Guild Wars 2

maxinion.8396:

Honestly I do agree with this. If a leaderboard exists, the only one that makes sense is a speed-running one, which can be fun but is not hugely interesting/motivating except to a very small portion of the playerbase. Better content/rewards/bugfixes/new fractals should be a much higher priority, because it is something that everyone can enjoy.

As I said a bit before, I think a speedrunning leaderboard would not be good. It would be nice for a very limited part of the playerbase, but it would impact everyone as even more people than now would play full zerker, even if they’re not good enough to do so.
As someone who pugs most of my runs, I’m already bored with so many people always dying because they “worship” the zerker stuff, even though they clearly can’t survive with it.

By implementing a speedrunning leaderboard, Anet would probably push even more people to go the full-zerker way, and we might get even more people dying again and again in our groups.

I’d like to make here one detailed example for as said a Ghosts of Ascalon-Heroic Fractal

Chapters would get unlocked by collectign enough Essences of Memories to rise up in the tome’s Memory Rank. Players start at Rank 0 by having to play first through the Prologue of each Tome of History, until you raise to Rank 1 unlocking that way Chapter 1. and so on…

R0 to R1 = 100 Essences of Memories. 40 Reward, 60 can be found in the Prologue.
R1 to R2 = 1000 Essences of Memories required
R2 to R3 = 10000 Essences of Memories required
R3 to R4 = 50000 Essences of Memories required.
—-

Just some inspiration for yor Devs, how I’d like to see something like Story Fractals (Heroic Fractals) getting implemented together with Tomes of Histories, that work just like the Books in GW1.
That way would be the story driven Fractals alot more, than just only single short Fractals, that you’d do only just one or two times, but more like multi-level Fractals, where you can slowly progress in them forward, like reading a book from Chapter to Chapter.
Rewards would be just interestign enough, that People will continously play them alot of times to earn their Essences of the Memories to unlock achievements, to unlock more of the story and to gain more Essences to gain quicker the required amounts to buy the rewards from the Historian NPC and to complete also the entries of the Tome of history, so that the completed Tome becomes a reward item, that you could trade into a special reward, like a large sum of Gold (10-15G, lots of Karma, Experience Scrolls that could boost a Character by 1-10 Levels and so on and so on)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

There is no ‘desperate’ need Romo. It is simply something I am interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on. The discussion so far has been very good.

Also please don’t assume that just because we are discussing or not discussing something that it either is or isn’t being given attention.

Chris

That’s completely understood Chris.

My intention is not assuming anything at all, I assure you. But with so little attention we’ve gotten over the past few months, I’m very nervous about what message you guys going to get from us.

I love fractals for what they are, even at the state they are right now, even though I still cringe every time I see that underground tunnel after a loading screen.

I hope you don’t misunderstand my stand on the topic at hand. I care for this part of the game more than any other area, even though I don’t spend as much time in it as I used to before the last patch.

I’m just glad that the conversation is being heard and hopefully thoroughly reviewed with attention it deserves. I apologize if I ever sound out of line.

Wethospu.6437:

phys.7689:

Your talking about competition, thats a bit different from replayability. In terms of having a fair competition against other players, random elements wouldnt help you. But in terms of having different/interesting challenges to deal with, and making each playthough different, random helps a lot.

now of course, if you are talking about competition, you have to have the same exact levels for every one, with the same enemies, then you can practice your mastery of learning specific and most effecient techniques, and accurately compare your performance to other people, but if we follow that path what do we have?

People doing the same 3 most effecient, most easy fractals, with the optimal party set ups, The replayability will be extremely low, except if the rewards are so good people feel they must do it.

I personally would give up a good competitive fair test type fractals for a fun/variable/semi unpredictable type fractal in a heart beat. The challenge i look for is more personal than about measuring myself against others. So for me, i dont mind if i have a harder fractal run than someone else, as long as we play well and overcome the challenges. Now, if the reward system rewards actually doing harder things, rather than mastery of the most efficient path, that, i think benefits everyone.

so yeah i think rolling isnt a great thing, i mean its only 1/4 fractals though, so it isnt the end of the world, but it doesnt add anything to fractals.

I mean the proof is there already, every one rolls swamp because it is the fastest fractal. Is it the funnest? not really, is it the most challenging? nope, is it the best designed? nope. Its the fractal that is the quickest stepping stone to getting the daily done as soon as possible.

It’s not about randomness not helping with competition. It’s about randomness completely killing any competitive play. You really can’t have any prestige if luck plays a big role in the outcome. For example, can you truly say you have beaten fractal scale 39 if you didn’t get Cliffside?

If people want only run same maps perhaps issue is with the maps? Increasing length of Swamp and decreasing length of Underground would be very easy to do and help a lot. No point having a bad system and forcing people to use it instead of fixing it.

Could you define fun / variable / semi unpredictable fractal? Why can’t normal fractals be fun? Do you think one well thought encounter would be less fun than a pool of simple encounters? Couldn’t variability come from multiple different instabilities with incentive to play all of them?

Yes, its like you said, the best way to make a fair competitive test, is for it to be completely uniform. Everyone has the same challenges, the same questions, the same tools. However, thats also not a very repeatable test. Because once people know the answers/way to get the answers, it becomes a test of memorization/speed rather than a test of intelligence/adaptability.

It however is probably a way more competitive test, than one where the questions were random, some people would get easy questions, or things they happen to know well.

Essentially i think that something designed to be fair in a competitive way, cant be very variable. but competitive and challenging/interesting are two different things. For example.
A fair competitive test in basketball might be shooting from a specific location repeatedly.
A variable/challenging/replayable one might be scoring versus any player on the opposing team.

The second test is a lot less fair, not a great way to compare to other shooters, but its a lot more variable, every time you do its different, and you may have to shoot from different places, different timing, etc.

As far as one well thought out encounter being fun, im saying i think every fractal should be well thought out, every fractal should be fun. But we both know the fun fractal is not necessarily the fractal that is the one that leads to finishing the daily the fastest.

Wethospu.6437:

I will try to sum up all current ideas to fix swamp rolling.

Balance maps
Keep tweaking length (priority) and difficulty (if needed) of the maps until there isn’t big incentive to roll. Basically make Swamp longer and make Underground shorter.

Pros:

• Easy to implement, doesn’t require any new mechanics
• Doesn’t really change how the game works (so no one should get kittened)

Cons:

• May need constant tweaking to reach the best result
• May not work with some instability combinations

Balance rewards
Instead of treating all maps equally with one big end reward, split it among the maps. Longer/harder maps would have more chests during the run meaning higher rewards.

Pros:

• Simple to implement, no extra mechanics needed

Cons:

• Removes/alters concept of daily chest (unless it remains)
• May not work with some instability combinations

Force first roll
Basically once you go in, your map selection would be saved and you wouldn’t get any other map until you have completed it.

Pros:

• Would prevent rolling

Cons:

• Doesn’t actually fix the problem, getting bad roll would become even more annoying
• Needs extra mechanics (probably bugs)
• Even less freedom for people to play how they want (for example can’t go practice starting fractals, etc).

Add daily quest with map selection
Allow players to take any map they want. Add daily quest to encourage completing specific maps.

Pros:

• Would give more freedom, people could play any map they want (useful when practicing or soloing)

Cons:

• Needs extra mechanics (probably bugs)
• People could do daily only with easy combinations (would need reward tweaking)

Rework
Instead of a run of 4 maps, have a run of 1 map. Allow selection of any map. Tie instabilities directly to the maps. Make progression separate for each map.

For more detail you can check my earlier post

Pros:

• Would remove randomness -> more competitive
• Would reduce time requirement -> more casual
• Would allow better instabilities
• Would eliminate rolling
• Would support very hard content
• Would support infinite scaling while keeping it expandable

Cons:

• Would require big amount of work
• Would require some kind of progression reset/transformation
• Would be a bold change

I think the best technique of your choices is to balance rewards, after all the main purpose of fractals now is beat 4 fractals as fast as possible once a day. (this is the rewarded behavior) one of the reasons people hate long fractals/difficult fractals is because it isnt to your advantage to do it.

I dont really like the idea of rebalancing every fractal to be similar speed. I feel it homgenizes the design of fractals and kills the creativity(development) and the ability of fractals to offer different challenges. For example, swamp is not a poorly designed fractal, its just a fractal whose main challenge is coordination, knowledge of the area/pitfalls and execution. Making it longer would not make it better, it would probably make it worse/miss the point.

as i suggested earlier, i think that fractals should get a bonus reward, which scales based on current data on that fractal

• how many times its been succeeded versus rolled
• how long it takes to complete in general
• how many player deaths

this is automated, and will adapt to whatever cheese people come up with, the best rewards will be for the least played least succeeded, longest to complete, most deadly fractals, which makes sense.
I would tie these rewards to fractal specific things essentially allowing you reroll on the type of things you might want from fractal chests.

Iason Evan.3806:

fabipm.4359:

- Dredge fractal trouble

Remove Dredge fractal until being made to last 20 minutes. Test it through dedicated testers.

- Rolling.
Tier 1 = current Tier 1
Tier 2 = current Tier 2 + remaining Tier 1
Tier 3 = current Tier 3 (except dredge) + remaining Tier 2 + remaining Tier 1

- Rewards.
- Gold reward = fractal level x 10 silver.
- Salvage or sell ascended rings for 50 silver
- Guaranteed token for skins for fractal 40+
- Random Skin chest to be able to choose skin (increase to 10% chance to get one at 40+)
- Random ascended stuff (weapon or armor) without fixed stats to be able to chose.

That, and I will do fractals again.

This is a pretty clean band aid until more long term solutions can be implemented. Better than nothing and an easy fix for now. /approved as triage until long term solution is in place. Would anyone be against this as a short term solution?

Exactly, this solution was intended to be a short-term one. Like a “fix” to the fractals.
Because I think it is very simple to be done and implemented.

And one more point to be raised.
Why do I loot more interesting stuff when doing a F11 compared to a F49 ? This should NOT be happening. At some point, reward chest at the end of fractal shall offer guaranteed good loot…

I think the biggest flaw with rolling, is it makes the short teir fractals come down to one fractal, if they create a new fractal tommorow thats faster/more efficient than swamp, no one will do swamp again.

If they make 2 new excellently designed short teir fractals, no one will ever see them because people are rolling swamp.

not sure the best solution, even if they lock the fractal to the instance, people will just remake the room, or try to get other people to open new rooms till they get.

It often surprises me how inefficient people will be chasing the easy/efficient answer. For example many of the times people tried to jump/scale walls/warp in dredge fractal to get to the switch room, which takes longer than just having people do it the real way, especially at lower levels, when the spawns are pretty light

phys.7689:

I think the biggest flaw with rolling, is it makes the short teir fractals come down to one fractal, if they create a new fractal tommorow thats faster/more efficient than swamp, no one will do swamp again.

If they make 2 new excellently designed short teir fractals, no one will ever see them because people are rolling swamp.

not sure the best solution, even if they lock the fractal to the instance, people will just remake the room, or try to get other people to open new rooms till they get.

It often surprises me how inefficient people will be chasing the easy/efficient answer. For example many of the times people tried to jump/scale walls/warp in dredge fractal to get to the switch room, which takes longer than just having people do it the real way, especially at lower levels, when the spawns are pretty light

That’s already the case with underwater fractal. Nobody does it anymore. The easiest fix would be bringing the selection to being completely random just like it used to be before Fractured. That way we would get verity of levels again without any problems.
For example yesterday I’ve gotten Swamps → Cliffside and…. Dredge. T1 and 2 T3s… How is that fair? Getting rid of Tier system would still have this kind of scenario happening, but the possibility of this happening would be much, much smaller than it is now.

Romo.3709:

That’s already the case with underwater fractal. Nobody does it anymore. The easiest fix would be bringing the selection to being completely random just like it used to be before Fractured. That way we would get verity of levels again without any problems.
For example yesterday I’ve gotten Swamps -> Cliffside and…. Dredge. T1 and 2 T3s… How is that fair? Getting rid of Tier system would still have this kind of scenario happening, but the possibility of this happening would be much, much smaller than it is now.

Title: Randomized Tier Assignments

Goal of Proposal

Create a mixture of random fractals and tiered fractals

Proposed Functionality

Would it be possible to leave the fractal tier assignments, but still make it random? What I mean is, what if dredge (and other T3s) remained a T3 fractal, but it could pop randomly as any of the 3 fractals. They could program it so that you will only get one T3 fractal, but it could happen 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Then you wouldn’t have to run the risk of having more than 1 long fractal, but you could still have a chance to run all of the others.

You will run only one T1 fractal, one T2, and one T3, but they could come in any order.

Alternatively, they could reverse the order of tiers (T3 always comes first) so you can get the longer fractal over with first. They could also make it so that if a fractal is in two tiers (like cliffside) you wouldn’t be assigned a dual-tier fractal if you had already completed one from the tier pool (i.e. If you did dredge first, no other T3s or T2/T3s would be given).

This could be given as an option when entering at the beginning of the run, kind of like dungeon paths. “Which path would you like to enter first: short, medium, or long”

Associated Risks

This would probably promote some sort of “reverse-rolling” where players would roll for their T3 first to make sure they don’t get dredge, but at least then it wouldn’t be so frustrating to realize you have a fail party after already completing 2 fractals.

Dietere.3476:

-snip-

Rolling for higher Tier fractal first would be much better idea. Especially considering that you get the hardest one last as of now, you’d know right away if your group can take the harder one up front, rather than finding out an hour later that you just wasted an evening.

Dietere.3476:

Associated Risks

This would probably promote some sort of “reverse-rolling” where players would roll for their T3 first to make sure they don’t get dredge, but at least then it wouldn’t be so frustrating to realize you have a fail party after already completing 2 fractals.

This is exactly what would happen. People would just roll for Aetherblade putting Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge (and possibly Cliffside if they move that exclusively to where it belongs) in the exact same spot as Water right now.

Plus it would be even worse since Anet would have no real incentive to make future Tier 3 fractals since no one is going to run it anyway or it will just replace another fractal (like how they have no incentive to make T1 fractals now).

GoldenTruth.2853:

Dietere.3476:

Associated Risks

This would probably promote some sort of “reverse-rolling” where players would roll for their T3 first to make sure they don’t get dredge, but at least then it wouldn’t be so frustrating to realize you have a fail party after already completing 2 fractals.

This is exactly what would happen. People would just roll for Aetherblade putting Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge (and possibly Cliffside if they move that exclusively to where it belongs) in the exact same spot as Water right now.

Plus it would be even worse since Anet would have no real incentive to make future Tier 3 fractals since no one is going to run it anyway or it will just replace another fractal (like how they have no incentive to make T1 fractals now).

Would that really be such a bad thing? Rolling isn’t going to stop anytime soon unless some of the previously suggested changes are made, so this “reverse-rolling” wouldn’t technically be any different. It would, however, alleviate some of the fear of the T3 roll.

This way it wouldn’t be “Let’s roll swamp so we are guaranteed at least 1 easy one,” but rather “Let’s roll Aether (or whatever T3) so we are guaranteed only 1 relatively difficult one.” Sure, you might still get something like cliffside for the T2, but if you have the guarantee that you won’t have to do cliffside > dredge then it would be more tolerable.

I agree with the incentive point though. Why spend time making new T1s if people are always going to skip them? I guess that’s where the “just make swamp automatically first” argument comes from.

People are calling for more short-length fractals though. I say leave the T3s how they are, reverse the roll order (T3 comes first) and make more T2 and T1s.

Or just remove all tiers, balance all fractals to similar length/difficulty, and have an open pool of rolls for all 3 fractals like before.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Title: Reward for not rolling for Fractals

Goal: Encourage the player-base to experience all of the fractals.

Proposal: Add a Magic find, money, or karma reward bonus if all players start a fractal stage at once.

Proposal detail:
Currently, the Underwater Fractal is seldomly done. Swamp is the preferred tier one fractal of the fractal community. To encourage exploration of all that Fractals have to offer, I propose a bonus when the entire party selects a stage together, and completes that stage together.

If the team leaves the fractal stage by going back to the Fractal home base, The bonus is permanently lost and a timed penalty of 30 minutes is implemented. The penalty will prevent people for getting the bonus again for a minimum of 30 minutes.

The bonus can be something simple like a Magic Find Bonus, Karma Bonus at the end, or Money Bonus at the end of the fractal run. The bonus should be good enough to encourage people to stay with their first fractal.

To complete this proposal the tier system needs to be revisited.

Associated Risks:
Player community might dislike the penalty for rolling for a specific fractal.

This was my proposed solution, which was not in the list of “solutions” even when I posted it days and days ago.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

By implementing a speedrunning leaderboard, Anet would probably push even more people to go the full-zerker way, and we might get even more people dying again and again in our groups.

Speed Running for recognition doesn’t make people wear Berserker.

The absence of danger that can’t be negated by rolling makes people wear Berserker.

Defensive stats in these game are rendered completely irrelevant by the ‘action gameplay’. Specifically, NPCs having an attack tempo that’s a fraction of the players’ tempo and having the majority of their threat presented as infrequent, wildly telegraphed gigantic hits that rarely ever land. Who needs Toughness when the hit will kill you outright if it connects? Who needs Vitality if it won’t give you margin for error when you miss a key dodge? Too often the only meaningful defense is dodge well and the only way to improve your chances of success doing that is to make the fight as short as possible, to reduce the number of times your dodging skills are checked. Over reliance on Dodge by the content designers has made Berserker the best defensive stat combo in the game.

Plenty of skilled delvers would tell you that they could ignore Agony Resistance too (another defensive stat…) if it weren’t for the occasions where you can’t dodge Agony.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Asia Skyly.7198:

Title: Reward for not rolling for Fractals

Goal: Encourage the player-base to experience all of the fractals.

Proposal: Add a Magic find, money, or karma reward bonus if all players start a fractal stage at once.

Proposal detail:
Currently, the Underwater Fractal is seldomly done. Swamp is the preferred tier one fractal of the fractal community. To encourage exploration of all that Fractals have to offer, I propose a bonus when the entire party selects a stage together, and completes that stage together.

If the team leaves the fractal stage by going back to the Fractal home base, The bonus is permanently lost and a timed penalty of 30 minutes is implemented. The penalty will prevent people for getting the bonus again for a minimum of 30 minutes.

The bonus can be something simple like a Magic Find Bonus, Karma Bonus at the end, or Money Bonus at the end of the fractal run. The bonus should be good enough to encourage people to stay with their first fractal.

To complete this proposal the tier system needs to be revisited.

Associated Risks:
Player community might dislike the penalty for rolling for a specific fractal.

This was my proposed solution, which was not in the list of “solutions” even when I posted it days and days ago.

No need to get offended if I haven’t read / can’t remember over 600 posts. You aren’t that special.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Dietere.3476:

Associated Risks

This would probably promote some sort of “reverse-rolling” where players would roll for their T3 first to make sure they don’t get dredge, but at least then it wouldn’t be so frustrating to realize you have a fail party after already completing 2 fractals.

This is exactly what would happen. People would just roll for Aetherblade putting Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge (and possibly Cliffside if they move that exclusively to where it belongs) in the exact same spot as Water right now.

Plus it would be even worse since Anet would have no real incentive to make future Tier 3 fractals since no one is going to run it anyway or it will just replace another fractal (like how they have no incentive to make T1 fractals now).

I think the best solution to this would be to just make tier list a rolling thing. All T1 fractals are also in T2, all T1 and T2 fractals are in T3. That way you get more variety across the board, things like Underwater become common again, and it also has the added bonus of making the not fun cliffside + dredge run a LOT less likely to happen.

Dietere.3476:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Dietere.3476:

Associated Risks

This would probably promote some sort of “reverse-rolling” where players would roll for their T3 first to make sure they don’t get dredge, but at least then it wouldn’t be so frustrating to realize you have a fail party after already completing 2 fractals.

This is exactly what would happen. People would just roll for Aetherblade putting Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge (and possibly Cliffside if they move that exclusively to where it belongs) in the exact same spot as Water right now.

Plus it would be even worse since Anet would have no real incentive to make future Tier 3 fractals since no one is going to run it anyway or it will just replace another fractal (like how they have no incentive to make T1 fractals now).

Would that really be such a bad thing? Rolling isn’t going to stop anytime soon unless some of the previously suggested changes are made, so this “reverse-rolling” wouldn’t technically be any different. It would, however, alleviate some of the fear of the T3 roll.

This way it wouldn’t be “Let’s roll swamp so we are guaranteed at least 1 easy one,” but rather “Let’s roll Aether (or whatever T3) so we are guaranteed only 1 relatively difficult one.” Sure, you might still get something like cliffside for the T2, but if you have the guarantee that you won’t have to do cliffside > dredge then it would be more tolerable.

I agree with the incentive point though. Why spend time making new T1s if people are always going to skip them? I guess that’s where the “just make swamp automatically first” argument comes from.

People are calling for more short-length fractals though. I say leave the T3s how they are, reverse the roll order (T3 comes first) and make more T2 and T1s.

Or just remove all tiers, balance all fractals to similar length/difficulty, and have an open pool of rolls for all 3 fractals like before.

I’m just saying I think reversing the fractal tiers would cause more problems than solutions since it effectively removes a chunk of the fractals.

Currently I think the T1→T2→T3 is fine. Anet could probably find a solution to stop rolling, but Water is only one fractal and is clearly not the pinnacle of dungeon design compared to other fractals.

I feel like all they really need to do is switch some things around tier wise and make the dredge fractal more in line with the length of the other tier 3 fractals (which many people have posted solutions on).

- Cliffside: Make exclusively T3
- Aetherblade: Make it so you can get it as T2 or T3 and raise the base damage of the laser beam, it currently does almost no damage besides agony, whereas the much harder to dodge (if people ever did it the non stacking way) AoE’s in the room before do a ton more damage plus agony (should remove the agony damage).
- Dredge: Take suggestions from this CDI on how to improve it

I would be very interested in seeing Anet add two brand new T2 fractals rather than just one T3 fractal like Thaumanova though.

Wethospu.6437:

No need to get offended if I haven’t read / can’t remember over 600 posts. You aren’t that special.

I was not offended at all.
Is unfortunate that I cannot convey feelings in short text. But no disrespect was taken.

I reposted it for exactly the same reasons you list. The thread is up to 13 pages and it is hard to keep up with all the suggestions. It would be absurd to ask someone to be up to date with all 13 pages, well anyone but Chris. His plate is loaded!

Nike.2631:

Speed Running for recognition doesn’t make people wear Berserker.

The absence of danger that can’t be negated by rolling makes people wear Berserker.

Defensive stats in these game are rendered completely irrelevant by the ‘action gameplay’. Specifically, NPCs having an attack tempo that’s a fraction of the players’ tempo and having the majority of their threat presented as infrequent, wildly telegraphed gigantic hits that rarely ever land. Who needs Toughness when the hit will kill you outright if it connects? Who needs Vitality if it won’t give you margin for error when you miss a key dodge? Too often the only meaningful defense is dodge well and the only way to improve your chances of success doing that is to make the fight as short as possible, to reduce the number of times your dodging skills are checked. Over reliance on Dodge by the content designers has made Berserker the best defensive stat combo in the game.

Plenty of skilled delvers would tell you that they could ignore Agony Resistance too (another defensive stat…) if it weren’t for the occasions where you can’t dodge Agony.

Are you complaining about attack speed of mobs in Fractals CDI? Are you aware that majority of mobs in fractals attack almost as fast or just as fast as players?

I’m not sure how berserker’s gear is a defensive gear during fights with mossman or archdiviner when you go down after every single autoattack of them, unlike players with more tanky setups. Fights also don’t take 20 seconds but more like 2 minutes or more.

Saying toughness and vitality are worthless is a huge hyperbole. People are not machines and none of us can dodge with 100% reliability. I’m all for increasing difficulty level in dungeons but fractals mobs attack fast enough and this entire thread is dedicated strictly to fractals.

JohnnySupernova.9182:

I think the best solution to this would be to just make tier list a rolling thing. All T1 fractals are also in T2, all T1 and T2 fractals are in T3. That way you get more variety across the board, things like Underwater become common again, and it also has the added bonus of making the not fun cliffside + dredge run a LOT less likely to happen.

This sounds pretty reasonable. It satisfies the swamp rollers who can keep their guaranteed easy 1st roll, and gives better chances for everyone to not get stuck with tough a tough T3 roll. Still possible to get a bad combo (like cliffside>dredge) but less likely.

Problems would arise, however, depending on how they decide to implement the leaderboards. If we are timing a full run speed clear, it shouldn’t be left up to the RNG of which fractals you get. It would have to be fair or it wouldn’t be, you know, fair. Not that I care AT ALL about leaderboards, but I’ll fight for those who are interested.

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
-Voltaire

JohnnySupernova.9182:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Dietere.3476:

Associated Risks

This would probably promote some sort of “reverse-rolling” where players would roll for their T3 first to make sure they don’t get dredge, but at least then it wouldn’t be so frustrating to realize you have a fail party after already completing 2 fractals.

This is exactly what would happen. People would just roll for Aetherblade putting Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge (and possibly Cliffside if they move that exclusively to where it belongs) in the exact same spot as Water right now.

Plus it would be even worse since Anet would have no real incentive to make future Tier 3 fractals since no one is going to run it anyway or it will just replace another fractal (like how they have no incentive to make T1 fractals now).

I think the best solution to this would be to just make tier list a rolling thing. All T1 fractals are also in T2, all T1 and T2 fractals are in T3. That way you get more variety across the board, things like Underwater become common again, and it also has the added bonus of making the not fun cliffside + dredge run a LOT less likely to happen.

Problem with this is it drastically reduces the chance you will roll any specific T3 fractals (which also decreases the incentive for Anet to make a T3 fractal) and it makes the overall difficulty of FotM much easier.

I do think the first part of your idea (including all T1 fractals to T2) would be a good idea though, since people are going to roll for swamp anyway (so only 1 fractal gets updated to the T2 roll as opposed to 2-4 to T3) and keeps Water as a possibility (though they still need to fix AR issues there).

What they could also do, is simple make a new series of tier 1 fractals, and include the Swamp among them. So players no longer have to specifically roll for the Swamp, since all tier 1 fractals would be of equal difficulty to the swamp.

I also think the bosses need some balancing. The Jaw Maw is still really simple, while Mai Trin is slightly more challenging, and the Molten Duo is really tough. The Flame Shaman is also a very tough boss, but oddly enough not among the final bosses. Which is weird, since I’d much rather face the Jade Maw or Mai Trin than the Flame Shaman.

Difficulty right now is all over the place.

haviz.1340:

Are you complaining about attack speed of mobs in Fractals CDI? Are you aware that majority of mobs in fractals attack almost as fast or just as fast as players?

Which mobs? Because I know we’re not talking about the Krait, the cultists, the Sons of Svanir, jade shards, the Dredge…

I guess Bloomhunger has a pretty quick tempo.

Could be my baseline for players is skewed since I don’t roll Hammer or Greatsword all that often .

I’m not sure how berserker’s gear is a defensive gear during fights with mossman or archdiviner when you go down after every single autoattack of them, unlike players with more tanky setups. Fights also don’t take 20 seconds but more like 2 minutes or more.

Perfect. Then encouraging berserker WON’T be an outcome of introducing speed clear leaderboards. Which would be why the comment was made in regards to Fractals.

Wethospu.6437:

And what if dungeons and fractals were truly random? There could literally be zero competition. Difficulty and length of every run would be affected by luck. Lupicus records already suffer from random mob behavior. Also if the content was hard enough, then there would be a risk of getting stuck if you get some hard events.

Do you realize how much content they would have to add to keep an element of surprise? Just few random events there and there wouldn’t do because you would have already seen all of them after couple of runs. If they just tweak some enemy parameters (color, amount) then it barely makes any difference.

Personally I would rather see them working on a more skill based content. Lots of encounters could use some extra mechanics to make them more complex. Also removing linearity would be a big step for competition as it would allow different tactics.

I’ll start out in my reply by stating that I actually do enjoy the fact that there is RNG hindering me in Lupicus solo times. I rage, I rage and I rage because I get 3 swarms every single attack cycle and complain about it but secretly it’s what keeps me coming back for more. I have something to hunt for! I don’t want everything handed out to me on a silver platter. I VERY much enjoy the fact that I’m not 100% certain if he’s about to kick or if he’s going to delay it slightly. Like I said, there is the element of surprise. Sometimes he double kicks, sometimes he does a sudden AoE barrage on phase 2 and sometimes he doesn’t even do it at all and keeps doing his normal ranged attacks for a suspiciously long period of time. You may not enjoy it, but if you knew EVERY single next move of his, then really… I can’t imagine it being as fun of a boss fight as it is.

I get the point that you’re making, but luck has to be a factor involved in gameplay as well as skill. Not just one or the other.

“And what if dungeons and fractals were truly random?”

Sorry… but… that would be a theoretical impossibility

I understand what you’re getting at, but you over-exaggerated / generalized what I said. I was implying that I want more randomization implemented with the dungeon content so that it isn’t so linear and predictable.

“Do you realize how much content they would have to add to keep an element of surprise? Just few random events there and there wouldn’t do because you would have already seen all of them after couple of runs. If they just tweak some enemy parameters (color, amount) then it barely makes any difference.”

Yeah, and I think it’s worth it in the longrun. If Jagex was able to do it on Runescape with dungeoneering then Arenanet sure as hell can too. I’m aware of the fact that there will always be a limit with how much of a variation with dungeon steps / content they could implement, but once again I emphasize my point; as long as there is a certain degree of uncertainty with what I will encounter in the dungeon, it makes for great replayable content.

As for your last statement, no one said anything about wanting them to trivialize their content even more so than it already is or avoid making certain encounters more skill-oriented. I want that too. I’m simply stating that knowing exactly what I’m going to find and fight and have to do in every single dungeon is much less exciting than the idea of “never know what I’m gonna get this time” or “hope I get such-and-such as a boss this time and not such-and-such.”

P.S. thanks for the reply. Glad to discuss this with ya.

Nike.2631:

Which mobs? Because I know we’re not talking about the Krait, the cultists, the Sons of Svanir, jade shards, the Dredge…

I guess Bloomhunger has a pretty quick tempo.

Could be my baseline for players is skewed since I don’t roll Hammer or Greatsword all that often .

Make a video how you dodge all of the autoattacks of cultists, ascalonians, dredges, mossman, archdiviner and aetherblades. I’m not sure you are aware of that but you have 2 dodges every 20 seconds and you fight more than 1 of those mobs at the same time.

I really like to see you dodging those highly telegraphed 0.5 seconds autoattacks with easiness. After all, there’s no risk in going full glass cannon. Only thing you achieve with increasing attacks rate without vastly decreasing their damage is even less variety of professions. I have one simple rule, if the content is too hard for you, grab more guardians. Always works since guardians bring too much defense while having a lot of offense potential.

I’m not sure why do you want defensive stats to matter more. They already are strong enough and if you make them obligatory in pve how would that be different from playing classical trinity games?

Substantiate your claims with some kind of proof like a video.

Proposal 1 Overview

- Separation of fractal level and Mistlock Instabilities.
- Mistlock Instability improvement and use like jubilee gambits.
- Fractal level cap increase and agony skill hike.

Goal of Proposal

- Choosing your difficulty scale by gauging how much damage and agony you can take or dodge, this increases the drive to gather gear and resistance alongside your improving player skill.
- Adding optional Mistlock Instabilities that you can stack together to test your skill like the Queen’s jubilee Gambits.
- Changing the formula away from its current state where you only see a few Instabilities that make little to no difference at all.

Proposal Functionality

Increasing your Fractal level should increase monster damage and health linearly and your agony damage exponentially.
As you reach higher fractals and the agony damage exponentially grows requiring either more resistance or a higher level of skill.
Guaranteed agony applications should be removed and replaced with the ability using player skill to completely avoid agony (Boss start agony). At the Fractal level cap (raise it to 80) agony should still be an issue with high resistance.

Mistlock Instabilities are added separately in the Mistlock Observatory like the gambits during the queens jubilee. Stacking multiple Instabilities will increase your reward.

Associated Risks

- Players may feel obtaining agony resistance for higher levels is required.
- Rewards for adding multiple Mistlock Instabilities could be hard to keep balanced.
- Combination of some Instabilities may be impossible and require changing.

Proposal 2 Overview
Fractal Median System

Goal of Proposal
Remove the bad RNG from the fractal rotation and install a fairer system that equalizes time and difficulty over the 3 fractals to a median length.
Also disincentives restarting the fractal until you get swamp and giving more variety to the fractal combinations.

Proposal Functionality

Remove the old fractal tier system and replace it a Fractal Median system.
Each fractal is assigned a value between 0.5 and 1.5 depending on length, complexity or overall difficulty.

Fractal A
Random draw from the entire pool of non boss fractals with equal chance.

Fractal B
Chance percentages are drawn up for the remaining fractals depending on the value of the previous fractal (if you previously got a 0.6 fractal then the 1.4 fractal would have the highest chance of appearing next. The farther the difficulty from 1.4 the lesser chance of occurring).
B = 2 – A

Fractal C
Picks the fractal that will bring the cumulative value across them all to 3 (or as close as it can).
C = 3 – ( A + B )

Associated Risks

Accurate judging and listing of the difficulties.
Team composition will affect the difficulty differently.
Triangular distribution in favour for medium length third fractals.

I just wonder about how many people do not play fractals because they are intimidated by the format and early difficulty. What I would do is lower the difficulty significantly for the first few levels to let beginner and more casual players get a feel for them. Maybe even reduce the 4 fractals in a level so that they are more approachable to casual play. Only talking about the first few levels here, say 1-5 to make them more accessible. Adjust rewards accordingly.

I’ve stopped playing Fractals, because of the repetition. Maybe this can be addressed as well:

-There are no surprises. Every time you do a Fractal, it is exactly the same.
-There are no rewards to work towards.
-Increasing your AR is a grind. I hate grind. Get rid of grind.
-Rewards are not equal to the time invested. If you roll the dredge fractal or flame shaman, and you also get the Molten Duo as your end boss, prepare for a very long run, a couple of armor repairs, and exactly the same reward as usual.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

MokahTGS.7850:

I also would like Fractals (and to a lesser extent, Dungeons) to evolve to allow for 2-5 player scaling. I know they are currently designed for 5 people, but I’d like to see the balance code reworked in such a way that 2 people could run through a fractal and be rewarded for that level scale. Obviously 5-man fractals would reward more, but I personally just want to run through them with my wife…currently that isn’t possible.

Call it “Casual-mode” for Fractals.

Personally I would like to see Fractals be able to be 5+ as well with associated risk/reward mechanics.

Chris

This is something I didnt even consider as part of the discussion, but love seeing it and think it deserves more attention/discussion.

The idea of fractals with different sized groups would go over insanely well in my guild. Just last night, we had 7 people wanting to do fractals and had to arbitrarily leave two friends out of the run.

Been doing this for so many years in MMOs with 5 man content that it’s become the norm. This single change would really set GW2 apart and give us a way to better play with friends (and as a GM of a large guild, it would allow me to schedule a guild fractal night without having to worry about leaving people out).

Blaeys.3102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

MokahTGS.7850:

I also would like Fractals (and to a lesser extent, Dungeons) to evolve to allow for 2-5 player scaling. I know they are currently designed for 5 people, but I’d like to see the balance code reworked in such a way that 2 people could run through a fractal and be rewarded for that level scale. Obviously 5-man fractals would reward more, but I personally just want to run through them with my wife…currently that isn’t possible.

Call it “Casual-mode” for Fractals.

Personally I would like to see Fractals be able to be 5+ as well with associated risk/reward mechanics.

Chris

This is something I didnt even consider as part of the discussion, but love seeing it and think it deserves more attention/discussion.

The idea of fractals with different sized groups would go over insanely well in my guild. Just last night, we had 7 people wanting to do fractals and had to arbitrarily leave two friends out of the run.

Been doing this for so many years in MMOs with 5 man content that it’s become the norm. This single change would really set GW2 apart and give us a way to better play with friends (and as a GM of a large guild, it would allow me to schedule a guild fractal night without having to worry about leaving people out).

as long as they dont balance fractals around 5+ people, i dont mind, but also you have to realize no matter what number they pick, people will get left out.

well dredge makes things slower/more annoying
rolling makes things easier/more predictable

I think people would pick dredge for changes.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Personally yes. I like the rolling as it is and as a lower lvl fotm player I’d prob baulk against any suggestion to kick more fractals up to the higher tiers and be in accessible. One of the big selling points on FOTM was that it was a series of random dungeons of up to 20mins each (approx.). Dredge doesn’t fit that. It would also need to ensure no skipping can be taken – that’s just completely against the nature of the game and needs discouraging at all costs.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

phys.7689:

Blaeys.3102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

MokahTGS.7850:

I also would like Fractals (and to a lesser extent, Dungeons) to evolve to allow for 2-5 player scaling. I know they are currently designed for 5 people, but I’d like to see the balance code reworked in such a way that 2 people could run through a fractal and be rewarded for that level scale. Obviously 5-man fractals would reward more, but I personally just want to run through them with my wife…currently that isn’t possible.

Call it “Casual-mode” for Fractals.

Personally I would like to see Fractals be able to be 5+ as well with associated risk/reward mechanics.

Chris

This is something I didnt even consider as part of the discussion, but love seeing it and think it deserves more attention/discussion.

The idea of fractals with different sized groups would go over insanely well in my guild. Just last night, we had 7 people wanting to do fractals and had to arbitrarily leave two friends out of the run.

Been doing this for so many years in MMOs with 5 man content that it’s become the norm. This single change would really set GW2 apart and give us a way to better play with friends (and as a GM of a large guild, it would allow me to schedule a guild fractal night without having to worry about leaving people out).

as long as they dont balance fractals around 5+ people, i dont mind, but also you have to realize no matter what number they pick, people will get left out.

From a brain storming standpoint I think 5+ fractals would be their own entity within fractals and thus be balanced for 5+ only.

Chris

instanced raid(high number of player) content eh? never really liked that much, but it might be just me.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Why do you personally think those two issues are way more important than getting a System in place that makes Fractals challenging ….. and more stuff

Though i think Patrikan maybe overly passionate, i have to agree, that in the big picture of what fractals needs, and the evolution of fractals in general, these issues are small in comparison.

These are balance fixes, they dont really evolve fractals and make them more interesting to that many more players, high level or low level. but yeah if you had to choose between those two it would probably be dredge for most i think.

but taking a look at dredge, I’d say the larger problem is that fractals as is, represents a race to complete the daily as easily as possible. Dredge is hated partially because it is a bikitteniment to that goal.
By changing the focus of fractals to be less of a lowest possible time to beat daily, you will probably fix both problems, and future problems with fractals that are short or masterable, and fractals that are long, and not easily mastered.

Point is, award people differently for doing different fractals, change the focus from being beat as soon/easy as possible to beating whatever challenges are thrown at you.

that said, dredge does have some design issues that are probably fundamentally off, even if the length doesnt change.

I think if all Fractals are equal (for time, rewards, difficulty), rerolling becomes a non-issue. Tune the various Fractals to be similarly scaled with regards to time and effort and I believe people wouldn’t be so prone to reroll. A polish pass to bring all of them in line (especially Dredge, since it’s overly long/difficult) might mitigate a need to work on rolling.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

100% yes. Did Fractals last night and Dredge came up. Took 51 minutes. (We were playing a bit above, maybe 5 scales or so, our normal level and had a few people low on AR, so that could explain part of the length. But still.)

It was much more stress than it was fun for nearly an hour. Ugh.

Out of curiosity, has anybody else timed their Dredge runs? How long does it take you? Without skips/exploits/etc?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Absolutely.

Rerolling isn’t an issue. It only affects the first Fractal, and the only reason it exists is because Swamp is much shorter that its alternatives. If all T1 Fractals were as short as Swamp, there wouldn’t be any re-rolling. The only other re-roll cases I’ve personally come across are Dredge as a T3 (where it’s so long and tedious it’s just faster to re-roll) and, rarely, Molten Facility because there’s a progress bug when entering the final cage fight, which is a bug issue, not a design problem.

Dredge, on the other hand, is a constant source of frustration and discouragement. Getting Dredge is a painful experience and makes players hate Fractals. In game design terms that is absolutely not okay.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

The first five pages were filled with “fix dredge” proposals, and even after you told people to stop talking about dredge it still gets brought up. I think it’s pretty clear which of these is a higher priority. Rolling as a “problem” is so small in comparison to the other problems with fractals that I’m not sure why it’s even being considered as as a priority thing.

synk.8762:

I think if all Fractals are equal (for time, rewards, difficulty), rerolling becomes a non-issue. Tune the various Fractals to be similarly scaled with regards to time and effort and I believe people wouldn’t be so prone to reroll. A polish pass to bring all of them in line (especially Dredge, since it’s overly long/difficult) might mitigate a need to work on rolling.

As i ve said before, i dont think homogenizing them to be all the same in length and difficulty is a great design. the idea is to create a lot of different experiences, with different goals, and skill sets required.

For example, swamp is one of the worst fractals for newbies to get, it requires much more knowledge, experience, and coordination than many other fractals. I remember for the first few months it was one of the most hated by far.

Swamp is actually a good fractal, now imagine they put some senseless killing in the water that uses up an additional 5 minutes, does that really make a better fractal?

Not to mention, when fractals are very varied, it creates various feelings when you get a roll. relief, a feeling of luckiness, even the feeling of OH BOY we gotta do this now, is something i dont think they should try to get rid of.

That said, they should definately reward you for overcoming greater challenges

timmyf.1490:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

100% yes. Did Fractals last night and Dredge came up. Took 51 minutes. (We were playing a bit above, maybe 5 scales or so, our normal level and had a few people low on AR, so that could explain part of the length. But still.)

It was much more stress than it was fun for nearly an hour. Ugh.

Out of curiosity, has anybody else timed their Dredge runs? How long does it take you? Without skips/exploits/etc?

depends a lot on the difficulty scale/team composition. Ive actually had fairly fast dredge runs at times. Only the mini boss is guaranteed to take a long time. The rest just usually ends up taking a long time.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

I’d prefer to rework rolling. Do away with tiers and make it so that Cliffside and Dredge are never in the same run together.

timmyf.1490:

Out of curiosity, has anybody else timed their Dredge runs? How long does it take you? Without skips/exploits/etc?

Between 40-50 minutes in a pug group at the higher tiers and under 30 in the lower. A lot of it has to do with the quality of players, how everyone works as a team, scale, and which tactics are used.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Does re-tuning the Underground Fractal have greater absolute benefit to the game? Yes. Certainly.

Does Re-tuning/effort required deliver more benefit for the coder-hours invested than Fixing re-rolling/effort required… I tend to think not, but there’s only one person here who can speak with authority on that aspect, and he’s got a red name tag.

But… since players are always happier with a nerf when it comes with at least a small buff, I would definitely roll out both changes together in the same patch .

JohnnySupernova.9182:

The first five pages were filled with “fix dredge” proposals, and even after you told people to stop talking about dredge it still gets brought up. I think it’s pretty clear which of these is a higher priority. Rolling as a “problem” is so small in comparison to the other problems with fractals that I’m not sure why it’s even being considered as as a priority thing.

Giving the players a vote between “Make something long and tedious shorter” or “Fix a minor exploit” is one of those elections that’s not hard to forecast the outcome .

Fortunately, we can probably have both.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

From a brain storming standpoint I think 5+ fractals would be their own entity within fractals and thus be balanced for 5+ only.

I think you’d better expect that once you introduce the technology to have 5+ as a working party size for any content, you’re going to hear UNENDING howling until it’s used for content in more places than just “those filthy elitist fractals” .

That genie will not go back in its bottle.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Absolutely. No matter what happens to rolling eg. changing tiers or locking rolls, Dredge would still be a massive outlier in regards to length/tedium. Compare it to, for example, Aetherblade, which sits in in the same tier but is almost on the other side of the spectrum.

I would suggest bringing Dredge more in line with other Fractals before moving things around or locking things down.

Dredge by a mile, the rerolling is an issue but does not remove all the challenge so is a secondary concern.

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

From a brain storming standpoint I think 5+ fractals would be their own entity within fractals and thus be balanced for 5+ only.

I think you’d better expect that once you introduce the technology to have 5+ as a working party size for any content, you’re going to hear UNENDING howling until it’s used for content in more places than just “those filthy elitist fractals” .

That genie will not go back in its bottle.

I’ve played games where certain dungeons had "this dungeon requires 3 people “this requires 7 people”, I think if you explain it in the entry requirements they’ll understand without becoming too rabid. I don’t recall anyone using that one mission in Cantha (vizu square I think), where you have a party of 16 as the basis for an argument on party size in gw1.

@Chris, those directed questions seem to work well for stimulating discussion, if you throw out one or two more it would keep this CDI going over the weekend.