopeful!
So I want to add this, since I’m willing to help and saying
thank you for being part of the community!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

…

2: Make rewards more accessible and relevant:
…
- Think of new rewards that cater more toward to Fractal players in general.
…

Please not another Ascended-like-gear tier, or something that can only be gotten in/meant for Fractals yet effects general PvE and WvW.
Maybe sigils that give +20% damage while in Fractals… It can be overpowered, but something that stays in Fractals.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I am not going to summarize every point raised in the thread but I am going to provide a summary of the points that stood out to us the most that you all made:

1: Dredge:
Dredge is frustrating and this is compounded by the overall length of the Fractal.

2: Make rewards more accessible and relevant:
- Allow players to spend their unwanted rewards to get rewards they actually need.
- Look at the general drop rate within Fractals.
- Take a look at the delivery of items to ensure they are more useful to individual players.
- Create a global dungeon reward system using a token system for example.
- Think of new rewards that cater more toward to Fractal players in general.
- Think about risk vs reward vs Time with global rewards.
- Do not depreciate the significance of certain rewards like Fractal skins.

3: Re-rolling:
Work on the higher priority issues before tackling this area.

4: Level Reset:
- Do not do a reset moving forward.

5: Challenge:
- More of an emphasis on Instabilities and core game play challenge rather than simply agony moving forward.
- Add new types of challenge rather than reworking existing areas.
- Focus more on additional paths that reward players dependent on the interaction of said path. Note this also includes different strategies of goals achieved in certain encounters.
- Thanks for the tons of ideas for new encounters which the team has read and will impact our design moving forward.

6: Lore:
- Continue to have lore be a pillar of Fractals but ensure it doesn’t get in the way of the flow of the experience. For example, no un-skippable cut scenes.
-Thanks for the tons of ideas for new lore themes and gameplay which the team has read and will impact our design moving forward.

7: Tiers:
- Do a pass on which fractals are included in which tier in regard to risk vs reward vs time.

Please post if you think I have missed a significant area from this summary.

Thank you all for partaking in this CDI. The use of the proposal format worked out really well I think.

I will check back later today, update if necessary and then sticky the thread in the CDI section.

Chris

Thank you for understanding and including #4. I know it doesn’t mean that they won’t do it, but I’m so extremely glad that at least you see that we all need to hear that the consensus is it wasn’t a good idea.

Also, Colesy told me to read this post while in game, and said I might start fangasming while reading, and he’s right. Thank you Chris.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

1: Dredge:
Dredge is frustrating and this is compounded by the overall length of the Fractal.

This is the only part that doesn’t seem a fair summary. At worst, it’s flippant, at best it boils down a lot of separate complaints to “it’s frustrating.” I understand not wanting to dwell on what’s already been discussed to death, but I also hope that the actual parts that make up the sum of “frustrating” aren’t being ignored now that this label is applied. Thank you.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Please post if you think I have missed a significant area from this summary.

Chris

Thanks for the list!

One thing that I feel is missing from that list:

The AR requirement makes it hard to keep playing with guildmembers or friends that don’t have enough AR. A few different suggestions have been made to make it possible for players to push the AR of their friends up a bit. To allow them to join fractals on levels that are more fun for the team.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I am not going to summarize every point raised in the thread but I am going to provide a summary of the points that stood out to us the most that you all made:

1: Dredge:
Dredge is frustrating and this is compounded by the overall length of the Fractal.

2: Make rewards more accessible and relevant:
- Allow players to spend their unwanted rewards to get rewards they actually need.
- Look at the general drop rate within Fractals.
- Take a look at the delivery of items to ensure they are more useful to individual players.
- Create a global dungeon reward system using a token system for example.
- Think of new rewards that cater more toward to Fractal players in general.
- Think about risk vs reward vs Time with global rewards.
- Do not depreciate the significance of certain rewards like Fractal skins.

3: Re-rolling:
Work on the higher priority issues before tackling this area.

4: Level Reset:
- Do not do a reset moving forward.

5: Challenge:
- More of an emphasis on Instabilities and core game play challenge rather than simply agony moving forward.
- Add new types of challenge rather than reworking existing areas.
- Focus more on additional paths that reward players dependent on the interaction of said path. Note this also includes different strategies of goals achieved in certain encounters.
- Thanks for the tons of ideas for new encounters which the team has read and will impact our design moving forward.

6: Lore:
- Continue to have lore be a pillar of Fractals but ensure it doesn’t get in the way of the flow of the experience. For example, no un-skippable cut scenes.
-Thanks for the tons of ideas for new lore themes and gameplay which the team has read and will impact our design moving forward.

7: Tiers:
- Do a pass on which fractals are included in which tier in regard to risk vs reward vs time.

Please post if you think I have missed a significant area from this summary.

Thank you all for partaking in this CDI. The use of the proposal format worked out really well I think.

I will check back later today, update if necessary and then sticky the thread in the CDI section.

Chris

The Fractal Weapon Boxes still have not been addressed. They were used as a bullet point in the release of the “Fractured” Update and still are not in months after release. I try to not press stuff that is in the works because I know you all don’t like talking about stuff til it’s ready, but these were listed as being in and then were not and that is frustrating as a player and doubly frustrating when there is no update as to when they are going to be in. I hate being the “Negative Nancy” here, but it’s hard to want to discuss future things when things that are supposed to be currently in the game are not and have not been addressed as to why they aren’t. Sure, this goes with the rewards section of your summary, but my feelings on it are that they should be added post haste before discussing future implementations or at least addressed to the community as to why they aren’t in the game right now.

Thanks for all your hard work Chris and ArenaNet. It’s really and truly appreciated.

Iason Evan.3806:

The Fractal Weapon Boxes still have not been addressed. They were used as a bullet point in the release of the “Fractured” Update and still are not in months after release. I try to not press stuff that is in the works because I know you all don’t like talking about stuff til it’s ready, but these were listed as being in and then were not and that is frustrating as a player and doubly frustrating when there is no update as to when they are going to be in. I hate being the “Negative Nancy” here, but it’s hard to want to discuss future things when things that are supposed to be currently in the game are not and have not been addressed as to why they aren’t. Sure, this goes with the rewards section of your summary, but my feelings on it are that they should be added post haste before discussing future implementations or at least addressed to the community as to why they aren’t in the game right now.

Thanks for all your hard work Chris and ArenaNet. It’s really and truly appreciated.

I am quoting this to stress the importance of the Fractal Weapon Boxes. It is of utmost importance insofar as Fractal rewards go and needs to be addressed as soon as humanly possible.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I am not going to summarize every point raised in the thread but I am going to provide a summary of the points that stood out to us the most that you all made:

1: Dredge:
Dredge is frustrating and this is compounded by the overall length of the Fractal.

2: Make rewards more accessible and relevant:
- Allow players to spend their unwanted rewards to get rewards they actually need.
- Look at the general drop rate within Fractals.
- Take a look at the delivery of items to ensure they are more useful to individual players.
- Create a global dungeon reward system using a token system for example.
- Think of new rewards that cater more toward to Fractal players in general.
- Think about risk vs reward vs Time with global rewards.
- Do not depreciate the significance of certain rewards like Fractal skins.

3: Re-rolling:
Work on the higher priority issues before tackling this area.

4: Level Reset:
- Do not do a reset moving forward.

5: Challenge:
- More of an emphasis on Instabilities and core game play challenge rather than simply agony moving forward.
- Add new types of challenge rather than reworking existing areas.
- Focus more on additional paths that reward players dependent on the interaction of said path. Note this also includes different strategies of goals achieved in certain encounters.
- Thanks for the tons of ideas for new encounters which the team has read and will impact our design moving forward.

6: Lore:
- Continue to have lore be a pillar of Fractals but ensure it doesn’t get in the way of the flow of the experience. For example, no un-skippable cut scenes.
-Thanks for the tons of ideas for new lore themes and gameplay which the team has read and will impact our design moving forward.

7: Tiers:
- Do a pass on which fractals are included in which tier in regard to risk vs reward vs time.

Please post if you think I have missed a significant area from this summary.

Thank you all for partaking in this CDI. The use of the proposal format worked out really well I think.

I will check back later today, update if necessary and then sticky the thread in the CDI section.

Chris

You missed the most important one: “Make it so that Fractals can be played in a much shorter amount of time, start to finish.”

That one change would make Fractals so much more playable, because the only thing keeping me from doing some Fractals from time to time is that I have no interest in spending an hour or more doing the same activity at a stretch. The current Scarlet event chain is pushing the limits of my attention span as it is.

That looks like a good summary. Thanks again Chris for your input, visibility, and patience around this CDI. I’m definitely looking forward to see what comes of it.

I think mistlocks existing in earlier tiers (10+) would add more gameplay diversity and excitement to players who otherwise do not feel motivated enough to repeat the same fractals so many times.

Iason Evan.3806:

The Fractal Weapon Boxes still have not been addressed. They were used as a bullet point in the release of the “Fractured” Update and still are not in months after release. I try to not press stuff that is in the works because I know you all don’t like talking about stuff til it’s ready, but these were listed as being in and then were not and that is frustrating as a player and doubly frustrating when there is no update as to when they are going to be in. I hate being the “Negative Nancy” here, but it’s hard to want to discuss future things when things that are supposed to be currently in the game are not and have not been addressed as to why they aren’t. Sure, this goes with the rewards section of your summary, but my feelings on it are that they should be added post haste before discussing future implementations or at least addressed to the community as to why they aren’t in the game right now.

Thanks for all your hard work Chris and ArenaNet. It’s really and truly appreciated.

This summarizes my main problem with fractals right now, namely the extreme rng nature of fractal weapon skins. The simple fact that I can sink so many hours into fractals without the weapon skin I want is ludicrous. I have over 200 daily fractal 49s clocked in both before and after the update, and the sword skin still eludes me. It felt much better before the update because I felt as if I had a realistic shot at it, after the update… not so much. It feels like because I didnt get the skin I wanted before the update (not for lack of trying I assure you) I am now sol, and its made me not want to run fractals at all, and not log in nearly as much as I did before. The rng aspect of fractal weapon skins needs to be addressed.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I am not going to summarize every point raised in the thread but I am going to provide a summary of the points that stood out to us the most that you all made:

1: Dredge:
Dredge is frustrating and this is compounded by the overall length of the Fractal.

2: Make rewards more accessible and relevant:
- Allow players to spend their unwanted rewards to get rewards they actually need.
- Look at the general drop rate within Fractals.
- Take a look at the delivery of items to ensure they are more useful to individual players.
- Create a global dungeon reward system using a token system for example.
- Think of new rewards that cater more toward to Fractal players in general.
- Think about risk vs reward vs Time with global rewards.
- Do not depreciate the significance of certain rewards like Fractal skins.
- Clearer communication/info i needed around the Fractal Weapon boxes.

3: Re-rolling:
Work on the higher priority issues before tackling this area.

4: Level Reset:
- Do not do a reset moving forward.

5: Challenge:
- More of an emphasis on Instabilities and core game play challenge rather than simply agony moving forward.
- Add new types of challenge rather than reworking existing areas.
- Focus more on additional paths that reward players dependent on the interaction of said path. Note this also includes different strategies of goals achieved in certain encounters.
- Thanks for the tons of ideas for new encounters which the team has read and will impact our design moving forward.

6: Lore:
- Continue to have lore be a pillar of Fractals but ensure it doesn’t get in the way of the flow of the experience. For example, no un-skippable cut scenes.
-Thanks for the tons of ideas for new lore themes and gameplay which the team has read and will impact our design moving forward.

7: Tiers:
- Do a pass on which fractals are included in which tier in regard to risk vs reward vs time.

8: Accessibility:
- Think of ways to make it easier to get player’s into the Fractals, especially friends of existing players, specifically in regard to AR.

Please post if you think I have missed a significant area from this summary.

Thank you all for partaking in this CDI. The use of the proposal format worked out really well I think.

I will check back later today, update if necessary and then sticky the thread in the CDI section.

Chris

Bump with additions.

Chris

Boss of bosses

I’ll mention again the possible advantages of a more reliable release cadence. Fractal players will be a lot more comfortable in the enduring value of their effort if they can trust that this branch of gameplay will receive regular, periodic expansion, either through new scenarios or new difficulty bands.

New fotm system is bs. This is a new casu mecanic, like all the other mecanics in the game….
Some players are looking for challenge and you cant provide it. Ppl are leaving the game because of no challenge & no content

We can play the game while extrem drunk & braindead afk & looking at tv & making love our gf at the same time

So basically ANet is just going to literally ignore the idea of making Fractals take less of a time investment? Sad.

Ohoni.6057:

So basically ANet is just going to literally ignore the idea of making Fractals take less of a time investment? Sad.

… I don’t get it. The only thing making fractals too long is dredge ATM. They’re looking into that.

Ohoni.6057:

So basically ANet is just going to literally ignore the idea of making Fractals take less of a time investment? Sad.

Out of curiosity, how short is short enough?

Ohoni.6057:

So basically ANet is just going to literally ignore the idea of making Fractals take less of a time investment? Sad.

Maybe MMOs, or games that require a large time investment in the first place, are not for you…

… I don’t get it. The only thing making fractals too long is dredge ATM. They’re looking into that.

No, even doing the shortest of the three fractals in a row will take quite a bit of time, more if the group is not all experts at it (which is likely to be the case for starting players).

Out of curiosity, how short is short enough?

Fifteen minutes, in and out. Thirty max. I’m not saying you should get the same total rewards as someone currently running the longer Fractal chains for doing that, but there should be a method of doing it that earns you a portion of those rewards.

For example if we were to say that the current average fractal run can offer you a total of 10 “Fractal Bucks,” then you should be able to run a 15-20 minute instance and get 2-3 “Fractal Bucks.” A player that runs a full current Fractal chain on one day would be well ahead of a player who only ran one fifteen minute instance, but a player who runs four 15 minute Fractal instances should be roughly equal in terms of reward as someone who runs one standard series. The quality of the rewards should balance to be the same, just not the quantity of them.

Maybe MMOs, or games that require a large time investment in the first place, are not for you…

I play GW2 2-3 hours per day, but mostly I run from world event to world event. That’s the time investment I enjoy, 5-20 minutes per event, and then I’m on to something else. If I feel like stopping, I can stop without inconveniencing anyone else. If I feel like doing one event instead of another, that’s my prerogative. I just don’t like content that says “if you start on this, you are committing yourself to spending the next hour or more on this one thing if you want to receive significant rewards from it, and avoid annoying the four other people involved.”

The Fractals in their current form are not for me, but I’ve played them all and would enjoy each, even the Dredge one, if they were something where I could just do them at my own leisure rather than being forced into an entire chain.