Guild Wars 2

I don’t think we have enough topics about fractals yet /s. So here is one more where I have tried to catch all the possible information.

Note: There are some speculation. They are marked like this.

Progression

• Completing a fractal run requires only one map instead of 3 normal and 1 boss maps.
• Each scale is connected to a specific map. Whenever you play that scale you will always face the same map and the same instabilities.
• Amount of scales increased to 100.
• Personal fractal level increases by doing a higher scale.
• Fractal levels won’t be reseted.
• Fractal leaderboards (details unknown).
• Fractal masteries gives access to additional dailies, new infusions, and instance-specific buff items or challenge modes

Difficulty

• End scales are supposed to me much harder then what we currently have.
• After scale 50, other enemy stats like precision and toughness increases.
• New and more interesting instabilities.
• Higher levels have multiple instabilities at the same time.
• End scales probably need more Agony Resist.
• New challenging achievements. Old achievements will remain.

Daily rewards

• Daily fractal bonus chests replaced with daily achievements.
• Scales 1-20, 21-50 and 51-100 have their own achievement.
• You need to do 3 different maps to complete the achievement. Total of 9 different maps to complete all achievements.
• Reward: A pristine fractal relic and chance at the fractal weapon skins, ascended equipment, infused rings, and more.
• New daily scale achievement. Probably included in the current daily achievement.

Fractal drops

• Every fractal gives a lock box called fractal encryption, which can be traded. A fractal encryption key is required to open it.
• Fractal encryption keys can be bought with stabilizing matrices.
• Opening a fractal encryption randomly gives a Mini Professor Mew, new ascended aquatic-breather recipes, high-level crafting materials or something else.
• Harder and longer fractals give more rewards.
• New randomly dropped fractal crafting materials.

Other rewards

• Cat golem miniatures: Evolve Mini Professor Mew with an ingredient found in fractals.
• Fractal weapon skins: A skin of your choice can be bought with pristine fractal relics, after you have reached scale 51. Probably 20 required.
• Golden fractal weapon skins: Can be acquired only from high levels (51+ or even more). Can be transformed to another golden weapon of your choice in Mystic Force.
• Fractal skin collection: New reward added.
• Legendary backpack: Start with a simple backpack and improve it (probably uses current Fractal backpacks). Do challenges, timed bosses and complete collections. Needs stuff from Fractals and other places. Needs balls of dark energy and stabilizing matrices.
• Salvaging ascended equipment: Needs a specific Ascended Salvage Kit. Can be acquired from the fractal vendors and other sources. Different result based on equipment type. All have a chance for a ball of dark energy.
• Salvaging ascended rings: Gives stabilizing matrices.
• New consumable: Stacks with other consumables. May not work outside fractals.
• Titles: Probably one for reaching scale 50 prepatch.

Sources:

• https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-brand-new-fractals-of-the-mists-legendary-backpacks-ascended-salvaging-and-more/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/Anet_Goremond
• https://www.reddit.com/user/mikezadorojny
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/33cu1u/spoilers_unannounced_release/
• http://ca.ign.com/articles/2015/08/06/gamescom-2015-guild-wars-2s-mastery-system-takes-you-from-canopies-to-crafting

My explanations and opinions:

Progression

The biggest improvement is increased accessibility. With reduced run times and map selection, it’s much easier to play fractals casually. While accessibility doesn’t matter much for the veterans, it will help us in the long term because more people play the content, more likely they update it.

The map selection is a big improvement for the hardcore community. Record running got much easier which means we will probably have a fractal tournament at some point. Also making guides and practicing is easier.

The progression is bit questionable. You can progress by doing the same scale over and over. Unless they do a good job with instability balancing, some scales will be much easier than others. People will find these easy scales and repeat them over and over for progression, especially if there are any exploits. While levels 90+ will probably be really hard, some of them will be easier than the others.

The daily achievement system discourages doing same maps over and over but we will see whether this has any meaningful effect. I expect that there will be several easy scales which people can run for both progression and daily. One way to fix this is to track which scales you have completed so only completing new scales would increase your personal scale.

Difficulty

The biggest improvement is the increased instability difficulty. This forces people to adapt and think instead of repeating same tactics over and over. It’s also good that they reduced the progression grind (100 new runs / 4 = 25 old runs).

I think scaling toughness, precision and other stats is a mistake. Increased toughness only means that people have to grind/get ascended condition gear. Yes, the meta will change but it will be as exclusive as the berserker meta. The precision change means that enemies will randomly deal +50% damage, even more if the ferocity is touched. When enemies already deal a very high damage, the randomness decides whether you live or die when you get hit. Yes, this makes weakness better but it only reduces the probability.

Daily rewards

I don’t really like how these work. This basically means people will find the 3 easiest scales with different maps on 50+ and run them every day for the achievement. I think the daily achievement should force specific maps or scales.

I think it is possible this will make more people play fractals….at least in the short term. I think the long term effect will be that casuals will be even less likely to play fractals post fotm 50. I’m of the opinion that casuals really don’t want a challenge…that’s pretty much why they generally wear the most “safe” gear choices possible (nomad, clerics, soldiers, etc) and want to range attack everything. The addition of scaling hp, toughness, and precision to fractal mobs post level 50, is not going to work out like they think. ANET doesn’t really learn from the past…they apparently don’t remember the nerf cries from casuals about fractal difficulties that caused them to nerf several fractals. Do they really think making them harder is going to somehow not end up with the same nerf cries? Nerfs cries in this game…as far as pve goes…don’t generally come from hard core players…they come from casuals. When nomads start getting one-shot and two-shot by random crits from 50+ fractal mobs….

Don’t get me wrong, I like harder…just depends on how they implement harder. Different mechanics are generally good…what’s not good is this current and pretty obvious focus on trying to make zerk not be viable for end game fractals. This hp, toughness, and precision scaling is going to bite them in a bad place. Casuals thought it was taking them a long time to clear fractals before…lets see how well they do 50+ now in their nomad gear versus this toughness and hp scaling. The same nomads that were getting downed pre-precision scaling mobs will still get downed now with the increased crit rate of these mobs. I can see these changes being good for condi builds…actually gives them some usefullness in fractals, but I’m not going to redo all of my ascended gear just for a poorly thought out forum balancing issue….just to try and make casuals feel better about fractals….especially when I think this will be a failure anyway. What was really the point of this anyway….a forced switch to condi gear as the new meta? There is no change in this game design that will not have a meta of some specific gear set. Something is always going to be best.

Then there’s the issue of reflects. So what was the point of this change? If you don’t want players to reflect projectiles…why are these skills in the game? Replace them with something you don’t mind us using instead of making current skills useless or inconsistent. That’s just bad game design to make skills not work correctly consistently. You talk about wanting the newbies to learn the game easier…making skills sometimes not work properly does not accomplish that. I know where this idea came from though…I’ve seen it on the forums where players were crying about being kicked for not using reflects appropriately. I’ve seen it where they were crying about reflects trivializing encounters. I’ve seen it where they were crying about reflects scaling off of offensive stats but not defensive ones. I guess we can chalk this up to ye olde forum balancing as well.

I think you are overestimating the difficulty.
I think 90+ might be harder, but 50 will probably be easier.
They arent going to expect someone who did 50 fractals to be able to do the current level 50 type stuff.

They said repeatedly they want to make it easier, this suggests the first 10-12 levels is going to be even easier than what we have now. This pushes back tne difficulty scale.
You probably wont hit the current level 50 difficulty til 70ish.

Overall the implementation will probably be similar to a hidden fractal reset.

I am sad about the static fractal shards i liked the randomness of what i was getting. Now it will just be a swamp somewhere between 1-20 a swamp somewhere between 20-50 and then a swamp after 50. And maybe that rotating achievement if the reward is even worth it.

Therodin.2970:

I am sad about the static fractal shards i liked the randomness of what i was getting. Now it will just be a swamp somewhere between 1-20 a swamp somewhere between 20-50 and then a swamp after 50. And maybe that rotating achievement if the reward is even worth it.

If current boss fractals are also added to the list of choices, than the molten duo would probably be faster even than the swamp.

Concerning the daily changes from fractal end reward to daily achieves does this mean you can do multiple fractals from a range i.e. 50’s 40’s 30’s etc and still get a reward for all of them? Love this change if so

I don’t know how I feel about the loss of randomness to fotm. On one hand we may get to see tournys and I can get some practice with Mai Trin but we also lose part of the joy in fractals. Personally if fractals is going to just be farming the same map over and over again I will hate it. Fractals random 3 maps (and then 4 when they added the bosses) was part of why I liked it. You didn’t know what maps you were going to get and that was fun.

Well anyway hopefully anet will rebalance some maps (snowblind cough cough) so they are a little bit more fair for pugs who aren’t experienced with being knocked back 15 times in a row. Maybe well see the underwater fractal played more, cuz it’s pretty easy and fun. I’m not looking forward to scaling toughness and precision to a lass ele neither on of those look fun to deal with, I already have to deal with rng skelk one shots in swamp… on the rest of the maps? errr no thank you. As far as toughness goes though you just make things slower, like adding more hp, but if you do it too much you make people have to buy a completely different gear set, which is annoying.

Therodin.2970:

I am sad about the static fractal shards i liked the randomness of what i was getting. Now it will just be a swamp somewhere between 1-20 a swamp somewhere between 20-50 and then a swamp after 50. And maybe that rotating achievement if the reward is even worth it.

This is exactly what’s going to happen when the new changes take effect. People will figure out what the quickest and easiest fractal is within each tier, and those are going to be the only ones people will want to do. It’s going to be so lame…

Seem to me they are turning Fractals into ezmode daily grind for rewards and legendary mats locked away behind coxbox bonanza RNG overload.

And weapon recoloring so simple and ugly done they make other golden skins like Crimson Lion, that are among the cheapest BLTC for a reason, look like masterwork pieces.

femalehumanmeta.8351:

Therodin.2970:

I am sad about the static fractal shards i liked the randomness of what i was getting. Now it will just be a swamp somewhere between 1-20 a swamp somewhere between 20-50 and then a swamp after 50. And maybe that rotating achievement if the reward is even worth it.

This is exactly what’s going to happen when the new changes take effect. People will figure out what the quickest and easiest fractal is within each tier, and those are going to be the only ones people will want to do. It’s going to be so lame…

So what, we’re already rolling for swamp all the time. I haven’t done underwater in ages.

It’s also good people have some semblance of choice. I simply detest Dredge and Mai Trin. Dredge as mobs are an example of “toughness” gone wrong.

Dredge are just obnoxious, a single immediate hand swipe that dazes you for 3 seconds and takes off half your health is not my idea of fun.

I’m also not fond of the precision change. This will just make blind stacking even more of a necessity, solidifying the dominance of guardians, thieves, and elementalists.

Giving mobs more hp and more damage is just a lazy way to substitute for difficulty. People should be executing mechanics and multiple tasks simultaneously with some sort of coordination. That should be where difficulty comes in. Think Priestess of Dwayna, but better.

Making it so “Stack as much burst and aegis/blind so these things die before their 2 autoattacks down you” is not a fun mechanic. Ascalon fractal mob damage is already dumb enough, the big damage from mobs should not be coming from inflated autoattacks.

I agree as well with the increased toughness crap. I am NOT looking forward to grinding Sinister ascended sets. Can they erase agony as a mechanic already? Just have infusions give extra stats like magic find/vitality as some added but optional bonus.

I really don’t want to spend around 400 gold just to have a new meta set to do my content with on a single class. Moreover, stats like sinister on ascended aren’t even available via crafting, you have to grab them off some dumb living story achievements people may not want to do.