Guild Wars 2

Fixing broken forum… again.

dear anet,

can we choose which fractal we do not want to play?

I would really like to do fractal 39 for my regular daily but the cliffside fractal has killed most of my interest.

loseridoit.2756:

dear anet,

can we choose which fractal we do not want to play?

I would really like to do fractal 39 for my regular daily but the cliffside fractal has killed most of my interest.

This is an interesting idea. I think I’d be much less opposed to random if we could vote say 2 out. For me lately It’d probably be Snowblind and Maw, though some nights I’m up late but want to bang out another fractal knocking out cliffside and grawl might be prefered or something like that.

… I still would like to be able to pick and have the option to do them all on 50 nightly but if they’re dead set on random this would be pretty awesome at least.

Rising Dusk.2408:

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?

i really like it personally, but i think the biggest issue with it is tangentially related — that cliffside feels too long

insanemaniac.2456:

Rising Dusk.2408:

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?

i really like it personally, but i think the biggest issue with it is tangentially related — that cliffside feels too long

^^ Though, I LOVE cliffside, I think it’s a fun fractal, I enjoy it, but it takes a lot longer assuming no failure rates are all equal across fractals. As for the spread, I enjoy a lot of the fractals and with Swamp being the obvious choice to start I like that I have a chance to see the other fractals that can be first fractals like uncatagorized and Ascalon, of course I’m not a fan of the water one

Jerus.4350:

insanemaniac.2456:

Rising Dusk.2408:

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?

i really like it personally, but i think the biggest issue with it is tangentially related — that cliffside feels too long

^^ Though, I LOVE cliffside, I think it’s a fun fractal, I enjoy it, but it takes a lot longer assuming no failure rates are all equal across fractals. As for the spread, I enjoy a lot of the fractals and with Swamp being the obvious choice to start I like that I have a chance to see the other fractals that can be first fractals like uncatagorized and Ascalon, of course I’m not a fan of the water one

one of my biggest wishes is for the community in general to not depend on weapons and hats for AR, because i really like the water fractal and i think its actually a lot easier than both swamp bosses. but water combat is just so primitive compared to land combat, the camera sucks, and people dont even buy an 80 water weapon often times.

i actually like running 9/19/29 because im allowed to carry thru water fractal and people dont kitten, but at 38/40/50 you… cant reliably solo the dolphin path and people usually dont have ar.

WTB an ascended aquabreather! Though personally not an issue for me as I went all try hard (mainly so I can swap stuff to alts) and got 15 AR in back/rings

insanemaniac.2456:

Rising Dusk.2408:

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?

i really like it personally, but i think the biggest issue with it is tangentially related — that cliffside feels too long

errr. cliffside at 39 is just plain broken. 39 instability is basically an anti stacking mechanic and cliffside you are required to do some type of stacking.

Chest and arm seals are pretty much torture to beat on this fractal due to core design of cliffside fractal. I like 39 instability because it is funny but it is not fun when you are practically given no choice but to eat the damage.

The damage from mobs at 39 is so much weaker than late 40’s or 50 that you don’t even need to stack on the Cliffside fractal.

Really, in the third level you can loosely assemble in the tunnel and just be careful not to cleave the markted add or just cc it out of the way or stealth it away. For the fire level you don’t stack between the circles, just run to the other side and spread around and bring a couple of reflects so you’re only dealing with heartseekers.

Stacking is just a feature that trivializes encounters, there’s absolutely no need in a single encounter to stack. Every single fractal is doable at any level without stacking.

What really will kill your fractal is bad comps (bringing more than one mesemer, if any for example, not having any might stacking or fury providing classes or no reflects/aegis) and lack of damage, as lack of damage will wipe you in any PvE in this game because the mobs WILL overwhelm your healing capacity if you let them live too long.

Most classes won’t have enough self sustain to overcome poor damage output. Those PVT or badly traited/runed people who are weighing you down will barely last a bit longer against the damage mobs do at high level fractals but take many times longer to kill them, so in the end your group actually absorbs more damage and is more likely to wipe.

So rather than saying 39 is broken just look at what’s going on with your group.

Rising Dusk.2408:

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!

I don’t see how level 40, with 1 instability, is harder than 39 with 9 instabilities. To be honest, stacking instabilities is a terrible idea. I still think my idea, random instabilities as gambits is the best way to prevent people from avoiding them. I also don’t know why people care about how others play their fractals. What’s the difference if people roll swamp?

Zenith.7301:

The damage from mobs at 39 is so much weaker than late 40’s or 50 that you don’t even need to stack on the Cliffside fractal.

Really, in the third level you can loosely assemble in the tunnel and just be careful not to cleave the markted add or just cc it out of the way or stealth it away. For the fire level you don’t stack between the circles, just run to the other side and spread around and bring a couple of reflects so you’re only dealing with heartseekers.

Stacking is just a feature that trivializes encounters, there’s absolutely no need in a single encounter to stack. Every single fractal is doable at any level without stacking.

What really will kill your fractal is bad comps (bringing more than one mesemer, if any for example, not having any might stacking or fury providing classes or no reflects/aegis) and lack of damage, as lack of damage will wipe you in any PvE in this game because the mobs WILL overwhelm your healing capacity if you let them live too long.

Most classes won’t have enough self sustain to overcome poor damage output. Those PVT or badly traited/runed people who are weighing you down will barely last a bit longer against the damage mobs do at high level fractals but take many times longer to kill them, so in the end your group actually absorbs more damage and is more likely to wipe.

So rather than saying 39 is broken just look at what’s going on with your group.

I am saying fractal 39 is broken because you are dealing with lots of chanters in very tight places. There is technically a time limit on hitting seal because they do heal the seals and chanter explode cc decreasing overall dps dramatically. Oh yea, Anet is planning of changing stability to defiance. So, I just dislike the overall design.

Yes, I beat the cliffside fractal on that mistlock before and it was not fun.

Becka Williams.4978:

I don’t see how level 40, with 1 instability, is harder than 39 with 9 instabilities. To be honest, stacking instabilities is a terrible idea. I still think my idea, random instabilities as gambits is the best way to prevent people from avoiding them. I also don’t know why people care about how others play their fractals. What’s the difference if people roll swamp?

Level 40 would have 10 instabilities, not 1. It’s the same tier as L39. L41 would definitely be easier than an L40, but you couldn’t do an L41 if you wanted the L40 tier rewards. That’s the point! Anyway, of course they’d have to be rebalanced. L40 would be infinitely harder than L50 in its current form due to a combination of some of that tier’s instabilities. It’s the principle I want peoples’ feedback on.

I personally feel that fractals should not be tiered. I liked the old system better. And if they arent tiered then the PvP vote system also makes more sense. Also they could make the vote between two maps instead of three. Theres plenty of ways to keep a lot of RNG while still giving players a little more control.

Zenith.7301:

s lack of damage will wipe you in any PvE in this game because the mobs WILL overwhelm your healing capacity if you let them live too long.

That isn’t true. You can even facetank lupicus and unbind the dodge key. Lack of damage isn’t what wipes pugs who don’t run berserker builds, what wipes them is that they don’t use good tank builds either (I know, it feels like an oxymoron to speak “good” and “tank” together but still). Pug builds = random garbage. A mass of randomly cobbled up together trait selections, runes and gear. A lack of any decent rotation. Also remember, just because you’re running tank doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use skills such as blind on trash mobs. Tank builds mean that you don’t have to dodge as much, and sometimes not even once, but they don’t mean you should stop using your skills and just mash the 1 button.

We don’t need healing builds in this game PVE, but, if we ever did, pugs would still wipe not because healing builds are bad at healing, but because the pugs themselves just don’t know what they are doing. Sustain builds are very good at what they’re doing, they’re just not needed.

Re: “opting out” of certain fractals

What if, by interacting with the observatory terminal, a popup appeared that let players set preferences for which shard they’d like to run? Each player would indicate which fractals they’d like to run, and these would be blessed by RNGsus — the selection would become weighted to favor them. This could also have a negative vote mechanic where disliked fractals would have their odds lowered. The UI would be simple:

Title text: “Set shard preferences: A [green checkmark] will increase the odds of selecting a shard, while a [red X] will lower the likelihood:”

List:
[ ] Swamp
[ ] Uncategorized
[ ] Volcanic
…. etc.

Clicking on the [ ] element will cycle through [ ], [green checkmark], and [red X].

Behind the scenes, the selection process would consider all of the party members individual votes to come up with a final set of shard weights for the RNG selection. The more checkmarks a shard has, the higher its probability. The more X’s, the lower the probability.

This way, every fractal still has a chance of being selected, but there would be some control over the selection process.

Optional:
- selections could be saved from session to session
- Should selections be kept private? I think so, but it could go either way.

Thoughts?

Re: stacking instabilities It seems that this would be very difficult to balance. There are currently fractals + instabilities that create significant frustration — not challenge, but frustration — due to the interactions of mechanics and instabilities. Level 39 cliffside is one I’ve experienced, and though it was interesting for a while, it soon became tedious and annoying as it went on. Forcing these annoyances to be present at all levels > X, as well as stacking many together, would not add much enjoyable challenge IMO.

Re: Locking fractals into levels (e.g. harpy can only be second, etc) This would completely stop most folks from running the first tier fractals other than swamp. I think if it’s going to be randomized, allowing fractals to appear in multiple stages is fine.

Becka Williams.4978:

Rising Dusk.2408:

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!

I don’t see how level 40, with 1 instability, is harder than 39 with 9 instabilities. To be honest, stacking instabilities is a terrible idea. I still think my idea, random instabilities as gambits is the best way to prevent people from avoiding them. I also don’t know why people care about how others play their fractals. What’s the difference if people roll swamp?

It’s not really that other people roll swamp it’s that if I’m looking to complete a quick fractal it’s pretty silly not to roll swamp and that’s kinda wrong isn’kitten Same thing as cliffside but in reverse. Cliffside is too long, swamp is too short when comparing to the other options. Likewise Mai is too hard and Maw is too easy. It just makes luck such a big factor in time and effort.

@Spoj, I like your thought there on tiered fractals. Being able to do more high level fractals and various instabillities but at least get your rare chance at skins would be cool.

@dlonie, if they went that route they could just import the PVP voting system yeah? Choose a map you want it gets added to the possible queues, to keep it random you could have a 1 vote for everything initially and your team can only strengthen the odds at certain maps. That’s what I figured Spoj meant when he suggested it a while back.

Jerus.4350:

@dlonie, if they went that route they could just import the PVP voting system yeah? Choose a map you want it gets added to the possible queues, to keep it random you could have a 1 vote for everything initially and your team can only strengthen the odds at certain maps. That’s what I figured Spoj meant when he suggested it a while back.

Exactly — I think that would actually be a far more intuitive approach. So long as each map starts with 1 vote, I’d love to see that.

Yeah I was going to add that suggestion but i forgot to mention it in my initial post. If the PvP vote system is implemented and it automatically applies 1 vote to each map. So even if the whole group votes for a single map there is still a small chance for one of the others. There are so many possible iterations that the devs could do with the vote system to improve things without making it completely abusable.

It seems like such a waste to develop one of the best vote systems ive seen in a game and not use it for another gametype that could benefit immensely from it. Id really love to see it used.

Only problem i would see, if we can call it that, is people would still roll for swamp, so dredge, water and others won’t be done. Not that I mind personally. Have to increase swamp size a bit.

I think you are misunderstanding. Ill just describe the exact system i picture.

Whenever you start a fractal or go to the next map. A vote comes up. It could be between 2 or 3 maps. Each map already has one vote applied to it so there is always a chance for them to be rolled regardless of what the group votes for. To add. There would be no tiers for maps apart from boss fractals being separate. So you could end up having underwater on the last roll.

This system means that every map will get played at least some of the time. Currently underwater is completely avoided without fail. Obviously people would probably still roll for swamp at the start. Thats unavoidable. But with this system theres atleast a semi vote in place and all maps will get played.

Actually, I think a pvp style vote system would be ideal. It preserves randomness while adding a bit of player interaction into the map choosing process.

We do underwater every now and then. Almost as fast as swamp and it gives decent loot from the first mobs plus it’s soloable while waiting for people to come in.

Do any of you actually like the pvp wheel of fortune? Because sometimes I really want to play Niflhel. We get 7 votes for Nifhel. The trololol wheel of fortune spins and it lands on Skyhammer.

I would love to see the wheel of fortune banished from pvp forever because it is a half measure. If you are going to give players a choice then do it straight up or don’t. Don’t do it half way like giving the player a choice which RNG can take away from you.

Nike’s suggestion looks like a method for structured groups to essentially get free ascended gear for their alts. I don’t think its a question of having more complex mechanics. Games like Tera had bosses with relatively unforgiving mechanics like Shandra Manaya (Queen). I say “had” because the power creep was such that within 1 year, anyone could burn Queen in under 2 minutes. You can kill her so fast now that she is completely locked in stand animations and pretty much doesn’t attack at all, so you skip nearly all the mechanics. But lets go back to the days when Queen was considered pretty difficult.

At first you think you will never be able to do it, because literally everything is a one shot kill. She has ground aoe patterns that come out fast and you must be well positioned to avoid them. At certain hp thresholds and every 40 seconds or so, she stands, requiring 3 party members to take 1 of 3 coloured debuffs: green, red and white. After 2 minutes with a debuff on you, you die. To overwrite green debuff (and thus not die after 2 minutes), you must take red. If you have red, you must take white. If you have white, you must take green. If any debuff is unaccounted for, at any time, your entire party dies.

There are 2 fundamental problems with dungeon/boss design that relies heavily on mechanics like this:

1) If the goal is to stretch content so people play the same thing for longer, it is still not a substitute for new content. In PvE all you need is to have an interesting problem for players to figure out. Once people figure it out, they have a tendency to reduce it down to a sequence of rote learned actions and then it becomes a farm.

Bosses like Queen are highly telegraphed, the player’s actions are highly choreographed and therefore the encounter is predictable. Once you figure out the pattern, it almost doesn’t matter how much more complex you make the mechanics. I got to the point where I was playing with people that could do Queen in their sleep and it wasn’t even fun anymore.

This dungeon was a death trap for PUGs where it was often an extremely unpleasant place to be. In structured groups, it was trivially easy once figured out. It was something you did 4 times a day per character on double drop weekends (whether you enjoyed it or not) so you could get rich. Over time, people will naturally try to reduce anything complex but predictable to its simplest, quicked form and farm the hell out of it for the associated reward.

2) It places your prospect of success entirely in the hands of other players. GW2 from the very beginning was different from GW1 because it gave every class a way to avoid damage, a self heal and a way to deal damage. GW2 made all players to an extent, self sufficient. In Tera, if someone missed their Queen debuff, you all wiped. You could do everything right, but one guy in your party messed up for 1 second and thats it. You all have to start over.

In GW1, players picked skill sets that were highly specialized. A Warrior pretty much never takes healing, condition/hex removal or evasion. Warriors are generally expected to run skill bars where they have absolutely no way of avoiding or mitigating damage. It is entirely the responsibility of someone else to block incoming damage for you and to heal you (usually a Monk).

Both of these scenarios create a situation where you can fulfill your party role exactly and do everything right in that role, but someone else makes a mistake and everyone collectively suffers the consequence. From the very beginning, GW2 seemed like it was designed to move away from that and the ragefests and trolling it spawned.

As much as I loved GW1, it was a game that you only ever wanted to play in highly structured groups in endgame pve or any type of pvp. When key people playing key roles weren’t online, you waited. Over time, every aspect of GW1 became about soloing or waiting and raging and waiting and raging when someone made a mistake and waiting some more.

Think of the wheel of fortune as a compromise. Its not a perfect system for those of us who hate RNG. But its better than what we have currently.

And it prevents people always farming the path of least resistance. Without forcing the devs to scale rewards per fractal shard. Which even if they try to do it will never be perfect.

spoj.9672:

Think of the wheel of fortune as a compromise. Its not a perfect system for those of us who hate RNG. But its better than what we have currently.

And it prevents people always farming the path of least resistance. Without forcing the devs to scale rewards per fractal shard. Which even if they try to do it will never be perfect.

^^

I still want the whole 4 fractals in a row thing abolished, I want to be able to run every fractal on 50 nightly for funsies if nothing else, though they should be rewarding however they decide to do it (i put my suggestion in more depth earlier in the thread).

The option to at least weight the RNG would be a very welcomed thing as opposed to just the current bend over and take it approach.

Jerus.4350:

spoj.9672:

Think of the wheel of fortune as a compromise. Its not a perfect system for those of us who hate RNG. But its better than what we have currently.

And it prevents people always farming the path of least resistance. Without forcing the devs to scale rewards per fractal shard. Which even if they try to do it will never be perfect.

^^

I still want the whole 4 fractals in a row thing abolished, I want to be able to run every fractal on 50 nightly for funsies if nothing else, though they should be rewarding however they decide to do it (i put my suggestion in more depth earlier in the thread).

The option to at least weight the RNG would be a very welcomed thing as opposed to just the current bend over and take it approach.

are you against dusks suggestion?
you can pick fractals seperately, but no daily reward.

i suppose it wouldnt be bad to let the daily be gotten either via one random, or clearing all without random

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

spoj.9672:

Think of the wheel of fortune as a compromise. Its not a perfect system for those of us who hate RNG. But its better than what we have currently.

And it prevents people always farming the path of least resistance. Without forcing the devs to scale rewards per fractal shard. Which even if they try to do it will never be perfect.

^^

I still want the whole 4 fractals in a row thing abolished, I want to be able to run every fractal on 50 nightly for funsies if nothing else, though they should be rewarding however they decide to do it (i put my suggestion in more depth earlier in the thread).

The option to at least weight the RNG would be a very welcomed thing as opposed to just the current bend over and take it approach.

are you against dusks suggestion?
you can pick fractals seperately, but no daily reward.

i suppose it wouldnt be bad to let the daily be gotten either via one random, or clearing all without random

Not really, it’d be something nice, though I’d really prefer being able to get a chance at fractal skins. If we could get individual fractals with just the chest and normal loot + the PVP map selection thing described above it’d be my “ok I’ll stop complaining” answer.

As i stated before though.

What I’d love to see is something like this:

Change rewards from the “complete 4 for your level run” to instead use a sort of PVP reward system, doing a fractal gives progress towards a chosen reward with smaller rewards throughout including pristines and other stuffs.

Toss a 3-4 hour DR on a map where you get 10% of the normal reward till the DR resets, this means you would be still rewarded for farming a certain fractal if you wanted to train at it, but so hindered that you’d be greatly encouraged to do other fractals.

THis would mean you get your non RNG based fractal rewards of skins/chests, something like say you get progress equal to the level you are doing, so you’d get 50 for every lvl 50, then make it like 20k+ to get a reward (roughly equal to doing 100 fractal 50s or more).

I’d also add in instability “gambits” as additional challenges for daily gold rewards for those who feel like creating an additional challenge and want to get a gold reward. Scale this reward based on the previous days completion metrics such that rarely done ones are more rewarding, stack a few of these and the right ones and you could make bank, but it surely wouldn’t be easy. The lvl 40/50 agony check would be the standard on those level ranges so you’d always have that there but with that it’d be potentially even more negligable of a cash reward compared to what it currently is.

You could even add in a random system to this for bonus progress though repeated runs of it could overlap and leave you not getting the rewards /shrug.

I really like choice and an incentive to do all the fractals on the most difficult setting you feel like doing.

I’m really a fan of the changes they made in PVP regarding map selection and rewards, I think both systems are pretty elegant and well made.

I like the Idea of using the PVP reward track system in fractals, if it was done well it could be really cool. Though I would imagine it would take a decent amount of work getting there.