Guild Wars 2

Fixing broken forum page.

Smart trash kitten please, the aetherblade seem the most organised. I would somehow like to feel like the enemies are smarter and require more team work. They need there own active defence: blinds, reflects etc, etc..

IMO the rewards are amazing in fotm, I have gotten over 40 ascended chests, 100’s and 100’s of rings

But the only thing that is bad is the Fotm weapons, they need to be less RNG.

Honestly fotm atm IMO only needs Titles and a Fotm Armor Set that can be bought for Relics + P-Relics. something like 300-500relics + 10-20p-relics per piece.

Giving us 10 levels wouldnt be bad, but I feel fotm needs other things 1st.

Cliffside- duration of the hammer thing increased such that you are forced to have more people rotate or sit around waiting of course. Perhaps require an extra swing at each seal?

Swamp – 4th/5th Orb needing to be put in ( not sure how that could be done with 3 receptacles but maybe they could just have them all accept any amount and have a global counter on it? /shrug)

Harpy – Could they make the Yellow jump pads blink in and out? I know they do it with some for a couple puzzles in the game, but maybe too much work here? If it was a lot of work but they were willing to do it, maybe make pressure pads throughout the jump such that it’d make stealthing through a bit more challenging?

Alternately maybe give the harpies a new attack with an orange circle (screw that red circle you can’t see on the pads) that is a “reveal shot” dodgable/blockable of course, but reveals if hit and they randomly fire it at pads. Again, making stealthing through a little more challenging.

Ascalon – Patrolling guards, much like we got with those caithe living story instances, or dredge, they’ll reveal if you’re stealthed and run into them making you have to be a little more careful.

yes I’m focusing on stealth for these as what’s the point of other changes if you can simply run right by it and never engage?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Alright, some really good posts so far, so thank you for that!

Firstly, I’ll say that I personally as a player fall into the camp that agrees with Nike, and I personally like the random Fractal approach we have right now. It is part of what Fractals were designed around, and is part of their replayability for me. It keeps what might otherwise be a monotonous task of completing a Fractal series enjoyable because I at least get different experiences each time. Also, I would never pick Cliffside if I were given the option to avoid it (it’s too long), and I would pick Grawl every time.

As for rewards, I am very familiar with the problems there and am definitely on board with the notion that the hardest content in-game should be the most rewarding.

As for selecting Fractals, I agree that being able to play a single Fractal of choice for practice and not for a full series reward is a great idea. This is important both for the speed running community that needs to be able to select a Fractal for purposes of clearing it, but also for practicing with friends new tactics. Based on discussion here, I think a good approach would be:

• If you run a normal series by entering the Portal in the Mistlock Observatory, you will still encounter 4 random Fractals and will get the end rewards as normal.
• If you talk to Tessa and have her teleport your team to a specific Fractal, you will get that Fractal only and then be returned to the observatory, and the only rewards you get is the end chest at the end of that specific Fractal.

As for challenging higher tiers, there seems to be a lot of support for Nike’s proposal, taking ultimately the following form:

• Higher tiers introduce new boss mechanics with increasingly supremely difficult challenges that teams will need to overcome. (I will link to Nike’s post)
• No new mistlock instabilities at higher levels. (Maybe it could be like L50’s instability at every level thereafter)
• Add a collection achievement and title for completing every Mistlock Instability from 30 to 50. They could have each level give a unique ‘token’ item that contributes to the collection to do this.

Besides these things, what do you think should happen to the normal encounters throughout the Fractals (not the bosses) at higher tiers? Everyone opposes more HP, more damage, and more mobs, so what else would you like to see? I don’t think more events / paths are appropriate because that requires a lot of terrain/scripting work, but maybe there’s something that could be done.

Ok, the problem with having 80 levels is that it is too many levels, for how much the difficulty actually changes.
i suggest they separate qualititative changes from number tweaks.

Change in quality gets you different rewards, whereas number tweaks changes your chances or amounts of rewards.

This allows them to scale number difficulty to a great degree
but at the same time it doesnt need to be as much of a hill to get to the interesting mechanics changes.

Many games have 100 level dungeons, its a trail, its something many players wants.

I would like 80 levels, But at a certain point the mobs dont get harder (Scale level 50 is the hardest for mobs) and just make the Mistlocks harder.

Faux.1937:

Many games have 100 level dungeons, its a trail, its something many players wants.

I would like 80 levels, But at a certain point the mobs dont get harder (Scale level 50 is the hardest for mobs) and just make the Mistlocks harder.

ok there are two seperate issues with large number of levels

1) do you have enough differences to justify the amount of levels?
2) developing content that only a very select few can consume, without somehow getting more value out it.
3) new content has to come after the old content, therefor making the new content harder to reach.

i dont think there is enough difference in difficulty to justify 80 levels.

and i dont think you want to develop really interesting game mechanics, and then create to high a curve before players can experience it.

Now, in my solution, i would seperate numbers based difficulty, so you would still have level 80
however the actual game change stuff could be based on something more representitive on your skill level/experience/personal desired challenge.

And if they decide to add new content/modes, they wont have to worry about people needing to be level 100 to experience it, and 120 the month after that, and 140 the month after that.

The first 30 levels of fractal don’t even need to exist, not in their current implementation. The first levels are incredibly boring, I would even rate 1-10 as being easier than most dungeon content in this game, do fractals really need anything like this? Not in my opinion.

I’ve already levelled to 50, so it doesn’t matter to me in a personal manner. I wouldn’t want to do it again though. Before it became account bound I’d take alts to higher level FOTM even if it meant slower levelling than just rushing through mindnumbing thing that FOTM 1-10 is.

Have the current 30 to 50 serve as the level 1 to 20 then have the rest of the progression influenced by nike’s ideas and views of higher level content.

phys.7689:

Faux.1937:

Many games have 100 level dungeons, its a trail, its something many players wants.

I would like 80 levels, But at a certain point the mobs dont get harder (Scale level 50 is the hardest for mobs) and just make the Mistlocks harder.

ok there are two seperate issues with large number of levels

1) do you have enough differences to justify the amount of levels?
2) developing content that only a very select few can consume, without somehow getting more value out it.
3) new content has to come after the old content, therefor making the new content harder to reach.

i dont think there is enough difference in difficulty to justify 80 levels.

and i dont think you want to develop really interesting game mechanics, and then create to high a curve before players can experience it.

Now, in my solution, i would seperate numbers based difficulty, so you would still have level 80
however the actual game change stuff could be based on something more representitive on your skill level/experience/personal desired challenge.

And if they decide to add new content/modes, they wont have to worry about people needing to be level 100 to experience it, and 120 the month after that, and 140 the month after that.

1) Easily, that is what Mistlocks are for and like I said before we need other things 1st, but I wouldnt mind level 80, I would do it now, a person that enjoys playing fotm dont always need a new shiny to play
2) Your not making more content, its already there, we datamined many Mistlocks, adding slightly more reward for slightly harder content isnt much work when the bases for that is already there
3) Again.. we have LOADS of content ready to do, Mistlocks, and what is this older content? we have so much older content its not even funny. There is also that Abaddon fotm that we never got. Most fotm players are asking for more rewards than new maps atm, If we got less RNG, able to pick the maps we wont and 10 more harder levels to challenge us isnt new maps.

Its not about make all levels different, its about the journey and challenges it brings. We need more challenging content and Fotm can give that to us.

We do fotms 100’s of times already nothing will stop that. so adding 30 more levels would be good and here is why

1) With 30 more levels you can give us less RNG in rewards, Higher levels can give you Weapon skin boxes that let you “Pick” you fotm weapon
2) Can give titles (STUPIDLY EASY to add to the game) titles give players something to work towards, it wont hurt the game economy at all and make them feel good.
3) Give players more of a challenge, we can do level 50 in 25min, giving new Mistlocks would be awesome, something different.. and that is 328 different ones

We dont need to add more maps everytime we add new content, content can be Titles, higher levels, more Mistlocks. Letting us pick our maps.

You could have a ambit system too, where you take 2-3 or even 4 Mistlocks for Bonus relics/p-relics/+1 Agony and gold. Heck! do 5! Mistlocks and you are guaranteed a Item at then end (Still Random but 100% will get something).

The large number of levels provides a progression mechanism. It’s designed with the following in mind:

1) Players must do a higher level to increase their PR.
2) Most players will only play fractals maybe 10 levels above their PR.
3) Daily rewards are only given once per tier per day.

This essentially timegates PR progression — unless you want to give up on a lot of rewards, you’ll only increase your PR once, maybe twice per day.

The individual levels are only there to slow progression — not to noticeably increase difficulty. The difficulty only changes noticeably per tier.

Which I think is a valid way to do things. It encourages (but not forces) players to work their way up to 50 slowly and progressively learn the more challenging encounters, and adds a bit of meaning to having earned PR50.

I think it’d be ok to keep this design and just add more tiers. Nike’s proposed changes seem good to me. If the encounters were as difficult as described, a 25g reward doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable (though I doubt it’d fly with ArenaNet!).

Adding more Mistlock Instabilities, on the other hand, is a bad idea:

1) RNG level selection can make them meaningless or a nightmare.
2) They’re easily skipped.
3) There is absolutely zero incentive to play them.

It’s just not a good system. Some of the ideas they’ve implemented are pretty interesting: reversing boon/condition effects, exploding enemies, etc — really cool ideas, but the instability system just doesn’t work well.

dlonie.6547:

The large number of levels provides a progression mechanism. It’s designed with the following in mind:

1) Players must do a higher level to increase their PR.
2) Most players will only play fractals maybe 10 levels above their PR.
3) Daily rewards are only given once per tier per day.

This essentially timegates PR progression — unless you want to give up on a lot of rewards, you’ll only increase your PR once, maybe twice per day.

The individual levels are only there to slow progression — not to noticeably increase difficulty. The difficulty only changes noticeably per tier.

Which I think is a valid way to do things. It encourages (but not forces) players to work their way up to 50 slowly and progressively learn the more challenging encounters, and adds a bit of meaning to having earned PR50.

I think it’d be ok to keep this design and just add more tiers. Nike’s proposed changes seem good to me. If the encounters were as difficult as described, a 25g reward doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable (though I doubt it’d fly with ArenaNet!).

Adding more Mistlock Instabilities, on the other hand, is a bad idea:

1) RNG level selection can make them meaningless or a nightmare.
2) They’re easily skipped.
3) There is absolutely zero incentive to play them.

It’s just not a good system. Some of the ideas they’ve implemented are pretty interesting: reversing boon/condition effects, exploding enemies, etc — really cool ideas, but the instability system just doesn’t work well.

incentive…….. why do you still play them then? it doesnt seem (To many players) there is any incentive at all, when you can just farm gold and tp flip to get legendaries.. I mean what do you think this is, A game for fun?

Anyone has a clever idea/solution to get people to stop rolling swamp as first map every single time?

EcoRI.9273:

Anyone has a clever idea/solution to get people to stop rolling swamp as first map every single time?

The problem is Swamp can be done in Minutes with a good them.

Get in run the orbs (45sec) get Bloomy and kill (2-4mins) and be done in 5min.

Other starters are dbl that mostly.

EcoRI.9273:

Anyone has a clever idea/solution to get people to stop rolling swamp as first map every single time?

Well, as I’ve said dozens of times, I don’t like the randomness. Hell I think the fact that we roll for it proves that most people would like choices as well.

However, what I’ve seen in old games is a lockout on re-queuing. So once you pop into a fractal you’re locked out for 5 mins. It’s not necessarily the best option, it could cause problems, and there would be a workaround in that you could potentially split up into 5 “groups” all roll, and you all join whoever had the best luck, basically still allowing it but having it be more annoying to do.

Jerus.4350:

EcoRI.9273:

Anyone has a clever idea/solution to get people to stop rolling swamp as first map every single time?

Well, as I’ve said dozens of times, I don’t like the randomness. Hell I think the fact that we roll for it proves that most people would like choices as well.

However, what I’ve seen in old games is a lockout on re-queuing. So once you pop into a fractal you’re locked out for 5 mins. It’s not necessarily the best option, it could cause problems, and there would be a workaround in that you could potentially split up into 5 “groups” all roll, and you all join whoever had the best luck, basically still allowing it but having it be more annoying to do.

Removing the RNG as well as giving every fractal a reward that is appropriate to the length and difficulty would be the best solution imo

Lendruil.9061:

Jerus.4350:

EcoRI.9273:

Anyone has a clever idea/solution to get people to stop rolling swamp as first map every single time?

Well, as I’ve said dozens of times, I don’t like the randomness. Hell I think the fact that we roll for it proves that most people would like choices as well.

However, what I’ve seen in old games is a lockout on re-queuing. So once you pop into a fractal you’re locked out for 5 mins. It’s not necessarily the best option, it could cause problems, and there would be a workaround in that you could potentially split up into 5 “groups” all roll, and you all join whoever had the best luck, basically still allowing it but having it be more annoying to do.

Removing the RNG as well as giving every fractal a reward that is appropriate to the length and difficulty would be the best solution imo

Yup, though I would add I think the best way to do the reward would be to create a scaling function, the more it’s done before reset the less rewards it’ll give the next day, all relative to eachother, so the most run are the least rewarded, least run the most rewarded.

and, if ANet created that function I’m sure they could find plenty of applicable uses in other areas of the game to promote more diversity instead of sticking to the easy options only.

Faux.1937:

dlonie.6547:

Adding more Mistlock Instabilities, on the other hand, is a bad idea:

1) RNG level selection can make them meaningless or a nightmare.
2) They’re easily skipped.
3) There is absolutely zero incentive to play them.

It’s just not a good system. Some of the ideas they’ve implemented are pretty interesting: reversing boon/condition effects, exploding enemies, etc — really cool ideas, but the instability system just doesn’t work well.

incentive…….. why do you still play them then?

I don’t. See (2).

Like most people, I stick to the easier ones. If you RNG certain shards with certain instabilities, it can be very not-fun (personal opinion) to finish — especially considering there’s no actual reward in doing so. From reading your posts, I get it — you like them. Me, I found many of them rather gimmicky and once I’ve done them once, there’s not much reason to play them again.

My first though about swamp, was to make it longer. I was thinking get rid of the rng and make both bosses a requirement.

sorta @faux:
id say the instability system isnt working as intended because it doesnt make us want to challenge ourselves, even though the opportunity to do so is there (and that opportunity is definitely something we asked for).

its a good idea, has a lot of potential, has realized a lot of potential… but it misses the mark because theres an easy way past it for the same rewards. make us want to use it for better rewards, and itll be full of win.

insanemaniac.2456:

sorta @faux:
id say the instability system isnt working as intended because it doesnt make us want to challenge ourselves, even though the opportunity to do so is there (and that opportunity is definitely something we asked for).

its a good idea, has a lot of potential, has realized a lot of potential… but it misses the mark because theres an easy way past it for the same rewards. make us want to use it for better rewards, and itll be full of win.

I never said it wasnt working…. idk why you ppl think I said that.

I was arguing that we need more things in fotm before maps for levels, BUT I personal would like a level 80 (never said its time for it just said I would like to have it).

Ive said in these post already that we need Armors, titles, able to get 2+ Mistlocks for better rewards etc….

I did talk about that going to a higher level IS GOOD just NOT right now.

Faux.1937:

I never said it wasnt working…. idk why you ppl think I said that.

im saying it doesnt work, not you.

im under the impression you think its fine.

insanemaniac.2456:

Faux.1937:

I never said it wasnt working…. idk why you ppl think I said that.

im saying it doesnt work, not you.

im under the impression you think its fine.

But they are working as intended, they give flavor to levels, players will ALWAYS do what is best rewards.

if you have low rewards at level 21 and higher at level 30 It doesnt matter how fun it is, players will do level 30.

I loved them when I was leveling Back to 50 it made it much more fun and even funny.

but I do agree we need something else, if rewards worked in 10’s and scaling was in 10’s
Example 1-10 all drops/mobs scaling was equally the same, then all levels 1-10 would be fine to play for rewards.

Then give us that Gambit system but just with mistlock to make it harder but more rewarding, now we are getting somewhere.

Faux.1937:

Then give us that Gambit system but just with mistlock to make it harder but more rewarding, now we are getting somewhere.

hmm i guess its enough that youre coming around… i dont really wanna debate subjective opinions about opaque intentions, because i know im right and you know youre right.

insanemaniac.2456:

Faux.1937:

Then give us that Gambit system but just with mistlock to make it harder but more rewarding, now we are getting somewhere.

hmm i guess its enough that youre coming around… i dont really wanna debate subjective opinions about opaque intentions, because i know im right and you know youre right.

Now I dont even want to talk to you. You just sound closed minded.

Faux.1937:

insanemaniac.2456:

Faux.1937:

Then give us that Gambit system but just with mistlock to make it harder but more rewarding, now we are getting somewhere.

hmm i guess its enough that youre coming around… i dont really wanna debate subjective opinions about opaque intentions, because i know im right and you know youre right.

Now I dont even want to talk to you. You just sound closed minded.

eh, im not the one who thinks instabilities are in an ok place… =/

I really think instabilities should become the gambits of fractals. Everything gets the agony check instability, then add on others for bonus rewards. Of course there would be popular ones, but again… if they could create a function based on scaling rewards for common/uncommon choices it could be used there as well. Maybe people could get their BIG cash rewards based on using like “random mossy, attack in the back = death, and whatever” combinations.

Jerus.4350:

I really think instabilities should become the gambits of fractals. Everything gets the agony check instability, then add on others for bonus rewards. Of course there would be popular ones, but again… if they could create a function based on scaling rewards for common/uncommon choices it could be used there as well. Maybe people could get their BIG cash rewards based on using like “random mossy, attack in the back = death, and whatever” combinations.

only problem i see with removing instabilities, and making them more like gambits is

Then level 30-50 is pretty pointless, i think they said 30-40 is, other than the instabilities, virtually the same difficulty level.

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

I really think instabilities should become the gambits of fractals. Everything gets the agony check instability, then add on others for bonus rewards. Of course there would be popular ones, but again… if they could create a function based on scaling rewards for common/uncommon choices it could be used there as well. Maybe people could get their BIG cash rewards based on using like “random mossy, attack in the back = death, and whatever” combinations.

only problem i see with removing instabilities, and making them more like gambits is

Then level 30-50 is pretty pointless, i think they said 30-40 is, other than the instabilities, virtually the same difficulty level.

isn’t it already considering most people just do the easy options? if they became a gambit system people might actually do them for bonus rewards?

I prefer that the next time they think of difficulty, it’s not behind the gold gate of increased AR checks. Also, please stop with the dumb autoattacks with little/small tells that get obstructed by the myriad spell effects in the game, especially when said autoattacks can hit for 8k+ damage.

Also, attacks like mai’s spin bolts need to follow game rules with reflects, or the game needs to communicate better that they’re immune to reflects.

The biggest offenders in terms of dumb autoattacks is the ascalonian fractal. 4+ mobs with marginally noticeable tells, especially the male mages who just pop half your health with little visual queues and it gets ridiculous when you have multiple mobs who can instantly down people based on unclear aggro rules, so what people do tp defend against such AI cheese is to blind spam and stack behind a corner so they can get burst in as the mobs path to them without fearing some random, sometimes invisible ranged attack that downs people immediately.

There you go: http://gw2dungeons.net/Search#Ascalonian+Mage

Wethospu.6437:

There you go: http://gw2dungeons.net/Search#Ascalonian+Mage

That is pretty neat, just like mai’s spin swirl has a tell as well. Except when your screen is covered with elementalist and guardian spell effects on small humanoids and then seeing those tells in time gets less consistent.

It’s one of the things I really like about my necro actually, when you go into death shroud, the spell effects from other people get toned down a lot so you can actually see crap.

If we make instabilities into gambits, they need to be randomized, and cost relics. Random because if they aren’t, some will simply never be used (and adding new ones would be pointless), and cost relics, because it prevents people from doing too many rerolls to get the instabilities they want.

Becka Williams.4978:

If we make instabilities into gambits, they need to be randomized, and cost relics. Random because if they aren’t, some will simply never be used (and adding new ones would be pointless), and cost relics, because it prevents people from doing too many rerolls to get the instabilities they want.

Random is a cheap way of forcing people to do things. If they properly scaled rewards people would do what is rewarding to mix it up. A scaling reward system would do just that. The more something is done the less rewarding it is, the less done the more rewarding. Simply use their metrics in a function to adjust the rewards on a daily basis, if one instability were done 100 times the day before and another 0 times then the 100times one would drop down to the minimum reward while the other raises to the max.

Zenith.7301:

Wethospu.6437:

There you go: http://gw2dungeons.net/Search#Ascalonian+Mage

That is pretty neat, just like mai’s spin swirl has a tell as well. Except when your screen is covered with elementalist and guardian spell effects on small humanoids and then seeing those tells in time gets less consistent.

It’s one of the things I really like about my necro actually, when you go into death shroud, the spell effects from other people get toned down a lot so you can actually see crap.

The important part is that their big attack actually has a distinct audio cue.

Jerus.4350:

Becka Williams.4978:

If we make instabilities into gambits, they need to be randomized, and cost relics. Random because if they aren’t, some will simply never be used (and adding new ones would be pointless), and cost relics, because it prevents people from doing too many rerolls to get the instabilities they want.

Random is a cheap way of forcing people to do things. If they properly scaled rewards people would do what is rewarding to mix it up. A scaling reward system would do just that. The more something is done the less rewarding it is, the less done the more rewarding. Simply use their metrics in a function to adjust the rewards on a daily basis, if one instability were done 100 times the day before and another 0 times then the 100times one would drop down to the minimum reward while the other raises to the max.

How would people know what gives the best reward? There are, of course, easy and hard instabilities. Presumably, the easy ones will be done more than the kittenes, but eventually, people will choose the instabilities that give them the best reward versus effort. If one instability gives you, let’s say, 5 gold, but makes running the fractal take twice as long as one that gives 2.5 gold, isn’t the one that gives you 2.5 gold the exact same risk vs reward? Now, let’s say it gives 5 gold, but the one that takes half as long gives 1 gold. Some people will do the one that gives 5 gold, but I think it depends on how long the fractal takes to run in the first place. If it’s a difference of, say, 30 minutes versus and hour, I think people will take the 5 gold. If it’s 90 minutes versus 3 hours, well….I think most would take the 1 gold. Plus, fractals are already randomized. Why not the instabilities?

Wethospu.6437:

Zenith.7301:

Wethospu.6437:

There you go: http://gw2dungeons.net/Search#Ascalonian+Mage

That is pretty neat, just like mai’s spin swirl has a tell as well. Except when your screen is covered with elementalist and guardian spell effects on small humanoids and then seeing those tells in time gets less consistent.

It’s one of the things I really like about my necro actually, when you go into death shroud, the spell effects from other people get toned down a lot so you can actually see crap.

The important part is that their big attack actually has a distinct audio cue.

Ah, that’s pretty neat. Will check it out next time. Thanks.

Becka Williams.4978:

Jerus.4350:

Becka Williams.4978:

If we make instabilities into gambits, they need to be randomized, and cost relics. Random because if they aren’t, some will simply never be used (and adding new ones would be pointless), and cost relics, because it prevents people from doing too many rerolls to get the instabilities they want.

Random is a cheap way of forcing people to do things. If they properly scaled rewards people would do what is rewarding to mix it up. A scaling reward system would do just that. The more something is done the less rewarding it is, the less done the more rewarding. Simply use their metrics in a function to adjust the rewards on a daily basis, if one instability were done 100 times the day before and another 0 times then the 100times one would drop down to the minimum reward while the other raises to the max.

How would people know what gives the best reward? There are, of course, easy and hard instabilities. Presumably, the easy ones will be done more than the kittenes, but eventually, people will choose the instabilities that give them the best reward versus effort. If one instability gives you, let’s say, 5 gold, but makes running the fractal take twice as long as one that gives 2.5 gold, isn’t the one that gives you 2.5 gold the exact same risk vs reward? Now, let’s say it gives 5 gold, but the one that takes half as long gives 1 gold. Some people will do the one that gives 5 gold, but I think it depends on how long the fractal takes to run in the first place. If it’s a difference of, say, 30 minutes versus and hour, I think people will take the 5 gold. If it’s 90 minutes versus 3 hours, well….I think most would take the 1 gold. Plus, fractals are already randomized. Why not the instabilities?

Look at how Wildstar revamped sanctuary of the sword maiden for a good example. The long options should be not only rewarding, but offer a slight advantage in rewards to take into account the time commitment, convenience has value.

Problem is they don’t actually want to make it rewarding. You have to understand a B2P game needs to be inconvenient/unrewarding enough so people spend money on the cash shop. Otherwise nobody buys their gems to convert to gold (which enough people do, even if you don’t see the point in it either because you’re good at playing the auction house or you have plenty of time to kill grinding gold).

A couple of minor suggestions from a new player’s perspective:

1. Better rewards for experienced players helping out in low difficulty scale runs would be nice, so that they’re more willing to do so. Perhaps give them bonus gold (50s-1g?) per tier that their reward level exceeds the difficulty scale? To some extent the dailies serve this role, but that’s unpredictable and only happens a couple times a week.
2. Unifying the agony tiers with the reward tiers would avoid a lot of confusion. People don’t seem to understand that scale 10 doesn’t give any better rewards than scale 1-9. Assuming the wiki is correct.

The problem I’ve had trying to get into fractals is that the experienced players understandably try to maximize their chances of getting loot, and as item #2 indicates they often do so incorrectly. Setting someone’s first run to scale 10, or saying “oh, you have AR10 now, great, let’s set this run to 20!” for example. Those are both totally doable, but getting autokilled by unavoidable agony is not a good introduction for the new guy…

Becka Williams.4978:

Jerus.4350:

Becka Williams.4978:

If we make instabilities into gambits, they need to be randomized, and cost relics. Random because if they aren’t, some will simply never be used (and adding new ones would be pointless), and cost relics, because it prevents people from doing too many rerolls to get the instabilities they want.

Random is a cheap way of forcing people to do things. If they properly scaled rewards people would do what is rewarding to mix it up. A scaling reward system would do just that. The more something is done the less rewarding it is, the less done the more rewarding. Simply use their metrics in a function to adjust the rewards on a daily basis, if one instability were done 100 times the day before and another 0 times then the 100times one would drop down to the minimum reward while the other raises to the max.

How would people know what gives the best reward? There are, of course, easy and hard instabilities. Presumably, the easy ones will be done more than the kittenes, but eventually, people will choose the instabilities that give them the best reward versus effort. If one instability gives you, let’s say, 5 gold, but makes running the fractal take twice as long as one that gives 2.5 gold, isn’t the one that gives you 2.5 gold the exact same risk vs reward? Now, let’s say it gives 5 gold, but the one that takes half as long gives 1 gold. Some people will do the one that gives 5 gold, but I think it depends on how long the fractal takes to run in the first place. If it’s a difference of, say, 30 minutes versus and hour, I think people will take the 5 gold. If it’s 90 minutes versus 3 hours, well….I think most would take the 1 gold. Plus, fractals are already randomized. Why not the instabilities?

You explained the problem with random quite well.

Having things take variable times of that magnitude is quite troublesome. If it were a possibility to have say exploding enemies or mossy chasing you on a lvl 50 grawl fractal, but also just agony check and aetherblade both as possibilities… sure I could hae a 30 min fractal run still but I’d have to prepare for what might be a 3 hour run. That’s not really a reasonable spread to schedule your time with. Might as well just give up if you roll the wrong instability and don’t have plenty of time to beat your head on something.

I want the option to beat my head on things, and I want it to reward me for doing so, but I don’t want that to be a luck of the draw and basically choose for me whether I do fractals that day or not.

Jerus.4350:

Becka Williams.4978:

Jerus.4350:

Becka Williams.4978:

If we make instabilities into gambits, they need to be randomized, and cost relics. Random because if they aren’t, some will simply never be used (and adding new ones would be pointless), and cost relics, because it prevents people from doing too many rerolls to get the instabilities they want.

Random is a cheap way of forcing people to do things. If they properly scaled rewards people would do what is rewarding to mix it up. A scaling reward system would do just that. The more something is done the less rewarding it is, the less done the more rewarding. Simply use their metrics in a function to adjust the rewards on a daily basis, if one instability were done 100 times the day before and another 0 times then the 100times one would drop down to the minimum reward while the other raises to the max.

How would people know what gives the best reward? There are, of course, easy and hard instabilities. Presumably, the easy ones will be done more than the kittenes, but eventually, people will choose the instabilities that give them the best reward versus effort. If one instability gives you, let’s say, 5 gold, but makes running the fractal take twice as long as one that gives 2.5 gold, isn’t the one that gives you 2.5 gold the exact same risk vs reward? Now, let’s say it gives 5 gold, but the one that takes half as long gives 1 gold. Some people will do the one that gives 5 gold, but I think it depends on how long the fractal takes to run in the first place. If it’s a difference of, say, 30 minutes versus and hour, I think people will take the 5 gold. If it’s 90 minutes versus 3 hours, well….I think most would take the 1 gold. Plus, fractals are already randomized. Why not the instabilities?

You explained the problem with random quite well.

Having things take variable times of that magnitude is quite troublesome. If it were a possibility to have say exploding enemies or mossy chasing you on a lvl 50 grawl fractal, but also just agony check and aetherblade both as possibilities… sure I could hae a 30 min fractal run still but I’d have to prepare for what might be a 3 hour run. That’s not really a reasonable spread to schedule your time with. Might as well just give up if you roll the wrong instability and don’t have plenty of time to beat your head on something.

I want the option to beat my head on things, and I want it to reward me for doing so, but I don’t want that to be a luck of the draw and basically choose for me whether I do fractals that day or not.

how about if they group them similar to how it chooses fractals from a subset of all of them. you choose an “easy” instability, and its randomized from about 5-10 easy ones like 36, 38, 49, 50. you choose a “hard” one and its randomized from another 5-10. you choose “nightmare” and enemies explode in addition to an “easy” one. choose “hell” for exploding enemies + a “hard” one.

RNG isnt bad in small doses. its the stupid kitten like a 1/19 * 1/10 chance once a day after an hour long run to get the weapon you want that makes us dislike RNG. precursor drop rates make us hate RNG. i dont want to feel like i didnt win the lottery… again. but a system like instabilities doesnt have to have rates like that to make it feel like it has some variety, which i think would be the point.

Personally speaking, I hate the randomness of my fractal selection far more than the randomness of my rewards. I want to do the fractals I want when I want to do them.

Mistlock instabilities are a really good idea but they should add instability-specific rewards.

These would be the usual unique skins or titles which you could obtain only by doing a certain instability (doing lvl 39 a set amount of times for example could give the “Maniac” title or Horrick’s cannon as a rifle skin).

Jerus.4350:

Personally speaking, I hate the randomness of my fractal selection far more than the randomness of my rewards. I want to do the fractals I want when I want to do them.

Agreed, but I know that we’d be tempted to run the same fracs over and over until we get sick of it. But man, I wish there were a way to roll shaman every time. I need some big practice there. Oh, and mai.

You know what? I have no idea how to get out of this mess. I can totally understand devs having trouble with higher levels (no, there was still no need for a reset and deleting levels, go to hell). How do you make things interesting, spicing them up, making sure at the same time the rewards are fair and people don’t cheese the hell out of it, boring themselves after 2 weeks?

P.S. I still think reworking the loot table [of 50] a little isn’t rocket science. That we could do.

What about a repeating fractal completion reward?

Allow us to pick the fractals we run, and if we run all of them in a given timeframe (week? two weeks? one month?), there is some sort of bonus. This would be an easy way to help prevent the issue where everyone just focuses on the fast/rewarding fractals.

It’d be similar to dungeons, where the only time most of us run CoF3, SE2, HotW2/3, etc is when someone wants their Dungeon Master achievement. If it were a repeating reward (AP, laurels, karma, mist essense, relics, ascended gear, whatever), it would provide incentive to still run everything, without being forced to by RNG.

Choice + reward > RNG

So it seems like there is a fairly divisive split in opinion between random fractals and chosen fractals. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, which have also been discussed. As I said before, I personally fall into the category of liking random fractals for the full series, but having the option to choose to play any single fractal by talking to Dessa for purposes of speed runs and practice runs.

As for the non-boss components of each fractal, it seems that the general consensus is:

• Smarter mobs, featuring coordinating skillsets closer to the Mordrem or Toxic Alliance
• Additional orbs in higher tiers for Swamp (4/5)
• Mob patrols in Ascalon and other Fractals (Water, Uncategorized, Snowblind, etc)
• Mobs having some revealing effect around them when out of combat to force better timing if stealthing past

I will say that I feel that progression is the most important component in the levels being divided as they are. If they dialed back the number of levels in Fractals, it might make some people happier, but I think it would hurt the Fractal community overall. Now maybe instabilities aren’t the best way to do that in their current form, but maybe they are. I once proposed this a long time ago and am curious what you guys think of it.

What if instabilities were still a thing, but they stacked based on what level you were on. So for instance, L31’s instability was active when you do L31, and L31 and L32’s instability were active when you do L32. So you couldn’t avoid instabilities by doing higher level fractals within a tier. Once you hit the next tier, the list of instabilities reset and you had the next tier’s instabilities. This would at least prevent people from skipping instabilities, and would also avoid the situation where L40 is easier than L39.

As for Eco’s question, I think the only way to make rolling swamp not a thing would be to intentionally slow it down. The problem with just making the other ones more rewarding is that people will naturally gravitate towards rolling for the first fractal that is most rewarding for its average time investment. To actually solve the problem of rolling altogether, the average time spent on each first-tier fractal has to be virtually the same.

This is a great discussion so far! Thanks for all the insight into your thoughts everyone!

dlonie.6547:

What about a repeating fractal completion reward?

Allow us to pick the fractals we run, and if we run all of them in a given timeframe (week? two weeks? one month?), there is some sort of bonus. This would be an easy way to help prevent the issue where everyone just focuses on the fast/rewarding fractals.

It’d be similar to dungeons, where the only time most of us run CoF3, SE2, HotW2/3, etc is when someone wants their Dungeon Master achievement. If it were a repeating reward (AP, laurels, karma, mist essense, relics, ascended gear, whatever), it would provide incentive to still run everything, without being forced to by RNG.

Choice + reward > RNG

They could add fractal specific relicts. If you want to buy a weapon skin or an armor skin (that hopefully gets implemented) from the fractal npc (that hopefully also gets implemented), you need an equal number of tokens from each fratal.

Lendruil.9061:

dlonie.6547:

What about a repeating fractal completion reward?

Allow us to pick the fractals we run, and if we run all of them in a given timeframe (week? two weeks? one month?), there is some sort of bonus. This would be an easy way to help prevent the issue where everyone just focuses on the fast/rewarding fractals.

It’d be similar to dungeons, where the only time most of us run CoF3, SE2, HotW2/3, etc is when someone wants their Dungeon Master achievement. If it were a repeating reward (AP, laurels, karma, mist essense, relics, ascended gear, whatever), it would provide incentive to still run everything, without being forced to by RNG.

Choice + reward > RNG

They could add fractal specific relicts. If you want to buy a weapon skin or an armor skin (that hopefully gets implemented) from the fractal npc (that hopefully also gets implemented), you need an equal number of tokens from each fratal.

Oooh, I like that.

A few tokens for rare, a decent sum for exotics, and to make it more fractal-y and top it off — an exorbitant amount for ascended.

That’d be pretty awesome

Rising, wouldn’t that make certain fractals a little rediculous?

40’s would be harder than 50’s also with mossy and exploding enemies I’d think.

Again, I’m a big proponent of choice, but I just see it better as letting us choose our instabilities and reward them properly.

As for Swamp, i like Sarah’s idea of simply having to defeat both bosses, I think that’d be sufficient to make it a longer task. Maybe if they could force the return of more orbs? But, biggest th ing when discussing swamp IMO is they really need to fix the mossman glitch, half the LFGs I join already have mossman in the water when I get in… the other half are mostly on bloomhunger

Jerus.4350:

Rising, wouldn’t that make certain fractals a little rediculous?

40’s would be harder than 50’s also with mossy and exploding enemies I’d think.

an idea like that would probably come with rebalances to the instabilities on each level..

Rising Dusk.2408:

As for Eco’s question, I think the only way to make rolling swamp not a thing would be to intentionally slow it down. The problem with just making the other ones more rewarding is that people will naturally gravitate towards rolling for the first fractal that is most rewarding for its average time investment. To actually solve the problem of rolling altogether, the average time spent on each first-tier fractal has to be virtually the same.

It may not be enough just to make them virtually all the same.

Fractals can be categorized into A, AB, B, BC, and C, depending on which levels you can get them.

As swamp is an “A”, people would still favor it over an “AB” like Ascalon or Uncategorized. This is because if you start at with an AB, your chances of rolling a BC for the second one are now higher than before, coupled with a lower chance of getting a BC for the third fractal.

Dave.2536:

It may not be enough just to make them virtually all the same.

Fractals can be categorized into A, AB, B, BC, and C, depending on which levels you can get them.

As swamp is an “A”, people would still favor it over an “AB” like Ascalon or Uncategorized. This is because if you start at with an AB, your chances of rolling a BC for the second one are now higher than before, coupled with a lower chance of getting a BC for the third fractal.

This is a very good point that we haven’t talked about yet. Assuming they stay random for purposes of discussion, do we actually like that some fractals can be had at both the first and second level? What about the ones that you can get at the second and third level?

Currently we have:

1. Water, Swamp, Ascalon, Uncategorized
2. Uncategorized, Snowblind, Ascalon, Molten Furnace, Cliffside
3. Aetherblade, Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge, Cliffside
4. Solid Ocean, Molten Boss, Mai Trin

Would it be better if a fractal could only show up ever once? An example might be as follows:

1. Water, Swamp, Molten Furnace
2. Uncategorized, Snowblind, Ascalon, Aetherblade
3. Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge, Cliffside
4. Solid Ocean, Molten Boss, Mai Trin

I think these are closer in terms of length insofar as events and/or difficulty across the different fractals. This also prevents the situation you referred to, Dave, where getting Ascalon for first fractal would make Cliffside for second fractal more likely, and so forth. What do you all think?