Guild Wars 2

I am one of the old farts of fractals from the days where you had to shout in LA for party, and had to clear dredges for a solid 30 min – 1 hour. Those days.

I love the number of players that are currently doing fractals. It’s great. Sort of. It’s great if you are looking for people to do Swamp or low level Molten Duo fractals. You are hard pressed to find people who are willing to do fractals that are not listed as dailies outside these two fractals.

I hate the fact that the great majority of fractal runners know next to nothing about the mechanics of particular fractals (except perhaps Molten Duo and Bloomhunger). If ANet takes away the pole, which I hope they do, the number of party wipes even on Mossman will skyrocket.

“Back in my days” a level 49 fractal runner was (almost always) a veteran. He had suffered through Cliffside, Dredge, Underwater, and the rest, so much that you knew he was familiar with various tactics used in each fractal. What is certain about a current high level fractal runner is that he had enough money to buy the required Agony Resistance.

TL;DR: I love the popularity of new fractal system but hate the lack of skill in the players.

Spaceman Spiff.2516:

TL;DR: I love the popularity of new fractal system but hate the lack of skill in the players.

I hate lack of ar on players. Hate it so much in fact that when I will pug next time I will trial people with agony orb in fractal lobby.

I haven’t fractal’d much since its release, but decided to get back into it. There is a bit of a skill gap with some players, but nothing I would consider unusual given the casual player base of GW2. Just gotta browse the web while you wait for them to complete the JP (which IMO is a bigger issue compared to lack of agony resistance).

Overall I find fractals fun and rewarding. My main dislike is the player fragmentation. I’m not fond of the fractal leveling system because it segregates much of the community. The adept tier isn’t bad because there seems to be enough people doing those. The veteran levels so far feel like a hit or miss depending on whether or not someone feels like doing that level. I had to wait 10+ minutes just to get one person to join for level 34, and then we both left after 15 or so minutes of waiting. Makes me uneasy to think how bad things might get when reaching the higher levels.

Fractals? You mean a fractal?

Seriusly though – a system where you level up your fractal reward level doing easy swamps isn’t really encourages players getting skilled.

Also amount of fractals should be expanded – by now i’m really bored with them.

AR is the worst gating mechanic I can think of from any MMORPG. It’s incredibly confusing and counter intuitive with infusions and infused versions of items. Worst of all it’s not useful in any other part of the game. I crafted a set of ascended armor for 600g now I have to choose between some nice advantages in wvw that come with the added bonus of stats that are useful EVERYWHERE or AR which is a PVE gimmick they added for who the hell knows why?

I think they are too far entrenched in the AR system but they should seriously scrap it if they want to make a better game and get more people playing fractals.

My first complaint about end game since HoT is how everything is gated, it’s either masteries or ascended stuff or player exclusions mainly in Raids and the worst is that there’s no LFG section for these so finding a group can take 2 hours at most (what’s funny is they can still kick you after that).

Luckily I bought HoT at a cheap price and joined a big Guild, but I think the expansion brought much more frustration to the players than before, and Fractals were one thing I ran daily, but with the absurd farming required I just gave up on it…

dislikes:
- high level fractals are too easy because bosses have lots of hp but deal less damage than before hot. damage on lvl 100 mai trin is a joke, don’t even need to dodge if you bring defensive traits/utility :s
- being able to do dailies by farming the easiest fractals
- golden fractal weapon rng is even worse than fractal weapons before the patch, the only golden weapons I found so far are those from the weapon collection and the 76-100 achievement. :/

Fractals? What are fractals? Oooooooohhh you mean Swamplands of the mists.. riiight…

I worked hard for my ascended. Everyone is getting that now without doing ANYTHING.

Fractlas are supposed to go up in difficulty and reward skilled players on high levels and others on lower levels. But since you can get any reward regardless of skill… also its always swamp/molten which is boring..

There is one easy way to fix it though! Have the fractals be random.. sounds familiar right ;P

Likes: the fractals core
Dislikes: every single change they made to fractals since HoT

Spaceman Spiff.2516:

TL;DR: I love the popularity of new fractal system but hate the lack of skill in the players.

I warned about this when they first brought up the change to fractals being 1 and done.

I’m sure i’m not the only one who was skeptical either, but it’s a royal PITA now.

It’s always the same fractals, daily without fail. Heaven forbid, you actually try to get a group going off the “normal” routine, you’ll always end up with people who only know how to press 1 profit.

Of course the system is terrible. It was crystal clear this would be bad from the moment they released their ideas for the “new and improved” fractals.

I dislike that my fears of the new fractal system turned out to be true. People almost exclusively do swamp. Not only that everyone insists on standing on that kittening pole.

Yes, make my own group and bla bla bla. But sometimes you just want to jump into a group and do a quick dungeon, and opening up the LFG window and seeing 90% swamp runs is just plain depressing.

I pugged lately and I always create my own group, sometimes with 1-2 guildies together and a) we never encountered a pole mossman (which I don’t care anyways) and b) we do mostly one swamp the recommended and a boss.

I just can’t understand this lackluster complaints here. It really seems this forum is just full of whiny kiddies.

If either the wisp run for swamp went back to being almost impossible like the old days, or the Mossman became a mad Eldritch horror worthy of lovecraftian nightmares that took half an hour to kill (which is more or less what the other fractals take in average), then people would be forced to do other fractals as well. Or simply stop doing fractals…oh well

I’m pretty happy with the changes overall. Wasn’t a big fan of the relatively long time investment (typically 40 minutes in one sitting), or having to play through at least one ‘bad’ fractal per run.

My only issue is with the instabilities and toughness at higher levels. They’re just not fun. Most of the community avoids the longer fractals because of this. One or the other would be fine.

I like new fractal… except new instabilites..

Lost all boon on dodge..ok… Thanks for making that instability and create elite spec that specialize on dodge..

And I saw that level 70+ they just slap boon flumber with other instability….

//upset daredevil.

I tried Fractals long ago and was overwhelmed because I didn’t know what to do so I got yelled at. I avoided them for a long time after that and only returned about 6 weeks ago (after HoT) because I needed a Mists Stone to complete Mawdrey. I decided to pay attention and learn and ultimately enjoyed myself so much that I kept going because the reward was good and I needed more mastery points. I didn’t have much trouble completing 1-20 for the achievement. Some people were very kind and patient to explain mechanics. I like how they are relatively quick and not too hard (well 48 Thaumanova Reactor was long and painful lol).

I dont understand fractal community. Many ppl state that they loathe the new fractal system, but iv seen more lfg in fractal tab than ever before.

You see in wvw, the moment we hate something (ie: new bl), we try to avoid/abandon it altogether. Maybe you should avoid those swamp lvls if you hate em.

To me, the current fractal lvl is a good improvement You dont need to invest 1-4hours just for a quick daily. And gawd the community is much more forgiving now. Less ppl ragequitting if someone fail in the first attempt or when party wiped in the first 5mins

BlueBoy.1236:

And gawd the community is much more forgiving now. Less ppl ragequitting if someone fail in the first attempt or when party wiped in the first 5mins

But that’s only due to fractals being faceroll content now, more than almost all actual dungeons!

That’s a good thing, Vince.

In spite of their incessant clamouring for it, actual difficulty tends to bring out the worst in gamers.

I like the new fractals. Not as stressful or time consuming as the old pre-Hot ones and the rewards a really good. I am a fractal vet who’s probably ran more fractals than anyone in the game and I welcome the current fractals with open arms. Fractal dailies might me repetitive, but they are fast which let’s me do more with my time vs old fractals which took almost 2h vs 30-40 mins now.

Likes:
- Many fractals have interesting, unique mechanics
- Many fractals are challenging
- Daily rewards are fair
- Playing through snippets of Tyria’s past is a cool concept

Dislikes:
- Minimal incentive to attempt most scales, resulting in certain scales being run repeatedly
- Minimal incentive to attempt fractals at all outside of dailies, besides scale 40. This especially applies to higher tier fractals.
- Almost every instability feels frustrating rather than challenging, and some make certain classes a near necessity. This severely impacts the popularity of certain 10-scale ranges (even 41 swamp isn’t run)
- Extremely slow response to bugs/exploits, even for anet
- No new content or updates to existing content despite an apparent desire for players to do fractals.
- LFG tiers are not the same as daily fractal tiers (or that the LFG tiers exist at all)

Likes:
The ability to do one fractal at a time rather than a set of 4 makes it very easy to pick up and put down on any achedule without modifying the challenge or inherant rewards.

The legendary backpack collection adds several interesting challenge modes and time trials.

The post-patch implementation of the new rewards system is great. I never feel like I got totally shafted on a fractal run.

The slight alterations to enemy scaling and other things in the new difficulty scale system.

Dislikes:
The ability to choose your own fractals damages a crucial component of what made fractals interesting. Making it easier to select specific fractals should have never been a design goal. It is antithetical to the core principals of fractals being content with a high degree of replayability due to scaling challenge and randomizing factors. This should have gone the other direction, by penalizing rather than rewarding this behavior. Skipping to roll starting swamp was done because a 4 fractals run was a significant time investment, not because people love to do swamp. Remove the “pick 3” dailies, and replace them with a randomly numbered set in the difficulty range each day.

New instabilities are boring. The old instabilities started with an outlandish and noticable challenge, and ran through several permutations of pure insanity. The new instabilities are overly weighted against bland condition and boon modifiers. Wasn’t the point of static islands that you could add crazy instabilities tailored to the island to create unique challenges? Instabilities could be so much crazier and more interesting in the new system, with island-specific effects.

No incentive for “full runs” once you’ve cleared achievements. There really should be a repeatable collection or achievement award for doing scales in sequence, to award and encourage running the entire gamut. Bonus gold, achievement points, credit toward a unique title, or something else. Currently there is no reason not to just repeat the same scale (and thus the same exact fractal) over and over again once your dailies are finished. Repetition should not be more rewarding than playing within the difficulty-climbing spirit of the content.

Likes:

1. The single-fractal change
2. Instability concept
3. The fractals themselves!

Dislikes:

1. Reward nerf
2. Difficulty nerf
3. Choosing your fractal

I don’t like the fact that you can choose fractals. I thought the point of fractals is that they’re random. What would’ve been better, I think, is that you keep the single fractal change, but choose at random.

JTGuevara.9018:

1. Reward nerf

Which reward nerf? Please explain yourself and explain it with facts!

Vinceman.4572:

Which reward nerf? Please explain yourself and explain it with facts!

~1 box per month is enough facts?

I would like to propose some changes to the current system:

• A specific fractal level is no longer a specific fractal instance. Any fractal instance can be done at any fractal level between 1-100. Scale the difficulty and correspondingly the reward with fractal level. This is essentially the old system.
• All three fractal dailies in each tier are random and fixed for the day. For example, players do Volcanic, Snowblind, and Swamp fractals for the level 1-20 tier. Players are, however, free to choose what difficulty level (between 1 and 20) they want to do each of those (e.g. Volcanic 10, Snowblind 15, Swamp 20).
• Add daily fractals to each tier: 1-25, 26-50, 51-75, 76-100. It could be perhaps set so that the same daily fractal does not appear in more than one tier.
• Mistlock instabilities need to be reworked. They behave quiet differently in different fractals. In some they add a nice challenge and in others they are a source of frustration. The instability/ies should be tailored to each fractal.
• Make fractals more challenging at higher levels but reward the players for it too. How do you increase the difficulty beyond one-hit-kill? You add variety to the kitten nal [?ärs(?)n(?)l] of the mobs/bosses. May I be so cruel as to suggest a teleporting Dredge boss? You can also add randomness to their patterns so that players are kept on their toes at all times.
• Add worthwhile items that are specific to each fractal and their drop rate scales with fractal difficulty level. For example, Molten shaman drops a unique bow.
• A more serious change would be to rethink some of the mobs and/or their mechanics within each fractal so that they take into account the changes that have occurred elsewhere in the game – particularly skills/traits of players.

I could blabber on but I’ll stop for now. I love fractals and I want to see them be popular and enjoyable.

Rednik.3809:

~1 box per month is enough facts?

Probability of ascended boxes after december patch is about the same before HoT, so your assumption isn’t a fact.

Please more and relevant ones, especially from JTGuevara because we all know that fractal rewards have increased a lot.

I’m loving fractals as they are now, daily doable in 1h. Don’t care if it’s all swamp => I can do other fractals extra if I want, no problem.

To say that you hate the low level skill of players is a very short sited thing to say, new fractal system is bringing in a lot of new players, which means more fractalers. And they’ll learn.

And fractals is great content for practicing for raids (new builds new classes or just being new). It’s not too easy, it’s not too difficult once you got the skill.

I had about 4-5 ascended boxes in the last 3-4 weeks. Also a lot of rings and ofc all the loot you can sell for 15-20g.

What the kitten are you talking about reward nerfs.

ibravitzk.8324:

Gimli.9461:

I’m loving fractals as they are now, daily doable in 1h. Don’t care if it’s all swamp => I can do other fractals extra if I want, no problem.

To say that you hate the low level skill of players is a very short sited thing to say, new fractal system is bringing in a lot of new players, which means more fractalers. And they’ll learn.

And fractals is great content for practicing for raids (new builds new classes or just being new). It’s not too easy, it’s not too difficult once you got the skill.

Fractal dailys prepatch(20, 30, 40, 50) were done in less then 1.5h wtf are you talkin about….

With lucky rolls yes, old fractals under 1.5h (9-19-21/29-40-49/50) For me with a set Guild team, but with pugs and not-so expert players its 2-3h. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

New fractals? takes my team roughly 30-45 mins tops. with PUGs who stay the whole duration, under 50-60 mins still. HUGE difference in time, and better rewards. Then we can do w/e we want with all the TIME we have on our hands compared to old fracts.

Don’t try to act like an elite wannabe, fractals now are Waaaaaaay better than they used to. Better for the general population and player base, less stress on the average Casual player which far out-number all the so-called “elites” who cry and whine about them being too easy.

ibravitzk.8324:

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

ibravitzk.8324:

Gimli.9461:

I’m loving fractals as they are now, daily doable in 1h. Don’t care if it’s all swamp => I can do other fractals extra if I want, no problem.

To say that you hate the low level skill of players is a very short sited thing to say, new fractal system is bringing in a lot of new players, which means more fractalers. And they’ll learn.

And fractals is great content for practicing for raids (new builds new classes or just being new). It’s not too easy, it’s not too difficult once you got the skill.

Fractal dailys prepatch(20, 30, 40, 50) were done in less then 1.5h wtf are you talkin about….

With lucky rolls yes, old fractals under 1.5h (9-19-21/29-40-49/50) For me with a set Guild team, but with pugs and not-so expert players its 2-3h. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

New fractals? takes my team roughly 30-45 mins tops. with PUGs who stay the whole duration, under 50-60 mins still. HUGE difference in time, and better rewards. Then we can do w/e we want with all the TIME we have on our hands compared to old fracts.

Don’t try to act like an elite wannabe, fractals now are Waaaaaaay better than they used to. Better for the general population and player base, less stress on the average Casual player which far out-number all the so-called “elites” who cry and whine about them being too easy.

so the fastest solo lvl 50 i did were below 45mins. the fastest duo i did below 20mins and you wanna tell me it isnt possible to clear full run in under 1.5 hrs in a Pug group?

The rewards arent better since the update i got no ascended chest and no fractal skin….

No one cares about your times, generally most PUG’s can’t do that not nor don’t really care. It is possible to hit fast times on old fractals with PUG’s, yes, but that’s VERY few teams. You’re just speaking for yourself. The general populace benefits more from the current fractals and that’s a fact. Most people are casual and don’t have that much time to waste on 1 piece of in-game content = Fractals. They can do so much more with their time after clearing the new easy-mode fractals, which is why this is a wonderful thing for ANET to do, everyone wins.

Elitists / Hardcore players are the loud minority in this game, the General casual players are the silent Majority.