Is this really what the community wants?
Does Anet really think that fractals are the only future of group-content?
In my opinion the fractal instances themselves are good, it’s just the whole fractal system surrounding them that’s kittened up (AR and stuff). I’d love to see some new dungeons in the next expansion instead.
I think part of the issue is how little fractals have received since inception. They were brought in to revolutionise how we looked at instanced content and yet have not received a level of development and attention that warrants that kind of acclaim. Perhaps if there had been a constant flow of content updates, then much of the thirst for instanced content would have been satiated.
My guess is the company believed open world group metas were the way forward for the Living World concept, yet a Living World in the way many would interpret never materialised fully and an over reliance on metas has frustrated various corners of the playerbase.
As for dungeons, well I would be surprised if we ever see them again. No dungeon team, technical issues with the originals, lack of resources, call it what you will, but I think the community needs to accept that Anets road does not go down that direction.
Instanced content has always been niche in MMO’s, but even so it has been neglected for at least 2 years here. The fractal update this year will be a make or break for the non-raid side of instanced content for many I feel.
I’m of the honest belief that Guild Wars 2 has thrived on outdoor content much more than content in dungeons and it should stay that way rather than introducing new systems like dungeons. The main issue is to not have meta events be the focus of a map, but the map’s smaller events all around. See Silverwastes for example, Vinewrath is too important of a target, but the smaller bosses, which you can’t realistically all kill in 1 trip, those are fine. They’re different, smaller meta events, and they don’t take nearly as long to reach. You can jump in, play a bit, do them, then jump out. Dry Top is alright too with its various sandstorm events.
What doesn’t work is maps like Tangled Depths where the meta is impossible, where nobody playing means you utterly fail and it takes forever to get back to the meta. Silverwastes? It progresses, even if people fail events and lose forts all over the map. I always saw Silverwastes as a mini dungeon where you can switch paths/forts whenever you liked and grouped with random people to defend or capture them every time. Sometimes a Legendary happens and then all hell breaks loose. It’s still fun even if I farmed it so much for Luminescent. Dungeons/low fractals are a rushfest, but you can’t rush Silverwastes and you can go about it in so many different ways unlike fractals always done the same way over and over.
If your post starts with “how dare” then you can be assured I’ll disregard it.
Yeah, as much as I enjoyed dungeons, I can’t ever see them coming back. Fractals are fun at first but get old fast. I think I’ve played 5 since HoT. And I’d not touched them in about a year before that. I just don’t find them fun, I like a story. That was something that GW1 had in every part of it. GW2 started out the same. There is no meaningful story in fractals. That is the main reason I don’t play them. For me they are just not worth doing.
I really like fractals and if we had been getting new fractals regularly (even as few as 3 new ones, once a year), I think we’d all feel a lot differently about them. There’s no particular advantage, in my opinion, to creating a new mechanic for offering 5-person instances.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I’m of the honest belief that Guild Wars 2 has thrived on outdoor content much more than content in dungeons and it should stay that way rather than introducing new systems like dungeons. The main issue is to not have meta events be the focus of a map, but the map’s smaller events all around. See Silverwastes for example, Vinewrath is too important of a target, but the smaller bosses, which you can’t realistically all kill in 1 trip, those are fine. They’re different, smaller meta events, and they don’t take nearly as long to reach. You can jump in, play a bit, do them, then jump out. Dry Top is alright too with its various sandstorm events.
What doesn’t work is maps like Tangled Depths where the meta is impossible, where nobody playing means you utterly fail and it takes forever to get back to the meta. Silverwastes? It progresses, even if people fail events and lose forts all over the map. I always saw Silverwastes as a mini dungeon where you can switch paths/forts whenever you liked and grouped with random people to defend or capture them every time. Sometimes a Legendary happens and then all hell breaks loose. It’s still fun even if I farmed it so much for Luminescent. Dungeons/low fractals are a rushfest, but you can’t rush Silverwastes and you can go about it in so many different ways unlike fractals always done the same way over and over.
What hell breaks loose in sw?
Its just skill spam of 1 to several dozen people. Most of them have no idea what to spam, so you see all the point blanks and stuffs.
It’s my rather confident opinion that world dungeons are a critical aspect of any fantasy MMO, and that not having them, supporting them, or expanding them is unequivocally bad for the game.
Fractals are nice, but they don’t provide the immersion (due mostly to lack of context) that world dungeons can, and, like you said, they use mechanical gimmicks not everyone wants to fuss with.
Firing their dungeon team to focus on open world content was arguably the worst of their long string of bad decisions that have suffocated this game’s potential over the last 3 years. Open world content simply does not offer the same degree of immersion or camaraderie that MMOs thrive on, period, and fotm alone is not enough to compensate for a total lack of world/story dungeons.
Yeah, that the story inside the fractals themselves feels kind of meaningless bugs me a lot. They’re just random unconnected mini-dungeons and I don’t get the feeling that what I do there has any impact on anything.
And this AR-stuff is just so… unnecessary. Why don’t we have “dungeon resistance” for high-level dungeons? “Raid resistance” for final raid wings? Or idk, Maguuma resistance for HoT-maps? We don’t have that because it’s dumb! So why is this stuff part of fractals? They should just remove AR completely and make high-level fractals harder in some other, creative way. Most of my friends never tried fractals higher than lvl20 because they’re basically just not interested in upgrading their equip with a stat that is only useful in one niche content part of the game.
Sorry for changing the topic title btw, I just wanted to give this thread a little more precise direction.
And this AR-stuff is just so… unnecessary. Why don’t we have “dungeon resistance” for high-level dungeons? “Raid resistance” for final raid wings? Or idk, Maguuma resistance for HoT-maps? We don’t have that because it’s dumb! So why is this stuff part of fractals? They should just remove AR completely and make high-level fractals harder in some other, creative way. Most of my friends never tried fractals higher than lvl20 because they’re basically just not interested in upgrading their equip with a stat that is only useful in one niche content part of the game.
I have a feeling Anet started panicking in the early days of the game when there was essentially no non-pvp endgame and a rather easy equipment ladder to climb. I don’t doubt many left out of boredom and plenty of MMO’ers turn their nose up at the idea of no treadmill even if they say they hate it.
Essentially, they over compensated. Anet went and did the maximum amount of treadmill they thought they could get away with and it was generally a flop. The average joe player didn’t care about high level fractals and the hardcore PvE’er who did was probably able to TP most of the cost away relativly quickly with all the speedrun gold they had.
I think the only reason we don’t have equipment checks for other pve content is because the community collectively told Anet to go kitten themselves when they released a brand new equipment tier after they said there wasn’t going to be a stat treadmill in GW2.
If people hadn’t been so irate I have no doubt we would see other infusion types for other pve content or a more general application of Agony in other content like Raids etc.
Imagine a Guild Wars 2 where Anet had decided dungeons were the way to go. We’d have updated, active dungeons that fit the lore and required no special stat that is useless anywhere else. Each expansion would have brought a dungeon or two in one of the zones that fit the theme and they wouldn’t get old.
Why? Because they would give dungeons the respect they deserve. They would remove the pvp reward tracks to make the skins tied only to the dungeons. Much like how the Domain of Anguish in GW1 had Tormented weapons. Or how certain missions such as Urgoz’s Warren, and The Deep had boss specific skins you could acquire.
Unfortunately, this was not the direction. We all must do fractals in the end.
