Guild Wars 2

I’m part of the pre-HoT fractal community, and I think everyone is already aware of how absolutely terrible the drop rate currently is, so I won’t divulge into that. I think everyone also knows how terrible the scaling is and how terrible the incentive to do high level fractals is. So I’ll skip over all of that.

Instead, I really want to ask this: Has anyone here experienced a single new mechanic in Fractals? I think this is what is killing the old Fractal community. We ask for new content and Anet instead provides “new” ways to experience old content. The old Fractal system ran something like this:

Prelevel 10, Uncategorized had harpies not knockback and the fan didn’t need crystals: the mechanic changed.
Prelvel 50, the Veterans on Jade Maw vanished: the mechanic changed.
Really though, what else is different? Except for swamp requiring faster runs per level, I haven’t felt anything… new. The instabilities, sure, but they’re not game-changing. They’re just plain annoying. Do you remember the Bloodlust fractal where you had to engage in bursts and then disengage before killing yourself while hitting the boss? Or how about Ill and Chill where you really had to watch what conditions you applied? Lethargic, where your endurance regen was cut in half so you really had to be skillful and not waste any dodges? Antielitism that prevented you from casting an elite skill, changing up how youplayed? Social Awkwardness, where if you stacked you healed for less? Now it’s just: You lose boons, enemies gain boons, enemies steal boons, you apply agony when nearby an ally, enemies can apply conditions, your cds are longer when you have a condition, and enemies explode. AKA you’re punished for dodgerolling, the enemies aren’t more difficult but instead have RNG conditions like fear, etkittenerally Last Laugh is the only real instability that increases actual difficulty instead of inflating artificial difficulty by lowering dps and increasing enemy tankiness. When you actually lose mechanics from preHoT to postHoT, you’re going to really burn out a lot of fractal runners. What happened to the no-reflect instability that was planned to replace Ill and Chill? Imagine no reflect on Uncategorized. Now that would be really difficult.

I got the intention that the new fractals would all have their own unique instability’s before they were released and personally this affects me way more then the garbage rewards currently. Don’t get me wrong i like gold and ascended chests skins ect, fractals is the sole reason all my weapons and armor are all of the ascended rarity, at the very least i want it back to normal for rewards with slightly better liquid gold and honestly i feel like that isn’t to much to ask. Now i would make a point about the Dungeon liquid gold nerf here too but its unrelated and those people should do their own ranting in another thread. I wanted that feeling of discovery as lame as it may sound to others getting up to scale 100 figuring out best ways to get around the instability’s. I don’t understand what the deal is with the Arena Net Devs being so against the Berserker meta because its honestly a joke to me. Pre-HoT scale 50 Fotm has perfect balance in my opinion because everything came down to player skill in the end, knowing when to dodge enemy attacks, using blinds, stacking in the right areas to lure trash mobs and much more. To me the old fractals was about setting records and having fun with friends its certainly has none of that now at the highest scales. Another thing enemy’s did as much damage or more then what you do to them i loved that it made me feel like i had to really focus and think strategically. Arena Net really need to reconsider what fractals actually are because they are turning them into something they aren’t with this high toughness crap and awful instability’s that literally lets the game play you instead of you playing against it, the inspiration from the new raids mechanics shouldn’t have to much affect with what the fractals are suppose to be.

There’s a lot wrong with the current fractals…Like punishing using game mechanics (dodge this go around).

Then there’s the new boring as heck HP sponge fights.

I’m not really sure who was involved with this incarnation of fractals, but honestly give me the old fractals back, they were way more fun and actually engaging (maybe not as Pug friendly) but something has to change.

Would like to see the current fractals as “Normal” run and a “Coordinated/Challenge” run for full 5 man groups willing to do the old set of 4 random fractals (perhaps change the mechanic to also have (4 random Instabilities) only available above scale 50. /shrug

I want the pre-fractured fractals back, dredge clown cart and all. I want to spend 45 minutes killing the dredge clown car on fractal 79, and I want to fight fire shaman on fractal 79 and I want the skin drops to be 1/4 again.

I literally bought HoT because of the fractal patch, and as it stands I feel totally lied to. It’s not that fractals didn’t meet my personal expectations, it’s that they aren’t what ANET SAID they would be. I pmed Jon Smith and he sent me to a Reddit post saying he was looking into the reward drop rates… but as it stands the collection is still broken 2 weeks out, leaderboards are still “in the works” and none of the exploits were fixed. I honestly feel like these changes were completed in like two days by a single person and never tested. It honestly feels cut and pasted.

Instabilities: cut and paste
New Island with New Merchant: cut current island, remove the portal, add new character model with existing asset, add a few items
Collection: not touched
Exploits: not touched
Leaderboards: not touched
Rewards: touched, end result is the OPPOSITE of what they said it would be

Half the stuff that was discussed as selling points for the revamp, THE SELLING POINTS that got me to buy HoT weren’t included, and haven’t been added in the past few weeks. It just feels so dishonest that it hurts.

I also thought it sounded like every single fractal level was going to get its own special instability. I thought that was one of the reasons they gave for the static schedule. I was really looking forward to it and was very disappointed in what we got. IE the same bland instability for 10 or so levels.

I did around 1500 full runs/dailies so pretty much everyday and multiple times a day since they came out. But I’m done now. It’s not like it was to me any more. I’m finding some other things to do tho I also find myself playing less. Hoping raids will be worth…

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Instabilities: cut and paste
New Island with New Merchant: cut current island, remove the portal, add new character model with existing asset, add a few items
Collection: not touched
Exploits: not touched
Leaderboards: not touched
Rewards: touched, end result is the OPPOSITE of what they said it would be

Half the stuff that was discussed as selling points for the revamp, THE SELLING POINTS that got me to buy HoT weren’t included, and haven’t been added in the past few weeks. It just feels so dishonest that it hurts.

It’s a shame that they found time to reduce the drop rates and make power builds terrible in high level fractals, but the content we were hoping was added didn’t come. Nerfing drop rates without adding substantive content is not going to draw customers. I don’t like the idea of paying 50 dollars to redo my armor and get less loot.

I feel bad, because you can tell the employees probably had to work themselves to the bone for this short a release cycle, but there wasn’t enough time to finish. I guess it’s a lesson learned that when this happens, nerfing drop rates and making people swap from one dps build to another should be last on their list because it causes a terrible perception among players.

I stopped playing fotm entirely. I’m not sure if I’ll start again. Wvwvw is having similar issues, and that’s what I did most of the time. I play less now.

New fractals is old fractals, but for babies.

i find all the replayable content in this game has turn to kitten… excuse my french, dungeons while easy enough, supplied me with endless hours of fun.. fractals are now pointless, once you’ve done your 1-100, fractal dailies are a sad joke.. challenging content my kitten .. this isnt an expansion, its the opposite.. you’ve taken away all the content i loved and replaced it with nothing..

Anet simply destroyed both … Dungeons and fractals

Bad rewards in both of them
No one there to do dungeons because of the bad rewards
Just boring fractals because of the hp sponge mobs and the abolutely stupid instabilities ( dodging causes loos of any boon , yes pls destroy your game mechanics more offensive )
People leveled on 100 just do the daily fractals not even more because it’s not real fun

Anet gave us a good example how to not introduce some ADD on

It’s an ADD on not a REMOVE on

My play time have been greatly reduced since the dungeons and fractal nerf, I did not even bothered doing fractals after lvl50, while I was doing lvl50 daily pre-HoT, the rewards now are terrible and the new mechanics are not challenging, but a waste of time, even the Covetous Demon from Dark Souls 2 is infinitely better designed than the boss fights with the new instabilities…

Didn’t they take Arrowheads moveset from Covetous demon?
And Devil Dogs are Skeleton Wheels, but more OP since they can roll continuously while changing directions.

My conclusion is that HoT fractals are meant for people who were not playing fractals before. And I think Anet suceeded at that.
For prehot fractaleers, anet will give us raids. Lets hope they are good enough.

Pre Hot fractals were being destroyed too easily with iceBow chains, they could keep the exactly scaling but with the new BreakBar and everything would be perfect.

I was really waiting for new Fractals and increased rewards.

ArenaNet destroyed all my expectations on the instantiated PVE content, and i will not create any more expectations or believe in anything they say, i will wait to see with my own eyes, currently GuildWars2 has NO, absolutely NONE decent instantiated PVE content.

And i expect bad raids, because everything else is bad, how could i expect something good from ArenaNet.

Over 200 level 50 runs in a row I did before hot came out. Don’t regret not a single one, all fun in the sun.

Did level 50 now, I shall cease participation to a minimum to finish the backpiece. Dungeon and fractals veteran community killed. I cringe each time I have to drag myself to get research papers. No one speaks, no party prep, feels like a fair ride and I want off.

Why is this becoming a theme park mmo?

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

as it stands I feel totally lied to.

This sums it up for me. They presented fractals as the content they focus on, just to make people buy HoT, and all they delivered is old content seasoned with different icons for items (supposedly loot) that litter my inv.

I can’t see myself doing fractals again once I finish the legendary backpack. Not a fan of the gold skins and already bought the normal skin I wanted. I’ll try to do all the levels until then for the achievement but there is no reward to continuing after.