Guild Wars 2

Hmm. I’m not sure if we’re talking about quite the same strategy then. Essentially, have all but one player go down to the maw platform, and have them wait at the edge while one of them kills off the second tentacle. As soon as they’re affected by agony, jump off the ledge so that they’re teleported back up to where the guy who stayed behind is standing (the person killing the tentacle might not make it to the ledge in time to jump off). The guy who stayed behind then rezzes all the players, who should no longer get agony when they jump back down to the maw platform. They rez the guy who stayed behind (and the tentacle killer if he didn’t make it), then carry on with the fight. Seems to me that should work in theory (unless dying causes them to retrigger agony when they reenter the maw’s range).[/quote]

[/quote]

Oh, I see what you mean, you get agony the second you jump down on the lower floating stone from the higher one, not the actual battlezone, and you can’t jump back up because it’s too high so running back to the person is not possible and if he jumped down after the second tenticle is gone, hed get agony as well because it would count as re-entering the battle, but I’m willing to test that actually, I’ll try that tomorrow.

Syeria.4812:

lekyii.9856:

Syeria.4812:

lekyii.9856:

Syeria.4812:

lekyii.9856:

Shear Force.9154:

lekyii.9856:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

What ?? better rewards? where?

From wiki :

lvl26-39 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic
lvl40-49 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic

Same rewards

I think he means drops, and even if not, fractal weapons and rings have a higher chance to drop in higher levels, I believe, which is better rewards, kind of…

It cant be drops you know why? RNG, its cant be better drops if we have RNG,

Or will be like lets try my lucky today, oh look good loot , and the next day, oh no good loot.

I fell like you dont get rewarded by playing well/being good player or doing the hardest dungeons that almost no one can do but you get rewarded if you are lucky.

That’s not how RNG works.

Think of RNG as a dice roll (how it would be handled in D&D). Essentially, when a dice roll determines that loot will be granted, a dice roll is performed to determine what loot is received. At fractal level 1 you might be “rolling” 1-1000 and when you roll a number higher than 800 you receive a rare item. At fractal level 21 that roll might be a rare at higher than 700. At 40 it might be a rare at higher than 600. So, despite it being “RNG” your odds of receiving a rare item is (in this example) double when on fractal 40 as opposed to fractal 1.

Still is random you may get good look today and bad loot tomorrow

better change/higher chance is not the same as you get better loot

i think in a diferent way for me when someone in a game says you get better loot, i think that if i do that lvl i get better loot and not if i do that lvl i have a higher change to have better loot.

But thats what i think ofc i may be wrong

What you’re attempting to say is that odds can not be better because it’s a random system. The equivalent statement is that the odds of guessing a coin flip are exactly equal to the odds of guessing a 6-sided die roll.

Now, this is obviously false when phrased that way, but it’s exactly what you’re saying. Because it’s random, I could guess two dice rolls in a row correctly, but zero coin flips. That doesn’t change the fact that the odds of me guessing a coin flip are 3 times better than the odds of me guessing a die roll.

maybe I did not express myself well, what im trying to say is that the way they say that you MAY get better reward, dont change anything because the base loot at lvl 1 or lvl 10 or lvl 19 is the same then you have the chance to have a rare or exotic and that will still the the same at higher lvls, in other words, we will never get guaranteed rare , it will always be luck and that is what i dont like about the loot in the game, ofc this happend in other MMOs but i see it worst in here for some reason.

The chance for loot at level 11 is significantly higher than the chance at level 1. The chance at level 21 is significantly higher than the chance at level 11. The chance at level 31 is significantly higher than the chance at level 21. The chance at level 41 is significantly higher than the chance at level 31.

No, you will likely never get a guaranteed rare. However, you will reach a point where the odds of receiving zero rares in a run are diminishingly small.

At this juncture it seems you either don’t actually have a point, or are butchering what you’re trying to say so badly that it’s incomprehensible.

I Doubt that will happen, Anet won’t allow it, all for the good of the economy

lekyii.9856:

Syeria.4812:

lekyii.9856:

Syeria.4812:

lekyii.9856:

Syeria.4812:

lekyii.9856:

Shear Force.9154:

lekyii.9856:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

What ?? better rewards? where?

From wiki :

lvl26-39 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic
lvl40-49 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic

Same rewards

I think he means drops, and even if not, fractal weapons and rings have a higher chance to drop in higher levels, I believe, which is better rewards, kind of…

It cant be drops you know why? RNG, its cant be better drops if we have RNG,

Or will be like lets try my lucky today, oh look good loot , and the next day, oh no good loot.

I fell like you dont get rewarded by playing well/being good player or doing the hardest dungeons that almost no one can do but you get rewarded if you are lucky.

That’s not how RNG works.

Think of RNG as a dice roll (how it would be handled in D&D). Essentially, when a dice roll determines that loot will be granted, a dice roll is performed to determine what loot is received. At fractal level 1 you might be “rolling” 1-1000 and when you roll a number higher than 800 you receive a rare item. At fractal level 21 that roll might be a rare at higher than 700. At 40 it might be a rare at higher than 600. So, despite it being “RNG” your odds of receiving a rare item is (in this example) double when on fractal 40 as opposed to fractal 1.

Still is random you may get good look today and bad loot tomorrow

better change/higher chance is not the same as you get better loot

i think in a diferent way for me when someone in a game says you get better loot, i think that if i do that lvl i get better loot and not if i do that lvl i have a higher change to have better loot.

But thats what i think ofc i may be wrong

What you’re attempting to say is that odds can not be better because it’s a random system. The equivalent statement is that the odds of guessing a coin flip are exactly equal to the odds of guessing a 6-sided die roll.

Now, this is obviously false when phrased that way, but it’s exactly what you’re saying. Because it’s random, I could guess two dice rolls in a row correctly, but zero coin flips. That doesn’t change the fact that the odds of me guessing a coin flip are 3 times better than the odds of me guessing a die roll.

maybe I did not express myself well, what im trying to say is that the way they say that you MAY get better reward, dont change anything because the base loot at lvl 1 or lvl 10 or lvl 19 is the same then you have the chance to have a rare or exotic and that will still the the same at higher lvls, in other words, we will never get guaranteed rare , it will always be luck and that is what i dont like about the loot in the game, ofc this happend in other MMOs but i see it worst in here for some reason.

The chance for loot at level 11 is significantly higher than the chance at level 1. The chance at level 21 is significantly higher than the chance at level 11. The chance at level 31 is significantly higher than the chance at level 21. The chance at level 41 is significantly higher than the chance at level 31.

No, you will likely never get a guaranteed rare. However, you will reach a point where the odds of receiving zero rares in a run are diminishingly small.

At this juncture it seems you either don’t actually have a point, or are butchering what you’re trying to say so badly that it’s incomprehensible.

I Doubt that will happen, Anet won’t allow it, all for the good of the economy

I’ll take a good, stable economy over inflation any day, the second 100G means absolutely nothing in the game I’ll quit, I love that gold is as valuable as it is, in fact I’d like it to be more valuable. I really wish that there was a set amount of gold in each server, and that money itself wouln’t be dropped as a drop, meaning the amount of raw gold would never increase but thats impossible so… meh

Shear Force.9154:

Oh, I see what you mean, you get agony the second you jump down on the lower floating stone from the higher one, not the actual battlezone, and you can’t jump back up because it’s too high so running back to the person is not possible and if he jumped down after the second tenticle is gone, hed get agony as well because it would count as re-entering the battle, but I’m willing to test that actually, I’ll try that tomorrow.

Which stone triggers the agony? The one I’m suggesting the guy wait on is the last platform with mobs, which is where players teleport to if they fall off the maw platform.

Shear Force.9154:

Trollhammer.7439:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

I am sure it was already said like thousand times, but allow me to reiterate: Wearing a piece of obscure stat gear doesn’t make one more skillful. In fact the opposite is true. People have trouble completing 20+ and 30+ fractals with agony resistance required, yet other people beat 40+ just fine, even though none of them have the required AR yet.
The whole concept of agony is useless and insulting to players, when increased difficulty on the encounter is plenty for telling who deserves better rewards. Why can I not complete level 50? Why show me a big fat finger at the very end, when I’ve already proven to be skilled enough by getting there?
I am sorry, but this is absurd. It goes against GW design philosophy we knew and loved where player skill is above gear.

That isn’t entirely true tho, you might be able to do easy fractals like underwater or swamp or deadge, but some bosses that you can’t dodge the agony will kill you without required AR, but I also see your point.

We got pretty hard onse on the way to the maw and we were fine, but the agony at maw killed us, I’d say make the maw it self stronger as a boss, not agony, that you can’t dodge or do anything against you just die because your gear isn’t good enough, not because you as a player isn’t good enough.

Only the Maw has the agony that can’t be dodged. All other fractals are perfectly doable at 40+, have been for weeks before last patch and still are.

Fractals are gated content with terrible rewards (if, like me, you have bad luck/Anet tagged you for bad loot). Did fotm 20 and got all blues and 2 greens. Couldn’t even finish the 3rd fractal though because 1 party member dropped for no reason and the bosses can 1hit kill you even without agony. This game stopped caring about player skill a long time ago and moved to a hope you get lucky game.

Robert I have a serious question.
Are you guys planning to change the number of ecto required for a backpack infusion?
I’m talking about the Quivers and Tomes. 250 ecto jut to get it infused, isn’t it a tad too much?
Also if you think this would be unfair for the ones using the fractal backpiece, why not lower the requirements for that one too, while keeping the 250 ectos just for the glow as an extra.
250 ectos is too much for 5 agony.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

5 greens instead of 4?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It was never intended that you could get higher without further AR gear that has not yet been released. There was an exploit in the system we were not able to close up until this last patch.

AR is seriously the WORST!! design i have EVER seen in a game…. you made a stats with the sole purpose of bringing in the counter stats on gear for it, NOTHING ELSE!!!….

i have never in 20+ years of gaming seen such a completely “out of wack” design choice.. it is a mystery how the hell your lead designer still got a job o.O

Rozbuska.5263:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

5 greens instead of 4?

first of the loot increase is next to useless in a game where the endgear is crazily easily arquired stats wise.
secondly using a fixed % dmg i kill you stats to detail the difficulty of a dungeon instead of a clever design/mobs/skills/etc is soo .. i can’t put words on it without getting instantly perma banned, but every gamer which have ever touched a game even console gamers would understand how incredibly stupid and bad such a design choice is…

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It was never intended that you could get higher without further AR gear that has not yet been released. There was an exploit in the system we were not able to close up until this last patch.

So this is the official respone to a question I asked a month ago in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractals-cap-80/page/2#post1389132

Now that I have the answer I can’t defend you anymore that you not have a geartrademill in your game. I was always defending the idea of fractals and not beeing forced to geargrind, since I could get to lvl 80 naked ( i did some lvl 70+ lvl’s without any AR) and from 72-75 with 5 AR. Till the update you weren’t forced to have AR at all. you could do ( I might make a video ) Fractals scale 70+ naked. ( and Surely without any AR). But since this update you force ppl that wanna advance to grind a specific gear. You force em to grind Dailies to get to a dungeon with higher difficulty…

I’m dissapointed that the answer to my question was not answered over a month. Still I have tiny little hope that you rethink your System cause as you stated it is a geartrademill now. And I really hoped to get along with skill in this game…

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

My only criticism is that the Agony on Jade Maw increased to a ridiculous level, when it could have continued to increase at its current pace. Even if it doubled from 72% to 144% and still would have been impossible to complete. Why was it set to something completely unrealistic, 1172%?

Note: ((AR : DR)) formula ((Agony Resistance : Damage Reduction)) formula is currently set at a ((5 : 6%)) ratio. If you have 35 current AR, you reduce Agony by 40%. In order to reduce level 50 Jade Maw’s damage to 30% a tick, you need an additional 950 AR. I somehow doubt our remaining 9 slots of gear are going to provide on average 110 AR each, since it would completely invalidate Fractals 1-49.

actually, unlimited infuses, just 250 ectoplasm each infusion !!

I still feel like how agony works right now, it does not increase difficulty in coordinated groups.. Instead, it just makes already stong boss attacks stonger, and skilled players can already dodge and circumvent all but the Jade Maw’s agony.

Skilled players should be rewarded with the ability to continue progressing, and agony resistance should serve as crutch for other players who have difficulty with the fights.

The jade maw should not have a 8 second undodgable agony attack, because it does not make this fight more fun or more difficult. How agony should work in the Jade Maw should make it harder, but not impossible, to fight the tentacles and colossus, perhaps something like stacking vulnerability, or the maw can target more than one person at a time.

Gear gated content is not harder or more skillful, and instead this punishes players who coordinate and work together as a team. It punishes teamwork and is not fun.

Assuming players could avoid all damage 100% of the time using skill and timing; the developer faces an interesting dilema with thier fractal design. A dungeon that scales in difficulty to infinty cannot scale in rewards infintly for obvious reasons. When you get to lvl 10000; what is going to be in that chest?

lekyii.9856:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

What ?? better rewards? where?

From wiki :

lvl26-39 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic
lvl40-49 Ascended Ring (Infused), Fractal Weapon, Pristine Fractal Relic

Same rewards

the fractal relics go down too iirc.

@calae, the internet.

Nokaru.7831:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

My only criticism is that the Agony on Jade Maw increased to a ridiculous level, when it could have continued to increase at its current pace. Even if it doubled from 72% to 144% and still would have been impossible to complete. Why was it set to something completely unrealistic, 1172%?

Note: ((AR : DR)) formula ((Agony Resistance : Damage Reduction)) formula is currently set at a ((5 : 6%)) ratio. If you have 35 current AR, you reduce Agony by 40%. In order to reduce level 50 Jade Maw’s damage to 30% a tick, you need an additional 950 AR. I somehow doubt our remaining 9 slots of gear are going to provide on average 110 AR each, since it would completely invalidate Fractals 1-49.

You mean, you’d need extra 950 AR for lvl 80?

Sativo.9754:

Citizens, citizens! Introducing the all new endless scaling dungeon that had an end that we decided to make end sooner!

^ Fractals in a nutshell.

Glad I didn’t follow my guild leader to lvl 50+. That was a helluva lot of work for him to get to, that he can’t even run any longer. Time wasted > 9000.

Sativo.9754:

Making the decision to cut fotm off at 49 was a bad decision for these reasons:

1. People already higher than this who enjoy having limitless progression are in essence flipped off and told to dwi and go do other content in the game which they obviously find less enjoyable.

2. Money? Anet likes money right? Gold sinks, gotta have more of those yeah? Hmmm, how about making the only way to progress be using a cash shop item that will never be used anywhere else anyway? Yeah, people will cry about it. Pay to win blah blah, you can buy them with gold it isn’t that much and have each member buy a few each. People will eventually stop crying and buy it with gold mostly. The rich people who don’t care will buy them with rl money for convenience. Isn’t it a win/win?

After this update i’ve had my active friends list cut by 2/3rds. I’m sure im not the only one. This is by far the worst update this game has had.

Also, I bet they cut it off because the mechanic used to allow only res orbs to be used wouldn’t be able to prevent ranger res. sigh Why don’t you just make it so a pet cant run across thin air to res ppl? Can’t be that hard.

Citizens, citizens! Introducing the all new endless scaling dungeon that had an end that we decided to make end sooner!

Actually if any content in the game required you to buy something from the cash shop to progress past I’d quick GW2 instantly, and so would a lot of people.
The whole point of this post was that you need Revive Orbs at the moment and that it’s pay to win, that got cleared out however as it was never intended to go this far into fractals at the moment.

Shear Force.9154:

Actually if any content in the game required you to buy something from the cash shop to progress past I’d quick GW2 instantly, and so would a lot of people.

You didn’t need rez orbs to go to level 50+. You just needed a ranger (pet rez skill), or a well timed 99% rez. So no need to buy anything at cash shop.

This is just a theory, but 4 thieves + 1 ranger should be able to out heal agony until it does over 6k per tick.

Healing Springs + 4 Cluster bomb spam = 6k AoE heal per second.

Regen from healing springs and extra healing from shadow refuge could add up to another 1k to that depending on how the Thieves are traited.

Kaon.7192:

This is just a theory, but 4 thieves + 1 ranger should be able to out heal agony until it does over 6k per tick.

Healing Springs + 4 Cluster bomb spam = 6k AoE heal per second.

Regen from healing springs and extra healing from shadow refuge could add up to another 1k to that depending on how the Thieves are traited.

I thought about using 5 guardians and 5 properly timed full heals from their elite skill. As long as agony did less than 100% damage, you could pop one full heal after each tick and possibly survive at higher level fractals. It would be difficult to time, but rewarding if pulled off correctly.

Of course this does not really work now that fractal 50 does 1174% damage.

Shear Force.9154:

You mean, you’d need extra 950 AR for lvl 80?

No, you need it to live through the current damage of Level 50 Jade Maw.

Kaon.7192:

Healing Springs + 4 Cluster bomb spam = 6k AoE heal per second.

Fields have a cap on how many times they can combo, as far as I know. I think the number is 5.

Nokaru.7831:

Shear Force.9154:

You mean, you’d need extra 950 AR for lvl 80?

No, you need it to live through the current damage of Level 50 Jade Maw.

Kaon.7192:

Healing Springs + 4 Cluster bomb spam = 6k AoE heal per second.

Fields have a cap on how many times they can combo, as far as I know. I think the number is 5.

Really? I’ll have to test that out later with a longer field but I’m almost certain I’ve blasted healing springs more than 5 times before, with the healing proc’ing every time. It lasts 15s after all, you can get in quite a few cluster bombs in that time period.

Lanser.8520:

Kaon.7192:

This is just a theory, but 4 thieves + 1 ranger should be able to out heal agony until it does over 6k per tick.

Healing Springs + 4 Cluster bomb spam = 6k AoE heal per second.

Regen from healing springs and extra healing from shadow refuge could add up to another 1k to that depending on how the Thieves are traited.

I thought about using 5 guardians and 5 properly timed full heals from their elite skill. As long as agony did less than 100% damage, you could pop one full heal after each tick and possibly survive at higher level fractals. It would be difficult to time, but rewarding if pulled off correctly.

Of course this does not really work now that fractal 50 does 1174% damage.

Timing that is insanely hard, I would that I didn’t even have enough time to cast it after the first tick, but I assume you could do it if you are trying to heal one persont who has agony and the rest just stay back.

But don’t you think that it’s a bit unfair that guardians become the only class that goes into fractals past lvl 40, or a ranger assuming you’ll do the whole ress with the pet thing. That’s not very ballanced…

Shear Force.9154:

Lanser.8520:

Kaon.7192:

This is just a theory, but 4 thieves + 1 ranger should be able to out heal agony until it does over 6k per tick.

Healing Springs + 4 Cluster bomb spam = 6k AoE heal per second.

Regen from healing springs and extra healing from shadow refuge could add up to another 1k to that depending on how the Thieves are traited.

I thought about using 5 guardians and 5 properly timed full heals from their elite skill. As long as agony did less than 100% damage, you could pop one full heal after each tick and possibly survive at higher level fractals. It would be difficult to time, but rewarding if pulled off correctly.

Of course this does not really work now that fractal 50 does 1174% damage.

Timing that is insanely hard, I would that I didn’t even have enough time to cast it after the first tick, but I assume you could do it if you are trying to heal one persont who has agony and the rest just stay back.

But don’t you think that it’s a bit unfair that guardians become the only class that goes into fractals past lvl 40, or a ranger assuming you’ll do the whole ress with the pet thing. That’s not very ballanced…

That’s one of the thing I hate most about fractals, how the agony works just makes the dungeon feel badly designed. Its an attack that doesn’t really increase difficulty, just acts as a gear gate, with very little being added to every other boss fight besides emphasizing dodging.

As of right now, it favors rangers for just pet revive and guardians and mesmer for reflections and heals.

You cannot make difficulty scale forever. You cannot make rewards scale forever. It doesn’t make any sense. You will hit a mathematical wall whether you like it or not.

As a developer, to get around this you have to create the illusion of progression.

This is how I would do it. At lvl 20 you have 1% chance to get a charged lodestone from the chest. At lvl 30 you have a 2% chance. At lvl 40 you have a 3% chance. I would monitor where most people are and adjust the drop rates accordingly. Say for example that my threshhold is 50% of the active FoTM population. Lets say that 50% of the population is at lvl 30 and I find the drop rates acceptable. Once 50% of the population reach lvl 40, I change the lodestone droprate from 3% back down to 2%.

Theoretically, the community wouldn’t notice but, if they did; I could deny changes in the drop rates.

Calae.1738:

You cannot make difficulty scale forever. You cannot make rewards scale forever. It doesn’t make any sense. You will hit a mathematical wall whether you like it or not.

As a developer, to get around this you have to create the illusion of progression.

This is how I would do it. At lvl 20 you have 1% chance to get a charged lodestone from the chest. At lvl 30 you have a 2% chance. At lvl 40 you have a 3% chance. I would monitor where most people are and adjust the drop rates accordingly. Say for example that my threshhold is 50% of the active FoTM population. Lets say that 50% of the population is at lvl 30 and I find the drop rates acceptable. Once 50% of the population reach lvl 40, I change the lodestone droprate from 3% back down to 2%.

Theoretically, the community wouldn’t notice but, if they did; I could deny changes in the drop rates.

Denying, or effectively lying to your community is the most horrible thing a company can do, if it wasn’t for us there would be no Guild Wars 2, a little gratitude would be nice, and I hope ArenaNet never goes down that road, where they have to lie to their customers to keep them playing.

Trollhammer.7439:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

I am sure it was already said like thousand times, but allow me to reiterate: Wearing a piece of obscure stat gear doesn’t make one more skillful. In fact the opposite is true. People have trouble completing 20+ and 30+ fractals with agony resistance required, yet other people beat 40+ just fine, even though none of them have the required AR yet.
The whole concept of agony is useless and insulting to players, when increased difficulty on the encounter is plenty for telling who deserves better rewards. Why can I not complete level 50? Why show me a big fat finger at the very end, when I’ve already proven to be skilled enough by getting there?
I am sorry, but this is absurd. It goes against GW design philosophy we knew and loved where player skill is above gear.

Exactly what I thought. Anet now completly lost my support. I was saying before Fractals would be an increasing gear grind, however I played to 20 without AR without problems and thought skill could make up for this so it is more or less optional. No that I read that official statement I think: That’s a simple, boring and stupid item gating mechanic. And you teased us there will be more content with Agony in the future. Blah. Please go the way Turbine did and remove Agony from the game as it is a terrible mechanic no one needs (especially in a game YOU said is not for grinding better stats that allows you to play content). I don’t know but I am really really sad about how your company moved from making an incredible unique game with gw1 to a company making a random kitten gear grind mmo with gw2 and advertise it with the same points as the first title.

Shear Force.9154:

I’m just going to say this, and probably get crucified by most of the people.
Isn’t that kind of, pay to win?
I know you can take a ranger, but what if I don’t want a ranger, I automatically need to get gems.

no, you automatically don’t have to do crap. They didn’t limit you to 38 levels of fractals correspondingly to currently available agony resistant gear and you are already whining about them making you buy gems. pathetic.

Shear Force.9154:

Calae.1738:

You cannot make difficulty scale forever. You cannot make rewards scale forever. It doesn’t make any sense. You will hit a mathematical wall whether you like it or not.

As a developer, to get around this you have to create the illusion of progression.

This is how I would do it. At lvl 20 you have 1% chance to get a charged lodestone from the chest. At lvl 30 you have a 2% chance. At lvl 40 you have a 3% chance. I would monitor where most people are and adjust the drop rates accordingly. Say for example that my threshhold is 50% of the active FoTM population. Lets say that 50% of the population is at lvl 30 and I find the drop rates acceptable. Once 50% of the population reach lvl 40, I change the lodestone droprate from 3% back down to 2%.

Theoretically, the community wouldn’t notice but, if they did; I could deny changes in the drop rates.

Denying, or effectively lying to your community is the most horrible thing a company can do, if it wasn’t for us there would be no Guild Wars 2, a little gratitude would be nice, and I hope ArenaNet never goes down that road, where they have to lie to their customers to keep them playing.

Give it time.

Arenanet doesn’t know how to make encounters challenging enough without artifical gear gates. It took Blizzard awhile to pull it off.

Calae.1738:

Arenanet doesn’t know how to make encounters challenging enough without artifical gear gates. It took Blizzard awhile to pull it off.

Pretty funny comment, talking about a game where most raids have at least one gear-check boss, if not several…

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Calae.1738:

Arenanet doesn’t know how to make encounters challenging enough without artifical gear gates. It took Blizzard awhile to pull it off.

Pretty funny comment, talking about a game where most raids have at least one gear-check boss, if not several…

May be true, but while I hate WoW with passion, I’ll never deny that their dungeons are amazingly designed, even with the gear grind, they are challenging, not because there is a condition on you that you can’t do anything about but get better gear, which becomes irrelevant as your gear gets better, but because encounters are well designed.

Guys trust me all anet is trying to do is push ppl out of fotm into doing other stuff the game has to offer.
I mean with making AR hit so hard, making the mobs hit harder, making the loot suck(esp loadstones) and with the introduction of the laurels system what else can they be trying to do.
Which kinda sucks big times but, hey the real kitten clowns are the ones who kept crying fotm killed the game cos no one is doing anything else.
Funny thing is 2 of the 4 monthly and 2 or 3 of the 5 dailies can be completed just by doing fotm. Even helps in event completion but not the ideal way of getting it done.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Calae.1738:

Arenanet doesn’t know how to make encounters challenging enough without artifical gear gates. It took Blizzard awhile to pull it off.

Pretty funny comment, talking about a game where most raids have at least one gear-check boss, if not several…

That’s not what I meant.

Remember resistances? You needed fire resist for Ragnaros. You needed those stupid capes for the dragons in Blackwing Lair. Agony works the same way. It’s a resistance to an unavoidable type of damage. In reality, this mechanic is a gating system designed to slow down progression in order to give enough time for the developers to develop new content. The player base consumes the content much faster than it takes them to build it.

Once the developers become better at what they do, they’ll be able to design a dungeon where your amazing group of 5 will be wiping on the same boss for a month.

So, looking at the complaints in this thread, I got to wondering: Was agony resist ever billed as more than a gear-check?

To answer, I tracked down the two news announcements talking about FotM in general and ascended gear, specifically. Those can be found here:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/leah-rivera-on-the-new-fractals-of-the-mist-dungeon/

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Now, both of these announcements do say that progression in Fractals will be based on skill and teamwork. However, and this is important, they both also say that agony resistance will be crucial to progression. They literally say that agony resistance is “crucial” or “a must.”

Seeing that, I have to ask: Why are you so surprised that it’s a gear-check?

Iures.2894:

Seeing that, I have to ask: Why are you so surprised that it’s a gear-check?

It isn’t so much that it’s a surprise, as an unexpected lowball.

Groups were competent enough to survive the increased “danger” in fractals over 40 and had found workarounds for the maw agony. After a significant portion of time as this being acceptable, with no statement to the contrary by the company, Anet suddenly just shut off everyone from that former option. With the justification after the fact that it was never intended to progress beyond that newly formed invisible wall.

Funny how the opinion of Agony started out as, “No, we don’t want gear checks, get rid of it.”
Moved to, “It’s not a gear check, if you’re good, you can live regardless. L2P.”
And has arrived back at “No, we don’t want gear checks, get rid of it.”

Well that’s very disappointing I see this topic is a 1 motnh old. Do Anet plan some upcoming changes? If this is it im done with fractals and i dont need more Agony Resist becouse the reward are the same and we always will have limit. So why i must do higher fractals and why i will need more Agony Resist?

Anything but minor changes to fractals appear to be on the backburner for now.

This month’s update will be WvW focused. No telling if next month’s will give fractals any love, or not.

Now that ascended earrings have been added, and at least one is attainable within the next few weeks (if you have a large, active guild), I would assume they will at least allow progression past the 40th tier with the next patch, if you have an earring or two.