Guild Wars 2

Character progression in this game “feels” bad. I say that as I sit at Lv:50 fractals with a legendary and a nearly completed set of ascended armor and weapons.

When I got my legendary back in 2012, people didn’t look at my accomplishment and think of how great it was. I mostly got questions like, “Did you farm it or buy it?” Obviously I liked my Frostfang, I thought it was cool, but I could start to see something wrong with the picture.

The old system of do dungeon X for Y amount of tokens to get your item was wonderful. I don’t understand why I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of fractals without getting the fractal shield, but someone else can run the dungeon a few times and throw it on their alt because they don’t care? So, when/if I finally get the reward, people won’t know if it is because I’ve reached the pinnacle of PvE or if it was because of dumb luck.

Ascended armor surprised me too. I never expected it to be able to be acquired so easily. Yes, the path is a little long but you can’t say it has any difficulty to it. With alts getting teleported to 3 jumping puzzles in LA, dynamic events being a big Zerg, and the rest able to be purchased with gold off of the TP, ascended armor asks very little of the player other than time.

The problem I see with character progression is how little skill in this game matters. It should not serve as the be all end all, but it has no role here.

I want to see my character progress because I learned how to master my class. Being able to do fractals should matter, I should never have to consider champion farming to get my gold when I can knock out a level 50 fractal. I want the weapons and armor I’m carrying to reflect my progress in the game, not be all about how much gold I make or what luck I have. When nearly everything about my character can be bought off of the trading post, it is hard for me to feel invested in what I accomplish in game.

Fractal rewards are not being handled correctly at all. I’m sitting here at Lv:50 now with absolutely zero incentive to ever go back in there.

This really needs to happen so they understand what is wrong with the fractal.

Dragus.1853:

Max you’re the type of person I hope I never have to put up with in game. It does seem pretty lame that anet can’t just put in the box mechanic which should be easily modified from a different version, but you are making a mountain out of a molehill.

No, he’s not. A lot of people returned to fractals specifically for skins and to try and obtain this container. It is like working a job and complaining why your paycheck was never sent out.

I had a staff skin drop at 42 today. I was very upset to see that the fractal container promise was not delivered on.

Dreamslayer.7659:

I think that, at the very least, we should be able to forge 3 fractal skins and 5 Pristine Relics to get a chance at another fractal skin.

I also think they should make some “super skins” – like a black or white version or something that only drops at 40+

Yeah that would be helpful. At least something to give us the chance to reduce the luck factor.

Myself and many others have been dedicated enough to do fractal after fractal, only to never see the specific skin we want drop. We have been hoping all year long that when fractals returned we’d be able to buy our weapon skin of choice with pristine fractal relics.

Is this going to be an option with the new fractals? Please give us some hope that the RNG nightmare will be over. The odds of getting your wanted weapon were rough set at crazy low odds PER DAY. (32.5% drop rate at level 40 fractals x 1/19 possible fractal weapons.)

I really like these characters. They grow on you more and more with each event. They have some of the best dialogue and interaction between each other.

A big group has been waiting here on Tarnished Coast for 1h20mins.

Josh, thanks for staying up and answering so many questions from people.

The feedback I want to give isn’t related to difficulty, but time. I’ve been on world 2 zone 2 for about two hours now. I really want to go to bed, but I know if I stop now my progress will be lost. (Also there is a patch available so it will kick me off soon.)

Basically I just want to go to bed and I wish I didn’t have to sacrifice my progress to do it. I think you misunderstood someone earlier when they said the levels were too big. We love content, and would never complain about too much content. I just wish some of these levels were cut in half so I could save in between. You know?

I know this is going to be received with mixed views, but I want to add my feedback to the pile.

I’m not a casual gamer. I played throughout the beta just to test how to best run things on live. I got my Frostfang legendary in November. I’ve made it to level 50 fractals and have even made sure to do the entire super adventure box and each jumping puzzle and living story event GW2 has seen. I WvW, I even dabble in PvP, I like to try to experience everything the game has to offer.

What I really dislike is having someone tell me that content was not meant for me and that it is somehow okay. Keg brawl wasn’t for me until I tried it, then I had fun. Sanctum Sprint was totally new and not for me until I got into the interest of racing. I am fine working outside of my comfort zone.

There seems to be this obsession in the playerbase with wanting something up on the shelf too high for them to reach. Hardly anyone can do Light Up the Darkness, but it keeps being championed as this great fight. Why? Just because it is nearly impossible? Because it is so frustrating? This doesn’t line up with any of the other content in the game.

Mad king’s jumping puzzle was a great challenge, but it was a realistic one. Aetherblade Retreat gave us one of the most challenging dungeons outside of fractals that took a team’s cooperation. The Queen’s Gauntlet is none of these things. It is filled with frustrating OHKO mechanics and achievements that practically beg players to find a broken part of the game’s mechanics and exploit it.

I got High Stakes Gambler, Triple Threat, and I’ve killed Liadri but I’m not having fun. I don’t feel challenged. I feel like I am doing my best as a player to explore every aspect of this game while it rejects me over and over again. It feels harsh and unwelcoming, as if the game was begging me to quit instead of beckoning me with a new challenge. Events that once were fun distractions now act as stressful road blocks in what felt like an otherwise rewarding experience.

I don’t care that I have the 11/11 meta complete. I want to do everything but The Queen’s Gauntlet contains far too many frustrating achievements that were made for the 0.01% of the playerbase. This is horrible design. My friends gave up, my guild calls it a waste of time, everyone else tells me it doesn’t matter and “who cares?” I care! Or at least I am trying to.

There is such a thing as poor design and there is such a thing as sliding the difficulty too far into frustrating. The run back sucks, the waiting your turn sucks, getting one shot sucks. There is not challenge just because 99%+ of everyone that tries it says it is too hard. Maybe it just is too hard and is too far outside of the challenge everything else has been so far.

I’ve done the fight, but getting Light Up The Darkness achievement is practically impossible. It’s so stupid to have temporary content achievements that are this insanely difficult. So many people will never be able to even get past phase 1 of this fight. Just because I am a hardcore gamer does not mean this fight is okay, I want my friends to have a chance. It needs a nerf bad.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

You’re right, luck is a big part of this. It’s just meant to be a fun achievement though, in a game that’s only been around for a few hours.

Perhaps if it’s truly an issue we’ll change it to something else.

I really would appreciate this being changed. It is an incredibly frustrating achievement. The better players get at dodging the harder it is to achieve. The biggest problem is that it isn’t something you personally achieved, it is something everyone else failed at.

I’m very upset at the RNG approach to Fractal weapons too. I’m currently blocked at 50 and am still unable to get the Fractal weapon that I want.

Please give us a way to buy these weapon skins with Fractal relics. Grinding 2+ hours a day for a chance at the wrong weapon skin is not fun.

When I first played FotM I was shocked at how incredibly fun they were. All of these little mini dungeons to explore and interesting boss fights to learn. Unfortunately, the more you level the worse they get and it hurts to see something so brilliant start to suffer from bad design choices. With that said, I want to give the developers credit for trying something new. We can’t fault them for not getting it right on the first try.

I’d like to point out some flaws (in descending order) that I hope we can see fixed and can possibly avoid in the future.

(5.) Mass enemy respawning
This is the sole reason most skip the dredge fractal. So many enemies spawn the only way to complete the event is to either wipe or to avoid the content. Infinite scaling exacerbates this problem too.

(4.) Agony on hit
Agony itself is a good way to “gear check” harder fractals, but its implementation is disproportionate for all players. Many times only the player with the boss’ agro suffers from all of the agony, other times it can be ignored completely with a dodge, and sometimes it’s absolutely impossible to avoid.

(3.) RNG rewards
I’m very unhappy with this and “unhappy” is the nicest way to phrase this. We have tokens and ascension quality drops that could be used to craft/buy our ascension gear. Someone should not run 2 dailies and get their perfect rings while someone else has to run 100. Can’t sell, buy, or trade to even give a bad 2nd option. This is very frustrating.

(2.) Infinite Scaling
Simple number increases are not enough to balance a bump in difficulty. The HP increase of an enemy simply increases the time it takes for that boss to die and is irrelevant because everything becomes solely about survivability. The damage enemies deal with infinite scaling becomes so high that only the best toughness and healing support builds can survive. DPS builds become a liability as all they do is reduce the time an enemy survives.

(1.) Levels aka LFxM FotM ##
This system is so outrageously poor that it has dominated the map chat of every lion’s arch across every server and overflow. Entire websites and guilds were designed just to overcome it’s broken nature. A dungeon finder would alleviate this greatly, but it wouldn’t change the fact that most of us have to choose between playing with our actual friends and complete strangers that happen to share our skill level.

I do hope we see some drastic changes that make fractals fun again and I would like to offer some solutions in order to do so.

(5.) Reduce the respawning of enemies by about 2/3rds. This harms dredge, and cultist fractals the most.
(4.) Make Agony tick evenly across on all players every 30sec of a boss encounter. Scale its damage accordingly to adjust for this.
(3.) Keep the current system but allow players to buy the ring of their choice from the golem vendor for a high amount of Fractal Relics.
(2.) Remove infinite scaling.
(1.) Reduce Fractals to 3 levels, easy, normal, and hard. Easy would be level 1 as is for leveling alts and new players to get gear and experience in a fun dungeon. Normal would require an 80+ character and be the difficulty of 10 without agony. Hard should be level 20 with agony, only getting easier when more agony resist is required. With this model a Very Hard could be added down the road as more ascension gear is released.