Guild Wars 2

This dungeon has one major flaw in it, and that it seperates the gaming community due to a NUMBER.

Right now, you can only do FoTM based on what the difficulty score is of the person who has the lowest difficulty unlocked. This is ridiculously bad. Why? Because it makes it based on a NUMBER rather than a group.

I myself have run dungeons numerous times. My first time in Fracts was with 3 people that were clueless and just plain stupid. I’m not an elitist, but these guys were seriously bad.

I stuck with them, and we completed 2 paths and it took over an hour. We all know that’s bad. I eventually gave up when we reached the swamp, and they couldn’t figure it out despite me telling them what to do. So I left. By that time, I’ve never been able to get a group for lvl 1 FotM. People don’t want to waste their time. There is no reward for them to do FotM. Just like how in other games, there is no reward for people to go back and help random people.

I’ve got a guild, but it’s a WvW guild, since that’s what I primarily play until new REAL PvE content is released. A handful of them do FotM, but they don’t want to have to carry me all the way through the difficulties so I can “repay the favor” and play with them at their lvl.

I spent 5 years waiting for this game when it was announced. I spent that time reading about the gameplan, reading about what everything has to happen. ArenaNet mentioned numerous times how you can play with your friends and don’t need to backtrack. But then they go and release this dungeon.

I have no problems with the dungeon, except the restriction to enter.

Either add a matchmaking system so that multiple people looking for a group can be grouped up without spamming in Lion’s Arch, or make it so that the person with the highest level can invite everyone to join them. To balance it, make it so the people that complete it don’t advance to that level.

Right now people are GRINDING the dungeon, another thing against ArenaNet’s philosophy.

Please change this immediately, preferably before the month is over so I can complete my monthly.

Join a FoTM guild. The game lets you be in 4 guilds for a reason.

Also grinding is the philosophy of Anet. I don’t know if you noticed the 2 million karma grind or the 200g grind or the dungeon token grind, or the precursor grind or the mystic clover grind.

I regularly run people through level 1. It is a fast way to get additional vials by wearing full MF gear, getting 2 other good people (you can pretty easily 3man level 1) and then running through 2 other players to help them learn and level.

i agree with the OP in terms of the difficulty number severely hampering your ability to form a group. with NO dungeon finder on the horizon it makes looking for a group for this place a serious pain. spam chat all you want to try and find people and then guess what happens? your messages get suppressed because nobody cares to run fractals 1 or 2 or 3 even after your asked 25 times. The dungeon is great (minus the bugs). grouping for the dungeon is absolutely horrible. this game has made great strides with some unique mechanics and gameplay but its in the ice age when it comes to finding groups

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Also grinding is the philosophy of Anet. I don’t know if you noticed the 2 million karma grind or the 200g grind or the dungeon token grind, or the precursor grind or the mystic clover grind.

Optional Legendary is not any upgrade at all.
Ascended gear is. Hence, not optional. Hence, FotM isn’t optional.

It goes against a lot of Anet’s philosophies.
-RNG item drop on extremely important items
-RNG drop chance for ascended gear (and it’s the only way to get the rings)
-Community gating mechanic (fractal levels)
-gear gating mechanic (agony)

It is a pretty big slap in the face now that I’ve looked it in the eyes.

striker.3704:

It goes against a lot of Anet’s philosophies.
-RNG item drop on extremely important items
-RNG drop chance for ascended gear (and it’s the only way to get the rings)
-Community gating mechanic (fractal levels)
-gear gating mechanic (agony)

It is a pretty big slap in the face now that I’ve looked it in the eyes.

This ^

striker.3704:

-Community gating mechanic (fractal levels)

This bothers me the most. Arena said that they are resigning from holy trinity model so that it will be easier to create groups and play together without looking for x tanks and y healers. And it worked, making groups for dungeons was easy even without a proper LFG tool. And now? Sitting in LA forever and typing LFG/LFM for the one specific fractal level which I need for progress. It will only get worse once more people unlock more levels.

Imagine when weapons and armors are available, and defensive and offensive spec will be requested. Uhm, a defensive.. a tank… a defensive… healers… omni…casters…dps.. ouch, trinity soon is back

I got pretty upset after finding out that fractals does NOT reset, meaning i’m stuck at lvl 1 and unable to find people to do fractals with because everyone is already at 2+

And lets face it; noone will ever do lvl 1 if they are paste it..noone.

The entire system design goes against everything this game was suppose to not be and i’m very disapointed.

Not even a cross server lfg tool is in place making this entire system even worse (if that is even possible)

Up till now it was my believe that they DID reset each week, making it so that it would always be easy to find people, because you could just wait for next reset and then start.

Dear anet, you have just completely fragmented your player base and lost tons of people with this move, i for one have no intentions of logging back into the game.

Boxy.3824:

I got pretty upset after finding out that fractals does NOT reset, meaning i’m stuck at lvl 1 and unable to find people to do fractals with because everyone is already at 2+

And lets face it; noone will ever do lvl 1 if they are paste it..noone.

I am a player that is past level 1 and i completely agree with you. I will not spend an hour and a half doing level 1 ever again and thats a problem. I have the same problem you do. I am at a low level still but find it very challenging to find people to group with because everyone else is past that. Nobody including myself wants to go backwards and do the lower difficulty settings again because its a waste of time. better loot on the higher levels right so why bother? its definitely a problem i hope they will address

This is one of those things that just make you wonder about the competence of ANET in general. As soon as i heard about the system and the way it works I immediately thought about how would they handle the tiered progression.

And immediately I game played the scenario in my head where it was unlimited or severely stratified. And immediately I thought about how that would suck very bad, seeing as you would have people with all different levels of completion not able to group. And this is without even logging into to the game.

So question…am I a genius? I don’t think so, so if I can figure this out like in a split second…why? my god why can’t ANET see this throughout A) the planning phase the development phase and C) the play testing phase? There is something seriously wrong with ANET’s dungeon team.

The dungeons and the whole design philopsophy are filled with WTF moments. Seriously we are talking about million dollar investments, this stuff should not be happening. ANET has serious issues with its content team…really really bad. I mean the FOTM dungeons are the best that ANET has done yet….they still are a bore spamfest to some extent due to the lack of class roles and battle structure/strategy, but yet the quality and the annoying one shotting, and cheap mechanics are not nearly as bad.

So they did take some of the complaints and fix a lot of stuff, but then they make this bonehead move…and its consistent with all the other WTF bonehead moves….ANET if you are listening, I would let anyone play at higher levels….the tradeoff should be its harder to run….thats it…..there is no need to make people climb the tiers like that.

striker.3704:

It goes against a lot of Anet’s philosophies.
-RNG item drop on extremely important items
-RNG drop chance for ascended gear (and it’s the only way to get the rings)
-Community gating mechanic (fractal levels)
-gear gating mechanic (agony)

It is a pretty big slap in the face now that I’ve looked it in the eyes.

I have to thank you for pointing this out. I hadn’t thought about FotM in this context before seeing this thread, and boy am I glad I did.

This seriously makes me concerned about where GW2 is going.

Good valid points. I am looking forward to seeing an official reaktion to these isses.

Boxy.3824:

And lets face it; noone will ever do lvl 1 if they are paste it..noone.

I’ve run level 1 about 6~ times since I’ve been beyond it. It is a quick and easy run that can score first-tier materials and currency.

Tulisin.6945:

Boxy.3824:

And lets face it; noone will ever do lvl 1 if they are paste it..noone.

I’ve run level 1 about 6~ times since I’ve been beyond it. It is a quick and easy run that can score first-tier materials and currency.

It’s not so much a problem of specific levels, it’s that the basic design of the dungeon divides players into different groups based on a (somewhat) arbitrary number.

You can have run any other dungeon in the game dozens of times, and there would be nothing on the game’s side barring you from running it with someone who’d only ever completed story mode. With fractals, it’s all about meta-scale progress, so running level 1 over and over again doesn’t give any kind of benefit compared to getting up to level 10.

The real problem doesn’t stem from the difficulty levels themselves, though, it originates in the way that gear necessary for completing later levels of FotM is intrinsically tied to running FotM at high levels. If the rest of your guild has agony resist rings and you don’t, you have not motivation to run level 1 – you want to run level 10+ to try and get your ring.

I myself have run level 1 a number of times, because I have guildmates who haven’t completed it yet. Once a few of us get into double digits, however, the motivation to run low-difficulty fractals will be minimal, since A) FotM are gimmicky and unfun compared to some of the other dungeon options, and I won’t get anything particularly useful out of low-level fractals.

Most people are asking for a party that adjusts to his own level.

In a guild with 50 members online, suppose you are very lucky to have 50% of them interested in running FotM at that specific moment (which is usually not happening), it is even harder than forming a 20man raid without a schedule. You will have to deal with the problem that people demanding groups for their levels, then fit everyone into 5-man groups with most of them compromising.

I suggest they divide the levels into brackets of 10. 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc. You get the same rewards and same amount of progression points in each bracket, regardless of the number. Level 1 and Level 10 both give you the same amount of progression points, which add up to a certain amount then offer you the capability to join the next bracket. 5 points for bracket 1, 6 points for backet 2, … and so on. So you still can earn your progression at bracket 1 even you are already at bracket 2, only a very little bit slow (can be faster because it is easier). After all, you still need the agony stats and skills to complete the higher bracket although it is possible to do tons of level 1 to get to bracket 4 or 5. And it will probably play a part in solving the alt level problem, to make the progression point account wide.

Edit: Most importantly, it recommends a system for high levels to help low levels, not the current system which is repelling everyone else with a different level. It is a completely different stance and the current system is doubtless the easiest way to destroy an MMO community.