Guild Wars 2

Why, oh why?

With the new gating, all I see in Lion’s Arch is people looking for others. But not for good players or players playing a class and build that complements the group.

No, it’s all about what level was the highest you’ve completed so far.

Do I go there with some guildmates limited to level 4 or am I being egoistic and play at my personal max level? Well, the game is all about groupbuilding and social playing. So obviously, the gating mechanism encourages me to play egoistically.

Even if I love playing with my guildmates, not doing so all the time but egoistically preferring to play on my personal max level is the rational choice if I have to assume that I’ll not be playing FotM for a few days and they might surpass me and then leave me behind.

And if we all stick together and play at the highest common denominator whenever we’re all there, this might sully the experience for up to four of us who feel that the dungeon-run doesn’t really advance them that much.

They need to remake the “gating” system:

It should work as you can pick any difficulty any player has, for example:
Player 1: 5
Player 2: 1
Player 3: 3
Player 4: 5
Player 5: 5

You can pick 1/3/5 to start on. All players will retain base score to start (even though you are fighting on level 5 you are at base still 1/3), but when a round is completed your individual score will be increased. That way someone at level 1 can play with players at level 5 and BOTH players can progress through the ranks (As long as it is higher than your base individual score). That would ease the difference between 1-9 grind players are feeling now and increase group size later on as people piggy back off others in the lower end “bracket”.

Still though, it is basically a ticking time bomb. Groups will slowly diminish as new player influx slows and it becomes “top heavy” on the fractal difficulty.

i agree with the OP: the current implementation of the fractals, while being fun and all, urges every player to be selfish and look only for the current level he has to complete.

imho merging levels into some “stage” or whatever would probably lessen the pain: for example, if levels 1 to 9 were just “stage 1” and you needed to complete x runs at that stage to gain access to “stage 2” (being levels 10 to 19), it would make it a lot easier to find team mates.

something like that, and/or letting parties start the dungeon at the highest difficulty attained by any member would help a lot.

after all agony, and not levels/difficulty, is intended to prevent people from farming content they are not equipped for (yay for equipment gating, i hate it).

I’m glad more people are bringing this up. Planning to start fractals tonight, but all I saw when I logged on were people looking for fractals well past level 1. Looks like casuals are going to have a rough time with this.

Personally I think its great. The difficulty ramps up gradually, if someone has done level 12, they probably have a good chance of being reasonably decent at level 13.

If anyone could join anything it would make pugging this absolutely impossible.

ehtom.5047:

If anyone could join anything it would make pugging this absolutely impossible.

i’ve left the first part of your post because i partially agree (reaching level 11 is indeed an indicator of the player’s chances to reach level 12), even if i think that if i trust someone to run FotM at level 11 i should be able to enter at that level (given that someone in the party has already reached it)

regarding the quote i think you should consider this: allowing parties to run FotM at the highest possible level would let people to party with anyone they want and run the instance at the level they “deserve”.
also, and this is imho more important, it would remove the urge to play FotM, and also (but partially) the fear to be left behind by friends (partially because ascended stuff/infusion would still be there, and if they dont fix the RNG the problem will be back at levels 10+).

with the current system:
1. you probably dont want to play with anyone who isnt at your level
2. you are urged to play FotM as much as you can because you can be left behind

and if we consider the RNG being a factor in ascended rings drops:
3. you cant even be sure to stick always with your group (assuming you have a fixed group)
but thats being discussed in other threads too, so lets leave it out.

levels = another gating mechanism on top of agony and luck (because rings are dropping randomly too)
imho this is a bit too much..

The biggest issue I am seeing is the wide spread of levels of dungeons and the inability to utilize a LFG utility to insure compatibility with your desired outcome. For example, I was LFG for Level 2 for over 8 hours this weekend. Ran into a couple of issues (never actually got to attempt a level 2).

First, not many people were looking in the Level 2 range. Most were either 1 or 5+. After a few hours of looking, the few of us that were looking finally got a group together. When we went to enter, the highest level available was level 1…… This meant one of the PUGS didn’t understand and wasn’t fessing up to being the one. We began the process of kicking, checking, and reinviting. This unfortunately frustrated 2 of the members of the group who just left before I found the one who was the non-level 2. This left my group of 5, with 2.

Hours later, we got the group again, only to have the same issue. I gave up.

I know, find a group of people I know to run with, but that group isn’t always available and I wanted to be able to run this weekend. It’s very frustrating. I’m not looking for a solution, just supporting the OP with some supporting evidence.

Yep. Welcome to the new GW2. Join a guild that will help you get up on your fractal ranks, new 80s.

SteepledHat.1345:

Yep. Welcome to the new GW2. Join a guild that will help you get up on your fractal ranks, new 80s.

oohh – i’m not a new 80. I actually have 2 80’s but I just WvW mainly, and only tried to work on some Fractals during the off times. Except yesterday I decided to torture myself!

Regardless, I understand there are things I can do to resolved it and wasn’t hoping for a solution, but rather just voicing my vote behind the OP. Heck, I could have simply represented my other guild had I not been soo tired & thought about it …………….. which I didn’t think about until now!!!!!! LOL

Yeah, currently it is poorly thought out

The further players get spread out in level, the harder and harder it is to find a group… until people stop trying

I’m already at a point where it’s not worth it to sit in Lion’s Arch for hours at off peak time spamming LFG… and I’m only on fractal lvl 4~!

To be frank, the current system seems purely designed around hardcore guilds who can run it all day so they can feel elite.
It’s pandering, pure and simple.