Guild Wars 2

FotM (Fractals of the Mist) is unforgiving on player disconnections, and the solution so players may reconnect to their instance is still under way. Solely on this I would want to ask:

Why is Fractals of the Mist a part of Jan 2013’s monthly achievements?

Because it is. Nobody is making you play them.

Nobody is making me play Guild Wars 2 either.

I ask because I want to, both do and know the thoughts of similar peers concerned.

Can’t stand FotM. Just make it ANY dungeon like you did that one time.

i decided to get an early start on the FotM monthly bit. started at lvl 2. got kicked out during the second fractal (at the end boss of the ascalon fractal). so my team had to end up 4-manning it. sure they did fine, but still. i felt bad for that. and i didn’t get to play something i wanted to. the fractals are interesting! but this base mechanic needs a lot of polishing.

hope the changes will come soon. : )))

@OP – if you’re not concerned with leveling up your fractals now, just do lvl 1 for now and clear the monthly. supposedly, there are plans for people from different levels to play together and each time you complete a set, you’ll level up accordingly (1 level).a nd can rejoin with disconnects.

Waitseno.3865:

FotM (Fractals of the Mist) is unforgiving on player disconnections, and the solution so players may reconnect to their instance is still under way. Solely on this I would want to ask:

Why is Fractals of the Mist a part of Jan 2013’s monthly achievements?

My concerns exactly. If the fix for Fractals is not coming until the end of the month, they really should have left Fractals out of the Monthly Achievement.

I’m at scale 30 and have done many dailies. I’ve seen a total of 4 dc’s and 1 anomaly bug that wouldn’t let us finish a fractal. At least one of those dc’s was very likely on the player’s end. The odds are highly in your favor that you can finish 7 fractals without issue.

Do these dc problems happen to people that don’t dc often? I’ve ran with my team several times and it has only happened once to someone who actually has an ongoing internet problem even outside of fractals. I was starting to think that the dc problem is on the players’ end, but I could be wrong.

Lightrayne.7829:

Do these dc problems happen to people that don’t dc often? I’ve ran with my team several times and it has only happened once to someone who actually has an ongoing internet problem even outside of fractals. I was starting to think that the dc problem is on the players’ end, but I could be wrong.

I have wondered this myself. My guess is a good percentage of dc’s are user end. However, regardless of the reason of the dc, people need to be able to get back into a dungeon after after a dc. While I can honestly say dc’s are generally rare, it does suck when it happens. At 26+ it’s often a death sentence for the rest of the party depending on the fractal.

EDIT: Thought I’d also add that after doing several hundred fractals, I have never personally had a dc in a fractal.

Might be your machine, the way things work is so weird.

I never have dc’ed on mine even though my brother dc’s on his old machine plenty of times, specially fractals. I barely ever lag too

However when I plug my xbox I sometimes lag a lot on call of duty. Switch back to guild wars and no lag… so weird.

I think it would be a good idea to change up monthly achievements each month. ALL of them, not change up 2 and leave the Wv3 and FotM in month after month.

Simple fix really. Make it so a DC’d player returns to the lobby and will be able to rejoin the group at the next check point or after the boss kill.

What annoys me is having to go revisit a bunch of jumping puzzles for the monthly.

Don’t make a big deal out of it, because:

- You don’t need 5 people to do most fractals, especially not the easier ones.
- It is just small fractals, if some one DC’s, you can start over without losing time. It’s not 7 consecutive runs.
- People barely DC.

All in all, it’s still way faster to do than for example, 5 dungeons. Also, the fix should be comming this month, so you can wait untill it is here.

Many of you sound lucky to not experience DCs yourself or very often with your party. But they DO happen quite often and are a real issue. There is a reason that ANet is addressing the issue this month. Because it is a genuine problem.

And yes, most fractals can easily be done by four people. But I too am a little bewildered that this is included in the monthlies again. There is an obvious problem that affects many player’s ability to reliably run fractals. Until this issue is fixed, why make this a monthly requirement?

I’m just waiting for the inevitable monthly requirement of ‘10 Purchases from the Gem Store’. :P

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Many of you sound lucky to not experience DCs yourself or very often with your party. But they DO happen quite often and are a real issue. There is a reason that ANet is addressing the issue this month. Because it is a genuine problem.

And yes, most fractals can easily be done by four people. But I too am a little bewildered that this is included in the monthlies again. There is an obvious problem that affects many player’s ability to reliably run fractals. Until this issue is fixed, why make this a monthly requirement?

I’m just waiting for the inevitable monthly requirement of ‘10 Purchases from the Gem Store’. :P

Agreed, it is a genuine problem. However dc’s are still quite uncommon in actual play. Sure there are the occasional threads here where someone says they’re on fractal scale 4 and they’ve seen 15 dc’s already. Either they are flat out lying or they’re playing with someone who has a bad network. At scale 30 I pug and play with the guild sometimes. Literally no one I’ve talked to about has experienced that many dc’s. 7 fractals is the quickest of any Monthly I’ve yet to see.

Agreed, it is still an easy and quick monthly.

And those saying they’ve seen 15 DCs are obviously either exaggerating or dealing with user end issues.

Personally, I never had many DCs until Wintersday came along. Now my client will just randomly crash on a somewhat consistant basis. Try to travel from LA to another zone.. instant crash. Happens a lot lately when I change maps. Never happened before Wintersday. Coincidence? Maybe.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

But I too am a little bewildered that this is included in the monthlies again. There is an obvious problem that affects many player’s ability to reliably run fractals. Until this issue is fixed, why make this a monthly requirement?

I posted nearly those exact words in the thread “announcing” the upcoming fix date as “late January,” back in December. The disconnect issue was known problem and a fix-in-progress situation since less than a week after Fractals went live. Once it was known that the content was bugged in such a way as to be progress-blocking, Fractals shouldn’t have been in any monthlies – I’m talking about December here. It kind of slipped in because at that point, the planned fix had a hazy release date of “the next update.”

Well that didn’t pan out, and eventually we got a (comparatively) solid timeframe for a fix. From that point forward, content which was known to be broken and not going to be fixed within a month should definitely not be included in monthlies. The fact that broken content is the only way to access the highest gear tier is bad enough, we don’t need any more forces pushing us towards running said content.

Nothing can be done about this at this point, but as a player I’m pretty disturbed that ANet judged it appropriate to require participation in Fractals for the monthly achievement. I hope that ANet doesn’t take this trend with them, going into the new year.

You can actually solo the Ascalon fractal alone at scale 1 with minimal input. Do it 7 times for the monthly.

All you have to do is lead the NPCs to the enemies you want dead, go grab a drink and come back to collect loot.

Lightrayne.7829:

Do these dc problems happen to people that don’t dc often? I’ve ran with my team several times and it has only happened once to someone who actually has an ongoing internet problem even outside of fractals. I was starting to think that the dc problem is on the players’ end, but I could be wrong.

I’ve done around 75 Fractals and never had a single DC, same with my team of “regulars”. However, when I grouped with people who already had connection issues they DCed in Fractals too, as it was bound to happen. Although in lots of cases it’s a client issue, it’s not always, as Anet used to have lots of routing issues in the past (especially in the first month) so it could either still be a routing issue or a client issue, or both.

I am sick of people kittening every single day for same kitten. If you were not absolutely chronic complainer, you would finish this achievement in 2 hours. Hell that’s real issue, you have only one month to finish it.

Spiky.8403:

I am sick of people kittening every single day for same kitten. If you were not absolutely chronic complainer, you would finish this achievement in 2 hours. Hell that’s real issue, you have only one month to finish it.

Exactly. I did 9 fractals in 2 hours last night.

Spiky.8403:

I am sick of people kittening every single day for same kitten. If you were not absolutely chronic complainer, you would finish this achievement in 2 hours. Hell that’s real issue, you have only one month to finish it.

Classic case of completely missing the point. It doesn’t matter that people can complete Fractals at all. ANet is aware that there is a game-breaking design problem with Fractals and has been aware of that problem for months. They’re not going to fix it within a reasonable amount of time before the monthly completes. Therefore, they should not continue to include content which ANet has acknowledged is in need of a fix in time-constrained achievements.

It’s not about whether the content is completable or not, it’s about the fact that the content is broken and is not going to be fixed within the given timeframe.

Additionally, while it’s lovely that you and I and other players aren’t directly affected by the disconnection issue, I have a guildmate who, only when playing GW2, suffers from periodic brief disconnections from the internet, which forces him to restart the GW2 client. This does not detrimentally effect him or others when experiencing any other content, but it makes him unable to complete a full 3 or 4 fractal FotM run, and at higher levels can bar the team from completion.

In other words, just because you personally aren’t effected by the issue, doesn’t mean it’s not progress-blocking to others.