Guild Wars 2

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-brand-new-fractals-of-the-mists-legendary-backpacks-ascended-salvaging-and-more/

Some good changes there, and some …. not so good changes. Looks like in order to do high level fractals you will need for find a pretty constant group that is accepting of taking various roles in order to complete them. Gonna make people that just PuG through fractals frustrated (ie. Me ) more than get now with some groups.

Still, finally getting to make use of these rings will be worthwhile. And being key area for things like the legendary backpacks is good, just will mean there more clueless pugs to deal with

MyBodyIsReady.exe

Some key things to take note of are that they specifically mention that this is not what they have planned for the expansion with “challenging group content” and also that this announcement is “only part of” what they have in store for fractals.

I don’t even care if they have a history of disappointment. This is genuinely a pleasant surprise, especially considering I never caved in and deleted all my ascended rings.

YEAH HOARDING #1

i miss the hundreds of rings that I’ve deleted q.q

Fractal run is one fractal and selectable. This makes no sense to me. Sounds like people will just do the easiest fractals over and over.
Get 1-100 doing swamp fractal?

Some people complained about it but the random nature of fractals was integral to its longevity.

Btw 50 fractal levels is the equivalent of 12 old fractals. My feeling until they explain some things is they just killed fractals as entertainment and furthered them as future easy grinds.

This will probably make speed clear people happy, but it destroys fractals as an actual gameplay experience.

You all missed this part.

Additionally, we’ve simplified the current system of daily reward chests into a system of new daily fractal achievements that have been separated into three distinct difficulty ranges: 1–20, 21–50, and 51 and above.

Done, buying HoT This was enough for me to drop $50. Sounds fun/cool.

If Anet holds true to their words this time… HoT actually will be worth it.

phys.7689:

Fractal run is one fractal and selectable. This makes no sense to me. Sounds like people will just do the easiest fractals over and over.
Get 1-100 doing swamp fractal?

Some people complained about it but the random nature of fractals was integral to its longevity.

Btw 50 fractal levels is the equivalent of 12 old fractals. My feeling until they explain some things is they just killed fractals as entertainment and furthered them as future easy grinds.

This will probably make speed clear people happy, but it destroys fractals as an actual gameplay experience.

That’s one of the things that excited me the most. I have to imagine they understand the issue you bring up. But, how will the instabilities interact? Will they make Swamp harder? Will different loot drops change in a meaningful way depending on level and instability?

Plenty of room for details that could solve that issue… but I’ll no longer be getting the worst combos when it’s 2am and I just want to do a fractal and go to bed \o/

I’m a bit confused ont he reward levels. Sounds like you get a better reward outside the daily per run, but you’re only going to have 3 daily chests for skins/ascended drops? With the 51-100 being all one lumped together where you get the new skins? Pretty huge gap there isn’kitten

Either way, agian details matter and we don’t know them, enough to get me excited though.

looks neat cant wait to get my fractal rifle and whatever the finished collection reward will be …not to mention i finally know why i have 2 bank tabs of rings and its nice to have something tangible to point to instead of a dev post on reddit that i shouldnt delete those

Jerus.4350:

Done, buying HoT This was enough for me to drop $50. Sounds fun/cool.

I remember you asked for this, so i am not surprised. But if its as it seems, wont you just end up doing 3 swamp runs per day?

Lvl 19 lvl 49 and lvl 90?

Assuming they fully copied my idea of a daily fractal quest, the paths which you must do are randomized.

No idea how leveling up will work. Might be connected to the daily quest.

Jerus.4350:

phys.7689:

Fractal run is one fractal and selectable. This makes no sense to me. Sounds like people will just do the easiest fractals over and over.
Get 1-100 doing swamp fractal?

Some people complained about it but the random nature of fractals was integral to its longevity.

Btw 50 fractal levels is the equivalent of 12 old fractals. My feeling until they explain some things is they just killed fractals as entertainment and furthered them as future easy grinds.

This will probably make speed clear people happy, but it destroys fractals as an actual gameplay experience.

That’s one of the things that excited me the most. I have to imagine they understand the issue you bring up. But, how will the instabilities interact? Will they make Swamp harder? Will different loot drops change in a meaningful way depending on level and instability?

Plenty of room for details that could solve that issue… but I’ll no longer be getting the worst combos when it’s 2am and I just want to do a fractal and go to bed \o/

I’m a bit confused ont he reward levels. Sounds like you get a better reward outside the daily per run, but you’re only going to have 3 daily chests for skins/ascended drops? With the 51-100 being all one lumped together where you get the new skins? Pretty huge gap there isn’kitten

Either way, agian details matter and we don’t know them, enough to get me excited though.

People will select the fractal scales with the easiest instabilities and swamp and repeat them 40 something times, with gear and sigils tailor made for them.

Theres probably a reward per fractal per scale. So i would expect you can get multiple fractal 50 rewards by selecting different shards. But repeating the same skitten the same scale will not keep rewarding you. Obviously a lot of casual players will just go for the quick ones. But thats no different to how people go for the quick dungeons like SE p1 when they have little time or desire to do the content.

this basically kills any prestige fractal skins had if you like the “base skins” which everyone will now have because they can just farm ONE stage per day 3 times a day and get enough pristine to buy them.

and if you go for the “tier2” fractal skins?

https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/b75c9Golden-590x331.jpg

anyone else thinks this looks ugly? i mean really? a solid block of gold? it doesn’t even go with the new backpiece!

“…But thats no different to how people go for the quick dungeons like SE p1.” and that’s exactly why this sucks, we have enough SE p1 in the game, and only had 1 fractal.

Taku.6352:

You all missed this part.

Additionally, we’ve simplified the current system of daily reward chests into a system of new daily fractal achievements that have been separated into three distinct difficulty ranges: 1–20, 21–50, and 51 and above.

It would be kind of ridiculous to receive daily rewards from tiers 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80, 81-90, and 91-100 don’t you think?

That said I would not be opposed to increasing the amount of different dailies you can do from only 3. I say 5 different tiers sounds most reasonable.

1-20, 21-40, 41-60, 61-80, 81-100

adozu.6398:

this basically kills any prestige fractal skins had if you like the “base skins” which everyone will now have because they can just farm ONE stage per day 3 times a day and get enough pristine to buy them.

Prestige? Plz.

You can theoretically get all fractal skins in less than a month with godly RNG, and there is no prestige in RNG. The items do not reflect that you have played the game the longest at all. I know people who have done way more FotM than me and have never seen a fractal sword before, yet I have gotten 3 of them before, with 2 of them being within the same week. How is that prestigious? That’s just lucky (or rather, unlucky in my case since they were duplicates).

I love gold. xD

Going from 5×4 fractals for dailies to 3×1 is kinda huge letdown for those who actually enjoy fractals.

this has the potential to be worse than Fractured

I’m more worried about their plans to increase enemy toughness and precision. Former may mean that we have to get condition specced gear to deal any reasonable damage. Latter means that already high damaging enemies will randomly deal 50% more damage, even more if they touch ferocity.

This might actually get me doing fractals again. Looking forward to this! I got to level 50 a long time ago and rarely do fractals anymore.

You can not buy the fractal skins until you are at personal reward 50, if you are that far and do not have the fractal skins you want then you deserve to get them. I think the prestige is still there.

They basically also hidden restructured your progress. Smart way of doing it, but basically it takes 1/4 the effort with like 1/10 the difficulty to get to 50 now. Basically 100 new fractals = 25 old fractals.

They also are making like the first 20 easier.

“you’ll be able to trade fractal encryptions with your fellow Tyrians”

I like having the rare sword fractal skin but meh, now I dont think i will be using it on my revenant

But yeah, I wonder if certain rewards will be in certain fractals. Outside of the achievements there no reason to run any the longer ones, especially things like Grawl Shaman when you are no longer able to reflect his attacks.

…
I spose the good thing though, is that condition specs will become viable in high levels with toughness increasing on the mobs. Can see Sinister becoming a typical stat used and may have to switch away from my mesmer to something else due to the reflect nerfs (unless can avoid it).

If revenant could actually put up decent condition dmg I may use him, although I am leaning towards using a Sinister spec Necro with Dhuumfire.

edit:
Also.
Does this now mean you do lvl 50 swamp – you now lvl 51. Do lvl 51 swamp, you now lvl 52…. so instead of needing to do 3-4 fractal runs to go up a lvl you just chain do a single fractal and go up 1 each time (so go up 3 after 3 runs, instead of just 1 for 3)

“You can not buy the fractal skins until you are at personal reward 50, if you are that far and do not have the fractal skins you want then you deserve to get them. I think the prestige is still there.”

under the old system? maybe.

under the new system? you mean i can do 50 times swamp then i’m entitled to my skin? hmmm…

anet just being anet and trying to please casuals as hard as possible over the more dedicated players: see wvw map completion removal for another example.

Therodin.2970:

You can not buy the fractal skins until you are at personal reward 50, if you are that far and do not have the fractal skins you want then you deserve to get them. I think the prestige is still there.

Getting to 50 now means doing swamp 50 times. For the first 20 it will be even easier than before.

While I’m glad with some of this I have some major concerns with this announcement xD.

1. Why would anyone run cliffside when swamp gives the same rewards (as far as we know) for 1/6th of the time.

2. Shorter fractal runs mean getting to 50 and the good rewards is far easier now, Is there going to be some reward for players who were 50 before this update? Maybe a title.

3. “you’ll be able to trade fractal encryptions with your fellow Tyrians” That’s a bad idea and devalues the rewards.

I predict people blitzing swamp 50 times and being fractal level 100 by the first day/week. I’d be pleasantly surprised if it manages to take a month or more. I just hope there isn’t a backdoor to getting these new fractal skins that devalues them.

Okay, so i liked the reward changes, something really needed to happen there, also adding more fractal levels beyond 50 is only a positive thing even if i maybe never make it to level 100, its good that it is there for the people who wants this kind of challenge.

However i dont completely agree with the “more accessible” part, i already think the low level fractals are very much accessible. Like come on, i’m a very casual player and i play in the level 30s at the moment slowly climbing more and more. And i remember when i was playing fractals 1-10 you can even complete it with low level people in your group or not full groups. All you need is to have a basic knowledge of game mechanics, dont need to be a hardcore player at all or even semi-hardcore or whatever.

The other change that i dont like, and that might actually completely ruin fractals is the change of having only 1 “island” per fractal run. A huge part of what makes fractals fun is actually the random element. And yeah, the idea of people choosing what fractals to play will make a lot of fractals completely disappear and people will just farm the easy ones. I personally think that if you cant spend 30-60 minutes in a play session maybe the mmo genre is not for you, but i also believe that most people who do play mmos actually can spend this time, the ones who cant must be in the minority.

If this is really such a big issue, but i dont think it is, i really think Arenanet is overestimating the number of people who have this as a problem. But if they want to cut the time, maximum they could reduce it to 3 fractals, so 2 regular fractals and 1 boss fractal in a run. So the people without much time will be appeased and at the same time fractals retain the random element and isnt completely ruined / drastically changed.

Another solution could be to simply have the choice of diffrent game modes when you enter fractals. Like a popup where people can vote like for the diffrent paths in dungeons, “short run”, “medium run”, and “long run”. Where short is only one fractal, medium is 2+boss and long is the standard. And the longer runs get bigger reward of course, but the shorter ones are there to give the minority of people who really just dont have enough time the chance to experience fractals.

Thanks for reading.

phys.7689:

Therodin.2970:

You can not buy the fractal skins until you are at personal reward 50, if you are that far and do not have the fractal skins you want then you deserve to get them. I think the prestige is still there.

Getting to 50 now means doing swamp 50 times. For the first 20 it will be even easier than before.

They have not said how many pristines it costs to buy them and you can only get three pristines a day, if it costs 50 pristines then at the bare minimum it is going to take you 17 days of constantly doing three a day to get one fractal weapon of your choice

honestly fractal skins at least had a little bit of value because they were hard to get and you couldnt just buy them unlike every other skin in the game up to legendaries, now theyll just be on the same level as everything else which is kind of disappointing.

and more accessible? with the recent damage increase my group is already EASILY doign fractal 50 with 3 ppl and selling the last 2 spot daily. And we aren’t even that good c’mon!

I also do not think you get to choose what fractal you play, they said static which in my opinion means unchanging. I believe every day they will randomly select that day’s shard+boss combo and that will be the only fractal runnable that day.

Therodin.2970:

phys.7689:

Therodin.2970:

You can not buy the fractal skins until you are at personal reward 50, if you are that far and do not have the fractal skins you want then you deserve to get them. I think the prestige is still there.

Getting to 50 now means doing swamp 50 times. For the first 20 it will be even easier than before.

They have not said how many pristines it costs to buy them and you can only get three pristines a day, if it costs 50 pristines then at the bare minimum it is going to take you 17 days of constantly doing three a day to get one fractal weapon of your choice

And they decreased the amount of daily rewards abd decreased the difficulty of dailies. So you will do easier things over a longer period of days. That sounds like a formula for grind and boredom

“Once you’ve completed fractal scale 50, the golem BUY-2046 in the Mistlock Observatory will sell you a fractal weapon crate for pristine fractal relics, which will grant you a fractal weapon skin of your choice.”

Finally I will get to use all my pristines!!

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

Done, buying HoT This was enough for me to drop $50. Sounds fun/cool.

I remember you asked for this, so i am not surprised. But if its as it seems, wont you just end up doing 3 swamp runs per day?

Lvl 19 lvl 49 and lvl 90?

Probably not. Ask yourself this. People who run fractals, why do they do it? Most people I play with do it for the fun, we’ll run multiple 50’s back to back. So no, we’d probably run whichever we thought was fun. For the lower level one we’d probably do whatever is fastest though true, just get the daily and move on to the more fun ones.

Its sounds good
Here you will have the choice to play the difficulty u like.
So I choose your fun !
That’s perfect.
If ppl like fast swamp daily leave it to them

About trading the encryptions: Note they are lockboxes, and the keys come from a different source. You may still need to work at getting the mats to buy the keys, so you can’t open the traded boxes without having in some way “earned” your chance at the contents.

Now, if the contents are also tradeable, then I will agree it devalues the wow-factor at seeing someone with the nifty new things. I say this as someone only at Fractal 27 or so who is unlikely to grind them out fast enough to get the goodies terribly quickly.

Jerus.4350:

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

Done, buying HoT This was enough for me to drop $50. Sounds fun/cool.

I remember you asked for this, so i am not surprised. But if its as it seems, wont you just end up doing 3 swamp runs per day?

Lvl 19 lvl 49 and lvl 90?

Probably not. Ask yourself this. People who run fractals, why do they do it? Most people I play with do it for the fun, we’ll run multiple 50’s back to back. So no, we’d probably run whichever we thought was fun. For the lower level one we’d probably do whatever is fastest though true, just get the daily and move on to the more fun ones.

Sorry man
Rewards and effeciency dominates the way any game is played by most of the players.
A well designed game maximizes fun and incentivizes the most interesting ways of playing the game.

A small select group of fractal players will create their own sub meta thats more entertaining. The vast majority will not.

Most people will play the most effecient ways, and if that becomes boring they will say tbe game sucks and they are actually correct in saying that.

Besides a few good changes this doesn’t sound too good to me yet.
Not a fan of single fractals at all and I feel like this is going to get abused a lot.
Fractal level 100 could be a lot of fun though, given the instabilities aren’t stupid.

How is Agony Resist going to work now then, if they make it that you need to change armor stats etc to combat different levels, you will need to roll several armor sets with a lot of AR on each, giving that AR is soul bound to armor/trinkets etc,

This will lead to the introduction of legendary armor.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3f6ei6/the_brandnew_fractals_of_the_mists_legendary/ctlq8gt

“To start with, we’re raising the maximum fractal scale from 50 to 100. In addition, after scale 50, the difficulty curve will change to adjust not only the health and outgoing damage of creatures but also other stats like precision and toughness”

This makes me excited.

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

Done, buying HoT This was enough for me to drop $50. Sounds fun/cool.

I remember you asked for this, so i am not surprised. But if its as it seems, wont you just end up doing 3 swamp runs per day?

Lvl 19 lvl 49 and lvl 90?

Probably not. Ask yourself this. People who run fractals, why do they do it? Most people I play with do it for the fun, we’ll run multiple 50’s back to back. So no, we’d probably run whichever we thought was fun. For the lower level one we’d probably do whatever is fastest though true, just get the daily and move on to the more fun ones.

Sorry man
Rewards and effeciency dominates the way any game is played by most of the players.
A well designed game maximizes fun and incentivizes the most interesting ways of playing the game.

A small select group of fractal players will create their own sub meta thats more entertaining. The vast majority will not.

Most people will play the most effecient ways, and if that becomes boring they will say tbe game sucks and they are actually correct in saying that.

True, and no matter what they do people will find the best and farm that most.

Balancing them better would surely help though. For swamp if they made you kill the tree and the shirtless wonder it’d be pretty well balanced I think. Still only take like 2-3 mins for a guild like SC, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they could do Aetherblade in nearly that as well. And depending on instabilities and the way things drop… yeah devil in the details.

This got me quite excited, as it seems to address pretty much any concerns I currently have with the fractals: Less random runs, less random rewards and salvageable drops. Also, if I’m reading this correctly, you can sell the box reward, meaning this provides a more hassle-free way of making extra gold over selling slots or whatever.

Definitely looking forward to it.

adozu.6398:

honestly fractal skins at least had a little bit of value because they were hard to get and you couldnt just buy them unlike every other skin in the game up to legendaries, now theyll just be on the same level as everything else which is kind of disappointing.

Once again, there is no prestige involved with getting a random lucky drop. This is not difficulty, this is luck. The skins have value, which is true, but only due to the fact that there is no reliable method of acquiring one in a reasonable amount of time and it could either be acquired within a day or years of mindless farming.

There is nothing remotely difficult about this, and complaining about removing the element of RNG from a reward that was obviously very problematic to begin with is just silly. What you should instead opt for is ensuring that acquisation of said rewards costs a high enough amount of pristines to ensure that it still requires doing FotM enough to make it “feel like you worked for it.” This can be done without playing a game of roulette, I promise.

There is more resentment than prestige from fractal skins. It’s not “ohh man you’re so good, i’m impressed” it’s more like “god kitten , kitten you, kitten rng, and kitten anet”

The new weapons I imagine would have a bit of prestige in that it sounds like you’ll have to complete content harder than the current stuff. Hell you don’t even have to do 40s/50s to get current skins.

love the new changes , can’t wait to see how they affect fractals but all I can say is :

DO NOT RESET OUR LEVELS BACK TO 1
fractal reset never forget

Jerus.4350:

There is more resentment than prestige from fractal skins. It’s not “ohh man you’re so good, i’m impressed” it’s more like “god kitten , kitten you, kitten rng, and kitten anet”

The new weapons I imagine would have a bit of prestige in that it sounds like you’ll have to complete content harder than the current stuff. Hell you don’t even have to do 40s/50s to get current skins.

i can’t wait to have a few golden misty fractal weapons to pair with my GOLDEN PIG!!!

Arc DLad.2194:

love the new changes , can’t wait to see how they affect fractals but all I can say is :

DO NOT RESET OUR LEVELS BACK TO 1
fractal reset never forget

As spoj linked, already confirmed this won’t happen.

Really happy we’re getting this AND “challenging group content”. Still want to see what the latter is, but today was a good news day.

After reading the whole post, I really want to give the Devs a big hug and tell them “Thank You!”. They must have been through a lot while holding off on talking about what they are doing, planning and even trying to fix. I have heard that communication within ANet hasn’t been in a good shape, and the negativity and distrust from the community must have been discouraging.

Devs, thanks for your hard work. I’m definitely looking forward to the launch.

/expansionbought