Guild Wars 2

Hi all

The new system for fractals brought to us since HoT sure looked nice on paper, but now that we’ve seen it live for a while, is it really as good as we had hoped or are certain aspects lacking. Let’s Compare the old with the new.

For simplification we’ll compare 1 old run with 1 daily fractal run (Adept, journeyman or master, the ones that require you to run 3 fractals.). I will not discuss balance issues like mobs just being hp sponges etc in this thread.

Old
The main issue with the old ones was the fact that you had to run 3 fractals + a boss fractal, and at higher lvl this could easily take 45 mins, 30 mins if you have a good group but unlucky rolls on the random fractals you get beyond the first meant you’d take longer. However, each run you had would most likely result in different fractals at the 2nd, 3rd and boss one, maybe even at the first if you decided not to roll for swamplands. This made it so that each fractal was played regularly and made the experience more diverse. Rewards were not the best in the game in terms of gold, but one always got a decent amount of rares and the higher chance of ascended boxes made running fractals appealing at higher lvls. Lvl 50 cap was maybe a little bit low for those that like to push for a little bit more progression in their pve.

New
You can pretty much pick out whichever ones you feel like doing each day, there are 2 dailies that do push you in a certain direction but one does not need to follow them, especially not if they are not going for the back piece. It looks nice on paper indeed, and in practice it is nice as well to some degree. If one doesn’t have too much time they can quickly do 3x swamplands (for higher lvls) or some swamplands and other fast fractals and be done for the day. However, at higher lvl we start to see people running only swamp swamp and more swamp, mostly because it’s the fastest way to get the daily. Not to mention, if you just spam swamp over and over the reward you get is better than doing a super long one like cliffside. The result is that fractals start to feel very farmy, and when you want to do another one 2 months after launch you’ll have trouble finding them, because most just do each lvl one time for the achievement and then move on. Ideally, if one can freely pick which fractal to do, they should all be worth picking for one reason or the other.

In my opinion, right now, I would prefer the old system over the current one BUT I do think the current system overall is a better idea. Being able to pick your fractals is a good thing, but as said before I think if you wish fractals to be “pick your own adventure”, then all of the options should be worth picking and not just the short ones only, and that is the main issue I would wish to see fixed. I don’t want the option of spamming swamp to be destroyed, I think it has a certain place in the game, but I wish for other options to be appealing too.

How I would fix it? Well, I’d start by balancing the current rewards so that each 1 min spent in whatever island = the same amount of rewards (ofc the higher lvl you go the higher the reward… but I’m sure you get the idea.). This way, swamp will be for those that want to maybe have a bit more of a chill, relaxed experience while the other fractal islands could be for those that want a little bit more. However, I ultimately think this is not the solution.

I think in order to really make all fractal islands appealing, they should each have a few unique skins that only drop in that certain fractal. These skins should be BoE like the Aetherpath skins are as well. 2 skin ideas that could easily be implemented already without much extra work is the Molten Jetpack from the Molten Duo boss and Monocle from Mai Trin fight. Giving each island appealing, unique rewards that are also worth something if they decide to sell them, will make it so that people will want to run them. This way, you don’t need to buff the rewards of fractals that aren’t swamp to stupid lvls and people that want to run swamps as they do now don’t get punished, but people that want to do the other fractals got something to go for. Everyone wins.

Anyway, that’s just my suggestion really. Do you agree or disagree? Have any other ideas? Let’s have a healthy discussion!

HoT pretty much killed the fractal daily for me. The new system is dumb as hell and rewards running swamp/molten over and over. Either way, it’s gotten stale extremely fast. Most of my friend who ran fractals have stopped playing all together

Completely disagree. The new system is really great. It just needs a few tweaks:

1. A daily fractal in 51-75
2. A daily fractal in 76-100
3. A daily reward for completing 3 fractals in 76-100.

and the biggest:

4. Much better rewards. The current rewards are horrible and that’s a big reason people don’t do them anymore.

As far as I know, the fractal patch will change the rewards to a more appropriate level, eg cliffside will give more reward (XP at least) than swamp.

Ummm… Big Whoop? By the time, the Fractal’s patch hits most people will have already completed central tyria masteries. Then, who cares if Cliffside gives even 3 million xp for completing it?

what style said and increased rewards for fractals like cliffside that take longer

i dont think they should nerf swamp or molten boss rewards that just makes people unhappy
just icnrease the long fractal rewards a bit to reward people doing those more

They could take a leaf out of dungeon’s book. Every unique fractal done each day could grant a bonus amount of fractal encryptions. If their December fractal patch actually makes these things worth money to crack open, such as giving higher value trophies more often, it could be a decent boost to income. And would encourage fractal runners to run a diversity of fractals to maximize returns instead of just doing swamp over and over.

A simple solution, give each fractal a rating, swamp, maw and molten duo obviously being the easiest with the lowest rating for example 1, and volcanic or reactor being on a higher rating maybe 3, something like that. So to complete a daily you will need let’s say 5 rating points, that way people who are good and want to complete it fast will do reactor for 3 rating points, while people who are not that good can do 5 swamps or a mixture of swamps and duos to get their daily but would take longer. Maybe the daily rating for this example is too low but you get the idea, maybe swamp will be 1 rating, reactor will be 5 rating and daily rating required might be 15. And ofc make the higher rating fractals drop better loot than the lower rating ones. Fractals fixed! The less skilled people who just want dailies will be happy, the more skilled people who want rewards and variety will be happy. And moss man will not be killed a thousand and 1 times everyday. Even better make each fractal drop exclusive rare rewards from that fractal. Or make golden fractal relics drop from higher rating fractal end chests.

When this system was first announced ppl warned anet about just running swamp over and over. They assured us this wouldn’t happen because of daily recommended fractals.

well… sigh

Pretty much agree with OP. While rewards should be better, the system needs an overall change. There’s no point in increasing rewards when they still can be earned by doing swamp, molten duo and a third easy and quick level.

Many good suggestions were given, many warnings were spoken before they rolled out the new systems. Yet, A.Net didn’t listen.
What Zach.2618 wrote would be one way to change things for the better.
Another thing I could think of would be mixing the old with the new system, like
- select the difficulty stage you want to play in
- chose the first level you wanna play
- get a dialogue after finishing the level offering a choice of 2 or 3 random levels ppl can vote for, like chosing explorable paths in old dungeons (RIP)
- repeat until you have 3 different levels done to get your daily reward for that difficulty stage

This could also be combined with Zach.2618’s idea, like, each level has a particular value and the levels you can chose from depend on the amount of missing value until you got your daily done, to make the system less luck dependant but predictable to a certain extent.
For example: daily needs a value of 10 points. People decide to start of with swamp, which gives 1 point, so the next two votes whould let the party chose from levels with a higher value, so they can reach 10 points.
On the other side, a team that starts of with cliffside might get 6 or 7 value points, thus being able to chose from easier/faster levels for round 2 and 3.
Hope you get the idea.

The solution is rather simple:

1) Give more daily fractals per bracket.

2) Improve the rewards (see 1). Less rng, more relics, additional items from vendors that help with ascended gear. Ideally not only rings, but ascended trinkets in general.

3) MOST IMPORTANT (and admittetly most difficult to change too): Adjust the toughness scaling and rework the instabilities.

Problem solved.