Guild Wars 2

Fractals of the Mists (FotM) is gated content. Players are forced to grind through difficulty scalings (DS) to get to the higher content. This is not necessarily the bad thing. The bad thing is that players are required to be in a party of 4 other players in the same DS in order to progress to a higher DS.

Several problems this creates are:
-Making it hard and frustrating for people to find others at the same DS to progress to a higher DS.
-Players currently not playing FotM, or coming into the game months after now, will have a lot of trouble getting started in FotM.
-A lot more spam in chat as players have troubles finding others to play with.
-Players wasting time searching for a party instead of actually playing the game.

The Solution to these problems is right here. Make it so a party of 5 people is able to enter the highest DS a player in your party has reached.

Example of a FotM party:
Guy 1: Unlocked up to DS 2
Guy 2: Unlocked up to DS 5
Guy 3: Unlocked up to DS 7
Guy 4: Unlocked up to DS 10
Guy 5: Unlocked up to DS 12
This party would be able to play up to a DS of 12. After clearing the set of dungeons, each player will unlock their next DS. So Guy 1 from that party will now be able to start groups at DS 3.
Now if the party decided to play a set of dungeons at DS 7, only Guy 1, Guy 2 and Guy 3 would unlock their next DS, as Guy 4 and Guy 5 were playing at a difficulty below their current highest unlocked DS.

What this solves is:
-Easy to find people to play FotM with.
-Easy to play in the higher DS without having to grind through the lower DS first (as long as you have 1 guy in your party that has unlocked a high DS).
-Everyone playing at or above their current DS unlocks a new DS after finishing a set of dungeons.
-More time spent playing, rather than looking for a group.

It’s a WIN / WIN situation.

Gated content is never a good thing.

Iehova.9518:

Gated content is never a good thing.

Thanks for reading and contributing to the topic in a constructive manner.

Gated content goes against everything that made GW1 good. I don’t care how you try to implement it.

I love the dungeon, but day by day finding it harder to find a group for the lower levels. (And yes i’m in a guild.)

SteepledHat.1345:

Gated content goes against everything that made GW1 good. I don’t care how you try to implement it.

Well, since gated content is here anyway, it should be Anet’s priority to make it feel as fair as possible for the entire community.

Players will eventually fall behind, not to mention the stream of new players pouring in. They HAVE to be accommodated for, otherwise the mechanic of finding a suitable group will deter players from playing what’s otherwise a very enjoyable dungeon experience.

Milennin.4825:

Thanks for reading and contributing to the topic in a constructive manner.

You’re more than welcome.

The actual solution is to remove gating altogether and let us choose the difficulty instantly, as well as show little tooltips showing the changes between difficulty levels instead of making us waste several hours on clearing faceroll modes.

Guys, I’ve got an idea! Lets have Dungeon Finder, Gear Inspect, Gear Score, Mounts and a whole bunch more “Vertical Progression”.

Good Idea, or Good Idea?

Also harder and harder to find people for the higher levels. Also hard playing an alt.

Ultimately the whole system is redundant. If you can clear difficulty ten, you sure as heck can do 9 and below. It reminds me of GW1, where you could complete a Mission/Dungeon with bonus and everything directly in hard mode, but were then forced to go back and do it in normal mode. ZZzzzzzz

Chamone.6890:

Guys, I’ve got an idea! Lets have Dungeon Finder, Gear Inspect, Gear Score, Mounts and a whole bunch more “Vertical Progression”.

Good Idea, or Good Idea?

You forgot raids.

Asagi.1405:

Chamone.6890:

Guys, I’ve got an idea! Lets have Dungeon Finder, Gear Inspect, Gear Score, Mounts and a whole bunch more “Vertical Progression”.

Good Idea, or Good Idea?

You forgot raids.

And periodic gear resets.