Guild Wars 2

1.) As Fractals evolve, so to can the rewards. Even specifically the rewards granted to people from the fractals previously.

Example: Higher tier fractals can drop dye kits or upgrade kits specifically for Fractal weapons, functioning specifically as Fractal weapons have historically: proving the player has completed difficult content.

2.) Add more fractals to the rotation. Not simple but it makes this the most compelling dungeon in MMO gaming to me and likely many others.

3.) Incentivize playing to the strength of Fractals, allowing 3 random dungeons. Example: Allow a greater chance at fractal specific rewards if the party clears the first shard they roll.

Thank you for this CDI on a topic I’m particularly interested in.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Proposal Overview
Add a chance at previous living story items tied to specific fractals.

Goal of Proposal
Adding another reward tier for future of fractals and making less desirable/harder fractals more desirable. Allows a way for people to customize their characters with items that are no longer attainable and were tied behind limited-time RnG drops.

Proposal Functionality
At very high level fractals there is a rare chance of getting previous living story items (depending on the fractal rolled). The item would be in the bosses chest at the end of that fractal. Boss fractals would contain the more sought after rewards.

Example of standard fractal rewards:
- Molten Fractal: Chance at Azurite Orbs and Molten Berserker Tonic Recipe
- Aetherblade Fractal: Chance of the Aetherized Tonic Recipe and Oil/Crystal/Stone Recipes.

Example of boss fractal rewards:
- Molten Champs: Chance at Jetpack (if you kill Firestorm first), Chance at Mini Firestorm (if you kill Berserker first).
- Mai Trin: Chance at Monocle

Could also add items that currently don’t exist such as a chance at a Mini Colossus after completing the Colossus fractal.

Associated Risks
Lowers desirability/price of past living story items.

Puts an RnG drop inside an RnG fractal. Can solve this by making the items purchasable for a large amount of fractal relics. The purchased version should be account bound. You should only be able to buy certain items after you pass a certain personal fractal level threshold.

You might find my proposal that contains this subject interesting. You can read it on page 2 here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Fractal-Evolution/3682391
It’s about returning Living Story events, their rewards as rare drops and buyable from “tickets” as well as hardcore endgame content as part of a new expansion to the fractals system.

Top three:
1)Rebalance dredge fractal to get it more in line, and alot less tedious
2)Make fractals more rewarding (according to expected length/difficulty level)
3)Give us something to do with unwanted rings that is more interesting than selling for a few silver

My main issue with Fractals is that they don’t really seem to know what they want to be. As such, it’s difficult to me to nail down a list of three things to improve.

Fractals should be either:
– a series of graduating challenges with the design not reliant on lore such as to provide the developers with a more wide open tool set with which to design variable challenges. Think of something like Super Adventure Box where the only rule is that it’s a loose retro game homage.

OR

- a deep lore exploration tool that allows players of all stripes to delve into Tyria’s past with the design focused not on challenge but instead on being a sort of interactive history lesson

Right now Fractals are stuck in a place where they’re trying to be both and that position is limiting them to everyone.

My suggestions, then, for improving Fractals if the goal is to have them as story/lore instances are:
- Reduce the base difficulty level
- Introduce scaling such that solos, duos, etc. are welcomed
- Look at sections of GW1 that could be repurposed into GW2 Fractals

StriderShinryu.6923:

My main issue with Fractals is that they don’t really seem to know what they want to be. As such, it’s difficult to me to nail down a list of three things to improve.

Fractals should either:
– a series of graduating challenges with the design not reliant on lore such as to provide the developers with a more wide open tool set with which to design variable challenges. Think of something like Super Adventure Box where the only rule is that it’s a loose retro game homage.

OR

- a deep lore exploration tool that allows players of all stripes to delve into Tyria’s past with the design focused not on challenge but instead on being a sort of interactive history lesson

Right now Fractals are stuck in a place where they’re trying to be both and that position is limiting them to everyone.

My suggestions, then, for improving Fractals if the goal is to have them as story/lore instances are:
- Reduce the base difficulty level
- Introduce scaling such that solos, duos, etc. are welcomed
- Look at sections of GW1 that could be repurposed into GW2 Fractals

base difficulty is pretty low. level one fractals are not hard

Proposal Overview
Increased difficulty of existing dungeons via Fractalised versions of those. Apply the group PvE approach demonstrated in Fractals to existing Explorable Dungeons in order to make these dungeons more interesting. Make these Fractalised versions of those dungeons relate to the Fractal experience (eg. rewards include or roll on some Fractal loot tables).

Goal of Proposal

• Address some of the (arguably) exploited AI or mechanics encountered in regular Explorable Dungeons.
• Should result in more dynamically interesting encounters and, in most cases, more challenging encounters.
• Promote build diversity
• Provide more Difficulty & Content options within existing content; improve replayability

Proposal Functionality
At the entry point to a dungeon, where the instance openner is presented with the choices to open Explorable or Story versions of the Dungeon, a new option is implemented: Fractal Mode. If it is felt that this would be better placed within the Fractal of the Mists, I don’t really have a problem with that.

The dungeon paths remain essentially the same, and tell the same story and provide the same gauntlet of puzzles, tactics, fights and so on. Key differences would be:

• Any form of increased difficulty ANet may have been thinking about for certain dungeons/paths may be presented in these Fractal versions of the dungeon.
• Unskippable mobs
• Better, but not necessarily tougher, foes (eg. foes that utilise more boons, foes that cleave, foes that do not necessarily stay in a corner vs. a stacked party as opposed to straight HP pool increases).
• Overhaul of dungeon layout and foes’ AI to reduce foes vulnerability to corner stacking and other trivialising tactics where it occurs excessively.
• Increased rewards (both drops and completion chests) to compensate for difficulty and time increase, including fractal rewards.

How does your proposal work in regard in relation to the current design of GW2
Applies lessons learned by ANet which are demonstrated in Fractals. I have nothing against players beating content and “outsmarting” the design to a point, and I appreciate the steps taken by ANet to address some of the cheesier tactics employed by many groups in fractals.

This allows for both camps to get what they want (those who want to play the game in the so-called “intended way” and those who believe that doing anything to win is legitimate) and provides a refreshing, more interesting approach to some older content, some of which has long since been rendered trivial by stacking, skipping, safe-spotting and the like.

I’m sure many ANet developers and staff who play the game will know many of the work arounds players employ to nullify or trivialise dungeon content and perhaps would relish the idea of addressing the balance.

Associated Risks
May diminish Fractals position as the high-difficulty content, but by tying these changes into the Fractals system it would probably promote it instead.

Proposal Overview
Refrain from adding unnecessary time sinks such as the dredge car in future fractals.

Goal of Proposal
Time sinks offer little to no challenge to the player and artificially makes the level take longer than it needs to be.

Proposal Functionality
Quite a number of the newer dungeons have interesting mechanics such as the Aetherblade path in TA, Marionette, and even many of the challenges within the dredge fractal itself. Challenging mechanics should be used in place of time sinks to reward players who are skillful and work together as a team.

Associated Risks
Some players, who are not quite as skilled or do not work well in a team, may struggle. You can just recall back to the initial lashback from when Marionette was released about being too difficult but then slowly the skill level of players in relation to that event increased. There’s also the mechanics of the dredge and challenge within the fractal itself that many are unaware of and/or struggle with.

One possible way to minimize the hardship would be to add a buffer of sorts for the earlier fractal levels to ease them into the mechanics. This will leave more room for error and hopefully create a better experience for players to learn and improve.

I agree with Strider. I love both the PvE-challenge aspect of Fractals and the lore-aspect of Fractals, but I don’t want to see either limited by trying to design them around each other.

I don’t want a lore-focused experienced to be diluted or soured by the PvE design of a fractal (imagine if a very important lore-set fractal had all the problems of Dredge fractal), and I don’t want my Fractal progression to be tied to lore events in particular. I think the environment for enjoying these things is very different.

The Bonus Mission Pack in GW1 is somewhat how Fractals now are, but they were personal instances with storybooks and you never ran them more than a few times. I think Fractals is a much more challenge-oriented world, and should cater to that design. The purpose of lore design is to tell a story, but Fractals tend not to focus on that. In Thaumanova, even though I’m a huge follower of the lore, I don’t stop and admire the story-telling of the Fractal, I (like my group) focus on completing the fractal as efficiently as possible so that we can get our rewards. In that sense story is lost, and I don’t want to see that happen to any really cool bits of unexplored lore.

Proposal Overview
Either change Fractals to have a 10 player version or discontinue focus on Fractals to build a new 10 player instanced dungeon/raid.

Goal of Proposal
The goal of building 10 player content is to allow players to experience the fun of instanced content on a larger scale without becoming a disorganized zerg. This would provide more options to players who want to be able to game how they want so that they don’t have to choose between small party content and large zerg content.

Since Fractals has already had so many additions, building this as separate content could prevent Fractals from becoming too bloated, but you could still incorporate the agony design of Fractals so that rewards of Fractals and the new content would work hand in hand.

Proposal Functionality
I understand that GW2 has stayed away from large raids for a reason. However, if you don’t design a raid that takes up as much time as raids in other games do and keep party sizes to a 10 player size, you can still cater to the more casual/flexible player that GW2 is designed for while still providing more serious, organized content.

Associated Risks
Creating an instanced area that takes up too much time to clear could drive away players who can’t spend long periods of time online. Also, creating content with a very low skill ceiling would create content that loses player interest fast..

Proposal Overview

The way agony and agony resistance works should be changed; it should stop scaling at a certain level and other things (like Mistlock Instabilities) should take over to make it challenging instead of a gear check. There should also be a way to gain account bound Agony Resistance (similar to the way Luck to Magic Find works).

Goal of Proposal

• Make it easier to use multiple characters and to gain more agony resistance.
• Make fractals based more on skill level than on gear checks.
• Avoid the eventual fate of future high level fractals (like 100+) being a dungeon that takes hours to find a group for, if you ever find one.

Proposal Functionality

The Fractals of the Mists is heavily gated by the amount of Agony Resistance you have.

At higher level fractals, this means that you have to get your character fully outfitted in ascended armor/weapons/trinkets and infuse it; then, you need to get the agony resistance items and place them into the armor. This is a problem that makes it nearly impossible to use multiple characters in the Fractals at very high levels, because of the amount of things needed just to survive the agony alone.
Eventually, the amount of agony resistance may get higher with higher level fractals. It’s already hard to find groups for high level fractals, but eventually it will be nearly impossible with too high of agony resistance needed.

• Proposal Part 1: I propose for there to be a way to earn account bound Agony Resistance that you earn simply by completing fractals, by spending fractal relics, or by getting consumable drops. It could work the same way as Luck works for Magic Find; it would likely have diminishing returns, but would at least help players get other characters into high level fractals.
• Proposal Part 2: Additionally, agony should stop scaling at a certain point. The thing that should continue to scale is Mistlock Instabilities. At Fractal Level 100, the agony should reach its ultimate tier. Starting at Fractal Level 111 and each 10 levels after that, there will be an additional Mistlock Instability. Level 111-120 will have 2 instabilities; level 121-130 will have 3 instabilities, and so on.

This will make it so that skill is the main factor in the challenge rather than gear gating. It will also fix the problem where players just choose a certain level and just use it to level up because it has an easy instability; instead, there will be multiple instabilities that create unique challenges at every level and none will be truly “easy.”

Associated Risks

• At really high fractal levels the Mistlock Instabilities may become too numerous and make it nearly impossible to continue.
• The rewards associated with very high level fractals may not be worth it unless they’re reworked to match the incredible challenge associated with it.
• The powerful instabilities may drive players to find exploits to beat fractals rather than trying to accomplish them normally.

Proposal Overview

• The rewards in the fractals should be completely overhauled and increased.

Goal of Proposal

• Encourage playing fractals at higher difficulties for increased rewards.
• Give all players realistic goals to work toward in the fractals.
• Make an unlock system for fractal rewards.
• Allow veteran players to also gain new rewards from fractals.

Proposal Functionality

• The amount of gold given at the end of fractals should increase by 1 per 10 levels. This will help reward players doing the incredibly challenging high level fractals at 50 (and perhaps 51+ in the future).
• Fractals should award players with consumable items that grant permanent agony resistance on their account; it should work like Luck to magic find. It would have diminishing returns, but would still help increase agony resistance and allow them to play alt character in fractals.
• There should be a non-random unlock system for armor/weapons. I suggest allowing the player to choose to unlock one reward on their account every 10 fractal levels; this would work just like achievement chests – allowing the player to withdraw the reward again whenever they please. Things available to be chosen should be fractal armor, weapons, tonics, etc.
• Automatically increase fractal level once a certain number of fractal players reach the highest level. Creating an automatic system would keep the fractal progression going while players continue to progress, and help keep high level players at an equal level so they can continue to find groups easily.

Associated Risks

• The rewards may be too high if fractals are exploited. (This problem can easily be hindered with daily timers on rewards)
• Players who already have fractal weapons may feel betrayed or no longer special. (Simply put – they aren’t special; they are lucky. There should be no regret for Arenanet in creating an unlock system that rewards player skill and hard work, instead of just random luckiness. Regardless, the players that already have a fractal weapon should have it unlocked on their account to be withdrawn again whenever they please. There are still other rewards they can unlock with this system anyway.)

Overview:
Rework the reward tiers to correspond with agony levels and label them in the in game LFG tool.

Goal:
Clarify the reward tiers for new and returning fractal runners

Proposal:
Have the reward tiers based on the agony levels and relabel them in the in game LFG.
For example, 1-9 would be T1 reward because there is no agony at those levels.
Then, 10-19 for T2 because you need 10 agony resistance to take 1% hp per agony tick.
20-29 for T3 (25 AR for 1% per tick)
30-39 for T4 (40 AR for 1% per tick)
40-49 for T5 (55 AR for 1% per tick)
50 for T6 (70 AR for 1% per tick)

As it stands, the reward tiers confuse new players wishing to start fractals because the LFG isn’t organized to portray the reward tiers, and the tiers themselves have flawed logic behind them — Why does a level 50 that requires 70 AR and has higher scaling on mob damage/HP give the same daily reward as the 41-49 that requires only 55 AR?

Associated Risks:
None

Proposal Overview
Fix the LFG to have certain requirements regarding your personal fractal level in order to join a given fractal.

Goal
Preventing level skipping, and inexperienced players joining a fractal much higher than their personal level.

Proposal
For the first three fractal tiers (1-10, 11-20, 21-30), players can join a fractal/LFG if their personal reward level is within one of those tiers. Ex. You are reward level 25, and you see a post for a level 29, you will be allowed to join and run this fractal. However if you were only personal reward level 15, you would not be able to join and run this fractal. For the next two tiers (31-40, 41-50) you can only join a fractal/LFG is your personal reward level is equal to that or greater of the the one you are joining. Ex. You are reward level 36 and you want to join a level 39 fractal in the LFG, you would not be able to join or run this fractal.

Without this, there isn’t any point to having different instabilities from 31-50, because everyone just levels up doing the easiest instabilities (36, 49), and the rest of them go completely untouched. This still allows for power leveling your friends through low level fractals, but once you reach the instabilities you are forced to play through the content as it was designed.

Associated Risks
LFGs may take longer to fill up, but I think the trade off of knowing that people in your group are at least of a certain experience/reward level would be worth it.

P.S. For the love of god please make it a requirement to be level 80 to join a Fractal LFG. If you have it on the regular dungeons it doesn’t make any sense to not have it on Fractals.

GW1 dungeons as fractal content

Proposal Overview
Imagine doing one of the DoA encounters as a fractal! The individual parts are generally short enough and Mallyx could be added as a boss.

Goal of Proposal
Make GW1 fans swoon with glee while introducing newer GW players to some pretty entertaining content

Proposal Functionality
GW2 uses a different engine so you would likely have to remodel, but you would have the design already layed out. Some of the encounters would need to be re-skilled for the new system, but this should be no more difficult than the Ascalonians in the Searing fractal.

Associated Risks
It would be strange to introduce just one of the DoA sections and might be overwhelming to add them all at once. Perhaps add two, then two later, then a Mallyx boss. Unlike the GW1 boss you wouldn’t be earning access to Mallyx by doing the other parts, which might disgruntle some of the more disgruntly (?).

This is a proposal written by Nike (the leader of DnT, not the other Nike who is posting in this thread) who can’t post because of his temp ban for the forum.

Proposal Overview

To bring back Twilight Arbor Forward Up Dungeon Path (or a shortened version thereof) as a Fractal Shard in order to utilize content that is no longer in the game (but quite popular among the dungeon community) in order to make Fractals more interesting and fun. This dungeon path can be used the same way the Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat were, a chance to relive temporary content. This can be a replacement for Underground Facility that will both be skill testing and more popular than UF

Goal of Proposal

• To bring back the best path of Twilight Arbor to the game
• To solve the problem of removing/modifying Underground Facility without having less content than we had before
• Adding a third tier shard whose completion time will be comparable to the others

Proposal Functionality

The Fractals were promised to be a place to relive temporary content from the game, and no temporary content is more beloved by the end game PvE community than Twilight Arbor Forward Up. It was the correct balance of time, challenge and fun. The end boss, as maligned as it was by a segment of inexperienced players, presented a good lesson in how to improve and succeed in PvE instances. With a slight modification (spiders despawning after a wipe) it would be perfectly fair encounter. Additionally, the water fountain and bee swarm puzzle is well constructed. Last but not least, the Vivenna fight is one of the best, most dynamic and challenging boss fights in the original dungeons outside of Arah.
Implementation: Begin the Shard in the room after the six archers have been killed and the group would pick whether to go up for forward, have the up door be open and forward closed. Continue the remainder of the dungeon path as originally constructed. Modify the last boss to have the spiders despawn in case of a wipe, and have his shake/spider summoning attack be an Agony attack. If it is reflected or blocked the group does not spawn spiders (as before) and additionally does not get hit by agony.

Associated Risks

• Masochists who actually like the Dredge fractal get upset that the Dredge was removed for a wholly superior experience.
• Players complain that Vivenna/Oakheart/Bee Puzzle are too hard. Clearly anyone who is progressing to high level fractals should be good enough to handle a dungeon path from a normal dungeon. A de-tuned version for lower levels could obviously be created.

Salvage pristine fractal relics into ectos

Proposal overview
Right now there is not too much you can do with pristine relics once you’ve got yourself a nice backpiece and some attunements. Even salvaging to fractal relics isn’t useful if there is nothing the vendor has that you need. I suggest that pristine fractal relics be salvaged to ectos instead, at a one relic to one ecto rate with a small chance for two ectos.

Goal of proposal
Clear out some of these useless pristine fractal relics from people’s banks

Proposal functionality
Users can salvage the pristine relic for ectos using a salvage kit. They should always get one and have a chance to get two.

Risks
It would affect the economy of ectos and prismatic dust.
This proposal is only useful if you don’t already have another pristine fractal relic sink in the works.

1. Fractals used to be a high end dungeon, where skilled players were looking for their
challenge.

At the moment it’s just pay to win, people have 75AR and literally facetank every agony attack, they don’t even know how to dodge it or even know about the exact attack, it becomes even worse if you have lvl 40/50 where skilled players don’t even have the chance to dodge. Who is not rich gets excluded and skill gets removed.

2. Mistlock instabilies should be randomly applied on each fractal and not fixed on a level

3. Exclude Rings from the Daily Chest and make it so, that just fractal weapons / asc weapons and asc armor can drop (or at least from 40+)

4. Pristine Relics should be exchangeable for asc gear/armor/trinkets
not only rings, since you need AR to progress.

5. Grawl camera fix (make it so, tht you can actually see what’s going on)

Like before the fractured patch!

6. Their should be a compensation for everyone who has his fractal level 80 removed

A fractal tonic would actually represent the effort pretty well and would be a nice give away for the effort.

Top 3:

1. Fractal Reset:

Very important for me to at least get the answer promissed in Progression CDI maybe some retroactive reward for all the time spent.

2. AR Deisgn:

Make AR the design it was before. A check that could have been avoided by skill ( dodge nice teamplay ect ). → this improves that the highest Levels are not a grindy WoWlike Content where grinding gear for a week more is way more important than playing skillfull.

3. Rewards/Progression & Leaderbaords:

Make sure there are Special rewards that are accountbound and not compeltly RNG for example: You can go each 10 Level you get in personal reward Level a new item at merchant you can buy for relics. Progression shoulnd’t be bypassed by doing high x0 Levels with high AR ( wich basicaly makes the Levels have no instability at all. You should make sure that People can past a certain Level not Bypass hard instabilities just by playing x0 Levels . Leaderboards if you implement them take highest Level achieved as Long as you make the Levels / instabilities so hard ( maybe mutiple instabilities on 100+) to make it hard. + mentioned changes so abilities don’t get bypassed ( at least for leaderboards it should track and give you + 1 for all instabilities completed completing 50 times scale 50 still leaves you at Level 2 leaderbaordwise but scale 50 scalewise)

Proposal Overview:
Revamp of the Underground (Dredge) Fractal and the Reward System

Goal of the Proposal:
Everyone, seriously, hates this fractal. Coming from an avid Fractal player, the constant changes to this fractal in the opposite direction of where it needs to go has made sure that I haven’t stepped foot in a fractal since. This fractal, along with the extremely sub-par rewards have killed all motivation for myself and my friends to do fractals.

Proposal Functionality:

• Pressure Plates
  Lower the amount of dredge in the room, or completely remove their ability to respawn, allowing groups to clean the room and then channel.
• Bombs
  Not a bad idea for a room however the sea of dredge calls for stealth either from an engi or a thief (most groups use a thief) and this is simply bad design. Again, lowering the amount of dredge or simply allowing groups to clean/cull the room beforehand would solve everything. As it is right now, without stealth this room is simply impossible to do on a 49.
• Door room
  Again. An ocean of dredge. Stealth required, I’m just repeating myself.
• Clone Car
  Remove it. Seriously.
• Dredge suit/Ice Elemental
  Probably the only well designed encounter in the entire fractal.

Onto rewards -
For one, allow the skin box to drop. I know this has been said plenty of times in this thread already. Arenanet stated it would be in the patch, it is not. Put it in.
Doing basic dungeons like CoF path 1, AC all paths, CoE all paths allows players to gain just as much and more gold doing it in the same time or less than a fractal 49 run to get a pitiful 1.4g. Bump up the gold amount big time.
1-9: 50s
10-19: 1g
20-29: 1.5g
etc
Even just this little bit helps.
Reverting the skin drop rate back to pre-fractured drop rates would satiate a great amount of players.

Associated Risks:
Making your playerbase happy has no risks.

Riko.1309:

Associated Risks:
Making your playerbase happy has no risks.

This is so not true .

However, I doubt it will be the undoing of your specific proposal.

• Pressure Plates
  Lower the amount of dredge in the room, or completely remove their ability to respawn, allowing groups to clean the room and then channel.

I would say this is entirely missing the point. This encounter is an durability test with a dash of coordination – yes, a type of challenge so infrequent in the game players often have no idea what they’re looking at. Removing the respawns makes it yet another exercise in pure DPS. The door might as well just pop open the moment you kill them all, because all pretext of there being a puzzle or any sort of strategy requirement would be gone.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Top 3:

1. Fractal Reset:

I don’t think that is supposed to be discussed here, and as you seem to have missed it I got a quote for you:

Isaiah Cartwright

As we were looking at the fractal reworks we wanted to change the relative values of how hard it was to work through the fractals, because of this we wanted to bring everyone to a common starting point. We knew this was going to be controversial but we really wanted everyone to be on an even play field and once we got the feedback about it we started looking into ways we could mitigate this risk. This is a common practice we do with all releases and risks and sometimes like with this one we were not able to do anything due to time constraints and tech. It’s wasn’t our goal to devalue peoples time and effort and when reworking stuff sometimes these types of tradeoffs happen. We wanted to create a new scaling paradigm that would give us more room in the future for adding fractals and we felt the current systems was harder to scale. Our original design was for players to go past 50 but this wasn’t able to happen in time.

Link to the original post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/2#post3368875

Proposal Overview
*Addition of more fractal stories
*Have different fractal “categories” that allow parties to have more control over what types of fractals they choose

Goal of Proposal
This would allow RNG to be a less deciding factor to how you want to run fractals. It would be similar in the way that explorable paths of dungeons work. It should be noted that this requires the addition of several new fractals before it could be properly implemented and must also focus heavily on proper balancing of the different fractals that currently exist.

Proposal Functionality
The first point I would like to address is that fractal players would still like there to be more fractal stories available to them. At the point of the last fractals addition, the need for a new fractals instance was long overdue. It should become a regular practice to add 3-4 new fractal stories per year. This addition does not have to be all at once. Judging by how starved some of the community was at the point of the last release, it should be spread out so it gives fractal runners something to look forward to every few months rather than once a year.
Having fractal categories as an option for players over the random roll would have them feel more like dungeon paths. Fractal categories would give players the option to have some control over what they want their dungeon experience to be rather than praying it isn’t this or that instance over something they really enjoy. What specific fractals they get will be RNG within that category, however. The break down of fractal categories could be something like historical fractals (fractals based off of events that occurred in Tyria outside of the context of what we have witnessed in-game in guild wars 2), classic fractals (the first generation of fractals that are not based off of historical occurrences or fractals that have no discernible context within the games story), and living story fractals (fractals based off of living story events). Before fractals could get to this point, each category (which can really be categorized however needed) should be roughly evenly distributed.
The option for a purely random roll should also be available for those who would like a varied run.

Associated Risks
If the fractals are not properly balance and all offer interesting mechanics/story and unique reasons to play through them, the player base can flock to one category. This will require a lot of carefully calculated balancing.
Specific categories could become quite larger than others, such as the living story fractal category, if the categories aren’t all evolved to the same level of options simultaneously.

Asko.4120:

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Top 3:

1. Fractal Reset:

I don’t think that will be discussed here, and as you seem to have missed it I got a quote for you:

Isaiah Cartwright

As we were looking at the fractal reworks we wanted to change the relative values of how hard it was to work through the fractals, because of this we wanted to bring everyone to a common starting point. We knew this was going to be controversial but we really wanted everyone to be on an even play field and once we got the feedback about it we started looking into ways we could mitigate this risk. This is a common practice we do with all releases and risks and sometimes like with this one we were not able to do anything due to time constraints and tech. It’s wasn’t our goal to devalue peoples time and effort and when reworking stuff sometimes these types of tradeoffs happen. We wanted to create a new scaling paradigm that would give us more room in the future for adding fractals and we felt the current systems was harder to scale. Our original design was for players to go past 50 but this wasn’t able to happen in time.

Link to the original post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/2#post3368875

Guess you didn’t see that after this Point Chris mentioned several times that he has to think more about an answer. and REPETADLY told he will give us one , and might make a fractals CDI sooo… there is still an answer missing. And it is a very important Point when speaking about the design of a high end area in a game, that has suffered from resets without any compensation. to finally get an answer otherwise… it’s just too risky to Play the Content because all you do might get reseted and deleted again…

and I really hope this will be a big Point that will be discussed… since many of us wait for several months now already for an answer to this:)

CoffeeMug.9540:

This is a proposal written by Nike (the leader of DnT, not the other Nike who is posting in this thread) who can’t post because of his temp ban for the forum.

I believe we are ALL relived to know there are not two of me .

Proposal Overview
This can be a replacement for Underground Facility that will both be skill testing and more popular than UF

One of the worst problems of the living story has been the habit of taking away content every bit as fast as it introduces it. I think proposal this hits on an interesting piece of ‘lost content’ to revive via fractals, but I’d rather fix issues with the Underground Fractal rather than create another case of content-removal .

Associated Risks

• Masochists who actually like the Dredge fractal get upset that the Dredge was removed for a wholly superior experience.

Oddly enough, yes, I am one of them. The Dredge fractal, at least up through the late 20s, generally strikes me as one of the more interesting fractals simply because its not “hit them all till they are all dead” in its major encounters.

Too long? Probably.
Irredeemable? No, definitely not.

Riko.1309:

• Bombs
  Not a bad idea for a room however the sea of dredge calls for stealth either from an engi or a thief (most groups use a thief) and this is simply bad design. Again, lowering the amount of dredge or simply allowing groups to clean/cull the room beforehand would solve everything. As it is right now, without stealth this room is simply impossible to do on a 49.

I don’t mean to single you out, but you’re the last one who said this, and I want to say: This is not true. You can do bombs without stealth. There are actually a couple ways that I know of. The slightly safer way is to clear your way to the back, drop 2 or 3 bombs, run back to the front, clear to the back again, and drop 4 or 5 more bombs (you need 7 total). The faster but slightly riskier way is to clear to the back, drop 2 or 3 bombs, stay there and fight the handful of adds that keep spawning, and then drop 4 or 5 bombs once the ones you used before have respawned.

This doesn’t require a ton of coordination—I’ve done it in pugs. It does get a lot easier with reflects, but that’s a general problem with high-end content in this game.

The clown car is still stupid because it’s so tedious, and they could make all the infinite spawns a little smaller if they wanted to make the fractal easier as a whole (and maybe they should! that would at least bring the difficulty in line with other fractals), but I don’t think things are quite as bad as people have been saying.

My top 3

1) Rewards!!!!! This is by far the biggest issue with fractals currently. Ive been doing fractal runs for months to try and get a skin that just wont drop. I feel the option is to get fractal skins with pristine fractal relics is a MUST. However to keep the fractal weapons rare it should also be difficult, perhaps 100 relics.

2) Please continue with the instabilities they’re amazing! it makes the content unique and more challenging and gets people to change up their play style.

3) … do I even have to say it? Dredge!!!! The level is waaaaaay too long. To fix this I would suggest two things which both aim to make the level shorter.

3A) In the first phase, open the two gates to get to the main room (with the drill in it). It’s basically a time sink as you need all the people in the cage room to be able to open the final door anyway. And this would probably save you hours of work fixing exploits of jumping over gates, walking on edges, porting through fences etc.

3B) Remove the clown car. It’s just another time sink before the final boss.

Single Selectable Fractal Option

Proposal Overview
Implement a mode so that a party can choose any of the available fractals (including boss fractals) for a single quick run. This can be used for practice, testing specific builds or strategies, or introducing new players to fractals.

Goal of Proposal
The unknown time commitment for a full 4-fractal run can be a problem getting a group together. Additionally, some players are not familiar with certain fractals since the only way to experience them is getting lucky after doing 2 or 3 previous fractals. Maybe one day I just want to fight the Molten Duo or down Mai Trin, but there is no way to do so right now.

Associated Risks
I can see rewards as being an issue. While I would prefer some rewards or loot for doing just a single fractal, I wouldn’t expect it to be as good as a full run.

Top 3:

1. Rewards.

• More gold (I think that even 10s per reward level would be fair, given how long arah p1 and p2 take for 3g).
• Something to do with the rings, skins, and ascended gear we don’t want.
• A way to get drops unique to fotm (weapon skins, tonic) that doesn’t depend completely on rng. It’s fine if it’s expensive—100 pristine relics or 3k normal relics per skin, maybe—or if we have to trade in multiples we don’t want for ones we do—4 skins for a skin of our choice, maybe.

(But if you do the first option then you really have to let us do something with the drops we don’t want, so we don’t feel cheated when we spend all our relics on a skin only to get a duplicate in our next run. Getting ascended chests with stats that we’ll never use or stats we’ve already crafted is bad enough.)

• And stop giving us uninfused rings at high levels.

2. AR. Get rid of gear checks. Let us avoid agony by playing well. But AR is still helpful, so also let us get the gear by playing fractals. I made ascended armor solely for the AR, and I felt very stupid doing it. I would have much rather spent that big chunk of money (36 damask!) on horizontal progression, which is what you promised for the game originally. And I’m not making a set for an alt any time soon.

Or, even better, get rid of AR all together. It’s vertical progression in its purest form—spend hundreds of gold so you can play certain content!—and it’s awful. But this would be pretty hard to do without screwing up all your other additions, like special agony infusions that take even more hundreds of gold to make.

3. New fractals and higher levels. Especially higher levels. Give us more to do! But also, don’t remove any existing fractals to add new ones, like you did with TA. We want new content because we want more content, not because we want different content.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Topic Title: Updates to Fractal Currency and items

Goal: Make fractal currency viable again.

Proposal Overview: Allow fractal tokens to be used for a variety of ascended related items.

Proposal Details: Since launch, there have been no significant changes to what can be obtained from Buy-4373. At the same time, Ascended gear, arguably, has its main use in Fractals of the mists. Currently many of our hardcore fractal players are sitting on tens of thousands of relics and hundreds of rings. Thus, we should add support for the fractal currency to acquire new items from Buy-4373. In addition we should add a new vendor which would allow us to exchange items. The amounts listed below are for demonstration purposes:

Add New Items to the Fractal Vendor

• Amulets – 2000 fractal Relics
• Earrings/trinkets – 1900 Fractal Relics
• Dragonite ore – 5 Fractal Relics
• Bloodstone Dust – 5 Fractal Relics
• Empyreal Fragments – 5 Fractal Relics
• Add a simple white 20 slot bag to the vendor – 100 Fractal Relics
• Add Fractal Weapon Boxes to the vendor. – 5000 Fractal Relics
• Add the Fractal Tonic to the Vendor – 15000 Fractal Relics
• Add Fine infusions to the Vendor. – 3500 Fractal Relics

Add a Currency Exchange Vendor to Fractals.

• Fractal tokens for laurels. 100 Fractal Relics for 1 Laurel
• Fractal tokens for Karma jugs. 1 Fractal Relics per 10 Karma Point. A Jug of 6000 Karma = 600 relics.
• Fractal tokens for Guild Influence. 1 Fractal Relic per 10 Influence pts.
• Ring Exchange: 3 Rings for 1.
• Ring Exchange: 1 Ring for 5 Pristine Fractal Relics.

Goal of the Proposal:
While other parts of the game have been updated, the fractal currency has fallen behind. Currently, and without much sense, you cannot acquire ascended related materials in the place where it matters most: Fractals of the Mists. We are in need of a change that will add support to our existing currency by expanding its base, while at the same time introducing a mechanism to exchange fractal currency into other types of in game currency.

Although not perfect, the ideas above would certainly revive interest in Fractals and reward those that are brave enough to handle some of the hardest content in the game. I am honestly baffled why something like this didn’t make it into the Fractured patch.

Proposal Overview
Add a progression system to the instability levels. (Starting from 31 and up)

Goal of Proposal
The idea is to have players not skip through the instabilities they find too hard to do by joining the next instability level because it’s easier to get through.

Proposal Functionality
I will not say what kind of progression system, because there are many that can be implemented here. So that’s for us and Anet to decide, but some good examples would be "better rewards, unlocking gear, work towards a weapon/armor etc, etc.. Now I will say, this should be an optional path, if players want to keep progressing by skipping the hard instability levels, they should do so, and all they will get is a rank up in level but it won’t count towards the instability progression system input.

Associated Risks
It can take more than the current instability levels in place to complete your progression goal and will have to wait for more levels to be added, risking impatience from the community.

Harper.4173:

Proposal Overview

Create more fractals that are in some way related to GW1 or GW2 Lore.

Goal of Proposal

More content will incentivize players to start doing or come back to FOTM.

Proposal Functionality

If the added fractals would be related to lore in any way it could attract large numbers of players – we all remember the reaction of the player base to the possibility of a Abaddon fractal.

I cannot upvote this enough. Fractals related to GW1 would be great. A few that spring to mind:

• Boss Fights (Rurick/Lich, Shiro [First fight with the Jade Wind], Abbadon, Ossa vs. Joko, Great Destroyer, etc…)
• Major Events (Sinking of Orr, Searing of Ascalon, Ascension, Defeat of the Flame Legion, Unification of Cantha, etc…)

Anywho… maybe my nostalgia is too strong, but I was just giddy thinking of the possibilities.

CrazyCanuck.4265:

Proposal Overview
Fix the LFG to have certain requirements regarding your personal fractal level in order to join a given fractal.

Goal
Preventing level skipping, and inexperienced players joining a fractal much higher than their personal level.

Proposal
For the first three fractal tiers (1-10, 11-20, 21-30), players can join a fractal/LFG if their personal reward level is within one of those tiers. Ex. You are reward level 25, and you see a post for a level 29, you will be allowed to join and run this fractal. However if you were only personal reward level 15, you would not be able to join and run this fractal. For the next two tiers (31-40, 41-50) you can only join a fractal/LFG is your personal reward level is equal to that or greater of the the one you are joining. Ex. You are reward level 36 and you want to join a level 39 fractal in the LFG, you would not be able to join or run this fractal.

Without this, there isn’t any point to having different instabilities from 31-50, because everyone just levels up doing the easiest instabilities (36, 49), and the rest of them go completely untouched. This still allows for power leveling your friends through low level fractals, but once you reach the instabilities you are forced to play through the content as it was designed.

Associated Risks
LFGs may take longer to fill up, but I think the trade off of knowing that people in your group are at least of a certain experience/reward level would be worth it.

P.S. For the love of god please make it a requirement to be level 80 to join a Fractal LFG. If you have it on the regular dungeons it doesn’t make any sense to not have it on Fractals.

The level skipping was implemented solely because it was more of a pain and hindrance than anything.

Yes, I agree that people playing higher level fractals should have some minimal level of skill…

However, requiring people to progress level by level might result in some people getting stuck and certain levels without a way to progress further. (Especially if that level contains an instability that people consider wholly annoying.)

Proposal Overview
Introduce a token system for Fractal Weapons, using Pristine Fractal Relics.

Goal of the Proposal
Currently, acquiring a Fractal Weapon skin is a tedious exercise in RNG. The proposed Fractal Weapon Box would have solved this somewhat, but it is not currently in the game, and I’m not sure that making it drop at higher levels would be the optimal solution, given that some players could already get lucky and get the skin they want at a much lower level. A token system would make it a lot fairer by ensuring that players who have put a lot of time into Fractals can still get the skin they want.

Proposal Functionality
The number of Pristine Relics it would cost for a Fractal Weapon would have to be suitably high for it to retain its prestige. Perhaps 1000 Pristine Fractal Relics could be a good starting point. (If you’ve gotten that many Pristine Relics and STILL haven’t got the skin you’re after, I think you’re entitled to have one!)

I might add another post later regarding the Dredge fractal, but I think most of what I’d suggest have already been covered by other posters.

The three areas of improvement I think are most important to discuss are:
1) Rewards
2) Player Satisfaction
3) Lore

Fractals have a lot of juicy potential for lore in the game, there is a lot we could learn about the past and future of Tyria from it. But as things stand we don’t get to experience a whole lot of concrete details about it. I’m not a deep lorehound like some players so I would leave this to others to discuss, but as far as Rewards and Player Satisfaction goes I would put forward this proposal:

Proposal Overview
<A short description of the proposal that is being put forward>
To improve drops and player choice in fractals allowing for a better user experience.

Goal of Proposal
<What problem are you trying to solve with your proposal>
A lot of players spend extended periods of time rerolling fractals to get the easiest ones (IE Swamp) or to avoid harder ones (such as Grawl or Dredge). Or to drop fractals because of the lack of a crucial role in the party.

Rewards in fractals leave many players highly unsatisfied, that the greater length and time fractals require would be better spent farming in Southsun, on a Champ Train, or doing the shorter dungeon runs.

Proposal Functionality
<How does your proposal work in regard in relation to the current design of GW2>
The main feature I am proposing is the option to allow players to choose which fractals we want to do. Allowing us to customize our fractal experience. This is specifically only the option to do so, if we would rather not do that then we can choose to instead do it randomly as it always has been. To expedite this process I would say the instance owner should be the one to choose which fractals to do.

This would allow people to choose short and easy fractals if they just want an easy run. Or if they are looking for a challenge to choose the most challenging fractals one after another.

To promote the use of either feature, each fractal should have a “weighted” reward level. Swamp should not be worth as much as Dredge for example As Swamp is just about universally percieved as the fastest and easiest fractal it should be the cheapest fractal with the worst rewards. While Dredge being seen as the longest and hardest fractal having the best rewards. This would promote the voluntary acceptance of these harder fractals in exchange for much better rewards

The rewards in question could consist of:
-Fractal Relics (should be available for any fractal)
-Pristine Fractal Relics (For the harder fractals)
-Mist Essences (Once again for the harder fractals)
-Rare/Exotic Loot (For all fractals)
-Fractal Skins (For harder Fractals)
-Ascended Gear (rings, trinkets, etc)

Some of those being guaranteed drops others not.

For example for Swamp I would propose it should get:
*1-2 Fractal Relics per five levels of the fractal (1-2 on Frac Levels 1-5, 2-4 on frac levels 5-10, 3-6 on levels 11-15, etc, etc)
*A 10% chance at a rare drop and 1% chance at an exotic.

And then to compare, Dredge should get something like:
*2-4 Fractal Relics per five levels of the fractal (2-4 on Frac Levels 1-5, 4-8 on Frac levels 5-10, 6-12 on levels 11-15, etc, etc)
*1 Pristine Fractal Relic per ten levels of the fractal (1 on Frac Levels 1-10, 2 on Frac levels 11-20, etc)
*1 Mist Essence based on the fractal level (1-10 a Vial of Condensed Mist Essence, 11-20 a Glob of Coagulated Mist Essence, 21-30 a Shard of Crystallized Mist Essence, and multiple essences past that)
*A Chance at a Fractal Skin of some sort past Fractal Level 20, maybe a 10% chance.
*A good chance for rares, 50% or so, and a 20% chance at an exotic.
*5% chance at ascended gear past Fractal Level 10

-Cutting for length-

-Continuing on from previous post-

And then at the end of a run after the boss fractal, based on the difficulty of all fractals done, additional rewards would be given. Doing the hardest fractals should grant a 3-4 times greater reward than doing the easiest fractals.

To go along with this I would propose an increase in the number of things one could purchase with fractal relics to make it more exciting, maybe material bags to help facilitate ascended crafting. Ascended crafting materials being on sale. The other ascended accessories that you can’t purchase with relics, make it possible to infuse these other accessories besides just the back piece and rings to give the gift of ascension more use. However keep the majority of items with full stats on them or a direct use (such as item boxes/bags/etc) account bound

Obviously enough I am not proposing changing the fractals as they are too much as the variety in challenge and length is something I personally do like and believe can lead to interesting fractal designs in the future if the devs behind newer fractals aren’t worrying about those two factors. I would say making it easier to reset parts of fractals (such as the arms for colossus after a failure) would be good changes to make, but the actual difficulty should be kept intact.

Associated Risks
<What risks or problems can you foresee with this proposal which you would like to have assistance on from other members of the CDI>
Well I can’t see too much around some of this, but there are obviously issues:

The most obvious being this does lend itself to elitism amongst players looking to do the highest level of fractals and not doing lower levels because of the change in how rewards work.

The next most obvious is the programming issues and bugs that can occur from allowing the players to choose the fractals they do. And Fractals already have their fair share of issues that are being discussed.

While I am suggesting we keep the effect of fractals to the economy to a minimal, fractals should also at the same time promote one’s advancement in ascended gear. Namely producing better infusions and helping one get towards ascended armor and weapons. Which at this time would need items that would be things we could put on the open market.

Apologies for being a bit verbose there.

Zaxares.5419:

Proposal Functionality
The number of Pristine Relics it would cost for a Fractal Weapon would have to be suitably high for it to retain its prestige. Perhaps 1000 Pristine Fractal Relics could be a good starting point.

although I agree with the idea, but 1000 pristines? Um….

Proposal Overview
My suggestion is titled the The Infinite Gauntlet Fractal. The goal is to have an infinitely generated hallway [yet substantially wide]. There would be pillars, holes, and some endless drops from wall to wall that must be crossed by bridges. This will be filled with all sorts of different mobs, going from easier to harder as you progress further down the hallway, possibly with different themed groups of mobs as well.

The goal of this fractal is to simply go AS FAR as your group can handle before being overwhelmed by enemies, or not having enough dps/efficiency/support to go further. The goal is simply the longest linear distance that you can achieve with your group.

Also, this Fractal will go on forever (see Cube World for this concept). Alternatively, it could simply be made finite and very very difficult so that it is not possible to make it further in order to prevent logarithmically generated bugs.

Goal of Proposal
The goal is simply to focus on group play and “fighting through enemies” and objectives as a team unit. Many fractals are focused on getting to the end as fast as possible. This fractal would focus on forming good tactics in order to progress. While good tactics are helpful in other fractals, currently, as long as you are “good enough” you no longer have to try harder. This fractal focuses on group play tactics as primary advancement.

Proposal Functionality
This fractal (The Gauntlet Fractal, as I will call it) is to simply be a fractal that allows players to measure their group abilities by recording distance and determining how far they can make it with different skills, builds, and profession mix ups. Functionally, if you rolled this fractal, this would be the only one, as the length should potentially be the length of the normal fractals required to complete. Chests would be obtained at set periodic linear distances.

Associated Risks
Biggest challenge is getting this to auto-generate logrithmically without bugs that would frustrate players. Alternatively, it could simply be made farther and harder than thought possible to complete.

Second Risk is players hating it as it could be viewed as “elitist”.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Quick note to say that I am up to date on the proposals and small number of discussion points.

Chris

Not anymore!

—Editted—

Topic Title: Fractal-Weapon Chest!

Feature or Goal.:
Less frustration about the fact that not all classes can use all weapon types.

Proposal Overview
Embed a fractal weapon chest as reward in high level fractals. chance to get such a chest similar to the chance to get an ascended armor chest.

Goal of Proposal
There are people like me playing only one class and and getting fractal weapon skins they can’t use – that is normal, but, take me for example: i have got 9 (!!!) fractal weapon skins and not one skin for a thief (EDIT: i only have one character which I play) . getting 9 unusable fractal weapon skins had a chance of ~1-3% (with a chance of 100% (!!!) getting a fractal weapon skin)

Proposal Functionality
Implement the new chest – account bound – working like ascended weapon chest or ascended armor chest.

Associated Risks
The chance to get a fractal weapon chests should be lower than the chance getting a fractal weapon skin now. so the fractal weapon will stay a high end reward – the fractal weapon skin is already more rare then a legendary weapon.

I wanted to voice my opinion that I am against letting you choose which fractals you roll unless it is in the form of a “Practice Mode” which lets you select a single fractal with lower rewards.

If they let you pick which fractals you would roll at the start and then give you rewards based on those choices you would essentially have two types groups forming; those that want to finish the run as fast as possible choosing only the fastest/easiest fractals, and those that want the greatest rewards choosing only the longest/hardest fractals. All the fractals in the middle would become obsolete.

Even if non-randomized fractals didn’t increase your personal level once a person hits max fotm level they would end up falling into one of these two groups.

This would in essence eliminate the point of adding new fractals, people would just pick the 8 fractals (3 regular + 1 boss) which closest match one of those two groups. Keeping the randomness in fractals helps keep it from becoming stale and makes it seem much larger.

I had a fix in the Fractal Forums. But it looks like that got canned.

top 3 suggestions.

1: Consider your creation ( and for some reason, continuously making it harder in patches ) of the dredge fractal to be similar to the universe creating black holes for which all nearby matter to be uncontrollably sucked into it upon passing by. Make like the T-3 firey armor “oops” set, and remove it until you can make it comparable to other t3 fractals. see…my post in the fractal forums if you need a hand at that. or…the forty billion people that complain about the fractal on a daily basis.

2: LET US DO SOMETHING WITH THESE RINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( which could fix the “loot” issue….shhhhh its an idea within an idea )

3: It doesnt make any sense that you cant put +Agony Resistance in Fractal weapons. Just sayin.

all in all. their are lots of maps ( never get water anymore ) and its been a job well done. aside from dredge. i appreciate the unique dungeon environment that fractals allows us to experience and its been great not getting rewards for a year. i know that you will reward me for having 5 bank tabs of rings…I KNOW YOU WILL. cuz i love you…and thats what love is all about. rewards. :S thanks for the read. take care

Proposal Overview: Add Fractal specific, tradeable rewards

Goal of Proposal:
- Provide additional rewards for completing fractals that can be shown off or sold
- Use free market to balance difficulty vs reward of different fractals (i.e. Colossus, Dredge). All rewards being equal, the ones earned from harder fractals should end up being more expensive and therefore more lucrative for Fractal frequenters.
- Give people a reason to not re-roll quite so often, or at least not re-roll for the same fractal every time
- Keep content even more fresh as new fractals are added and give people a reason to learn/explore the new fractals
- Incorporate some of the other great suggestions I’ve seen in this thread into one overarching change

Proposal Functionality
The proposal is to add the chance for a fractal specific reward (or perhaps multiple fractal specific rewards) to the end chest of each individual fractal. For resurrected living world content, this could be rewards from that event. For Guild Wars 1 content, it could be the rewards earned from that content. For fractal exclusive content, it would need to be new rewards. These rewards could be weapon skins, armor skins, minis, tonics, or all of the above. Here are a few examples (including ideas for fractals mentioned in this thread that haven’t been added yet but would make great additions IMO):
Dredge – (new) Sonic Weapons with special audio affects
Aquatic Ruins – Ascended Breather
Uncategorized Fractal – Golem Tonics (Old Tom, Mr Mittens, Professor Mew, etc.)
Molten Boss – Fused Weapons
Molten Furnace – Sentinel recipes and/or Azurite orbs
Tower of Nightmares – Gas Mask Skin
Abaddon – Forgotten weapons
Domain of Anguish areas – Gemstones for Tormented Weapons, localized minis
Aurora Glade – Mini Demagogue

Associated Risks
- May dilute the value of fractal rewards if people can just buy the same rewards. Keeping the generic fractal rewards (fractal relics, fractal weapons, ascended equipment, etc) account bound should combat this to some extent. Also, if re-balancing is done to the fractals to make them more even, this is less necessary, but more account bound rewards in general will only exacerbate the current issues with the fractal reward system.
- This change also places the player somewhat at the mercy of RNG both for the drop rate and for the rolling of fractals if they are hunting for a specific reward. Solutions for this could include one of the previous proposals to let people choose their fractals and/or to add specific tokens to each fractal that are guaranteed to drop from the chest and can then be used to buy the given reward(s).

Stonecaduceus.5638:

Zaxares.5419:

Proposal Functionality
The number of Pristine Relics it would cost for a Fractal Weapon would have to be suitably high for it to retain its prestige. Perhaps 1000 Pristine Fractal Relics could be a good starting point.

although I agree with the idea, but 1000 pristines? Um….

I’m open to the actual number being tweaked. 1000 was just a ballpark figure I plucked from the air, since I’m sure there are Fractals regulars who have accumulated that many. I think it should be a minimum of 250 Pristine Fractal Relics for one though.

Sorry I was probably not as concise as I should have but I felt like I had to justify my statements. Please make fractals a better place !

Proposal Overview
Rewards reworked in order to make fractals appealing.

Goal of Proposal
Right now fractals are the most interesting content but are quite unsatisfying : people experienced in fractals are not rewarded enough for playing high level and people new to fractals have no real incentive to start as the first rewards are basically less gold than dungeons and tools to get higher in fractals.

Proposal Functionality
The idea here is to make rewards more consistent (instead of some sort of a time gamble) and appealing, getting closer to the dungeon model.

About gold : gold rewards do not need to go up the roof but it’d be better for them not to be insulting. The difficulty and time difference between a lv1 and a lv50 is worth way more than 50s. You should probably aim for a 2-4g total at lv50 and a linear progression so that any step further in fractals feels like an actual progress. Another good way to change gold rewards could be to give smaller amounts at the end of each fractal rather than everything after the boss : that way longer fractals can be less frustrating as they are more rewarding and failing to end for whatever reason wouldn’t be the end of the world.

About exclusive rewards : fractal weapons’ art is gorgeous and deserves an armor set. What players deserve however is a consistent way to obtain fractal gear. Fractal relics and pristine relics are failing as a reward because they are not giving access to actually interesting things. Offering fractal gear for those, even for high amounts (1000-1500 relics for a dual handed weapon ?) would make those actually attractive and fractal gear hunting less frustrating. Think of these as a dungeon reward system.
Ascended weapons and armors are a nice drop but since they are rare and you have no control over the stats you are getting it is almost negligible as a reward (you’re likely to be already geared when playing fractals).

Associated Risks
More players wanting to play fractals ? Happier fractal regulars ? Seriously though a problem could be a fractal gear trivialization, but if a fractal piece of equipment requires enough fractal relics while those relics are getting especially easy to obtain at the highest levels I think it’s just fair. On the other hand, players like who played tons of fractals but could never find a skin for my profession will be able to show they’re fractal runners.

I don’t mean to start a riot, but I would love to have an update on how the fractal leaderboards are going?

As for suggestion, make us harder content!
A lot of players love to challange themselves, hose players have loved the tequatl and wurm update.
I would love to see an update to fractals (higher tiers or what not) which made it seem close to impossible to complete at first glance

I will keep it simple: these are my 3 things that would motivate me to play fractals again.

1. Remove dredge fractal completely.
2. Add better rewards. Make each fractal have a small chance of dropping some special skin. Make it rare enough and good looking enough to make it actually worth something.
3. Do not add leaderboards. It would motivate a small number of players but it would also demotivate many others because they would realise they could never get high ranked enough so they would just stop.

1) no mandatory guardian in fractal….
2) don t change old skins rarity (if anything add new different)
3) balance length and reward (remove account bound from exo and add runes/sigils)

These come in no particular order:

1) Avoidable Agony
2) Dredge Fractal
3) Beginner and casual-friendliness

Details:
1) Should players that lack agony resistance be able to complete high-level Fractals nontheless (without dying)?
2) Dredge is a difficult point. What criticism is really justified?
3) Before adding new Fractals, the beginner-friendliness should be taken into consideration. I’d guess that new players have a hard time in figuring out how every Fractal works. Maybe a separate point: the length of a Fractals-run varies a lot and may be just too long for some players. However, listed here as a single point because I believe that they have the potential of being solved by a single change (though I don’t know which, yet)… also I only have 3 points to mention

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would like us to start of by listing the top three things we would like to see evolved in Fractal Design. Idea proposals can come after this stage.

Chris

1) Weapon skins purchasable with relics
2) Weapon skins purchasable with relics
3) Weapon skins purchasable with relics

Simply this, nothing else will get me back into fractals (472 complete)