Guild Wars 2

I think a 15 minute duration is acceptable for a fractal.

In the past, some fractals like the Dredge fractal and the Asura/Harpies fractal have traditionally dragged on for much, much longer.

I don’t like skipping mobs, not in fractals and not in dungeons but it’s hard to argue against if it cuts your run time by over 50%.

So could some of the longer fractals please have some of their fat trimmed. Less Harpies would be welcome because they are especially annoying. The Dredge too could be slightly less…numerous.

….. >.> make the most fun to have in the game…. Shorter?

I respect your opinion, but I would like to request this not happen…

Instead, fix bugs like harpy invulnerability and such… But keep it challenging and fun so we can still feel amazing after finishing.

no would mean no rewards cause they are so easy

I’m not really concerned about the length, just the issues that cause the length.

Dredge would be fine at 30 minutes, if it didn’t involve attacking dredge as they magically pop out of an empty clown car for 15 minutes on end, delayed by invulnerability per spawn.

Harpies would be fine if they didn’t have 4000 range and went invulnerable when you make one mistake.

I would say around the 30-45 min mark per frac is good, so that really good groups can complete in 15-20.

Mmm… How about a time limit on fractals! Oooooh I hope that’s an instability!

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Mmm… How about a time limit on fractals! Oooooh I hope that’s an instability!

I hope you’re joking. I mean, what happens if you don’t beat the time limit? Sorry guys, start over again?
And start over when? This fractal? The whole quartette? And remember, they said the instability apllies to all four fractals of the same difficulty.

I can think of some fun things for instabilities, but a time limit? No, thank you.

Edit: Oh and to write something on topic:
I don’t think cutting them all doen so they can be done in 15 minutes is a good idea. You simply would have to cut out too much out of some fractals. Though I honestly wouldn’t mind if they redid the clown car to take up less time of boring whack-a-mole.

Silberfisch.3046:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Mmm… How about a time limit on fractals! Oooooh I hope that’s an instability!

I hope you’re joking. I mean, what happens if you don’t beat the time limit? Sorry guys, start over again?
And start over when? This fractal? The whole quartette? And remember, they said the instability apllies to all four fractals of the same difficulty.

I can think of some fun things for instabilities, but a time limit? No, thank you.

You don’t think that would be fun? ….:( I like a challenge…..

Lilith Ajit.6173:

….. >.> make the most fun to have in the game…. Shorter?

I respect your opinion, but I would like to request this not happen…

Instead, fix bugs like harpy invulnerability and such… But keep it challenging and fun so we can still feel amazing after finishing.

The “fun” parts of every Fractal can definitely be condensed into 15 minutes or less. The rest of it is just mindless tanking and spanking trash or giant DPS sponge bosses, i.e. filler content.

Aiming for a ~50 to 60 minute completion time for a full set of Fractals (for levels 30 and below at least) is the reasonable thing to do.

An average 15 minutes duration means an hour long fractal run. If anything this is slightly too long, but not by much.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Silberfisch.3046:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Mmm… How about a time limit on fractals! Oooooh I hope that’s an instability!

I hope you’re joking. I mean, what happens if you don’t beat the time limit? Sorry guys, start over again?
And start over when? This fractal? The whole quartette? And remember, they said the instability apllies to all four fractals of the same difficulty.

I can think of some fun things for instabilities, but a time limit? No, thank you.

You don’t think that would be fun? ….:( I like a challenge…..

Nope, sorry. I like a challenge as much as the next guy (or girl) every now and then and I have no problem with some of those being a timed gauntlet. But in this case? No, not unless they make sure you only get a very certain set of fractals for that timed instability. And with the repercussions being no more severe than losing a comparatively harmless chest like in the volcanic fractal when you try to save the hostages.
Anything other than that for 4 whole fractals is overkill. But i guess that’s a matter of opinion.

I can see no one really agrees with me. I’ll leave this thread now. ^.^

Bye bye everyone!

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I can see no one really agrees with me. I’ll leave this thread now. ^.^

Bye bye everyone!

Time limit would be fun. If you time out you start that round over again (not the whole thing).

Or maybe a time limit on each part. For instance on cliffside they put a check limit in certain areas, that all 5 players have to cross. 3 minutes to do the first two seals, 2 minutes to run to the next, 6 minutes to do the torso, 2 to run to next part, 10 minutes on the hand seal, 2 to next, then 6 minutes on boss.

Numbers are completely made up, but you get the idea.

Completely off topic. But no, they shouldn’t be limited to 15 min

Time limit would be fun. If you time out you start that round over again (not the whole thing).
→ For who?

This seems orientated to a hard core crowd – I cannot support this suggestion.
Often new zones are difficult and may take a while to figure out how to do it.
If you want to ‘time your run’ for bragging rights that’s fine.

Remember the devs stated that each fractal should take approx 15-20 mins each. Unfortunately this has proven not to be the case often at higher levels this is why they are making fractals “easier” (even at lv 50 – they have stated this numerous times)

TPMN.1483:

Time limit would be fun. If you time out you start that round over again (not the whole thing).
-> For who?

This seems orientated to a hard core crowd – I cannot support this suggestion.
Often new zones are difficult and may take a while to figure out how to do it.
If you want to ‘time your run’ for bragging rights that’s fine.

For me, that’s why I said it would be fun.

OH NO! We CAN’T cater to the hardcore at all!! We MUST wipe their progress to cater towards the casual player every update.

This is why good players leave the game, and bad players stick around =(

Kaon.7192:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

….. >.> make the most fun to have in the game…. Shorter?

I respect your opinion, but I would like to request this not happen…

Instead, fix bugs like harpy invulnerability and such… But keep it challenging and fun so we can still feel amazing after finishing.

The “fun” parts of every Fractal can definitely be condensed into 15 minutes or less. The rest of it is just mindless tanking and spanking trash or giant DPS sponge bosses, i.e. filler content.

Aiming for a ~50 to 60 minute completion time for a full set of Fractals (for levels 30 and below at least) is the reasonable thing to do.

I second this. If you have so much fun with fractals and wish to spend more time in them, well…just start another round? It’s not like anyone is kicking you out after 3-4 fractals. However, more than an hour on a single type of content (which does not really allow you to pause without inconveniencing your party) is quite difficult to manage for folks with, you know…family, pets, responsibilities.
We do like to have fun challenges too – but do they really need to drag on for so long?

You are more than welcome to give yourself a stop watch and set your own personal challenges.

E.g. Solo FoTM If you want !
Fastest guild run! (I participated in many timed runs in GW1 and broke a timed few records)

The idea is not to alienate a majority of players so they don’t even bother with a zone at all or attempt it.

The resetting of progress is a different issue entirely and has been discussed in multiple other threads lets not confuse the two please. (Equity loss is something I do not support or rewinding of players personal levels > 30 down to 30.)

I would like the developers proving that the later harder fractals can be completed fin the average amount of time specified e.g. Dredge in the 15-20 min window at the higher levels not just <lvl 30. No-one likes being stuck in an single FoTM that they know will take 1hr to complete a single stage (for whatever reason) whatever the team composition.

The pro-hardcore players should be able to take the 15-20 min aim and take the time to sub 10 mins.

I take a different example: Underworld / FoW from GW1 – casuals took 4 hrs.
Pro teams worked out how to get this down to <10 mins (Yes I could get a ~8 min full run back in the day and 2 man UW runs in about 20 mins)

There is your challenge – prove you are the best and fastest around.
There is no need to force people to get bits of stuff done within time limits or it resets – it just causes griefing between a team of players and much frustration.

The idea is to try to have both groups of players catered for.
If something is not challenging enough for you – set yourself some goals such as the fastest, a particular build composition or even soloing high end stuff.

TPMN.1483:

The idea is not to alienate a majority of players so they don’t even bother with a zone at all or attempt it.

The idea is screw over the minority for the benefit of gems, I mean majority.

Stonecaduceus.5638:

I would say around the 30-45 min mark per frac is good, so that really good groups can complete in 15-20.

That is honestly how they all are accept dredge which I think they said they are adressing

Well each fractal has an interesting mechanic or two and that should be the focus. But requiring the players to repeat this to an unreasonable extent is just asking too much.

I’m not asking for fractals to be removed, just “trimmed”.

For example, the challenge posed in the Harpy fractals is navigating the Harpies without getting knocked-off in the process. That’s fine (although tedious without Guardians). But do we really need to do it a dozen times?

Wouldn’t 3 Harpies on the first ladder and 4 on the second be sufficient?

And the Dredge are in the same boat. The early puzzle is interesting and cool. Blowing up the following gate encourages smart use of class abilities like Stealth. That too is fine. But the following Boss fight is just completely unnecessary and boring, especially compared to the somewhat challenging “actual” boss fight.

The Squid boss is the same. Underwater combat is already bad and spaming the same skills over and over again for 5 minutes without any real mechanics is just boring.

With my gruop we get it done in an hour and if we are just totaly bad in hour and 20 min (with dredge at 48)so they are not so long.Only thing they should change is the stupid dredge cart and bombs before it -.- and the jellyfish boss make it more interesting somehow.O and the ice elemental that teleports you that is put there just to waste time….

Fafnir.5124:

no would mean no rewards cause they are so easy

By this logic difficult content would have excellent rewards, but we already know this has never been the case in GW2.

The question you gotta ask is how do you want them to be cut? If you meant something like just revamp the jellyfish fight because its 5mins of spamming 1, then yes, that’s just boring. But if you meant making them easier, then I very much disagree with you.

Dredge and colossus are fun? Ye right. Doing 3x any other frac then these in same time is a lot more fun and less dragging.

Both these fracs are balanced to speedclear professions and nothing else (non warrior basically).

15-20 mins is fine. That’s a little over an hour which is fine. You gotta remember that it’s whatever length x4. So 30 mins = 2 hours which is longer than what most players would like to spend on a dungeon. Especially for the current rewards.

If a fractal lasts 15 min, then a full set of 4 would last an hour.

That’s acceptable for any dungeon.

Do not forget that the objective is not merely completing a fractal. Is doing a set of 4 in a row.

Boss fights are usually a 1…5 minute thing, so the rest of the fractal should not take more than 14…10 minutes, to keep fractal completion around an hour.

Not everyone can play 6 hours a day, you know?

Honestly I can mostly play 1 hour a day after work.
And it kitten ed me off in those days that I had barely time to do anything with my only free time in the day,if I did a fractal run that day for my backpiece.

IF fractals would take less time, finally i could go and do it again. but this way…

For the most part, I actually like Dredge fractal. It begins with a cool switch puzzle requiring decent team co-ordination, which I actually like.

It’s just the bombs section that’s stupid… Augh.

The tank section is easy though. Just pull the boss, dodge when he raises his mace, then farm loot. Done.

The issue is when one fractal gets longer running all 4 of them (each one has a boss now) takes pretty darn long.

To keep fractals accessible they need to be short.

40+ levels from my experience usually took 40-80 minutes, depends on the dungeons you get and whether your team is decent or not.
I’ve had 2 hours run once, mainly just because we were trolling around.

So yeah, shouldn’t take any longer than 2 hours, which isn’t much to be honest.
And of course, if you don’t get Dredge.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I can see no one really agrees with me. I’ll leave this thread now. ^.^

Bye bye everyone!

I actually do agree with you.
I’ve often thought “I want to do some fractals but I know it’s gonna take 2 hours with PUG’s” so I avoided doing them.

Keep the difficulty but shorten the length. 15m*3=45m. 45 minutes for a fotm run sounds good to me (plus boss fotm). If each one is 20-30 like Anet has said that means we can expect to spend 75m per run (25m average) which sounds long to me. Try to keep dungeons under an hour please. If overall they’re supposed to equal a dungeon, why not try to balance it out so if you get dredge/cliffside, you’ll get swamp/snow next, and a higher chance for a medium fotm next. Or better yet, each one is categorized into short/medium/long and you have to get one of each. Then it’ll average it out versus having those short ones where you get swamp, snow and volcanic, and then the long one with cliffside, asura, and dredge.

Morsus.5106:

Or better yet, each one is categorized into short/medium/long and you have to get one of each. Then it’ll average it out versus having those short ones where you get swamp, snow and volcanic, and then the long one with cliffside, asura, and dredge.

That’s what they are doing this patch.

“Fractals are now weighted according to their length and difficulty. Easier fractals will always show up earlier in the run, with more difficult ones coming later.”

GoldenTruth.2853:

Morsus.5106:

Or better yet, each one is categorized into short/medium/long and you have to get one of each. Then it’ll average it out versus having those short ones where you get swamp, snow and volcanic, and then the long one with cliffside, asura, and dredge.

That’s what they are doing this patch.

“Fractals are now weighted according to their length and difficulty. Easier fractals will always show up earlier in the run, with more difficult ones coming later.”

The issue with this is that the “long” ones are all inflated in length with artificial time gates that do nothing besides waste players’ time. They need to be rebalanced to make it 15 minutes of very engaging and dynamic content, not 15 minutes of fun content plus 30 minutes of mindless boss DPS’ing and trash slapping.

Of course don’t implement a time limit like the Tequatl revamp. That’d only be artificial difficulty and shouldn’t be implemented at least until condi DPS is fixed and support made much more potent in PvE.

The short medium long thing, I’m wondering what everyone thinks the breakup will be?

My hypothesis :

Short:
Water
Swamp

Medium
Ascalon
Harpy
Colossus

Long:
Dredge
Grawl

I’m not sure. What do y’all think?

You forgot snow. I’d put snow in short ones.

Also, I think Colossus is more of a long one and grawl a medium.

Oh right, snow. I always forget that one, I very rarely get it.

Kaon.7192:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Morsus.5106:

Or better yet, each one is categorized into short/medium/long and you have to get one of each. Then it’ll average it out versus having those short ones where you get swamp, snow and volcanic, and then the long one with cliffside, asura, and dredge.

That’s what they are doing this patch.

“Fractals are now weighted according to their length and difficulty. Easier fractals will always show up earlier in the run, with more difficult ones coming later.”

The issue with this is that the “long” ones are all inflated in length with artificial time gates that do nothing besides waste players’ time. They need to be rebalanced to make it 15 minutes of very engaging and dynamic content, not 15 minutes of fun content plus 30 minutes of mindless boss DPS’ing and trash slapping.

Of course don’t put a time limit like you did to Tequatl. That’d only be artificial difficulty and shouldn’t be implemented at least until they fix condi build DPS and make support much more potent.

Having a pool of short/medium/long gives them more freedom in the fractals they develop. It isn’t like the current shorter fractals are more any more engaging than the long ones. Rather than saying they should all be about 15 minutes of engaging content, they should simply be engaging content (which can then fit into whatever length slot). Not advocating that all fractals should be 30+ minutes, just that it is probably better design-wise for them to have engaging content with varying length.

Plus it becomes even more difficult to say a run should be ~15 minutes when you factor in FotM levels. Should level 50 take only 5 minutes longer than level 10.

All that said, Dredge fractal still needs a big revamp…

What? you want some sort of Citadel of Fractals?

JMar.3254:

I’m not really concerned about the length, just the issues that cause the length.

Dredge would be fine at 30 minutes, if it didn’t involve attacking dredge as they magically pop out of an empty clown car for 15 minutes on end, delayed by invulnerability per spawn.

Harpies would be fine if they didn’t have 4000 range and went invulnerable when you make one mistake.

QFT. I’m excited to get in there and see what changes they made though. Hopefully some of this is more balanced out than it was.