Guild Wars 2

The purpose of this thread is to suggest improvements to the Fractals by tweaking the reward system and fixing some of the bugs on certain Fractals.

My assumptions are that the fractals are too inconsistent from both a difficulty and time completion standpoint and the rewards for the amount of time it takes to complete a fractal are grossly insufficient given the difficulty and time requirements of a full fractal run vs other PvE content.

And, yes, these are just my opinions:

1. Make Fractal Reward Levels Account Bound: The only reason I can see for the individual level rewards is the daily chest. In order to compensate for limiting a player to 1x daily chest per day, the daily rewards need to be improved and scale with the level of fractal you complete for your daily. Aside from that, opening the fractals up to account level makes team composition and subs much more viable.

My rewards proposal (again, just an opinion) can be seen in the attached picture, and I’m sure some of the percentages would need to be adjusted.

2. Remove Fractal Weapons… Add Fractal Weapon Boxes: “Oh sweet! My first fractal wea… oh, it’s a torch.” Enough of this, instead of weapons, give us a box that allows us to choose the fractal skin we would like.

3. New BUY-4374 Items: It seems strange to me that the Fractals, the content that introduced ascended items, has so little ascended gear. For starters, BUY should have a 3rd tab with all available ascended amulets at a cost of 15 (maybe 20?) Pristine fractal relics.

In order to continue to improve the fractal rewards, I’d like to see bloodstone, empyreal, and dragonite added to BUY’s first tab that exchange 1-to-1 for fractal relics but in clumps of 50.

Finally, now that we can get the fractal weapon we want, can we ascend it? BUY now offers a Fractal Inscription which sells for 500 relics. The inscription, upon purchase, prompts you for the stats you want it to have, any craft-able inscription can be selected and 1 Fractal Weapon, 1 Gift of Ascension, 1 Fractal Inscription and 3 Lumps of Mithrillium or Globs of Elder Spiritwood Residue can go into the Mystic Forge and produce an ascended version of the fractal weapon you put in.

4. Improving the Fractals: There are certain fractals that just feel right. They combine challenging content with a playtime (unless you screw up) of around 15-25 minutes a level. The boss fights, enemy spawns and completion time works. For me, those fractals are: Swampland, Snowblind, Urban Battlegrounds & Volcanic.

Each of those can be difficult, but once you get used to them and as long as you understand the mechanics and stay on your toes, nothing in them feels “cheap.” The Legendary Imbued Shaman is one of my favorite boss fights in the game, and I’d like to see more like him.

There are some that need some reworks:
Aquatic: Boss is too easy, make his attacks more powerful but give him a slight reduction in HP. Also, no more underwater fractals.

Uncategorized Fractal: Almost there, the only issue with this one is the stupid invulnerability on the harpies. I believe this has to do with the KD that moves the Harpy’s target out of range, but it just seems so inconsistent and buggy. I’d recommend you remove the Harpy KD (kind of a cheap mechanic in the middle of a JP style level) and have the harpies’ AoE attack cause a 1s stun and 1s burning or something along those lines.

Dredge Fractal: Too long. Remove Rabsovich and halve the dredge spawn in that room to cut out a pointless time-delay. For the final boss, have condition damage scale with damage on the Suit/Elemental when he (she?) is superheated.

Cliffside Fractal: The left/Right seals seem out of whack in comparison to the other seals. I think the spawn either needs to be toned down or the vulnerability stacks need to be reduced, maybe have two types of baddies spawn with only 1 type capable of putting vulnerability on you. Other than that, a great fractal.

So there you have it. Make the fractals account bound, greatly improve the fractal rewards and I think you’ll have a very nice, challenging PvE meta for players who like dungeon content… and yes, just my opinion. Leave your thoughts, suggestions, criticisms below. And thanks for reading.

Also: gold, lots of it.

6.6 gold for a Lvl 80 daily. Enough?

Not even close.

this is a great idea… while overall i enjoy running fracs, it is not without its issues. I love the difficulty, but it is frustrating to run lvl 30+ fracs only to receive less in way of compensation compared to something MUCH easier and faster (i.e. arah p1/2). For fracs, giving daily gold rewards that scales in difficulty (in addition to current rewards), scale up the relics a bit (as proposed above)… I really like the idea of being able to purchase more than just rings (amulets and accessories like all other ascended vendors), and being able to upgrade frac weapons with ascended with fractal upgrade components!

It would also be nice to see some new fractals introduced, maybe even another bonus fractal to alternate with jade maw.

I still hope they delete the dredge fractal. I do like the final boss mechanics but everything else makes me sick.

Protect the hard work of players who spent months in fractal for skinsets…. (with low AR also…having to work twice than today)

If you Give fractal boxes is the final middle finger to old time fractal players……

I thought fotm 20 noobs getting better rng’s than fotm 48 vets is enough of a middle finger already

48 has a very high chance to drop skins…..
Since i farmed lot of fractal to get all skins and 0 rewards (rather than being rich with cof1 farm and stuff) i can confirm reddit spreadsheet on the % near 20% (23,4 if i remember well or something like that).

At 20 the % is really low.

A lvl 20 could get 1 or 2 skins….but if you want a fotm weaponsets you go 48 for sure.

true, but even in fotm 48 the chances of getting the specific weapon skin you want is too low for the amount of work though. Like, almost 1% for that specific weapon? I guess only have weapon box at 48 or whatever is the hardest would make sense

actually an hard to obtain skin is a proof you like fotms….

And that you play those a lot if you want a weaponset.

Since SKIN was the only reward people got, giving away them easily so anyone can be carried on few fotm 48 runs, would just destroy any reward fotm players had.

Like zenith weapons….they are nice but when everybody have them they are far less appealing.

I think just as many people who do daily 48’s would be happy to just pick their skin.

Also turn every existing unused fractal weapon into a skin.

LordByron.8369:

actually an hard to obtain skin is a proof you like fotms….

And that you play those a lot if you want a weaponset.

Since SKIN was the only reward people got, giving away them easily so anyone can be carried on few fotm 48 runs, would just destroy any reward fotm players had.

Like zenith weapons….they are nice but when everybody have them they are far less appealing.

hard to obtain those skins isn’t the problem. The drop rate of the weapon box can remain low enough to keep them scarce. The actual problem is that when you do get one it is likely going to be useless to you and end up sitting in your bank, or salvaged. You see what I’m saying? Say for example, what if the harpoon gun (never gonna use it) I get some time ago is a hammer (def gonna keep it and transmute it) instead? Will it change the scarcity and prestige of fractal weapon skins?

Aquatic fractal: I’d like underwater combat improved so that I have a separate trait set underwater like i set a different set of utilities.

Uncategorized: I love this one. The invuln is annoying though!

Dredge: Hate the bomb door path. o.o

Cliffside: This one is just right. I don’t see a problem here. The way we do it is we target one of the two on the first side and that one is not allowed to die. we kill the other smash seal, run to the other side, slaughter, smash seal, charge hammer, run to other side and smash seal and run back. This keeps the mobs on the first side from respawning and makes it so that you only have the one mob there working on the healing of the seal. Goes flawless unless we kitten .

As far as rewards go, I’d like the fractal weapons to be actual skins so we don’t need to use transmutation stones. I"ve so far gotten two fractal skins. The torch (LOVE it) and the pistol…what am I going to do with a pistol…I don’t use a pistol on my guardian…or necromancer. And every thief I’ve ever had got deleted. I do like the randomness of the skins because it does keep the scarce but for the ones I get that hurrr are useless to me, well they’ll sit in my bank til my guardian or necro can use those weapons. XD

Last night on a lvl 26 fractal I got an Assassin’s Ascended Weapon chest. o.o I’m still in disbelief…so something went right with my RNG for once.

its not that hard to understand:

if you get a box, in 4 lvl 48 runs you got the weapon you want …basically like paying a dungeon weapon 240 tokens…..

If you have a random skins the chance to get the one you can use/want get drastically lower….That means you have to run a lot of fotms.

In the meantime you get lot of stuff you can use but takes many runs to get all you want…..

Once again do you want to punish people who run the unrewarding difficult content by:

-nerfing drops
-inflating drops
-gear requirements obtained via grinding outside fotms
-no guaranteed rewards like dungeons
-T7 materials that became obsolete rather than being included in ascended crafting
-lowering difficulty by increasing AR

and now the last nail in the coffins give easy skins to everyone….

I can agree….let make everything more accessible to everyone…

But before that i want to see precursors sold by npcs at 10G ….so even legendary becomes easier….

After all legendaries are BiS while fotm are only skins….

What you ask is to make fractal weapon skin incredibly easy to obtain….

Now if that is what you want, just make them tradable so at least fractal runners can get some money they lost playing fotm….

After all you are going to make them easy to get but at least long time fractal runners won t pay the price for it as Always happened and recover a little gold they lost running fractals instead of cof/open world bosses/champions

I don’t think gold is needed in fractals.
Normal dungeons give a lot of gold and almost none karma
FotM gives a lot of karma and 0 gold.
For me the balance is more than enough

K … karma?

Karma is very valuable.

after almost a year of spamming fractals, with over 80 ascended rings and almost 30 fractal weps im done with this boring thing until not only reward is significantly increase (i don’t think anet understand what better reward means so my hopes are none existent for this) but we need brand new skins (preferably armor skins) only available in fotm. The main reason was to get fractal stuff, i have that, now there’s nothing to chase nor do i want to store more fractal garbage in my storage. At level 48+ anet should add Ascended Fractal weapons (must have different skins and not just a color change as anet so likes to do with their lazyness). If new skins aren’t added i just don’t see the point of spamming fractals even if reward in gold is better

LordByron.8369:

its not that hard to understand:

if you get a box, in 4 lvl 48 runs you got the weapon you want …basically like paying a dungeon weapon 240 tokens…..

If you have a random skins the chance to get the one you can use/want get drastically lower….That means you have to run a lot of fotms.

In the meantime you get lot of stuff you can use but takes many runs to get all you want…..

Once again do you want to punish people who run the unrewarding difficult content by:

-nerfing drops
-inflating drops
-gear requirements obtained via grinding outside fotms
-no guaranteed rewards like dungeons
-T7 materials that became obsolete rather than being included in ascended crafting
-lowering difficulty by increasing AR

and now the last nail in the coffins give easy skins to everyone….

I can agree….let make everything more accessible to everyone…

But before that i want to see precursors sold by npcs at 10G ….so even legendary becomes easier….

After all legendaries are BiS while fotm are only skins….

What you ask is to make fractal weapon skin incredibly easy to obtain….

Now if that is what you want, just make them tradable so at least fractal runners can get some money they lost playing fotm….

After all you are going to make them easy to get but at least long time fractal runners won t pay the price for it as Always happened and recover a little gold they lost running fractals instead of cof/open world bosses/champions

surely there are better ways to make things more difficult to get than bad rng?

I like these suggestions for the most part. While I agree with the Dredge recommendation, I would go a step further and remove it completely and replace it with a shortened version of Molten Facility. I figure they will be adding MF anyway, so best to replace Dredge with it since thematically they are very similar anyway and MF is significantly better balanced.

I personally think most fractals are fine with the exception of dredge which needs shortening (I reckon take out the Bomb door/Turrets or make it so swamp/water/ascalon are guaranteed to spawn after). Fractals are fun endgame content that I and a lot of other players love doing and what we need are just more things to spend relics on and a couple more maps. Biggest issue in with rewards is that once you have your backpiece, 20 slot bags and your 1 or 2 ring sets there nothing to buy. You overtime just accrue more relics and hope against hope that you get the fractal skin you want

I suggested in a another thread about allowing pristine relics to be spent on things like mini’s, Black lion keys, T6 Mat packs, Unique finishers, Dungeon Tokens, Ascended weapons so those who don’t craft them have a guaranteed means of acquiring them and even account bound pre-cursers (about 100 pristines). Give us something to spend the relics on and players will come.

As for completion rewards just change the current one with the following and we are all good.
Bonus chest rewards as of random patch date
0-8 = 25 relics
10-18 = 30 relics, pristine relic, chance of a ring/weapon
20-28 = 35 relics, pristine relic, 10 of a T6 mat or 1 rare, chance of a ring/skin/weapon
30-38 = 40 relics, pristine relic, 15 of a t6 mat or 2 rares, chance of a ring/skin/weapon
40+ = 45 relics, pristine relic, 15 of a t6 mat + 2 rares, guaranteed ring/skin/weapon
-All completed fractals chains award 10,000Karma on completion once per day per tier
Now rewards scale up the harder it gets with 0-8 rewarding barely anything but 40+ having huge guaranteed rewards. This combined with giving players a relic market would make fractals as huge as they were back when they first started. I hope Anet make it happen

I have done many fractal 48s and would not at all feel that a weapon box devalues the skins…however, this coming from someone who has only found off-hands and a shortbow…

Just give me something to use my pristine relics on. Im not wasting another bank slot on them.

I think they should add a bonus level when you reach fractal 80.
Once a day instead of the level 80 fractal you would enter a flat land full of frightened dredges with 1 hp running away from you in slow motion, you would be given a big fat hammer that makes a huge blood bath animation every time you smash a dredge into the ground. There would be a 5 minutes time limit for the level (no goal) at the end of which you would be given 50 silver for each dredge murdered. A bonus 30 silver would be awarded for each children or female dredge kill as a reward for putting an end to their breeding potential.

wait there are no female dredges … suspicious …

They pop out of holes in the ground. Just like LOTR dwarves.

Zelyhn.8069:

K … karma?

Yes karma exactly karma.
Many obsidian shards and many boxes can be bought with it.
Gear for newly dinged 80 alts

I tried to edit my original post, but it didn’t take, so here are some updates:

First a few other threads with some ideas around fractals or fractal related items…
Salvage Ascended Items

Token/Ticket System for fractal weapons

More Fractal Reward Ideas:
1. Pristine Relics – now can be traded for Jugs of Liquid Karma (1-to-1) & for new mini pets (see below)

2. Fractal Title Tracks
a. Fractal Frequenter – title available for completing the achievement
b. Level 48 – title for all the sadist, hipsters upset about proposed fractal reward upgrades (note: “In my day we walked to school in the snow, uphill both ways” was too long), this is achieved by completing a Level 48 fractal
c. Bane of the Jade Maw – Available for completing Jade Maw at level 80, also rewards you with the /fractal emote, type that in chat to summon a vision of the Jade Maw looking quite furious.

4. Fractal Minis:
a. Fractal bosses – all bosses are available as an exotic mini pet for 50 pristine relics
b. Jade Maw Mini – ascended mini, available for 1,000 pristine relics

5. Level 80 Weapons: Ascended versions of the fractal weapons but with variations to the skins and effects (note, not just a different color), so that they look distinct. These ONLY drop at Level 80.

Pixels, all the proposals you have (or take from older posts) are great. I love them all.
But they never gonna happen. Get used to the idea…

Arcade Fire.4895:

LordByron.8369:

Protect the hard work of players who spent months in fractal for skinsets…. (with low AR also…having to work twice than today)

If you Give fractal boxes is the final middle finger to old time fractal players……

So just because players had to do it a different way when it first came out means that they shouldn’t change it at all? Where’s the logic in that?

“I got mine, screw everyone else”

Wukunlin.8461:

Arcade Fire.4895:

LordByron.8369:

Protect the hard work of players who spent months in fractal for skinsets…. (with low AR also…having to work twice than today)

If you Give fractal boxes is the final middle finger to old time fractal players……

So just because players had to do it a different way when it first came out means that they shouldn’t change it at all? Where’s the logic in that?

“I got mine, screw everyone else”

Quite the opposite..

I worked to get X
Another player worked to get Y

Second player now wants X for free without giving Y for free….

I just said…if X will become easier i want Y easier too.
Expecially since X is aesthetic and Y is a BiS equipment.

For one, I disagree with your comment about the underwater fractals. We need more underwater content. Lets be honest, underwater combat is far superior on GW2 than any other game, and is far to unappreciated. We need more underwater content, less whining about an innovative system, and more reason to have the underwater legendaries.

It’s underappreciated because it’s terrible.

I almost forgot to get my warrior exotic underwater weapons before running fractals again, but then I remembered there’s always a chance of getting the underwater fractal.

LordByron.8369:

Wukunlin.8461:

Arcade Fire.4895:

LordByron.8369:

Protect the hard work of players who spent months in fractal for skinsets…. (with low AR also…having to work twice than today)

If you Give fractal boxes is the final middle finger to old time fractal players……

So just because players had to do it a different way when it first came out means that they shouldn’t change it at all? Where’s the logic in that?

“I got mine, screw everyone else”

Quite the opposite..

I worked to get X
Another player worked to get Y

Second player now wants X for free without giving Y for free….

I just said…if X will become easier i want Y easier too.
Expecially since X is aesthetic and Y is a BiS equipment.

There is nothing free about doing fotm to get fotm weapon boxes.

Wukunlin.8461:

LordByron.8369:

Wukunlin.8461:

Arcade Fire.4895:

LordByron.8369:

Protect the hard work of players who spent months in fractal for skinsets…. (with low AR also…having to work twice than today)

If you Give fractal boxes is the final middle finger to old time fractal players……

So just because players had to do it a different way when it first came out means that they shouldn’t change it at all? Where’s the logic in that?

“I got mine, screw everyone else”

Quite the opposite..

I worked to get X
Another player worked to get Y

Second player now wants X for free without giving Y for free….

I just said…if X will become easier i want Y easier too.
Expecially since X is aesthetic and Y is a BiS equipment.

There is nothing free about doing fotm to get fotm weapon boxes.

RNG is the only reqson to play fotm 48….
Without rng you can play few level 20 and full gear your character in fotm skins..

Since lvl 48 droprate is good.

Unless we make boxes dropped only at 48 with a % comparable to ascended boxes….
Do you think everyone shuld have a fotm box every 4 runs?

Remove RNG from fotm…afterremoving rng from precursors and ascended while adopting same philosophy…
Then i can agree.

LordByron.8369:

RNG is the only reqson to play fotm 48….

if a piece of content needs to rely on RNG to keep players playing them then it’s bad

LordByron.8369:

Unless we make boxes dropped only at 48 with a % comparable to ascended boxes….

that would be good

LordByron.8369:

Remove RNG from fotm…afterremoving rng from precursors and ascended while adopting same philosophy…

precursor rng is stupid as well