Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Here is my perspective:

I leveled to FOTM 80 because it was the only content in the game that I found moderately difficult and enjoyable. I didn’t have a set group, but usually leveled with a mix of friends and a mix of pugs. It was a lot of time, very little proportional reward, but a whole lot of fun.

The clutch moments on level 79 shaman where the 4/5 people die and one person manages to res the rest… that was why I played high level fractals. I enjoyed it.

Looking at the new changes, I am hesitantly disappointed. I know I’ll have to test out the new levels 30-50 before I can fully judge, but from what the developers have been saying you can get to level 50 with less AR than before, and the overall difficulty curve from 1-50 has been lowered. The devs said they’d open up levels 50+ in the future, but not now.

I’ve waited over a year for them to “re-officially” open 50+. I quit the game a while back due to school, and was really looking forward to this patch to maybe bring me back in. But instead of a new challenge being opened to the rest of the player base, the cap on 50 is still in place, and from what the devs said, the content has been dumbed down a bit.

As it stands now, this really isn’t encouraging me personally to come back to the game.

I was one of the people who played from 50-80 not for the rewards, but for the challenge and fun and yes, admittedly, a bit of guild prestige. I don’t care about the leaderboards, don’t care about the rewards, and don’t care about the “new” fractal if it’s going to be easy. I want the dungeon that they said, and now are saying again, has “infinite” levels, that increases in difficulty, so I can challenge myself and have some fun in the process.

Edit: Also, if and when they open 50+, if it requires AR grind, I’ll never enter the dungeon again.

i get what your saying, and it actually saddens me they are making it easier, the loss of the ever increasing difficulty sucks.

Dont get the last part though, fractals were set up from jump to be a AR grind, not a bad one imo, but AR grind none the less, why would they take that away now?
also, Mr Ordon said the level 50 fractal has the AR requirement for 50-59, so shouldnt be that bad really

Level 50-80 didn’t have any additional AR requirement. Maybe it was because those levels weren’t finished, but lots thought it was because they only wanted the AR hurdle to be for people just starting. Afterwards, it’s learn to dodge

Crysys.1297:

@phys, you are actually incorrect on all accounts.
1) weapons ONLY dropped 20+ at a rate of ~5% (~15% at 38, ~30% at 48)
2) you could run multiple dailies, one from each “tier” (i.e. 48, 38, 28)
3) they ARE reducing AR. “infused” rings will no longer have the +5AR built in… rather, they will already have AR in the infusion slot… what happens to people that grinded the 250 ecto infusions?? will they be given 100s of gold they spent to get them?

2. You still run multiple dailies one from each tier. You’ll get a different daily chest from doing 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. They changed it so you won’t get 2 daily chests if you run fotm 28 on one character and fotm 26 on another.

3. What you said about AR is completely wrong. Infused rings/backpieces get 2 infusion slots now. Where non-infused will only get 1 slot. One of the infused slots is an Agony Resistance only slot that can reach X AR. The other slot is whatever was on previously (including +5 AR / +5 Power, Precision, Vit, etc.).

Crysys.1297:

3) they ARE reducing AR. “infused” rings will no longer have the +5AR built in… rather, they will already have AR in the infusion slot… what happens to people that grinded the 250 ecto infusions?? will they be given 100s of gold they spent to get them?

Just to put a brief pause on the hysteria, my understanding is the new rings will have the same slot they always did (and your very expensive infusion remains there safe and unharmed) and the +5 fixed bonus of the ring is replaced with a new slot that starts at +0 AR but can go much, much higher in the long run.

So yes, there is a temporary drop of up to -15 AR (5 AR from each of three pieces, giving you 3 of the new unlimited slots)… laying the groundwork to regain not only that 15 AR but potentially infinite AR opening up new tiers for fractal difficulty in the hundreds.

Crysys.1297:

phys.7689:

Bright.9160:

So what this update has done is the following:

• Screw over a bunch of people that got to lvl50+ or 50 by invalidating their work and putting them on the same standard as some random scrub that just hit lvl30.

• Hand out Fractal weapons to everyone: if anything, they should have changed them to only drop in lvl30 or lvl40+, not lower the requirement to get them.

• Remove any incentive to do more than 1 Fractal run/day, because they are now account bound and doing a daily again is basically a waste of time. The only reason the day after the patch to do extra levels is in order to get to 50 first. Woopdi-flipping-doo. As if this game wasn’t alt-unfriendly enough.

• Cheat a bunch of people out of 100’s of gold because of the t6 mats they used to make special infusions.

• Show yet again how incompetent Anet is as a company.

• Show yet again how little Anet cares about their hardcore high-end PvE community.

*1 maybe true depending on your prespective

*2 supposedly drop rare hasent changed and they were always possible from 10 on, just highly unlikely (well thats what the dev said) i have gotten one in the 20s though.

*essentially the daily system is almost exactly the same, except its acount bound now.

*the old infusions are not being touched, no one will have less AR, there is no a possibility for higher AR, nothing really different here

*since all your beefs except 1 are inaccurate, i dont know if you can really make that claim, but regardless, it sucks that you lost your title, i suggest they give you another
Alpha fractal runner X
x= level of fractal over 30 you obtained

@phys, you are actually incorrect on all accounts.
1) weapons ONLY dropped 20+ at a rate of ~5% (~15% at 38, ~30% at 48)
2) you could run multiple dailies, one from each “tier” (i.e. 48, 38, 28)
3) they ARE reducing AR. “infused” rings will no longer have the +5AR built in… rather, they will already have AR in the infusion slot… what happens to people that grinded the 250 ecto infusions?? will they be given 100s of gold they spent to get them?

he answered all these questions in the fractured forum, i had the same questions

he said,
1)apparently they could always drop from 10-20 fractals they just almost never did (this is what the dev said, i never saw it before 20, but this is what he said) he went on to say that its rate wasnt changing really

2) he specifically answered my question in the fractured forum and said, there are different dailes for each tier 1-10 11-20 21-30 etc. the main difference is that this is account bound now.

3) the infused thing was confusing but he explained it after many questions
essentially its like this
old infusion slots will not be touched, this includes the the versatile/mighty/precision stuff
a new type infusion slot will be added to the item types called infused, like
infused red ring http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ring_of_Red_Death_%28Infused%29

instead of having the base 5 infusion it will now get a slot specifically for an agony resist type infusion.
agony resist type infusion only goes in this slot
old items will start with a +5 agony infusion in this slot

you will be able to create higher agony infusion to put in this slot.

so if you had 55 AR, you will still have it, none of your old infusions will be touched

check out Mr Ordons Dev posts in fractured sub forum

Nike.2631:

Crysys.1297:

3) they ARE reducing AR. “infused” rings will no longer have the +5AR built in… rather, they will already have AR in the infusion slot… what happens to people that grinded the 250 ecto infusions?? will they be given 100s of gold they spent to get them?

Just to put a brief pause on the hysteria, my understanding is the new rings will have the same slot they always did (and your very expensive infusion remains there safe and unharmed) and the +5 fixed bonus of the ring is replaced with a new slot that starts at +0 AR but can go much, much higher in the long run.

So yes, there is a temporary drop of up to -15 AR (5 AR from each of three pieces, giving you 3 of the new unlimited slots)… laying the groundwork to regain not only that 15 AR but potentially infinite AR opening up new tiers for fractal difficulty in the hundreds.

it will not drop, they will give them a +5 agony infusion

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

phys.7689:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Here is my perspective:

I leveled to FOTM 80 because it was the only content in the game that I found moderately difficult and enjoyable. I didn’t have a set group, but usually leveled with a mix of friends and a mix of pugs. It was a lot of time, very little proportional reward, but a whole lot of fun.

The clutch moments on level 79 shaman where the 4/5 people die and one person manages to res the rest… that was why I played high level fractals. I enjoyed it.

Looking at the new changes, I am hesitantly disappointed. I know I’ll have to test out the new levels 30-50 before I can fully judge, but from what the developers have been saying you can get to level 50 with less AR than before, and the overall difficulty curve from 1-50 has been lowered. The devs said they’d open up levels 50+ in the future, but not now.

I’ve waited over a year for them to “re-officially” open 50+. I quit the game a while back due to school, and was really looking forward to this patch to maybe bring me back in. But instead of a new challenge being opened to the rest of the player base, the cap on 50 is still in place, and from what the devs said, the content has been dumbed down a bit.

As it stands now, this really isn’t encouraging me personally to come back to the game.

I was one of the people who played from 50-80 not for the rewards, but for the challenge and fun and yes, admittedly, a bit of guild prestige. I don’t care about the leaderboards, don’t care about the rewards, and don’t care about the “new” fractal if it’s going to be easy. I want the dungeon that they said, and now are saying again, has “infinite” levels, that increases in difficulty, so I can challenge myself and have some fun in the process.

Edit: Also, if and when they open 50+, if it requires AR grind, I’ll never enter the dungeon again.

i get what your saying, and it actually saddens me they are making it easier, the loss of the ever increasing difficulty sucks.

Dont get the last part though, fractals were set up from jump to be a AR grind, not a bad one imo, but AR grind none the less, why would they take that away now?
also, Mr Ordon said the level 50 fractal has the AR requirement for 50-59, so shouldnt be that bad really

Level 50-80 didn’t have any additional AR requirement. Maybe it was because those levels weren’t finished, but lots thought it was because they only wanted the AR hurdle to be for people just starting. Afterwards, it’s learn to dodge

im thinking its becaused they were unfinished. I expect it will actually scale up in the future, otherwise the infinite AR potential of (infused) items is pretty limited. On the + side its highly likely someone who does fractals often will have more AR than they no what to do with7

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

Moreover, you can’t say dredge and ascalon got ridiculous for non plate stacking groups.

I know most “hardcore” groups can’t appreciate this as they have rarely had any qualms about using guardians and warriors to trivialize content, but doing dredge at 48 as berk ele or even ascalon without a guardian for perma reflects or the burst aoe of 100b is just dumb.

It was gimmicky balancing. Hopefully the newly introduced challenges don’t take the usual game balance design of “Hard = more HP more damage done”.

I’ve got to 80 using this composition: 2 war/nec/2 ele. You know what do you need the most in fractals? Reflections. Do you know what this group lacks?

Which is somewhat mitigated by the necro’s and wars. You’re still aoe bursting the kitten out of groups with those two warriors in it whenever you can’t use FGS.

Drop the warriors and see how smooth the run becomes for the caster/leather.

Zenith.7301:

Which is somewhat mitigated by the necro’s and wars. You’re still aoe bursting the kitten out of groups with those two warriors in it whenever you can’t use FGS.

Drop the warriors and see how smooth the run becomes for the caster/leather.

Bursting mobs at level 80? I didn’t know necro could aoe burst. I guess we were waiting for fgs every time when pulling mobs. I would also like to see how would you explain bursting bosses like archdiviner or mossman.

Are you serious?

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

Which is somewhat mitigated by the necro’s and wars. You’re still aoe bursting the kitten out of groups with those two warriors in it whenever you can’t use FGS.

Drop the warriors and see how smooth the run becomes for the caster/leather.

Bursting mobs at level 80? I didn’t know necro could aoe burst. I guess we were waiting for fgs every time when pulling mobs.

Are you serious?

The necros and warriors are damage sponges. What’s so hard to understand about the fact that without 2 warriors, having 2 other non-warrior classes instead, your run wouldn’t go so well?

I’m hitting the bed peps. Hopefully the devs will share some light on all of this.

See ya tomorrow.

How about making everyone’s characters level 30, even those at max level, but making it so that when you level up one character, all of them gain a level? Wouldn’t that be exciting? I know I for sure would want to experience all of the open world content this way.

Zenith.7301:

haviz.1340:

Zenith.7301:

Which is somewhat mitigated by the necro’s and wars. You’re still aoe bursting the kitten out of groups with those two warriors in it whenever you can’t use FGS.

Drop the warriors and see how smooth the run becomes for the caster/leather.

Bursting mobs at level 80? I didn’t know necro could aoe burst. I guess we were waiting for fgs every time when pulling mobs.

Are you serious?

The necros and warriors are damage sponges. What’s so hard to understand about the fact that without 2 warriors, having 2 other non-warrior classes instead, your run wouldn’t go so well?

I was able to reach Fractal level 8 today and I can say this guy is correct.

Zenith.7301:

The necros and warriors are damage sponges. What’s so hard to understand about the fact that without 2 warriors, having 2 other non-warrior classes instead, your run wouldn’t go so well?

I’m not going to argue with that, we’ll just get infractions. But I will try to tell you that in fractals guardians are much better choice than warriors. If I replaced 2 warriors that had had no support (both elementalist weren’t exactly supportive) with 2 guardians, I am pretty sure we wouldn’t argue right now.

Did you not read my post? I said warriors and guardians both. You for some reason felt like nitpicking when we both know a party made of engineers and necros and rangers and elementalists and thieves by themselves, without the support of warriors or guardians would be a much rougher party.

At no point in my first post did I ever leave guardians out. I said specifically they trivialized content.

There is a very real difference in the impact guardians and warriors have on a group compared to other classes, and I’m tired of people playing it down.

phys.7689:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Here is my perspective:

I leveled to FOTM 80 because it was the only content in the game that I found moderately difficult and enjoyable. I didn’t have a set group, but usually leveled with a mix of friends and a mix of pugs. It was a lot of time, very little proportional reward, but a whole lot of fun.

The clutch moments on level 79 shaman where the 4/5 people die and one person manages to res the rest… that was why I played high level fractals. I enjoyed it.

Looking at the new changes, I am hesitantly disappointed. I know I’ll have to test out the new levels 30-50 before I can fully judge, but from what the developers have been saying you can get to level 50 with less AR than before, and the overall difficulty curve from 1-50 has been lowered. The devs said they’d open up levels 50+ in the future, but not now.

I’ve waited over a year for them to “re-officially” open 50+. I quit the game a while back due to school, and was really looking forward to this patch to maybe bring me back in. But instead of a new challenge being opened to the rest of the player base, the cap on 50 is still in place, and from what the devs said, the content has been dumbed down a bit.

As it stands now, this really isn’t encouraging me personally to come back to the game.

I was one of the people who played from 50-80 not for the rewards, but for the challenge and fun and yes, admittedly, a bit of guild prestige. I don’t care about the leaderboards, don’t care about the rewards, and don’t care about the “new” fractal if it’s going to be easy. I want the dungeon that they said, and now are saying again, has “infinite” levels, that increases in difficulty, so I can challenge myself and have some fun in the process.

Edit: Also, if and when they open 50+, if it requires AR grind, I’ll never enter the dungeon again.

i get what your saying, and it actually saddens me they are making it easier, the loss of the ever increasing difficulty sucks.

Dont get the last part though, fractals were set up from jump to be a AR grind, not a bad one imo, but AR grind none the less, why would they take that away now?
also, Mr Ordon said the level 50 fractal has the AR requirement for 50-59, so shouldnt be that bad really

The Point is Since the Progress is now geargated and I already was way beyond the gear where it was gated in fractals as 81.. I can tell the Content isn’t that hard.. no Comes the tricky part… if they could tell me for sure that nobody will get in less than 3 months too scale 50 and this is not based on gear but on skill I might even consider playing it… but I expect as every hard Content in the game ( I have done all even light up the dark) to not be as hard as they say.. if they say.. the difficulty for 40-50 is like 50-60 before … I already know and overcome this difficulty without even wiping 1 fractal at this Level or resetting stuff or whatever… just did it cause I needed…

I was hoppning for an infinite not geargated dungeon so Players can Play as high as they can than leaderboards would make sence because the ppl with the higheest Level have overcome highest challenge but… meh a geargated dungeon that gets personal Levels resetted and isn’t partialli as hard as they clame is really not what I expected

I enjoyed the idea so I get to the Limit.. as it stands I will have 20 Levels of boring grind at a difficulty way below of what I did … and than wait again .. ? so why do you take this away from me?

Zenith.7301:

Did you not read my post? I said warriors and guardians both. You for some reason felt like nitpicking when we both know a party made of engineers and necros and rangers and elementalists and thieves by themselves, without the support of warriors or guardians would be a much rougher party.

At no point in my first post did I ever leave guardians out. I said specifically they trivialized content.

There is a very real difference in the impact guardians and warriors have on a group compared to other classes, and I’m tired of people playing it down.

I cannot agree. Today I did Hotw 1 with pug. We had ranger, 2 necros, mesmer, and engineer. It was a breeze and it was a pug of rather questionable quality.

True story.

Agree to disagree tbh. HotW is just HotW.

Zenith.7301:

Agree to disagree tbh. HotW is just HotW.

Agreed. Real elites run the hardest content with bad builds and bad class composition.

Quit being efficient and organizing what you do.

Hmm,

The last people I knew who played GW2 just quit over this. Hope the next patch isn’t, “Honor Among Thieves,” where a new faction of thieves “reset” all players’ wealth to zero, or perhaps “A Plague of Vampires,” where bloodsuckers reset all character level progress to 1.

Personally, I am currently level 50 in FotM before they made brought out the ascended weapons and such. I do got to say that I am really disappointed that Arena Net is resetting the personal levels to 30 because personally I don’t think they understand how hard it was to level up your Fotm levels and even if you leveled your FotM level to 40+ (before ascended weapons), it was still extremely difficult to finish if people just leave in the middle of fractals (due to time constraints). So I would like to know, in what way would this be even fun for players that wasted tons of time to level up their Fractals beyond 40 or 50 for them to just be rest to 30 just for the leaderboards.

Personally, instead of resetting all the personal rewards, Arena net should have a choice where the game introduces a “different” FotM which has leaderboards. What I mean by different is that players should have a choice to either keep their personal reward levels for just “regular Fotm” and players that would like to have a more competitive Fotm should que up for the “leaderboard” Fotm to get unique rewards.

VOLKON.1290:

Surely those currently above level 30 are good enough to handle these new challenges and outpace the rest of us right back up there again, yes?

Yes. Scrubs will keep being scrubs and decent players will keep being decent players.

deSade.9437:

VOLKON.1290:

Surely those currently above level 30 are good enough to handle these new challenges and outpace the rest of us right back up there again, yes?

Yes. Scrubs will keep being scrubs and decent players will keep being decent players.

The Point is a decent Player might not wanna farm again 51 Levels of easy Content just to see it was easy… man if I can Keep my reward Level I will join 81 see if 80 is still the cap if 80 is the cap I Play new fractals see how hard they are if I can complete em on 80 I will just put the whole Thing aside again.. now I Need to spent time Money to Level grind new gear whatever to get up just to see it’s easy… doens’t make sence to me to not Show me in the first place if it’s really hard I Need to go down some level’s anyway

Incredibly unfair to individuals who spent hundreds of hours and thousands of gems in order to increase their personal reward level to 50-80.

There needs to be a significant reward to those individuals or the leaderboard concept needs to be over.

also…why is this thread in general discussion and not under the new fractal update where it belongs?

Don’t want to accuse anet of hiding/deflecting our concerns….but if it looks like a fish and it smells like a fish…

This sounds like one of the best updates since release. The permanent addition of extra paths, the streamlining of rewards, a more sensible scaling in difficulty. Living story is supposed to be the fresh breeze, but it’s the other way around for me. For once there’s no old, worn living story “rinse and repeat” stuff (at least not for the fractals part), but a permanent, tangible addition. I sincerely hope this is not the last time you enhance some of the great things already in the game.

My point of view, already mentioned in the living story forum.

As I understand it the initial infused item change will be a wash. Nothing immediately different. The only point of this however seems to be a gear grind on infusions. Collect scraps, buy crafting reagents, craft things together, get something better after finding many pieces on many runs, i.e. gear grind. I don’t see any other reason for this change other than gear grind.

The infusion change doesn’t solve any problems for players wanting to run fractals and WvW with the same equipment. They will still have to choose between AR and stats on their infusions. The gear gap between people who run fractals (PvE) and pure WvW players might even increase with better infusions coming from fractals. I thought this was a clear game design problem that needed solving.

The level drop however seems well thought out. Experienced players who start at L30 and play 20 new levels to get to L50 are going to have much the same experience as if they had kept L50 and played 20 new levels to get to L70. In fact their game experience will be better since they don’t need more AR and mobs will not be scaling up any higher. New players will also get it better since they don’t have to grind through an excessive number of levels. 50 levels in enough, account bound or not. It is just better game design in the long term to have the new levels relaunched at L31-L50.

Could the players have been left with L50 in fractals instead of L30? Possibly, but I don’t see why they should. It lowers their potential enjoyment of the new levels and they haven’t actually beaten the new content yet. It may be more difficult or need new builds and tactics.

Two reasons why players seem angry about this change is time spent and ego. Ego is just silly since fractal level wasn’t public so the only people to admire that were the players themselves, and they can still be proud of that old level if they want to be. Nobody else knows or cares, quite frankly. Time spent is a valid concern but I suggest that they should ask themselves whether they really want justification of their gaming time or whether they want a better game design instead.

Yep.. I couldn’t care less about having a leader board… I do care about the time it took for me to level up my FotM,.. I did high 40s when I was leveling up to 40 because that’s what my friends were doing. I also leveled up an alt.. I’m not sure what to say really… I feel like something has been taken away from me. Maybe it’s the feeling of just achieving something for the time I put into it? I never got a ascended chest drop, and have only had 2 FotM weapons drop.. but I did feel like, within my self, I had gained something from making the time, around my busy life to do some long, long runs… I can’t just sit at home any play for a few days straight to get my levels back… I have work and IRL commitments… Summing up, I guess I feel crap now…

Since fractals went away from the original idea of infinite progression(which coincidentally would’ve been a nice thing to have leaderboards for) I suggest they just make it open world and the top would be the fastest squad(yes, pve commander ftw) to finish them without dying(cleric gear also ftw).
Also, to the guy who said the stuff about jockeys and horses and cars, this would be like if you were a top jockey training for years and then cars came out. But instead of horse riding becoming obsolete they would shoot your horse with a rifle(maybe killshot?) and force you to drive a car.
One more thing. No one wanted leaderboards because casual people don’t care about ranks obviously and people who are actually good don’t care about ranks either. I doubt some silly title is what they desire. Titles are more in the vein of afk in LA with all the legendaries(commander tag optional but recommended). I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, but people who did level 79 fractals did them to prove that they can because seriously 90% of the community doesn’t give a ???? about that and no title will change this.

tl;dr Let people who want to farm dollies farm them and let people who enjoy stuff without hurting anybody enjoy said things. Can’t we all be friends?
P.S.: stop balancing PvE around WvW it’s stupid and inconsiderate.

JMar.3254:

Zenith.7301:

Agree to disagree tbh. HotW is just HotW.

Agreed. Real elites run the hardest content with bad builds and bad class composition.

Quit being efficient and organizing what you do.

whoosh

CC Danicia.1394:

Bright.9160:

If you remember not to remove topics just because they give negative Feedback.

Kthanks.

As long as it is respectful and doesn’t include violations of the Forum Code of Conduct, it won’t be removed.

You should tell the moderators that.

P.S. Moving it to Linksville or Suggestions is the same as deleting around here.

robertul.3679:

One more thing. No one wanted leaderboards because casual people don’t care about ranks obviously and people who are actually good don’t care about ranks either. I doubt some silly title is what they desire. Titles are more in the vein of afk in LA with all the legendaries(commander tag optional but recommended). I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, but people who did level 79 fractals did them to prove that they can because seriously 90% of the community doesn’t give a ???? about that and no title will change this.

This ^. Well said.
Wiping progression to progress just ain’t right, for fractal. It’s like a slap in the face to all of us dedicated fractal players.
And making it account bound cd will make fractal become even more deserted once the euphoria of patch is over. Take a good look at dungeons during off peak, gw2lfg.com practically empty and the beta tool too. Given fractal is not popular in the first place, it will make it even worse …

My personal suggestion for the new leaderboards would be to include the previous highest personal reward attained on the account. So that we could rank people better.

Daenerys.2708:

My personal suggestion for the new leaderboards would be to include the previous highest personal reward attained on the account. So that we could rank people better.

Have been running fractal of 6 months now on daily basis. 48 and 38 clear in 2 hrs or so … with a sorta of permanent group (ppl come and goes, lots quit). It’s safe to say we don’t give a jack about title or leaderboard.

People at above level 30 should get an instant precursor of their choice. Or if A.NET be stingy, any ascended weapon box.

alcopaul.2156:

People at above level 30 should get an instant precursor of their choice. Or if A.NET be stingy, any ascended weapon box.

nope I don’t want Money give me a somthing that is a Special as having scale 81 or don’t take it away from me in the first place!

Selenya.6410:

I’ll try to point out couple of things and my 2 cents over this whole story:

1) Turn it like you want dear ppl, yeah you who reached lvl 80 when it was clear we shouldnt go there. I have not one, nor 2, but 3 characters at lvl 50, capable group to run stuff with, 50+ fractal skins in my vault+chars, over 500 pristine fractal relics.
Whoever reached lvl 80 first 2 months FoTm was released, did it abusing of stealth kits, teleport guns, healing seeds and yada yada. Beyond those, just for JM: revival orbs, dark fields, ress tricks. That does not require skills, that’s just cheap.
“We got no response from devs cap was below a certain lvl”. Well, if you can’t proceed normally and only need to do odd lvls, go figure… Seriously, I’m amazed from ppl sometimes… I’m sorry, cant be with you on this point.
To all those braggin about lvl 80: done wrong from the root.

Gotta agree on this. Sure u have spend heaps of time getting to max fractal lvl but honestly why do u want arenanet to take it into account. Seriously.. you werent supposed to reach such high lvls by design. And dont tell me “its 100% legit” cuz it isnt. It involved 100th times of dying and using the tricks as stated above.

Besides, the only time ppl who would know that u are at such a high lvl fractal at this time is when you created that lvl fractal (which u wouldnt because u probably never play that lvl anymore).
This patch gives u the opportunity to show the world how good u really are. Now reaching a certain fractal lvl has a meaning. You should be freaking happy…

Clivar.3176:

Selenya.6410:

I’ll try to point out couple of things and my 2 cents over this whole story:

1) Turn it like you want dear ppl, yeah you who reached lvl 80 when it was clear we shouldnt go there. I have not one, nor 2, but 3 characters at lvl 50, capable group to run stuff with, 50+ fractal skins in my vault+chars, over 500 pristine fractal relics.
Whoever reached lvl 80 first 2 months FoTm was released, did it abusing of stealth kits, teleport guns, healing seeds and yada yada. Beyond those, just for JM: revival orbs, dark fields, ress tricks. That does not require skills, that’s just cheap.
“We got no response from devs cap was below a certain lvl”. Well, if you can’t proceed normally and only need to do odd lvls, go figure… Seriously, I’m amazed from ppl sometimes… I’m sorry, cant be with you on this point.
To all those braggin about lvl 80: done wrong from the root.

Gotta agree on this. Sure u have spend heaps of time getting to max fractal lvl but honestly why do u want arenanet to take it into account. Seriously.. you werent supposed to reach such high lvls by design. And dont tell me “its 100% legit” cuz it isnt. It involved 100th times of dying and using the tricks as stated above.

Besides, the only time ppl who would know that u are at such a high lvl fractal at this time is when you created that lvl fractal (which u wouldnt because u probably never play that lvl anymore).
This patch gives u the opportunity to show the world how good u really are. Now reaching a certain fractal lvl has a meaning. You should be freaking happy…

Tell me 1 reason why we should expect a so called infinite dungeon as it was called to have a cap and not be there for progressing ? tell me what is an exploit about using Rez orbs as part of the game mechanics to advance? so I see you just have about 0 clue how FotM worked back than .. sooo don’t Keep saying we exploited.. or that we knew we shoulnd’t advance it is just NOT TRUE!

Felbryn.5462:

Out of morbid curiosity: for those who are upset about the level reset, what would you consider a reasonable alternative?

Just some kind of one time reward, no matter how small, that says “I conquered Fractals in year one before they changed the system”. Extra daily chests doesn’t cut it – those aren’t unique, and you could open literally 50 of the bonus chests and never see the fractal weapon you want, meanwhile somebody does level 10 and gets it first time – such is RNG, sure, all MMOs have it, but it’s not good enough.

It could be an achievement in my Historical tab that nobody will ever see for all I care, but more appropriate would be a simple title. No development time required – just ‘Legend of Fractals’ or something to that effect for level 80, ‘Master of Fractals’ for 70+, ‘Veteran of Fractals’ for 60+ etc. Nothing major like a special skin or anything. Just a title, the same way pre-leaderboard top PvPers got unique titles based on how many qualifying points they had.

It astounds me how many people are so antagonistic that they can’t bare to see somebody who achieved something get a minor reward like a title that has zero impact on anybody’s gameplay, even going so far as to vehemently oppose it. I’ve always regarded the GW2 community as one of the nicer communities as far as MMOs go, but it’s pretty disconcerting to see so many people actually going out of their way to tell ArenaNet “don’t give them anything – they don’t deserve a thing”.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Clivar.3176:

Selenya.6410:

I’ll try to point out couple of things and my 2 cents over this whole story:

1) Turn it like you want dear ppl, yeah you who reached lvl 80 when it was clear we shouldnt go there. I have not one, nor 2, but 3 characters at lvl 50, capable group to run stuff with, 50+ fractal skins in my vault+chars, over 500 pristine fractal relics.
Whoever reached lvl 80 first 2 months FoTm was released, did it abusing of stealth kits, teleport guns, healing seeds and yada yada. Beyond those, just for JM: revival orbs, dark fields, ress tricks. That does not require skills, that’s just cheap.
“We got no response from devs cap was below a certain lvl”. Well, if you can’t proceed normally and only need to do odd lvls, go figure… Seriously, I’m amazed from ppl sometimes… I’m sorry, cant be with you on this point.
To all those braggin about lvl 80: done wrong from the root.

Gotta agree on this. Sure u have spend heaps of time getting to max fractal lvl but honestly why do u want arenanet to take it into account. Seriously.. you werent supposed to reach such high lvls by design. And dont tell me “its 100% legit” cuz it isnt. It involved 100th times of dying and using the tricks as stated above.

Besides, the only time ppl who would know that u are at such a high lvl fractal at this time is when you created that lvl fractal (which u wouldnt because u probably never play that lvl anymore).
This patch gives u the opportunity to show the world how good u really are. Now reaching a certain fractal lvl has a meaning. You should be freaking happy…

Tell me 1 reason why we should expect a so called infinite dungeon as it was called to have a cap and not be there for progressing ? tell me what is an exploit about using Rez orbs as part of the game mechanics to advance? so I see you just have about 0 clue how FotM worked back than .. sooo don’t Keep saying we exploited.. or that we knew we shoulnd’t advance it is just NOT TRUE!

What do they expect from dedicated fractal players by ditching us for a year, watching living story after living story crap goes by? Can’t blame ppl for wanting to progress.
Communication lol, it’s 1 way street, out of touch with your players.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Tell me 1 reason why we should expect a so called infinite dungeon as it was called to have a cap and not be there for progressing ? tell me what is an exploit about using Rez orbs as part of the game mechanics to advance? so I see you just have about 0 clue how FotM worked back than .. sooo don’t Keep saying we exploited.. or that we knew we shoulnd’t advance it is just NOT TRUE!

Considering they fixed it later, it surely was an exploit of the game mechanics.
Not that we needed that confirmation – in no other part of the game a gem store item is required to progress further.
Level 50 is/was fine and well – and i can understand people being annoyed for that.
But don’t expect rewards for something that wasn’t supposed to be doable anyway – that is, level 50+.

Manuhell.2759:

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Tell me 1 reason why we should expect a so called infinite dungeon as it was called to have a cap and not be there for progressing ? tell me what is an exploit about using Rez orbs as part of the game mechanics to advance? so I see you just have about 0 clue how FotM worked back than .. sooo don’t Keep saying we exploited.. or that we knew we shoulnd’t advance it is just NOT TRUE!

Considering they fixed it later, it surely was an exploit of the game mechanics.
Not that we needed that confirmation – in no other part of the game a gem store item is required to progress further.
Level 50 is/was fine and well – and i can understand people being annoyed for that.
But don’t expect rewards for something that wasn’t supposed to be doable anyway – that is, level 50+.

It was supposed to be an INFINITE LEVEL DUNGEON! so you were suposed to go as high as possible.. don’t blame me for doing what they told us.. When I Played it they didn’t tell it was not ment to go that high or hey you reached the cap nothing… so we can’t know most of ppl who are writing here have got a diffrent case.. but for me I’m one of some lonely leftover that actually have 81 as rewardlevel means beeing done before the first hardcap!

Manuhell.2759:

Considering they fixed it later, it surely was an exploit of the game mechanics.
Not that we needed that confirmation – in no other part of the game a gem store item is required to progress further.
Level 50 is/was fine and well – and i can understand people being annoyed for that.
But don’t expect rewards for something that wasn’t supposed to be doable anyway – that is, level 50+.

People need to understand a few things about this whole “it wasn’t supposed to be doable” issue.

First of all, it’s basically unheard of for a game developer to release content that you can access, play, and spend hours attempting that is intended to be impossible to beat. Think about that. And if that was their intention, they should have communicated that very clearly once people started to post asking about it back in the day. They were very silent on the issue.

So when you have content that’s accessible, right before your very eyes, and the boss is wiping your group, and the game’s cash shop has an item called “Revive Orb” for sale, and there’s no other method to deal with the attack that anybody can think of, can anybody blame them for using Revive Orbs? Items that are perfectly legitimate and sold/promoted by ArenaNet as one of their sources of revenue?

You can say “it would be ridiculous to need to spend money on an item to make progress”, but that’s simply not true in the world of free to play games. The game was, what, four months old at that point? For all people knew, ArenaNet could have been taking the same kind of “pay to win” approach as countless F2P games. Nobody can blame anyone for assuming a Revive Orb was totally legit in a free to play game.

Secondly, people act like ArenaNet are somehow not in control of their own game. If they didn’t want people to get to 50+, then there’s a very simple solution: block people from entering 50+. Why have a long-winded pseudo-solution like making Jade Maw’s agony do an unhealable amount of damage? It doesn’t make sense.

They could have even made a simple forum post/tweet/Facebook status update saying “progressing beyond fractal level 50 is not intended to be possible, we request that all players refrain from entering any level above 49”. There was never anything to this effect. In fact, I don’t think there has been an official statement on the whole 50+ thing so far in an entire year of fractals being in the game.

reading the new incomming fractals update got me super exited since im at about scale 25 and another character somewhere around 12. but yeah to all the people that reached 80 or went to 40+ on multiple characters this all seems like a major punch to the face. especially because of some leaderboards that nobody ever asked for. stuff like this shouldnt be about competing against each other. why couldnt they just add some titles to certain thresholds to show how “good” someone is in fractals.

@ Patrikan: Quoting from another thread, so that i can avoid to point it out once again. Have fun.

Nokaru.7831:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Depends what you call an exploit. Before January, it was completely possible to go to 80 without exploiting.

That’s a good laugh. It was always an exploit to get to 80. This is my opinion though based on the following facts:

How Jade Maw Works:

• At Difficulty Scale 50+, the Jade Maw’s Agony does 1172% of the player’s health. (You need 950+ AR to survive) There’s no way to avoid or mitigate this damage; everything was tried
• Difficulty Scale 2-48 Jade Maw and below functions slightly differently than Difficulty Scale 50+.
  • 2-48 Maw will apply Agony is only applied to a player once they step past the trigger point. (Jumping from the rock) If you manage to survive this, or if you are revived by those that did, it does not re-apply.
  • 50+ Maw’s agony applies again if a player is revived within the trigger area; using a Revive Orb is a waste of time because it kills you again straight away.
• It was not always like this though. 50+ Jade Maw used to function like 1-48 does now. Thus, players made strategies based around having at least one person surviving and then reviving the rest of their party.

The Strategies to Beat 50+

• At first you could simply die on the edge of the floating rock leading to the Jade Maw. This was barely on the trigger area of Agony, so you could inch over and die within revive range. The party could easily get their teammate back up who then revived the rest of them.

• This rock was moved so that this was no longer possible. However, players found out they could still revive the defeated player from afar using Search and Rescue from a Ranger. They also could have the defeated player pop a Revive Orb and then revive the rest of their party.

• It’s also worth mentioning that a Guardian casting Binding Blade on the Jade Maw’s tentacles yielded 6-10 Reflecting Crystals depending on when it was cast. This allowed players to kill the Jade Maw in “phase 2” and skipping its second Agony. This made the Revive Orb strategy a lot less expensive.

• The final change to 50+ Agony was that you (presumably) must survive it, as it re-applies. It’s hard to tell though since it’s impossible to survive it. (You need 950+ Agony Resistance in order to do so) However, players could grind their way to 80 by being “boosted” by someone who already has level 80. (Someone level 80 could start a Difficulty Scale 51 and completing it would boost a player with Difficulty Scale 50 to 51, thus skipping the Jade Maw entirely. Repeat this process 28 more times and presto, you’re level 80)

Was it an exploit? Probably. However, since ArenaNet intentionally tried (and failed) to make it impossible to progress past 50, it was fair game.

Why don’t they just start the new content at lvl 50 and call it a day?

Regarding 50+, they knew about it for the longest time but didn’t care to patch/stop it because it was $$$ spent on Gems. Therefore, I would say it is intended.

Sifu.6527:

Why don’t they just start the new content at lvl 50 and call it a day?

cause start the new content at lvl 50 would be the more resonable, fair and the best way to introduce this content.

it was so obvious that new content should start to lvl 50 that today when i read about level 30 ive tought “omg why anet hates itself so much? they will take a lot of complain for that”.. and here we are!

regarding level 80 fotm in a perfect world with honest people none will QQ about rollback.

Truth is that there is no argumentation or reason that can hide a simple fact, there are 2 kind of level 80 fotm players

1) the ones who exploited in the first 2\3 months after fractal release, when was still possible to exploit and avoid maw agony with revival orb, 99% res, necro or ranger res etc (tons of exploit at beginning)

2) knowing someone who has esploited in the first 2\3 month after fractal release and ask him to open odd level 50+ in way to let you grow up in this way.

so basically a new player who buy the game today and dont know anyone at level 80 fotm can’t reach level 80 by hiself.

it’s obvious that this is unfair and need to be fixed.

on second approach when i read people saying “dev didnt say us was not allowed to go at level 80” even after dev has changed maw agony to make it impossible to been exploited, it’s under a psicological point of view really interesting…

so you guys when you walk on the street need a paper on cars that say to you “dont steal this car” to understand that stealing a car isnt allowed? xD

crunchyraisin.6054:

also…why is this thread in general discussion and not under the new fractal update where it belongs?

Don’t want to accuse anet of hiding/deflecting our concerns….but if it looks like a fish and it smells like a fish…

Sorry but this thread had been made before the Fractal LS tab had been created. Hence it’s in general discussion.

FOTM lvl 50 on two characters, and 30 odd on two others. I could care less if they lower the level amount to 30 as long as they make fractals worth running. The only reason they were worth running before was for skins, which arent even the coolest skins around anymore.

oh and for an ascended back piece.

phys.7689:

It would be interesting to hear

What is the equivalence in difficulty of new system to old?

I thought this was pretty clear from the announcement.

Levels 1-29 of Fractals are identical to what is in game now in terms of difficulty. The new fractals are added to the rotation and the rewards are getting juggled a bit, but they’re essentially identical to what we have now.

Level 30+ of Fractals are going to have radically different mechanics. There is no equivalent of the new Fractal levels in the current system. In a very real sense they are removing levels 30+ and replacing them with something new.

This is why they are resetting fractal access to levels above 30; that is where the new content begins.