Guild Wars 2

Jalarien.7410:

Title: fractured environment

Introduction

How can the Devs make the entire fractal interesting? A boss with huge hp who can oneshot you is not fun at all. What will become of fractals at higher levels? Are the instabilities enough to make a name for fotm, for gw2 endgame, for the future of mmos as a whole?

Proposal overview

Make the fractals more fractured at 50+ by:
1) having mobs from another fractal B appear in fractal A.
2) more randomised branches in the dungeon path (eg Mossman / tree)
3) randomly switch to fractal B while completing fractal A.
—

While this may seem like a cool idea it would probably be really frustrating. I don’t think high end content should be based on randomness. Imagine getting more dredge in your dredge. Imagine getting stuck / spending lots of time because of bad luck. Might be fun couple of times but eventually people would just rage (like now on dredge).

I’m a bit late to the party but let’s get started shall we?

Currently Fractals are in a weird limbo of being the “most hardcore group content” in Guild Wars 2 yet do you provide the “I am a better than you” factor often found in this type of content.

This is not a bad thing. However, having lackluster rewards from content that demands a relatively higher level of planning, coordination, and skill makes no one a happy camper. Those that enjoy the content feel cheated for not being able to get rewards comparable to other aspects of the game, and those that do not enjoy the content not only don’t participate in it (which is not a problem) but look down upon those that do as they are “wasting their time”.

Fix?

Well try to put yourself in the shoes of the “average” player. Players usually have goals, right now those goals are probably somewhere between the lines of “get better gear” and “get better looking gear”. For the first crowd there are ascended items, which are actually necessary to progress further into fractals. Only, there are many ascended items that can not be obtained in fractals, this is a problem. Then the items that are available are rare on top of being varied from “this is useless to me” to “this is the one item I need”.

Proposal: Guaranteed Item drop dependent on level

I propose that upon completion of a level 30+ fractal every player in the team receives a new ascended item, this item (which is not a currency) will be BoA so no trading it between players obviously. The purpose of this item is to act as a sort of psuedo token, it can be taken to our lovely golem friend at the entrance of the fractals and traded for either a ring of your choice, a rather large lump sum of fractal relics, or (in higher quantities not exceeding 5 for a single item) all of the ascended gear boxes (both for armor and weapons) currently available as well as amulets and acessories.

This along with a revamp on T6 material drop and an increase in gold as a completion reward will entice many to continue to do fractals in the future.

With that said however, no matter how good the rewards will be if the content itself is not fun players will not participate in it.

So how can we make fractals more fun?

First off, and I know this has probably been said too much. The length/difficulty of all the fractals needs to be normalized at an individual level. The biggest outliers of this are Dredge and Swamp. Dredge is too long, some would say even artificially so with the “clown car” and Swamp is ridiculously short compared to every other fractal. Which would explain why so many reroll their first fractal to get it.

I’m not a balance person, I don’t like numbers. However I like concepts and ideas so it’s time to throw a newish one (that I certainly hope I am not alone in suggesting)

Scaling Fractals

Particularly Fractals that Scale to the amount of players inside ranging from 2 to the highest number over 6 the developers find manageable to make a balanced and fun experience for players. This of course would mean having to introduce a way to make parties up to that limit, but I’m sure that can be handled.

Why do this though? Simply put, for flexibility and convinience! There are many players that would benefit from being able to run fractals under the current magic number of 5 players and there are also many who would enjoy (I know I’m one!) being able to bring all their friends in to kill virtual baddies for digital goodies.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and I hope this inspires the developers to do more amazing work on an already great game.

Wethospu.6437:

Jalarien.7410:

Title: fractured environment

Introduction

How can the Devs make the entire fractal interesting? A boss with huge hp who can oneshot you is not fun at all. What will become of fractals at higher levels? Are the instabilities enough to make a name for fotm, for gw2 endgame, for the future of mmos as a whole?

Proposal overview

Make the fractals more fractured at 50+ by:
1) having mobs from another fractal B appear in fractal A.
2) more randomised branches in the dungeon path (eg Mossman / tree)
3) randomly switch to fractal B while completing fractal A.
—

While this may seem like a cool idea it would probably be really frustrating. I don’t think high end content should be based on randomness. Imagine getting more dredge in your dredge. Imagine getting stuck / spending lots of time because of bad luck. Might be fun couple of times but eventually people would just rage (like now on dredge).

The idea isn’t to multiply trash. It is a way to make challenging content without dragging out fights via huge boss hp bar. Imagine a higher level fractal with the same enemies as a low level fractal, but just moved into a higher level mechanic.

It would be the reverse of Mossman in level 30.

Instead of the boss causing havoc and then disappearing, he stays – you kill him – but the environment changes to, say, snowblind. This forces the players to pay attention and work as a team.

You’re right, it could be rage inducing. But I’m hoping that the combinations get properly tested. The content should to hard enough to justify leaderboards, afterall.

So I think it’s time for a little bit of a far reaching idea for expanding fractals.

User Created Fractals

Currently Guild Wars 2 has very little “sandbox” in it. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a fan a heavily sandboxy games, but a little sandbox can lead to a lot of fun.

The biggest issue however comes up every time someone suggests user created fractals, hwo do we keep creators from allowing players to exploit their content for more rewards?

Numbers, lots and lots of figures, values, and quotas that have to be met and not exceeded.

My proposal would be to add an architech tool to allow a creator to “forge” a map with terrain of their choice, however the space must meet a certain amount and not exceed another, in order to keep all fractals relatively the same size.

Next enemy mob amount, in order to prevent players from simply creating a big arena and sticking one boss in it and BOOM fractal! require mob spawn areas to be placed. Creators will be given a choice of different mob templates that will include many different (yet similar like all dredge or all grawl) that cover an area that can be adjusted slightly.

These templates must be a certain distance apart and there msut be a certain amount placed and another slightly higher that can not be exceeded within one fractal. Additionally players will get 1 boss template they can set parameters to spawn upon certain conditions (killing all other mobs, escorting blah NPC, entering BLAH area) per fractal.

All of these will not affect however how many friendly non-combat NPCS a players can add (within reason) and how much dialouge, in the form of text bubbles or perhaps even uploaded sounds clips they can give these NPCS (also allows dialouge for enemies because reasons)

Simply adjust the values that must be met and not so much exceeded to match the “normal” fractals and give equal reward.

Give them the tools, and they will build for you a magnificent land to enjoy to slaughtering of your enemies for your profit like the true merc..ermm….uhh… HERO you are!

Esya.3427:

Proposal overview
Make agony resistance (AR) account wide.

While I agree there’s a problem with AR and alts, I’m not sure giving account-bound AR is the solution, as I think the problem is wider than that.

Like others have also said in this CDI (Relativity & Mr Niice on page 1, Auesis & The lost witch on page 2, Patrikan Habaton & One note chord on page 3, etc.), the problem with AR, even on one character, is the complete gear-gating it has become. Skill should be what has to be improved to progress in fractals, not AR.

Because of this reliance on AR, we now see even at the highest levels people who don’t care to dodge anymore, as they don’t take any damage from agony. What’s the point of agony then ?

Wethospu.6437:

Problem
The current implementation won’t work with actually hard content. Actually hard content means that the players will struggle to get through and wipe multiple times. With wipes, the run will take way too long without any real reason (maps already break the content to smaller pieces). Also relying on randomness would eventually force people to get lucky rolls to get through (you can’t balance the maps, especially with the instabilities).

snip

I believe that if fractals are to become harder (which I believe is a good idea), there should be a way to save your progress as a team. (Up to the start of a fractal)

That way we can feel happiness and relief after struggling through a seriously hard version of the uncategorized fractal, instead of feeling down because we can’t finish a full run.

This isn’t formatted to the template provided but I am a big fan of fractals (my favorite content in game) so I just want to highlight a couple things in this CDI that are very relevant to me. Hopefully it’s easy enough to skim though very quickly, and thanks so much for all your hard work on this Chris!

Gated Vendors
As a prerequisite to any reward structure change this is the most important to me. I do not want someone to be able to spend more time in a level 10 fractal to earn the same thing I can get in a level 50 fractal. I very much like the idea of gated vendors that only open up rewards for you once you have completed certain levels (including cap of 50 for the best vendor).

Fractal Skins
I love the idea of being able to get different color Fractal weapons to show the different levels of prestige (just like the SAB TM weapons have different colors for harder worlds). Also fractal armor skins sound so cool!

GW1 Mission Fractals
Best idea I’ve seen so far regarding new fractal ideas! Rendering those old missions many of us enjoyed in the GW2 engine/world using GW2 mechanics and professions would just be a blast.

Account Wide AR
I can’t see a good way to do this. Not sure how this work with for multiple characters with ascended armor. Most people only make that armor if they need it for fractals. If it turns out we only need 1 character to have it, then many people who made it for multiple characters just wasted hundreds of gold. If it turns out we need multiple armor sets just to reach the equivalent AR for level 50 then I think most people would be unhappy they can no longer do level 50s until they shell out hundreds more gold.

Proposal Overview
Improve current Time-sink on Fractals
Goal of Proposal
Get Fractals to be a known entity, so that they can be planned on and executed regularly. The problem with current fractals are that they can take 45 minutes or up to 3 hours….this makes it really hard to put into any kind of dungeon rotation for players.
Proposal Functionality
I propose a maximum time per fractal of no more than 15 minutes so that a full set of fractals can be accomplished in no more than 1 hour. This means that several of the fractals will have to be cut down in the amount of time it takes to accomplish them so that if you get a set of 3 longer ones, your total time is still no more than one hour. This will tie in with my next couple proposals as well.
Associated Risks
-Requires re-working of many fractals to get them into the 15 minute time frame, this may also diminish a lot of the hard work developers put into these fractals. This risk could possibly be mitigated by simply cutting some fractals in 1/2…for instance the dredge fractal could have the section with the buttons, and then the “clown car” as the final boss…and it could be made into a second fractal that includes the bombing of the door (or destroying the other door) and the dredge mining suit / elemental as the final boss.

Proposal Overview
Improve current Randomness of Fractals
Goal of Proposal
Get Fractals to be more repeatable. I love the random nature of some fractals (dredge end-boss, new Thaumanova reactor), this needs to be increased to increase replayability.
Proposal Functionality
I propose adding “split zones” to all fractals where the dev team can add additional elements whenever they want. This might be an opening that reveals a separate path that you now suddenly find in front of (similar to moss man / tree at the end of swamp). This could be a door that you don’t know what is behind (different boss). The flexibility of adding these “split zones” to fractals for developers is endless. This gives them then the opportunity of simply coding something “cool” when they want to and throwing it into a fractal without extensive re-coding. By adding these “quick insert” types of content into the fractals it will always change them and make players more likely to play them. It can be something as simple as changing a final boss randomly (instead of Moss-man / Tree, you get Champion Skelk or Champion Spider.
Associated Risks
-Requires re-working of many fractals to add “split zones” that are then easier to code for in the future. Putting a door or a teleporter into a part of the fractal that then allows the developers to code something behind it that is different to what was expected. Many fractals have methods of this already. Close the gate on cliffside (so someone has to pull the chains to teleport in…which then makes the end area a seperate zone that can have different end bosses), Close the Ice-wall on the frozen fractal forcing you to touch the standard to teleport in…I think the end result of giving more flexibility to developers to add new content is worth the risk though.

Proposal Overview
Add more need for skills within fractals
Goal of Proposal
Involve the different Skills. Make skills necessary. In the past, the only way through certain areas successfully was to use a teleport, or invisibility, or to advance in another area, Stability was necessary. Bring in more of those mechanics. Make people change skills based on Fractal area entered. Make people think a little to accomplish the task at hand. This also has the added effect of forcing increased group dynamic, making people want to group with a mesmer, and a guardian, and an elementalist (or bring in alts) to make use of the appropriate skills.
Proposal Functionality
I propose bringing in more use of skill mechanics. Make people change skills based on Fractal area entered (like we used to on the super high level ones). Make people think a little to accomplish the task at hand by possibly requiring the use of specific skills to advance (or combination of skills). This also has the added effect of forcing increased group dynamic, making people want to group with a mesmer, and a guardian, and an elementalist (or bring in alts) to make use of the appropriate skills. The easiest way to implement this would be with new fractals (like someone suggested, bring in missions from GW1, or even old dungeon paths).
Associated Risks
-Some back-lash from the community over being forced to play with certain classes because not every class has certain skills (invisibility or teleport). People wouldnt always get to “play like they want to play.”

Proposal Overview
Rewards need to be in-line with risk and time-sink
Goal of Proposal
Increase rewards so that fractals are once more “worth it” to do on par with dungeon runs.
Proposal Functionality
If I can earn 1.5 gold for a 15 minute run of COF or HOTW, I should earn 4x that for a 1 hour run of fractals. Gold reward should be commensurate with the length of time it takes to complete an individual fractal. If the fractal takes 10 minutes (Swamp) it should provide less reward than one that takes longer. This will make people actually want to do the longer ones for the increased rewards. If you end up with a set of 4 “long” fractals, your reward should be greater than getting the 4 “short” fractals.
Associated Risks
-Unless all fractals are re-worked (as an earlier proposal of mine) to be 15 minutes each, this would mean re-coding new rewards on a per-fractal basis so that if someone ended up with Dredge they could count on higher rewards than if someone ended up with Ascalon.

Proposal Overview

An AR rework to make fractals more accessible without making AR obsolete.
Idea 1: AR Feasts & Stations

Goal of the Proposal

Replaying low level fractals to get my guildies and friends some agony resistance is becoming boring. This proposal should make it easier to play with my friends at higher fractal levels. (Which I have not been able to do yet because of this!)

Proposal Functionality

AR Feasts and Stations

These could require fractal relics and agony infusions to create or purchase (among other things). They would be account bound, so it does not become a matter of simply buying your way through. Perhaps these could offer respectively 5 or 10 AR. (Depending on the ingredients and rarity of the feast)

As a bonus, this should be relatively easy to implement?

Associated Risks

It would only get us so far. But if it can boost the AR of players up to the required amount for fractal level 30, atleast the instabilities will provide extra diversity and a more significant feeling of progression for those involved.

To some extent, AR would become obsolete on lower levels. But it would still be viable higher up, and this would replace your food/potion buff!

Proposal Overview
Give us more to do with rewards
Goal of Proposal
Increase flexibility with the rewards that we currently have earned from running fractals. We need something to buy with the Pristine fractal relics that we have been earning from the beginning. There also needs to be something that can be done with the ascended rings (I have already destroyed 50 ascended rings that I was not using…I only kept the infused ones). Fractal skins need something as well
Proposal Functionality
Let us buy additional equipment with Prestine Fractal relics. They could be the currency similar to other dungeons have to buy fractal armor or weapons. Ascended rings could be Salvagable for Ascended materials (dragonite, deldrimar, gems, even infusions if they are infused rings). Or maybe a recipe to throw 4 rings into the mystic forge to get a different one back. Fractal Skins can perhaps be traded (2 of one type for one of your choice for instance), or could just simply go into a skin-locker (like achievement skins) with the game keeping track of what we already have and only granting new ones.
Associated Risks
-lots of coding.
-Risks of people who destroyed large quantities of items (like myself) who could be upset that there is now a use for something that there was no use for previously.

Proposal Overview
Selectable Fractals:

Goal of Proposal
Allow fractal run to be selected by the group. Tie Reward to difficulty.

Proposal Functionality
Instead of the random tiered 4 chain event, allow each fractal to be selectable, want to do a short run, do all easy ones, want to do a kittene, do all hard. Run is selectable by the group. Reward level based on difficulty, ie more for dredge, a lot less for swamp.

Associated Risks
Without change in rewards, all easy fractals will be selected for speed. Make sure that each fractal reward is unique, rewards can be adjusted after time if certain fractal levels don’t see enough love.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Moon.7310:

Using fractals to tell story:

Proposal Overview
Fractals should be used to tell as more about the lore/history of Tyria.

Goal of Proposal
Increase the amount of lore used for the fractals and creating new fractals which story and background informations. This is such a good oppertunity to tell us about things that happende before GW2, things that could happen in the future, things of an alternate version of Tyria.

Proposal Functionality
Existing fractals:
I think the fractals should have some more story, like what is this underwater fractal thing, what happened in this strange rata-sum version, is it ascalon we are over-running? It would be great if we got some more informations about them while doing them, either by getting more informations from Dessa or by some writings found in them or NPCs you could talk to.

New fractals:

• There could be fractals which tell us about events that happened between GW1 and GW2
• Fractals that tell us about things that happened even before GW1
• Fractals telling alternate versions of history: I would especially love to see a fractal where we help Shiro to kill the Emporer (still a great fan of Shiro )
• Fractals about a possible future: Everything is overrun by Scarlet (sorry, I just had to write that here, since I like here even if so many hate her^^)
  I’ll complete the list here with this examples, since I could go on about this for a long time.

Associated Risks
Of course people might not care about lore/story, making it a bit of wasted time for you devs, but I still think many would think it a nice addition and if it leads to new fractals everyone should be happy.

Hi Moon,

Thanks for delivering a very good proposal for more Lore based fractals.

TimmyF this post is a good example to discuss ideas around.

Chris

A cool idea – and I agree with this – pre-GW1 stories would be awesome.

A few ideas :

Ascalonians driving back the Charr.
Margonites in the Crystal Desert.
The actual Guild Wars.
The sinking of Orr.
White Mantle vs Invading Charr.

The list could go on – we should have these – they would be epic.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I sort of feel bad for Chris already. I tried to keep my posts short, but every time I come back to the thread I see walls of text that are “formatted”. It’s still difficult to get through.

I really wish people could be more concise, use more lists, and less walls of text.

Anyway, I like a lot of the ideas so far. But it does seem the playerbase is all on the same page here. It would be beneficial to get some developer interaction to see what page they’re on. (But I can’t imagine trying to soak in this many words at once, so I suspect that’s why we aren’t getting too much red yet).

Things are much much more accessible already and whilst we can still improve I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for giving it a try.

Loads of devs have commented to me about the topics being much easier to consume and think about.

So thanks everyone.

Chris

If she feels bad for you, she should go check out the Ranger Thread. I feel so sorry for poor Allie. =(

Allie and the team are doing a great job and the majority of the discussion is very useful to. Really pleased so far with the CDI topics.

Chris

P.S: Fingers crossed!

She’s doing great, but that thread has so much to read! LOL

Proposal Overview
Create a better rewards for all types of fractals, and make all rewards worthwhile, while increasing replayability/variability

1. fractal keys
2. bonus rewards
3. fractal trade ins

Goal of Proposal
The current reward system of fractals rewards doing 1 set of fractals per teir as fast as possible, this makes any long/hard fractals undesirable, and leads to speed being the primary concern in fractals.
This proposal aims to make every fractal you run, whether its first or tenth, rewarding in a way that scales naturally with how the community is playing fractals. It increases variability in rewards, and makes the currency of fractals more desired. And hopefully cleans up excess fractal based rewards.

Proposal Functionality

three facets of this proposal

1. Fractizing key/ fractized unopened chests
   the introduction of a new randomized reward box key that can be purchased with fractal relics. Along with more fractal based fractal rewards.
   1. possible rewards in box
      1. unlock fractal lore books (explains some of the things/details/legends about fractals
      2. unlock fractal side missions(to be discussed in different proposal)
      3. agony resist infusions with more random range(like+2s or 3s/other infusions
      4. fractal skins
      5. progresses title track fractal treasure hunter
      6. make it fractizer key, which turns black lion chests into unopened fractal chests (just to give black lion chests slightly more value)
   2. The reward box will make fractal relics something to get even when you have the rest of what you need, and makes sure fractal relics is always a good thing. It will give second chances for some of the items people hunt/can get in fractals. Every chest is different and has a chance of giving you something you want/need.
   3. Can make the rewards/chance of reward scale with max fractal level, or make certain rewards unlock from loot table based on max reward scale

1. Bonus awards
   1. at the end of each fractal, you should be given bonus reward, more gold(maybe karma) and more fractal relics scaled based on some internal metrics that are generated each day.
      1. How many players died in this fractal yesterday
      2. How many people completed this fractal yesterday/versus the amount who came in
      3. Average time spent in said fractal
      4. for mistlock type fractals it counts how many even attempted that instability
   2. this makes your reward seem new every day, and gives you a rough idea what you achieved. It rewards more for fractals which are harder/costlier and more time consuming, it also rewards more for completing fractals people skip or instabilities people skip.
   3. the reward is self correcting, if player base figures out a fractal/always runs it/makes it easy/finishes it fast it will use the internal metrics algorithms to be less rewarding.
   4. this allows you to create more varied fractals, some longer, some shorter, and makes people more likely to play more difficult fractals.
   5. combined with the new fractal relic reward keys, people will be more excited about getting/using fractal relics.
   6. gives a soft competition, when you see you get a huge bonus, you see you just beat a hard fractal most people avoid or was extremely hard for them.

1. Fractal trade ins
   The ability to trade fractal type rewards for fractal relics.
   1. this makes it so no fractal specific drops feel like a waste, extra rings, account bound fractal exotics, fractal skins you dont want/need any new account bound item people can get too much of.
   2. this needs the new fractizer box to exist, or its pointless to get fractal relics

All together i think this reward system would make fractals feel more rewarding no matter how long or hard it is, provide more unpredictability/thrill and goals for players. And make each fractal run more fulfilling/interesting. This will increase the replayability i believe drastically.

Associated Risks

1. people who just want to do one fractal may leave in the middle of the whole fractal run after completing one fractal. Since you can replace people mid fractal, this may not be that bad.
2. people who afk in fractals throwing off the numbers, but you could make exceptions in the algorithm for these.
3. If you arent tracking some of these metrics already, you may have to create processes to track them.

Harper.4173:

A cool idea – and I agree with this – pre-GW1 stories would be awesome.

A few ideas :

Ascalonians driving back the Charr.
Margonites in the Crystal Desert.
The actual Guild Wars.
The sinking of Orr.
White Mantle vs Invading Charr.

The list could go on – we should have these – they would be epic.

Oh man. How cool would it be to have a Fractal where you fight through an Orrian palace to stop the Vizier from sinking Orr?

We could finally see a cleansed Orr!

Top 3:

1. More new mechanics (like interrupts!) getting added to the fractals and bosses as you keep getting to higher levels.

2. Agony should get reworked so it’s neither a totally unavoidable gearcheck nor does it affect only such a small part of the fractal that it can be totally avoided and ignored. Optionally it could just get removed.

3. Some less randomity in the levels high up if you ever want fractal progression to be competitive. Otherwise competetitive progression is going to detoriate into rolling until you get only easy fractals, which is neither fun nor cool.

Proposal Overview:
Have a fractal level that can experiment with flying abilities.
Goal of the proposal:
Expand the GW 2 experience into another dimension besides water and land based graphics and interface.
Proposal functionality:
If the swimming ability , instead of kicking legs within a bubbling water environment, was changed to flapping arms within a windy airy environment, we would virtually have flying. There it seems there is a simple set environment that allows the introduction of air weapons (which for all purposes are exactly the same functionality as the water) and some flying attire (armor).
This area can be a easily adapted (I am assuming here sorry) from the water based environment mechanics, it appears would function very much the same with the challenge for developers to create a form of ‘gravity’ (or not as it could just be an area of no gravity).
If this fractal is successful there is a possibilty for future area development in WvW, PvE

Madvangogh.4169:

Proposal Overview:
Have a fractal level that can experiment with flying abilities.
Goal of the proposal:
Expand the GW 2 experience into another dimension besides water and land based graphics and interface.
Proposal functionality:
If the swimming ability , instead of kicking legs within a bubbling water environment, was changed to flapping arms within a windy airy environment, we would virtually have flying. There it seems there is a simple set environment that allows the introduction of air weapons (which for all purposes are exactly the same functionality as the water) and some flying attire (armor).
This area can be a easily adapted (I am assuming here sorry) from the water based environment mechanics, it appears would function very much the same with the challenge for developers to create a form of ‘gravity’ (or not as it could just be an area of no gravity).
If this fractal is successful there is a possibilty for future area development in WvW, PvE

Oh just admit you just want flying already. This doesn’t have anything to do with fractals

Proposal Overview
Create more optional random events and goals that can happen in fractals, and reward them for completion
Goal of Proposal
To increase the replayability of fractals, and make every run different, but interesting. Without having to do total redesigns, and its optional.

Proposal Functionality
Have randomized extra objectives and missions pop up while you are doing a fractal, defeating them will give extra fractal relics/or gold/ or karma.

1. Challenge type missions
   These basically dont alter the way you do fractals, but give you bonuses based on your performance, If they trigger, they trigger at the start of the fractal
   examples:
   1. Time attack
      beat this fractal as fast as possible (can be graded on results of player metrics, reward scales upward based on what % you place in, anything under 50% is no bonus)
   2. Survival
      best reward for no deaths during fractal, goes down with each death, total fails on full wipe
   3. killer/vanquish
      rewards increase based how many non respawning enemies you kill in this fractal, killing every non respawning enemy gives the most bonus
2. Explorerer
   exist somewhere off the beaten path of the fractal, maybe jumping puzzles, regular puzzles, hidden rooms, scavenger hunts these are unique to each fractal and usually award a lore entry as well as a standard amount of fractal relics/gold based on how hard it is to find
3. Extra missions
   these would be dynamic event like, and might include say bounties who escaped to fractals, people lost in fractals, protecting people. Some of the rarer events might include bosses from dungeons. These would exist off the beaten path, or spawn in areas you have already passed, so as not to block progress if people dont want to do them These would award extra relics, and if boss level difficulty, boss chests.
4. side missions
   these a could be mini stories about the fractals, allowing you to experience more of the story

the idea here is to make every fractal run offer some interesting different optional objectives/challenges, and reward people for doing them. You can make some more rewarding than others (like say you pop a skritt treasure hunter event) or rarer. Multiple events, or no events can pop in a fractal. the non challenge ones wont spawn in the very beginning.
this is tied strongly with making fractal relics more useful/desired, as you can give fractal based rewards/account bound stuff in them that wont effect the economy much.

Its also very scalable, and can be done with small additions over time

Associated Risks
Its possible it may cause some friction between those that do and dont want to do them, but i think this is acceptable, as for friends/guilds it wont be an issue, and for pugs they can put whether they do or dont want to do them in the description of lfg.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Madvangogh.4169:

Proposal Overview:
Have a fractal level that can experiment with flying abilities.
Goal of the proposal:
Expand the GW 2 experience into another dimension besides water and land based graphics and interface.
Proposal functionality:
If the swimming ability , instead of kicking legs within a bubbling water environment, was changed to flapping arms within a windy airy environment, we would virtually have flying. There it seems there is a simple set environment that allows the introduction of air weapons (which for all purposes are exactly the same functionality as the water) and some flying attire (armor).
This area can be a easily adapted (I am assuming here sorry) from the water based environment mechanics, it appears would function very much the same with the challenge for developers to create a form of ‘gravity’ (or not as it could just be an area of no gravity).
If this fractal is successful there is a possibilty for future area development in WvW, PvE

Oh just admit you just want flying already. This doesn’t have anything to do with fractals

#Tengu2014LargosShortlyThereafter

Proposal Overview
Solo story mode fractals containing the lore of past Living Story releases and practice mode for existing and new 5-man fractals.

Goal of Proposal
This will let players see for the first time or replay past LS chapters. Also, as timmyf.1490 suggested, this mode could be used for practice, one fractal at a time, making it easier for new players to start running the regular mode fractals.

Proposal Functionality
The player or group should be able to choose a specific fractal to enter.

The solo fractals should contain all the lore of a single or multiple past LS releases without any combat. New 5-man fractals could be added, one at a time, to let players replay specific fights of past LS releases like the Aetherblade fractal or as a part of the current LS release. Whenever you have 3 new 5-man fractals then you add them to the normal rotation with the rest.

A 5-man fractal that is part of the current LS release could have temporary achievements and rewards. When the LS ends it becomes practice mode fractal like the rest of the existing fractals and offers only a few rewards like ascended mats or a champion box per boss and a few silver but nothing from the associated past LS release. This mode is for story-telling and practice not rewards.

Associated Risks
The only “risk” I can think of is the added work needed to make the past LS releases into story mode fractals.

Chris, I was wondering if you would comment on my suggestion for using Twilight Arbor Forward Up as a Fractal Shard earlier in the CDI discussion.

Proposal Overview

Too many Fractal Levels that has no real difference between then. Fractals could have way less levels with faster increase in dificulty and reward.

Goal of Proposal

FotM feels grindy to actually start rewarding.

Proposal Functionality

Instead of having so many levels 1-50, FotM could have fewer levels . Mostly because there’s no real difference between level 1-9 or 11-19, for example.

While trainning is good, it takes far too long to actually see real differences between levels.

I’d change all levels to 10
Level 1 would be entry level and equal to 1-10;
Level 2 would be soldier level and would equal to 11-19
Level 3 would be tenent level and would be equal to 20-29
and so on.

To balance fractal leveling to this change, make it so you can auto level once you complete every fractal on your appropriate level. Of course, you could still be “taken” to a higher level fractal based on your party mates.

Associated Risks

Luck factor. Due to randomness of Fractual, you could end up having to run it multiple times in order to get all completed so you could level. To prevent that, I believe that servers could still track your secondary level and gives you a level as soon as you run FotM 10 times.

Proposal Overview
Randomization of Mistlock Instabilities

Goal of Proposal
Allow players to experience a wider variety of instabilities over the course of a fractal run.

Proposal Functionality
Starting at level 30, random Instabilities start appearing during each fractal shard. Each new fractal would have a randomized instability rather than having the same instability across the entire fractal run. This could be tiered for each of the current reward level tiers as well as the fractal difficulty tiers.

For example, levels 30-40 could share a pool of possible instabilities that could be assigned. This could include the current instabilities, or new ones could be added. Each fractal (1st, 2nd, 3rd, boss) would get a different instability from the pool of possible instabilities for the reward level. The 1st fractal could have a smaller, and possibly easier, pool of possible instabilities, and then the 2nd fractal would have its own pool of possible instabilities, and so on for each shard.

This idea could expose players to a wider variety of instabilities, as the current meta seems to be to choose a reward level with a relatively easy instability in order to maximize efficiency. It is currently very difficult to complete certain fractals combined with some of the instabilities (like the bloodlust one on the grawl shaman fight, or the OOC one for Mai Trin, for example). This could be alleviated by not adding certain instabilities to the possible pool for certain fractals. Less rage, more variety.

Associated Risks
People will probably still roll for swamp, but now they might also roll for swamp + X instability. This would make the rolling process even longer and more frustrating. At the same time, however, it could potentially decrease rolling for swamp if another fractal popped along with an easier instability.

Nike.2631

While I agree with your sentiment on the Bomb and Clown-Car fights, I’ll point out that the Pressure Plate battle is one of the few places in the entire game where glass-cannons are not rewarded out of all proportion with any other build. It’s not that the fight is hard per se, but that the encounter actually calls for 2 characters to be able to withstand a bit of a beating without relying on dodge-spam. That also makes it one of the few places where Support can make a difference. Knockbacks, interrupts, mass-Aegis, strong healing… If the enemies weren’t Drege this would also be a amazing fight for anyone with AoE blinds.

The problem with your reasoning is the game is designed around dodging as a form of damage mitigation. You can’t create content that suddenly goes against game design and then make it only the beginning of a larger part where you actually need to dodge the rest of the time.

CoffeeMug.9540:

Chris, I was wondering if you would comment on my suggestion for using Twilight Arbor Forward Up as a Fractal Shard earlier in the CDI discussion.

The dredge fractal is already a problem for most PUG groups. Is it really a good idea to add a fractal that would be even worse for them?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

Chris-

What are your thoughts about bringing back some of the GW1 Missions as Fractals? Is that something feasible?

I mentioned Aurora Glade as an option before. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Aurora_glade

If this is something you would entertain, would it be valuable for us to discuss potential options?

I think this is a cool idea and certainly one worth some proposals and some discusison around said proposals.

Chris

If you’re interested in a way to introduce more lore-based fractals with more elaborated story and missions from Guild Wars 1 and perhaps old Living Story that can’t be accessed anymore, I would suggest you take a look at my suggestion on page 2 that covers this.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Fractal-Evolution/3682391

A few people seem to suggest similar ideas as well.

I do however think that the current fractal system wouldn’t be able to incorporate such content because fractals are meant to be short.
Hence a stable fractal system that allows for longer content, that runs parallel with the unstable, traditional fractal system.
The flame and frost and aetherblade fractals are a good example of how this limitation is way too limiting. They’re honestly quite butchered. Sure, the most interesting parts are there, but they’re not there in their former glory and they don’t make as much sense in a story perspective as they did in full size.

The Thaumanova fractal is an example of how limiting the limits are as well. While it was a bit interesting and it looks quite nice, you barely see anything of the Thaumanova reactor at all. You get no references at all to the building in Metrica province at all. What would be interesting is to start outside the building, in Metrica, having someone tell you that there is something terribly wrong with the reactor and then you’re tasked with entering the building and navigating to the core avoiding hazards of a reactor that’s breaking apart, clearly seeing references to the actual building as you progress inside.

I do not want lore fractals to be standard sized, I want them to be full dungeon sized at least. And that’s not possible with standard fractals. Hence the suggestion for a stable fractal system to be used as a “story book”.

cranked.3812:

Nike.2631

While I agree with your sentiment on the Bomb and Clown-Car fights, I’ll point out that the Pressure Plate battle is one of the few places in the entire game where glass-cannons are not rewarded out of all proportion with any other build. It’s not that the fight is hard per se, but that the encounter actually calls for 2 characters to be able to withstand a bit of a beating without relying on dodge-spam. That also makes it one of the few places where Support can make a difference. Knockbacks, interrupts, mass-Aegis, strong healing… If the enemies weren’t Drege this would also be a amazing fight for anyone with AoE blinds.

The problem with your reasoning is the game is designed around dodging as a form of damage mitigation. You can’t create content that suddenly goes against game design and then make it only the beginning of a larger part where you actually need to dodge the rest of the time.

If you want a game with more depth than dodge-spam and ‘zerker-uber-alles, I think you can most definitely introduce challenges that don’t crumble under the repeated application of our much beloved on-demand 2 seconds of godmode. The third floor of the Nightmare Tower and perma-Toxin was not an accident. If dodging was meant to be the only form of mitigation the Vitality and Toughness stats wouldn’t exist. Admittedly many people act like they don’t exist…

Moshari.8570:

Proposal Functionality
If I can earn 1.5 gold for a 15 minute run of COF or HOTW, I should earn 4x that for a 1 hour run of fractals. Gold reward should be commensurate with the length of time it takes to complete an individual fractal.

If I could score best-in-slot items randomly from even 100 runs through CoF I might think there was a comparison to be made here. But there’s not. Gold is not the only currency in the game, and trying to turn everything into a gold earning competition just adds that many more faucets and debases coin that much more. Five fractal-specific currencies. FIVE. Yes, we need more ways to spend them, but we need to also not ignore that they exist in the rush to throw ourselves on the tender mercies of the Trading Post. Fractals are a separate track. Any number of Dungeon-delvers will tell you the grass is greener on the Fractals side of the fence and that they are the ones being wronged by the differences.

Dietere.3476:

Proposal Overview
Randomization of Mistlock Instabilities
…
It is currently very difficult to complete certain fractals combined with some of the instabilities (like the bloodlust one on the grawl shaman fight, or the OOC one for Mai Trin, for example). This could be alleviated by not adding certain instabilities to the possible pool for certain fractals.

Or you could make it so those harder combinations only get added to the pool at higher levels. I like this idea.

The other alternative that I thought would also suffice would be to make instabilities like gambits that increase your rewards, but it makes it harder (or at least less straight forward) to ramp up difficulty as level increases.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Proposal overview
Account bound rewards tiered on fractal level.
…
Proposal Functionality
Several different types of items:
“Guaranteed”
Like the Pvp rank vendors add equivalent fractal rank vendors. These can sell a small selection of items, possibly with each fractal tier up selling a more upgraded version.

“Fractal based”
Fractal specific rewards that only start dropping at 40+ since this tier currently has no additional drop compared to 30-39. i.e Mini Anomaly, Mini Evolved grawl shaman etc.

More tiered/ranked rewards is a good idea for progression. It could also pair well with my proposal
You could earn fractal specific tokens, almost like a new set of dungeon tokens, and at each fractal rank tier, additional rewards would be unlocked that you could purchase with those tokens. At the same time, you could add tiered rewards for the already existing account bound tokens/rewards.

I feel like the less you can rework the fundamental mechanics the better. The more drastic the changes, the higher the risk of alienating the few who still do enjoy fractals. Also, if we can come up with solutions that solve multiple problems with a single change, it would leave more time for adding additional content that we all want, like the GW1 missions and other lore-based stories.

Speaking of GW1 missions, another one that might make a good, short, but teamwork based fractal would be the “Grand Court of Sebelkeh” mission from Nightfall, or Dzagonur Bastion, but that one may have been mentioned already. Yeah, in case you couldn’t guess, I want to fight Margonites again…

Proposal overview

Tiered Rewards

Getting to different tiers unlocks more items that you can purchase with the fotm vendors. This items should ONLY be accessible if your personal level is in the tier required or higher. You shouldn’t be able to get this items outside from fractals.

Goal of Proposal

People will feel more rewarded for their level, they will have a nice way to show their mastery on fractals and how high in the tiers they have got and not that they got lucky with the RNG.

Proposal Functionality

Getting to different tiers unlocks more items that you can purchase with the fotm vendors. This items should ONLY be accessible if your personal level is in the tier required or higher. You shouldn’t be able to get this items outside from fractalas.

Level 21-30 unlocks boots and leggins (unique skins and if possible ascended)
Level 31-40 unlocks pouldrons and gloves (unique skins and if possible ascended)
Level 41-50 unlocks chest and helmet (unique skins and if possible ascended)
Level 51-60 weapons (unique skins different from the actual fractal weapons and if possible ascended)

Everytime you introduce a new tier you can add a new skin for that tier and /or other kind of items, may be a dye with particle effects, exclusive minis, exclusive tonics and others. Also you can add titles for each tier.

This will make people to keep interested in leveling up when you release higher levels and they will also feel rewarded for their level.

Associated Risks

I think there ´s no risk

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Esya.3427:

Proposal overview
Make agony resistance (AR) account wide.

While I agree there’s a problem with AR and alts, I’m not sure giving account-bound AR is the solution, as I think the problem is wider than that.

Like others have also said in this CDI (Relativity & Mr Niice on page 1, Auesis & The lost witch on page 2, Patrikan Habaton & One note chord on page 3, etc.), the problem with AR, even on one character, is the complete gear-gating it has become. Skill should be what has to be improved to progress in fractals, not AR.

Because of this reliance on AR, we now see even at the highest levels people who don’t care to dodge anymore, as they don’t take any damage from agony. What’s the point of agony then ?

I see those as two different proposals. The time gating and need of AR could still be addressed while making AR account bound. One does not exclude the other.

Proposal overview
Quality of life. To change/ammend certain aspects of fractals instances to improve enjoyment and immersion within the virtual environment.

Proposal Changes
1) Careful consideration to tone/ambient spectrums. Mossman and wolves in their environment are difficult to see. The entire area is so dark that anyone without the benefit of 20/20 vision with a high contrast monitor have difficulty seeing a lot of the animations. This is further made more difficult by excess particle effect. Many players instead enter melee range and execute burst according to time, then evade backwards as opposed to watching for animations and actually engaging mossman. This also holds true for arch diviner.

2) One-shot mechanics undermine too much core fundamentals of profession design. There is little purpose to blind, protection, increased toughness etc if a Boss type target can one shot you, regardless of whether you have all of these mechanics in your favor or just a few. Often the associated mechanics of these one shots in fractals are lost in particle, or the hit window is remarkably larger than the animation itself. A careful timed dodge on a animation tha is covered in particle still resulting in a one shot kill on a profession with 20K health with high toughness that also had protection and regen highlights just how much this undermines making a build and has contributed to the DPS berserker meta.

proposal outcomes
Changes such as these allow for players to actually engage the foes they encounter in fractals and not just rely upon stick and move tactics.

I also think that the instabilities should be random (for every level, not just the first one and don’t keep it for the other 3, to avoid rerolling) and the gold reward should scale better.

In my opinion water fractal should be tier 1 and 2 (only because probably no one plays it now and it´s a wasted fractal right now, most of the people just reroll until they got swamp) , cliffside should be tier 3 only (it’s easy but much longer than the other tier 2 fractals and you can get cliffside + dredge) and I think Volcano should be tier 2 and 3 and Aetherblade tier 2 and 3

And I think it would be better for fractals if Agony is changed to what it used to be, before you could do higher levels with low AR, now you need to grind the AR…

I think the fractured patch was bad for many fractal players, I used to play levels higher than 50 and now I don’t even have a chance to play level 50 now, because I don´t have the AR required. You should be able to get all the necessary AR to progress in fractals through fractals.

The fractal level reset was pointless, fractals aren´t harder, many of the instabilities you don´t even notice that they are there. And the excuse that it was to have an equal start for the leaderboards, the truth is that players with the gold to get enough AR were the ones that had a huge advantage, but ironically you don´t get many gold in fractals so probably the people that only used to play fractals since the release of them, were the ones that didn´t have enough AR…

Anyway the fractal leaderboards weren’t released and I think it was a bad idea to put a leaderboard that showed who got there first. It would only make sense to have a leaderboard in fractals if there was no cap.

I’m late, and not sure I want to read all the pages before I post mine, so I’m not going to temper my post by seeing what came before. What you’re gonna get is what I came up with on seeing the topic and not reviewing it . . .

I’ll comment later on things I see interesting, but I want to note again: I don’t run Fractals, and the current incarnation holds little interest for me since there’s precious little in there which is mandatory or useful to me which I cannot gain outside of it.

Proposal post to follow shortly.

Proposal Overview
Normalization or Rebalancing of Fractal length/difficulty. Both the perceived and actual difficulty of Fractals were partially addressed with the Fractured update, however there are still outliers that players dread due to the length of time required to complete them, or the difficulty in doing so relative to the tier they are in.

Goal of Proposal
In the Fractured update, you identified easy, medium and hard instances and separated them out so that players couldn’t get a “bad roll” and end up with the three hardest Fractals. This went a long way in improving player experience, however there are outliers within those tiers:

Tier 1:
Swamp (2): puzzle > boss.
Aquatic (3): trash mob area > puzzle > boss.
Urban Battlefield (5): trash mobs > miniboss > large trash mob area > trash mobs supported by deadly siege > boss
Uncategorized (6): trash mob area > double miniboss > puzzle > miniboss > trash mob area > boss

Tier 2:
Urban Battlefield (5): trash mobs > miniboss > trash mob area > trash mobs supported by deadly siege > boss
Uncategorized (6): trash mob area > double miniboss > puzzle > miniboss > trash mob area > boss
Molten Facility (5): trash mobs > trash mobs > trash mobs > puzzle > boss
Snowblind (6): trash mobs+puzzle > miniboss+trash mobs > trash mobs (usually ignored due to difficulty/numbers) > boss
Cliffside (8): miniboss > trash mobs > puzzle/run > trash mobs > puzzle/run > trash mobs > puzzle/run > boss

Tier 3:
Cliffside (8): miniboss > trash mobs > puzzle/run > trash mobs > puzzle/run > trash mobs > puzzle/run > boss
Volcanic (7): trash mobs > run > puzzle > miniboss > puzzle/run > difficult boss (counted boss as 2)
Aetherblade (6): trash mobs > puzzle > puzzle > trash mobs > trash mobs > boss
Thaumanova (7): trash mobs > miniboss > trash mobs > puzzle > puzzle > puzzle > boss
Underground Facility (~58): trash mobs > trash mobs during puzzle part 1 > respawning mobs during puzzle part 2 > trash mobs > many respawning mobs during puzzle > miniboss > Clown Car (read: trash mobs about fifty times) > trash mobs > boss

• Urban Battlefield is a long instance for Tier 1, however you do get the assistance of the very strong NPC Charr to help speed it up a little. Probably fine where it is.

• Uncategorized is longer than the other Tier 1 fractals because it contains two champion fights. While they are not particularly long fights, they add a significant amount of time to the instance. The trash clears are also made significantly more difficult due to the aerial nature of the walkways.

• Cliffside is much longer and more difficult than any of the other Tier 2 Fractals. It features one miniboss and three objective areas on top of the final boss. The third objective area (arm seals) is particularly difficult due to the regeneration of the seals. Players almost always rely on the fact that mobs will not spawn if one of the initial Chanters is left alone to complete this objective. It becomes incredibly difficult to make progress/survive if they die since the seals regenerate much faster than players can destroy them, and the group can not split up due to the massive damage, bouncing projectiles and Vulnerability from the Chanters. (Splitting up is only viable on low level Fractals where the mob damage is not very high).

• Aetherblade is pretty short, simple and fun. I think it would work well to make it available in Tier 2 as well as Tier 3, if only for more people to experience it.

SEE NEXT POST

Proposal Overview

- Use the Mistlock Observatory as a lobby for further exploration of the Mists’ potential for revisiting lore.
- Utilize Fractals as more varied experiences than combat-heavy events.
- Revise potential rewards so people can still earn desired rewards through lower-tier play.

Goal of Proposal

The goal is to draw some appeal for using the Fractals for more than “random dungeon rush” type experiences. While this was the first goal of the design, it seems clear to me that goal is no longer enough to make this area desirable. One method is to diversify the offering and usefulness of the Fractals. Thus one goal is to get some use out of it further than to just dive in for loot seeking.

The other goal is to to develop the use of it so players aren’t feeling they are required to “buy in” to super-high-tier play in order to get what they want. In other words, I want to apply the idea of rewards earned through regular play slower but intense play faster to things from Fractals which are desirable enough to draw people in.

Proposal Functionality

First, there is no need to fully tamper with the original/current selection of the Fractals. But there can be a second set of Fractals accessible through unlocking them in various ways. These Fractals would contain a variety of events rather than simply combat-intensive Fractals, such as ones where there are problem-solving, defending a position, or location capturing. I would say “things such as the Swamp Fractal” where there’s a particular way to proceed which is not solely achieved through combat, but through other means. This would allow some variety to be achieved in what the Fractals are without forcing it on the people who just want to push through combat encounters. We can quibble about what content is available in the Fractals later, but right now this is a big thing I see – almost all the Fractals are very combat-oriented and while there are different shades of combat it becomes less interesting and more for the loot.

This leads me to my second point. I’d like to see a means of earning things which won’t require me to dump a lot of effort and time into cultivating Agony Resistance as well as running the Fractals again and again until I am bored with them all. I suspect there are a lot of players who would like the idea and implementation of the Fractals but are turned away by the sheer repetitive nature of getting to “the good stuff”. So why not offer things like the Fractal Weapon skins for sale for tokens such as Pristine Fractal Relics, or future offerings being likewise available?

Finally, the first point of my overview is the one I feel the most about: using the Mistlock Observatory similarly to how it was used to scan on the Thaumanova Incident. I’ve always maintained the Fractals’ potential is in reliving events for the sake of lore, and floated the idea a few times to use it as a means of allowing latecomers of the things done in the Living Story. Particularly the climax encounters. Now, it’s already been done of a sort with the Molten Furnace and Aetherblade Fractals. Let’s see some more, or also see ones depicting other events in the lore we could want to see?

Associated Risks

The major problems I could see is how it could be perceived to be “diluting” the actual point of the Fractals as it is now in favor of making it something it isn’t. Of course, if there is a vast agreement on this score I’d like it to be known I don’t exactly like playing Fractals as is, as much as I like the concept of it.

The risks I can foresee would revolve largely around making all this material and content and not having anyone use it, or have anything “worthwhile” take place in the eyes of players. Alternatively, it could be added in such a way people feel forced to do things they don’t want to be doing for the reward. These risks are, of course, almost unavoidable.

CONTINUED

• Underground Facility features a satisfactory number of objectives for a Tier 3 Fractal, however the trash mobs and respawning enemies make getting to those objectives too drawn out. This Fractal also suffers from the overpowering nature of Dredge as an enemy. They start by completely negating one of the players methods of control in their immunity to blindness. Guardians and thieves lose an incredible amount of defensive capability that they would normally have just “because Dredge”. Dredge are also some of the most CC (crowd-control) heavy enemies, where nearly every type has a Daze, Stun, Knockdown or Knockback. This might not be terrible for players if they could kill the enemies while Stability lasted, however the Disaggregators also give all nearby Dredge Protection and other boons. Not only do they give Protection, but it is of a short duration that is constantly refreshed. This means that any attempts to steal/convert/corrupt the boons is meaningless (they are instantly reapplied on the Dredge). The “Clown Car” serves as both the best and worst part of the instance, since the hordes of enemies at least have loot tables, but is by far the least exciting and most arduous part of the instance. I frequently find myself waking up from a fugue thinking “Oh we must nearly be done with this” only to see that 75% of the Dredge reinforcements remain… The final boss in Underground Facility is fun (outside of the occasional AI/aggro glitch) and shouldn’t be changed.

Proposal Functionality

• Uncategorized: Make Uncategorized Fractal exist only in Tier 2. The mechanics, trash mobs and boss are all well balanced, just not for Tier 1.

• Cliffside: Outside of the third objective (arm seals) this Fractal is relatively well balanced; perhaps lower the damage scaling on the Cultists so that when 8 of them look at you, you can survive. Improving the player’s ability to identify the spells/projectiles that the Cultists fire could also help (consider lowering their speed). For the arm seals, either reduce the number of spawns, or remove the veteran spawns.

1. Move Cliffside to Tier 3 only, possibly while making Aetherblade available in Tier 2&3.
2. Change the way the initial miniboss fight functions and keep Cliffside in Tier 2&3. Perhaps a dying guardian/rebel cultist/benevolent spirit gives the players a Hammer of Retribution that they can use to complete the three objectives, instead of having to fight the cultist leader. Tie the Colossus’ baby toe to a stick and let us beat people with it. This would also help explain to new players why the hammer that has worked so far can’t be used at the final boss (it still doesn’t make any sense to me) as well as slightly shorten the instance to be more in line with Tier 2.

• Underground Facility:

1. Completely remove Disaggregators from every place they spawn, or radically change how their boons function (entire duration is applied after 5 second channel, boons are only applied within a VERY small radius, boons are only applied to one unit, etc.). If the Disaggregators are going to stay, change all Veteran spawns to normal, and give the players some way to counter them.
2. Either remove respawns, or greatly increase the time and decrease the number of spawns. If respawning enemies are to stay, make the first wave drop loot at normal rates while the respawns drop nothing, instead of none of the mobs dropping loot.
3. Remove the Clown Car. If you want to keep the loot reward for the Clown Car, move it to the mobs that spawn in the Bomb/Laser room.
4. Rebalance the number of Dredge that have CC, either by removing skills, or replacing the mobs with different ones. Extending the cooldown on their CC will not help since there are so many of them that players have no ability to dodge/block/stability through the spam. Improve the player’s ability to identify the “ground waves” that so many Dredge shoot out; brown on brown is very hard to see, and it is impossible to pick out which “wave” is a knockdown, which is damage, whether it is two waves or ten coming at you.

Associated Risks
The risk of making Uncategorized Tier-2-only and Cliffside Tier-3-only may be that players could feel like there is less variety/randomness in the Fractal system. This could possibly make Fractals less interesting to some people.

No risks to rebalancing Underground Facility. It is the sole reason for many people that do not participate in Fractals.

Proposal Overview
Currently, the gear combination we use for meta are PPCri such as Berserker/Assassin, nerfing crit damage would not solve the problem we don’t use other stats combined gears, highly organized solid team still use PPCri meta gear for max their damage to minimize the time for one dungeon run. I want propose changing the dungeon mechanism to make Vitality, Toughness, Healing Power and Condition Damage to be more viable for dungeon run or at least we won’t pass them anymore at first glance. Let’s take the first step from changing the high-end dungeon content such as FOTM.

Goal of Proposal
To expand stats usage in PVE. Changing the fact that defensive stats and condition damage are useless in PVE.

Proposal Functionality
We could take FOTM as a trial, if it works, we can expand the change into the other dungeons.
1. Take Toughness as an example. We don’t want toughness because more toughness would not make us survive mobs’(mostly bosses’) mighty killing skill. Encountering a killing blow, without dodge or other invulnerable skills effect on, we are gonna die at full HP either way.
There are several inputs I have in mind:
a. changing certain mob’s/boss’s killing attack result different from players toughness. For example, players with less than 2500 toughness wouldn’t survive one killing blow no matter how much HP he have. Players with more than 2500 toughness would survive the killing blow with only 1 HP left which give them opportunity to stay alive and regain their HP.
b. reward special effect to character who had certain level of toughness. For example, if one character gain more than 2500 toughness, he might gain a special effect of permanent protection(-33% damage reduction), of course these numbers can be changed for balancing reason.

2. Making condition damage viable through all PVE content. I think making mobs vulnerable to condition damage is a good start but never enough. As I listed above, changing the mobs’ mechanics is one way, rewarding more for stacking one stats is another way. But I think simple the kinds of stats is a better way, currently we just have too many kinds of stats on gears which was just players don’t want, I suggest simple the stats combination such as combining Crit damage and Condition damage in one stats Ferocity. Making every stats weigh close enough to make people have a hard time to choose instead of the current PPCri meta.

Associated Risks:
In higher level FOTM, players gonna need more AR, the ascended gears are very expensive to make, preparing several sets of armor with different stats combination in order to meet different dungeon scenario seems a very expensive choice for players. Either making changing stats on the same gear possible such as Legendary weapons or simpling the system of stats combination making every stats weigh closely. Either way is a chanlleng to the existing game mechanic but for a better balancing PVE content.

I’ve been playing fractals fairly regularly since they were initially introduced so I have a few big suggestions for that area:

High level fractals/Endgame:

• The max fractal cap (50) needs to be eliminated or changed to the highest level of fractals that you EVER want players to complete (potentially 80)
• The difficulty of higher level fractals should not come from excessive health and damage scaling but should utilize the mistlock instabilities to create the bulk of the difficulty
• The instabilities for higher level fractals should add significant difficulty for players that isn’t in the form of lengthening encounters, an example of a good one would be the instability at 35 that causes stunning lightning strikes to constantly appear around the players. The instabilities at high levels (60+) in particular need to focus around substantially crippling certain common behaviors of players.
• High level fractals should also incorporate multiple instabilities
• Most importantly high level fractals, particularly in the 60-80 range, should not have any “safe” levels E.G. fractals 36, 38, 49 with ignore-able instabilities. Groups attempting high level fractals should have to make a seasoned decision what level to run based on their group composition.
• All of these would ultimately allow for fractal leaderboards again especially if the 70-80 fractals prove to be extremely difficult

Rewards:

• The bonus gold reward needs to be increased even taking into account the increased t6/rares droprate. Currently 10-15 minute dungeons award at least 1.26 gold while a 45 minute fractal 49 (which is near perfect with no mistakes or dredge) awards about 1.4 gold I believe
• More things should be available for purchase with (pristine) relics. The only good suggestion I could think of at the moment is to allow for fractal weapon chests to be purchased for a large amount of fractal currency (I’m thinking at least 1000 relics and 20 pristine)
• Potentially consider additional currencies exclusive to high level fractals
• Fractal weapon drop rates need to be increased SLIGHTLY, fractal weapons currently carry prestige in that they are one of the few weapon sets that cant be bought with gold. As such the drop rates are a little low now, weapon skins at the 4x level should be increased from the ~5% it is now to 10-15% and skin chests added at this level at 5%. These drop rates should increase gradually until 70+ fractals nearly guarantee a skin or chest.
• Ascended rings need to be adressed, the first idea I have is to simply make them salvagable and they would potentially give orichalcum, ecto, dark matter, and mist essence (if theyre infused)
• The second ring idea is to implement significant mystic forge recipes involving rings such as: 3 infused rings of the same type plus a certain amount of mist essence will yield an ascended amulet with the same stat combo and the infusion slot determined by the type of mist essence used. This gives a use for rings and a legitimate use for mist essence. Also, you could incorporate new items bought with fractal relics into these recipes to yield different items or stats.

Other suggestions:

• The dredge fractal needs to be shortened considerably
• There are still a number of bugs that need addressed
• Please for the love of god remove “rolling,” not only is swamp my least favorite fractal but it is now impossible to get any of the other “initial” fractals such as underwater. A couple of the tier 2 fractals can be dropped to tier 1 (aetherblade hideout) and rolling needs to be eliminated

Jalarien.7410:

Wethospu.6437:

Jalarien.7410:

Title: fractured environment

Introduction

How can the Devs make the entire fractal interesting? A boss with huge hp who can oneshot you is not fun at all. What will become of fractals at higher levels? Are the instabilities enough to make a name for fotm, for gw2 endgame, for the future of mmos as a whole?

Proposal overview

Make the fractals more fractured at 50+ by:
1) having mobs from another fractal B appear in fractal A.
2) more randomised branches in the dungeon path (eg Mossman / tree)
3) randomly switch to fractal B while completing fractal A.
—

While this may seem like a cool idea it would probably be really frustrating. I don’t think high end content should be based on randomness. Imagine getting more dredge in your dredge. Imagine getting stuck / spending lots of time because of bad luck. Might be fun couple of times but eventually people would just rage (like now on dredge).

The idea isn’t to multiply trash. It is a way to make challenging content without dragging out fights via huge boss hp bar. Imagine a higher level fractal with the same enemies as a low level fractal, but just moved into a higher level mechanic.

It would be the reverse of Mossman in level 30.

Instead of the boss causing havoc and then disappearing, he stays – you kill him – but the environment changes to, say, snowblind. This forces the players to pay attention and work as a team.

You’re right, it could be rage inducing. But I’m hoping that the combinations get properly tested. The content should to hard enough to justify leaderboards, afterall.

The point wasn’t really about thrash but that you can get a much harder encounter, completely based on luck. For example Snowblind could be really bad on a tough fight because of Frostbite. Imagine having a trouble with a boss and you wipe multiple times. Finally you get it together and it goes pretty well. Suddenly you teleport somewhere, it gets harder and you again wipe.

But if your idea is that it wouldn’t really affect encounters then I’m not sure what this feature would add. And how would even more luck affecting your runs justify leaderboards? If content was truly hard people would just keep grinding until they get lucky roll.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Wethospu.6437:

Problem
The current implementation won’t work with actually hard content. Actually hard content means that the players will struggle to get through and wipe multiple times. With wipes, the run will take way too long without any real reason (maps already break the content to smaller pieces). Also relying on randomness would eventually force people to get lucky rolls to get through (you can’t balance the maps, especially with the instabilities).

snip

I believe that if fractals are to become harder (which I believe is a good idea), there should be a way to save your progress as a team. (Up to the start of a fractal)

That way we can feel happiness and relief after struggling through a seriously hard version of the uncategorized fractal, instead of feeling down because we can’t finish a full run.

Nice idea but what about the implementation?

How would this work on pug teams? Where you aren’t guaranteed to get same team together?

What if someone leaves? Could you invite someone else? Who’s progress would get saved?

Moshari.8570:

Proposal Overview
Improve current Randomness of Fractals
Goal of Proposal
Get Fractals to be more repeatable. I love the random nature of some fractals (dredge end-boss, new Thaumanova reactor), this needs to be increased to increase replayability.
—

BlueDragon.7054:

I also think that the instabilities should be random (for every level, not just the first one and don’t keep it for the other 3, to avoid rerolling) and the gold reward should scale better.
—

As with all “add more random” ideas, these would just make fractals more luck based then skill based. They won’t be able to balance it. For example if the content was really hard people would just roll Swamp until they get Bloomhunger instead of Mossman. Imagine this happening mid-run. You end up with the hardest encounter. Reroll?

Solypsys.1876:

—

• Please for the love of god remove “rolling,” not only is swamp my least favorite fractal but it is now impossible to get any of the other “initial” fractals such as underwater. A couple of the tier 2 fractals can be dropped to tier 1 (aetherblade hideout) and rolling needs to be eliminated

How would you prevent restarting the run? Even if you could, what about people splitting up and having 5 roll attempts? Very likely to get a favorable map.

To be honest, I would appreciate if people focused on how to implement their ideas. It’s easy to have nice ideas like “fix problems, add fun stuff, make people happy” but actually implementations might be much trickier.

Like all the people telling how dredge or rewards have to be fixed. I’m sure they are well aware of that. But what they would (probably) like to hear is how they should be fixed.

Wethospu.6437:

Solypsys.1876:

—

• Please for the love of god remove “rolling,” not only is swamp my least favorite fractal but it is now impossible to get any of the other “initial” fractals such as underwater. A couple of the tier 2 fractals can be dropped to tier 1 (aetherblade hideout) and rolling needs to be eliminated

How would you prevent restarting the run? Even if you could, what about people splitting up and having 5 roll attempts? Very likely to get a favorable map.

To be honest, I would appreciate if people focused on how to implement their ideas. It’s easy to have nice ideas like “fix problems, add fun stuff, make people happy” but actually implementations might be much trickier.

Like all the people telling how dredge or rewards have to be fixed. I’m sure they are well aware of that. But what they would (probably) like to hear is how they should be fixed.

Sound and dazzling as always.
I’d really like to see more thoughts on how to lessen the amount of the so-called “artificial difficulty” (exponentially increased hp, toughness, damage) and introduce more variables into the fight – why the changes from 1+ to 10+ and then nothing all the way up ‘til 50?
Also, would the mere reward increase (oh god, this abysmal drop rate on skins) by itself make the fractals more appetizing for the majority of people?
Do they really deserve to be expanded on as “élite zone”?
Does anet have any intention to do so? Weird if they didn’t, the modular structure of fractals open up so many possibilities I can’t pick only one.

This is not directly about fractals, but very closely related as it concerns the LFG tool:

• Proposal Overview Disable the merge party button in the LFG tool.
• Proposal Goals Stop the griefing of LFGs (using this button on an LFG destroys that party’s progress). People are afraid of creating LFGs because of this issue.
• Proposal Functionality Disable the button so that it does nothing.
• Associated Risks None.

Wethospu.6437:

BlueDragon.7054:

I also think that the instabilities should be random (for every level, not just the first one and don’t keep it for the other 3, to avoid rerolling) and the gold reward should scale better.
—

As with all “add more random” ideas, these would just make fractals more luck based then skill based. They won’t be able to balance it. For example if the content was really hard people would just roll Swamp until they get Bloomhunger instead of Mossman. Imagine this happening mid-run. You end up with the hardest encounter. Reroll?

You are right, good point, but the way it is now, people just keep running the same instability. For example for tier 41-50 almost everyone only runs level 49, something needs to be done to encourage playing the other levels. Many people level up playing the same level.

May be it would be a good idea that the higher the level, the harder the instability will get, and eventually getting multiple instabilities. They would have to rearrange the order of the actual instabilities, and adjust the rewards not only per tier but also per level to avoid that only the lower levels of each tier get played when the instabilities are rearrenged.

So that way you get higher skill, higher rewards and it won´t be luck based. The problem is that the difficulty of some of the instabilities may be subjective and probably it will be hard to balance the difficulty vs rewards.

Rebalancing instabilities should definitely help with the issue. If they are tracking which instability completion they should be able to tweak them relatively easily.

But problem with lethal combinations would still remain. Some instabilities are quite ok on some maps but get on rampage on other maps. I can’t see anyone regularly doing these levels.