Guild Wars 2

I love FoTM and have been doing them everyday since they were released. Now I am at the point where I need Ascended rings or constantly die to Agony and be a burden to my group.

I crafted my backpiece since FoTM10 and have 5 Agony Resist by my own efforts, but cannot afford to upgrade (infuse) it because 250 ectos are still beyond my reach, and I just don’t have the luck to find that many mist essences.

Now doing high level fractals is no longer about skill, it’s all about gear. No matter how good I may be, no matter how I redo my build or gear, I will still die to Agony if I am the one getting it consecutively. My group just has to revive me OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

This is frustrating for them AND for me. How is this supposed to be fun? Making the rings and mist essences drop ONLY on RNG is stupid. Players are artificially held back from going further, or continue playing with their friends.

Rings should reward players for hitting higher FoTM tiers (lvl10, lvl 20, lvl30, etc), and perhaps mist essences should always drop in the bonus (daily) chest. They should not drop based on RNG if they are needed to go deeper into the dungeon. Why is my time not as valuable as the time of other players? Why do they get to go to the higher levels instead of me when we spend the same amount of time and effort?

A player who was lucky and got ring drops everyday from the daily chest OBVIOUSLY has an advantage over players who never got one. They survive better, they have a better experience in each boss fight, and have no problems getting into groups which prefer players with agony resistance.

I don’t want to be carried, I don’t want to a burden. Your RNG is doing this to me and I have no way to counter it, other than simply giving up playing with my friends altogether.

In all other dungeons, a player’s progress is tracked by the respective dungeon tokens. There is clear and predictable progression, and even without getting instant gratification, the player still has tangible rewards. In FoTM, I have to grind and grind without end, and hope and pray and beg for a drop.

Please fix this, I don’t have so much time to do the same level ad nauseum everyday.

Another issue are random disconnects, effectively killing the group and also wasting everybody’s time. I know people still stuck on the first tier not because they are bad players, but because of disconnects and they are unable to 3 or 4-man it. Tell me what is the point of that? Another artificial way of holding players back?

I know groups are so fearful of disconnects that they have to try to rush through each level and complete them as soon as possible. This creates a tense situation for groups, and with the added frustration of having “disconnect-fail-attempts”, it makes for ugly players.

Please fix that too, I thought Anet valued the time of their players, stop causing friction between players.

Pay 2 Play – this is the new model. Farm some gold or buy some gems off the BLTC and upgrade your gear so you can get passed this artificial “gating” mechanism.

Wait, are you tellin gme that you need those ascendant items to get some resist and to be even able to survive some encounters?

Looria, once you get past L10 in FoTM, you absolutely do need to start obtaining Agony resistance.

So skill based game not so much anymore…gear based game. What a joke…

Yes, that’s what the huge uproar is about.

Looria.8019:

Wait, are you tellin gme that you need those ascendant items to get some resist and to be even able to survive some encounters?

Yes, for FotM lvl 10 and beyond, it is recommended to have that 5 agony resist, but not yet necessary (unless you have a really crappy build and bad armor). Past lvl 20, not having resists starts turning you into a burden for your group. In some cases, they are better off just leaving you dead and 4-manning it, especially if they have all their resist items.

Why waste time ressurecting a player with no resists than another player who does and won’t get one-shot again?

Ah, thought it was just some 5 more stamina here and there…didnt think it was a progression blocking issue.

Looria.8019:

So skill based game not so much anymore…gear based game. What a joke…

I still say that 98% of this game is skill based.

But why they added this stupid gear-based gating mechanic with such a high cost and barrier to entry…in a game with GUILD WARS on it, no less….is beyond me.

Quite frankly, I choose to ignore the higher level fractals. I’m not paying out the mouth to get gear to protect me from ONE CONDITION. Hell no.

Just ignoring the parts of this last patch that I don’t like.

Vorch.2985:

But why they added this stupid gear-based gating mechanic with such a high cost and barrier to entry…in a game with GUILD WARS on it, no less….is beyond me.

Quite frankly, I choose to ignore the higher level fractals. I’m not paying out the mouth to get gear to protect me from ONE CONDITION. Hell no.

Just ignoring the parts of this last patch that I don’t like.

Unfortunately I enjoy doing dungeons with my group of friends, that’s the part of GW2 that I loved. When FoTM came out, the whole scaling difficulty to test out mettle as gamers and professions was very exciting…..but this gating is full of rubbish, complete and utter rubbish.

It breaks up groups because everyone starts being at different resistance levels, and being able to do different tiers at different times. Even if you have a constant guild group, if not all 5 of u have the same luck, people will start to lag behind, no matter how much effort they have put into it.

You may be a good player, you may be a hard-core player…but all that doesn’t matter if you are just an unlucky player.

I thought the intent was to keep playing at the level your gear supports until such a point that you upgrade and can progress.

Can’t you choose a lower fractal level?

mulch.2586:

I thought the intent was to keep playing at the level your gear supports until such a point that you upgrade and can progress.

Can’t you choose a lower fractal level?

Yes, I can continue to play lvl 10 over and over and over and over again. But tell me, what is the point of that if I get nothing over and over and over again whilst someone else does? Didn’t they say that one player’s time isn’t valued less than the next?

By the time I get my rings, my friends might already be at lvl 40-50, enjoying the challenges and rewards from that tier. Why should any player be stuck grinding lvl 10 because of dumb luck?

It gets to the point that it’s no longer fun, because u know everything the boss is going to do. I thought the point of FoTM is to constantly scale up and challenge people, not bore and frustrate.

So this gating is just bullpoo.

mulch.2586:

I thought the intent was to keep playing at the level your gear supports until such a point that you upgrade and can progress.

Can’t you choose a lower fractal level?

Look, problem now is, higher fractal=higher difficulties=higher reward. But due to RNG, no matter how many time you do the lower fractal to farm, if you’re unlucky, you won’t be able to move forward.

I have 800+ hours of playtime(mostly WvW), hundreds of gold thrown into Mystic Forge, and not a single precursor is rewarded to me. With the price going up, I gave up on legendary. 15 nov, a new patch and a new event is introduced and this guy with trial account get a kittening dusk. A kittening DUSK. He just got here for a few hours and he get a kittening dusk due to a kittening random number generator scumbag.

The way I see it, effort>luck but with this RNG is applied, no matter how many hours you spend, if you don’t have the luck, you just don’t fit to get the best stuff in the game.

Daendur.2357:

You asked for WoW’s style, enjoy!

Who asked for WoW’s style? I think most of us came over from GW1, not WoW.

Shadoekin.3928:

Daendur.2357:

You asked for WoW’s style, enjoy!

Who asked for WoW’s style? I think most of us came over from GW1, not WoW.

i don’t know.
but i was told that ppl complainig about this new direction the game is taking are a minority of the global player base … so i think the majority of GW2 players asked and obtained what we are currently playing

at OP, gw2 is now in a horrendous state of denial, you are suffering the fallout. WoW better for this style of gameplay, by a mile.

Short term, yes, the RNG can be a fickle vindictive spinster.

In the long run, it balances out, ala Bernoulli’s principle. Meaning you can flip and coin and have a chance for 6 heads in a row, especially when you consider we have over a million players flipping the coin. But for a given player, if you play the game for a length of time, the difference between your flips and anyone else’ approaches zero.

mulch.2586:

Short term, yes, the RNG can be a fickle vindictive spinster.

In the long run, it balances out, ala Bernoulli’s principle. Meaning you can flip and coin and have a chance for 6 heads in a row, especially when you consider we have over a million players flipping the coin. But for a given player, if you play the game for a length of time, the difference between your flips and anyone else’ approaches zero.

Except that there is no LFG tool for FoTM. The only sure way to be able to play FoTM consistently is to stick with the same group. At high levels you can sit in LA, relogging into every possible overflow to look for a group and never find one for hours.

I can shamelessly beg my friends to play lvl 10 with me over and over again everyday and hold them back and be a selfish burden, but what kind of fun would THEY be having? This RNG is just breaking groups and players up for no good reason.

And to counter your analogy, a player playing lvl 10 only everyday has less flips of the coin than the player who plays a lvl 10 tier, a lvl 20 tier, and a lvl 30 tier fractal everyday.

So it doesn’t apply in this case, gating doesn’t work that way. Lucky people just get the chance to be luckier, the unlucky just get left behind looking for group.

Agree with OP.

RNG is bad, it’s one of the reasons I don’t play WoW anymore.

mulch.2586:

I thought the intent was to keep playing at the level your gear supports until such a point that you upgrade and can progress.

Can’t you choose a lower fractal level?

Ascendant rings start to drop from fractal level 10+. Incidentally, that’s also the level where the agony starts. Besides, what you have just described is the gear gating mechanics of the worst kind.

Grain of salt since this is guildies not myself (I haven’t gone past Fractals 2), but they say that 8 of the 9 Fractals agony is a highly telegraphed boss move that you can skill your way around without significant issue. They’re also psychos who are much better than me, and at least one Fractal IS BS resist required, but I can’t help but note that the people who actually reach that tier tend not to find Agony too devastating even without any Ascendeds.
Flip side, the kind of people who get to high tiers are the kind who also like treadmills overall, most likely.

Desraedos.1856:

Grain of salt since this is guildies not myself (I haven’t gone past Fractals 2), but they say that 8 of the 9 Fractals agony is a highly telegraphed boss move that you can skill your way around without significant issue. They’re also psychos who are much better than me, and at least one Fractal IS BS resist required, but I can’t help but note that the people who actually reach that tier tend not to find Agony too devastating even without any Ascendeds.
Flip side, the kind of people who get to high tiers are the kind who also like treadmills overall, most likely.

Which heroes are able to survive lvl 20, 22, 24, 26, 28…2n+20 Jade Maw without agony resistance? Other than having a guardian in the group to elite-full heal everybody pre-emptively, it’s pretty much a death sentence.

Also, when you have no choice but to PUG because everyone you know are way ahead of you, dying constantly will not get you on their friends list.

Gating and treadmills are one thing, but RANDOMLY gating and not allowing players to progress is just wrong.

Apparently the damage can be blocked by invulnerability even if the CONDITION can’t be cancelled, and the moves themselves can be evaded?
As said I’m fuzzy on the details so if I’m wrong I welcome any corrections (none of ‘em are on right now).
Either way it’s nice to see someone who has (presumably) ENCOUNTERED Agony weigh in rather than a bunch of people who seem to have quit as soon as it was released, if not before.

Desraedos.1856:

Apparently the damage can be blocked by invulnerability even if the CONDITION can’t be cancelled, and the moves themselves can be evaded?
As said I’m fuzzy on the details so if I’m wrong I welcome any corrections (none of ‘em are on right now).
Either way it’s nice to see someone who has (presumably) ENCOUNTERED Agony weigh in rather than a bunch of people who seem to have quit as soon as it was released, if not before.

For some bosses the attack which causes agony can be dodged (ie. Legendary Archdiviner from Cliffside fractal), blocked and even reflected (ie. Raving Asura from Uncategorized Fractal). I believe the Jade Maw just applies agony to everyone during phase change and kills anyone who doesn’t have resistance or their heal available.

Ultimately, there’s no reason why players need to resort to gimmicks or kitten their playstyle (for example solely focusing on the boss to survive/avoid agony attacks by not helping with mechanics or adds) and drag down their group solely because of bad luck.

Shadoekin.3928:

This is frustrating for them AND for me. How is this supposed to be fun? Making the rings and mist essences drop ONLY on RNG is stupid. Players are artificially held back from going further, or continue playing with their friends.

It is meant to be fun in the same sense that Diablo III is fun. Many people enjoy Diablo III, I am not one of them, and will continue to play it for the random gear drops just to progress to higher difficulty. They will run the same level of difficulty over and over again until they get the gear needed to go tot he next difficulty level. I don’t know why Arena Net thought a Diablo inspired dungeon crawl, which focuses on grinding for gear, would be a good fit for a game that was sold as lacking significant grind for best-in-slot gear; but that’s the question of the week isn’t it?

RNG is definitely overused in this game. It needs to be toned down. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind RNG when it’s used smartly but in this game it’s all over the place.

Things that you need for progression, like the essence or those rings need to have a much higher drop rate, as you go up in levels. Also chest rewards need to have their loot tables reassessed. It’s really lame when you kill a really tough boss and only get a few rare and masterwork items.

You can dodge the things that trigger agony. The rampaging Asura applies it with his 3 orb shots, dodge roll, get out of range of projectile reflect. Captain what’s his face applies it when he kneel and shoots fire, again dodge roll or fight at maximum range. Agony isn’t unavoidable, I’ve gone through D10-13 fractals without dying on a single boss.

SirMoogie.9263:

Shadoekin.3928:

This is frustrating for them AND for me. How is this supposed to be fun? Making the rings and mist essences drop ONLY on RNG is stupid. Players are artificially held back from going further, or continue playing with their friends.

It is meant to be fun in the same sense that Diablo III is fun. Many people enjoy Diablo III, I am not one of them, and will continue to play it for the random gear drops just to progress to higher difficulty. They will runt he same level of difficulty over and over again until they get the gear needed to go tot he next difficulty level. I don’t know why Arena Net thought a Diablo inspired dungeon crawl, which focuses on grinding for gear, would be a good fit for a game that was sold as lacking significant grind for best-in-slot gear; but that’s the question of the week isn’t it?

They can introduce best-in-slot gear drops from the boss chests in the various non-FotM dungeons. That would ensure players not skip any content and play the dungeons as they are meant to be played.

For resistance gear that becomes mandatory to go deeper into ONE particular dungeon and little use anywhere else, it makes no sense to make that a random drop. And the player can only try to get it ONCE a day, so you can go on for days—or heaven forbid weeks—not progressing anywhere.

I am not talking about the random best-in-slot here, I am questioning the validity of random gating.

Don’t you get a free ascended ring on clearing rank 10 that has 5 agony resist?

Florgknight.1589:

You can dodge the things that trigger agony. The rampaging Asura applies it with his 3 orb shots, dodge roll, get out of range of projectile reflect. Captain what’s his face applies it when he kneel and shoots fire, again dodge roll or fight at maximum range. Agony isn’t unavoidable, I’ve gone through D10-13 fractals without dying on a single boss.

I’m not talking abt 10+ here, it’s already understood that you can play without any resistance in that tier. It’s 20+ that I’m concerned with.

Shadoekin.3928:

Daendur.2357:

You asked for WoW’s style, enjoy!

Who asked for WoW’s style? I think most of us came over from GW1, not WoW.

Even WoW-style has controlled RNG in the form of specific loot tables. We’re not trying to get some fancy over-the-top do-dad like the Alar mount or some legendary item, we’re trying to get basic gear necessary for moving forward in a dungeon. Even WoW doesn’t stiff you that hard; if your group is fresh to the dungeon, almost 100% of the items that drop will be upgrades to somebody… and that percentage will remain the same, and fairly high, for a few weeks after beating the encounter the first time.

Polaritie.4851:

Don’t you get a free ascended ring on clearing rank 10 that has 5 agony resist?

No, you only get a chance at the ring from the bonus (daily) chest when clearing even-numbered fractals (ie. lvl 10/12/14/16/18). So it is totally based on RNG once per day.

I might more fully understand what the OP is talking about if he’d use WORDS instead of acronyms. What is “FoTM”? I’m sure it aint Baskin Robbin’s Flavor of The Month.

Huck.1405:

I might more fully understand what the OP is talking about if he’d use WORDS instead of acronyms. What is “FoTM”? I’m sure it aint Baskin Robbin’s Flavor of The Month.

Fractals of the Mists…but it does seem like the Flavor of the Month dungeon atm.

Shadoekin.3928:

I’m not sure how dungeons are meant to be played. They were initially advertised as challenging encounters that players would earn tokens to get unique looking skins. These were to be the “legendaries” or the armor world. You’d know someone by looking at them that they did explorable mode of X dungeon and conquered it.

For resistance gear that becomes mandatory to go deeper into ONE particular dungeon and little use anywhere else, it makes no sense to make that a random drop. And the player can only try to get it ONCE a day, so you can go on for days—or heaven forbid weeks—not progressing anywhere.

It makes sense if you’re trying to slow down the fastest players from progressing their characters to the max, getting bored, and leaving the game. By making ascendant gear they have introduced something that requires heavy amounts of grinding for materials (for the backpiece) and time/luck (for the rings). Now they can of course go too far the other way and make it too long to progress one’s character, and thus players just will refuse and quit out of frustration. It’s a delicate balance one must play once they’ve decided to sustain their game through character progression.

SirMoogie.9263:

It makes sense if you’re trying to slow down the fastest players from progressing their characters to the max, getting bored, and leaving the game. By making ascendant gear they have introduced something that requires heavy amounts of grinding for materials (for the backpiece) and time/luck (for the rings). Now they can of course go too far the other way and make it too long to progress one’s character, and thus players just will refuse and quit out of frustration. It’s a delicate balance one must play once they’ve decided to sustain their game through character progression.

Unfortunately it doesn’t slow down all players equally across the board. The RNG system randomly holds players back, regardless of their skill level or effort. This goes against their belief that no one player’s time is valued less than the next.

We play this game to be entertained and challenged, not frustrated because we have bad luck. It already takes a while to find a group of a particular level, it takes a longer while to find a group of a particular level that has no DCs. Going through that same process on a daily basis and still not getting the drop is a huge waste of real world time. Enough is enough.

Thank you Shadoekin!

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Shadoekin.3928:

Daendur.2357:

You asked for WoW’s style, enjoy!

Who asked for WoW’s style? I think most of us came over from GW1, not WoW.

Even WoW-style has controlled RNG in the form of specific loot tables. We’re not trying to get some fancy over-the-top do-dad like the Alar mount or some legendary item, we’re trying to get basic gear necessary for moving forward in a dungeon. Even WoW doesn’t stiff you that hard; if your group is fresh to the dungeon, almost 100% of the items that drop will be upgrades to somebody… and that percentage will remain the same, and fairly high, for a few weeks after beating the encounter the first time.

What you miss is that there should NOT be any kind of upgrade in any dungeon here.
If you complete the dungeon you will receive badges. That’s all. Everything else is for sell/disenchant.

So everyday I am just looking for group and doing FotM10 and FotM20 which can take up to 3 hours. After both tries yielding NO RINGS FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, I get frustrated at another wasted day’s efforts and simply log off.

Anyone else having the same lousy experience?

Vorch.2985:

Looria.8019:

So skill based game not so much anymore…gear based game. What a joke…

I still say that 98% of this game is skill based.

But why they added this stupid gear-based gating mechanic with such a high cost and barrier to entry…in a game with GUILD WARS on it, no less….is beyond me.

Quite frankly, I choose to ignore the higher level fractals. I’m not paying out the mouth to get gear to protect me from ONE CONDITION. Hell no.

Just ignoring the parts of this last patch that I don’t like.

The problem is the other areas of the game are “withering on the vine” because the original philosophy of “play how you like and get rewards” is being negated due to fractals being the ONLY source of their new gear.

I can personally ignore it if they’re introducing new tiers and continue at my own pace, but if there’s nobody to play with, I may as well get more compelling titles for console and not have to worry about server disconnection or some kittenamamy patch encouraging everyone to be raging elitist kittens.

You wanted “longterm-goals”. This is what it looks like. Deal with it or leave it!