Guild Wars 2

I’ve been enjoying the dungeon, and glancing now and then at the massive hatestorm with it, however the only real issue I personally have with the dungeon (besides disconnect issues) is how much it splits players up.

I think Anet went a little bit overboard with the amount of difficulty levels. Not only does it make it much harder to actually find a group for your character’s specific level, it also makes it a big PITA to group (well, “progress”) with guildies unless you all decide to not PUG whatsoever.

I’ve gone back to lower levels to help other guildies try to catch up to my level in hopes that we could be on the same level and progress together, but it just doesn’t end up working out. Most of our guildies are on completely different levels.

And since the difficulty doesn’t really change at all (not that I noticed) besides going into a new +10 tier it just seems sort of pointless. I think it would’ve been alot better had they cut down on the levels a bit perhaps making it either 1 tier every 5 levels and just require 2 runs to upgrade a level?

Or perhaps just have a progress bar to upgrade to the next tier so the 1-10 tier simply becomes an Exp bar of sorts that you fill up doing 1-10 runs. And if the difficulty from 1-10 actually does change (again not very noticable really) then just take the average progress level of each party member and set the difficulty for that tier (with anyone 11+ counting as lvl 10).

Ex : 5 people group up with levels : “24, 20, 6, 9, and 1” (first 2 count as lvl 10) group can only do Tier 1 Difficulty at difficulty level : 7.2

Atleast this way the difficulty levels wouldn’t fragment the playerbase/guild members so much. (LFG Tier 1, LFG Tier 2, etc).

I agree completely, they need to find a workaround to this (I think Chris mentioned they were working on it). It’s extremely frustrating!

Yes, this is so annoying.

I ranted about this very same issue yesterday. It still boggles my mind how ANet didn’t see this coming. It’s like they don’t think their concepts through to the end.

It just seems so terrible that I can’t progress unless I play that very specific level I’m currently at.

And all that while the actual fractal levels have negligible differences in difficulty.

I completely agree, 200%. Its the only thing preventing me from signing in right now. Ive made my peace with ascended gear. I asked Chris Whitehead in the AMA on monday about this myself, to which he responded. He completely agreed when I said it fragments the community and they are working on options. One of which is levels 1-5 are grouped in a tier, 6-10, etc. But this has ramifications on reward and difficulty.

All I want to do is run the fractals and have it get harder. To be honest, until I cannot go any further, I dont care about ascended right now.

I’d rather hope they make it into brackets, say 1-5, then 6-10. Then as long as you’re in a 1-5 bracket, the 1-5 is almost the same, difficulty increases by a bit ofc, (and rewards as well), but generally the same difficulty. Then even if the lowest member of the group is lvl 1, as long as you do a frac run from this dungeon, you get a +1. this way, you won’t have to wait for a group wtih the same level to do, yet you still progress.

Less levels bigger difficulty jump each level… problem solved

Set max selectable level of the dungeon to highest level achieved in the party rather than lowest. Upon completion increase a player’s level by one if the level selected is >= the individual’s level. Index rewards for each player to the lesser of their current level or that of the dungeon, not just the level of the dungeon.

Done, fixed.

Awesome to hear that they’re working on this.

Does anyone know if there is actually a difference in difficulty from 1-9? I never really noticed any.

Lockout after disconnection is biggest flaw. :<

Doggie.3184:

Lockout after disconnection is biggest flaw. :<

Yeah this definately drives me absolutely insane and I really can’t wait for that fix to come.

I’ve DC’d at the last boss on the 3rd fractal, and it ended up kicking the whole group, and this was after a painfully long Cliffside run because people didn’t know what they were doing. Just awful.

And the fact that you all have to be in the same overflow in LA and join together, if someone doesn’t get in, you all have to come back out and go in together again. It’s just sloppy.

I think what is also incredibly broken is how people can troll the whole group by hitting the exit button and even though you hit NO, it will still port everyone back. I’ve had some impatient stupid people do that after Jade Maw because it takes a while for the fractal to register that it’s over, and even though I hit NO, it ports us back and we don’t get the chest/daily nor do we go up a level, HUGE waste of time.

agreed, i love the dungeons but the level thing really just is a poor system at the moment. Too many levels and too difficult to find 4 other people who just happen to be where your level is.

Knote.2904:

I’ve been enjoying the dungeon, and glancing now and then at the massive hatestorm with it, however the only real issue I personally have with the dungeon (besides disconnect issues) is how much it splits players up.

I think Anet went a little bit overboard with the amount of difficulty levels. Not only does it make it much harder to actually find a group for your character’s specific level, it also makes it a big PITA to group (well, “progress”) with guildies unless you all decide to not PUG whatsoever.

I’ve gone back to lower levels to help other guildies try to catch up to my level in hopes that we could be on the same level and progress together, but it just doesn’t end up working out. Most of our guildies are on completely different levels.

And since the difficulty doesn’t really change at all (not that I noticed) besides going into a new +10 tier it just seems sort of pointless. I think it would’ve been alot better had they cut down on the levels a bit perhaps making it either 1 tier every 5 levels and just require 2 runs to upgrade a level?

Or perhaps just have a progress bar to upgrade to the next tier so the 1-10 tier simply becomes an Exp bar of sorts that you fill up doing 1-10 runs. And if the difficulty from 1-10 actually does change (again not very noticable really) then just take the average progress level of each party member and set the difficulty for that tier (with anyone 11+ counting as lvl 10).

Ex : 5 people group up with levels : “24, 20, 6, 9, and 1” (first 2 count as lvl 10) group can only do Tier 1 Difficulty at difficulty level : 7.2

Atleast this way the difficulty levels wouldn’t fragment the playerbase/guild members so much. (LFG Tier 1, LFG Tier 2, etc).

Yeah, I guess they are working on it. I play mostly at night and it has been a problem. To be honest, it’s not so bad during peak play hours. No rush really anyway for me, I’m on 6 and will get to 10 at some point. You can also run lower levels for tokens if you are willing to take the hit. you still get 15 tokens plus some nice loot every run so … eh. I’d say it’s not as big of a deal as people are making it, but I would like to see level brackets.

I.E, 1-9 (all players gain one level no matter their dungeon level)
10-19
20-25
25-30

This way you would not be at a disadvantage for experienced players for the difficulty , in addition to that, infused gear etc would not effect anything because you’d still have to be within a reasonable level range to join and benefit the party.

Knote.2904:

Awesome to hear that they’re working on this.

Does anyone know if there is actually a difference in difficulty from 1-9? I never really noticed any.

Increased mob health pool, increased amount of MOBS. That’s about it.

Mostly same. Each just takes a tad bit longer.

penatbater.4710:

I’d rather hope they make it into brackets, say 1-5, then 6-10. Then as long as you’re in a 1-5 bracket, the 1-5 is almost the same, difficulty increases by a bit ofc, (and rewards as well), but generally the same difficulty. Then even if the lowest member of the group is lvl 1, as long as you do a frac run from this dungeon, you get a +1. this way, you won’t have to wait for a group wtih the same level to do, yet you still progress.

Yeah well looks like other posters have already stated what i did below. LOL . but yeah, seems most of us are coming to this conclusion so it would be logical this is what is going to happen.

I agree the levels are fragmenting the players. Too many with no point. But I have another problem and that’s the dungeon’s location. Lion’s Arch was one of my favourite places to hang out. After the update the map chat is full of “LFG Fractals this”, “LFG Fractal that” and so on. It would be great if they moved them somewhere else.

As soon the “leveled” fotm came out half my guild quit within a week