Guild Wars 2

I believe that the reward is pretty much core thing at any dungeon. Why else bothering yourself with necessity of grouping with other people and challenging yourself with difficult content? Ofc there are other factors like satisfaction from PvE-progress etc, but as we all know the other option is to farm COF, which offers much better rewards for a much lower time and effort investment. You will always need resources to buy or upgrade something, and COF just offers you much quicker way to do that, making you choose between PvE-progress and the efficiency of farm.

Thus said, there are several problems regarding fractal rewards in my opinion:

• Complete uselessness of pristine fractal relics (they just stack in the bank)
• Poor use of common fractal relics (when you already have your capacitor/bags): your only choice is to buy obsidian shards or skills
• The loot is too random: even if you are lucky, this would barely compete with the efficiency of COF farming, but if you are not lucky, you can finish even lvl 48 with just lots of greens/blues (hello, blue/green Jade Maw chest) and several rares, without any cores/lodestones or anything else valuable
• Insane RNG regarding fractal skins: there are so many weapon types in this game (including the ones that your character can’t equip) that your chances to get a desired skin are close to zero
• Overwhelming numbers of rings, which can’t be utilized and barely have any value (ofc u can give them to another character, but in fact these rings just progressively occupy more and more space in your bank as you complete fractal dailies)
• Same goes to ascended reagents (vials, shards etc.), but at least they have a special slot in the bank and don’t overwhelm your free space; however, they are just stacking there and have no use at all once you have upgraded your equipment
• Absence of any visible signs of your progress, i.e. ranks or unique weapon/armor skins which can only be obtained after reaching a certain fractal lvl (in theory, even an infused fractal capacitor can be farmed by only completing lvl 1 many times, and if you see someone with a fractal weapon, u will never know if he/she is lvl 30, 40, 50 or just got that skin from his/her 1st lvl 20 run)

I think that these problems can be solved by introducing:

• Buyable lodestones (at the cost of 2-3 pristine fractal relics per 1 lodestone)
• Buyable t6 reagents (at the cost of 30-50 common fractal relics per 1 t6 reagent)
• More stable loot from mobs and bosses that gets better as you lvl up (for example, a guaranteed rare per fractal boss and some guaranteed cores, lodestones or rares for Jade Maw at lvl 30+)
• Buyable fractal skins (at the cost of, for example, 50 pristine fractal relics)
• The possibility to utilize rings via salvage kits, allowing to extract ascended reagents and a guaranteed glob of ectoplasm (mb even 2 globs)
• New transmuting recipes for Mystic Forge that require ascended reagents (and mb obsidian shards and skills): this will allow to transmute useless ascended reagents into some t6 materials or cores/lodestones (something similar to mystic clovers recipe)
• A new ranking system that promotes you to a new rank every 10 lvls (i.e. lvl 10, 20, 30 etc.)

I understand that this will allow people to get more reagents and may affect market, but you get most of these rewards on a daily basis (and the amount of these rewards is quite mediocre), so they actually cannot be farmed 24/7 (unlike COF, which has no diminishing in terms of pure gold farming). Besides, farming fractals requires time, and people who go there are surely not farming COF, WvW or any events while they are inside the fractal. I just suggest introducing more reasonable rewards by allowing people salvage or trade materials/items that have no use and simply occupy free space in the bank. Perhaps the suggested cost of reagents can be altered, but I think you got my general idea.

Regarding fractal weapons – I think that completing 50 dailies will be enough to buy a desired skin. I have been farming fractals for months, reached lvl 49 and still do not have a greatsword skin which I need. And I have a feeling that I will get a legendary faster than this fractal greatsword, which is wrong.

I think that a new ranking system is needed too. People need something to show others their fractal progress. There are ranking systems for sPvP, even WvW now, why not to add similar system to fractals, which are actually designed as a leveling ladder?

In conclusion I have something else to add: the difficulty of fractals differs, and players tend to restart until they roll the easiest/fastest fractal. Nobody starts from dredge, grawl, cultists or harpies. I suggest excluding these fractals from the list of possible rolls of 1st fractal. Players then will have a starting set of quick fractals and they will still be able to roll something else (but that will be much faster than now).

If you have any additions to this, feel free to share. I know that this is a TLDR topic, but I tried to sum up the most annoying fractal issues and help developers make fractals better.

P.S.: English is not my native language, so I’m sorry for possible mistakes.

3. Having to level your way through fractals from level 1 on every single character is beyond stupid.

Good post. However, I have had tons of players suggest they enjoy Dredge for the loot, and removing the add’s would make them unhappy. I think there might be a alternate way of shortening it. Also most people cringe when they see bombs vs the door cannon.

Alphik.5327:

The 2nd pack of krait on 40+ lvls. Yes, it’s very painful. There is no real challenge here, just killing mobs 1 by 1 at range while they just deal insane amount of damage and down people. It may require 10-15 min to pass these guys, which is just…

Prioritize hypnosses, instead of just kiting the damosses forever and wonder why you wipe over and over again.

Alphik.5327:

Bloomhunger, as his agony ability is too unpredictable. It’s barely noticeable unless u start taking serious damage from agony

Personally I dont see any randomness here, theres a delay between when the signalling red-circles appear and when the projectiles actually land, you have enough time to reposition

Alphik.5327:

NPC’s have an odd aggroing mechanic: they never fight with mobs until the whole group comes into melee range, but at the final square they aggro on ballistae and arrow carts which are located really far away.

They will fight when hit by mobs/sieges. People are told to get in melee range so the npcs can be cleaved by those warriors/meteored by mages; not because they will “aggro” when close enough. Once they start fighting you can stay melee, or retreat and plink to you heart’s content. For the court yard, make the people with npcs stay by gates away from ballistae range. If you run to those pillars and let them get hit, of course they are going to go in and pull everything.

Alphik.5327:

But the worst part of this fractal is arms seals part. If you (or someone in your group) deal a mistake, you will not be able to complete this fractal (and daily) at all, because you will have to deal with constantly spawning armies of hard-hitting mobs at both sides. And you will not be able to reset this. What is that? 1 mistake of 1 member of the group – and no daily?

Completely doable, even at 70+, with the right tactic.

Alphik.5327:

Don’t forget – he also uses a meteor shower which still can kill you (during the elems phase too), and I think agony arrows are just a little bit too much here, especially when you have to eliminate the fire shield asap.

Don’t remove his shield immediately, clear some elementals first.

Alphik.5327:

And this lasts very, very, very, very, very long. I know that they droop loot, but people mostly prefer to do their daily quickly, and this just turns that into a very long, monotonic and exhausting process

This is more or less a slippery slope, but if you want to remove the clown car, why not make every fractal swamp, and make daily just as comparably fast as “daily” daily. Like you said because pristines and relics are worthless, people who do dailies are mostly after the skins. Those skins are by no means a “need” like laurels. Sometimes you get lucky and you roll ice or water, sometimes not and you get dredge or cliffside.

Razeor.6271:

Prioritize hypnosses, instead of just kiting the damosses forever and wonder why you wipe over and over again.

I don’t wipe over and over again, it’s just a long boring fight which should be reorganized or removed.

Razeor.6271:

Personally I dont see any randomness here, theres a delay between when the signalling red-circles appear and when the projectiles actually land, you have enough time to reposition

There is a ~1-second delay, but if you dont have energy afrer series of dodges, you will most likely have troubles.

Razeor.6271:

They will fight when hit by mobs/sieges. People are told to get in melee range so the npcs can be cleaved by those warriors/meteored by mages; not because they will “aggro” when close enough. Once they start fighting you can stay melee, or retreat and plink to you heart’s content. For the court yard, make the people with npcs stay by gates away from ballistae range. If you run to those pillars and let them get hit, of course they are going to go in and pull everything.

Perhaps I should have created a longer post explaining every piece of tactics at every fractal, but what I said was not “Omg, that mobs just randomly aggro on everything, fix that”. What I said is: “Mobs must be pulled, but this process is too annoying (not fun) and sometimes results in several wipes”.

Alphik.5327:

But the worst part of this fractal is arms seals part. If you (or someone in your group) deal a mistake, you will not be able to complete this fractal (and daily) at all, because you will have to deal with constantly spawning armies of hard-hitting mobs at both sides. And you will not be able to reset this. What is that? 1 mistake of 1 member of the group – and no daily?

Completely doable, even at 70+, with the right tactic.

I believe, that with right tactics everything es doable (including this), but tell me, how may times did you pass these mobs in a random group after someone killed the marked mob and your party wiped? People just leave the group after that (sometimes even the one who started the instance) before you have a chance to explain the “right tactics”.

Razeor.6271:

Don’t remove his shield immediately, clear some elementals first.

Same question: how many times did you see random people prioritizing fire elems, not hitting the shield? And, most importantly, how often do you hold the boss far enough from the NPC’s to have time to deal with elems first (in random groups)? In reality random ppl tend to get downed even before the elems phase and the party constantly regroups, moving the boss out of center. As a consequence boss can summon elems when he is really close to his victim and you won’t have time to hit elems before his shield is gone.

Razeor.6271:

This is more or less a slippery slope, but if you want to remove the clown car, why not make every fractal swamp, and make daily just as comparably fast as “daily” daily. Like you said because pristines and relics are worthless, people who do dailies are mostly after the skins. Those skins are by no means a “need” like laurels. Sometimes you get lucky and you roll ice or water, sometimes not and you get dredge or cliffside.

This daily will not be comparable to “daily” daily, coz it takes much longer to complete even easy fractals. I suggest removing the boring and monotonic part, so you wouldn’t feel like you have been unloading a train with coal. You have enough challenges that include dealing with many hard-hitting mobs and require teamwork. Rabisovich event requires nothing: you just pull mobs behind the wall and kill them slowly, a wave by wave. People are really frustrated by dredge fractal, mostly because it’s just too long, and I suggest make it shorter without removing any real challenges.

All in all, if you speak about correct tactics regarding armies of mobs at arms seals (at lvl 70), that means that you most likely missed a part of my post. I will kindly repeat this for you:

Before we start, I would like to mention that I have never been to fractals in organized groups (with teamspeak or any other kind of voice communication) and I always run with random groups found on g2lfg.com. Running fractals in random groups makes it more difficult, so I want to answer to people who’s gonna say “hey, that isn’t an issue at all, l2p” right now, in this sentence: try running lvl 48 with random players for a week or two. I’m sure you will learn something new about frustration.

I would like to see Rabsovichs health lowered a lot and killing him would make all Dredge disappear. In return make his attacks stronger (like Shockwave would be tri-projectile like those Veteran Dredge Oscillators).
Point is that you could go in and kill it or use easier but longer method.

@alphik

Welltrying to explain to some ppl that in a mmoprg you are supposed to play with pugs is quite hard :|

For example i prefer pugs to guild froups because rather than the usual same strategy for every un, you get different tactics every time making the fractal more enjoyable…..

Most of other are only “farming” fotm…..just for the chance at skins….they don t care how they play it.

For underwater….its really fun and pro when you attack for first and get 1shot in less than 0,5 seconds by a focused invisible attack by every single mob for about 50.000 …lol.

still the 2 worse issues FOTM problem is:

Glf GUARDIANS <===
Glf HEAVY <=====

And now Glf Thief (this is even more fun because its actually only to bypass some annoying parts….and not really because people wants a thief in their party).

P.S: despite anything people will say, guardian support makes the run extremely easier as it does a warrior with banner for ressing….
Its not l2p….
Its more that playing without you must be perfect while playing with them you can just chill and do many mistakes….

Alphik.5327:

I don’t wipe over and over again, it’s just a long boring fight which should be reorganized or removed.

My mistake, it’s not possible to wipe while kiting and killing mobs 1 by 1 at range, but this is why it seems like no challenge and to take forever. In fact killing all the hypnosses first so the rest can be grouped up to be meleed/aoed easily can actually cause wipes.

but if you dont have energy afrer series of dodges, you will most likely have troubles.

Unless you are talking about dodging from one projectile’s destination to another thus having to dodge again and have no endurance left, I can’t understand what your issue is here anymore.

I believe, that with right tactics everything es doable (including this), but tell me, how many times did you pass these mobs in a random group after someone killed the marked mob and your party wiped? People just leave the group after that (sometimes even the one who started the instance) before you have a chance to explain the “right tactics”.

You said “you will not be able to complete this fractal”, I responded that it’s not true. I have got a dozen of free 38/48 dailies from pugs group that failed this.

Rabisovich event requires nothing: you just pull mobs behind the wall and kill them slowly, a wave by wave

Doing that door thing is why it seems monotonic and takes forever.

No, I did not miss the part where you say your experience is limited to pugs. However, that is not relevant to your list of suggestions to fix certain fractals. From your two posts what I can infer is that you suggest that devs should put another pair of training wheels on the content, make fractals pug-friendly (not fail-safe, fractals are nearly fail-safe already).
And you moved goalposts a lot, especially with the responds to ascolanian/volcanic/cliffside parts.

Razeor.6271:

My mistake, it’s not possible to wipe while kiting and killing mobs 1 by 1 at range, but this is why it seems like no challenge and to take forever. In fact killing all the hypnosses first so the rest can be grouped up to be meleed/aoed easily can actually cause wipes.

This refers to “lesser problems” I mentioned before, and I think that most serious things happen at Cliffside/Volcanic/Dredge fractals. The 2nd pack itself is just very boring, that’s why I suggested to revamp it. But people in general like the underwater fractal for good reasons: it is completely doable at any level by any group and that doesn’t require a lot of time. Moreover, it’s often chosen as a 1st fractal if you roll it before the swamp.

Razeor.6271:

Unless you are talking about dodging from one projectile’s destination to another thus having to dodge again and have no endurance left, I can’t understand what your issue is here anymore.

Yes, I’m talking about this exactly. This happens not so often, but considering that you are not the only player in the group, I believe that the risk of that (for the whole group, not only for some particular player) is high enough to talk about constricting the number of bombs that can be fired at a specific location.

Razeor.6271:

You said “you will not be able to complete this fractal”, I responded that it’s not true. I have got a dozen of free 38/48 dailies from pugs group that failed this.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so radical and, as I already said, I believe that failed arms seals event is still doable with correct tactics. But man, if your group fails this, you will really most likely fail your daily just because people’s morale gets low and they start leaving (sometimes they even intentionally fall down with a hammer). And you will not be able to find additional members if you were not the one who started this instance (that guy will leave and you will be teleported to LA). They just don’t want to engage again, when HP of these seals is full again and 2 armies of mobs are waiting for you at both sides. Good for you that you found some failed gropus and was able to do a free daily, but in most cases such groups just break up and don’t tend to find additional members. This is frustrating and I see no reason why don’t let people restart this event with 2 mobs on each side in case of failure (at least until you won’t be kicked out of fractal if the host leaves the party).

Razeor.6271:

Doing that door thing is why it seems monotonic and takes forever.

Ye, thats why I suggest removing or revamping that door thing.

Razeor.6271:

And you moved goalposts a lot, especially with the responds to ascolanian/volcanic/cliffside parts.

I don’t move goalposts, the things you are talking about are true (everything of that is possible), but my point here is that in most cases your group will not be organized enough to ideally pull ascalonian mobs, allways keep grawl shaman away from his prisoners or be optimistic enoigh to continue after a failure with arms seals. I suggest making fractals more PUG-friendly, thats true. But I suggest removing/revamping unnecessary punishing/boring elements, many of which just rely too much on RNG or are based on an odd logic: “Just because”.

I don’t think that we need to continue this discussion, coz people allways have different opinions and my point of view is only based on what I see in random groups, where people sometimes even don’t read messages in the chat.
My post is divided into several parts, but the most important things regard fractal rewards. I think that this issue should be fixed first while revamping the mechanics of fractal encounter is very subjective and will hardly be fit to anyone. However, these ideas should sound here, only then developers will be aware of the opinion of players.

The hope for Anet fixing certain mechanics in high level fractals is as low as the numbers of players that actually do this content. Don’t get me wrong, your post is well written, but many of these problems are the problems of a very small minority. That’s why I don’t expect changes to fractals any time soon.

To me the most annoying thing about fractals is that the reward level is tied to your character. It’s not fun to have to start again, just because you need variety from playing a different class. Make it accountbound!

The fractal weapons always need transmutation stones from the gem store. Maybe ANet hopes for easy cash from players after receiving a precious skin, but it’s contradicting the game’s promises about the ingame shop. Paying real cash for “unlocking” rewards that you received from endgame dungeons is a terrible concept. Anet can do better as it showed with the super skins.

I’m actually one of those that enjoys doing dungeons with Pugs instead of having a static group that has the dungeon on farmstatus and does it as daily routine. The four players are the random variable that makes the run exciting or in rare cases frustrating.

FirstBlood.7359:

To me the most annoying thing about fractals is that the reward level is tied to your character. It’s not fun to have to start again, just because you need variety from playing a different class. Make it accountbound!

There’s nothing stopping you from doing this now…unless you insist on opening every time/getting loot.

On the other hand, there are people who’ve actually leveled their alts all the way again just because they want two chances at the skins daily.

Pretty much everything here has already been mentioned. Nikaido.3457 mentioned it briefly earlier; gw2posts requiring an absurd amount of AR for content that doesn’t even require it is quickly becoming a big problem, in my opinion. It’s great to have 45AR, but if you have multiple alts that enjoy doing FOTM on, you probably evened out their AR levels to about 30 – 35AR/ea (at least this is what I did). Apparently this is not enough for the above said groups — which appears to be increasing daily.

on the rewards front, its always bugged me that fractals don’t have any nodes for materials, i know its’s dungeon but hear me out, larger fractals such as dredge will have more nodes for more materials making them profitable, also increasing the values of the nodes from platinum at 20, mith 30 and orch at 40 would just make these tough runs more consistent other then the stacks of tokens we are getting from the dailies. also players wont be so disappointed with a large fractal making it worth the time investment.

FirstBlood.7359:

Don’t get me wrong, your post is well written, but many of these problems are the problems of a very small minority. That’s why I don’t expect changes to fractals any time soon.

Agree, it was my mistake to suggest fractal mechanics changes. We won’t see any changes anyway. That part of the post has been deleted.

@Nikado
I got your point, man, you don’t need to fraps anything. Not every run I make is bad. Most of them are good actually. What I suggested is getting rid of some annoying RNG things that can kill you even if you did everything correctly. This happens not so often and even if that will be changed, this won’t be done due to my suggestions.

Honestly, I’d be happy if all that changed was…

• Personal Reward Level becomes account-wide.
• Fractals become “dungeons” for the purposes of Daily/Monthly Achievements and Influence gain.
• Extra rings gain some kind of purpose, even if it’s just making them salvageable for Globs or Mist Essence.

Ask for very little, be pleasantly surprised if it happens. :P

Well AR is a broken mechanism; as people could complete some high level fractal with some tricks like the 99% rez it meant at these very high levels that AR was not enough nor needed to complete it. In conclusion it means you can do any other lower level fractals without AR at all… Agony need to be a basic dot (damage over time: a tic every 5sec of a X amount of suffering) on all map from starts: that dot would be completely prevented carrying enough DR regarding to the level of fotm running. Then the cap reachable of fotm would absolutely not being able to be skip as it is the case actually in high level fotm.
Please fix fotm Agony mechanism to be effective.
Bypassing the Agony with some tricks rendering Agony Resist useless is a kind of pve exploit. (Any game items/rewards/gold obtained through exploit can be removed by Anet and then account possibly also suspended/banned.)
Don’t tell me that people in fotm40+ don’t know they are bypassing Agony mechanism without doing it intentionnaly