Guild Wars 2

Since the expansion it seems that fractals in the higher tiers have lost some of their replay value due to the new single map system. After the initial play through, player will simply run the 3 shortest maps for their dailies, which at the moment are levels 56 (bloomhunger)/ 60 (jade maw)/ 70(jade maw – again), and many of my friends have resorted to this. I’d argue this decreases map diversity and less popular maps such as aquatic or cliffside receive even less replay value than before (Aquatic was almost never run prior to HoT since players could opt for swampland). One of the great things about fractals which I enjoyed since its conception was its diversity of encounters and the new system seems to eliminate that somewhat.

Suggestion: Choose specific levels that players must complete similar to the current system for levels below 50, and it would be randomized each day. A possible daily could be “complete fractal level 65, 76 and 81”. These can be split into separate tabs so that maybe players who can’t complete 81 yet will still be able to run 65, as an example. The reward could be an extra fractal page perhaps or something else.

Although this does cater more to veterans it would bring more replay value to high level maps that aren’t visited as often such as cliffside, which is an extremely well designed map/encounter, but since it takes longer to run than other maps it’s not terribly popular.

Thanks devs for reading,
From an avid Fractaler since 2012

56, 67, 77 (Swamp, Swamp, and more Swamp) would be faster than the Jade Maws (unless your team has terrible DPS).

I agree with your idea for 3 fractals like an addition of a Grandmaster daily tier. 3 random fractals from 51-100 or 76-100.

Also think the lower tiers should have 3 random fractals picked out each day instead of 1 recommended and then two others since people are always going to just do the recommended then two swamps or something.

As it is now, people do 7 Swamps plus the two recommended ones if they’re doing all their fractal dailies.

yup, its swamp, swamp and more swamp :P.. really easy to do dailies.. what has anet done to my game!

very sad now.. will keep an eye on things for the next couple of months, but im already looking at other games now (tera looks promising).. this one has destroyed all the content that i loved doing.

I personally pick the daily fractal and do 2 above/2 below. OR 1 before 1 after.. Saves zoning out over and over and under 50 all the fractals take 10minutes or so anyway.

For the 51+.. my group only beat 100 last night so I’m not sure exactly what we’ll do today but.. :/

I am ok with 3 pre-selected fractals on the condition that they fix scaling and rewards first. Currently there are some fractals I am simply not willing to do with a PuG, not because they are difficult, but because a single fractal can take more time than a full level 50 run pre-HoT for a much lower reward.

Preselecting fractals does not fix the never repeating hard fractals problem by itself. On days when “bad” fractals like snowblind pop up, most people will just skip the dailies that day. In addition assuming rewards are also fixed, it does not give a reason to do higher and harder fractals on any particular day. So, it will be extremely hard for a person to “catch up” if he misses and falls behind his group’s level. This suggestion is fine as a quick fix but it does not fix the core problem of disincentivizing harder fractals.

DrEckers.2039:

Preselecting fractals does not fix the never repeating hard fractals problem by itself. On days when “bad” fractals like snowblind pop up, most people will just skip the dailies that day. In addition assuming rewards are also fixed, it does not give a reason to do higher and harder fractals on any particular day. So, it will be extremely hard for a person to “catch up” if he misses and falls behind his group’s level. This suggestion is fine as a quick fix but it does not fix the core problem of disincentivizing harder fractals.

+1

Unfortunately it seems when designing the new fractals system, they’ve decided to make all rewards easily accessible to the majority of more casual players by allowing them to get all rewards by doing only the easy fractals for the daily. This also limits the rewards Anet can put in dailies, ‘cause you can’t expect amazing rewards for 2 swamps and 1 jade maw.

I was hoping high level fractals would be the 5-man challenging content, but alas.