Guild Wars 2

Stooperdale.3560:

Camera angles. The poor GW2 cameras angles are exposed in fractals, for example trying to get all of the lava shaman on screen while also watching the burning floor. Fix this throughout the game and specifically for fractals.

This could be easily fixed by adding the Camera system that was recently implemented in Snowblind Fractal during the fight with Elemental Source. Excellent implementation on their part for this particular fight. I do hope they put it in Shaman level. The code is already there, it just needs to be carried over to this level.

timmyf.1490:

Aye.8392:

The problems with infusions:

1.) Must be an artificer to combine infusions. My mesmer, who I generally play Fractals with, is a tailor and a weaponsmith. So to create higher level infusions I must either run back and forth to the bank by way of the log-in screen to get my infusions to my artificer so that he can combine them and I can repeat the tiresome exercise in reverse, or I must switch crafting discipline to artificer and pay to switch back to my preferred craft after I combine my infusions. It is inconvenient and irritating.

2.) Combining infusions is expensive. The exponential increase needed to create a new level gets quickly out of control; a +1 infusion from the TP is currently 11 silver, a +10 infusion is 69 gold and a +12 is 275 gold. There are multiple infusion slots which helps, but the expense is still incredibly high. Many people aren’t willing to go past the point of the simple +5 infusions in each slot, so 30 AR. It’s cost prohibitive and consequently it prohibits who is able to participate in high level fractals.

3.) The component extractor. 250 gems. At current transfer rates this costs over 20 gold. This gold is spent to get back an infusion so that it can be destroyed in the creation of another. This is just wrong.

These problems need to be addressed.

Well, #2 and #3 are working as intended. I can understand (and maybe even agree with) disliking the intent, but… yeah, that’s intentional.

For #1, I just leave my artificer at the crafting station. Remember that the crafting station also functions as bank access. Just drop your +1s and extracted +whatever into the bank from your Mesmer, log in on your artificer, up-convert, drop the completed one back into the bank through the crafting station with no running whatsoever, and switch toons.

I do completely understand that 2 and 3 are by design, but it’s bad design. Charging that much in-game currency for the enjoyment of a game mode just keeps people from enjoying the game mode. It isn’t worth it. Since this CDI is about evolving the experience then the feedback is valid. If you don’t enjoy this design now is the perfect time to say so.

As far as your solution to the artificer being the only profession that can combine infusions, that’s cool; but my artificer is my guardian and I play him extensively. Just leaving a character parked anywhere whether that is the home instance, a Ori node, or the TP vendor is counter-productive to actually PLAYING the character. Again, now is the time to give feedback and make valid complaints.

Aye.8392:

I do completely understand that 2 and 3 are by design, but it’s bad design. Charging that much in-game currency for the enjoyment of a game mode just keeps people from enjoying the game mode. It isn’t worth it. Since this CDI is about evolving the experience then the feedback is valid. If you don’t enjoy this design now is the perfect time to say so.

As far as your solution to the artificer being the only profession that can combine infusions, that’s cool; but my artificer is my guardian and I play him extensively. Just leaving a character parked anywhere whether that is the home instance, a Ori node, or the TP vendor is counter-productive to actually PLAYING the character. Again, now is the time to give feedback and make valid complaints.

Oh yeah, I wasn’t trying to suggest you weren’t welcome to leave feedback or that your feedback was invalid.

I think it’s worth mentioning that, because AR only seems to operate at intervals of 5, I don’t think it’s as big of a deal. For example, if you slot a +5, removing it to upgrade and re-slot as a +7 doesn’t make sense.

I haven’t spent long enough figuring out what the best strategy is – I haven’t done Fractals higher than 24 so far. But I have a +7 infusion and a handful of +1s waiting for me to get to a higher level. I’ll probably slot when it hits +10.

I guess that brings me to a question for those of you who do a lot of higher-level Fractals: how frequently do you feel the need to remove an infusion, upgrade it, and re-slot it? Are we talking weekly? Monthly? Every 2-3 months? Or is it every AR you can add? Or every 2-3 AR you can add? And how often is that?

I’ve never needed or used an upgrade extractor, but $3 doesn’t seem overly expensive for something that saves tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Romo.3709:

Since people talk about Puzzles in fractals, figured I’d chime in myself.

Harpy Puzzle

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I like this one a lot. Nothing wrong with it in any way, except maybe Shield of avenger either wandering off or turn itself off the second orb goes our way.

Harpy stairs

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Another fun part of the puzzle. It tends to help the team by putting the Wall of Reflection at the very top. But after a few runs it really becomes quite fun rather than tedious. Love the fact that it doesn’t break your armor if failed.

Underwater Dolphins

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I agree with The Lost Witch.7601 on this one when it comes to actual meaning of it. Why am I a dolphin? And a switch of some kind would be a nice addition, but not terribly needed. On the other hand I kind of dislike this “puzzle”. Taking off your armor on this one feels mandatory. And double strikes from kraits are unforgiving. Bring it down to one strike per, please.

Underwater Dark

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This one is more in my alley. I always hope to get this one over the dolphins. Making it through alive is hardly ever an issue, even though most teammates never make it though. Lights are spaced well allowing a player to get through from one area to the next without too much damage, but at the same time just barely enough time to rush because the light always seem to run out before you reach the next plant. Makes it feel more on the edge. Good job on this one.

Swamp Whisps

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What’s not to like? Perfect placement of traps and trees that you can climb make this fractal feel like you really have no limits when it comes down to movement and jumping.

Aetherblade puzzles

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Mines can be easily avoided by swimming on the bottom floor, but taking off your armor is a good precaution. Kind of don’t see the point of this area, but it’s not too horrible. Electric floors are cool, but when using a Charr or Norn it tends to be a bit unforgiving because of the character’s size, maybe changing a character’s model for this part because of some field would be an answer to it. The Electric room right after is kind of annoying, but not impossible. Final boss is alright when it comes to difficulty, but I’d definitely consider making the stun a tad shorter.

Shaman Rolling Fire Balls

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The cutscene during the fireballs has to go. It serves no purpose at all and resets every time someone is near the beginning. Worse if someone goes afk for a min or two near the starting area…

Dredge Doors/Pads

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It’s fine, but the dredge inside of the main room should be clear-able. The worst addition to this date when it comes to fractal is “the teleporting off the button” action that the game takes upon player’s death. Why? Why? Why? It’s hard enough as it is. Now all light/medium classes are almost useless on the pads because of inability to stay alive while dredge hit you like trucks on the higher levels. Fix or bring back to the way it was. No reason to make it harder.

Dredge Bomb Room

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I barely ever get this room, but I always hope for it instead of Cannon side. Soloing it on my thief is really fun, but the dredge respawn should be really much more controlled than constantly respawning mobs upon mobs. If trying to clear it feels like for every one dredge we kill, two spawn in its place.

Molten Room

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Stacking makes it kind of boring because of the corner. But the room overall is fun if done properly. Not extremely hard or unforgiving, but fun and enjoyable. It tends to bug if the whole team takes the shortcut through the lava rocks when getting to the room. Making the fractal impossible to complete. Ticket been sent, nothing been done to my knowledge. Therefore I always take a long way around, even though the shortcut is more fun and engaging.

Mai Trin Cannons

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Fun little tactic, but long. Way too long. Sometimes I feel like the whole boss battle is just running away from the cannons, rather than an actual fight.

Thaumanova Reactor Puzzles

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All the areas in this fractal including the boss fight are very fun and engaging. The only issue I have is the shield room. Upon failing, shields stay inside of the room making the area that much harder. A possibility of shields respawning or making them unlimited at the beginning of the room would fix the issue. Other than that, /cheer @ Anet

What I would like to see more of in this game:

More Jumping. More Jumping. More Jumping. Oh and More Jumping.

The format completely stolen and modified for personal purpose from The Lost Witch.7601.
Figured I’d give credit.
;)

You guys are really easy to please. o.O

timmyf.1490:

I guess that brings me to a question for those of you who do a lot of higher-level Fractals: how frequently do you feel the need to remove an infusion, upgrade it, and re-slot it? Are we talking weekly? Monthly? Every 2-3 months? Or is it every AR you can add? Or every 2-3 AR you can add? And how often is that?

I’ve never needed or used an upgrade extractor, but $3 doesn’t seem overly expensive for something that saves tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Considering you can only use this type of agony in Infused items only (Rings and Backpack atm), you really don’t need more than 5 in each slot if you’re properly equipped.
At the current state, having every ascended item equipped (Trinkets, Armor and Weapons) with +5 AR (both Craftable one and Relics one) you can get your AR to 85 AR total:

45 AR from Trinkets
- 2 Rings
– +5 Relics AR each (Let’s call it RAR)
– +5 Craft AR each (Let’s call it CAR)
- 2 Earrings
– +5 RAR each
- 1 Amulet
– +5 RAR
- 1 Backpiece
– +5 RAR
– +5 CAR
10 AR from Weapons
- 1 handed
– 2x +5 RAR
- 2 handed
– +5 RAR each
30 AR from armor
- 6 pieces
– +5 RAR each

The highest fractal level at the moment being 50 requires you to have 70 AR total to receive 1% damage.
Source:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony

Making AR past +5 doesn’t make much sense. And at the current prices, you’re better off buying another +5 AR infusion than spending gold for extractor.

Romo.3709:

Making AR past +5 doesn’t make much sense. And at the current prices, you’re better off buying another +5 AR infusion than spending gold for extractor.

i roll with 10s in my rings/back so i dont have to gear swap to run low levels with friends (<30)

im not a rich kitten by any means, and my focus is wvw + friends. id rather have wvw infusions. overclocking those infusion slots is pretty nice. i dont exactly want to make another pink armor/gear set for something i only dabble in due to it being passé to me.

insanemaniac.2456:

Romo.3709:

Making AR past +5 doesn’t make much sense. And at the current prices, you’re better off buying another +5 AR infusion than spending gold for extractor.

i roll with 10s in my rings/back so i dont have to gear swap to run low levels with friends (<30)

im not a rich kitten by any means, and my focus is wvw + friends. id rather have wvw infusions. overclocking those infusion slots is pretty nice. i dont exactly want to make another pink armor/gear set for something i only dabble in due to it being passé to me.

I understand completely. I only made my ascended armor for one of my toons and it was purely with fractals in mind. It kind of got to the point where Agony doesn’t affect me at all. So I tend to switch to my thief a lot which has 55 AR, so I have more initiative to dodge
Not much of a WvW fan, but I would love to use those infusion slots for things other than agony. Like Magic Find Infusion, Gold Infusion, Karma, Exp (Even though those can only be put into Utility slot). In a way I’m kind of jealous of people that do not care for fractals because of the options they have (extra damage to npcs in wvw for example) =/

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I can’t find it now but there was a post talking about secondary objectives and rewards for completion of said objectives.

We do this with the Grawl Shaman and I would like to see more of this in the fractals.

Essentially stretch goal objectives that add more optional difficulty but reward the players for completing the more difficult content.

The larger the sense of discovery and accomplishment the greater the overall experience in my opinion.

Chris

This reminds me of the bonus objectives from the missions on GW1, which were awesome!

In regards to the secondary objective that you cited (Grawl shaman) the rewards from the bonus chest are, in my experience, really bad. Bad enough that nobody really cares if you save all the villagers or not.

What if, instead of a quick chest, completing bonus (secondary) objectives had some effect on the loot table of the final boss chest? Maybe each completed bonus objective could add one more drop slot, or an increased % for the daily reward chest to include a skin or ascended item?

Or completing secondary objectives could even add some sort of buff (like the bloodlust buffs in WvW) that could help you through the rest if the fractal run. It could be something like positive mistlock instability, or a MF buff, or a regen, etc. This would add a boost to groups who chose to complete the objectives, but nobody would be punished for not completing them.

First off, I’m fine with random if things are really well balanced. If they aren’t able to be tested, though, to the point where they are more or less balanced, I don’t dig RNG.

For instabilities, I would have much preferred random instabilities, rather than “level 33 has x instability”. And I thought it would be cooler if each fractal had it’s own. A different one for swamp, a different random one for next fractal, etc.

If you change any of these things, can I please keep my fractal level? I’ll give you a Caithe mini.

Oh also I’d of course prefer more fractals to instabilities. That way I can really wonder what I’m going to get next.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? While it’s easy to dismiss it because of the drawbacks, I think it’s important to talk about the drawbacks of not having it (or having another system) would be. Assume we solve re-rolling and make Dredge more reasonable, does random fractal selection add or detract from your satisfaction of playing in the Fractals? Was it more interesting at one time than it is now? Can we compare that with Instabilities, which are very predictable? Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

I like the randomization. I think, especially if there were a larger number of Fractals, it leads to a bit more of a unique experience each time. (To a point.) What could be useful is if you could choose how many Fractals you get. If not any number, then from a list. Do you want 1+1, 3+1, 5+1, 5+2, etc. Higher numbers in a set would lead to higher chances to loot Ascended gear or Fractal skins from the end chest.

I haven’t hit instabilities yet, so I’d obviously prefer more Fractals rather than more instabilities, but I certainly could understand the argument for instabilities.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have a few questions for the thread. Sorry I’m a bit late (though I have been reading)!

First, I want to stir the pot on Instabilities. It’s been brought up a few times but never really discussed. In the conceptual phase they seemed like a great way to add replayability to the Fractals. Simple math seems to concur. Even though we built roughly 90 Instabilities, we were only able to ship about 20 because QA had to test approximately 300 configurations of content. That seems like a lot of variety, but obviously there’s some problems. Admittedly, some aren’t very good and they’re sorted in a less-than-stellar manner. They might have been more appealing and/or made more sense had we been able to implement to full plan. But then again, maybe not. I’d like to know what you think. Is this a good system? Does it add to the Fractal experience? Would you rather have 30 new Instabilities or 1 new Fractal? Which ones do you like/dislike? From reading the feedback, I’ve already been gathering some assumptions:

• Additive content is generally well received (extra creatures, environment effect)
• Slightly less popular are combat modifiers (exploding enemies, flanking)
• Stat modifiers are the least interesting. Specifically DPS reducation is a terrible idea.
• It’s more interesting to make builds instead of break them. For example, make condition damage more important than negate it.

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives. If not difficulty scaling (or supposing difficulty scaling simply stopped at a certain level), what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? While it’s easy to dismiss it because of the drawbacks, I think it’s important to talk about the drawbacks of not having it (or having another system) would be. Assume we solve re-rolling and make Dredge more reasonable, does random fractal selection add or detract from your satisfaction of playing in the Fractals? Was it more interesting at one time than it is now? Can we compare that with Instabilities, which are very predictable? Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

Thanks in advance for reading and I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Why not have the best of both worlds: random and predictable?!

Make fractals accessible in 3 ways:

1- Time Trial this mode would have teams run only 1 fractal. The objective would be to complete as quickly and efficiently as possible. Full team wipes would end a run. Include options to add instabilities a la gambit style. This would compliment any proposed leaderboards very nicely. This would also be great for those min/max hardcore SC types.

2- Fractal Exploration this mode would be the same as it has been. 4 random fractals (well, 3+boss), same reward system, instabilities, etc. Basically, this mode is how fractals works right now.

3- Instable Fractal this mode would be a procedurally generated, very random, endless (theoretically) mode in which teams would proceed as long as they are able. It would scale up as it went along until players were no longer able to continue. Instabilities could be added every so often. As well as more mobs, or different objectives. Rewards would be based on how well the team does (mobs killed, time lasted, number of deaths, etc.). This would also compliment any leaderboards very nicely. You could even track stats like number of mobs killed, number of rezzes, etc. A bit like Black Ops zombie mode, if you will.

These modes would appeal to a wide range of players in a wide range of situations.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have a few questions for the thread. Sorry I’m a bit late (though I have been reading)!
-Snip-

Instabilities

It’s a fun system, but some of them you can only play through once, and then you swear to yourself that you never will again (like Bloodlust as an example). I would like to see more cosmetic Instabilities as well that aren’t affecting the actual stats for pure fun. Kind of like making your characters minimized at all times, or twice the size throughout fractals. Big heads, enemies exploding into fireworks? Let’s have fun with it
But when it comes to Instabilities vs new fractal, new fractal would win every time. More verity means less chance of getting Dredge But in all seriousness, new fractal level is always welcome.

Difficulty

I’m obviously never a fan of getting one-shot. Instead how about we make it so you have to go alternate way? Like different paths in each fractal, they would open as we get higher and higher. I really have no ideas regarding this issue, since I never really thought about it.

Meta

I remember those moments when we got to the third fractal and we either got Underwater or Swamps. It literally felt like we won a lottery. Everyone’s mood automatically shot up, and the evening was complete. That doesn’t happen anymore. Because whatever we do we always end up with a kitten at the end. Hoping we get one of the lesser evils. Complete randomness with level selection was something that made fractals unique. Given we sometimes got a really bad roll with 2 really long fractals back to back, but it was outweighed by the times we had those fun easy runs. I miss those. Like seriously miss those. I would love to see it go back to that.

You don’t practically need to solve rolling, but instead you could give us a reason not to roll. And not by something in lines of “You get swamps first, you’ll always end with Dredge” or anything along those lines. More like innovative ways. BINGO idea was a fun one. Or maybe making 2 small levels just like Swamps, so we’d be happy with whichever one we get regardless of the roll. Regardless making dredge more reasonable would fix rolling by itself, since people wouldn’t mind playing other levels knowing that there isn’t one later on that will take them 1-2 hours to complete.

As to idea of completing specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items is not much of a grind, but based too heavily on the RNG factor of fractals. Which would make people flip out when they went through 3 levels of a specific combination just to get the wrong one at the very end. It would have to be Instability/Difficulty combination at most, which would be much more reasonable.

Instabilities are an amazing idea to add variety. And i think it would work better if you added more randomization instead of a fixed one per level. As in the current situation, people avoid all the annoying ones and stick with easy, making the others kinda pointless.

As for raising the difficulty of the content as you progress. Instabilities is also good way to do it. How about mixing up? For instance. Level 30 to 40, we have fixed instabilities. As for level 40 to 50, they start coming randomized for each level, then 60 to 70, it is randomized AND there are more instabilities to pick from, harder, and from there on, you can start adding 2 instabilities at same time per fractal.

I would prefer more fractals and rewards than everything else though. I would really like to see Abaddon fractal making in.

Also if rerolling is just so much of an issue, just make t1 fractals happen in t2 and , same for t2 to t3.
Removing the randomness in fractals kill away much of its flavor. Fractals are refreshing because of the random nature, and if it were to be removed, wouldn’t be any different from all the other dungeons where we have others running the easiest path over over and over.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’d like to know what you think. Is this a good system? Does it add to the Fractal experience? Would you rather have 30 new Instabilities or 1 new Fractal? Which ones do you like/dislike?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? While it’s easy to dismiss it because of the drawbacks, I think it’s important to talk about the drawbacks of not having it (or having another system) would be. Assume we solve re-rolling and make Dredge more reasonable, does random fractal selection add or detract from your satisfaction of playing in the Fractals?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Was it more interesting at one time than it is now? Can we compare that with Instabilities, which are very predictable?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks in advance for reading and I look forward to continuing the discussion.

I think its safe to say the meta community or more specifically the speed clearing community would prefer less randomness. This allows us to actually use fractals competatively which is one of the ways we keep ourselves entertained with old content.

Personally I never saw the point of instabilities or random selection of fractals. But if it must be random then make it how it was before the fractured patch (completely random). Some instabilities are challenging and interesting the first time but once you’ve reached a tier you just want to do your dailies on a simple one (49 or 38). Obviously the old scaling has its flaws, eventually it becomes the same difficulty no matter how high you go because everything 1 shots you. But personally I found this more fun than most instabilities. The best way to increase difficulty would be to add more mechanics per fractal in higher tiers (like tier 0 to tier 1+). Obviously that would be a lot of work so I can see why it was only done for the first tiers so far.

Instabilities

As a player who actually hasn’t gotten to level 30 yet (only at level 10), I would like to see them available sooner so that I don’t feel like I have to “grind” to try them out.

Also, they should be tied to your current fractal’s level as much as they are to the party’s chosen fractal level. That could be done by priotizing player’s level over party’s chosen level to decide which mistlock should be used, at least when the player’s fractal level is lower than expected. The game should force every player to go through every mistlock at least once – no skipping the first time around.

All the more annoying build-breaking instabilities should be removed, and funnier instabilities come into their place.

Difficulty with instabilities

One good way to add more difficulty/ higher levels, is to make fractals create two and then up to three instabilities at once. Also, the second and third instabilities could be randomly chosen from a list of all instabilities unlocked thus far.

Instabilities should also have “internal tiers” based on how much extra challenge they add to the place. Those tiers would be decided based on anet’s opinion and the community’d feedback. Then, the game could purposefully chain together easier or harder instabilities depending on the level.

On accessibility and diversity

I’m only at level 10 fractal, because even though I enjoy it, I find the experience a bit too repetitive for my tastes. I was about level 5 before the fractal’s update, to try out the new fractals, but as you can see, that wasn’t enough. Here’s what I would like to see in the future to hook me more into fractals:

• Better Rewards even at lower levels;
• Mistlock Instabilities existing as early as possibly, perhaps at level 10 on;
• Shorter full-run duration. I like a challenging game, but I dislike very lenghty dungeon runs. I would like to see the whole thing made shorter, but without sacrificing challenge. Perhaps give the option to players for a 2-fractal run or 3-fractal run instead of the current 4 (including the boss section).
• More fractals, more bosses.
• Deeper challenging content that relies less on one-hit kills, and places more emphasis on conditions, boons, positioning, passive defensive stats (toughness), party support, cleansing, stun breaking, etc. The current focus on reflection, dodging and blocking is already fine where it is, but not enough. This is a problem with GW2’s monster design as a whole, and not just fractals.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

—

Hopefully you read my post about rework as it pretty much addressed everything on your post. I will kind of repeat my post below. Also I’m bit surprised seeing a post like yours. I didn’t expect you guys to consider any kind of rework as you had one while ago.

First of all, I think instabilities are a really good idea (good form of difficulty) but they don’t fit current implementation very well. It’s really tough job to balance instabilities, especially when difficulty may change a lot with different maps. That’s why I would separate progression for each map and tie instabilities with maps. Then have 3-5 instabilities for each map. Each instability should have like 3 different strengths resulting in 9-15 levels. Then you could also mix and match resulting in 64-1024 levels. This probably wouldn’t really help with testing but would allow focusing on more interesting combinations.

Personally I really dislike boring instabilities. “Annoying” ones are actually good because they are meaningful. But I’m not sure how you can make builds without breaking builds. Because that means that you would add a weakness to enemies which would actually make it easier than without the instability.

I think current scaling isn’t very exciting because scaling is so weak. Scale 28 or 29? Barely any difference. Also current implementation has lots of scales until players reach more interesting instabilities. That’s why in my idea the main focus for levels are instabilities and then there’s additional stat scaling with big steps (25%-50% each scale) which allows infinite scaling (while still allowing adding more instabilities).

One drawback for non-random map would be lack of “gambling”. Apparently that gets some people excited. I personally think it adds nothing because once you know the maps there isn’t really any surprises. Your system is quite close to my idea so it sounds good for me! I personally see current implementation quite grindy because lots of scales feel same (especially when most of the stuff is quite easy).

I’m sorry but if the time invested in fractals is not rewarding, than all this meaningless to a lot of players

I only get 3 hours at most to play a day (on Mon-Fri at least due to work)
it easily can take upto 2 hours on fractals (especially if you roll dredge)

so you tell me devs, is 2 hours of champ bags mindless zerg farming more rewarding or 2 hours of frustating fractals? I don’t mind frustating if the ending scenario involves rewarding. Right now it’s only gratifying from a standpoint to me (saying ahhh finally completed this fractal … now lets see my rewards…. oh nothing … sad face)

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? While it’s easy to dismiss it because of the drawbacks, I think it’s important to talk about the drawbacks of not having it (or having another system) would be. Assume we solve re-rolling and make Dredge more reasonable, does random fractal selection add or detract from your satisfaction of playing in the Fractals? Was it more interesting at one time than it is now? Can we compare that with Instabilities, which are very predictable? Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

Thanks in advance for reading and I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Regardless the outcome, can we keep our current level this time around? I like your ideas and how you want to go about it, but in the back of my mind I can only see the bad outcome of resetting everyone again to be on par. Because this idea is more troubling than anything you would do to fractals. Thanks in advance.

DiogoSilva.7089:

• Deeper challenging content that relies less on one-hit kills, and places more emphasis on conditions, boons, positioning, passive defensive stats (toughness), party support, cleansing, stun breaking, etc. The current focus on reflection, dodging and blocking is already fine where it is, but not enough. This is a problem with GW2’s monster design as a whole, and not just fractals.

Everything you mentioned is already in place. You just gotta get there. And you’ll find that higher levels have everything that you mentioned.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• Additive content is generally well received (extra creatures, environment effect)
• Slightly less popular are combat modifiers (exploding enemies, flanking)
• Stat modifiers are the least interesting. Specifically DPS reducation is a terrible idea.
• It’s more interesting to make builds instead of break them. For example, make condition damage more important than negate it.

Just seeing a Dev acknowledge this so directly is incredibly heartening. Thanks. To the question though, personally I would say the answer to you first question is dependant on your answer to the final question:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals?

Personal opinion alert here: I believe the strength in the replayability of Fractals is the randomness. So I would feel that more instabilities would be a compromise if stage randomness were removed from the equation.

As a player, I would rather there be more stages. If I were developing the content, I could see a compelling argument for both sides, since so many players try to remove the randomness, at least at the beginning.

Everyone is always happy with three quick shards, but without randomness and a well developed incentive to do anything but the three fastest shards I would think fractals would become even less newbie friendly and less of a game teaching experience for people just getting into it.

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives. If not difficulty scaling (or supposing difficulty scaling simply stopped at a certain level), what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

The easiest answer, but not necessarily the easiest solution, would be to significantly change the stages themselves at higher difficulty levels, or add new ones that are high difficulty only.

This could fracture the playerbase and make content a large portion of players would never see, so there are likely better alternatives.

Joke answer: make a random shard that just queues the team for tpvp. Can’t progress until you win with your PVE spec.

Romo.3709:

I remember those moments when we got to the third fractal and we either got Underwater or Swamps. It literally felt like we won a lottery. Everyone’s mood automatically shot up, and the evening was complete. That doesn’t happen anymore. Because whatever we do we always end up with a kitten at the end. Hoping we get one of the lesser evils. Complete randomness with level selection was something that made fractals unique. Given we sometimes got a really bad roll with 2 really long fractals back to back, but it was outweighed by the times we had those fun easy runs. I miss those. Like seriously miss those. I would love to see it go back to that.
—

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

Nebilim.5127:

Instabilities are an amazing idea to add variety. And i think it would work better if you added more randomization instead of a fixed one per level. As in the current situation, people avoid all the annoying ones and stick with easy, making the others kinda pointless.

As for raising the difficulty of the content as you progress. Instabilities is also good way to do it. How about mixing up? For instance. Level 30 to 40, we have fixed instabilities. As for level 40 to 50, they start coming randomized for each level, then 60 to 70, it is randomized AND there are more instabilities to pick from, harder, and from there on, you can start adding 2 instabilities at same time per fractal.

—

Do you realize this wouldn’t be a challenge? It would be a RNG-fest.

Lots of you guys seem to ignore that random gets very easily out of control. Randomized systems will always have good and bad rolls. And more you rely on random, more prevalent those rolls become.

Wethospu.6437:

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

We all do in one way or another. I understand it doesn’t feel AS good as winning the lottery, but it still feels good. A small win is still a win. Randomness in levels made it so you never knew what kind of a run you’ll get. Could have be an easy one or a very long one. It gave the element of surprise each time u hit that loading screen. Now it’s a harder one every time you pass that 2nd fractal. Nothing to look forward to at all.

Wethospu.6437:

Nebilim.5127:

Instabilities are an amazing idea to add variety. And i think it would work better if you added more randomization instead of a fixed one per level. As in the current situation, people avoid all the annoying ones and stick with easy, making the others kinda pointless.

As for raising the difficulty of the content as you progress. Instabilities is also good way to do it. How about mixing up? For instance. Level 30 to 40, we have fixed instabilities. As for level 40 to 50, they start coming randomized for each level, then 60 to 70, it is randomized AND there are more instabilities to pick from, harder, and from there on, you can start adding 2 instabilities at same time per fractal.

—

Do you realize this wouldn’t be a challenge? It would be a RNG-fest.

Lots of you guys seem to ignore that random gets very easily out of control. Randomized systems will always have good and bad rolls. And more you rely on random, more prevalent those rolls become.

Completely agree with this statement. The less RNG based Instabilities, the better. At least at this point in game we can gear up properly for any fractal. Think of getting a zerker party and hitting up Bloodlust Instability on your final boss. No Thank You.

Just a little thing I wanted to ask:

Would it be possible to have Mossman increased to the size Ginva the Butcher from HOTW p1 is? Mossman is a good boss but the fact that he’s so small means that particle effects make him really hard to see when trying to fight him which means it’s hard to see his very subtle tells.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder?

It’s almost like I’m talking to an honest to goodness flesh and blood human.

That aside, the pace at which anet adds (permanent and instanced aka real) content is far to slow. Removing randomness would allow for people to work on speedruns and increase replay-ability. RNG has never worked in this game (see engineer elixirs) and should definitely not play a part in dungeons or what are supposed to be skill based encounters.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I can’t find it now but there was a post talking about secondary objectives and rewards for completion of said objectives.

We do this with the Grawl Shaman and I would like to see more of this in the fractals.

I absolutely agree with this. Stretch goals are great in content, and getting a little bit of an extra reward for it is very motivating of players to push themselves. The way it’s done in the Grawl fractal is nice. I think similar things could be employed in the Cliffside fractal and elsewhere as well.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

First, I want to stir the pot on Instabilities. (…) I’d like to know what you think. Is this a good system? Does it add to the Fractal experience? Would you rather have 30 new Instabilities or 1 new Fractal? Which ones do you like/dislike? From reading the feedback, I’ve already been gathering some assumptions:

Firstly, let me say that I love your directness in how your post is worded. This is a phenomenal precedent for player-interaction from developers. Thank you.

Secondly, about instabilities, I feel that they are largely ignorable in their current implementation. I reached PL50 without ever experiencing 18 of the instabilities. I just repeatedly did L40 and L49 to get up to PL50. With this implementation, I feel that they are largely lackluster because they can be ignored.

Way to improve this:

• Use instabilities as a means of increasing difficulty by adding growing mechanics

Start a tier at L30 with instability X, and then L31 would have instability X still as well as something else. In this way, newer levels are actually harder than earlier levels, as opposed to how it is now. For instance, right now L49 is easier than a lot of the earlier instabilities, and L50 is actually the easiest if you have enough AR. I feel that if the instabilities actually included earlier instabilities within a tier, you could create a system where each level really feels tougher than the last and each level actually prepares you for the next by introducing the new mechanic you’ll feel for the entire rest of the tier.

As for your assumptions, I feel that they are very correct. DPS reduction is awful, combat adjustments are mildly interesting, and environmental or creature additions are very exciting. Also I absolutely agree with your idea about builds; far better to enable new builds than to disable others. Ways to encourage condition damage, for instance, would be amazing.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Next is the difficulty/progression question. (…) what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

I think if you approached instabilities like I suggested above as a growing challenge that accumulates over a tier you could create a really difficult (and predictable) challenge that would force players to actually play in a unique way to overcome obstacles.

As a general rule of thumb, making mobs more durable doesn’t increase difficulty, it just increases the time it takes to plow through them. I would rather mobs with more difficult mechanics that die quicker than what we currently get with scaling. For instance, permanent Protection on Dredge only drags the fight on, it really doesn’t encourage interesting play. Mobs with interesting mechanics like the new mobs for the Living Story (for instance) would be much more fun to fight against and a lot more actually challenging. You could then add new mechanics (or new mob types) at higher tiers to increase difficulty further.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? (…) Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

Randomness in general is bad for the following reasons:

• It makes it less predictable, which makes speed running hardcore players unable to really quantify and compete with each other for best time
• It makes the time that each run takes variable, which alienates casual players who only have so much time to play

I think a much better approach to fractals would be to enable players to choose the next fractal in every case, but to give each fractal unique rewards (unique cores/lodestones, for example) and possibly unique rewards for crafting Fractal weapon / armor skins. Like, for instance, each of eight fractals gives a specific type of trophy that must be combined in high quantities in the Mystic Forge to then craft ascended armor pieces. That would be an exciting fractal reward scheme, and even if a little grindy, it’d be for horizontal progression in the form of special skins, which is exactly what the end-game should be about. This would encourage people to play different combinations, enables hardcore players to time more easily and compete in Fractals, and enables casuals to have an expected time to completion enabling them to play more. It’s win across the board to get rid of randomness.

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

We all do in one way or another. I understand it doesn’t feel AS good as winning the lottery, but it still feels good. A small win is still a win. Randomness in levels made it so you never knew what kind of a run you’ll get. Could have be an easy one or a very long one. It gave the element of surprise each time u hit that loading screen. Now it’s a harder one every time you pass that 2nd fractal. Nothing to look forward to at all.

Why should there be something to look forward to? Why couldn’t you just have a solid run?

Romo.3709:

insanemaniac.2456:

Romo.3709:

Making AR past +5 doesn’t make much sense. And at the current prices, you’re better off buying another +5 AR infusion than spending gold for extractor.

i roll with 10s in my rings/back so i dont have to gear swap to run low levels with friends (<30)

im not a rich kitten by any means, and my focus is wvw + friends. id rather have wvw infusions. overclocking those infusion slots is pretty nice. i dont exactly want to make another pink armor/gear set for something i only dabble in due to it being passé to me.

I understand completely. I only made my ascended armor for one of my toons and it was purely with fractals in mind. It kind of got to the point where Agony doesn’t affect me at all. So I tend to switch to my thief a lot which has 55 AR, so I have more initiative to dodge
Not much of a WvW fan, but I would love to use those infusion slots for things other than agony. Like Magic Find Infusion, Gold Infusion, Karma, Exp (Even though those can only be put into Utility slot). In a way I’m kind of jealous of people that do not care for fractals because of the options they have (extra damage to npcs in wvw for example) =/

indeed. however, i feel just as constrained as you. im locked out of 40+ fractals by a gold barrier. i dont want to either make another pink set for agony or buy big enough infusions to progress. my wvw infusions allow me to be a real threat soloing the map.. i can easily solo a tower lord, i can have camps capping before they show contested. i couldnt without the damage reduction. exactly the same effect agony resist has: the infusions unlock my playstyle, if not my possible material rewards.

im perfectly capable of handling higher fractals, especially since fractured restructured mob scaling to an extent… but i doubt ill ever find myself motivated enough to try. i can get what i feel i need from level 29 (relics, pristines, infused rings, shards, occasional weapon) without having to warp my overall play to accommodate higher levels.

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

We all do in one way or another. I understand it doesn’t feel AS good as winning the lottery, but it still feels good. A small win is still a win. Randomness in levels made it so you never knew what kind of a run you’ll get. Could have be an easy one or a very long one. It gave the element of surprise each time u hit that loading screen. Now it’s a harder one every time you pass that 2nd fractal. Nothing to look forward to at all.

Why should there be something to look forward to? Why couldn’t you just have a solid run?

Solid run only happens with groups of friends that work together well. That’s not always the case. As to looking forward to third fractal. I was always looking forward to getting an easy Swamp or Underwater at the end. It made it that much closer to completing the run. Now I know I’m getting one of four possibilities, and none of them are the above 2. It takes out the random from fractals completely. I can only have one long one or one ungodly long one. That’s the choice now.

Regarding randomness in fractals

The fractal chain

• I really like that I don’t have the same fractal run every time I do it.

• I really don’t like that I never get to see the thaumanova reactor.

Simplest solution: have a single fractal mode that only offers the reward of that individual fractal. Restrict the overall fractal rewards to the boss levels found at the end of the normal randomized fractal chain.

Adding a random factor to instabilities

• I would rather not see random instabilities. I think they have the potential to add a lbit of strategy. And I can have a lot of fun strategizing beforehand. While I don’t particularly like adapting to a random situation. (It is the difference between making a strong build for a fractal, or making your build less weak.)

Adding random events to fractals

• If these are additional bonus events, like saving those poor humans in the grawl fractal. Then yeah, it could make for a more diverse fractal experience.

• If these are lore heavy bonus events, like catching whoever ruined the thaumanova reactor. Then no, I would become frustrated if I could not reliably experience this. (Or in my enthousiasm show it to a friend)

• If these make the fractal more difficult to complete, then no. At high enough levels we might just have to depend on luck in that case, which is not cool.

• If these have a very specific supercool weapon on their loottable that we can’t find anywhere else. Then no, I can already imagine groups rerolling over and over again to find that event.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

First, I want to stir the pot on Instabilities. […] I’d like to know what you think. Is this a good system? Does it add to the Fractal experience? Would you rather have 30 new Instabilities or 1 new Fractal? Which ones do you like/dislike? From reading the feedback, I’ve already been gathering some assumptions:

• Additive content is generally well received (extra creatures, environment effect)
• Slightly less popular are combat modifiers (exploding enemies, flanking)
• Stat modifiers are the least interesting. Specifically DPS reducation is a terrible idea.
• It’s more interesting to make builds instead of break them. For example, make condition damage more important than negate it.

Some of the instabilities can be nice or fun to do once or a few times (31, 39, 45 for ex).

Some can be a pain (43 for example: you have to wait to lose your stacks, but you have no way of knowing when you lost them. So you wait a while, then attack, and if you attacked early, you again have to wait long before attacking again…). Some instabilities also go very bad on specific maps (37 and Mai Trin, 43 and Shaman, etc.)

Some instabilities are extremly bad. 40, 50 are the worst. Especially as with this pattern, we can expect to see the same thing at 60, 70, … They’re bad because they’re a pure gear check. Skill has no impact on it. You either farmed for the stuff, or you die, even if you’re the best player ever. Because of this, people farm AR to the point where they don’t care about dodging at all, just facetanking the agonies.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives. If not difficulty scaling (or supposing difficulty scaling simply stopped at a certain level), what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

Even on a full zerker clothie, you weren’t one-shoted by everything at level 80. You had to know which attacks you could take one or two hits, and which you had to absolutely evade. It all goes down to managing your positionning to not waste your dodges, etc.
But that’s not in my opinion the best way to do it. Giving to opponents other abilities as you go higher in level (like harpies with the knock-back ball at level 10) would be in my opinion the best way to do it.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? While it’s easy to dismiss it because of the drawbacks, I think it’s important to talk about the drawbacks of not having it (or having another system) would be. Assume we solve re-rolling and make Dredge more reasonable, does random fractal selection add or detract from your satisfaction of playing in the Fractals? Was it more interesting at one time than it is now? Can we compare that with Instabilities, which are very predictable? Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

Random is nice, as it makes some change for people doing multiple runs a day. The problem right now in this randomness is the bad balance between the different maps.
You could get Asura -> Cliffside -> Dredge, or you could get Swamp -> Svanir -> Grawl. One of those runs would be very long, the other very short.
If you managed to make a better balance between the different maps, you’d solve most of the problems: less people whining about very long maps, and no need to reroll if there isn’t a shorter map.

Giving an incentive for players to try every “paths” like the instabilities could be a nice way to give a specific reward to players. But for that, you have to make sure there’s no problem with the instability. For example, I never did 37, because I just don’t want to waste 1-2h and get Mai Trin at the end, and then have to give up because this instability is badly thought for this boss, making it impossible.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have a few questions for the thread. Sorry I’m a bit late (though I have been reading)!

-snip-

Instabilities are not good as they are, 43 is insane on specific fractals, and if you’re going to use the LS model for fractals again, I’d rather you just not do instabilities at all. 43 is insane, and when people complained about it, we got complete silence from you and everyone else that worked on fractured. If you want something like instabilities, you need to be updating them after the fact, and you need to test them before releasing them, because good gravy.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Would you rather have 30 new Instabilities or 1 new Fractal?

One new fractal. I have yet to get to my first instability, and I am most likely going to be doing a lot more low level fractals with guildmembers than high level ones.

But even if instabilities were added to lower levels, I think I would prefer the new fractal.

That said, I do like the idea of the instabilities, so if we can have some of those 90 instabilities in addition to a new fractal, that’d be great!

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives. If not difficulty scaling (or supposing difficulty scaling simply stopped at a certain level), what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

I would love it if some of the very basic fights were revamped at higher levels. In a way that they would require a new strategy.

A few examples that come to mind:

If desired I can come up with many more.

Edit: I’ve just read your most recent post, and have this to add:

I don’t think that it would be necessary to adjust these encounters for every level. It would combine with the regular scaling and instabilities to make the fights more difficult overall. Just having them change from say, level 20 onwards, would make the experience of players quite a bit different. So they don’t run approach the fight the same way they did in the previous 20 levels. Players often run the same level fractal anyways. (Because their friends need to level up, or because it’s the easiest one in the bracket.) I don’t think that difficulty has to move up in every direction at every level.

These are complex questions, cause whether or not is stated, it is directly tied to effort vs. rewards.

Instability

The idea was well intended, but the execution flawed. I think had the organization of the instabilities been better, it would have been more impactful.
Take instabilities such as exploding corpses, bloodlust, or reduced critical damage. Had bloodlust been at 49, it would have seemed more reasonable, As you have the hardest instability at the currently highest level. If the reward bracket was significantly greater on 49, than say 48, then you would have some motivation to do 49 and revisit the instability.

The only thing I can think would promote replay would be specific rewards associated with completing specific instabilities. They would have to be some sort of collectible reward, otherwise people will never redo them. They will do it once, collect the reward and never again visit it.

Adding more instabilities as they currently stand will lose the novelty almost instantaneously.

Random Fractals

I personally love this about fractals, and I hope it does not change. As much as I dread getting Dredge as the last fractal, I love the fact that it is one of the possibilities.

On this issue I would advice that you revisit your fractal tiers. Water is a fun fractal and is sad it does not get any replay. At a minimum it should be added to the second tier.

This is not broken, do not change it!

Difficulty Scaling

I have a question for you, is it true that at some point in beta the monsters dodged? If true, this is the kind of mechanic we need to see in fractals. I would love to see a better AI the higher you go. For example, add healers to the mobs at 51-60. Add dodge to the mobs 61-70, add blocking (in addition to the previous ones) at 71-80, etc.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

It’s no surprise that the “add more mechanics” idea comes up a lot for difficulty scaling. Not only does it sound really great, it was also the original plan. Unfortunately it’s just about the heaviest approach we could take because it implies that every boss in the fractal needs to be updated and rebalanced for every tier that we add. Assuming 2 bosses per Fractal (and we never added new Fractals), every time we add a tier of difficulty we have to do this 30 times. I’m not saying we can’t do it; I’m saying it would be slow. Much slower than say, adding one or two new Fractals per tier with entirely new content.

What I actually don’t like about that approach is that it has a lot of filler progression. Hypothetical levels 51-60 would effectively all be the same. We thought the advantage of assigning an MI to every level was that it literally made every level unique and also avoids the re-rolling problem that fractal selection has.

What about the notion of a growing mistlock instability list within a tier, like I suggested above? In this way you could create uniqueness to tiers, and also use it to create difficulty. You might only ever add new creatures if one of the mistlocks was specifically about that… For instance if the entire theme of 30-39 was that Mossman stalked you the whole time. That’d give it a unique feel while simultaneously removing the silliness of people just using the easiest mistlock to rise their personal reward level and raising the difficulty as you moved up in the tiers.

So, for example:

• L30: Agonizing Expedition – Take agony damage periodically
• L31: Mist Stalker – Mossman stalks you. (L30’s Mistlock also applies)
• L32: Outflanked – Enemies do more damage when attacking you from behind or the sides (L30 and L31 still apply, meaning Mossman could sneak attack you for big damage, etc)

And so forth for the entire tier. This creates the theme that the 30-39 tier is all about being stalked and trying to keep your wits about you to unseen threats. Maybe at one point you could in that area have a Mistlock where mobs will periodically stealth themselves to add to that feel, and so forth.

This should also help reduce the burden on you guys, right?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives. If not difficulty scaling (or supposing difficulty scaling simply stopped at a certain level), what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

As someone who was able to do fotm 79, I feel like I can comment on this intelligently. I feel the best way to get beyond the “everything one shots you” and the “instabilities that are too punishing are avoided” problems is to simply make the bosses in each fractal get new mechanics at each tier. New moves, new tricks. so that eventually when you reach a high enough level, fighting bloomhunger is like fighting Lupicus in terms of mechanics to learn.

edit: I just read your response about how hard that is to develop. I think an alternative is to isolate the good instabilities that make the fractals more interesting and fun, and have them apply to the entire tier, rather than have a new one each level some of which are soul crushing bad.

I think that having unique rewards based on what instabilities are applied would be a good idea. So how about this as a suggestion:

Based on the instability you select for your fractal run, each fractal scenario will reward an “unstable essence” in the end chest after you defeat the boss. This unstable essence would have 2 modifiers. The first modifier would be where it came from, so you’d have something called a “Swampland’s Unstable Essence” or a “Dredge’s Unstable Essence”. The second modifier would be the Instability type, so you’d have a “Battleground’s Unstable Essence of Lethargy” if you did the Lethargic Instability.

Using the Mystic Forge, you’d combine 4 of these Unstable Essences to produce specific recipes or weapon/accessory components. If you needed a Recipe+Sword Hilt+Sword Blade+Fractal Inscription, that could potentially be 16 unstable essences to produce a fractal sword.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Back on randomness/replayability/rewards: I think the intent has always been to make the Fractals a very replayable experience by using random to create semi-unique iterations through the content. But the extrinsic reward motivators work to the contrary, making random unfavorable for optimal gain.

I’d like to see more speculation on middle ground solutions which both add meaningful variety to the Fractals without forcing players to feel like they’re trudging through non-optimal reward paths.

Also, this is all just speculation. I’m not advocating or declaring an official re-work of any system here. Just exploring possibilities for the evolution of this and future content.

I have been thinking about this as well and ended up thinking that there should be a higher emphasis on the randomness so that people expect and accept it instead of just finding it a chore. Maybe you could turn the fractals+instabilities into a sort of slot gambling system. Dividing them in groups of difficulty, let the player choose a difficulty ( like every fractal) for the fractals themselves and for the instability then multiply the rewards by a factor decided by the difficulties. As it is the fractal level would provide a baseline for the rewards. You could even tie this in with leaderboards by awarding points for more difficult combinations along with a timer.

On the topic of scaling, I wouldnt mind a CDI focused on this.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

It’s no surprise that the “add more mechanics” idea comes up a lot for difficulty scaling. Not only does it sound really great, it was also the original plan. Unfortunately it’s just about the heaviest approach we could take because it implies that every boss in the fractal needs to be updated and rebalanced for every tier that we add. Assuming 2 bosses per Fractal (and we never added new Fractals), every time we add a tier of difficulty we have to do this 30 times. I’m not saying we can’t do it; I’m saying it would be slow. Much slower than say, adding one or two new Fractals per tier with entirely new content.

What I actually don’t like about that approach is that it has a lot of filler progression. Hypothetical levels 51-60 would effectively all be the same. We thought the advantage of assigning an MI to every level was that it literally made every level unique and also avoids the re-rolling problem that fractal selection has.

---

Back on randomness/replayability/rewards: I think the intent has always been to make the Fractals a very replayable experience by using random to create semi-unique iterations through the content. But the extrinsic reward motivators work to the contrary, making random unfavorable for optimal gain.

I’d like to see more speculation on middle ground solutions which both add meaningful variety to the Fractals without forcing players to feel like they’re trudging through non-optimal reward paths.

Also, this is all just speculation. I’m not advocating or declaring an official re-work of any system here. Just exploring possibilities for the evolution of this and future content.

How about a “Gauntlet Mode” where your krewe has to go through every Fractal but they get to pick the instability? I would like to see a Horde Mode Fractal (new Fractal) a la Gears of War if you have ever played it. That would be super fun. Almost like Glint’s Challenge in GW1. I could also see being able to pick the Fractals your team wants to do, but then having a different random instability on every level, like the instability for the first one is different from the second one and so on and so forth.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

-Snip-
I just read your response about how hard that is to develop. I think an alternative is to isolate the good instabilities that make the fractals more interesting and fun, and have them apply to the entire tier, rather than have a new one each level some of which are soul crushing bad.

I really like that idea. Perhaps we can have multiple instabilities on a level. You get one instability for the tier instability you have, and one for the particular level, e.g. 36 gets the tier 31-39 instability and the level 36 specific instability.
If we happen to get a fractal team this could work particularly well because they could reassign tier and specific instabilities by looking at the ones that are most/least played.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

First, I want to stir the pot on Instabilities. […] I’d like to know what you think. Is this a good system? Does it add to the Fractal experience? Would you rather have 30 new Instabilities or 1 new Fractal? Which ones do you like/dislike?

I can’t get behind the instability system. It’s still the same lame dungeon which you want to complete as fast as possible to get the loot (Yes, that’s grind and GW2 turned into a grindy game) and the instabilities just slow you down. There is not even an explanation for those instabilities storywise.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have a few questions for the thread. Sorry I’m a bit late (though I have been reading)!

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three questions —-

Thanks in advance for reading and I look forward to continuing the discussion.

ok i actually touched on a lot of these things with my various proposals and talk.

1) instabilities are meant to make fractals more interesting, but they are gated pretty far. you have to go all the way to 30 to experience them. As you add more, the gate goes higher and higher. Instabilities probably should have been a game mode, not tied to difficulty. As i said in a proposal, I think going foward you should seperate game mode changes from difficulty. (or have a softer method of gating it)

2) as for difficulty being redundant: the simplest and most scalable method, i think is capping the increase on dmg, and then increasing enemy attack speed/animation speed/movement speed. This will go far with active defense, it has limits, but its a good way to take it past the dmg only increase. I dont think difficulty will ever be easily infinitely scalable past that point, after that the only thing you can do is add enemy skills, and what not, but movement speed/animation/speed and attack speed would probably take the difficulty up to at least double the current level.

3)well done random is huge for fractals, though some disagree, i think random elements add greatly to replaybility. The problem is you cant just add random, you also have to add the proper rewards to it. As it is, the focus is on speed clear, anything that gets in the way of faster clear times will be hated, the rewarded behavior needs to be a little more skewed to doing things, then people wont hate random, as its not getting in the way.
Essentially make it so the random, when done well, actually rewards the player more than not doing it. Some of these rewards can be different, like cool power ups for the level,

lets say you do an optional event that only occurs sometimes, and you get a sword that slices through weak enemies, and has some cool animations/dmg etc. yeah the net result is it took the same time, but for a little while you were an awesome sword weilding deathball, which allowed you to progress through the area faster/easier after doing it.

you can also make some optional events give you a quicker way to the end, etc.
but these would be random, you dont plan on them, you get lucky and it happens, and makes the level feel different/fun again.

now, for those who like ultra competitive, static fractals, i think you can have a mode for them, where they select a completely non random version with no bells and whistles (for things like leaderboards).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

It’s no surprise that the “add more mechanics” idea comes up a lot for difficulty scaling. Not only does it sound really great, it was also the original plan. Unfortunately it’s just about the heaviest approach we could take because it implies that every boss in the fractal needs to be updated and rebalanced for every tier that we add. Assuming 2 bosses per Fractal (and we never added new Fractals), every time we add a tier of difficulty we have to do this 30 times. I’m not saying we can’t do it; I’m saying it would be slow. Much slower than say, adding one or two new Fractals per tier with entirely new content.

What I actually don’t like about that approach is that it has a lot of filler progression. Hypothetical levels 51-60 would effectively all be the same. We thought the advantage of assigning an MI to every level was that it literally made every level unique and also avoids the re-rolling problem that fractal selection has.

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Back on randomness/replayability/rewards: I think the intent has always been to make the Fractals a very replayable experience by using random to create semi-unique iterations through the content. But the extrinsic reward motivators work to the contrary, making random unfavorable for optimal gain.

I’d like to see more speculation on middle ground solutions which both add meaningful variety to the Fractals without forcing players to feel like they’re trudging through non-optimal reward paths.

Also, this is all just speculation. I’m not advocating or declaring an official re-work of any system here. Just exploring possibilities for the evolution of this and future content.

when i had my proposal on fractal liscenses, i seperate the qualitative changes in fractals into different modes, i keep the difficulty scale as a seperate mechanical change.
like you said, part of the problem is access issues, also you have to remember, people kind of find their own right difficulty levels in fractals, Some people like the 40+ some people stay in the 20s etc.

so lets say you have
a mode called “simple” this would be the overall design of 1-10, no agony, less enemy skills, etc
a mode called “advanced” would be like 11-20 introduce agony, enemies have more skills

a mode called “skilled” where you get more challenging enemy distributions

a mode called “instability” where you select an instability

now, these modes can be experienced, even if you arent the type who likes, big hp/high dmg enemies, they can still be unlocked, but in a less vertical way, that prioritizes experience over difficulty.

this way you wont get the feeling that you have to grind 10 more difficulty levels to see the new content, or when you add more instabilities, grind up to 50.

difficulty progression will provide a handicap for players essentially, just mechanically upscaling

heres a link again for a slightly more visual representaion

http://ampbucketspace.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I can’t find it now but there was a post talking about secondary objectives and rewards for completion of said objectives.

We do this with the Grawl Shaman and I would like to see more of this in the fractals.

Essentially stretch goal objectives that add more optional difficulty but reward the players for completing the more difficult content.

The larger the sense of discovery and accomplishment the greater the overall experience in my opinion.

Chris

I talked about this, and some other people as well.

Essentially, as you say, add optional events that sometimes occur sometimes dont, that reward players well. Some of these could be universal (like tricksy treksa spawns in an area off the beaten path) and some could be specific, like navigating a jump puzzle on the roofs of ascalon before a bomb blows up.

my idea on rewarding players leverages fractal relics, by making them more desired. 1 item i would add is something with the type of drops you find in the daily chest.

say it costs 110 relics, now, if extra events, and harder fractals award more relics, suddenly its less about the race to the end, and more about doing whatever comes your way.

Aside from events, you can add random optional goals(that appear sometimes), like beat in X amount of time, kill X amount of non respawning enemies, kill only 3 monsters, Beat level with no deaths etc, that reward extra fractal relics, while this shouldnt be that hard to add in, it changes the way, and style of play you would use on the level. Instabilities capture some of this, but they dont really reward you extra for it, and they dont add to the unpredictability/variability since you always select your instability.