Guild Wars 2

Surbrus.6942:

I almost exclusively do dungeons with guildies. However I have an additional concern about this Infusion mechanic.

My concern is that this difficulty here is not difficulty at all, but just stat/gear inflation. Once you get Infusion +10 or whatever, the content gets easier simply because you already put time into grinding this dungeon, it does not get easier due to your skill improving, or your greater understanding of the dungeon, but simply because you did the time. That isn’t difficulty, that is inflation of stats, nothing more.

Thanks for the input,

I hope this is not the case as well as simply passing an infusion check to proceed to the next level would be a small disappointment.

While I’m confident that Arena Net will make whatever changes are necessary to keep things fun, I can’t help but feel that Infusion as it appears right now feels a bit rushed.

All the same, Fractals of the Mist seems like a really cool idea in theory and I’m looking forward to it. I’m happy about getting interesting new content along with a new open world area and I guess we’ll all see how Infusion turns out in the next couple of days.

First off, I’m grateful for the new content. But as you can see there are some concerns presented by the future impact of features in this update.

There’s currently a giant thread going about the discussion of whether ascended gear violates guild wars 2’s principles or if it sets a precedent for gear treadmills in the future. This is focused on Infusions instead.

In my opinion the introduction of ascended gear is very minor compared to the possible problems that Infusions present.

I believe Arena Net when they say that ascended items are the final tier, but aren’t Infusions the real treadmill here?

Currently infusions defend against the monster ability “Agony”. So if hypothetically later on, Arena Net were to introduce a new monster that uses an ability we’ll call “Despair”, what happens here? Do current infusions defend against that or do we now need to either overwrite our current infusions, losing our defense against Agony, or obtain a second set of ascended gear to put new Infusions in that defend against this new “Despair” ability. If the latter is true, that’s a lot of re-gearing every time a new monster ability requiring an Infusion counter is introduced.

More importantly though…

Based on the way Fractals of the Mist is described to work, https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/leah-rivera-on-the-new-fractals-of-the-mist-dungeon/

The higher the dungeon scales up, the more difficult and rewarding it becomes and the level of difficulty is decided by the average difficulty that each party member has achieved personally in their trips through this dungeon. Furthermore the ability to go deeper is governed by the amount of Infusion that your character has.

Once players have completed experiencing the content, they will gravitate towards doing things that garner the best rewards for their time. The infamous explorer Plinx event chain and Sheltered Path events in Cursed Shore are definite proof of this due to their high returns on karma, and monster loot drops.

Because players will eventually start seeking the best rewards for their time in the Fractals of the Mist
1) Won’t players start requiring that people who join a Fractals of the Mist group have a minimum attained level so as not to bring the average difficulty level of the dungeon down thus lowering the rewards.

2) Won’t groups eventually start requiring that people have the best available Infusions so that the group has the best possible chance of success in completing the hardest difficulty-levels.

3) This appears to create a classic problem where the player needs a group in order to conquer levels of difficulty in Fractals of the Mist but as more of the player base achieves the harder levels of difficulty they are less likely to be willing to go back and do the easier levels for less rewards, which would lock out players who hadn’t done the easier levels back when groups were willing to do those.

The point for me isn’t really about the rewards but that it can be difficult to simply grab a group and start playing the dungeon when a portion of the player population is actively trying to filter out players based on the dungeon’s reward criteria. This becomes even more difficult when the dungeon’s design is rewarding players for engaging in this behavior.

A player who shows up a month or two late to the Fractals of the Mist craze could easily end up being met with “LFM Fractals difficulty level 30+ only, Max Infusions.”

Naturally I reserve all judgment until this is live and encourage others to do so as well.
I’m definitely looking forward to the new content, these are just some concerns based on the descriptions given of these features. If nothing else maybe it can help show how communication from the design team is interpreted by the player-base.

To other players, what are your thoughts on Infusions?

TLDR:
1) Infusions appear to be a sort of treadmill in and of themselves.

2) The dungeon design of Fractals of the Mist appears to unintentionally reward player discrimination. (Players arriving late to this dungeon’s inception won’t have higher difficulty levels unlocked or have max infusions which groups will want them to have already as a requisite for joining).

3) Infusions could lead to excessive re-gearing and bank-bloat where every time a new monster ability is introduced, the player needs an additional set of ascended gear with infusions that guard against that new ability.