Guild Wars 2

Bug is still active with the latest patch.

I’ve made a very quick video to show it, here:
https://youtu.be/ruGe8Mpc1ME

You can see here that even though I’m moving inside a spot where there is no fire zone, yet I still take the Burning condition as well as the Agony.
For this video, the “Effect LOD” option was unchecked, but I’ve tested and it is the same whether is is checked or unchecked.

Also a little advice, if you want to familiarize with the position of traps, how to climb the walls, …, you can open the map and train a bit alone inside. Running the whisps is pretty easy as long as you know the path to take, and use appropriate skills (speed buff, condition removal or stability in case of a mess)

As everyone was saying, swamp is by far the fastest map possible. Only problem is if you go only with people who have no idea what they’re doing, as you need 2-3 players who can run the whisps. That problem mostly only happens at low levels.

But well, if you go with people who don’t know how to run the whisps, get ready to explain many of the fractal mechanics, because those people probably don’t know much about the maps and what you have to do on each one.

It would also be nice if they can finally give us the collection “Fractal Master”, which is currently not available / bugged since at least september 2014… And please, make a real reward for it, 10 achievment points for collecting every fractal skin is a joke, considering how long you have to farm fractals to get them…

Video of someone who got the achiev probably through a bug:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWswwMahZyA

Quothrone.8615:

Funny thing they didn’t even consider changing the end chest of this fractal which is still old dungeon chest since it doesn’t “favor” players.

They’ll probably change that when they revamp the rewards for all the fractals, something maybe our granchildren might get to see…

And again no change, the bug is still active.

I’m guessing most people don’t see it because they burst him in melee while using perma-reflects, but it’s really annoying when you do the “normal way”. One of the guy in our group even got hit by the 3rd rebound (the one which bumps you) of an invisible attack, and he got thrown out of the platform because of it.

Lol at using AP to scale the difficulty !
AP doesn’t mean a thing to dungeons/fractals, except that the player also farmed completely unrelated stuff.

Grasping vines from the Sylvari is the only one I use:
- on Grawl map: during the middle fight, where you have to kill the grawls before they push the humans down. It’s not really needed if you have enough dps in the group, but I like having it as a safety in case of a mess
- on Dredge map: during the end fight, to block the boss under the lava (if you don’t have someone else already doing the immobilize)
- on Thaumanova as you said already

Apart from those situations, I never use other sylvari skills.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

Valik Shin.9027:

U should get 1g per reward tier so a 50 would be 6g

This would be acceptable IMO.

Many proposed such a change during the fractal CDI a year and a half ago.
I too think it would a good change. Given the difficulty and time needed to complete a full fractal run, it would make it worthwhile to do.
Right now, you can get as much gold than a full fractal run with a mere CoF p1, which is stupid considering the immense gap of difficulty and time necessary to do it.

And the few other loots don’t compensate such a difference at all, especially as you need almost a miracle to get something more interesting than a ring in the daily chest (at best you can hope to get an infused ring if you’re lucky !)

It’s been a year and a half since the fractal CDI, in which the fractal rewards were unanimously described as too low: either with the gold (many saying we should get +1g per 10 levels instead of +10s), and the lack of use for pristine relics.

All we got from the CDI since then was the suppression of the clown car at dredge fractal, nothing else…

No change with the last patch, the bug is still active. Got it multiple times on our 49 today.

I remember seeing the problem at level 50 and level 40, but I don’t play other levels often. So if the problem doesn’t exist at lower levels, Orinil may be right about it, it might be coming from too many projectiles thrown, so some of them are not shown on screen ?
But then, it also happens if the “Effect LOD” is unchecked, so it’s a bit strange

It’s pretty strange that clones and phantasms don’t work for the bonus of the Ranger rune, when you consider that guardians summoned weapons work…

There’s another bug you didn’t mention, on the Molten Duo map for FotM.

Sometimes you get hit by burning and agony, like you were in a fire zone from the Firestorm, but there’s nothing showing on the ground (no red circle, no fire effect). So you can’t know at all when it will happen, or where is actually safe.

There’s no way to prevent it, you can just realize you’re in a zone fast to get out, but you’ll still get hurt badly.

I’ve put a post about it on the Bug section here :
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Fractal-Molten-Duo-Invisible-fire-zones

Since a few patches ago, there is a bug on the fractal map where you fight the molten duo (berserker and firestorm).

Sometimes you get hit while walking on the ground, getting Burning and Agony, despite the fact there is no red circle, nor fire effect on the ground. This happens whether you checked the graphic option “Effect LOD” or not.

It’s really annoying, as there is no way to know when you’ll get hit by that.

This bug has been active since more than a month ago. cf https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/out-of-Combat-bug/

It’s really annoying, and it’s forcing us to not change our skills to not penalize our group (who’d have to wait for us if we went to LA to switch), especially for those who have long loading times.

It doesn’t change a thing. I was out of combat in that screen, i could change my weapons if I wanted to, but not my utilities, heal or elite.

This is a bug that appeared with the last patch, and is probably related with another bug described here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/In-Combat-bug

While in combat, in “normal” situations, you still get the little arrows over your bar to change the skills (even though you can’t change it). This is annoying because you then can’t know easily if you’re in combat or not.

But there’s another bug with this skill changing. When you’re morphed to another thing (like in ascalonian or thaumanova fractals, where you’re morphed to charr or asura), and enter combat, you don’t have the little arrows, even after the combat is over and you’re out of combat, so you can’t change your skills at all.

As you can see in the image, i’m out of combat, yet no arrows to change the skills. It’s the same on the Hero window, can’t change the skills that way either.

Getting a fractal tonic is the same as winning the lottery.

From all the recorded runs we have here, we’re at around 3000 chests on level 41-50, and still no tonic. For a single player who’d want to get the tonic, that means 8 years and 3 months of doing the daily every single day, and still not getting it.

Seeing someone with the fractal tonic or multiple fractal skins should be an indication of the player dedication to fractals. At the moment it’s not. When I see someone with those, I only think: “This guy won the lottery”.

As for the skins, the droprates on them was much higher before (around 25-30% per daily, with multiples dailies a day possible with alts). Even like this, there’s not that many people who managed to get all the skins. With the way the droprates were lowered, getting them all is now out of the question for all new players. The “Fractal Master” collection achievement is also completely buggy. A friend of mine got it (it’s in the Flame and Frost section…), but other players with all the weapons didn’t get it…

All this gives us the sensation that fractals, and fractal rewards is clearly not a priority for Anet… Please prove us wrong !

dlonie.6547:

I know there was some glitch that would slam you with tons of agony right when you enter the fight at like level 10. Just walking through the door with no AR would pretty much down you off the bat.

Yeah, on this fight you get 2 stacks of agony when you enter the room.

Now that Orr has become megaserver too, how are we expected to gather the tons of required dragonite for ascended armor / weapons ???

Before, we could check if the temples events were active or not, and then go there to do them.

Now, it is impossible. Worse than just making it impossible to see, with the megaserver, there is so much people on the maps that the temples are almost never contested, so impossible to loot dragonite from them (or do the events required for the new traits either…).

I didn’t record all my runs since then, but I also got the same feeling from the loots I got on my daily runs.

Thanks a lot for making our concerns more objective by clearly measuring the probabilities. Now let’s hope that we get some response.

As it was shown on the fractal CDI, lack of rewards (relative to difficulty of high level fractals) is one of the player’s concern, and this problem with daily reward is one part of this issue.

We had a pretty big problem yesterday because of the megaserver.

We were doing our guild missions, but for almost every mission, when we used the waypoints to get to the spot, half the guild got sent to a different instance of the map, so it was pretty annoying to :
- degroup
- group the guys on a “wrong” map
- get them to rejoin
- degroup
- take another group to let them rejoin
- etc.

It’s just impossible to do the bounties with this system now, as you need more time than the whole bounty to just ferry your guildmates to the right map.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Lol! Hey at least we got a response right?

And what a great answer it was…
It’s been almost 4 months since the first threads about the reset, 3.5 month since the patch, and they say they still need more time to think about it…

But I agree we need to continue pushing for an answer, as we didn’t get a real one yet. Hopefully they’ll stop playing the “3 wise monkeys” and give us a real answer one day.

The problem with placing anvils in fractal maps is that, unlike the other dungeons, fractals don’t have waypoints, so going back to the beginning of the fractal to get to the anvil could be more time consuming than just reloging.

Not saying that putting anvils is a bad idea, but you’d need more than just putting them (for ex putting multiple waypoints on each map), or they won’t be used much.

Rylar.4807:

Currently, 4/5 party members in fractals can repair their armor using alt-F4 to disconnect, then rejoin their group after repairing. The instance owner cannot. I guess most groups get around this by bringing spare gear, or by purchasing repair canisters. This all seems unnecessarily awkward, and can give the impression that the game is pushing you towards the cash shop.

This is wrong.
From the moment they allowed us to reconnect inside fractal, the instance owner could alt-f4 to repair (as long as someone stays inside the instance, of course). At the very beginning, I think you had to alt-f4, only going back to character selection didn’t work.

It is now fixed. As long as the instance owner doesn’t switch characters, he can go back to Character selection, then login again. He can then repair before entering the fractals again.

Tman.6349:

maxinion.8396:

++ to Nevets for fighting the good fight. Very well said.

But hell, even the reset from 50 without any compensation is a slap to the face, considering PvP and WvW’ers get something when they’re reset.

PvPers aren’t being/haven’t been “reset” and what is it that you claim they “got/are getting”?

Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/player-vs-player-rewards-roadmap/

They were saying there that PvP ranks will be retired, but players will get a title based on the rank they achieved, and keep their finishers (those finishers will be exclusive, they will not be attainable anymore).

Due to player response, they finally went back on this move, unlike what they did after the fractal players response…

The problem with them just saying they are sorry and telling us they won’t ever reset progress without compensation again, is that Anet has already gone back on some of their promises, especially on the fractals situation.

Before Fractured, they had said that they understood the situation with Dredge being too long. What did they do ? They put more mobs on patrols, changed some mechanics, and made it even longer/harder than before.
They told us the randomness of maps would be altered, so that there would be no more Cliffside + Dredge. In the end, it’s still possible to get the two, you even have more chances to get Dredge at the end if you get Cliffside at second.
They told us about fractal weapon boxes, then when people said there was a bug about them not dropping, they say: it will be the case for 51+.
I could go on, the list isn’t exhaustive…

After all that happened, it will be hard to trust them if all they do is just saying it.
Anyway, I fear they will just ignore this thread and just not reply to it ever… I hope I’m wrong.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Spoj The Second.7680:

The regular and loyal fractal players are not in it for one time lore stories and easy dailies and that means they are in it for fun, challenging, rewarding and replayable content.

Quoted for truth ! Lore can be nice, but the most important thing if you want fractals to stay active is replayability, and for this you need balance, rewards, and challenge.

Lore is an important part of the fractals and will continue to be. Replayability, balance, rewards and challenge in no way exclude the ability to continue to tell exciting and meaningful stories in Fractals.

Chris

I didn’t mean you had to throw lore away and only focus on the gameplay and replayability. Of course, if you manage to get both great gameplay and lore, it’s the best. However, if you have to focus on only one, gameplay should be prioritized over lore.
A dungeon with great gameplay, through balance of the maps, rewards, .., will get played over and over again by players, even if the lore component is lacking. A dungeon with great lore but gameplay issues will only be played once or twice, and most of the players will then move on to other aspects of the game.

Moshari.8570:

Snip

You forgot about the first threads. The first few threads got immediatly deleted by moderation.

Then a few survived and got merged in one massive thread, here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractal-personal-level-reset/
When that thread arrived at more than 600-800 posts (can’t remember), it was deleted, still without any answer from Anet.

Other threads were then opened, then merged and moved, finally going to this one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Fractal-levels-above-30-to-be-reset/first
When this arrived at over 850 posts, it was locked.

Another post was open, which “survived” till the end of fractured (over 1000 posts):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fractured/Merged-Fractal-level-reset-is-equity-wiped-Discuss/first

Those were the 3 massive threads, with many little ones also on the side. And still with all those posts, not one answer other than: “The Developers are reading these posts and we are gathering feedback.”

Spoj The Second.7680:

The regular and loyal fractal players are not in it for one time lore stories and easy dailies and that means they are in it for fun, challenging, rewarding and replayable content.

Quoted for truth ! Lore can be nice, but the most important thing if you want fractals to stay active is replayability, and for this you need balance, rewards, and challenge.

Tman.6349:

Serious question: What kind of ‘compensation’ is it that you’re after? Never mind if it’s justified. I’ve mostly just read arguing and tantrums on this subject, so what would you like them to do?

Opinions diverges a bit depending on which player you ask.

Some only want a promise for Anet to never do that again. Personnaly, I don’t think this is enough. Promises only works for those who believe in them. And from what happened with Fractals since the beginning, Anet just can’t be trusted in this issue, as many things they said were never done (cliffside+dredge, fractal box, leaderboard, …).

From those who want something in compensation for the reset, most think a title depending on which level you attained back then would be a good idea.

Some are more extreme and want more than that: specific color weapon skin, fractal tonic, … have been options asked by some players.

Romo.3709:

Then when asked they went into communication lockdown. Like really? That’s incredibly unprofessional. Almost like punching somebody in the stomach, running away to the other room, locking the door and not answer to knocking and yelling. Maybe it’ll go away.

I like the image. That’s exactly how I feel about it.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I have no reason to level fractals. I have no desire to go in and have my progress destroyed in 6 months when they think more people should go into fractals.

Or when they actually release the leaderboards (if they ever do). After all, one of the reasons they did a reset was so everyone was on an even field when the leaderboard was released…

spoj.9672:

So they kind of have to sweep it under the rug whether we or they like it or not. Its the safest option for them and thats the way many business’s deal with these things.

I would argue that they’re making customers extremly angry about it, so maybe it’s not the safest option after all. Unless you consider that you can get people so angry that they’ll leave, after which they don’t have to care about them.

Personnaly, I wouldn’t say it’s the safest option. It’s more like the most cowardly one. And telling us they would think about we felt, then 2 months later telling us that this matter was solved back then, seems to imply they just wanted us to shut up about it, thinking we would forget about it after a while. That is not a way to address an issue your community is talking about.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

They did, they fixed the content for you. They updated it and gave you new toys to play with.

Lol ? You call that fixing the content ? Are you joking ? Read my post earlier in this thread, here. More than half the thing they promised for fractured were not implemented, especially the ones most wanted by the community (less dredge, no more cliffside + dredge, fractal weapon box).

Suddenflame.2601:

Like really guys does it seem fair that if you played FOTM prior to the update that you had an easier time getting to rank 50 than new people trying to get to FOTM rank 50?

Getting to 50 now is way easier than what it used to be before Fractured, the only part more “difficult” is have more stuff than before (AR), but the skill requirement is way lower. People have now so much AR that they don’t have to focus on dodging like we did when we had only 25-30 AR.

spoj.9672:

So they kind of just have to avoid it.

I don’t think ignoring an issue is the right way to solve it.
All it achieves is kittening the players. Many were kittened so much by the fact Anet completely ignored the issue that they stopped playing the game. The fractured patch, which should have been directed at the fractal players, instead punished the ones who were playing this content the most.

Nike.2631:

Those players should be your ambassadors of fractaline awesome to the rest of the player base, not the most legitimately bitter voices.

I completely agree with this.
If Anet had talked to us during the week before the patch, to explain the reason of the reset (and not tried to sell it as something needed for a leaderboard that no one was asking for, and that wasn’t even implemented), and to listen to our feelings about getting the progress we worked so hard for getting wiped out, there wouldn’t be a situation now. But as the people who were the most angry about this just stopped playing the game, Anet probably doesn’t care as there’s not much bad feedback on the forums now.

Every other part of the game where some kind of reset happened (sPvP or WvW with rank, for ex) got some compensation for it. There wasn’t any for fractals, and the issue wasn’t even talked about, it was totally ignored.

It’s a fact that Fractals were ignored by Anet since the beginning.
When players arrived at the level 80, they were surprised to see they couldn’t open 81, as the fractals were promoted as an endless dungeon. The question was asked on the forums, but no one ever replied to it.
I can’t count the number of threads that were opened talking about the fractals issues (bugs, dredge, etc.), and there was never an answer on them either.
When Fractured was announced, no reply was made to any comments about it. Many features were announced but were never made. Let’s take a look at what was promised and what happened:
- No more Cliffside + Dredge: it still happens. In fact, if you get Cliffside, you have more chances to get Dredge next than if you had Uncategorized as second map, for ex.
- Fractal skins instead of weapons: it was a hit in the face to tell people the skins they had dropped before would not be affected by this change. Why not put an npc who would enable us to exchange our old weapons to skins, like they did for the gathering items ?
- Fractal skin box: another thing that was well received by the players when it was announced, but when players find out it’s not in game yet and ask about it, they say it was always intended to have them at levels 51+. Then why talk about it if you’re not putting them in the game for months ? All it did was create false hope. Of course you get a backlash after this.

The problem about the communication on fractals has been there for a while.

When they announced the reset on Fractured, many threads were created to talk about this issue. In 3 weeks, over 2500 posts were made (and quite a few threads deleted), without any answers from the dev. This was quite a mistake for communication, because as time went, players became more and more kittened at the absence of reaction from Anet, considering that our feedback wasn’t listened to at all. That’s part of the reason some of those posts back them were quite vindicative and not constructive, even though some of them were more constructive, talking about why this reset was or wasn’t needed, and which kind of compensation players could agree with.

Around a month after fractured, we got an answer from Izzy about it, saying “It’s wasn’t our goal to devalue peoples time and effort and when reworking stuff sometimes these types of tradeoffs happen.” This message was badly received by many, and after those reactions, Chris told us he would “spend some time thinking about how [we] feel and get back to [us]”.

It’s been more than 2 months since then. So I hope we can finally get an answer, other than “suck it up”, like Izzy’s post seemed to imply. Many of us lost levels we took weeks, if not months to get to. Not getting anything in exchange for this reset of our progression feels like being told by Anet that we wasted our time playing this content.

Here’s a link to some posts where I tried to sum up a few links about the subject:
This one links to the 2 bigs threads made during Fractured (around 1850 posts on those 2 threads): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/first#post3368282

A post where I tried to describe how it happened in our view:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/38#post3391562

Lastly, one post on a proposal which was made by Nike:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/38#post3392129

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I am pretty sure Izzy responded to this question a few months ago. I will check with him.

I seriously hope not, because that would mean we somehow missed an announcement that “You’re just gonna have to lump it.”

Do the right thing on this one. Please.

Those players should be your ambassadors of fractaline awesome to the rest of the player base, not the most legitimately bitter voices.

This is off topic for the time being Nike.

Thank you.

Chris

So as to let this thread stay only on the topic of the future of fractals and how we want it to evolve, could you then just tell us where and when we could discuss the reset topic ? As you could see, this subject is still quite vivid for most of us, and will obviously stay like this until we can get an answer on it.

timmyf.1490:

I’d love to see those early Fractal 80-scale folks be “compensated,” but I’m not sure there’s a way to do it without making things worse.

Suppose you get a super-exclusive Fractal Pioneer title for hitting 80. You don’t think the forums will have a handful of angry people who maybe were in their mid-70s? And that’s assuming Arena can even access that information at this point.

Compensation will just anger all the people who would have done X had they known about the compensation then.

But for those of you who did it, do you have an ask? What would satisfy you? All I’ve seen are vague “compensate me!” posts without much detail.

Back in the Fractured subforum, 3 months ago, there were talks about what kind of compensation players would feel ok with. I didn’t make notes back then, so forgive me for not looking back for sources inside the 2500 posts made on the subject back then…

Also, in the first page of this subject, I linked to a post made by Nike around 2 months ago where he made a proposal of compensation for fractal players. Link here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/38#post3392129
Note that this proposal was commented by some of us after that in the thread.

As for Anet not having access to the level we had back then. There was a massive reaction on the forums when Fractured was announced, a week before the patch went live. The moderation had to work quite a bit on it, many threads were deleted, some were merged, etc. In the 3 weeks between the announcement of Fractured and its end, around 2500 posts were made on this subject alone. Knowing this a a “touchy” subject, it would be strange for Anet to have just discarded this data, especially since around a month after Fractured, Chris told us he would think about how we felt.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I am pretty sure Izzy responded to this question a few months ago. I will check with him.

Chris

After his response, the subject was still talked a lot. And you then told us you would think about how we felt and get back to us.

Source (response from Romo to Izzy): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/3#post3369056

Your response to Romo after this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/3#post3369091

Romo.3709:

Yeah. Whatever they do with fractals in the coming months and however they take our responses it always comes down to one thing: Rewards. Either balance them out so they’re on par with each other or have different rewards tiers. And by different rewards tiers I don’t mean an extra green, because frankly they’re salvage trash, nothing more.
Even if balancing doesn’t happen and rewards tiers get implemented, there’s still need to do something with Dredge. That’s a point number 2 on the list before anything else, but after rewards.

I agree with this. I would put another point that need to be adressed, though.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

[…] I would suggest that another question is more relevant. Is infinite agony building to avoid agony one-shots more valuable gameplay than skillful avoidance of regular mob one-shots during non-boss encounters?

Honestly what ruined fractals for me, besides the reset and obvious lack of care for players that worked to get to high levels, was the shift from skill-checks to gear-checks. I refuse to grind exponentially for more agony resistance gear. It’s stupid and not indicative of skill, but rather of wasted time.

I would love to see more skilled encounters. […] Game play should focus on good positioning, good timing of skills, and good synthesis between group members. It should not focus on exponential gear grinds (your new infusion system), gear checks (every 10 levels of the Mistlock Instabilities), or mindless game play (dredge clown car-I fell asleep doing this in the 70s late at night on more than one occasion.)

I second this. This change to agony and AR is the thing I disliked the most about the fractured patch, along with our level reset.

This change force you to grind for stuff (which is excessivly costly) to be able to continue to progress, something we could before do with skill alone. I had friends at lvl 80 with only 25 AR, for example. This change also makes it impossible for the player to go in fractals with an alt. Before, we could switch character to play with different friends if the group composition was weak. Now, you can’t, as only BLC traders could hope to stuff multiple characters with full ascended equipment.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

First, I want to stir the pot on Instabilities. […] I’d like to know what you think. Is this a good system? Does it add to the Fractal experience? Would you rather have 30 new Instabilities or 1 new Fractal? Which ones do you like/dislike? From reading the feedback, I’ve already been gathering some assumptions:

• Additive content is generally well received (extra creatures, environment effect)
• Slightly less popular are combat modifiers (exploding enemies, flanking)
• Stat modifiers are the least interesting. Specifically DPS reducation is a terrible idea.
• It’s more interesting to make builds instead of break them. For example, make condition damage more important than negate it.

Some of the instabilities can be nice or fun to do once or a few times (31, 39, 45 for ex).

Some can be a pain (43 for example: you have to wait to lose your stacks, but you have no way of knowing when you lost them. So you wait a while, then attack, and if you attacked early, you again have to wait long before attacking again…). Some instabilities also go very bad on specific maps (37 and Mai Trin, 43 and Shaman, etc.)

Some instabilities are extremly bad. 40, 50 are the worst. Especially as with this pattern, we can expect to see the same thing at 60, 70, … They’re bad because they’re a pure gear check. Skill has no impact on it. You either farmed for the stuff, or you die, even if you’re the best player ever. Because of this, people farm AR to the point where they don’t care about dodging at all, just facetanking the agonies.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives. If not difficulty scaling (or supposing difficulty scaling simply stopped at a certain level), what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

Even on a full zerker clothie, you weren’t one-shoted by everything at level 80. You had to know which attacks you could take one or two hits, and which you had to absolutely evade. It all goes down to managing your positionning to not waste your dodges, etc.
But that’s not in my opinion the best way to do it. Giving to opponents other abilities as you go higher in level (like harpies with the knock-back ball at level 10) would be in my opinion the best way to do it.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? While it’s easy to dismiss it because of the drawbacks, I think it’s important to talk about the drawbacks of not having it (or having another system) would be. Assume we solve re-rolling and make Dredge more reasonable, does random fractal selection add or detract from your satisfaction of playing in the Fractals? Was it more interesting at one time than it is now? Can we compare that with Instabilities, which are very predictable? Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

Random is nice, as it makes some change for people doing multiple runs a day. The problem right now in this randomness is the bad balance between the different maps.
You could get Asura -> Cliffside -> Dredge, or you could get Swamp -> Svanir -> Grawl. One of those runs would be very long, the other very short.
If you managed to make a better balance between the different maps, you’d solve most of the problems: less people whining about very long maps, and no need to reroll if there isn’t a shorter map.

Giving an incentive for players to try every “paths” like the instabilities could be a nice way to give a specific reward to players. But for that, you have to make sure there’s no problem with the instability. For example, I never did 37, because I just don’t want to waste 1-2h and get Mai Trin at the end, and then have to give up because this instability is badly thought for this boss, making it impossible.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Rebalancing some bosses to be more or less vulnerable to conditions wouldn’t cause any trouble through an instability. (Instabilities which, I might repeat, I have not reached because AR is preventing me from bringing guildies along at higher level fractals) But other, more extreme diversity in challenges may not function very well in our current system.

Like spoj said before, the way agony works could make this type of instability a problem. You can’t expect players to have to switch to a different gear to succeed at a specific level, as they then wouldn’t have the required AR to survive agony.

If we had only avoidable agony, then this type of instability would be possible. I personnaly think it could be a nice one, but it can only work if you make it possible to survive the encounters without a big amount of AR.

What’s among the most important about rewards is also replayability.

For example, Fractured introduced some new rewards with the exclusive recipes for rune and sigil. Once you get it, this loot has absolutely no value if you get it a second time. All you can do is just destroy it, as not even the merchant will buy it. It’s the same with rings, after a moment they have no value at all (4.95 silver at merchant, yeah !).
Unlike the dungeon token with which you can buy stuff to salvage or use in the mystic forge, you also can’t get with fractal relics things that keep their “value” (backpiece or bags won’t be bought that many times for one player).

The Lost Witch.7601:

I do fractals every now and then, but I rarely gain levels because the people I play with don’t have enough fractal relics or ascended items to get enough AR to play at my level. (So I have done a lot of level 1-15 fractals, but I am still only level 27).

Another part of this problem is the existing Infusions. At the moment, you have the choice of either getting +AR infusions, or using infusions that boosts your stats, or even damage for WvW (infusions that boost your stats and give AR cost way too much to be used).
Given the price of ascended stuff, you have to make a choice, and many people just don’t want to dedicate a stuff only for fractals. Most of my guildies play WvW, and almost none of them ever go to fractals, they can’t have AR on their stuff cause they’re using WvW infusions.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Clearly. First priorities should be Rewards rework, then Dredge rework.

By the way, Chris, could we have an update on the situation about the fractal level reset and the lack of compensation for it ?

2 months ago, you said you would spend some time thinking about how we feel and get back to us, but unless I missed it, there has been no more mention of that since then.

maxinion.8396:

Honestly I do agree with this. If a leaderboard exists, the only one that makes sense is a speed-running one, which can be fun but is not hugely interesting/motivating except to a very small portion of the playerbase. Better content/rewards/bugfixes/new fractals should be a much higher priority, because it is something that everyone can enjoy.

As I said a bit before, I think a speedrunning leaderboard would not be good. It would be nice for a very limited part of the playerbase, but it would impact everyone as even more people than now would play full zerker, even if they’re not good enough to do so.
As someone who pugs most of my runs, I’m already bored with so many people always dying because they “worship” the zerker stuff, even though they clearly can’t survive with it.

By implementing a speedrunning leaderboard, Anet would probably push even more people to go the full-zerker way, and we might get even more people dying again and again in our groups.

Romo.3709:

Why do we still desperately trying to put in something that Fractals doesn’t need? It was a bad idea then, it’s still a bad idea now. There were many people voicing their concerns about their fractal habits being seen by the public. The discussions went on so far as people asking if they could opt out of the Leaderboards all together. That was never addressed just like many other topics around Fractured update.

I think the idea should be just scrapped and forgotten. The time should be instead invested in redesigning one particular fractal level that doesn’t even have to be mentioned to be understood which one is being called out. Along with new rewards system and perhaps new items.

In other words, please don’t waste man-hours (which you will most likely have a finite number of, that can be put towards fractals) on something that majority of fractal players never asked for nor wanted to begin with.

Instead let’s focus on the major things: balancing and rewards, because that’s where the main issues are laying right now. Not the lack of Leaderboards.

Please, if you can discuss it with us. What would you like to see changed? How you feel about time investment in fractals?

Completely agree with you on this, Romo.
Leaderboard would be so useless it’s a complete waste of time to make one. And it’s not a feature the community is eagerly waiting for, so I too think it would be better to focus the ressources on more interesting things:

- first priority is to fix the various problems that were presented by many here.
- second priority would be to give some improvements that the community is waiting for (see the various proposals here for what players are really asking for).

Leaderboard is really a last priority, some people were even arguing before that it was something they didn’t want at all.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

your right actually it was introduced as infinite scaling dungeon so even hardcore Gamers could go to they’re Limits… but It really concersn me that the Content I played in fractals over a year ago was way harder than what you are able to Play now ( even the new instabilities that make sure you have enough AR to facetank the attacks from bosses make the Content easier )

I feel the same. Back when we began playing at level 40+ with only 20-25 AR, there was a real challenge on the fights, as any mistake would result in a downed, perhaps even dead, player.
Now, people can’t go in 40 without 45 AR, or they insta-die because of the instability. Because of the high level of AR people now have, most don’t care at all about agony, no need to dodge, like it’s a waste of endurance… The challenge I once felt from the higher level fractals is completely gone.

maxinion.8396:

I think the solution to that is to keep separate records for each combination of fractals, as I mentioned. Then, no matter the combination, you are vying for the record.

That only solve one part of the issue.
The biggest issue will be about the group composition. Profession that already have some difficulties to get grouped (necro, engi, ranger for ex) will have even more of a hard time.
It will also promote full zerker groups, even in pugs. However, many people just aren’t able to play zerker. I often see in my pug groups people dying left and right because they can’t play well enough for it. Those people would be much more effective for the group if they had a bit more survival stats and were managing to stay up for the entire fight. With a Time-to-clear leaderboard, Anet would send a message that this is what they want, everyone needs to be in full zerker. I’m sorry, but I don’t think zerker builds are for everyone.

When I say this, I don’t mean to say that playing zerker is bad. I am myself using an almost full zerker stuff. However, to be effective with this, you first need to be able to survive the encounter even with this low-survivability gear. Many people will just never be able to do that.

maxinion.8396:

Keep leaderboards by clear time. Individual fractals, and then for all possible combinations. Like http://gwscr.com/ , but official and for fractals.

Time to clear is the only reliable metric on how “good” a run is, and is the best way to display mastery and leadership in the area.

I disagree. Time to clear is a bad idea because of the randomness of fractals. If you get Swamp → Svanir → Grawl, then you can get the best time, if not, you don’t have a chance.
It would also promote specific groups composition for max dps. This is already partly the case, as people want to get a fast run, but this kind of leaderboar would only make it even more of a situation.

We talked about the leaderboard issue quite a bit during the 2 weeks before Fractured patch, and after all propositions that were made, I think the only logical thing for a leaderboard would be to see the highest level attained, but that only has meaning if there is no hardcap on the fractal levels. Every other suggestion that were made back then were biased in some ways.