Guild Wars 2

So I’ve completed 12 fractals, I’m at level 4, right? Of course not. I’m at level 2, and that was only after ten Fractals at level 1. The problem is that you only level up after clearly 3 fractals in a row, and dragging a pug across that finish line is like pulling teeth. If even one party member decides to leave, for whatever reason, the whole thing is a complete wash. If one member disconnects (and they will) then they’re never coming back. If one member gets frustrated, or can’t spend the time to get through a given fractal, they’re gone and never replaced.

I had a great team running yesterday where one of the party members got so frustrated during the Swamp fractal that she just up and quit, dragging everyone else down with her. And I don’t want to hear from any of you “I’m so 1337 I solo them and am at level 40” guys, that’s not helpful.

This needs to change.

There needs to be SOME progress for completing even a single fractal, even if you don’t get through all three.

There needs to be ways of rebuilding a party without completely abandoning the fractal sequence you’re on.

People who are disconnected need to be able to rejoin the party.

If you’ve got a great group of people dedicated to helping each other out (like from a guild), and with solid connections, I’m sure you can soar through these with ease, because you won’t have quitters, but for pugs, the current systems just do not work. I still love this game, and a big reason for that is community, because most of the game is designed to make me like my fellow players, because they can help me out and I can help them out and we can’t do each other any harm. FotM makes me HATE my fellow players more than anything else in the game, even worse than the cruelest WvWvW PK. It’s toxic.

^ this so much ;_;

When we ran fractals as a guild, it sometimes just crashes/disconnects everyone randomly, and if one person had to relog due to some bug or disconnected, we’re kittened.

I can already smell this thread getting merged.

Ohoni.6057:

There needs to be SOME progress for completing even a single fractal, even if you don’t get through all three.

There needs to be ways of rebuilding a party without completely abandoning the fractal sequence you’re on.

People who are disconnected need to be able to rejoin the party.

Well, the completing-three-in-a-row thing is a deliberate design choice that I can guarantee won’t change. If it helps at all to know the reason behind it, the “challenge” of fractals is getting through the chain of them without stopping to repair and rearm. I’m almost positive that the reasoning behind this development-side is to try and drum up sales for instant repair canisters, because slip-ups at higher difficulties often mean instant death, no downing.

There definitely needs to be a way to regroup, but the things preventing you from regrouping are also preventing people from leaving the instance, repairing, and returning. If you can invite a new player to the group to make up for the loss of a dropped player, then you could just kick a player whose armor was broken, let him repair in LA, and then re-invite. The same is true for players who disconnect – although this problem at least could be very, very easily solved by forcing them to reconnect back into the instance.

TL;DR: Most of the problems that you point out in FotM’s design are deliberate design choices to drum up gem store sales. ANet has made the classic mistake of designing content to fit their microtransactions shop, rather than vice versa.

Considering you can do 1-9 with less than 5 (Me and an Ele friend did 1-4 with 2 and then another guildy logged on and we did 5 and 6), it does take longer, there are more wipes and you have to really think about what you are doing. I don’t understand how doing them with a pug is hard.

Maybe, instead of just getting 5 people and trying to face roll the dungeon. Either take a look at videos or read about each strategy, then, take the time to explain how each works to people who have never done them.\

edit: I am fully aware that there are some fractals that you CANNOT do with 2 or 3, but we would just restart and hope we got fractals that we could do with 2 or 3.

Well, the completing-three-in-a-row thing is a deliberate design choice that I can guarantee won’t change. If it helps at all to know the reason behind it, the “challenge” of fractals is getting through the chain of them without stopping to repair and rearm. I’m almost positive that the reasoning behind this development-side is to try and drum up sales for instant repair canisters, because slip-ups at higher difficulties often mean instant death, no downing.

If that factor is necessary, then use some other method. Lock out the “shop” functions of the hub until you clear three, but there needs to be a way to gr-group partway through a chain, so that when a group collapses (and they do, CONSTANTLY), the individual players who didn’t completely drop the ball aren’t penalized for it. Nobody should be running around having completed more than ten Fractals and being less than level 3 unless they deliberately chose to do so.

Besides, has anyone ever actually had to repair their armor during a fractal run? I mean, I’ve been part of a few catastrophic pugs, but haven’t come anywhere near a red piece of gear yet.

Considering you can do 1-9 with less than 5 (Me and an Ele friend did 1-4 with 2 and then another guildy logged on and we did 5 and 6), it does take longer, there are more wipes and you have to really think about what you are doing. I don’t understand how doing them with a pug is hard.

“And I don’t want to hear from any of you “I’m so 1337 I solo them and am at level 40” guys, that’s not helpful.”

Ohoni.6057:

Well, the completing-three-in-a-row thing is a deliberate design choice that I can guarantee won’t change. If it helps at all to know the reason behind it, the “challenge” of fractals is getting through the chain of them without stopping to repair and rearm. I’m almost positive that the reasoning behind this development-side is to try and drum up sales for instant repair canisters, because slip-ups at higher difficulties often mean instant death, no downing.

If that factor is necessary, then use some other method. Lock out the “shop” functions of the hub until you clear three, but there needs to be a way to gr-group partway through a chain, so that when a group collapses (and they do, CONSTANTLY), the individual players who didn’t completely drop the ball aren’t penalized for it. Nobody should be running around having completed more than ten Fractals and being less than level 3 unless they deliberately chose to do so.

Besides, has anyone ever actually had to repair their armor during a fractal run? I mean, I’ve been part of a few catastrophic pugs, but haven’t come anywhere near a red piece of gear yet.

Considering you can do 1-9 with less than 5 (Me and an Ele friend did 1-4 with 2 and then another guildy logged on and we did 5 and 6), it does take longer, there are more wipes and you have to really think about what you are doing. I don’t understand how doing them with a pug is hard.

“And I don’t want to hear from any of you “I’m so 1337 I solo them and am at level 40” guys, that’s not helpful.”

The point I’m making is, you have 3 options. Figure out a way to do them, don’t do them or kitten about them. 2 of the 3 lead to no progression, so there is only really one option. Or you can petition ANet to just let your FotM lvl to 40 and give you all legendary gear so you can be happy.

I guess what i’m saying is, here’s a straw.

You’re missing the point. A critical one. Keep the group together – at this stage it’s luck of the draw with connections to ANet’s servers. If this can be managed so no one gets kicked or d/c’d then you can worry about team management.

The point I’m making is, you have 3 options. Figure out a way to do them, don’t do them or kitten about them. 2 of the 3 lead to no progression, so there is only really one option.

I know, that’s why I’m here, to fix them. “Not doing them” won’t get me anywhere, and “getting better” won’t either, because I can do them just fine. The problem is getting other players to pull their weight, and, short of RNG offering me better players, the only solution I can see is for them to change somethign to reduce the impact of human error.