Guild Wars 2

Mitch.4781:

Well I’ve done 100, but the incentive to do the torture that is 100cm till completion isn’t there. It simply isn’t fun. It’s hilarious that 100cm is actually harder and more frustrating than ANY of the raid bosses. What happened to the stepping stone? Apart from anything else, the entire fractal takes forever. If this is the way fractals will be going in the future, I’ll avoid them.

We aren’t happy with how the length of Shattered Observatory ended up either. It ended up being out of whack with the standard fractal experience for most players. We are taking a lot of things into consideration for the next fractal.

Axl.8924:

Mai trin seems overpowered, i can beat chaos observatory nightmare, yet mai trin gives me trouble when you get the cannon part.it seems completely random and i can’t seem to survive.

It might need another nerf to be in line with the others.

The cannons target each player. Just spread out from everyone else and dont run around all crazy. Just step out of the AoEs and only use your dodge when you really need it to get to a safe spot, and it becomes a really easy phase.

Also don’t facetank mai trin’s attack unless you have a condi cleanse, since she stacks crazy bleeding stacks on you. Stay close to her, but try to be behind her when you can.

zealex.9410:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Randulf.7614:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Jahroots.6791:

I gotta applaud anyone who can figure out the mechanics in the clusterkitten that is fractal 100. The first fellow’s alright, but the second boss just has way too much going on at once.

Even on normal mode, she’s actually a fair bit harder than many raid encounters.

Viirastra has 2 core mechanics:
1. Stand in the bubble when you have the skull
2. Bounce the marble on your head (only 1 person needed, backup helpful)

If you do these two mechanics correctly, the rest of the fight is pretty easy. Failing these two mechanics quickly snowballs the fight to failure.

There are also two minor mechanics:
1. Don’t stand in the AoEs (You can jump over many of them)
2. Kill the big clones, then drag the little ones to the boss.

Doing these two mechanics reduces the damage pressure to almost nothing.

Theres a bit more to the fight, but this is the core that will allow you to succeed in non CM.

If you are failing the marble, try lower tiers. The marble pattern is significantly easier. Also note that when the marble bounces on your head, it refreshes your SAS. Your SAS is OP and you should use it to move around.

Edit: If your group is learning, try having everyone do the marble at once. There is no time pressure on non CM, and doing the marble gives you lots of aegis and invulnerability so you can stay alive.

Out of curiosity, was is the thought behind the marble mechanic? To me, it didn’t feel an organic part of the fractal itself, more a random mechanic added, because more mechanics were felt to be needed.

I think that is what set this apart for me – the mechanics didn’t gel with what was going on around. Much of the other fractals work a) because they are short bursts and b) because the mechanics are organic to the environment. This felt too random or out of place if that makes sense.

Viirastra is innocent and playful, and literally thinks she is playing a game with the players, so marbles made thematic sense. Plus, the marble mechanic combines perfectly with the SAS skill, which brings the joy of movement in this fight to an entirely new level.

Idk if id describe Viirastra like that in the cm version. Yes the marble feels like im playing a game with her. She throws me the ball and its my job to keep it bouncing and sent it back to her. But shes innocent and she doesnt know that ball is a ball of suffering and death. /shrug

I was describing Viirastra, not Artsariiv.

Randulf.7614:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Jahroots.6791:

I gotta applaud anyone who can figure out the mechanics in the clusterkitten that is fractal 100. The first fellow’s alright, but the second boss just has way too much going on at once.

Even on normal mode, she’s actually a fair bit harder than many raid encounters.

Viirastra has 2 core mechanics:
1. Stand in the bubble when you have the skull
2. Bounce the marble on your head (only 1 person needed, backup helpful)

If you do these two mechanics correctly, the rest of the fight is pretty easy. Failing these two mechanics quickly snowballs the fight to failure.

There are also two minor mechanics:
1. Don’t stand in the AoEs (You can jump over many of them)
2. Kill the big clones, then drag the little ones to the boss.

Doing these two mechanics reduces the damage pressure to almost nothing.

Theres a bit more to the fight, but this is the core that will allow you to succeed in non CM.

If you are failing the marble, try lower tiers. The marble pattern is significantly easier. Also note that when the marble bounces on your head, it refreshes your SAS. Your SAS is OP and you should use it to move around.

Edit: If your group is learning, try having everyone do the marble at once. There is no time pressure on non CM, and doing the marble gives you lots of aegis and invulnerability so you can stay alive.

Out of curiosity, was is the thought behind the marble mechanic? To me, it didn’t feel an organic part of the fractal itself, more a random mechanic added, because more mechanics were felt to be needed.

I think that is what set this apart for me – the mechanics didn’t gel with what was going on around. Much of the other fractals work a) because they are short bursts and b) because the mechanics are organic to the environment. This felt too random or out of place if that makes sense.

Viirastra is innocent and playful, and literally thinks she is playing a game with the players, so marbles made thematic sense. Plus, the marble mechanic combines perfectly with the SAS skill, which brings the joy of movement in this fight to an entirely new level.

Mister Asdasd.6194:

Dont forget the dozens of adds that spawn and make your life a living hell

Those adds have like 12k health and do very little damage. Just AoE them and they poof.

Jahroots.6791:

I gotta applaud anyone who can figure out the mechanics in the clusterkitten that is fractal 100. The first fellow’s alright, but the second boss just has way too much going on at once.

Even on normal mode, she’s actually a fair bit harder than many raid encounters.

Viirastra has 2 core mechanics:
1. Stand in the bubble when you have the skull
2. Bounce the marble on your head (only 1 person needed, backup helpful)

If you do these two mechanics correctly, the rest of the fight is pretty easy. Failing these two mechanics quickly snowballs the fight to failure.

There are also two minor mechanics:
1. Don’t stand in the AoEs (You can jump over many of them)
2. Kill the big clones, then drag the little ones to the boss.

Doing these two mechanics reduces the damage pressure to almost nothing.

Theres a bit more to the fight, but this is the core that will allow you to succeed in non CM.

If you are failing the marble, try lower tiers. The marble pattern is significantly easier. Also note that when the marble bounces on your head, it refreshes your SAS. Your SAS is OP and you should use it to move around.

Edit: If your group is learning, try having everyone do the marble at once. There is no time pressure on non CM, and doing the marble gives you lots of aegis and invulnerability so you can stay alive.

In terms of data for RNG samples, 500, while it seems like a lot, is still a very very small sample size. Its entirely possible to have even worse luck than you had.

Your PFL (Personal Fractal Level) is what determines what LFG you can search for, not your agony resist. You have to play lower scale fractals to raise it.

pelle ossa.9705:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Sublimatio.6981:

can you also fix the progress blocking bugs in AC p2, SE p2, Arah p2 and Arah p3, please? These are all NPC scripts failing

Probably not, but I’m at least looking in to Detha’s script when I get some free time.

as a player who love dungeons, the stories , locations and stuff , this is soo sad , you have a good potential content , and you are letting it die… dat logic… it’s like Twisted Marionette the best world event , and you removed it forever… always smart choises always

It’s not like we want to leave the bugs in, its just that they were built a long time ago with different tools, and fixing them requires a lot of developer time. Time that could be spent on making new fractals and such. Any time I spend fixing dungeon bugs is completely voluntary, and is probably going to be done on weekends.

Sublimatio.6981:

can you also fix the progress blocking bugs in AC p2, SE p2, Arah p2 and Arah p3, please? These are all NPC scripts failing

Probably not, but I’m at least looking in to Detha’s script when I get some free time.

Zenith.7301:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

The drop rates are pretty dang high for ascended gear, but RNG is by definition, random. It has nothing to do with the efficiency of the algorithm, and our algorithm has a good distribution anyways.

The better question is why is viper/HoT stats accessories still not available through fractals, especially when you’ve made balance changes that have kicked power builds out of relevance?

That is a popular feedback item regarding future fractal rewards that is on my list of potential proposals.

TexZero.7910:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

RiverStyx.3276:

Fractal legendary armor (doesn’t need to be a fancy skin – can just be stat swapping like the PVP / WvW ones) for PVE players who don’t want to raid. It can be STUPID expensive, but at least give players a way of getting it that does not involve them playing content they are not interested in (again – as they have provided for WvW and PVP players).

The biggest concern with fractal legendary, even if it has no unique skin, is that raids is the source for PvE legendary armor, and we don’t want to diminish that.

That said i don’t think anyone would complain about a fractal style armor set assuming you guys can spare the artist and resources to do it.

That is the real question. Armor sets are surprisingly expensive in terms of developer cost.

We just need to delete charr first…

RiverStyx.3276:

Fractal legendary armor (doesn’t need to be a fancy skin – can just be stat swapping like the PVP / WvW ones) for PVE players who don’t want to raid. It can be STUPID expensive, but at least give players a way of getting it that does not involve them playing content they are not interested in (again – as they have provided for WvW and PVP players).

The biggest concern with fractal legendary, even if it has no unique skin, is that raids is the source for PvE legendary armor, and we don’t want to diminish that.

I meant to tackle this sooner but I uh… forgot. >_>

It’s formally logged as a task for the short term so I’ll try to get on this soon, along with some other fractal bugs.

The drop rates are pretty dang high for ascended gear, but RNG is by definition, random. It has nothing to do with the efficiency of the algorithm, and our algorithm has a good distribution anyways.

The others have highlighted mostly why we don’t do this. It’s a lot more work, taking precious time away from new fractals, systems, and rework, and it blurs the definition of fractals. I agree it would be super neat to also scale difficulty with party size in a way, but I don’t ever see that happening based on our backlog and the reasons stated above.

There’s lots of good discussion here, thanks guys I’ll be working on an internal pitch for specific changes based on player feedback soon. There’s a lot of variables at play so I’m not sure yet which changes are actually feasible when we take everything, particularly economy, into account.

Yes, the inconsistency.

I’ve got a task to look in to what is going on with this. Haven’t dug in to it yet so I’m not sure if it is a problem on player skills side or Arkk’s side.

So Avengers CAN still stomp the wrong person, its just way less likely. Thanks to some new tech I could potentially rebuild them… again… so that they DEFINITELY can’t stomp the wrong person.

Low on my priority list but yeah just saying.

All the fixes are in now. You should be able to join your party in fractals whether they start from LA or from the mistlock sanctuary, and there is a “return to previous map” option in the center portal. You can also waypoint to Tyria from the world map if you click to the lower floor in the bottom right hand corner.

I am glad that it feels much better now we never want tier 1 to feel punishing. We will be more careful in future releases.

Bugabuga.9721:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

FYI the tier scaling changes are in for Shattered Observatory. If you were having trouble at 25, give it a go now and see if it feels much better.

Quick question: given that spectral grasp on necromancer is now 2x cooldown (50 seconds instead of 20 seconds) is there any recommended substitute for breakbar management?

Flesh golem does good break bar damage.

FYI the tier scaling changes are in for Shattered Observatory. If you were having trouble at 25, give it a go now and see if it feels much better.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Even with all that amount of dodge power (wich should be insane, other classes have only half, or less amount of dodges), I took 9000 lightning beam damage, cause of the big amount of adds AND enrage that triggers on all of them. I also had lots of interrupts and blinds going. All useless.

If you are getting hit by the lightning beam, it’s because you failed to focus down the large Viirastra clones. The whole point of those is that you aren’t supposed to leave them up, in fact they even have break bars so you can break them and burst them immediately when they spawn. She only spawns one of these every 45 seconds or so if you do the marble right. To me it sounds like your group just isn’t properly executing the mechanics, as in my experience Viirastra is pretty simple when everyone is on point, regardless of comp, especially considering you get a free res every transition.

Love you guys too

UI bug :P fix incoming!

hornswroggle.8023:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Bugabuga.9721:

Perhaps it’d be better in new fractal was in category of its own? T5. And move CM versions and further new fractals there too?

We don’t want to make a Tier 5. Players historically all try to concentrate in the highest tier, and adding another one just means further spreading out the player base,. Eventually they will all end up in Tier 5 anyways, it just requires even more progression and hard work to get to the end. We feel like T4 is good for “max difficulty” and CM’s allow us to add another layer of challenge for hardcore players without requiring us to make T5 versions of every fractal.

Hi Benjamin,
on more of a sidenote of expanding fractals: Does the fractal team already have a plan on how to handle more than 25 different fractals? Is it intended to eliminate duplicate islands from each tier? Because I find it interesting that you have a choice among certain instabilities, depending on what build you run. Will you then expand he system beyond Scale 100?

We will cross that bridge if and when we come to it. I don’t think we would want more than 100 scales, but we might alter the system such that more than one fractal can exist at one scale. It would involve heavy UI and systems changes for sure. We have plenty of time to come up with solutions.

Bugabuga.9721:

Perhaps it’d be better in new fractal was in category of its own? T5. And move CM versions and further new fractals there too?

We don’t want to make a Tier 5. Players historically all try to concentrate in the highest tier, and adding another one just means further spreading out the player base,. Eventually they will all end up in Tier 5 anyways, it just requires even more progression and hard work to get to the end. We feel like T4 is good for “max difficulty” and CM’s allow us to add another layer of challenge for hardcore players without requiring us to make T5 versions of every fractal.

anduriell.6280:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

When designers play “Attached” effects on a creature, the effect is actually rotated 180 degrees the wrong way due to a code bug. So artists and designers would manually rotate the effect to work. But since there are already thousands of attached effects, fixing this bug would break all of those effects.

Granted, with some work you could probably make a clever python script to find all references to all attached effects and manually do some kind of fixup along with the patch, but it will still break for people working in different code streams than the main one that you do your fixes in.

If the code can do operations with the name from the effect, just use a prefix to detect the ones don’t need to be rotated so artists and designers no need to spend additional time rotating those effects when they design new ones. Something intuitive like fix_xxxxxxxxx should be enough.
So if you detect the new prefix in the name of the animation you apply the fixed code otherwise you apply the old flow.

The problem is, the rotated effects are also used in non attached manners, for instance playing at a particular location in the world. So we can’t just use the model file name, we have to detect the usage.

zealex.9410:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

DBZVelena.5186:

So basically, before the teleport didn’t happen because two bugs countered each other. Then one bug got fixed and it revealed the presence of another bug.

Yeah this kinda stuff is why fixing bugs in a codebase with millions of lines of code is always scary. Sometimes its better to NOT fix a bug :P

Do you have an example of a bug that if fixed could mess up a diff something else?

When designers play “Attached” effects on a creature, the effect is actually rotated 180 degrees the wrong way due to a code bug. So artists and designers would manually rotate the effect to work. But since there are already thousands of attached effects, fixing this bug would break all of those effects.

Granted, with some work you could probably make a clever python script to find all references to all attached effects and manually do some kind of fixup along with the patch, but it will still break for people working in different code streams than the main one that you do your fixes in.

felincyriac.5981:

thought this would have been fixed by now…

The fix is in the arkk balance patch. Just wait a day.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Your metrics have a ton of people doing (no CM) t4 fractal runs every day. What your metrics will see is that a lot of player, STRAIGHT OUT ignore nightmare. I still manage.

It was hard for me to follow some of what you said, but I can tell you that our metrics show that T4 nightmare is run just as much as any other T4 fractal, often more. And on days where it isn’t a daily, thanks to CM it is run much more than any other non daily fractal. In total we get more nightmare instances than other fractals at tier 4. (Obv 40 farm is the most but it is T2).

Astralporing.1957:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Remember that it isn’t about the rewards, it is about the experience of the journey and the self improvement that always comes with overcoming a difficult challenge, and not every challenge can be completed in a day, or even a week or a month. The hard things in life are what make us stronger people.

That’s the problem. Not everyone plays games to become “stronger people”. Most play them just to unwind. GW2 lately starts to strongly switch the game emphasis from the latter to the former, which obviously will leave many players discontent.

Also, in this case, the “experience of the journey” is just way too painful. Which is a shame, because visually and storywise that fractal is really good.

I was responding specifically about challenge mode, as that is what this thread is about. If you aren’t interested in growing your skills and overly challenging yourself, simply don’t do CM. Tier 4 should become easier with bugfixes. If after the next patch tier 4 Arkk feels way out of whack, we will still be collecting feedback for any future changes.

Gullig.8796:

Ashen.2907:

If fractals are fun for you, but one particular fractal, at one particular level, with CM isnt..wouldnt a wiser decision be to play the other fractals or levels, etc?

It would be like me quitting GW2 because I dont care for one particular event in one zone.

I totally understand and you are probobly right. It is just that my left side hurt since I fell on the floor. I have never let a game dmg me IRL before, both mentally and physically. I am very scared what game developers are turning fractals into and I don’t wanna not be able to join daily runs cause one of them happen to be 100 (Yes, I can clear 100, but I HATE it). Maybe it just burned me out.

I understand the frustration you feel. Sometimes it is best to just put it down and take a breather. We don’t build these experiences intending to cause people physical or mental anguish, but we understand that everyone has different opinions and emotions and will react to things differently. And obviously, the bugs are just plain frustrating.

When I find myself failing at a particularly difficult challenge, I’ve learned over the years that the more angry or frustrated I get, the worse I do, and then the more angry I get, and then it is just a self perpetuating cycle that leaves me feeling terrible. These days I have been trying much harder to realize when I’m starting to get frustrated, when my emotions are clouding my judgement and causing my blood to pump too fast. In those times I try to take a deep breath and calm down, and either walk away from the game for a day, or try again with renewed vigor and concentration.

Remember that it isn’t about the rewards, it is about the experience of the journey and the self improvement that always comes with overcoming a difficult challenge, and not every challenge can be completed in a day, or even a week or a month. The hard things in life are what make us stronger people.

DBZVelena.5186:

So basically, before the teleport didn’t happen because two bugs countered each other. Then one bug got fixed and it revealed the presence of another bug.

Yeah this kinda stuff is why fixing bugs in a codebase with millions of lines of code is always scary. Sometimes its better to NOT fix a bug :P

Madara.7435:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

For instance, until last year, some player skills such as the revenant sword 2 would randomly target these skill launchers, and players would see their projectiles flying at invisible objects.

lol this is still happening with rev sword 2

That’s not Skill Launchers, it’s probably hand placed invisible gadgets.

zealex.9410:

So why did it started happening only recently? Also could skill launchers cause rev hammers to dissapear after colliding with them?

It started happening only recently due to some code changes to physics and navmesh. Before, when the skill launcher collided with the anomaly, a code bug coupled with a navmesh crack caused the ejection to fail. Now that that bug was fixed, the ejection succeeded.

Projectiles shouldn’t be able to collide with skill launchers, even before this change, because of the unattackable and non-targetable flags. Additionally, the collision radius is like 9 inches and they are on the ground so the projectiles would just pass over them anyways.

UnbentMars.9126:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Finally figured it out. The bug was hilarious but too technical to explain. Fix incoming.

You know you want to tell us

Yeah…

TexZero.7910:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Finally figured it out. The bug was hilarious but too technical to explain. Fix incoming.

Try us. Im sure it will make for an entertaining Dev blog.

OK fine.

So I started by looking at the anomaly’s creature script. The fact that this was a consistent teleport at 50% made it seem like it would be an easy thing to track down, and the creature script was the likely culprit.

The anomaly had a script handler listening for it to hit 50% health. In this handler was a call to teleport it to the center of the map, presumably the designer who originally built the anomaly put it there as a safeguard, but it should not be needed. I figured, “maybe the teleport is failing and picking the wrong navmesh?” so I just deleted the whole handler.

The boss still teleported at 50%…

OK so it isn’t the creature script, so I looked at everything referencing the anomaly with regards to its 50% health threshold, and the only thing left was a map script. This map script did nothing but set a trigger, but there was a handler listening for this trigger that fired a skill at the feet of the anomaly “Unstable Matrix”, which is the skill that targets everyone and makes platforms fall.

This skill is not sourced from the boss, since the boss is doing his own thing at this time. Instead, the skill is sourced from an invisible, unattackable gadget that spawns right at the feet of the anomaly. These types of gadgets are called “skill launchers” and are used in places throughout the game, though we try to avoid them these days as they have a tendency to be buggy. For instance, until last year, some player skills such as the revenant sword 2 would randomly target these skill launchers, and players would see their projectiles flying at invisible objects.

All gadgets in our game have flags that define their behavior. Skill launchers were properly flagged to be unattackable and non targetable, but I discovered that they, hilariously enough, were not flagged as “No Collide”.

The skill launcher at the anomaly’s feet was colliding with him when it spawned. And when colliding gadgets collide with a creature when they initialize, they “Eject” said creatures, causing them to teleport to nearby navmesh. The reason the boss would teleport back to the center at 25% was because of those teleport safeguards on the creature script. But of course the next time Unstable Matrix fired it would teleport back out.

Flagging skill launchers as no collide solved this bug (and probably some elsewhere), and then Bill fixed some issues that could cause creatures to teleport too far away when ejecting, as the anomaly had.

Feanor.2358:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

skullmount.1758:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Sorry, I misspoke, I should have said, “the next patch with fractal and sanctuary updates”. It is coming very soon, apologies.

Is this also the patch that will give the sanctuary the ability to put us back to where we started/used the pass?

Yes.

Can we get the same QoL on the other passes?

At this point, no. It is actually not possible to do this in lounges that are in open world maps because of how we export character position on map transition.

Finally figured it out. The bug was hilarious but too technical to explain. Fix incoming.

Ana.2415:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

skullmount.1758:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Sorry, I misspoke, I should have said, “the next patch with fractal and sanctuary updates”. It is coming very soon, apologies.

Is this also the patch that will give the sanctuary the ability to put us back to where we started/used the pass?

Yes.

But will we be able to see the map and choose whatever waypoint we want? because put us back to where we used the pass it doesn’t really solve the problem… I don’t wanna have an extra loading screen

If I wanna go to do meta events, go to HoT maps, Living Story or going to whatever maps for stuff for my collections I will need 2 loading screens or 3 in case I need to join an instance :/

I just wanna go directly to the place I need.

You will be able to open the map, tab down a floor, zoom out, and select tyria waypoints.

There’s gonna be more raids and fractals, chill guys ^-^

skullmount.1758:

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Sorry, I misspoke, I should have said, “the next patch with fractal and sanctuary updates”. It is coming very soon, apologies.

Is this also the patch that will give the sanctuary the ability to put us back to where we started/used the pass?

Yes.

Sorry, I misspoke, I should have said, “the next patch with fractal and sanctuary updates”. It is coming very soon, apologies.

ButterPeanut.9746:

One perfect example is the special action key. Take the new open world map that has really cool and interesting lore tidbits related to the gods when using the special action key. In combat it helps allies certain ways, and hurts enemies. I find it interesting and exciting to pair it up with other people in a larger meta event.

Where did this tech come from? Raids.

I love the special action key as a tool for design. It gives us a lot more freedom and it can give every fractal a unique “feel”. I find myself wishing I had nova launch in other content.

I’m not fond of the undodgeable burn mechanic either, but we aren’t touching it for this next patch as we are trying to make as few mechanical changes as possible. We would like to continue to receive great feedback like this in the coming weeks as we decide on any potential balance changes to the encounters.

I’ve got a fix coming for this ^-^ sorry for the inconvenience! This has been a bug for years :O

Evenaardez.7913:

There is a bug sometimes with the medusa/fear attack on the final boss during CM. Sometimes even though you clearly look away from the boss the attack will still hit you. I know there are some good videos out there that show the bug, specifically some CM kills on Youtube.

That skill is indeed bugged. It actually pulses twice. Once when the effect happens, and once again 0.5 seconds later. I am removing the second pulse for the next release.

Sublimatio.6981:

Why did you intend to damage players when they dodge the attack? That’s really unfair. When I dodge I expect to be protected from damage.

The designer who built that skill intended for it to be a guaranteed damage pressure to emphasize condi cleanse or heals.

Triggerbrand.8072:

I think the new fractal has too much visual noise at times? E.g. the first boss on CM, the starting sun thing is too bright.

Yeah there’s a few cases where that sun can be pretty blinding… especially if the camera passes through it. I’m going to scale back the size of it and make it active for less of the fight.