Guild Wars 2

We finished it in 10 minutes. Easiest Fractal by far. We hope to get into it every time now instead of completely laggy fractals like Ascalon.

The swamp is god awful. Whoever designed this wasn’t thinking straight

Unlike the other fractals, swamp is heavily profession dependent. A group with a bunch of mobility (thieves, mesmers) has a much easier time with this than a group of slower professions. In a 3-thief group that can just shadowstep their way home, I’ll take swamp any day.

It just has a high difficulty barrier that’s all. Once you get good at it you’ll want to do it over the other Fractals. Way faster to complete.

Cliffside and Uncategorized are better, but the Swamp is very nice too, and doesn’t seem as hard as some are making it out to be (heck it not even that long either. I was seriously like,“that it?”).

swamp is the fastest by far. Any ele worth his salt can do any of the wisps with ease. If you dont fail the wisps, the entire thing takes about 3 minutes to do, then a boss fight.

fastest fractals in order from most to least
swamp
aquatic
urban
Deep sea
volcanic
snow
uncategorized (move this one up past snow if you skip the harpies)
underground(dredge. Move this one up if you get the cannon route and the ice ele. Put it above snow.)
Cliffside (the seals one)

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

@Robert Hrouda

Nonono, don’t touch them! they work perfectly at the way the are now !

Besides this, Robert you that are the Dungeon designer, can you check onto the rewards we get daily? Cause in fractals 10+ up sometimes we get a ring (2 days, and I didn’t get anything anyway) and I don’t know if it’s pure RNG based (bad) or something else.

Cause is nice that someone gets a ring, but when it comes to RNG you can’t nothing for a long time and someone else always, and that’s poor, I prefer tokens for this matter, like old dungeons. Not to grind and have a chance.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

My suggestions would be the make the boss fights a little more involved. Im a big fan of the wisp running, and the luminous plant portions. They both require heavy amounts of teamwork, and a parties completion speed relies on how well you work together.

The boss fights however are a little less involved. Mossman doesnt seem to have a mechanic beyond “hits you pretty hard if you stand next to him” Bramblethorn is a little better with his spirit spawning, perhaps make them do a little more for him, I know when I see a spirit my first thought is not “kitten I need to kill that” but instead “yeah I guess I can auto it a few times”

The jellyfish has several neat attacks, but the way we damage it is still just normal damage the whole time. You could perhaps make the electric lamp things around the arena hurt the jellyfish too/give it a buff that makes it take more damage. Now players are rewarded for kiting in 3 dimensions, as well as risk/reward of standing inside the electricity.

Changing the bosses into more involved fights would probably push them up both in difficulty, time taken, and imo fun.

I do wish to make it clear though, both the swamp and the aquatic fractals (and indeed all the fractals) are pretty kitten amazing. But I for one cant wait to see what else you guys can come up with ;o

the swamp is amazing in concept, but i was kinda shocked at how short it was, and we were doing it with 4 players only (one had DC’d on a previous fractal and couldn’t rejoin).

i think the traps blend in a bit TOO well though, and the timer to get all wisps in place is quite severe (our group did it with 3 seconds left, after a couple attempts).

I think the EASIEST (not SHORTEST) fractals in order from easiest to hardest (speaking from experience of getting to difficulty 14)…

1. Swamp
2. Blizzard
3. Aqua
4. Volcano
5. Asura (after L10 harpies will knock you back, gets annoying)
6. Clifftop
7. Charr Siege
8. Underground Facility

Maybe the swamp would have flowed better if the timer were a little more lenient, and there were another short area between the wisps and boss to make up for it, but personally I think it’s great as it is.

The swamp? easy? those walls, they’re too strong. but really all the fractals are a lot of fun to me. have yet to hit 8 though.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

easy and fastest doesnt mean they are not fun ;-)
i really like to be dolphin :-D
i may be mistaken but i think the deep sea gets darker with more fractal levels which is pretty cool.
even though i have to admit the endboss is kinda boring. too big health pool and too few abilities you have to pay attention to.

Best Fractual is the dredge fractual, actually made me think for a moment on how to beat the boss

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

Yes go ahead, I like this to be a challenge and most of them work good. However the Ascalon one, we have quite an experienced dungeon team but we kept failing and couldn’t find a decent tactic for it. Worst part is that we are unable to hit the ballista with melee attacks, as they would miss. Something went wrong when you fixed the object hitboxes there.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

Moar traps are required!!!!

heavily depends on the level and skill of players

early i liked asura/uncatogrized, starting at lv10 those harpies are starting with range ae knockback….

swamp is hard until you know the ways you have to walk and where the traps are, by then its suddenly a map you want 3times in a row… always

I really enjoy swamp as it is tbh. Took my group a fair bit of time to get past the wisps on our first attempt. But once you learn it you can blitz through it. I find it really enjoyable to be able to do something much more quickly and efficiently than you could originally after taking the time to learn it.

As for your boss design Robert the 3 bosses (2 in swamp and 1 in underwater) I find get a bit tedious as not much changes as the fight goes on. This may change in higher difficulties (have only cleared up to 11 atm) but certainly fights that involve multiple phases or actively doing something are far more engaging. The snow fractal for example has in my opinion two good bosses with multiple phases (the ice elemental with the snowstorms at each 25% and the ice rain on the final boss), then for a boss with a single phase that I enjoy probably final boss in the dredge fractal. Although his abilities don’t change as the fight goes on you have to kite him around into the lava the whole time which means that between his abilities you aren’t just standing there doing damage.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

Please don’t, you have no idea the horrible things that were said on skype when we were doing the Swamp

Clearly you wrote this topic with the only purpose to brag.
What do you expect people to answer? “GG! You are such a pro player doing this fractal in 10 minutes!”?

Instead I cross my fingers not to find this fractal again and luckly I got to level 4 (and played level 2 three times) without entering swamp fractal again.

I liked swamp itself overall but I just did not like wisp part. If you are a class that can ignore all the snares and such or have access to multiple teleport like skills, it makes it much easier.

If you take the time to learn the swamp, all the traps become predictably placed and you know where they are or what to look for, where the shortcuts are, and can succeed on the first attempt.

RandomHominid.3456:

If you take the time to learn the swamp, all the traps become predictably placed and you know where they are or what to look for, where the shortcuts are, and can succeed on the first attempt.

This. You can see the kitten tripwires on the ground. Theres more of an issue with faulty collision detection than the actual trap itself. When you run these fractals a few more times, you’ll realize how much you’d rather do Swamp over some of the other ones. The snow one is seriously epilepsy inducing, and I’d really not want to do that one again.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

You guys should’ve been quite. >.<

“Let me guess. You built this yourself. The quality shows.”

- Crea Irontooth

Robert Hrouda.1327:

That aside, my boss designs are an area that I would do well to improve upon.

Do you design and script the encounters, or just design?

Do you or the dungeon team have time for a reddit AMA (release dungeons and FOTM)?

Would be awesome to hear things from your side about the dungeons, design, intent, lessons learned, lupicus kill streaks, etc haha.

Fractals is awesome!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

So tell me, were you on heavy flu medication when you designed the dolphin/luminous moss sections?
Or were you under orders to create an insipid money sink?

Mossman lvl20 gave us a blast!! Looking forward to see him at lvl 30

Puzzle is very easy for a well coordinated group, i wouldnt say that it is heavily class dependant, we rock ranger+thief+warrior+guardian+guardian\warrior.

The swamp is actually fairly easy, but I’m not sure if we’ve been doing it the intended way.

If not, it’s down-right impossible without a very specific group set up, even if you dodge every trap. We’ve had times when the entire top bit get’s closed off, or you have to run in a Z shape to get to the wisps (which isn’t possible even with swiftness up 100% of the time, and no mobs putting you in combat), which is why I’m 90% sure we’re doing it correctly, even if it isn’t obvious…

We always skip the swamp. The fact the tree wall changes during the run of the event makes completing depending on less on skill and luck of the draw. The trap reset is also way too fast.

curtegg.5216:

We always skip the swamp. The fact the tree wall changes during the run of the event makes completing depending on less on skill and luck of the draw. The trap reset is also way too fast.

So much in this game is ‘luck’ based its disgusting.

i love the asura fractal, absolutely awesome please add more puzzle oriented fractals, thank you but they are all very good :P

You can climb and jump over the walls that appear.

Dear Robert: First of all, FotM is a huge success. My jaw dropped in almost all of the fractals, because I was simply amazed by the clever design!
However, there will always be things to improve, and here’s what I think you could improve:
The Krait underwater fractal’s final boss, the Jellyfish, is very underwhelming. It has no real abilities to be aware of. I suggest increasing the damage of the lightning around the cages by a lot, so there’s some sort of danger. The spin-daze attack could use an increase in lethality too.

The Frozen wasteland fractal is excellent, with the exception of the beginning. I want to fear frostbite, but it’s not lethal enough. There’s also the issue that you can shorten the run to the major bonfire by a lot, just by jumping off the edge. The last boss could use some more dangerous moves too.

And the Uncategorized fractal: I like it very much, up to the final boss, where I’m absolutely confused. What is the raving asura doing there? Why do we not get to attack him? What is the purpose of the last cutscene? Does he kill himself or teleport away? The cutscene is really vague :P

While we’re at it with Rob ITT, the Jade Maw gets boring very fast. Just saying.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I design them on paper, present them in a meeting to some other designers, make adjustments to them based on feedback, build/script it, play it, get feedback on it, adjust based on feedback rinse/repeat until it ships.
Other times someone else builds it based on the designs, but we work together on reacting to feedback and hooking it up in the game.

The meeting about the dolphin section garnered a lot of laughs when I presented it. To be honest I came up with the idea at home after a Rum-and-coke. It got people excited in the meeting, which made it a fun design to work on and get feedback for.

Okay so really, why the sink mechanic?
Isn’t it enough that you can be 2-3 hit as a dolphin and can’t fight back? Why lock our controls for 2 seconds?
Moreover, the sea scorpion thing.. it doesn’t work. It barely distracts them at best, and at worst it actually makes the kraits aggro you.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I design them on paper, present them in a meeting to some other designers, make adjustments to them based on feedback, build/script it, play it, get feedback on it, adjust based on feedback rinse/repeat until it ships.
Other times someone else builds it based on the designs, but we work together on reacting to feedback and hooking it up in the game.

The meeting about the dolphin section garnered a lot of laughs when I presented it. To be honest I came up with the idea at home after a Rum-and-coke. It got people excited in the meeting, which made it a fun design to work on and get feedback for.

haha I always hope to get the Dolphin one, but doing the Piranhas one is pretty fun also, if only for the feeling of relief after you get through it. I haven’t felt affected by darkness in a MMO like that since night time in Kithicor Forest from the original Everquest.

Also, it’s pretty cool each fractal has slightly different paths also. Props to that.

Generally I’m pretty impressed how you guys to make each dungeon run slightly different. Either by design…or intended or unintended bug fixes haha. Some people complain, but it’s nice to have to stay engaged somewhat after running the same instance 20+ times.

I gotta say, I love all of the fractals. The swamp one is interesting, because at first it IS very difficult. There is a learning curve dependent on the skill of your group, and the first couple of completions can take as long as an hour each. However, once you’ve learned the tricks to it, it DOES become a very quick fractal. I hear people complain a lot about the lower left one, with all the bear traps, the spike trap on the wisp, the KD traps, and the walls that spawn at any close-by paths through. I have to say though, I much prefer doing this wisp to any others once I learned the trick. Becomes very easy. Swamp is just one of those fractals that is very… I dunno the word, I don’t want to say gimmicky, but there are definitely certain ways to do it that you have to figure out. The difficulty lies in figuring those out, and once it’s done, you’ve got that fractal nailed for all eternity. I have done all the fractals and have yet to find one that I feel is truly difficult; the Searing fractal probably comes closest due to having to fight through a bunch of arrow carts and mobs of NPC’s. Still very doable with a good group.

Enjoying the Fractals of the Mist extensively. Now if only the presence of a gear treadmill and a massive grind for max-stat gear that was promised since before the launch of the game to be easily obtainable wasn’t ruining my ability to even want to play.

Also, since the devs seem to be paying attention to questions about the Fractals: will we ever get more lore about the colossus? What is he? What is he doing? Where did he go? WHY IS HE SO COOL

Our group(War, War, Guard, Necro, yes only 4) doesn’t mind the swamp one either. You can get unlucky a few times but usually its a one shot and a 5 to 10 minute fractal. We actually hate the char one the most.

I will say that the Giant Jellyfish is a little underwhelming as well. We found that dragging him to all of the electricity wasn’t rewarding enough and the DPS we lose by kiting him around is not made up by the electrocute, so its faster for us to just keep him in one spot and murder him. Even at difficulty 8ish his abilities are not dangerous.

Perhaps make the Jellyfish take 50 to 100% more damage for 20 seconds after an electrocute but also make him hit 50 to 100% harder for the same duration, or make him spawn twice as many little jellies for the 20 seconds(i don’t know just ideas). Then you get a little more of a risk vs reward scenario.

Overall though, great dungeons, i hope to see more like these in the future.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Now, this has no indication of difficulty, but both swamp and aquatic are easy as heck, and the fastest fractals. Whenever I see them Im more than happy.

Eesh, I built both of those… guess I need to toughen them up a bit…

Well do make the jellyfish fight more interesting. Nothing really going on there but spamming the thing for 5 mins…

edit: to be more constructive the best boss fights involve a lot of serious need for positioning. dodging, and teamwork in my opinion anyway.

but I do like the design of your areas. Quite cool, and swamp being the random ARGH factor for some people is nice. Not all the fractals should play the same and it’s great that they don’t.

Swamp is by far worst kitten i’ve played in this game so far. You can’t pug it, especially on higher lvls. It is so random and utility dependent that makes me sick. I spent hours trying to pass it with pugs just to get people ragequit.

Oh, and you can’t add another in his place because it’s bugged.

Seriously, fix the kitten swamp, it is not fun at all, and with so many traps and walls appearing out of nowhere right in my face it will never be fun.

Sorry but this is pretty much end for my fractal journey until you fix that kitten.

Tulisin.6945:

Unlike the other fractals, swamp is heavily profession dependent. A group with a bunch of mobility (thieves, mesmers) has a much easier time with this than a group of slower professions. In a 3-thief group that can just shadowstep their way home, I’ll take swamp any day.

How? lol my warrior just zooms right past all the traps, signet of rage for mobility with the whisp, and 2 condition removal signets, and your fast and unstoppable. any class with a speed boost and atleast 1 condition removal, can do the swamp with ease, but it also depends on the users ability to actually spot the traps.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zenyatoo.4059:

The jellyfish has several neat attacks, but the way we damage it is still just normal damage the whole time. You could perhaps make the electric lamp things around the arena hurt the jellyfish too/give it a buff that makes it take more damage. Now players are rewarded for kiting in 3 dimensions, as well as risk/reward of standing inside the electricity.

Spoiler alert: They do! It’s just a bit difficult to perceive, but if you leash the jelly into it, it actually takes some pretty severe damage. It also hurts the spawned jellies.

That aside, my boss designs are an area that I would do well to improve upon.

The ideal underwater boss is one that doesn’t exist. A braindead easy underwater boss is the second best thing. Remember some classes have just awful underwater abilities, the targeting and LoS is not very good underwater, and underwater combat in general is just plain terrible. If I am in an underwater dungeon I want to get through it as quickly and easily as possible so I can get back to the parts of GW2 that are fun.

If you really want to improve you boss design, I would recommend brushing up on your Zelda. That series always has incredible boss design. Dark Souls has some good attack based bosses too, but the game is too hard for some.

Robert I would like to express the fact that you have done a great job on the Swamp and Water fractals. Purely because they are very different, unlike the other fractals it’s less about fighting and more about teamwork and navigation. I have only done this fractals with friends so I have no clue if it is very frustrating with a bunch of random people.

Now for the bad part: What the hell were you thinking with the jelly fish boss? He has way to much health and does pretty much nothing. We have twice in a row simply gone afk and came back to find him dead. (This is was fractal level 3 and 5). Am I missing some kind of mechanic with the cages, we tried everything and it doesn’t seem to do anything?

My thought was maybe that you let this guy be a joke for like 20 fractals, then at 21+ he gets some insane abilities and becomes the greatest challenge a player has ever faced in the history of MMOs, right?

I second or third the comments on the jellyfish boss. I haven’t tried it, but I am quite sure you could set the whole party to auto attack and AFK.

Dolphins are ok, the lights I can’t do at all.

On the swamp thing, that’s been a killer for my parties. I guess we need to recruit more mesmers – thieves.