Guild Wars 2

Lower Tier Fractals?

Follow me on this…(sorry but went over characters on Topic Title)

Before the update each level of Fractals, now called tiers, the LFG was full of peeps wanting to party up and run each set of dailies. Now if you complete the higher tiers you automagically get the lower tiers and the rewards. For the past many days it is hard finding any lower tier groups. I have to admit I am not a higher fractal player and am fine with nothing more than tier 3 at most.

Does anyone see this as well? It just seems like I can jump in for a daily fractal of one and then done. At least at my tier level it is very difficult even impossible sometimes to find a group willing to do all three runs plus the daily.

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Well, this was partly owing to the fact that there was no reason to run high level fractals in the past (besides Swamptals of the Mists).

The pendulum was swung very hard towards low levels for a while, and now it seems it has swing really hard towards the high levels. ArenaNet can’t seem to find a happy medium (IE a daily using all 4 tiers).

Vagrant.7206:

Well, this was partly owing to the fact that there was no reason to run high level fractals in the past (besides Swamptals of the Mists).

The pendulum was swung very hard towards low levels for a while, and now it seems it has swing really hard towards the high levels. ArenaNet can’t seem to find a happy medium (IE a daily using all 4 tiers).

and should it not be balanced for higher tiers? you need a reason to do higher, lower levels should just be tutorials.

Xbon.9086:

Vagrant.7206:

Well, this was partly owing to the fact that there was no reason to run high level fractals in the past (besides Swamptals of the Mists).

The pendulum was swung very hard towards low levels for a while, and now it seems it has swing really hard towards the high levels. ArenaNet can’t seem to find a happy medium (IE a daily using all 4 tiers).

and should it not be balanced for higher tiers? you need a reason to do higher, lower levels should just be tutorials.

I’m not denying that higher levels should be encouraged. The trick is you need enough players doing the lower levels so that players new to Fractals can get up to said higher levels.

Xbon.9086:

Vagrant.7206:

and should it not be balanced for higher tiers? you need a reason to do higher, lower levels should just be tutorials.

I think the point is even newbies are going to have a tough time with the “tutorials” because the experienced are running high fractals. I can’t even get guildies to run tiers 2 and 3 anymore because why run the same ones at each tier if you already are rewarded. Why run them if you get the rewards for free.

Anyhoo it is what it is and we’ll see if it levels out.

The whole levels thing in fractals has made it very hard to get into, partially why i never bother, who wants to add a lvl 7 to their fractal team..

All i do is die over and over bring their teams down and have no agony resist because i can’t get it or afford it..

So Fractals for me is like Raiding, something to ignore.

I don’t know if I would call them broken but the update has definitely had an impact on lower tier fractals.

I used to do the lowest tier fractal daily every day, always 2-10-X where X was the “named one” that day. I’d just join a random LFG group and it was almost always quick and smooth to get them done and there was a real mix of players from “pro” to, um, not so pro. Occasionally you got a player or two who were squishy or new or just clueless but it didn’t matter because the team as a whole got through it and it was very rare for there to be any complaints or bickering.

Since the update it seems that those “pro” players have moved to other things which I think are probably:
- The higher tier fractals because they automatically get the lower rewards
- The buffed dungeons

That leaves the lower level fractals typically only attracting the lower-skilled and less-experienced players. I’ve had more struggling/failing fractals in the last week than in the previous 3-4 months. In the lower level fractals you only need 2 or 3 players in the team to know what they are doing to succeed but that does not seem to be very common now. It’s a shame to have lost that player diversity in those fractals.

Consequently, I’m doing fewer fractals than before.

TL;DR;
I think the new regime has diverted the better players to higher level fractals to the detriment of the lower level fractals.