Guild Wars 2

new one is good. players only need to learn the mechanics. very easy

Zenith.7301:

I love the random guy projecting so he could get on a soapbox.

You can take those pea"qok" (the censors on this site are almost as ridiculous as your antics) feathers somewhere else where someone might care about this posturing.

But players refusing to learn mechanics and not even trying to fix mistakes in their playstyle are the problem.

(I pug fractals a lot, usually as a druid and when I pug I always use magi gear unless the group I join states they want me to do dmg or I get the impression they can do with fewer heals. Main reason for this is that the majority of players play like they expect a magi druid in the first place, taking uneccesary amounts of dmg you can’t outheal otherwise. And I am speaking about CM99+T4 runs mind you)

Shattered Observatory was daily yesterday, let me just give you a rundown on things:

> I was the only person to turn away when Arkk used his fear. Everyone else ate the spike dmg + fear
> Three bombs exploded because the player with the skull didn’t move into the dome, spiking the group
> During solar blossoms phases, I cleared two pillars everytime yet we still got spiked by Arkk because my party members were to busy pushing blossoms into the edges
> Every single CC phase after blossoms failed because one Druid cannot solo break the boss
> three players died near the very end because they didn’t look out for Arkk’s “ball of doom” and killed each other with three stacked fields

Every single one of these mistakes would spell “WIPE” in100cm or make it at least very hard to recover from for the average group. The fact that the party failed every mechanic and still beat Arkk first try tells volumes about the “difficulty” of the fight post patch. If anything, players might just get the impression “get a better healer” rather than deal with the mechanics the proper way.

I did 100, will never bother with it again. There is a fine line between making something challenging and fun. The totally missed out on the latter,

I now did each tier once, no cm, and I must say it is ok how it works now. The difficulty level is now ok with regard to the tier level.

In T3 and T4, I would say Viirasta is more difficult than Arkk. With my guild team, in our first 100, we wiped about 4 times at Viirasta before we got sufficient knowledge of the mechanics to not wipe, while we wiped only once at Arkk, and that was very close.

Would do 100 again, but it’s not really fun.

It’s not my favorite fractal, and will not become my favorite. If it’s daily, I will probably skip fractals altogether and will do other things. It has a mechanics overflow. Feels too scripted. I feel I am being scripted. Nightmare T4, on the other hand, became a welcomed addition to my repertoire.

I like the new fractal and the T4 is nice, punishing poor mechanical play but rewarding it equally.

The challenge mote can go die in the fires of every hell with people who talk at the opera. The overlapping mechanics and how you can have the expanding circle with half the squares gone, an anomaly, while he’s attacking isn’t fun and almost feels like beating it is more down to luck than skill. Nightmare fractal CM is fun because luck plays no part in it, there’s no random spawning of stuff where you might have to kill something where you can’t really get to it or rely on using a special action key to negate a mechanic in a way that seems unintended.

It’s been improved with phases happening at set health levels, that was a great improvement. Another improvement I’d like to see is the enraged symbol not obscuring the sun when he gets enraged. It makes it very difficult to see when he’s doing the attack you can projectile block especially when you have to focus on everything else going on.

Silmar Alech.4305:

I now did each tier once, no cm, and I must say it is ok how it works now. The difficulty level is now ok with regard to the tier level.

In T3 and T4, I would say Viirasta is more difficult than Arkk. With my guild team, in our first 100, we wiped about 4 times at Viirasta before we got sufficient knowledge of the mechanics to not wipe, while we wiped only once at Arkk, and that was very close.

Would do 100 again, but it’s not really fun.

It’s not my favorite fractal, and will not become my favorite. If it’s daily, I will probably skip fractals altogether and will do other things. It has a mechanics overflow. Feels too scripted. I feel I am being scripted. Nightmare T4, on the other hand, became a welcomed addition to my repertoire.

Well of course, because nightmare is rather easy. You’re most likely just accustomed to easier mechanics and don’t like more challenging fractals , obviously.

That is your option and opinion to not like it though but I don’t think that excuse should hold weight in whether a fractal were to be nerfed or dumbed down just because you simply don’t like the fractal and it’s not your style of play.

I see a lot of this on the forums.. People, again, want it to resemble that of farming MC 40 and that is literally just dull and boring. Every fractal up until 100 CM is dull and un-engaging. 100 CM breaks you from that but again, people might not like it because it doesn’t suit their casual playstyle. These will be the people that have spent years since HoT and before that have been doing braindead meta events on a daily basis.

Of course being hit with a 100CM is going to be more frustrating, difficult and there will some people who literally just don’t want to learn the mechanics because they don’t want to because they don’t enjoy it.

I’m not sure this counts as a warranted nerf , however I could make maybe a few suggestions.

1. Better rewards for 100 CM / 100 Regular (they will vary on CM or No CM)

2. Difficulty levels on fractals 99 and above , beginner , medium , hard. 100 CM would essentially be “Extreme” difficulty in this case.

With better rewards, more opportunities at ascended pieces perhaps and materials for more money then it might attract those very people, but again – if people don’t want to do hard PvE in the game they won’t … This is the very reason people shy away from raids in general, they don’t necessarily like it due to the mechanical commitment and difficulty of learning boss mechanics and maximizing DPS output.

Perhaps a difficulty adjuster for 99+ would help remedy that to allow people to do 100.

Of course people would simply just do beginner and not go back so I’m not sure.

I just personally like how difficult and challenging 100 CM is and want to continue to see fractals follow this trend and it seems Anet agrees in this respect as Nightmare was a bit higher in tier vs the previous fractals and 100 is a bit harder than Nightmare.

I do every other T4 fractal, mentioned nightmare only because it was the latest bigger addition. No cm, because these are in fact over the top for me, but I did never complain about them, because they clearly have a different target audience than me. I don’t feel I miss a thing by not playing these. Well, the cat is something I miss, but I can live without this cat.
Plain T4 Observatory, on the other hand, does not quite fit into the line of existing T4 fractals, in my opinion.

It seems to me that Arenanet tries to invent new combat mechanics, here as well as in PoF, and not all of these are entertaining. Some feel invented, artificial, not natural. This route started with the raids, and I think this is the cause why Observatory was criticized as being too much raid-like. Remember, it’s only about defeating/killing some creature after all. Don’t overdo this.

I understand it is important to add more mechanics to get diversity, but please not all of them at once in the same fight (I exaggerate, but I hope it is clear what I mean).

I’ve never been one for fast paced, high octane games. Am I playing an RPG or Dance Mania Turbo Crisis? Theres a reason I don’t play arcade style games, I hate them.

Sooloo.1364:

I’ve never been one for fast paced, high octane games. Am I playing an RPG or Dance Mania Turbo Crisis? Theres a reason I don’t play arcade style games, I hate them.

Unless you’re panicking there’s nothing fast pace about this fractal.

It’s all slow highly telegraphed attacks that give you upwards of 3 seconds to react. Given the average reaction time of someone ages 18-25 is .25ms you have 12 times the that frame to work in.

TexZero.7910:

Sooloo.1364:

I’ve never been one for fast paced, high octane games. Am I playing an RPG or Dance Mania Turbo Crisis? Theres a reason I don’t play arcade style games, I hate them.

Unless you’re panicking there’s nothing fast pace about this fractal.

It’s all slow highly telegraphed attacks that give you upwards of 3 seconds to react. Given the average reaction time of someone ages 18-25 is .25ms you have 12 times the that frame to work in.

And what if he is 50?

Mitch.4781:

TexZero.7910:

Sooloo.1364:

I’ve never been one for fast paced, high octane games. Am I playing an RPG or Dance Mania Turbo Crisis? Theres a reason I don’t play arcade style games, I hate them.

Unless you’re panicking there’s nothing fast pace about this fractal.

It’s all slow highly telegraphed attacks that give you upwards of 3 seconds to react. Given the average reaction time of someone ages 18-25 is .25ms you have 12 times the that frame to work in.

And what if he is 50?

I’ll let you know when i’m 50 if i’m 12 times slower than i was at 18-25. I sincerely doubt it unless something drastic happens though.

Either that or some research journal might have the numbers….Im just to lazy to search for it.

Overall I liked Shattered Observatory a lot although I do think Nightmare is still a little better (though it’s much better than Chaos). CM mode is pretty crazy to learn, but after your first kill it seems to get much more manageable, in particular making it so you can control the solar flare phases via health percent improved the ability to control how the boss will act by a lot.

The main complaints I have are…

1. The “platform” phases for the 1st boss are complete filler and shouldn’t exist. This only acts to elongate the boss fight for no real reason much like the filler section in swamp. Just make it so the boss does the targeted rush attack every 33%.

2. The Enrage picture overlaps with the Eye making it a lot harder to see.

3. Shattered Observatory CM could use slightly better rewards since it is harder than Nightmare CM which in addition to the same amount of integrated matrices gives the toxic spores needed for toxic focusing crystals. I guess the celestial infusion is meant to be the main way to make money, but it would be nice to get a consistent secondary reward after each run (maybe gives you 1-2 food slot items of your choice similar to the raid CM chests).

TexZero.7910:

Given the average reaction time of someone ages 18-25 is .25ms you have 12 times the that frame to work in.

well, yeah…
http://www.censusatschool.ca/data-results/2007-08/average-reaction-time/
http://www.censusatschool.ca/data-results/2015-2016/average-reaction-time/

it’s around twice that actually…

That’s an average reaction time, by the way. Outliers can sometimes be off by over 50% in either side.
And it starts dropping somewhere after 25 yrs, at the average rate of around 1% per year. If you weren’t that good at start, by the year 50 you can run into near second of reaction time.

(the web-based tests show usually around .28-30, because people with bad reaction times don’t usually try them at all, this is a known bias)

Also, that is just a reaction time to an easily recognizable stimuli. If you have to react to something that’s harder to immediately recognize (which is often a higly personal factor), it may add a lot of extra time on top of that.

You may think that all the tells are easily recognizable, but it won’t be equally true for everyone.In fact, seeing some responses in that thread, it already isn’t true for all the posters.

The discussion about reaction time is bs. Although 3 seconds time to react is a bit exaggerated by TexZero because it’s way less I don’t see the problem here.

CM is “Challenge Mode”. It’s obviously the hardest existing fractal content and therefore it should require a little bit of effort and skill.

Even yesterday I had some “interesting” pug experience again, staff necro at Cliffside with <500 dps during the final boss fight – 0 tankiness + 0 blood magic support.
As long as such players can be carried through on of the level 90 fractals a challenge mode is strongly needed above those levels. It was a pain in the xxx to see such a bad player with no idea but still be able to get high quality loot/gold.
So, if CM is not possible for you, leave it out. T4s give enough daily reward.

Vinceman.4572:

…
Even yesterday I had some “interesting” pug experience again, staff necro at Cliffside with <500 dps during the final boss fight – 0 tankiness + 0 blood magic support.

I’ve seen my fair share of players like this with “Arch-Designer” or “Left No Hero Behind” enabled.

So at least a few guilds are cashing in on the new CM. ¯\(?)/¯

Grogba.6204:

Vinceman.4572:

…
Even yesterday I had some “interesting” pug experience again, staff necro at Cliffside with <500 dps during the final boss fight – 0 tankiness + 0 blood magic support.

I’ve seen my fair share of players like this with “Arch-Designer” or “Left No Hero Behind” enabled.

So at least a few guilds are cashing in on the new CM. ¯\(?)/¯

Yeah, of course if there are seller there are buyer and the other way round.
But this has been present since years in GW2. I’m not against it. I’m against a nerf regarding challenging content because it’s absolutely not necessary to serve challenge modes to the casual crowd.

Astralporing.1957:

That’s an average reaction time, by the way. Outliers can sometimes be off by over 50% in either side.
And it starts dropping somewhere after 25 yrs, at the average rate of around 1% per year. If you weren’t that good at start, by the year 50 you can run into near second of reaction time.

(the web-based tests show usually around .28-30, because people with bad reaction times don’t usually try them at all, this is a known bias)

My dislike is not caused by reaction time. Actually, my best reaction time according to https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime is 248 ms.

It’s more about having to react to too many different things at the same time, and if you fail one of these things, you fail all.

And that the combat is scripted in a way that you have a very narrow path you have to follow to not fail. There is a predetermined master solution in the script for how this boss has to be defeated, and if you do it slightly different, you fail. And if you do use the master solution, you will succeed effortlessly. The challenge is not the boss, the challenge presented to you is to reverse-engineer the master solution that’s coded into the script.
The script and its predetermined path is so narrow, you could probably write a bot for each of these boss encounters. There is no randomness, no variation in combat tactics, it’s simply do the scripted or fail.

I did all my related achievements at level 25. #NoShameWithThat

Important to mention that with the fixed bugs 100cm is rapidly getting into farm mode just like Nightmare cm is now.

I could definitely tell how easier it became since the bugs were fixed. If people are a bit bolder and just do it frequently (even if it seems painful) it won’t be hard anymore. Pugging it was almost a “nightmare” when it first came out but now it’s puggable on a daily basis. Also a lot of skipping mechanics is already happening, a lot of groups either use a tempest or guard for reflecting red orbs (most groups wipe from that) with aftershock and focus 4 skill or take a necro for the debufg and epi while the chrono either distorts or blocks the reds with precognition (it will always be off cd with decent alacrity). The only dangerous mechanic of Arkk is eye but u never get hit by that unless u arent paying attention so that’s a l2p issue and not a difficult mechanic.

Im sure as time goes on 100cm fractal will be trivialized like everything else.

Why would they nerf anything other than the core tier fractals? I can understand t4 being kinda hard for the general playerbase but cm’s arent targeted at these ppl.

zoomborg.9462:

Important to mention that with the fixed bugs 100cm is rapidly getting into farm mode just like Nightmare cm is now.

I could definitely tell how easier it became since the bugs were fixed. If people are a bit bolder and just do it frequently (even if it seems painful) it won’t be hard anymore. Pugging it was almost a “nightmare” when it first came out but now it’s puggable on a daily basis. Also a lot of skipping mechanics is already happening, a lot of groups either use a tempest or guard for reflecting red orbs (most groups wipe from that) with aftershock and focus 4 skill or take a necro for the debufg and epi while the chrono either distorts or blocks the reds with precognition (it will always be off cd with decent alacrity). The only dangerous mechanic of Arkk is eye but u never get hit by that unless u arent paying attention so that’s a l2p issue and not a difficult mechanic.

Im sure as time goes on 100cm fractal will be trivialized like everything else.

How did the bug fixes make it easier?

How did they make it easier? Well basically mechanics dont overlap as much anymore. B4 the bug fixes it was total chaos.The orbs in split phase dont get stuck either so wiping there is very unlikely. U can more or less expect what mechanic comes next. And with the change to Arkk’kittenbox the overall dps of the group has gone up massively which makes things easier.

zoomborg.9462:

How did they make it easier? Well basically mechanics dont overlap as much anymore. B4 the bug fixes it was total chaos.The orbs in split phase dont get stuck either so wiping there is very unlikely. U can more or less expect what mechanic comes next. And with the change to Arkk’kittenbox the overall dps of the group has gone up massively which makes things easier.

I wouldnt count the orbs gettig stuck as something that made the encounter harder but ye. On the other hand the panel phase starts always from 40% so it got harder in some regards. As for the overlaping part idk.

zealex.9410:

zoomborg.9462:

How did they make it easier? Well basically mechanics dont overlap as much anymore. B4 the bug fixes it was total chaos.The orbs in split phase dont get stuck either so wiping there is very unlikely. U can more or less expect what mechanic comes next. And with the change to Arkk’kittenbox the overall dps of the group has gone up massively which makes things easier.

I wouldnt count the orbs gettig stuck as something that made the encounter harder but ye. On the other hand the panel phase starts always from 40% so it got harder in some regards. As for the overlaping part idk.

One thing that i clearly remember was eye mechanic happening 2 times in succession, mb once in the whole fight but completely destroyed the group. Update: even though it is rare, orbs can still get stuck behind destroyed pillars in case u are dragging 2 of them.

This is why we can’t have nice stuff. Players complaining about overlapping mechanics being unfair is laughable. Anet designed some fun boss fights, and the only thing some of you can do is complain and tear it down. It’s disgraceful. Report real problems. If you don’t like it, participate in a T1 fractal 100. Stop kittening because you can’t complete a T4 for all the loot. Typical MMO community: wants kitten for no effort.

TexZero.7910:

Sooloo.1364:

I’ve never been one for fast paced, high octane games. Am I playing an RPG or Dance Mania Turbo Crisis? Theres a reason I don’t play arcade style games, I hate them.

Unless you’re panicking there’s nothing fast pace about this fractal.

It’s all slow highly telegraphed attacks that give you upwards of 3 seconds to react. Given the average reaction time of someone ages 18-25 is .25ms you have 12 times the that frame to work in.

I swear there’s been something off about telegraphs, or maybe it’s just me. Slow attacks always look like they trigger a half second before they’re supposed to.

Makai.3429:

TexZero.7910:

Sooloo.1364:

I’ve never been one for fast paced, high octane games. Am I playing an RPG or Dance Mania Turbo Crisis? Theres a reason I don’t play arcade style games, I hate them.

Unless you’re panicking there’s nothing fast pace about this fractal.

It’s all slow highly telegraphed attacks that give you upwards of 3 seconds to react. Given the average reaction time of someone ages 18-25 is .25ms you have 12 times the that frame to work in.

I swear there’s been something off about telegraphs, or maybe it’s just me. Slow attacks always look like they trigger a half second before they’re supposed to.

Psyching yourself out does that.

The challenge mode is quite a bit easier now. With Arkk only doing the tower attack on set intervals, and with the anomaly no longer spawning in thin air, success has gone from “crapshoot” to “realistic expectation”.

Want to add my voice to this thread after trying this fractal for the first time.

Context:
1) 1 month after release of the fractal
2) Tier 1 daily, level 25
3) Sunday morning, pugging (probably the worst time to pub, but oh well)
4) My first attempt
5) Party of 5 experienced fractal puggers
6) I have all the fractal goodies … legendary back, ascended omnipotion, etc. I do fractals a lot.

Party wiped twice on the final boss and split up. The mechanics of the final boss fight are horrible considering the context given above. This fight is over-tuned.

Later, I check the LFG tool to try and get it finished and the only level 25 groups were “experienced people only”. Easily 3-4 such groups out of 10 posts in the T1 fractal LFG tool at the time. Sure this is toxic behaviour in the community, that nobody will condone, but the fractal designers have brought this on the community by designing content that is too difficult for the average fractal runner. This was not tier 4, level 100 or 100 challenge mode. This was level 25, T1, done by experienced fractal pugs.

This kind of disconnect between the content designers and the player base is not helpful on the verge of an expansion release.

Please remember that only a very small portion of the player base have fighter-pilot reflexes and that the majority of us are human beings with illness, weaknesses, disabilities, and all sorts of other problems (including computer problems).

I’ve finished 100CM about 6 times so far.
Assuming you get people who know all mechanics and know how to play their class properly, at this point, it’s faceroll.

Unfortunately, you have to become semi-elitists and ask for title to get people like this.

100CM is nearly perfect at this point, and should be left as it is.
As for normal mode, if people can’t do it, then it should be adjusted.

Nick.6972:

I’ve finished 100CM about 6 times so far.
Assuming you get people who know all mechanics and know how to play their class properly, at this point, it’s faceroll.

Unfortunately, you have to become semi-elitists and ask for title to get people like this.

100CM is nearly perfect at this point, and should be left as it is.
As for normal mode, if people can’t do it, then it should be adjusted.

I have to respectfully disagree.

If people still cannot do normal mode then they need to improve, otherwise the gap between normal and CM is too vast for any players to feel realistic improvement.

Right now normal is a joke once you learn the mechanics, problem is the current people in fractals are ostrich’s when it comes to adamantly refusing to learning/doing mechanics.

I’ve yet to clear 100 despite multiple attempts.

From the thread it seems like everyone will tell me just ‘u sux git gud’ but the problem I see here is that one guy making a bad move can wipe the entire party, especially at the second boss. I’ve always had someone who didn’t jump into the dome when he had a skull, or who said he’ll bounce the ball but didn’t, or didn’t dodge the huge AOE, not using special action so on and after that it is basically impossible to make a comeback. And the fights are really long, which really wears people out and make them just give up after few wipes.

I’d call that a really bad design for a pug fractal, and I hope Anet never do thing like that again.

nedlee.5943:

I’ve yet to clear 100 despite multiple attempts.

From the thread it seems like everyone will tell me just ‘u sux git gud’ but the problem I see here is that one guy making a bad move can wipe the entire party, especially at the second boss. I’ve always had someone who didn’t jump into the dome when he had a skull, or who said he’ll bounce the ball but didn’t, or didn’t dodge the huge AOE, not using special action so on and after that it is basically impossible to make a comeback. And the fights are really long, which really wears people out and make them just give up after few wipes.

I’d call that a really bad design for a pug fractal, and I hope Anet never do thing like that again.

1. After first wipe to skull bomb tell them what to do in this scenario
2. Do the bouncing ball by yourself – one is enough to do it
3. If players don’t dodge the AoE and die over and over again, stop rezzing them and finish with 4 or less players. 100 is very easy doable, you don’t need 5 players alive.

Vinceman.4572:

1. After first wipe to skull bomb tell them what to do in this scenario
2. Do the bouncing ball by yourself – one is enough to do it
3. If players don’t dodge the AoE and die over and over again, stop rezzing them and finish with 4 or less players. 100 is very easy doable, you don’t need 5 players alive.

I’ve always asked if they knew what to do yet always someone managed to fail somewhere so far. Hell I’ve seen someone starting the fight when I was still explaining, twice. Bouncing ball phase is another problem since despite explanations sometimes everyone flock to the ball and kill others with social awkwardness or just fail to kill adds.

People may find it easy when you run with good players (everything is), but so far I haven’t met any group like that. You might say that I’ve been just unlucky, or in reality I am just a bad player and blaming others, however, what I can say is that it’s very different from my other fractal experiences, and not in a good way.

It’s funny that all the people asking for easy mode raid for the past year, are all here saying the fractal hard mode is too hard? Or all the people who were asking for 5 man raid because, what was hard was getting 10 people, not the raid itself?

Well here we are, with the same people saying the hard mode is too hard and that they don’t want fractals to be 5 man raids. If it’s too hard, do lower tiers, easy.

This is why I’m glad to see anet stick to their guns.

Trice.4598:

It’s funny that all the people asking for easy mode raid for the past year, are all here saying the fractal hard mode is too hard? Or all the people who were asking for 5 man raid because, what was hard was getting 10 people, not the raid itself?

Well here we are, with the same people saying the hard mode is too hard and that they don’t want fractals to be 5 man raids. If it’s too hard, do lower tiers, easy.

This is why I’m glad to see anet stick to their guns.

These arguments get bandied about all the time. Are you sure they’re the exact same posters? Got some quotes?

Makai.3429:

Trice.4598:

It’s funny that all the people asking for easy mode raid for the past year, are all here saying the fractal hard mode is too hard? Or all the people who were asking for 5 man raid because, what was hard was getting 10 people, not the raid itself?

Well here we are, with the same people saying the hard mode is too hard and that they don’t want fractals to be 5 man raids. If it’s too hard, do lower tiers, easy.

This is why I’m glad to see anet stick to their guns.

These arguments get bandied about all the time. Are you sure they’re the exact same posters? Got some quotes?

He is right. Some of them are here for real! I won’t name them because it could be seen as namecalling and people reporting for that. But you just have to give a look around and check some posters and browsing through their message history here in this subforum.

TexZero.7910:

Nick.6972:

I’ve finished 100CM about 6 times so far.
Assuming you get people who know all mechanics and know how to play their class properly, at this point, it’s faceroll.

Unfortunately, you have to become semi-elitists and ask for title to get people like this.

100CM is nearly perfect at this point, and should be left as it is.
As for normal mode, if people can’t do it, then it should be adjusted.

I have to respectfully disagree.

If people still cannot do normal mode then they need to improve, otherwise the gap between normal and CM is too vast for any players to feel realistic improvement.

Right now normal is a joke once you learn the mechanics, problem is the current people in fractals are ostrich’s when it comes to adamantly refusing to learning/doing mechanics.

I tend to agree with Tex. Haven’t done HM yet, so I can’t judge the difficulty gap, but 100 normal is more or less fine if you adjust for it. It’s just the “one guy stupid, whole group takes massive damage” mechanics that I still don’t like.

I wasn’t a fan trying level 25 for the first time. Felt too long and bloated in terms of mechanics. Fractals were meant to be short bursts of instances, this did not achieve that and felt like it had mechanics for the sake of mechanics rather than having ones that fitted the fight (bouncing balls..???). Instead the mechanics bogged the fights down and made them frustrating (the pylons).

There was no real story progression to each fight. You could take out a boss fight and it wouldn’t matter at all. They each felt like they could belong to their own fractal and had no relation to each other. The post-Arkk boss story was interesting. Wasn’t really understanding half of it mind you, but that was likely me not paying enough attention.

The action button was an unnecessary extra to the fractal as well – it added nothing, given they added separate jumping mechanics already. I saw the dev comment early on, but the action button should be used where its relevant (Snowblind is a good use for example) not used just because it is there.

On the plus side, it looked gorgeous as a fractal – one of the finest looking ones. The only issue here was that in the first fight, the orange boss ground attacks were lost in the gold flooring. We need better contrast for floor Vs Aoe attacks. Otherwise, great job on the visuals.

Of the 3 newer ones, Nightmare is the best fit as a fractal. Short, good learning curve, sensible and relevant mechanics and visits an interesting snapshot from the Mists. – it ticks the boxes for what the design philosophy behind fractals wkittentered Observatory for me misses the mark on too many levels. I hope to see a return to the classic fractal formula next time.

Change or remove Viraastra, keep the first boss and Arkk as they are, that’s all I have to say after doing consistently 100 CM for the past weeks, dealing with trash mobs spawning (and who does like 6k damage per hit) AOEs + the boss spawning AOEs aswell resulting in AOE stacking is bad.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who wants easy fractals. I’m not very good at the game, and I won’t ever pretend to be. But I like group content, and these new fractals just kick my behind all the time. It’s stopped being fun, and there’s no other group content for me that’s as visually impressive and storied as this.

I like the whole feel of the fractal, far out design, fighting mechanics.
However, in my opinion, is just too long.

New fractal is very cool, the long-term rewards (Cosmic Infusion) are cool – they’re worth like 2k gold atm?

It is true, though, it is hell of a pain to pug. Only yesterday have I spent 3 hours on wiping on 100 CM Arkk because people do not know mechanics or cannot execute their movement in a proper way (they all had the title) – try to imagine how infuriated I was, considering I first killed him 2 days after release date.

I’ve had like 15 different people joining the team throughout the 3 hours and someone always messed up. While I agree the content should be and in fact is challenging, the whole idea with one person’s mistake = party wipe is a little bit too much.

I actually do not feel like going into this fractal again, at least not before people put their kitten together. Title in case of this Fractal means nothing, seems like people have bought it or smth.

Oh, and I’ll just add – I pug all the content. Perhaps if I had a raiding PvE guild things would have been different.

I quite like the new one. Was actually a bit of a challenge to figure out the CM for the first time. All though, they certainly reused a lot of raid mechanics.
In any case, it is just a matter of practice and experience again. We are already at the point where you can get competent pugs if you care to look for them. Let alone those on your friend list if you know a lot of raiders and frequent Fractal runners.

Don’t really see where all of the hate is coming from. There are still plenty of easy Fractals out there if this one isn’t for you.

Trice.4598:

It’s funny that all the people asking for easy mode raid for the past year, are all here saying the fractal hard mode is too hard?

Why is it funny? Do you really think it’s surprising that people that weren’t okay with difficulty level of raids would also speak of fractals when the same difficulty level was brought there as well? I’d say that this is quite consistent.

Trice.4598:

Or all the people who were asking for 5 man raid because, what was hard was getting 10 people, not the raid itself?

I don’t think many people were asking for 5-mans at all (i wasn’t). I don’t think i have seen even one in this thread.
And yes, getting the 10 people is still the most difficult part of the raid. Many of the raid encounters mechanic-wise, individually are way easier than fractal level 100 – it’s just that there are 10 potential points of failure, not 5.

Trice.4598:

Well here we are, with the same people saying the hard mode is too hard and that they don’t want fractals to be 5 man raids. If it’s too hard, do lower tiers, easy.

Previous time it was “if it’s too hard, do the fractals”. Now it’s “if it’s too hard, do the lower tiers”. What’s next, “if it’s too hard, do the open word”? “If it’s to hard, quit the game”? Because, you know, the difficulty creep is expanding to other, non-raid content as well. I’d rather not see this happen.

Bandrell.4357:

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who wants easy fractals. I’m not very good at the game, and I won’t ever pretend to be. But I like group content, and these new fractals just kick my behind all the time. It’s stopped being fun, and there’s no other group content for me that’s as visually impressive and storied as this.

Naw, you aren’t. Not by a long shot. This forum generally doesn’t welcome such views, and many other like-minded players opt not to speak up and face ridicule, or may simply have lost interest in the game.

Bandrell.4357:

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who wants easy fractals. I’m not very good at the game, and I won’t ever pretend to be. But I like group content, and these new fractals just kick my behind all the time. It’s stopped being fun, and there’s no other group content for me that’s as visually impressive and storied as this.

I like them too. I have no issue with hard fractals or perhaps more complex fractals is the better phrasing, but they belong further up the tiering. Shattered Observatory is not aimed at players like us in its current form for tier 1.

I want them to return to the idea of “lunchtime” dungeons, at least for the early tier. That is what made fractals appealing. Proto-raid mechanics have their place in fractals, but at the higher end where players expect and soak up the challenge.

Normal mode should be doable by anyone without much difficulties.
Challenge mode should requite good knowledge of mechanics and team play.

I’ve yet to play NM of Shattered Observatory, but after my first successful run of 100CM 2 weeks ago, I’ve been doing 100CM just about every day since without any problems.

NikeEU.7690:

Jahroots.6791:

NikeEU.7690:

The fact that fractals has tiered difficulty with progressive rewards and people don’t use them but rather QQ about the top tier being too hard says a lot about what easy mode raids would look like.

The issue is that Tier 4 of fractals used to be much easier. Players invested in ascended gear and infusions with reasonable expectations to be able to continue playing the content at that level of difficulty.

I believe the bottom line for most of issues low and middling skilled players have with instanced PvE group content is risk vs reward.

We got too used to low risk (risk being defined as chance of raging teammates, party wipes and absolute failure to complete the instance) and high reward (gold, tokens and drops) activity. Now that the overall design seems to be shifting towards high risk and low-moderate rewards, some people are displeased. This is natural.

If you took a bit more of an objective view of these matters, I’m certain you can understand that although you’ve gained the sort of instanced content you enjoy others have not.

If you were more objective you’d see thefe is a simple solution: go down a tier and practice until you’re ready for tier 4.

Saying you got used to easy mode tier 4 and now it’s not face roll and you deserve face roll is just entitlement. Also level 100 non cm is pretty easy you just have to have some pracTice with the mechanics. Instead of complaining on forums try to use your time to productively increase your play experience.

I’m going to have to disagree with you here. The “entitlement” you speak of was conditioned via the game. Since is was so, it no longer puts the condition on the subject and as such can not be used as an invalid basis of motivation.

Example: You have ppl run a mile and you give then $10, 2 miles $20, 3-$30 etc… You then have them run 10 miles but give them $5. They will most like speak out about being short changed if you will. *note “you” is not intended to mean you personally

This is a conditioned response which is totally normal of the human psyche Ofc they are entitled, b/c you’ve made them that way. Seeing such, using “entitlement” as a negative descriptive in these type of cases seems odd.

If you run this fractal with pugs, just make sure you have a competent magi druid.

Ran it with a magi druid, engineer, and condi support tempest.

I was the condi revenant, and frankly nothing mattered because even as I dodged skills, the others who didn’t were pretty much kept up through the raw healing of the druid plus supplemental heals from the ele and the healing turret from the engineer.

You have to do some colossal screw up like missing bombs/beach balls/eating Ark’s summoned balls to really die.

This fractal has immense amounts of chip damage. Remove the chip damage with constant healing, and it’s easy.

This was not a fractal made for most pugs to run with their random comps. You really do need a healer if running with randoms.

Having at least a necro for epi on the second boss’s add management duty is also invaluable.

If you just run 5 glass builds on a pug with no support build to sustain you through the definitely longer fights, you’re going to have a bad time.