Guild Wars 2

As of now, Jade Maw is a joke fight. The worst part? The joke isn’t even funny.

The boss isn’t a skill or dps or intelligence check, it’s a freaking gear check. You’ve already beaten all the hard content, now the only thing stopping you from getting your reward is this giant octopus stopping you to make sure you have all the best gear.

It doesn’t matter how good the players are, if you didn’t hack the game to turn agony off at maw, you’re not getting the reward for all the hard work you did getting that far on fractals 50+.

Why isn’t there a skill check boss at the end of fractals? If you have to, just bring in other bosses from other dungeons and put them in at the end for w.e fractal lvl. It would at even help to keep the dungeon fresh. Something like current maw t1 fractals, ac t2, cm t3, ta t4, etc. Random end boss from each dungeon. SOMETHING.

End boss for 80s or w/e could be a beefed up Lupi that would be a real challenge to most people (something warranting the challenge a group of people who just completed lvl 80 should deserve to get).

I know these suggestions aren’t perfect but they’re a hell of a lot better than the gear check bs we have now.

tldr~ make fractals a skill check instead of a gear check by replacing Jade Maw with something that doesn’t wipe parties with the agony alone.

One of the problems with making harder content without placing a hard cap on progression (agony and limited agony resistance) is that players will find skills, mechanics and exploits that trivialise difficult content. We saw this before they buffed agony damage and fixed a few tricks used to counter it. A few niche skills and abilities (projectile reflection and stealth primarily) were used to negate the increased challenge. If you didn’t have these things you couldn’t win and if you did have these things, they felt like hard counters rather than challenging and skill rewarding content.

The devs have also said they didn’t intend for players to reach the higher levels of fractals. Most of the players doing this exploited bugs, AI and mechanics to bypass things they weren’t intended to bypass. They intentionally designed the Jade Maw to wipe people at a certain level. They don’t want you going higher than that, not yet.

randomfightfan.4091:

Why isn’t there a skill check boss at the end of fractals? If you have to, just bring in other bosses from other dungeons and put them in at the end for w.e fractal lvl. It would at even help to keep the dungeon fresh.

Maybe it’s cause it’s late (early?) but this has me thinking of the Jade Maw, but instead of shooting Jade Colossus at us, it instead shoots bosses at us.

Just imagine having an Arch Diviner, a Legendary Imbued Shaman and a Lupicus running after everyone at the same time while avoiding Jade Maw death skulls.

Shiren.9532:

The devs have also said they didn’t intend for players to reach the higher levels of fractals. Most of the players doing this exploited bugs, AI and mechanics to bypass things they weren’t intended to bypass. They intentionally designed the Jade Maw to wipe people at a certain level. They don’t want you going higher than that, not yet.

Terrible mechanic is terrible. Nothing should ever be built with the purpose of making teams fail, no matter how good they are. It’s straight up stupid.

Also the devs not intending someone to get that far? WHO CARES! Such thing as pleasant surprises. Sure getting there with exploits sucks, but for teams that are genuinely good enough to make it that far legitimately, they deserve their reward. Clean up the exploits and let the good players be rewarded for being good enough to beat near impossible content.

Gear check is the cheapest and laziest way to create difficulty. In a game that advertised itself on having skill-based combat it’s pure lame-sauce. I know ArenaNet can do way better than creating gear checks, so why they don’t, I dunno…

If they didn’t want people to get that high in Fractals, why not just cap the level at 50, or whatever.

Milennin.4825:

Gear check is the cheapest and laziest way to create difficulty. In a game that advertised itself on having skill-based combat it’s pure lame-sauce. I know ArenaNet can do way better than creating gear checks, so why they don’t, I dunno…

I don’t know what +1ing your post did but I did it

Not intended to reach that high up really is Anet underestimating the players, something you shouldn’t do in MMOs. Players will break everything they can, and climb Everest while being attacked by aliens to get somewhere they shouldn’t.

These little tricks help them find a way to beat the content. Anet should fix the bad ones, and make the others harder to use, but they should not make it impossible. Fractal 50 isn’t a gear check, its just a straight up wall to keep you from going forward, even though the players can use the game as it exists to their advantage and get to higher levels.

The thing with Maw is, that after the agony attack, nothing else is more difficult. You just get crystals and stand in place, and throw them.
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On the idea of other dungeon’s bosses, its an interesting idea that would fit in well with the lore of fractals. These events can be anywhere on Tyria at any time, so it would make sense that some monster from your previous adventures are back with a vengeance.

People really should do away with the notion that people reaching 50+ are doing so because of exploiting every fractal.

Reward wise, fractal really has a low reward/time ratio when it comes 50+. People are climbing the levels for the challenge and the satisfaction of overcoming it. This is where you need plan and communications, where you have to know the encounter and your teammates even better than your own character to succeed. Dare I say it had been the only place where for players longing for that kind of cohesive team play? There are many exploits in there, but I’d laugh if anyone think exploits along can carry any team through.

And just to point out, as someone mentioned earlier, Maw is a joke fight, what comes before are the hard fights, that’s why people didn’t give a kitten about exploiting it with orbs and ranger pets in order to progress, because the mechanics are easy and stupid.

Great move by the developers capping the dungeon back at end of January, never had I seen in a game where contents and progression are cut out so in-your-face abruptly. If you felt like something was wrong in the design process for some content, leave it for future reference. In a progression based dungeon, why all of a sudden cut it off right in the middle so people got it before got it while for others who were slower in pace is just too bad? Perhaps blocking the single bit of content where the most dedicated players coagulated seems a great idea.

Realistically, the fractals have to end somewhere. Anybody who has reached level 50 in fractals has already spent an incredibly massive number of game hours in that dungeon. There is no argument to say that fractals haven’t provided those players with enough challenge, entertainment, or anything else. Whilst the most dedicated players may feel let down, players who consume game content at a fast rate always exhaust all the content available in MMOs. Designers cannot fully cater for those players even if they wanted to.

This argument about fractals reminds me a bit about the world record for playing Donkey Kong. The player had to complete the levels of Donkey Kong and then since the game continued back at level 1 the player had to do all the levels again, and again, until the record for the longest Donkey Kong game was broken. Perhaps fractals at level 50 should just keep going and never return to the jade maw or the gateway so that players can challenge themselves with fractals for as long as they want to, setting records of stupidity as they go. It makes as much sense as increasing the fractal limit.

Stooperdale.3560:

Realistically, the fractals have to end somewhere. Anybody who has reached level 50 in fractals has already spent an incredibly massive number of game hours in that dungeon. There is no argument to say that fractals haven’t provided those players with enough challenge, entertainment, or anything else.

Slippery slope argument, also completely irrelevant. By your logic, anyone who has played and enjoyed the game for more than 30 hours should be happy if the game is to be terminated by tomorrow, because that’s typically what you get for $60 dollars of entertainment from a game typically nowadays. But I don’t think you’ll bring up this argument is something was to happen. Because basically, this is exactly the same thing.

Let me try to explain this to you again, this isn’t a problem with capping as compared to very bad communication/decision/design from the developers. First of, we were never told what the level cap was, we were left to explore ourselves. People then reached level 80, and the level doesn’t get any higher, and so we say, alright, so the level cap is 80, let’s work towards that. So we put together a core stable team, got our strats straight, had fun for two weeks progressing, and then BAM the level is capped at 50, without notification whatsoever.

I just want to say, if you have already opened everything for everyone for two and a half months, don’t do a kitten move and take half of it away at some point. If it didn’t go as planned, learn from it and make better decisions in the future content. But just slamming a brick wall on 50+? Again, I have never seen any games do such a thing.

Same thing as shutting down your game because you already got your money worth, hope you won’t be complaining about that.