Guild Wars 2

need fractals for ascended gear, yet they are proving very difficult to get involved in. Even for fractals 1-4 people freak out if they know I haven’t done them before and won’t go, or even drop midway into the run when they discover people havent run X fractal before. I just want to runt he earliest fractals and get to know them, the mobs inside seem like a joke in these yet STILL people are going full elitist over it, I just don’t understand it would be so easy if they stopped dropping group like kittenes. I can understand higher fractals of course wanting people who know what they are doing, but if I am expected to have run (not watched a video but personally run) even at the lowest possible level then WTH.

It’s like this for dungeons too, what made this community so kittenty in PvE

You should check out the guild recruitment forums. I’m sure there are entry-level type groups there that would be open to early fractals/helping you out.

Yea, the general design of fractals is pretty hair brained. Not sure who decided to make entry into them basically require charity on the part of others… basically- if you aren’t someone who started the day it came out, you are gonna have a tough time.

All together, it’s not a very smart design. :-\

Pick up groups are a crap shoot. Some days you get great ones and others days you get nothing good.

docMed’s advice on guilds is solid. A guild will not guarantee you a run whenever you want, but it’s a good place to start and learn. Barring that, build up your friends list of the players you enjoyed playing with. If you find yourself in a group of players from one guild that went well, ask if they are taking recruits.

Fractals have alot of puzzles and without voice chat, a guild voice chat server for example, they can be difficult to explain using in game typed chat. Dungeons are much more straight forward, but there are still nuances that you will not know about. That’s not an excuse for the behavior you ran into, but it is why. Every mmo is the same in these respects.

I actually failed a few low level fractal because no one knows what to do. Granted if I’m a better leader it probably won’t be that bad. Marsh and dredge fractal is pretty bad if no one knows what to do.

Dungeon is becoming a farm spot for players. Some people run them everyday. The truth is they dont’ want to get in a 2 hour group when they can get in a 30 minutes group. That is especially true if you run and farm it everyday.

I actaully don’t run fotm because of how bad pug can be. So I’m stuck at lvl19. I thought about grind fractal level, but just give it up. Having to go through bad pug everyday is not fun.

I thought about getting in a fotm progressing group, but everyone in a progressing group is already high level. The truth is I already did alot of fractal, I believe I have the 400 fractal complete achievement. I just dont’ see the point of doing more.

Honestly even guildies have troubles getting parties, because they are so horrible to do, no one wants to touch them, its either join the hard cores and take what you get or join pugs and hope for the best..

These days its best to just ignore FoTM imo.

When I’m leveling alts i see new people constantly and I see new people constantly posting on gw2lfg.com….

MrSmiley.1543 are you in a guild?

well people can be very selfish, few people nowadays do any content that can be slowed down by other players (i don’t know what these people expect from an mmo with this single player attitude, but it’s full of them out there).

so fractal, indeed a voice chat would be awesome! but we don’t have it, and you can’t force people in teamspeak, can you?
although there are only two fractals that start in a very bad spot, shaman and svanir all the other fractals give you plenty of time to explain what to do.

i never ever left a party in no dungeon even fractals because of first timers (not even when nobody actually listened of tactics on what to do)… i wish people out there could do the same, but they are busy asking here an inspect feature, and whining about everything else they don’t like, as magic find or other stats rather than berserker or entire builds because they read somewhere those builds have not the seal of approval of jerks!

nobody in my guild had me saying: not coming to you in this dungeon because i cannot be bothered to explain it to you (same viceversa, nobody ever told me, just to get out because they couldn’t use their fingers to chat some lines before running the content)

My suggestion would be to go to GW2LFG.com, find a fractal of level 9 or below, and just /join it (As long as it’s not a speed run). When you come across a fight you’re unfamiliar with, just ask “I havn’t done this fight before is there anything I should know” – many fractals have multiple bosses and paths, no need to tell them you’ve never done any paths before; don’t tell them more than they need to know, then they can only judge you on your actual ability not their preconceptions

Since it’s a low level fractal having a new player along isn’t unusual and it’s in their interest to explain it (It’s not in anyone’s interest to boot someone mid-run as that means they have to 4 man it).

I think you’ll find most people’ll be perfectly reasonable and not scream “hermagerd nooob”, and once you’re comfortable with the different instances you’re no longer a newbie and you can crank it up to level 10 for better rewards, refine your game and get started on obtaining ascended.

I agree completely…I dragged my feet when FOTM first came out, and so now I am hopelessly behind the curve to get into most groups. So I really don’t even try anymore.

To some extent this is a problem for all the dungeons. Even if you know a lot of people who play GW2, schedules and real world lives being what they are, it is difficult to get 5 together to run dungeons.

PUGs are a risky proposition…you might end up with obnoxious idiots, a 3 hour struggle through the dungeon…or complete failure to even finish the run. I have seen all of the above in PUGs (along with some great groups as well).

If you can get into a group of people you know… even failure becomes more of a fun LOL than a stressful occurence. But I usually can’t pull it off and it’s PUGs or nothing…

For these reasons, much as I love dungeons, I very seldom run them.

I would like it if all the dungeons had a single player route…like the current event in Southsun.

I totally understand. I’m a Fractals fanatic, but I remember the pain of getting scolded for simply not having experienced every shard. Then they change again at level 10, so you think you have it down and then you get blown out of the air by harpies that now have wind nukes.

But! Not all of us are jerks. Sometimes it’s worth it to specify in GW2LFG or in map chat that you’re new. When that happens in my groups (especially Guild plus 1 groups), I calmly explain the shard and if things go south, we just try again. Not everyone is going to be forgiving, and you’ll almost certainly deal with impatient butt-heads (especially when you get to tier 3+), but it’s worth the pain in my opinion. They’re fun!

zuraith.6104:

I totally understand. I’m a Fractals fanatic, but I remember the pain of getting scolded for simply not having experienced every shard. Then they change again at level 10, so you think you have it down and then you get blown out of the air by harpies that now have wind nukes.

But! Not all of us are jerks. Sometimes it’s worth it to specify in GW2LFG or in map chat that you’re new. When that happens in my groups (especially Guild plus 1 groups), I calmly explain the shard and if things go south, we just try again. Not everyone is going to be forgiving, and you’ll almost certainly deal with impatient butt-heads (especially when you get to tier 3+), but it’s worth the pain in my opinion. They’re fun!

say your new you dont get invited, or people start dropping group

To answer above no I am not in a guild I have joined a few and none of them turned out to be any help in anything other than being a chatroom so I am not having much luck on that side either

MrSmiley.1543:

To answer above no I am not in a guild I have joined a few and none of them turned out to be any help in anything other than being a chatroom so I am not having much luck on that side either

so, what kind of guild you are looking for?

what kind of things you are looking for in a guild?

would you mind sharing that with us?

I run lowbies through fractals fairly regularly. But then, that’s the kind of player I am. I don’t mind the fractals, I still get good drops and it’s a good thing to do for the community.

Find a guild of like-minded players, not just for the fractals. It will make the entire game much better for you.

Vayne.8563:

Find a guild of like-minded players, not just for the fractals. It will make the entire game much better for you.

aye, i believe that the bulk of the complaints i see in the forum comes from people who are not in a guild.

You aren’t missing anything, FoTM is like a dungeon in every other game with more chaos and less fun.

since last month patch and the “cough” fixes “cough” to the dredge and cliffside fractals, which were already the longest and the most hated fractals… lots of people including myself stopped running fractals completely.

I started this game after christmas and fractals had been out for a while, i found it hard to start aswell. I had trouble even finding a group, and wanting to start with lvl 1 since i had no idea what i was doing. I finally found a group lfm in lions arch, which we failed because we couldn’t make it past the swamp. Ppl got frustrated and left.

About a week later, i found some guildys that were running it for a member who hadn’t done it before either. I tagged along & we ran it a few times that day, and i had them explain everything as we progressed. Then i found out about www.gw2lfg.com, and if you plan to do fractals it’s highly recommended you use that site.

Anyways im lvl 40 fractals now, and consider myself pretty good at them. I still run it every now and again, but i really don’t need anything from there anymore. I used to do it everyday, sometimes multiple times, but not very much anymore, because there is more rewarding things to do with my time.

due to current system and anet “Patches” fotm is frustrating until lvl 48…..
At 48 it starts to be easier.

So even if you can do a fotm 40 there are serious chances you will fail at 26 pug.

This is a system that punish creativity and any sort of tactic different from the “intended”.

And i m not talking of exploit and stuff but of trash mobs that hits 6 times in a row for 10.000 and stuff like that….

Vayne.8563:

I run lowbies through fractals fairly regularly. But then, that’s the kind of player I am. I don’t mind the fractals, I still get good drops and it’s a good thing to do for the community.

Find a guild of like-minded players, not just for the fractals. It will make the entire game much better for you.

+1

Finding a good guild is always a benefit. If you’re already in a guild but it doesn’t feel like “home”, try a different one. If you join a nice guild and ask to run low level fractals, someone will probably say yes (although you will probably have to wait longer than for a pug).

I also run intro-to-fractals about once a week, mostly for my guild, but I’ll post on gw2lfg with an explanation saying newbies welcome. These same sort of posts from other people were how I just recently started to learn Arah. If you check out gw2lfg often enough, you’ll see a few groups that explicitly say newbies welcome, although most <10 fractal runs should expect new players to join. Alternatively, if I’m online feel free to PM me and I’d be happy to do a newbie fractals run (I’m not on for very long on weekdays though, and only late at night).

LordByron.8369:

due to current system and anet “Patches” fotm is frustrating until lvl 48…..
At 48 it starts to be easier.

So even if you can do a fotm 40 there are serious chances you will fail at 26 pug.

This is a system that punish creativity and any sort of tactic different from the “intended”.

And i m not talking of exploit and stuff but of trash mobs that hits 6 times in a row for 10.000 and stuff like that….

Geez. I didn’t even try to go past 38. There isn’t much incentive, really.

the incentive is easier+faster runs….
People at 48 learned the flowchart required so you don t have anything left to improvvisation….

Like people who do 38 doesn’t….

This is why (or one of the reasons) I don’t like the elitist community in this game and won’t continue to play it. I have never done a fractal because I am honest and say I haven’t run one before, I normally don’t even get a reply in return … nothing. I’ll play ESO when it comes out instead.

Mortifer.2946:

Like people who do 38 doesn’t….

once the limit was 20. then 26 then 30 now you find ba dplayers even at 38.

Possible indications:
They stay behind in ascalon fractal first part keeping npc out of aggro
They keep running in ascalon square taking npcs with them
They can t do snowblind fractal without whiping 3-4 times
Can t anyway survive lava stage boss even when alone….

and things like that…

Its not elitism…

Its common sense.
If you know you can t do some fractals because you don t understand how it works…why on earth do you play 30+?

Am i the only one that waited long and trained on lower fractals before proceeding to 20-30-40+ etc?

Salt.4621:

This is why (or one of the reasons) I don’t like the elitist community in this game and won’t continue to play it. I have never done a fractal because I am honest and say I haven’t run one before, I normally don’t even get a reply in return … nothing. I’ll play ESO when it comes out instead.

Because that game will be completely elitist-free.

Sadly, youll find this crop of people in every MMO. Elitists. Any MMO that has any sort of end game, in GW2 part of the endgame is fractals, people still want to zip through it as fast as humanly possible. Not knowing what to do will only slow them down.

Personally, I dont see much of this. If I am new to a dungeon, mostly I keep to myself and follow the group. Im normally in the back of the pack following them from point A to point B, watching what they do, moving when they move, standing where they stand. You might mess up here and there, but it’ll be less noticeable.

When I first started doing dungeons, I remembe rmy first few COF runs. “Everyone been here”…I was silent. Just followed them, and made it through.

But I am able to do this because I have common sense, I know how MMOs and boss fights in this game work, I know how to perform my role while watching others in my group for when they move so I can follow.

MrSmiley.1543:

It’s like this for dungeons too, what made this community so kittenty in PvE

Simple answer: RNG

Longer answer: If the reward for running a dungeon / fractal wasn’t hidden behind terribly low random chances, players wouldn’t feel the need to run it in 30 minutes and instead enjoy the ride. Now that in order to get anything you are needed to run the same thing a few hundred times (if you are lucky, if you are unlucky you might be running the same thing for decades and not get what you want – RNG) players are looking for the optimal way of doing it. Why “waste” time to do a run with newbies and take 2 hours, when you can do the run with “elitists” and be done in 30 minutes, both have same Random rewards, so why bother?

Also, it doesn’t help at all that other activities in this game, the joke akitten bosses, offer comparable rewards for next to no time/skill requirements.

go on gw2lfg.com make a post and tick thebox for first time/new to dungeon.