Guild Wars 2

I have to say I have zero desire to do fracs now because of the recent patch limiting the daily maps. Instead of forcing people to do maps that nobody wants to play, why not make the maps more pug/stupid friendly and let nature take it’s course? There was a reason people only did swamp, it was so stupid easy that is was pretty hard to screw up and in most cases didn’t require me to do an AR check on pugs.

Maps on lower tiers are pug/stupid friendly. At all tiers there are “kick from group” and “leave party” functions for a reason.

That just makes doing fracs even more hostile than before -_-

Actually it’s a great change. Finally, maybe, people will learn how all fractals work, instead of running swamp, swamp etc…

Nekomages.5672:

That just makes doing fracs even more hostile than before -_-

Explain yourself please. Every fractal has the chance to become a daily now, if I’m not mistaken, so I don’t see a problem here. Fractal community/runners in EU are very forgiving and they rather leave the group than kicking or insulting you. These are my experiences after 6 months of pugging fractals post-HoT and more pre-HoT.

I don’t think this new system is really great either. I mean it’s 200% time better than the system we used to have. We random fractal is better than 3 swamp. After all, when fractal started it was swamp, random, random and it was good.

Still, I think they could have implemented better system that allow us to choose and to not push people to only do swamp.

Sean Hughes.2487:

Thaddeus.4891:

Still, I think they could have implemented better system that allow us to choose and to not push people to only do swamp.

It was actually intentional that you would not be able to choose the daily Fractals. We want to reward players for playing all of the different Fractals, not just for playing a couple of them over and over again.

Which is one of the reasons I loved the pre-hot fractals. This iteration is way better than the one we had at HoT launch, but I still do miss the random fractals per daily tier.

Nekomages.5672:

I have to say I have zero desire to do fracs now because of the recent patch limiting the daily maps. Instead of forcing people to do maps that nobody wants to play, why not make the maps more pug/stupid friendly and let nature take it’s course? There was a reason people only did swamp, it was so stupid easy that is was pretty hard to screw up and in most cases didn’t require me to do an AR check on pugs.

You can still do Swamp; you just don’t get the bonus reward. That seems fair. I like the idea that more-skilled players have access to better rewards than folks that only want to do “stupid easy” content.

I prefer the changes to what we had by a long shot. I’d rather be rewarded for doing T4s than running swamp over and over.

I prefer this iteration to the previous by a good margin. You have to do 5 different fractals max for every daily. And you don’t get the monotony of swamp/swamp/swamp.

Well my desire to do fractal dailies went from zero before the patch to being one of my favorite things to do now, so from my point of view it’s a successful change. My excitement for fotm dailies will probably wane over time, but the daily rewards system is certainly leagues better than it was before the patch.

Saying that this system of dailies is “forcing people to play maps they didn’t want to play” is completely wrong. You aren’t forced to play anything; just as before you can play whatever fractal scales you want. You just no longer get the full daily rewards by doing only swamp and molten bros literally every day. I’m not sure how anyone could say this is a bad change.

I honestly don’t see how you can see it as not forced? I can no longer access rewards I want unless I now play maps I have no desire to play. Before I could choose what I wanted to do to get the reward. Before if you personally didn’t want to do swamp, there was nothing forcing you to do it, you could’ve tried to make your own group, but the fact is you had a choice. Now there is zero choice. I spent 3 times as much time doing this new system for the same rewards as before. It was far more frustrating, I had to keep kicking people without AR since swamp was nearly the only one that AR didn’t matter, and I had to wait a lot longer to even get a group started. The entire time every single person in the group was complaining about being forced in to content we didn’t want to do. As I said before, if they wanted people to play other maps there are better ways of doing it than content locking rewards like this.

As an an after thought I had today, I also noticed nobody was doing the maps below t3 last night and this morning, so wouldn’t this also make it prohibitive for new players or casual players to actually get groups now since nobody is going to do “t1”, “t2”, and “t3” when they can just do t3?

I’m one who is thankful for this change.

Nekomages.5672:

I honestly don’t see how you can see it as not forced? I can no longer access rewards I want unless I now play maps I have no desire to play. Before I could choose what I wanted to do to get the reward.

Ehh not really. It was an illusionary choice. You did 3xSwamp otherwise you just didn’t do fractals. It’s not like most people could solo high level fractals so you did what the group wanted (which was generally 3xSwamp) or you never found anyone to do anything else.

Nekomages.5672:

…There was a reason people only did swamp, it was so stupid easy that is was pretty hard to screw up…

Uhh the few times I pugged high-ish scale mossman people either tried to bug/exploit him or died horribly trying to kill him the normal way. The reason they went with swamp is because it’s the fastest fractal and because they were able to exploit the kitten out of it. lol
For those who actually know how to fight mossman properly, it was just “it’s the fastest fractal”.
Dailies are so much better now, so are instabilities. Some more adjustments, finally +7AR+5Stat Infusions (!!!!!!!!!!!) and some changes on AR in general and we’re good.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

+7AR+5Stat Infusions (!!!!!!!!!!!)

them birdies on reddit say only reason we dont have this (in some form or other) yet is cuz its still in progress and didnt make the cut for this quarter… and would have deleted our current infusions if they had shipped it this patch lol.

Nekomages.5672:

I honestly don’t see how you can see it as not forced? I can no longer access rewards I want unless I now play maps I have no desire to play. Before I could choose what I wanted to do to get the reward. Before if you personally didn’t want to do swamp, there was nothing forcing you to do it, you could’ve tried to make your own group, but the fact is you had a choice. Now there is zero choice. I spent 3 times as much time doing this new system for the same rewards as before. It was far more frustrating, I had to keep kicking people without AR since swamp was nearly the only one that AR didn’t matter, and I had to wait a lot longer to even get a group started. The entire time every single person in the group was complaining about being forced in to content we didn’t want to do. As I said before, if they wanted people to play other maps there are better ways of doing it than content locking rewards like this.

It’s not forced because getting those rewards is not a requirement. I guess since you got a similar reward before with swamp-swamp-swamp you feel entitled to continue to get it for a similar level of difficulty? I can’t get the legendary pvp backpack (a reward I want) unless I play a kittenload of pvp, which I don’t really want to do. Am I being forced to play pvp? I can’t get nevermore without grinding for crystalline ore, am I being forced to repeatedly play dragon’s stand? The answer to both of those is no, because I have simply chosen to forgo the reward since the cost to me is too great. If it isn’t worth the time to you to do the t4 fotm dailies, then do something else that you find more rewarding.

I guess your personal experience has been poor with the new system, but my fotm dailies actually are being completed faster now than they were before (though this is a bit disingenuous since we haven’t been doing the daily recommended scales). It’s a lot more enjoyable in general since there is some challenge in doing the high tier scales that aren’t swamp. My friends and I actually agree to do fotm dailies without kittening and moaning about having to do swamp for the thousandth time.

Nekomages.5672:

As an an after thought I had today, I also noticed nobody was doing the maps below t3 last night and this morning, so wouldn’t this also make it prohibitive for new players or casual players to actually get groups now since nobody is going to do “t1”, “t2”, and “t3” when they can just do t3?

This is a very valid concern. There is now pretty much zero incentive to do lower scales besides the recommended daily scales, which give much worse rewards than the others (and as I mentioned before my group has just been skipping them). Perhaps the reward from those should be increased, or some of the lower tier scales shouldn’t line up with higher tier ones.

The idea was that people who weren’t able to do the high tier ones could to the lower tier ones and still get something, but it seems like it would be difficult to find a group for anything at all below t3.

insanemaniac.2456:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

+7AR+5Stat Infusions (!!!!!!!!!!!)

them birdies on reddit say only reason we dont have this (in some form or other) yet is cuz its still in progress and didnt make the cut for this quarter… and would have deleted our current infusions if they had shipped it this patch lol.

Do you happen a link to the post where it was mentioned? Kinda curious now.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

insanemaniac.2456:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

+7AR+5Stat Infusions (!!!!!!!!!!!)

them birdies on reddit say only reason we dont have this (in some form or other) yet is cuz its still in progress and didnt make the cut for this quarter… and would have deleted our current infusions if they had shipped it this patch lol.

Do you happen a link to the post where it was mentioned? Kinda curious now.

why would i cite a source! its a rumor!

Nekomages.5672:

Before if you personally didn’t want to do swamp, there was nothing forcing you to do it, you could’ve tried to make your own group, but the fact is you had a choice.

I would ask “Have you ever tried to find a party for high level fractals?” but the answer seems obvious from the rest of your post.

You could indeed try to make your own group, the chance of not a single person joining appears to have been the largest chance by far, well over half if I remember correctly; and then there were the options of not enough people join to do the fractal and you get a full party but the party has a poor start and several people leave after the first wipe.

Since the patch I’ve been able to go from level 80 to level 86 in less time than a single level cost me before (with the exeption of when that level happened to be Swampland or Molten Boss).

And now that fractals doesn’t mean just 3x Swampland they can balance the rewards on actually doing fractals rather than just rushing Swampland thrice (for which the rewards were probably too high), I’d glady give up that “choice” for that.

Heck before the patch, I would solo entire fractals other than swamp or dailys. Constantly update the lfg on my progress, but people would not join even when the boss was under 10% hp. I was not selling the fractals or anything, but people were so stuck on Swamp of the mists, they would not join any other fractal even when it was essentially free.

Edit: yes, you could choose to do any other fractal to complete the daily. But that choice was completely illusionary. You would not be able to convince 4 other people to also choose to do a fractal unless it was swamp, Molten Duo, or the 2 listed dailies. And the listed dailies provided it was not mai or cliffside.

insanemaniac.2456:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

insanemaniac.2456:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

+7AR+5Stat Infusions (!!!!!!!!!!!)

them birdies on reddit say only reason we dont have this (in some form or other) yet is cuz its still in progress and didnt make the cut for this quarter… and would have deleted our current infusions if they had shipped it this patch lol.

Do you happen a link to the post where it was mentioned? Kinda curious now.

why would i cite a source! its a rumor!

Much appreciated, thanks.

Story time!

I was running daily mids ~2 weeks before this patch. I always run with at least one other person I know, and in the group one of the pugs asked if we could do Underground Facility instead of swamp for the last, since he needed it for the Dusk collection or something. We all agreed, except for one guy who said he needed swamp. Mind you, we all just did the daily recommended together. We asked him why, and the response was “need it for daily”. This is what 24/7 swamp did to some people: there was at least one person out there who thought the ONLY way to get the daily was by doing swamp/molten duo+recommended. He left when we went to UF.

It’s good that people can’t get away with low AR anymore, it was annoying enough finding people not having it mid-molten duo when they got rekt because they were unprepared. If you don’t know the mechanics or have AR you shouldn’t be running mids up.

The playerbase was given free choice, and they chose swamp. This is the logical solution. Although I must agree it might be better if it were the pre-HoT way: adding new fractals as-is seems complicated since it looks like they’ll have to reshuffle the scales each time instead of just adding it to a rotation list. No idea how to help initiate/adept groups though. That’s the struggle of moving up.

Please don’t listen to the OP, anet. The changes you made to FOTM in this patch were great, and I’m thankful for them.

Can finally finish Ad Infinitum (and without bad leaderboard idea)? Months late, but nice.
Cliffside playable and fun instead of a horrible grind? Awesome.
I can get all 12 (!!!) daily reward just by doing three high level fractals? GREAT! No more mindless lowbie grind, and I can finally find people to play beyond 84!
Daily reward chests can now include ascended crafting (got an Elonian Leather Square today) and ascended accessory (FINALLY! I was never gonna pay 40 laurel/50 ecto and I’m not in in a guild…)? Best change ever.
AND I CAN FINALLY USE MY CONDIS ON THAT DREDGE BOSS???? YESSSSSSSSSSSS.

The mistlock instabilities are also less painfully aggravating, and are fun for me (as a necro) in that most center around condi/boon and I can really adapt to them.

So yeah, just start adding some new levels to fractals (really, it’s years overdue) and fotm is where it needs to be! Nice job, guys!

Nekomages.5672:

Now there is zero choice. I spent 3 times as much time doing this new system for the same rewards as before. It was far more frustrating, I had to keep kicking people without AR since swamp was nearly the only one that AR didn’t matter, and I had to wait a lot longer to even get a group started. The entire time every single person in the group was complaining about being forced in to content we didn’t want to do.

Now there is a good amount of choice. I spent the same time or less than before doing this new system for better rewards as before. It was way more inspirational, I didn’t have to keep kicking people without AR like I did several times in swamp when the axe insta-killed some peeps and I had to wait a lot shorter to get a group started. Not a single time any person in the group was complaining about being forced into content we didn’t want to do.

I guess it’s 50/50 now! Reading others here in this thread make me feel it’s 99/1.
Stop whining about nonsense please, ty.

Nekomages.5672:

I have to say I have zero desire to do fracs now because of the recent patch limiting the daily maps. Instead of forcing people to do maps that nobody wants to play, why not make the maps more pug/stupid friendly and let nature take it’s course? There was a reason people only did swamp, it was so stupid easy that is was pretty hard to screw up and in most cases didn’t require me to do an AR check on pugs.

You had zero desire pre patch as well in fractals, cause ya know fractals include more than just swamp.

Might I add how hostile swamp groups reacted if ya did not comply with tree exploits.

Also you talk about making the other fractals more easy, but the more simple solution would be to make swamp more difficult so its on par with the rest.

Nekomages.5672:

I honestly don’t see how you can see it as not forced? I can no longer access rewards I want unless I now play maps I have no desire to play. Before I could choose what I wanted to do to get the reward. Before if you personally didn’t want to do swamp, there was nothing forcing you to do it, you could’ve tried to make your own group, but the fact is you had a choice. Now there is zero choice. I spent 3 times as much time doing this new system for the same rewards as before. It was far more frustrating, I had to keep kicking people without AR since swamp was nearly the only one that AR didn’t matter, and I had to wait a lot longer to even get a group started. The entire time every single person in the group was complaining about being forced in to content we didn’t want to do. As I said before, if they wanted people to play other maps there are better ways of doing it than content locking rewards like this.

As an an after thought I had today, I also noticed nobody was doing the maps below t3 last night and this morning, so wouldn’t this also make it prohibitive for new players or casual players to actually get groups now since nobody is going to do “t1”, “t2”, and “t3” when they can just do t3?

There is a very simple solution to the problem you describe. Join a guild that does regular fractal runs. If you have trouble finding one, let me know (send me mail in-game) – my guild does, and we do both low and high tiers for people with varying experience / AR. We also do “custom” runs for people who want to do specific, non-daily levels.

Sean Hughes.2487:

Thaddeus.4891:

Still, I think they could have implemented better system that allow us to choose and to not push people to only do swamp.

It was actually intentional that you would not be able to choose the daily Fractals. We want to reward players for playing all of the different Fractals, not just for playing a couple of them over and over again.

Oh that’s for sure. The worst possible outcome is when the best option for the players is to do the same couple of fractal over and over again.

But that doesn’t exclude allowing ppl to choose what they want to do either. I mean dungeon did it greatly.

Pre-hot most dungeon had a similar reward vs challenge vs time ratio. Out of the 25 dungeon path, only a couple of them were not popular. We could choose which one we wanted to do and we didn’t have only 1 or 2 dungeon that everybody runned. About 10 of these path were view as more profitable, but they weren’t so much more shorter or more rewarding that we only did these one. It wasn’t uncommon for groups to do 15 or 20 out of the 25 some days.

And with the last patch a portion of the reward from dungeon come from the achievement that push people to play at least 8 different dungeon path.

That the kind of stuff that would be ideal for fractal. Incentive doing different fractal, but still leaving us the choice of which one we want to do.

I prefer what we have now both to what we had before and to what we had before HoT. 3 random Fractals was always a pain to me, particularly with the time commitment all at once. Now I can do 1 Fractal at a time of the daily list on my own schedule and come back and do the others later if I want. It’s great now.

I really like the new system.

Are you kidding me? They nerfed the fractal difficulty so hard it almost doesn’t feel like an achievment anymore. I wish they had implented a title called “I did all 100 fractals when they still were difficult”.

I did 99 before they were difficult and the 100 after patch.
The lvl 100 Mai Trin was interesting though, with the new mob spawns when she hits 50%. Wasn’t particularly difficult though, we were 4-manning it, and still finished 5min early for the time challenge.

So, overall, I like the changes to the content overall, but the difficulty definitely feels scaled down a bit, especially at very high levels.

Soo since this seems to be the place to drop some opinions on the new patch for fractals, i’ll just drop my opinion here:

So i’m actually new to the game.
I’ve been playing GW2 for about 1 Month now and it’s been a lot of fun. I quickly found a guild and joined the fun. So far so good. Fractals were always possible and I played them as dailys pretty often. Not always, but often. When the guys from my guild went to play the lower daily fractals I was able to join in without any issues.

So, now after the patch I’ve got a problem: Nobody wants to do the lower fractals anymore because the loot is bad and they are able to do the higher ones without any problems thanks to their agony resistance. And I can’t blame them, because…i mean I wouldn’t either if i could just do the highest ones and get all the loot.
But I can not, as I now have a agony resistance of 10 or so, not very much to say the least.
They now drag me along in the higher fractals (76 and up), which is fine for me, but its no real fun for me, nor for them (at least thats what I guess).
So while the patch made the fractals definetely better for those who have been playing fractals for a longer time, it is now problematic for new players to join in, at least for those in a guild and who want to participate in said guild, as the seasoned players now lack the motivation to play the lower fractals.
Although I can not offer any advice on how to solve that problem, I would just like to mention this here. I personally had more motivation playing the Fractals before the patch, since I was able to actually help the group, not be an obstacle.
Since I really enjoy GW2 and playing with my guild, I don’t have the motivation to do lower fractals with pugs.
Which then again seems to be a must now if the new fractal system focuses more on people with more experience in them. Sadly, this leaves the newbies out of the equation.

Asgard Ragna.8165:

Are you kidding me? They nerfed the fractal difficulty so hard it almost doesn’t feel like an achievment anymore. I wish they had implented a title called “I did all 100 fractals when they still were difficult”.

Indeed, lvl 100 should be harder than raids, instead we get something that feels like what the difficulty of fractals lvl 1 should be

Niraseth.8360:

Soo since this seems to be the place to drop some opinions on the new patch for fractals, i’ll just drop my opinion here:

So i’m actually new to the game.
I’ve been playing GW2 for about 1 Month now and it’s been a lot of fun. I quickly found a guild and joined the fun. So far so good. Fractals were always possible and I played them as dailys pretty often. Not always, but often. When the guys from my guild went to play the lower daily fractals I was able to join in without any issues.

So, now after the patch I’ve got a problem: Nobody wants to do the lower fractals anymore because the loot is bad and they are able to do the higher ones without any problems thanks to their agony resistance. And I can’t blame them, because…i mean I wouldn’t either if i could just do the highest ones and get all the loot.
But I can not, as I now have a agony resistance of 10 or so, not very much to say the least.
They now drag me along in the higher fractals (76 and up), which is fine for me, but its no real fun for me, nor for them (at least thats what I guess).
So while the patch made the fractals definetely better for those who have been playing fractals for a longer time, it is now problematic for new players to join in, at least for those in a guild and who want to participate in said guild, as the seasoned players now lack the motivation to play the lower fractals.
Although I can not offer any advice on how to solve that problem, I would just like to mention this here. I personally had more motivation playing the Fractals before the patch, since I was able to actually help the group, not be an obstacle.
Since I really enjoy GW2 and playing with my guild, I don’t have the motivation to do lower fractals with pugs.
Which then again seems to be a must now if the new fractal system focuses more on people with more experience in them. Sadly, this leaves the newbies out of the equation.

I can offer you the same advice I offered someone else: join a guild that does regular fractal runs. If you don’t know one, feel free to contact me via in-game mail. My guild does regular runs of low and high levels and also we’re happy to help you with any levels you wish to do and get you your AR. We have a variety of experience levels amongst our members, so it’s really not a problem for anyone to find a group. There are other guilds who will do the same. Newbies are definitely not left out – in fact we take care of them!

GW2 is a social game, and guilds make up an important part of the experience – so it’s great to make use of them when they can solve issues such as this.

Niraseth.8360:

Soo since this seems to be the place to drop some opinions on the new patch for fractals, i’ll just drop my opinion here:

So i’m actually new to the game.
I’ve been playing GW2 for about 1 Month now and it’s been a lot of fun. I quickly found a guild and joined the fun. So far so good. Fractals were always possible and I played them as dailys pretty often. Not always, but often. When the guys from my guild went to play the lower daily fractals I was able to join in without any issues.

So, now after the patch I’ve got a problem: Nobody wants to do the lower fractals anymore because the loot is bad and they are able to do the higher ones without any problems thanks to their agony resistance. And I can’t blame them, because…i mean I wouldn’t either if i could just do the highest ones and get all the loot.
But I can not, as I now have a agony resistance of 10 or so, not very much to say the least.
They now drag me along in the higher fractals (76 and up), which is fine for me, but its no real fun for me, nor for them (at least thats what I guess).
So while the patch made the fractals definetely better for those who have been playing fractals for a longer time, it is now problematic for new players to join in, at least for those in a guild and who want to participate in said guild, as the seasoned players now lack the motivation to play the lower fractals.
Although I can not offer any advice on how to solve that problem, I would just like to mention this here. I personally had more motivation playing the Fractals before the patch, since I was able to actually help the group, not be an obstacle.
Since I really enjoy GW2 and playing with my guild, I don’t have the motivation to do lower fractals with pugs.
Which then again seems to be a must now if the new fractal system focuses more on people with more experience in them. Sadly, this leaves the newbies out of the equation.

If your guild mates let you run with them in higher tiers, you will level up and after some additional fractals here and there you will reach their level very soon. Infusions are cheap and asc armor to put them in is to be crafted by everyone who wants to run the higher ones. I don’t see a problem here.
In EU there also isn’t a problem with pugging lower fractals, you find tons of lfg for tier 1 & 2. Your complaint is not valid in my eyes

Nekomages.5672:

I honestly don’t see how you can see it as not forced? I can no longer access rewards I want unless I now play maps I have no desire to play. Before I could choose what I wanted to do to get the reward. Before if you personally didn’t want to do swamp, there was nothing forcing you to do it, you could’ve tried to make your own group, but the fact is you had a choice. Now there is zero choice. I spent 3 times as much time doing this new system for the same rewards as before. It was far more frustrating, I had to keep kicking people without AR since swamp was nearly the only one that AR didn’t matter, and I had to wait a lot longer to even get a group started. The entire time every single person in the group was complaining about being forced in to content we didn’t want to do. As I said before, if they wanted people to play other maps there are better ways of doing it than content locking rewards like this.

As an an after thought I had today, I also noticed nobody was doing the maps below t3 last night and this morning, so wouldn’t this also make it prohibitive for new players or casual players to actually get groups now since nobody is going to do “t1”, “t2”, and “t3” when they can just do t3?

All the things you’re listing as plusses (people with not enough AR being able to farm higher dailies, being able to blow through all the dailies with minimal effort, people being rewarded for playing easier fractals more frequently than playing more difficult ones) were the parts of that system that were broken.

Just like people rolling fractals in the old 3 island system, the intent was never to disproportionately incentivize people to do a handful of fractals at the expense of all others. The intent was to make fractals a shorter overall time commitment.

The original HoT patch where we moved to single islands achieved that goal. You could do just one fractal, get a reward, and be on your way. The daily system, however went in the other direction by making the ‘rolling for swamp’ problem even worse than it was.

When it comes to fractals, you have the same choice as always. When it comes to dailies, however, you’re now rewarded more for actually getting more AR and becoming proficient at the entire system in stead of farming two islands every single day until your eyes bleed.

The most efficient path to rewards should never be the easiest path. It should be the path with the largest amount of risk and required skill involved.

The new daily system accomplishes that goal. Greater risk incurs greater reward. You’re encouraged to do three specific fractals each day at the highest level you’re capable of, and there are two numbered fractals to ensure even high AR players have a reason to go back and help lower AR players so they, too, can progress to higher levels.

You don’t want to play fractals. You want to farm fractals. Fractals were supposed to be the anti-farm that scaled challenge and progression and gave scaled up rewards for that challenge and progression. Doing swamp swamp swamp every day simply resulted in progression being undervalued, and challenge being nearly nonexistant. It wasn’t good for fractals as a mode of content, and left as it was would have seriously hurt the mode in the long term.

You still have the option to grind swamp. It’s simply not the most efficient way to gain rewards because grinding should never be the most most rewarding activity in an MMO, that’s why we invented the term grinding, because it makes the game feel like a chore rather than like a fun game

The new system spits out a different set of challenges each day and says “If you’re good, you can get lots more stuff.” and that parity between risk and reward is actually fun game design.