Guild Wars 2

This discussion reminds me the game launch where people found dungeons such an awful experience because it was way too hard (with the same arguments).
For the last years people claimed that things in the game were not too easy but too much predictable after playing them over and over. Here we are with new / revamped 5-player content and the game turned harder… so those people were right.
In less than a year people will ask for new Fractals in a new thread every second day because Swamp will be too easy and berzerker meta makes this content trivial

Jahroots.6791:

OnizukaBR.8537:

Well current swamp for example is exactly it, the mechanics are pretty simple, “Go to green area, hit bloomhunger, repeat, get the wisp and go to the tree with markers, thats it” And anyone paying attention can do it easy.
And another thing you can’t have engaging mechanics if they are ignorable, this is a fact.

This has not been my experience. You left out the part where he pounces on people and basically insta-downs ’em and you spend ten minutes trying to revive people over and over, as well as the swarm of spirit creatures and periods of invulnerability.

Sublimatio.6981:

Fractals on high levels should be hard as kitten. The game is TOO EASY and i doesn’t matter if you’re bad so it’s difficult to you – endgame isn’t for bad players, it’s for the best. so yes please keep bloom and others bosses hard on tier 4

I disagree with this. Endgame is for everyone at level 80. It’s important to keep the content interesting and engaging, but there’s a point where the difficulty level brings out the worst in others and takes the fun out of playing.

All in all I’m comfortable with T4 as is, just hoping that Swampland is the exception rather than the new direction of fractals.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

There is literally nothing wrong with having to learn new mechanics or be challenged in a game, there is a reason Anet is implementing mechanics that don’t force stacking and AA most casuals and the majority were complaining about it especially with Mossman in fractals, and other content like dungeons. When the majority of “challenging” instanced content had the same strategy, i.e. Stack as tight as possible and AA to win something is wrong. You just want Braindead gameplay and to be rewarded for it.

No, not looking for ‘braindead’ gameplay at all and explicitly stated that yes, you should have to figure out how to beat something. What I take issue with is the amount of time and effort required. Also, while I’m not against stacking or cheesing if it’s the most effective tactic for, I am in favour of active play. The best fractal bosses, imo, are Archdiviner and the Dredge Powersuit.

My view here is that gaming should be enjoyable, first and foremost. I think that if content drives most players into a rage and/or forces them to be particularly selective about how they run it, then it is poorly designed.

The revamp adds not requirements besides kiting boss to designated spots, not downing to very weak adds while boss is invuln, and assigning people to gather wisps, nothing forces you to run particular classes or builds, no enrage timer, no game breaking mechanics you can’t avoid.

Literally one of the easiest fights in game still, you just can’t LoS spam 1 and win/ or stack in corner spam 1 like swamp was previously, also they redesigned T4 swamp to be difficulty between T3 fractals and raids. You don’t need voice comms for it either.

The only tweak is the phase where he is invuln and mobs spawn could be shorter since that just artificially prolongs the encounter

I have a solution for everyone.

People who find t4 fractals too hard, play the meta condi necro. It’s rediculously easy. Hell if that is too hard for you, use Dire gear instead of viper. It’ll take a century, but I assure you, you won’t die.

People who have half a brain, enjoy the game.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Literally one of the easiest fights in game still, you just can’t LoS spam 1 and win/ or stack in corner spam 1 like swamp was previously, also they redesigned T4 swamp to be difficulty between T3 fractals and raids. You don’t need voice comms for it either.

The only tweak is the phase where he is invuln and mobs spawn could be shorter since that just artificially prolongs the encounter

Oh, come on. This is blatantly false. It’s the currently the hardest fractal and more frustrating than at least two raid encounters.

You’re kind of right about the mechanics. They are definitely do-able, but the fight is too far out of most people’s comfort zone.

Jahroots.6791:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Literally one of the easiest fights in game still, you just can’t LoS spam 1 and win/ or stack in corner spam 1 like swamp was previously, also they redesigned T4 swamp to be difficulty between T3 fractals and raids. You don’t need voice comms for it either.

The only tweak is the phase where he is invuln and mobs spawn could be shorter since that just artificially prolongs the encounter

Oh, come on. This is blatantly false. It’s the currently the hardest fractal and more frustrating than at least two raid encounters.

You’re kind of right about the mechanics. They are definitely do-able, but the fight is too far out of most people’s comfort zone.

Personally I find the new snowblind to be harder than the new swamp. And if your group refuses to CC and instead just saves themselves on Chaos it’s more difficult as well IMO.

Jahroots.6791:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Literally one of the easiest fights in game still, you just can’t LoS spam 1 and win/ or stack in corner spam 1 like swamp was previously, also they redesigned T4 swamp to be difficulty between T3 fractals and raids. You don’t need voice comms for it either.

The only tweak is the phase where he is invuln and mobs spawn could be shorter since that just artificially prolongs the encounter

Oh, come on. This is blatantly false. It’s the currently the hardest fractal and more frustrating than at least two raid encounters.

You’re kind of right about the mechanics. They are definitely do-able, but the fight is too far out of most people’s comfort zone.

you rotate in a circle and repeat till you phase him, once you phase him the only thing they should do is make the invuln phase shorter, if you can’t dodge the two highly telegraphed attacks, or assign people to wisps before the fight starts, that’s not the fight being hard but a problem with the players. Now if it had an enrage timer or they increased the speed at which Bloomhunger does his two large highly telegraphed attacks
It would be hard, but his attacks are so slow and you get a 100% energy regen buff while in green circles that you should always have at least one dodge available. And it’s not blatantly false T4 Mai Trin is harder than Bloomhunger fight when it comes to mechanics, I see more people die there than in the new Swamp.

PS
I do it on a core thief build and don’t die running marauder armor with Zerker weaps and trinks using DA/CS/Tri, people claim Thief is worst class for Fractals.

Good movement is a difficulty aspects of a videogame.
Examples for this would be the thaumanova boss or mai trin. In lower levels often half the team falls into death/dies to aoe.
“Battlefield awareness” (who has aggro?, which enemy is moving to which position? etc.) and kiting/positioning also requires some experience and can be difficult.
Some groups are fast at rezzing, while others don’t even notice that half their team is downed.

I agree. Raids are boring.

Ranael.6423:

This discussion reminds me the game launch where people found dungeons such an awful experience because it was way too hard (with the same arguments).

And Anet listened, and made them easier (also, people started doing them at level 80 in full exotics/ascended, the first threads were made by people in greens/blues trying dungeons at their theoretically correct levels – no such change will happen now, people are already playing at full capacity). I wonder why people bringing “dungeons were hard” argument always keep forgetting about that.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

And it’s not blatantly false T4 Mai Trin is harder than Bloomhunger fight when it comes to mechanics, I see more people die there than in the new Swamp.

Oh come on, even devs already said that Swamp is now the hardest fractal (and that it was intentional).

Of course making Fractals stepping stones to raids is stupid. Fractals are not raids; their mechanics aren’t similar. They cater to people with different interests.

I’d like to see Fractals remain mechanically different, away from ‘viable comps’ and railroaded strats. It reminds me of Brontes NiM and Revan HM in TOR 4.0. Brontes is a wipe fest even for the best…‘elite’ raiders don’t usually want to clear it more than once. It’s predictable and mechanically repetitive. Absurdly abusive numerically. It was a roflstomp for me because I could churn dps like none other on my class by abusing mechanics and strats unforseen by the devs. Revan? Comparatively gentle and forgiving…numerically. Absurdly difficult to keep track of all mechanics for all players. A true skill test. Never easy, never masterable, always fun.

One comp will always be ‘best’. But, good design allows most builds and comps to work. Think…adaptable mechanics.

Fractal has difficulty scales for a reason. This is pretty much a nonissue. Yeah the highest scale of fractals is the hardest fractal.

But the lower fractals are still really really easy. You don’t need to be able to do the most legendary difficulty level, when you can also just do the normal difficulty levels.

Astralporing.1957:

Ranael.6423:

This discussion reminds me the game launch where people found dungeons such an awful experience because it was way too hard (with the same arguments).

And Anet listened, and made them easier (also, people started doing them at level 80 in full exotics/ascended, the first threads were made by people in greens/blues trying dungeons at their theoretically correct levels – no such change will happen now, people are already playing at full capacity). I wonder why people bringing “dungeons were hard” argument always keep forgetting about that.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

And it’s not blatantly false T4 Mai Trin is harder than Bloomhunger fight when it comes to mechanics, I see more people die there than in the new Swamp.

Oh come on, even devs already said that Swamp is now the hardest fractal (and that it was intentional).

You put a lot of emphasis on what Devs say, but brush off that Devs Claimed Dungeons were the hardest most challenging content for the most dedicated and skilled groups, then the same with Fractals, all of which were easy once people learned the mechanics.

And one more time more people have a lot more difficulty with Mai Trin (people getting yanked by Mai Trin when with attacks that little to no tell and when people run like a chicken with there head cut off dodging the seemingly random Aoe in cannon phase) and die to that than I see go down in T4 Swamp(run in a complete circle kiting boss dodging two of the biggest telegraphed attacks ever, waiting out a phase with adds and running wisps).

It’s not like they added any enrage timer or any other mechanic that dictates what build you can run or anything like that, they just made it so you move around and dodge, and here are three other levels of the same fractal that are joke compared to t4 where you can even ignore Bloomhungers big attacks.

But you are more inclined to stacking and spamming 1 so I guess that’s why you find having to move in a circle so difficult as shown by previous statements.

Astralporing.1957:

And Anet listened, and made them easier (also, people started doing them at level 80 in full exotics/ascended, the first threads were made by people in greens/blues trying dungeons at their theoretically correct levels – no such change will happen now, people are already playing at full capacity). I wonder why people bringing “dungeons were hard” argument always keep forgetting about that.

Because this is only partially true. After initial nerf there were still many people to find dungeons too hard (even today there are still some remaining post). And do people go into Fractals with food, consumables and Fractal potions? Have all people adapted to high boss armor in T3/T4 Fractal by using more condi build? Do some consider to bring a healer in raid to help. Yes one can do it, yet many do not need to contrary to raid … so this is a big difference between raid and Fractals, the latter content is way less strict in term of composition and itemization.

only problem with anet is,that they making difficult content same way over and over,raids.dungs,fractals, one hit >down. I dont have issue with difficult content,but whats challenging about getting hit by everything for 20k?
as some1 said,that fractals arent so hard as raids,you get hit by gorseval for 10k by his stopm,bloomhunger stomp you for 25k and he does that every 20 sec with EPIC telegraph.blooomhunger? perma jumping>charging>jumping + aoe poison,1000 mobz around.
and with this challange all you end up with,is again toxic players,calling names,leaving party or elitist which will run META ONLY or kick.
this isnt way anet shoud go,this fractal is long,hard and frustrating.
if you talk about reward, go to ab for 1 multiloot,spam F and get 20x more gold for half time.

daw.4923:

only problem with anet is,that they making difficult content same way over and over,raids.dungs,fractals, one hit >down. I dont have issue with difficult content,but whats challenging about getting hit by everything for 20k?
as some1 said,that fractals arent so hard as raids,you get hit by gorseval for 10k by his stopm,bloomhunger stomp you for 25k and he does that every 20 sec with EPIC telegraph.blooomhunger? perma jumping>charging>jumping + aoe poison,1000 mobz around.
and with this challange all you end up with,is again toxic players,calling names,leaving party or elitist which will run META ONLY or kick.
this isnt way anet shoud go,this fractal is long,hard and frustrating.
if you talk about reward, go to ab for 1 multiloot,spam F and get 20x more gold for half time.

So give a suggestion instead of saying its not the way it should go.
You talk about stomp of 25k, but if it did 2k people would ignore it and would face roll. You know bloomhunger is a BOSS his attack should kill you if only ticks you what the difference between a boss and a normal mob ?

ye it shoud have move which insta kills you,all im saying that move cant be on 5 sec cd, with all other things which means insta death. If you take fractal 100,its hard,but you can move around it,take some def,druid,but here you are simply one shoted by everything.

There’s only one attack that will one shot you and that is the leap, the ground pound isn’t one shot so you can react to it. Now if you miss your dodge and don’t slot a stun break the knock down into the ground pound can kill you, but that’s why the game has skills that stun break so you can react.

You can dodge every attack or just walk out of the attack area.

daw.4923:

ye it shoud have move which insta kills you,all im saying that move cant be on 5 sec cd, with all other things which means insta death. If you take fractal 100,its hard,but you can move around it,take some def,druid,but here you are simply one shoted by everything.

That was the way the game played before HoT power creep. Dodge or die, it’s what made the game fun, you had to actively defend yourself.

It looks like raids might be a big part of GW2’s recent massive drop in revenue. So OP might be worried about nothing. I expect at most one more raid before they’re cancelled for the next new “game saving” project.

Lord Kuru.3685:

It looks like raids might be a big part of GW2’s recent massive drop in revenue. So OP might be worried about nothing. I expect at most one more raid before they’re cancelled for the next new “game saving” project.

do you have any source for that? i’m interested.

If Swampland is too hard, why not do it at a lower scale?

Ranael.6423 :
“This discussion reminds me the game launch where people found dungeons such an awful experience because it was way too hard (with the same arguments). "
→ exept now , player know perfectly game from 3 years and know perfectly their classe

Nokaru.7831 :
“If Swampland is too hard, why not do it at a lower scale?”
cause reward ??
How you can do a fractal 10x harder than other who take 10x time than other ( when you can do , if you don’t leave before ) to same reward ?

Lord Kuru.3685:

It looks like raids might be a big part of GW2’s recent massive drop in revenue. So OP might be worried about nothing. I expect at most one more raid before they’re cancelled for the next new “game saving” project.

I wouldnt be so sure about that reason. I think it have nothing to do with raids. In fact i think it would be a lot worse without it. I know a lot of people ( i’m one of them ) that would take a break of GW now if there wasnt raid to keep us coming back every week. If we didnt had raids we would have what? Two more maps like Bloodfen tops. Yeah that would retain a lot of more players for sure as BF is a new map and overflowing with players /s

Ranael.6423:

This discussion reminds me the game launch where people found dungeons such an awful experience because it was way too hard (with the same arguments).

lol this couldn’t be more true!!!

I think the distinction I make here is that while I don’t mind them making fractals more difficult as I can and have done raids successfully (fractals are more or less pretty chill which I enjoy compared to raids) they do kinda ignore the average level of skill of a player in Fractals. Most people are honestly pretty bad, they don’t want to run meta builds a lot of the time, they don’t know rotations, and they most certainly don’t use fractal potions regardless if it would make it faster+even easier for a few silver.

Recent experience in Chaos and Swamp T4? I’m playing a FULL GLASS ELE in chaos I should honestly be the first to go down in the party but in chaos they just all went down before me and couldn’t dodge for crap (or use movement skills to get out of the large aoe so you don’t insta die/actually CC, but we all know nobody CCs out of raids).

In Swamp – The meta Reapers literally can’t see bloomhunger charging from across the fractal and they get run over. Same with pretty much most of the group, they can’t see the leaps and just dodge. You get so much endurance in that fractal it is silly not to have it available when you need it!

Anet is expecting way too much out of your average player, telling them to git gud is honestly not good constructive criticism and it is that attitude that will make them quit. I’d rather have the current fractal difficulty and be able to get on and pug it if I want than T4 being dead bc all the casual players don’t play T4 and the good players are all finished no more than a few hours after reset. Having to plan my day around getting on and doing fractals at that time would be silly, I have work, I have a life, I can’t be expected to get on and do the content at a specific time bc nobody does it after and if they do they are probably bad. Just like how I only raid on my day off during the week.

tl;dr Personally I’m able to do any sort of difficulty that is between fractals currently in raids. But Anet and the general playerbase asking for more difficult content online are kinda in an echo chamber of “We can do it, if you can’t git gud” and expect way too much out of your average player. If you have no average players, the game mode is dead.

Hypairion.9210:

Lord Kuru.3685:

It looks like raids might be a big part of GW2’s recent massive drop in revenue. So OP might be worried about nothing. I expect at most one more raid before they’re cancelled for the next new “game saving” project.

do you have any source for that? i’m interested.

He made it up completely to serve his anti-raid narrative. The revenue drop most likely can be linked to the almost complete lack of content releases between HoT launch and LS3 launch. If raids hadn’t been released during that time, it’s likely that revenue would have been even lower.

Source: it was stated that Anet will be rushing the completion and release of the next expansion due to the drop in revenue. This implies that the revenue drop was due to the lack of content, not some weird implication that raids somehow made people stop buying gems.

Zem.4139:

Ranael.6423 :
“This discussion reminds me the game launch where people found dungeons such an awful experience because it was way too hard (with the same arguments). "
-> exept now , player know perfectly game from 3 years and know perfectly their classe

Oh really?
Well after raiding a bit I tell you that the amount of player who have no clue about game mechanics is still huge.
Real examples:
“I put fire shield on people so that they burn with their attack”, “I rez during cannon phase in Mai Trin”, “I don’t dodge Kohler whirlwind”, “I use corrupter’s fervor to increase my condi damage”, “As a condi player you don’t need might since it only increases power”, “I am not responsible of dps loss because I stay Shiro… Glint is dps loss for me”, “I tell you that for fresh air rotation you have to switch to earth”

Everything in the last 6 months… sure people know their class and all their capacity in fights….

Senario.2038:

snip

I do see your point every day, PuGs who shouldn’t be in T4. I thought it was just me because I have set a VERY high bar for myself and applied that personal rule to myself for awhile.
Still.. I don’t want to be one of those people who go " oh nah, anet said this ages ago! " although fractals was one of the late game content for people to test themselfs..
Maybe I’m too bais to see straight.. I’m still salty over the change to a fractal run being one island and the buff to rewards but that’s just me.

I don’t like the idea of time being an out for harder content. You say if it got too hard, only " good " people would be able to do it around reset and the number of people in fractals would drop as there would be lots of failing PuGs. I think that’s how it’s meant to be, you do it with friends and sometimes you PuG and come across a gem and make friends.

I never played guild wars although you hear often about this underworld dungeon, surely that also has the same effect. Dead times when you don’t have enough people to do it. Isn’t that one going strong still and was/is popular now?

Sarah.

Senario.2038:

tl;dr Personally I’m able to do any sort of difficulty that is between fractals currently in raids. But Anet and the general playerbase asking for more difficult content online are kinda in an echo chamber of “We can do it, if you can’t git gud” and expect way too much out of your average player. If you have no average players, the game mode is dead.

ANet is saying: T4 is challenging content that’s not nearly as challenging as raids. If you have trouble with it, do something different.

Otherwise, if you don’t want to change your tactics or builds, then you can stick with the less-challenging content: dungeons, lower tier fractals, open world.

ANet isn’t expecting anything much from average players; it’s expecting something from those who consider themselves above average.

mostrol.6975:

So, I saw a dev post about fractals being stepping stones to raids. No thank you. Please keep raids well away from fractals.

I have no interest in raiding. I will never raid. Stop trying to move us towards making fractals into raids. Why is everything thing in this game from anet these days, obsessed with ‘hard core’ and raiding – it’s spilling over into other areas. And now they are messing with fractals to raid-i-fy them.

Just…. no.

Oh – but yes.
:D

Sarahfull.4930:

Senario.2038:

snip

I do see your point every day, PuGs who shouldn’t be in T4. I thought it was just me because I have set a VERY high bar for myself and applied that personal rule to myself for awhile.
Still.. I don’t want to be one of those people who go " oh nah, anet said this ages ago! " although fractals was one of the late game content for people to test themselfs..
Maybe I’m too bais to see straight.. I’m still salty over the change to a fractal run being one island and the buff to rewards but that’s just me.

I don’t like the idea of time being an out for harder content. You say if it got too hard, only " good " people would be able to do it around reset and the number of people in fractals would drop as there would be lots of failing PuGs. I think that’s how it’s meant to be, you do it with friends and sometimes you PuG and come across a gem and make friends.

I never played guild wars although you hear often about this underworld dungeon, surely that also has the same effect. Dead times when you don’t have enough people to do it. Isn’t that one going strong still and was/is popular now?

Sarah.

I’ll quote this one but also respond to Was Na. I think both of these posts are proving exactly the point I’m trying to make. You can argue that “It is supposed to be that way” and that “You’ll make friends” but even if I’ve been in a good group people don’t naturally want to add you as friends, people don’t want to have to make sure they get on at a certain time just to do the fractal. These “Friends” will do the fractal around reset with or without you bc in such a case they’ll grab another person. Forcing it to not be a pug experience (you can’t pug it) means that the mode will be dead for any time a few hours after reset and if failure becomes the norm you get a gamemode that is significantly less healthy because less people play it. So far they are 50/50 on the right balance so I’m waiting to see but as far as I’m concerned Chaos was a success and just needs some small tweaking (no stun on third autoattack chain on last boss) and Swamp was a failure for the overall health of the mode for your average player. People are surprisingly bad and will continue to do so because any criticism is taken as a personal attack. In general I think you’re reasonable Sarah and thanks for seeing my point even if you kinda don’t agree with it. I’m just cynical about the whole “you’ll make friends to do it with” or “Its supposed to be a more elite content”. Less people playing means they have no chance to get better at the game. You want to put the content in a sweet spot where it is just difficult enough that they have to learn the game a bit more (not too much) but they can still pug it without specific classes if you provide them something that is too difficult they just stop doing the fractals. Swamp’s instakill mechanic is one of the things that I feel is just outside the sweet spot for your average fractal player where Chaos fractal up until the boss is very well designed into making the players do little things to adapt a bit while not asking too much(It won’t instakill the party forcing them to start over). My only real problem with chaos is again → Stun on third autoattack for boss which makes melee builds have a headache and you’re forced to bring Stability which is a boon not available in enough quantity on all classes so when you require bringing it that is asking too much (honestly you could bring a good guard for stab lol).

As for Was Na…I think you missed reading my post? You seem to think I can’t do the content which I most certainly can lol, it is easy compared to bloodstone bisque Matthias or something like that. Your attitude is exactly what I’m talking about with the “Echo Chamber”. You’re attitude is essentially “Git gud or get out” which isn’t constructive nor does it teach players to be better players. You need to have difficulty that is very carefully balanced to require learning very slightly and not too much so that people just stop the content. Again, I cite Chaos as something that for the most part does this properly with the only issues being the final boss (and lets be honest ppl are usually terrible at breakbar and stab is limited).

Saying “Git Gud or get out” is not constructive, if you really wanted to create fractals that are a midstep they need to be just outside the range of what the average (not better than average) player can do otherwise you hurt the play -ability of the mode. You can say you’re fine with that and that only good players should be able to play but that is again not constructive. If you don’t give them a chance to become good telling them to Git Gud isn’t going to make them become better players. This is the exact reason why they want a stepping stone to Raids and why Raiding as a whole isn’t actually a super popular mode and is likely overrepresented on Forums where many players care enough about the game to get on forums and talk about the game and thus are more likely to play the content.

First, and I mean this as politely as I can, but paragraphs man. They make it much easier to understand your point.

Anyways I read it and I think I get what you’re saying, but I group with Sarah as much as I can, it’s hard with timezone differences but she’s a fractal friend. Over the time I’ve known her the list of fractal friends is always growing. These people typically will run fractals over and over, just for funsies, or to help someone who didn’t get their lockout, whatever the reason. These people are out there, and I’m one of them. It’s not rare for me to run dailies 3 times in a day with different groups of friends.

Your mention of dailies is important I think. That’s one of the problems with fractals IMO. Before HoT a lot of people ran fractals more for fun than for the rewards, but now they’re the daily grind content. And, the reason Swamp is a hot topic is because people have lost their easy t4 daily reward. They can’t handle t4, or can’t find a group that can, and they refuse to try and drop a tier to get it done and get the lesser reward. People feel they deserve the t4 reward because fractals have been so easy for so long.

I think that’s what is/was unhealthy for the game. Having what you call the top tier content be facerolled by pug groups for so long made people think they should be able to get top tier rewards, well, that’s not top tier content. Fractals are a scaling difficulty system, it should work that way. The lowest tier should be something a fresh 80 can push through even if it’s hard. The top should have experienced players failing if they make mistakes. Bloom does this, most of the other fractals don’t.

So again, ‘git gud’ by practicing Bloom in an easier setting, once you(global you, not personal you) can avoid Blooms attacks consistently then you jump up a scale.

Personally I hope they add t5 Fractals that make them all up to the bloomhunger level, and a Bloom that has it’s trash adds actually dangerous to where you want to rotate blinds and actually have to worry about them (Bloom himself doesn’t really need to be any harder, he already downs you on a mistake just fine )

I kinda miss the cliffside arm seals tbh

Senario.2038:

snip

This is my mind set: This is my first MMO, so when I hear " late game content " or " challenging content " I picture content that you HAVE to make time to do, that you have to work on, that you have to um.. Upgrade yourself. Weither this is right or wrong, that’s the first thing that comes to mind and what I will uses as criteria to judge such things.

I believe you are wrong about chao’s boss with his attack chain. I understand your veiw and this boss adapts this perfectly. Idk if it’s becuase I was playing a fighting game before this or what, although that boss teaches or forces you to respect his atuo atk chain and use active defence and/or dodge his finall hit. Yes, I agree the first hits do ALOT of dmg, although I don’t wanta see people cheese backpedaling so the boss only ever does one atuo atk because people got out of range. For me it’s kinda like learning there is a high atk in a atk chain and you can duck it and punish them.

I agree that chaos isn’t bad and it’s interesting to see a fight were the kill order matters.

Sarah

Jerus.4350:

I think that’s what is/was unhealthy for the game. Having what you call the top tier content be facerolled by pug groups for so long made people think they should be able to get top tier rewards, well, that’s not top tier content. Fractals are a scaling difficulty system, it should work that way. The lowest tier should be something a fresh 80 can push through even if it’s hard. The top should have experienced players failing if they make mistakes. Bloom does this, most of the other fractals don’t.

I’ve always had a problem with this approach to game design. A high chance of failure doesn’t inspire most players to improve, it just makes ‘em go do something else, because there’s relatively little value in it. Also, top tier rewards should not be exclusive to those with the greatest skill, but to dedicated players as well.

We had a real sweet spot in the early days (around the time LFG was added), where legit challenge was the exception rather than the rule. The majority of dungeons and fractals created the opportunity for players to master them, while still generally being accessible to all. It’s kind of odd that the addition of raids firmly cemented the meta build approach that people were constantly rallying against in the forums, yet there are relatively few topics opposing it these days. Makes one wonder whether people have embraced this, or simply lost interest in this type of content (or even the entire game)

I really wish Anet would have promoted PvP rather than instanced PvE as the go-to content for those who are actively seeking a challenge and willing to dedicate time and resources to honing their skills. It’s much better suited for this, and the dynamic and unpredictable nature of conquest matches are a more true gauge of player ability.

Jahroots.6791:

Jerus.4350:

I think that’s what is/was unhealthy for the game. Having what you call the top tier content be facerolled by pug groups for so long made people think they should be able to get top tier rewards, well, that’s not top tier content. Fractals are a scaling difficulty system, it should work that way. The lowest tier should be something a fresh 80 can push through even if it’s hard. The top should have experienced players failing if they make mistakes. Bloom does this, most of the other fractals don’t.

I’ve always had a problem with this approach to game design. A high chance of failure doesn’t inspire most players to improve, it just makes ‘em go do something else, because there’s relatively little value in it. Also, top tier rewards should not be exclusive to those with the greatest skill, but to dedicated players as well.

First, most of the game offers rewards to those who are dedicated over those who are skilled. DR on dungeons and all of open world content benefits those who spend more time, not those who are more skilled.

Second, fractals offers all sorts of ways for people to practice their skills. Every single fractal offers multiple levels of difficulty and challenges.

Third, raids, unlike fractals, were designed entirely with skilled players in mind, to appeal to them specially. The idea is that you’ve gotten good and now here’s something to sink your teeth into; they are not meant for everyone.

And finally, with the exception of AR+relics+mist essence, everything that drops in fractals also drops in WvW & PvP. My friend who plays less than I do and 99% WvW/PvP has more ascended gear than I do at this point, entirely from those modes.

The game’s overall design is meant to appeal to everyone. There are a limited number of venues in which skill matters and a smaller number in which rewards are restricted to skilled play.

Jahroots.6791:

Jerus.4350:

I think that’s what is/was unhealthy for the game. Having what you call the top tier content be facerolled by pug groups for so long made people think they should be able to get top tier rewards, well, that’s not top tier content. Fractals are a scaling difficulty system, it should work that way. The lowest tier should be something a fresh 80 can push through even if it’s hard. The top should have experienced players failing if they make mistakes. Bloom does this, most of the other fractals don’t.

I’ve always had a problem with this approach to game design. A high chance of failure doesn’t inspire most players to improve, it just makes ‘em go do something else, because there’s relatively little value in it. Also, top tier rewards should not be exclusive to those with the greatest skill, but to dedicated players as well.

We had a real sweet spot in the early days (around the time LFG was added), where legit challenge was the exception rather than the rule. The majority of dungeons and fractals created the opportunity for players to master them, while still generally being accessible to all. It’s kind of odd that the addition of raids firmly cemented the meta build approach that people were constantly rallying against in the forums, yet there are relatively few topics opposing it these days. Makes one wonder whether people have embraced this, or simply lost interest in this type of content (or even the entire game)

I really wish Anet would have promoted PvP rather than instanced PvE as the go-to content for those who are actively seeking a challenge and willing to dedicate time and resources to honing their skills. It’s much better suited for this, and the dynamic and unpredictable nature of conquest matches are a more true gauge of player ability.

I can agree exclusive rewards can be devisive and I don’t support that, but completing harder content should result in a higher reward as generally it means more time investment so you need a scaled up reward to be worth the effort.

Dungeon meta had a strong dislike as it was ALL damage focused, support was minor tweaks to gain active defenses. I liked it (though I often played slightly off meta that made things easier rather than slightly faster). It’s not there anymore as all the people who wanted to do other things were granted just that with HoT. You have tanks/healers now.

PVP has a load of problems for being an endgame bit of content. Balance for instance in WvW is trash. sPVP is incredibly limited and designed in such a way that myself who has typically been pretty into PVP (part of guilds/groups that were in the top tier of PVP content) in other MMOs, well I just don’t like how GW2 does it. I could go into why but that’s a lot of stuff, but basically there is just too much to balance and too many options. If PVP was the endgame of this game, I’d have quit a long time ago and gone back to a PVP game I actually enjoy.

Jerus.4350:

blah

But again that isn’t constructive, saying that “Oh people have gotten used to rewards so they expect it and that is bad for the game” is not a great argument. You’re arguing that people playing for rewards and that they expect it is bad when to be perfectly honest if there were less or no rewards then why would they play the content? WvW suffered the problem for a long time, you actually lost money playing it so the playerbase diminished to only the really really hard core. That resulted in the deaths of many servers as players stacked on the top servers to get anything done. Fractals are supposed to be stepping stones to raids, not on par with them and while so far they’ve done half good half iffy I’d be very cautious about any further reworks.

It is not constructive to say “Oh you people who did T4 fractals, you seem to be failing a lot go drop down to T3 and get less rewards and git gud” because now you’re fostering an attitude that a lot of players can’t deal with, nevermind the fact that while you have made “Fractal friends” other people generally don’t do. I don’t remember doing fractals with the same group twice in a long time. If I was a regular player and I spent 1-2 hours on a single fractal or maybe even more than 45 min and the group keeps failing on T4 the first reaction I’d have is not to go to a lower tier and do it, the first reaction is to simply not do the content. Fractals are supposed to be the new dungeons/a bridge between raids and open world, calling them top tier content is a bit of a stretch. If you make them as hard as raids why not you know…just do the raid? Or do nothing? Less players playing a mode isn’t going to help the mode, if anything it’ll just make it feel like content that is blocked off by the elite in a mode where a lot of players already don’t do fractals bc it is too elite.

Again, I think you’re expecting way too much out of the average fractal player and you need to have harder difficulty to be slightly above what the average player can do. Bloomhunger is out of this balance simply due to the insta-wipe mechanic which should be reserved for raids.

As for Sarah, I never complained about the damage of the auto attack. My main issue is that on his autoattack chain he has a stun. That pretty much forces you to bring stability (meaning certain classes) or dodge every third attack which honestly is kinda too often to keep dodging without a lot of endurance regen being applied to you. On the punishment end the breakbar is something I’ve seen groups struggle with due to the short time period and people being squeamish about CCing the boss, half of the group opting to just run out of the spinning AoE. There is very little “Punishment” time for his autoattack chain and the only other time you get to punish him is if you break his bar which is not very consistent as fractal players simply don’t CC regularly. I’ve tried to teach them, I’ve failed and I don’t have high hopes that’ll ever change.

I get that in your mindset and in my own mindset you have to put aside time to figure out how to get better, however having fractals be something that you really need to set aside specific time for (aka find an organized group/go with online friends) would ultimately kill the mode as not everybody has a fractal group and not everybody is good. Having to get online at a specific time for specific people to do specific content is unhealthy for any game mode to any reasonably normal person who has a job/has a life. I adjust constantly for raids, that said it is honestly a pain in the butt to find a group that will actually complete the content if you pug it and if you don’t happen to be that skilled at making online friends or have specific times every day to set aside you will not be able to do the content. They will take one of their alts and planning your life around a GAME is really really bad for the game and players. Only raids should be limited by this, fractals should remain definitely puggable and not an exercise in frustration for 2+ hours if you don’t happen to have a group. You can’t just say “Just make friends” That isn’t how it works.

I also come from a fighting game background and we did everything we could to keep the game relevant(thankfully it is still very relevant, top spot in viewership at EVO) by helping out or teaching players how to be better incrementally, accessibility being very important is something I’ve experienced first hand and if you make things too hard right out of the gate they just don’t feel it is worth their time. Again, the average player is a lot less skilled than anybody online commenting on forums will even think about and my personal opinion is that you can make fractals harder just be very very cautious because as soon as you step over the bounds too much the average player will lose interest in the content.

Saying an argument is nonconstructive doesn’t make it so. Fact is pre-HoT (and actually pre that last big trait altering before HoT) fractals were all Bloomhunger difficulty. Hell way before you could do fractals beyond what you could get AR for and people did them!

As for Chaos I find that last fight very fun on guard. Block/aegis rotations, I can face tank him while providing Aegis for the group so that the third attack doesn’t daze them when they don’t have enough dodges. Problem is finding a group that can break the bar fast enough >.<

Jerus.4350:

Saying an argument is nonconstructive doesn’t make it so. Fact is pre-HoT (and actually pre that last big trait altering before HoT) fractals were all Bloomhunger difficulty. Hell way before you could do fractals beyond what you could get AR for and people did them!

As for Chaos I find that last fight very fun on guard. Block/aegis rotations, I can face tank him while providing Aegis for the group so that the third attack doesn’t daze them when they don’t have enough dodges. Problem is finding a group that can break the bar fast enough >.<

But what does telling people to “Git gud” accomplish? Does it help the player actually achieve said goodness? Or is it more of a generalized statement that doesn’t really contribute to their understanding of the game? It is basically the latter which is why I say it is not a constructive argument to make. You say get better yet you offer no advice or no way for said players to get better besides “do easier content and get less rewards” which honestly isn’t an option as people would rather quit the mode than be forced to move down a tier. In all honesty I agree with that sentiment, If something is not worth your time it isn’t worth your time. Doesn’t matter how challenging or non-challenging it is. If it isn’t worth your time it isn’t. You can scream to the heavens “git gud” and it still won’t change the fact that you’re offering no real solutions to get these players to be better players that doesn’t involve basically forcing them out of the gamemode. Again, I can do the content pretty easily but expecting a lot out of players when the majority of players are really really bad and not providing adequate stepping stones is troubling. Fractals have never really had a “do this or die” mechanic and honestly I think it is going a bit too far and again expecting too much out of your average player. “Do this or get punished” is probably better.

We can repeat the same things at each other over and over again, but I don’t think that’s very constructive ;D

Senario.2038:

- snip -

People who want to get better, will practise and get better.
People who don’t want to get better, will whine and complain.

What do you suggest Anet does?

- Theres a Massive Tell to the “one-hit” attack.
- If you bring a Break Stun (which no one seems to do) then you should never die to his – leap attack (Unless your on a Thief or Ele)
- People don’t dodge the Charge
- Suggest they take a ranged weapon instead of meleeing him. They don’t.
- Suggest they don’t try and CC when he’s doing the stomps. They don’t
- Say don’t rez people in the stomp AoE. They try and rez anyway.
- Say “Take utilities that’ll keep you alive”. Wars still take 2 Banners and Signet. No WoR from Guards. Necros won’t use Shroud when they are stunned. Ele don’t take lighting flash. Theifs don’t use Signet of Agility for more dodges. Never seen a Mesmer with Blink or Phantasmal Defender. And I don’t really understand how Rangers die when they are the one throwing all the heals out.

And god forbid I tell someone to change their sacred build to help the group.

Truth is, most people are out there for them selves and don’t give a kitten about anyone else. Don’t want to play AS A TEAM and will just complain with they can’t pug something. Don’t learn how to dodge, read tells and expect everyone else to pick up where they are slacking because they are some uber pro who can’t do anything wrong.

At that point I’m tired of repeating the same stuff and will just say “Git gud”. Because it gives the same result with a lot less effort.

Absolutely Nothing Changes.

This is really getting repetitive.
It’s simple, if T4 is too hard for you, don’t do T4 but don’t be so self-centered that you can’t even recognize that some people actually enjoy this level of challenge.
This kind of post and its answers shows us that they were right to make different tiers, to each their tiers. It’s not a question of being good or not, it’s about different expectations.

Some people have fun playing casually and others want more challenging content. Fractals offer both now, deal with it.

If they intended T4 fractals to offer the most difficult course of 5 man instanced content, the changes to say Swamp are steps in that direction, as it seems the balancing of the fractals across the multiple levels starts off forgiving at lower levels.

A brand spanking new fractal runner will have a more cohesive time going from fractal 1 to fractal 100 due to this.

This thread has run its course and is at risk for going off topic. The thread is now locked. Thank you.