Guild Wars 2

Is there any indication that the dredge fractal will receive an uplift or some changes? Im sure many “pro” people would think otherwise, but that fractal….really sucks. I’m just hoping that it can be updated somehow.

Oh, that also includes uncategorized fractal (those crazy harpies just troll too much).

It has already been updated (the end bosses have been changed). And it actually has several interesting mechanics, that require parties to work together and pay attention to what they’re doing, instead of just stacking in some corner and spamming blindly until loot happens.

I agree the uncategorized fractal needs a few tweaks, though; sometimes the red circles don’t render at all, and you can get knocked off by an attack you had no idea was even aimed at you. The AoE should be smaller than the platforms, so it’s always guaranteed to render (even if only near the edge).

Also, GW2’s camera definitely doesn’t make it easy to play while looking up; one solution would be to make the players go down the platforms, but personally I’d rather see the camera itself fixed. How hard can it be to add an option to adjust the camera target height, so we can see more of the stuff above without losing sight of the ground in front of us, instead of wasting half our screen showing the ground behind our character?

I don’t mean the end bosses of dredge, more like finding a happy medium where they don’t spawn as much or at least improve the button mechanics, to which I have yet to see a party not take the short way to pass it, and even then most prefer a guardian or two to help with the enormous amounts of projectiles thrown at you. Can anyone say that they got dredge and were happy about it?

The bomb sequence is, most of the time and depending on group, the most stressful activity I have ever seen in gw2. Is quite the death-fest.

The bombs do take a bit too long to spawn, yes. Even if done properly, you need to pull back and wait ages for more bombs to spawn (and what’s the justification for bombs appearing out of thin air, anyway?).

I don’t like infinite spawns as a game mechanic in general (I think it’s just stupid; if the enemy has 500 soldiers, they would simply attack at the same time and crush you, not send a couple of new soldiers every 10 seconds), but I like the idea that some obstacles can’t be beaten simply by killing everything first.

I think a better solution for the bombs (and for the room with the switch) would be to have a fixed number of enemies, but give them armoured suits that made them almost impossible to kill, so players would have to deal with the door / switch while keeping those enemies busy. The end result would be similar, but it would avoid the silliness of “physical” enemies just infinitely spawning out of nowhere.

I’m fine with ghosts appearing out of nowhere because everyone knows real ghosts can do that.

that 10+? min killing dredge from clown car……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

i wonder if that will ever be fixed

bombs indeed take too long to spawn

random 20+ dredge spawn that all hit for 7k

long long meaningless map for few greens and huge repair bill….zzz

i really hope those “new” mechanics not gonna make it even more unbearable

Cynz.9437:

that 10+? min killing dredge from clown car……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

With a flamethrower it’s almost fun.

But yes, it’s too long and a bit silly (why do they come out only 3 at a time, and why does the car drive into the door afterwards…? it’s a bit nonsensical).

That part would be a lot funnier if the car wasn’t there at all and, after you killed the boss, the “clown APC” burst into the room and started spilling very weak mobs at a really crazy speed (think 60 mobs in 20 seconds). You could kill them (which would just be fun, not necessarily challenging, but also not boring), or you could just ignore them and go up the ramp to the final boss.

But whoever designed GW2’s dungeons seems to have a health bar fetish. Fractals are actually not as bad as the original dungeons, but some encounters still go on for far too long, and just become boring.

Account.9832:

Cynz.9437:

that 10+? min killing dredge from clown car……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

With a flamethrower it’s almost fun. :P

But yes, it’s too long and a bit silly (why do they come out only 3 at a time, and why does the car drive into the door afterwards…? it’s just random).

That part would be a lot funnier if the car wasn’t there at all and, after you killed the boss, the “clown APC” burst into the room and started spilling very weak mobs at a really crazy speed (think 60 mobs in 20 seconds). You could kill them (which would just be fun, not necessarily challenging, but also not boring), or you could just ignore them and go up the ramp to the final boss.

But whoever designed GW2’s dungeons seems to have a health bar fetish. Fractals are actually not as bad as the original dungeons, but some encounters still go on for far too long, and just become boring.

uh there is more than 3 at lv 48, more like 10… the problem is they are relative tanky+ hit really hard and the progression bar almost doesn’t move with wiping each mob

you just literary sit 10+ min at car and mindlessly spam aoe

all that is after sitting for 10 min waiting for thief to solo door because hundrets and hundrets of dredge keep sawpning at door and 1 shot your group basically no matter how tanky you are

Cynz.9437:

uh there is more than 3 at lv 48, more like 10…

Yes, but they still come out in waves. Which is just dumb (from their point of view). If they were really all in the APC, they’d all come out as fast as possible to overwhelm you, instead of giving you time to kill the previous “wave”.

In any case, this fractal needs to be fixed or re-designed. But I wonder if the fractal designer is aware about this fractal’s popularity…

I think that, overall, the fractal design is okay. It’s mainly a matter of adjusting the HP of certain mobs and bosses, and increasing the respawn speed of the bombs (or making the mobs drop bombs when killed), so the fractal becomes shorter. In terms of mechanics it’s certainly more interesting than most of the original dungeons. It’s just too long.

Or did you have some specific gameplay mechanic in mind?

Account.9832:

I think that, overall, the fractal design is okay. It’s mainly a matter of adjusting the HP of certain mobs and bosses, and increasing the respawn speed of the bombs (or making the mobs drop bombs when killed), so the fractal becomes shorter. In terms of mechanics it’s certainly more interesting than most of the original dungeons. It’s just too long.

Or did you have some specific gameplay mechanic in mind?

You have a clever solution there, although I would include to reduce the amount of dredges that appear at one time (specially in the door bombing section), and to shorten out the dredge car part considerably. I do like the battle against the boss in that fractal…

I think one of the things missing from GW2’s dungeons is… proper trash.

It makes no sense that a fully kitted out group of “heroes” (i.e., the players) should take so long to kill unnamed guards (i.e., “trash”). In fact, in GW2 it’s sometimes easier to kill bosses than the group of 3 or 4 mobs before them, which is just silly.

So I wouldn’t necessarily reduce the number of mobs in the bombs / clown APC parts, I’d just make them really weak. Mowing through big hordes of weak mobs is fun and helps make your own character feel more powerful. If, instead of reducing the number of guards to half, you simply halve each guard’s health, the fight takes about the same time but becomes more enjoyable.

Only named mobs (“mini bosses”) and bosses should be more powerful than individual players. The challenge in other encounters should come from the number of enemies (ex., 5 players vs. 20 guards), never from the fact that a lowly guard has 10x the HP and 5x the DPS of a fully kitted out player.

This is, IMO, one of the fundamental principles of dungeon design, which GW2’s developers don’t seem to understand. Trash is there to make players feel powerful, not to make them waste 10 minutes getting HP bars down.

Dredge fractal is fine. The game does not need to be dumbed down any further.

Ah, the classic “dumbing down” reply, clearly typed without reading any of the posts in the thread. That took a while.

Or maybe the poster thinks that spending 10 minutes killing identical mobs makes one “smarter” than if it took a mere 5 minutes.

Account.9832:

Ah, the classic “dumbing down” reply, clearly typed without reading any of the posts in the thread. That took a while.

Or maybe the poster thinks that spending 10 minutes killing identical mobs makes one “smarter” than if it took a mere 5 minutes.

Actually I did read the thread and 10 min is an exaggeration.

Ayrilana.1396:

Actually I did read the thread

And you think that making the bombs spawn faster (for the door) or reducing the number / HP of trash mobs (coming out of the clown car) would “dumb down” the game?

Personally, I fail to see what’s the intellectual challenge of those two activities…

Account.9832:

Ayrilana.1396:

Actually I did read the thread

And you think that making the bombs spawn faster (for the door) or reducing the number / HP of trash mobs (coming out of the clown car) would “dumb down” the game?

Personally, I fail to see what’s the intellectual challenge of those two activities…

I’ll post the points that prompted me to make my original post. I didn’t care about the two that you just mentioned.

Aden Celeste.3650:

I don’t mean the end bosses of dredge, more like finding a happy medium where they don’t spawn as much or at least improve the button mechanics, to which I have yet to see a party not take the short way to pass it, and even then most prefer a guardian or two to help with the enormous amounts of projectiles thrown at you.

Account.9832:

It’s mainly a matter of adjusting the HP of certain mobs and bosses

If I could do nothing else, I’d change it so you get a random 2 out of 4 challenges each run. First door/panel thing, door blow open thing, dredge boss, lava-bucket-boss. Then it wouldn’t be so long, and I wouldn’t dislike it so much.

Or, more ideally, I’d just redo the whole thing.

Ayrilana.1396:

Account.9832:

And you think that making the bombs spawn faster (for the door) or reducing the number / HP of trash mobs (coming out of the clown car) would “dumb down” the game? Personally, I fail to see what’s the intellectual challenge of those two activities…

I’ll post the points that prompted me to make my original post. I didn’t care about the two that you just mentioned.

Account.9832:

It’s mainly a matter of adjusting the HP of certain mobs and bosses

Er… so you don’t care about “reducing the HP of trash mobs”, but you do care about “adjusting the HP of certain mobs and bosses”…?

Aren’t those two the same?

Some mobs (and bosses) have too much HP and fighting them gets boring. Reducing their HP (or reducing the number of mobs, which in some cases adds up to the same) would simply make the encounters shorter, it wouldn’t “dumb down” anything.

Making a fight longer isn’t the same as making it harder or more challenging. Conversely, making it shorter is not the same as “dumbing down”.

If you meant just the part about the buttons (not my post), then I think the actual button mechanics are fine, but I don’t like infinite spawns (I just find them unrealistic and silly), so I’d just replace the current mobs with unkillable versions (ex., highly armoured guards or robots), so that players had to multi-task. The problem with the current version is that some groups assume they’re supposed to kill the mobs (after all, they’re killable), but then new ones pop out of nowhere (they don’t even tunnel from the ground, because the ground in that part of the dungeon is a grate).