Guild Wars 2

Iason Evan.3806:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Wanted to give you a quick heads up on a handful of notes relevant to Heart of Thorns launch in a few days:

Fractal Dungeon Leaderboards

Back when we announced all the updates to Fractals for Heart of Thorns – the announce blog also discussed more information coming before HoT about leaderboards for Fractals. Our team of folks working on Fractal dungeons kept iterating on this concept and ultimately we have decided to make it something more involved (re: exciting) than our original plans which will extend our development a bit more. This also means you’ll be able to earn the new fractal backpack precursor, but a few of the components for the new legendary will come with this expanded future fractals feature.

As always, we’ll discuss features once they’re far enough along to share development details on; our Fractal Dungeon team will be back with more updates about this and other plans for Fractal Dungeons in the future: when it’s ready™.

This has been pushed back since the “Fractured” Update. Is that the “original” implementation you are talking about, Colin? As a concession, could we at least have rewards for dungeons put back in to compensate for the lack of missing launch features? I am fairly disappointed dungeons have been pushed off to the side, but their abandonment would have been more palatable had there been a few new Fractals added to the game. I really hope the leaderboards are ready™ sooner rather than later. Those of us who really like dungeons and Fractals have waited a long time for their inclusion.

You are making it sound like Fractals getting leaderboards was “originally happening in HoT.” That simply isn’t the case. It was supposed to happen in this update: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractured which was 2 years ago this November.

• citation: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractured#cite_note-1

Well, they never actually intended to implement the “fractal leaderboard” for Fractured, so maybe Colin is confused.

They really should just drop the pretense already and get it over with. Every time they bring up fractal leaderboards nothing good comes out of it.

Labjax.2465:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

fractal playerbase is still waiting for anet to answer what the hell is up with the drop rates. and the fractal playerbase is still waiting for anet to explain just what happened to leaderboards and the fractal weapon box (and evidently, the fractal tonic)

i guess you’ve only been here for a few months, but basically, anet’s got a big history of screwing around with the players, and a few red posts on the forums wont change that

wake me up when they say something actually concrete about anything beyond “we’ll look into it maybe it’s not off the table”

It sounds to me like there are a lot of areas that don’t get solid dev communication. I understand it being frustrating and I don’t mean that in a placating way. I’ve been there.

It just sounds more like priority struggles on their part than intentionally screwing around with players (which they would gain nothing from).

Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Maybe you fractal folks should bring that stuff up a bit more. That is, if you don’t already have active threads on the issues you’re seeing.

The fractal playerbase DOES bring stuff up. I’d say they’re one of the more vocal groups of people in the game. They asked Anet what was up every facet of the fractured patch when it was up, they asked Anet what was up with the nerfed drop rates and missing fractal box and leaderboard and everything else at every instance.

Like, I know I sound silly saying this, but anet actually IS screwing around with the fractal playerbase. The last fractal update was hyped almost entirely on things that flat out weren’t true. We’ve been told, repeatedly, that the drop rates for fractals have gone up, when every player account has shown otherwise, and we are STILL waiting for the promised leaderboard and level extension so we can get the stupid fractal box.

Labjax.2465:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

Arena net has some of the worst communication out of any game company I can think of. When they’re not giving crappy non-answers and ignoring problems, they’re outright lying to the playerbase.

you really wont see a change in communication. Josh foreman got yelled at for communicating TOO MUCH. Even if anyone at anet WANTED to communicate, they wont be able to because the higher ups deemed it bad for business.

I’ve only been around for a few months, but in that time, I’ve seen them not only make an effort to communicate more, but Gaile now has the title “ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead” and has been posting in several threads.

If that’s non-answers and outright lying, then consider me fully duped.

fractal playerbase is still waiting for anet to answer what the hell is up with the drop rates. and the fractal playerbase is still waiting for anet to explain just what happened to leaderboards and the fractal weapon box (and evidently, the fractal tonic)

i guess you’ve only been here for a few months, but basically, anet’s got a big history of screwing around with the players, and a few red posts on the forums wont change that

wake me up when they say something actually concrete about anything beyond “we’ll look into it maybe it’s not off the table”

Arena net has some of the worst communication out of any game company I can think of. When they’re not giving crappy non-answers and ignoring problems, they’re outright lying to the playerbase.

you really wont see a change in communication. Josh foreman got yelled at for communicating TOO MUCH. Even if anyone at anet WANTED to communicate, they wont be able to because the higher ups deemed it bad for business.

Andred.1087:

This is ridiculous. Do you think they’re lying to us all? Anet has no obligation to provide you with their statistics, and demanding that they do is outright insulting. If you don’t believe them, that’s your prerogative, but nobody is forcing you to stay here against your will.

Is it that crazy to think? Anet has lied straight to the players’ faces before, why would they stop now? People in China complained about the leveling in the chinese client, people complain now, who where the people Anet used to “test” the new leveling? Do they exist?

(the answer is no)

mtpelion.4562:

Sarrs.4831:

mtpelion.4562:

Silver Lining: Your inconvenience means you are better at this game than the average person who needs all the handholding.

i do not believe any human being requires this level of handholding

imma go wake my cat up and see what she can do with it

I take it you have never worked in customer service then…
:p

Nah. There are no “bad players” that anet is trying to teach. It’s just to make leveling more tedious. It really is just a new grind to distract players away from the fact that there really is no new content coming.

Like, really, downed state is kitten near ubiquitous in FPS, and there’s some mystery majority of players that can’t understand it? Really??

LordByron.8369:

No i said the same since forever.
Expecially since i was playing fractal with 20 silver reward and cof1 farmers (10-20 G per hour) were crying they wanted easy fractal skins…..

I’m perfectly OK if they do the same for EVERY skin in the game.

But since i know what is a really balanced droprate, i’m advocating for it (see prefractured %… that is how i got most of my skins).

So as you see i’m not selfish.

P.S. FYI was about 18-19% at highest levels, opposing to a mere 5% we have now.
Was even higher when we had level 80 without the repeated agony check.

P.P.S. i want a selfless potion for example…did you see me crying on the forum for it?
I respect the fact that while i was farming fractal people farmed LS.

I’d ask if you worked for anet in secret, Lord Byron, because I can’t imagine anyone actually defending kittenty rng, but it doesn’t matter!! Anet doesn’t care about fractals.

Blanche Neige.7241:

The saddest part is that no ArenaNet officials consider this topic important enough to answer the players’ concerns.

People have been complaining about insider trading for a while, but it’s never really been something a lot of people noticed. Anet HAS to know that it’s a thing that happens, but my bet is that they just don’t care, because in the long run, things costing a lot of gold on the trading post is just another incentive for people to buy gems.

Ian.1349:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

dkspins.4670:

Megaservers have wrecked server identity. The trait system as caused current players to double think whether or not to buy a new slot. The changes for new players (becoming in line with China’s current system) has truly made me not recommend the game to others. Nerfs in farming, zerg mentality, nothing new to do… MMORPG has a great article today on the changes coming in September http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/8879/New-Players-Will-Have-It-Rough.html/page/1 The whole new player changes are discouraging, will be doing experiments with a couple of my nephews (7 & levelling now and after the patch (my grandson is only 2). Seriously Anet says rallying is too confusing for new player, and horizonal progression with traits encourages players to succeed and understand their chosen class. pfft. If I, a senior cititzen and neophyte to MMO’s (only played Spyro & Crash Bandikoot before) could figure it out and level 15 toons to 80, I’m sure that ANYONE could do so.

So, I’m wondering….do you think the Devs are being disingenuous when they explain why they chose this route instead of, say, adding a downed-mechanic tutorial to the intial starter instance? I mean, why would they say they tested several different ways of introducing the players to this mechanic, and found the results so surprising? What would they gain by flat-out lying about such a thing? Irritating the existing playerbase? Would that be their goal?

I’m one of those skeptics who thinks that they are flat out lying to their player base when saying that they actually did tests and found that moving it to level 5, and royally screwing the traits system, is better. I think that they say now that they did these tests is a form of damage control. They’re trying to get everyone to chill out because of the current storm of irritation, pessimism, and disappointment. That’s what I honestly believe. It’s damage control, they didn’t test. Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to not understand getting downed? It’s so trivial and simple to even the most entry level of players. I swear they’re just flat out lying.

Anet is a REALLY shady company. Just look at the fractured patch as a whole to see a lot of examples of Anet “honesty”. They flat out lied to us about “leaderboards” and fractal weapon boxes.

Improvements for “veteran” players are important because they’re good for everyone. A new player will feel QoL updates aimed at veteran players regardless, because the people that have been playing for two years now have been asking for things that will benefit the game AS A WHOLE.

Also, I really don’t know why people think these changes are meant to “attract” new players? GW2 had one of the best leveling experiences in any mmo, and Anet has only made it worse with their updates and revamps. Someone said gw2 pulls in new players just fine, but can’t keep them, and these changes for sure won’t help that.

Shen Slayer.3058:

Playing devil’s advocate here…but why should Anet care of the Veteran Players, they been around a long time and has amass tons of gold to convert to Gems. The veterans are not making Anet money, it’s the newblood (like China). Heck, if anything we are a drain on their resources. It’s all about the $$$$$$$$.

Converting gold to gems does not hurt Anet in any way. You aren’t TAKING money from them, it’s all virtual. Also, in the long run, people who farm tons of gold and buy stuff with it are only helping Anet. They help make the gold/gems rate worse, which makes buying gems and converting to gold more encouraging for other people.

Anet is so keen on nerfing any kind of farming, if buying gems with gold actually hurt their bottom dollar, they would have taken out 2 years ago.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Nike.2631:

Talked about this at some length in the Fractals CDI. Just waiting to see the results of the discussion.

We are seeing the results right now. Nothing. Just like those fractal leaderboards.

Now this just isn’t true. We have already seen action from Anet on fractals, it’s just the exact opposite of what they said they would do and what we asked for.

So in a way, it’s worse than nothing.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Zelyhn.8069:

My point is that the Fractured patch showed one thing: Anet does not care.

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

With the reset (I’d call it a rollback because of MMO rule #2: Exploit early exploit often), they leveled the playfield for everyone. This sounds like caring to me.
They would REWARD exploiting if they gave something for everyone.

Don’t blame ANet (wow, that’s hard for me to say) blame the people who exploited the system.

There are bugs in fractals that have been in since launch. Really, the only thing they “fixed” was dredge, which is pretty obnoxious since they specifically said they’d make it shorter.

Fractured pretty much was the product of anet not caring at all about fractals or what fractal players wanted. I’m not sure how you can honestly say otherwise when the patch was hyped up with things that aren’t even in the game. They care so little that they couldn’t even bother implementing some of the main features of the patch to begin with!

I’d give it a 3 or something. Updates like the zephyr sanctum and SAB showed the model could work, but everything else? It’s been super buggy, and just plain boring zerging. Also, the writing is really bad. Scarlet from day 1 to day now was an awful villain, and destiny’s edge jr are all pretty bad characters too.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have a few questions for the thread. Sorry I’m a bit late (though I have been reading)!

-snip-

Instabilities are not good as they are, 43 is insane on specific fractals, and if you’re going to use the LS model for fractals again, I’d rather you just not do instabilities at all. 43 is insane, and when people complained about it, we got complete silence from you and everyone else that worked on fractured. If you want something like instabilities, you need to be updating them after the fact, and you need to test them before releasing them, because good gravy.

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

In a similar way to the exercise that Orpheal has under taken it would be wise now to ask you all to pick 1 area that you would prioritize above all others having has the chance to have seen everyone’s opinions around each others proposals.

My revised opinion is that we’re mired in trivia.

…Adding shinies to a vendor, fiddling with average clear times of this single fractal or that one, slamming shut a tiny loophole…

It’s trivia. These are all things that should be done, but they’re neither difficult nor important.

The main thing that’s going to keep fractals vibrant is adding more scenarios.

New Content will drive the continued use of fractals far more than polish.

Fractals could definitely use more actual fractals, but that wont save fractals. There are a lot of problems with fractals (some since they were added to the game, some added in fractured), and we really can’t have a discussion on evolving them without a discussion on how to fix them. Fractals can’t evolve right now because it’s dying, and it’s dying because anet doesn’t care enough to fix the problems people have with it.

A new fractal would be nice, yeah, but if dredge is still dredge, or if instabilities are still completely out of unbalanced/untested, or if rewards are still worthless, you wont see people stick with it for long. It’ll just be a repeat of Fractured, a lot of people playing for a week, and then even less before the fractal was added to begin with.

Really though, a lot of stuff people have complained about in this thread should have been fixed months ago. It would have been nice to actually talk about the future of fractals instead of having to beg anet to fix the things we’ve been asking to be fixed for months-a year.

darkfiremew.5937:

I still think that making a dedicated team for Fractals (making/updating/fixing them) is the best course to go on. And with monthly new Fractal releases it would solve most if not all of the problems with fractals.

Yeah, fractals really needs a dedicated team on it. Fractured showed exactly why you can’t use the LS model for fractals. You can’t just put a random team on fractals, then take them off immediately after their one update is out. It leads to them putting in things that make no sense or flat out not fixing some of the issues people have wanted fixed for a year.

Even now, I can’t help but wonder how effective this CDI will be since there’s no team for fractals. You can take ideas from here all you want, but in the end, does it matter? It’s just going to go to a random LS team, who will have no context for what’s wrong with fractals, and will just quit interacting with the fractal community the second their update goes live.

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

The first five pages were filled with “fix dredge” proposals, and even after you told people to stop talking about dredge it still gets brought up. I think it’s pretty clear which of these is a higher priority. Rolling as a “problem” is so small in comparison to the other problems with fractals that I’m not sure why it’s even being considered as as a priority thing.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Dietere.3476:

Associated Risks

This would probably promote some sort of “reverse-rolling” where players would roll for their T3 first to make sure they don’t get dredge, but at least then it wouldn’t be so frustrating to realize you have a fail party after already completing 2 fractals.

This is exactly what would happen. People would just roll for Aetherblade putting Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge (and possibly Cliffside if they move that exclusively to where it belongs) in the exact same spot as Water right now.

Plus it would be even worse since Anet would have no real incentive to make future Tier 3 fractals since no one is going to run it anyway or it will just replace another fractal (like how they have no incentive to make T1 fractals now).

I think the best solution to this would be to just make tier list a rolling thing. All T1 fractals are also in T2, all T1 and T2 fractals are in T3. That way you get more variety across the board, things like Underwater become common again, and it also has the added bonus of making the not fun cliffside + dredge run a LOT less likely to happen.

KyleMcLaw.8974:

It is an actual problem and belittling it doesn’t change the issue to be addressed. Lets just have 10 more pages on dredge since that’s the only issue you allow us to discuss.

Honestly, if anet would say something about dredge I’d be happy about talking about ANYTHING else. Hell, I don’t WANT to talk about dredge. It’s nuts that we still have to say it because Anet wont come out and admit the fractal is seriously flawed.

If the CDI started with “We’re fixing dredge so lets talk about something else” it would be different, but it’s not, so as far as we know, the biggest thing stopping people from doing fractals is going to stay in this game.

KyleMcLaw.8974:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

KyleMcLaw.8974:

Issue:

Swamp fractal being consistently “rolled” as first fractal.

This isn’t really an issue though. If you don’t like rolling, you don’t have to do it. I said it earlier in the thread, but, if the major problems behind fractals were fixed (dredge, rewards), you’d probably see less rolling. If you’re a coin flip away from 2 hours of dredge, you are going to try and save time on the first fractal, that just makes sense. Also, ever since fractured, fractals have been a lot less enjoyable, and the attitude when my group starts a run is “lets just get this over with”. We never had that before fractured, and we also didn’t roll as much as we do now.

Honestly, I do not understand this thread. We were told to not talk about the single biggest problem in fractals (dredge), and we aren’t talking about the second biggest (rewards), and now we’re talking about a complete non-issue. What’s the point? We are wasting time on this.

And I fully disagree. Issues by importance: 1) swamp so it isn’t always first, 2) reward, 3) dredge revamp to be similar in length to grawl. Sorry if you think dredge most, but doing swamp every pug is zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Start party finder and state you won’t be rolling. Problem solved. Now can we talk about the actual problems with fractals?

KyleMcLaw.8974:

Issue:

Swamp fractal being consistently “rolled” as first fractal.

This isn’t really an issue though. If you don’t like rolling, you don’t have to do it. I said it earlier in the thread, but, if the major problems behind fractals were fixed (dredge, rewards), you’d probably see less rolling. If you’re a coin flip away from 2 hours of dredge, you are going to try and save time on the first fractal, that just makes sense. Also, ever since fractured, fractals have been a lot less enjoyable, and the attitude when my group starts a run is “lets just get this over with”. We never had that before fractured, and we also didn’t roll as much as we do now.

Honestly, I do not understand this thread. We were told to not talk about the single biggest problem in fractals (dredge), and we aren’t talking about the second biggest (rewards), and now we’re talking about a complete non-issue. What’s the point? We are wasting time on this.

Nike.2631:

Romo.3709:

This is not an exploit in any way.

Bullcrap. People aren’t re-rolling because they like the scenery in the swamp. They aren’t there to drop off the Mossman’s mail. Its done because the time spent re-rolling is considered less than the time/difficulty it saves by doing it.

If I have a chance of doing cliffside and dredge in one run, I am going to want to minimize the amount of time spent on the first fractal, because I sure as hell ain’t minimizing the time on the next two.

Fix the major problems with fractals (rewards and DREDGE) and you will see less rolling. Before fractured, my fractal group barely even rolled. We were okay with anything as long as it wasn’t cliff/dredge.

Will we be talking at all about fractals as they are, or just the future evolution of fractals? Fractured did a lot of damage to fractals both the game mode, and the community around it. Is that going to be addressed at all in this thread? Or the repeated changes to the underground fractal? I think these are really important to the fractals community, and we still never really got answers for a lot of what was changed about fractals.

Mochann.5298:

Weapon drop rates weren’t lowered from what I understood of the patch notes. Drop rates were increased, with armor rates increased even more than weapon rates.

Dunno how anyone can claim ANet isn’t giving fractals attention when they released a massive update to it just a couple of months back.

Fractal weapons definitely drop less than before the patch. And honestly, with fractured addressing very few actual issues with fractals, and the silence afterwards, it really does feel like fractals are just an afterthought to anet. We haven’t really gotten a meaningful response on fractals since before fractured.

Race : Sylvari
Sex: Female
Heavy armor class
Aetherblade heavy legplates and Phalanx Warplate clip oddly with each other. There’s also a very visible seam on the back.

Vol.7601:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

Vol.7601:

- Too much waiting around.
-> So you want the boss to be available 24/7, with no respawn timer?

Why do you think a shorter boss timer means no timer at all? Waiting around for an hour and a half isn’t fun.

OK, let’s put it on a 1 hour timer. The fight lasts 20-30 minutes. That would encourage players to stay in their zone for the next boss, leaving little room for other players to escape their overflow to get in the main server. Man, if people complain about overflows now, how about if they implemented that?

People are already staying in their zone for the next boss, so really, the only difference is that people have less idle time, which is a good thing!

Qaelyn.7612:

Actually I can see the reason for the 2 hour timer rather than 1 hour.. it is to prevent players from being split between the two events which would make the numbers problem worse on some servers.

The real issue for me is that you have to invest an hour of your time, but it’s mostly boring time AND you get few rewards. I can handle one or the other, but not both, when there are simply better things to do both within GW2 and outside it. I mean, here’s a typical time distribution for the marionette event:
- 30+ minutes trying to get into an instance with a party / changing lanes / standing around bored.
- 20 or so minutes spamming AoE damage in a corridor.
- 5 minutes actually fighting something meaningful.

Maybe some people enjoy that, but I’ll bet they are in the minority.

Honestly, the dialog in the Lion’s Arch instance is by far the best part of this update for me so far.

Honestly, I can see the logic behind the timer with the updates, but it still ends up splitting people anyway. I know last night I had to miss out on the wurm because I didn’t want to lose my spot in Lornar’s pass, and I’m sure everyone that was in the map with me missed out too.

Vol.7601:

- Too much waiting around.
-> So you want the boss to be available 24/7, with no respawn timer?

Why do you think a shorter boss timer means no timer at all? Waiting around for an hour and a half isn’t fun.

Faux.1937:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

Marionette is just a fancy set piece. It’s not even really a boss. We need more world events like Grenth, everything about that is perfect.

So your saying you dont like the Mechanics of it? Or the balancing of Scaling that came with it?

Temples are nice, but easily zerg down and dont require thinking at all.

It’s a neat encounter, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the model I’d like to see world events follow. It’s neat defending your portal, then fighting on the platforms with the marionette in the background attacking, but I think that would get really old if they did it for every fight. And yeah, you can zerg the temple events pretty easily, but Grenth actually does require some coordination to not mess it up.

Marionette is just a fancy set piece. It’s not even really a boss. We need more world events like Grenth, everything about that is perfect.

Zone.1275:

Elbegast.6970:

vrannar.5618:

WoW devs NEVER tell ya how to beat their bosses. The best groups do then publish videos and guides. Too much complaining, these fights are amazing.

But WoW has a beta test for those bosses. Those raid groups do the content weeks ahead of the actual release. GW2 has no beta testing. The patch goes live and in two weeks it’s gone again.

Do you have proof that GW2 has absolutely no beta testing? I’ve seen videos of people testing the new WvW map and it’s not even out yet. Also, the wurm is permanent, it’s not leaving in 2 weeks.

I honestly can not think of a single LS release that hasn’t had major bugs on day one. Anet doesn’t test their stuff, and if they do, they’re not testing well at all.

Elmo Benchwarmer.3025:

Better: ban ascended gear to Fractals.

They would have to make armor/weapons less RNG in fractals, and put the rest of ascended in it or this would be awful.

Buttercup.5871:

This also belongs in the dungeons section.

Btw very smart move on moving the zerker discussion there (dungeon section). Because that’s where it belongs. And it is directly tied to the OP’s post. His suggestion obviates the need for any changes to the zerker meta.

You know dungeons aren’t the only place with enemy mobs, right?

Luquatic.3825:

Vol.7601:

I’m no lore buff, but why is the Durmond Priory investigating this?

Don’t the orders strictly concentrate their efforts on fighting the elder dragons? Just seems odd they mentioned that…

That’s because the living story takes place before the pact was made. This to prevent spoilers for new players who haven’t played their personal story yet.

Uh, what? Living story takes place after the personal story. Dragonbash was a celebration of zhaitan’s death.

Saturn.6591:

Bagel.4598:

With each new broken promise

Broken promise? I don’t remember any broken promises.

Bagel.4598:

and now their false patch notes

False patchnotes? What do you mean with that? Iirc, their patchnotes always were correct.

The fractured patch was pretty much nothing but broken promises, if you want something recent.

Malediktus.9250:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lheimroo.2947:

Incidentally I think the idea of giving ascended gear stat-switching ability gives us a kind of metric for determining how difficult it ought to be to acquire.

Say, (for example), ascended can go with 12 stat combinations. Functionally the same thing can be achieved by multiple exotic sets, but that’d be far less convenient.

Add in a bit of a premium for that convenience and in principle ascended gear perhaps ought to be priced around 15-20 times the ‘effort’ required to get exotic gear.

I’m not talking about gold price on the TP; exotic gear value has taken a dive due to it being much less desirable now, and so freely available. I’m talking effort in terms of playtime to get the karma/dungeon/celestial/cultural sets.

I’m completely on the fence about making ascended sellable via TP. If the acquisition is tuned too high the prices will be astronomical and we grind gold while watching inflation push it continually out of our reach. If it’s too easy, ascended becomes a redundant brand of exotic. There is a certain convenience factor to that and it is seductive.. but darn it, I like the idea of gear attainable through gameplay only. And gameplay challenges more than through repetitive gameplay, but.. well, not everybody could beat Liadri even if you did put an ascended weapon on her.

Though if ascended remains a source of ‘vertical’ progression and not optional, all that goes out the window: it has to be easy.

I know that’d still devalue what people’ve already put into gearing up their characters, but I can’t think of a good solution that honors that effort while putting ascended in reach of the average 1-2 hour/day guy with multiple alts. That’s the reason why I think communication on the subject from Arenanet can’t come soon enough.

Yes, I know you’re communicating! I’m grateful. But getting a ‘game plan’ out to players is crucial, whatever ends up decided.

Many of you have mentioned this problem, so let’s discuss it some more. If the supply of ascended gear is made more accessible to the populous either through drop rates of items and mats, and/or sale ability of gear then is this something that is acceptable to early adopters?

Regarding:

‘Yes, I know you’re communicating! I’m grateful. But getting a ‘game plan’ out to players is crucial, whatever ends up decided’

There has been a clearly communicated game plan. Our focus is on Horizontal progression and I felt that Ascended was a necessary step. However as many have pointed out this gear was designed to sit between Exotic and Legendary and thus be a better bridge. Personally i feel like it could be made more accessible through playing different parts of the game. Once we have concluded the discussion on the tightening up of Vertical Progression we will move onto Horizontal discussion. Huzzah (-:

Thanks for your input and i hope that adds some more clarity.

Chris

Sadly, no. I do not find it acceptable for early adapters. There has to be a new tier of gear available before the current best in slot can be made easier to aquire. And no I do not own a set of ascended armor yet or even a single piece. But if I would be one of the early adopters I would be angry if this happens.

I’m an early adopter in that I’m actually working on a piece of ascended armor, and I honestly would not mind if they made it easier in the future. The grind for ascended gear is not fun, and I really would not complain if they saved people the trouble of going through it.

Also, on the subject of grinding for ascended gear, it worries me that anet is avoiding the subject of time gating vertical progression. I know a lot of people have brought it up, but neither Chris nor Izzy have really touched on it. What was the reasoning behind it, especially when they knew how much people dislike it?

Honestly if we want to talk about things making sense, it makes no sense that I can only craft one spool of silk weaving thread per day. Not even per day, I can only do it exactly 24 hours. What’s your explanation for that?

cesmode.4257:

Im simply amazed at the amount of people that are opposed to vertical progression being confined to FoTM. If you think about it, it is the only place ascended gear is required(currently). So why does a stat increase even need to exist outside of it?

If ascended stats were confined to fractals, then the rest of us who may not want to step foot into fractals would not need to worry about power creep or a treadmill in the open world.

Im very much in favor of this and again, Im amazed that people are against it.

As a fractal player, I would NOT want to see any kind of vertical progression in fractals. I’m already dreading the day the cap gets raised, because then you’ll NEED to grind out the ascended gear to go further, which seems like the antithesis of fractals to me. Climbing to 50 is very much based on skill, not on grind, so why do we need ascended gear to go past it (when the cap is raised).

Someone suggested using stat based infusions, and I wouldn’t like to see that either, especially if it’s anything like the current implementation of agony resist infusions. Infinite vertical progression (either stats or agony resistance) is just really silly.

Anet doesn’t care about the manifesto anymore, and I think it’s pretty obvious they don’t really care about the playerbase too much either.

Not really. Locking anything behind a lot of grind + time gates is just kind of gross.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

And then there are those that like Scarlet, and really enjoy the Living World updates, especially the release cadence. So, I guess the ‘community’ is divided in what it wants.

What? Your favorite part of the living story is the fact that every update is buggy and rushed? How can the release cadence be your favorite thing? A new update every two weeks is a wonderful idea on paper, but anet’s proven time and time again that they can’t handle it.

lordkrall.7241:

Jakzor.4160:

so basicly, from 21th Jan we’ll have FOUR living story only release.

that means 2 freaking months(3 starting from 10th dec) without any feature update…

that makes me very sad…..

That is not what he is saying.
He is saying that there will be no MAJOR feature release during those 4 updates.

Which makes sense.
Major features are after all stuff like the WPX system, new maps types, new systems over all and so on.

The living story should not take precedent over actually improving the game, to be honest. If it has to be one or the other, features should come first, always.

Sure, they’ll be added to fractals, but they’ll be at a level we can’t access yet.

Anen.1742:

Ken DeBoer.9268:

Probably another thing they mentioned for this patch but didn’t implement (e.g. fractal weapon chests).

They did not metion fractal boxes in the patchote. You assumed it based on a single dev comment.

Is it really an assumption when a dev post flat out says they’ll be in?

SoPP.7034:

This mistlock made me appreciate people who understood builds beyond full zerker ppc dps RAWR

It was kinda amusing tho watching some get five hits off, then having to kite for 30 secs till their heal was up again.

It also made me think about the path of least resistance.

Full zerk seems like the best option for this instability though. The longer a fight takes, the more damage you end up taking. You want to focus things down one at a time as a group as fast as possible to get relief before the instability kills you.

Extended fights just aren’t desirable at all for this instability.

TPMN.1483:

They said it would be up when enough data was available to populate it.
Perhaps there is not enough data (ANET only knows this answer – on how much data is the threshold).

With other leader boards like WvW, PvE AP – there is obviously data from every character so these will look more populated.

It will also give us (the player base) and idea of how many people actually do FoTM when it’s released.

I would say 2 weeks should have been sufficient if the player base actively played this area – but I don’t think there are enough people in this area of the game who honestly want a leaderboard for FoTM at this time.

Isn’t the leaderboard just showing who got first at what level? There should be more than enough data for that.

They probably forgot to put it up and can’t be bothered to.

Various Meat Products.4371:

Most of you guys seem pretty bitter about this, but I think this is great news. Why? Because I can go back to not doing fractals again! I can stop deluding myself into thinking fractals are a worthwhile, enjoyable experience, and instead be content in knowing that I am no longer persuaded into doing this unfun slog multiple times every day. What a relief!

P.S. Just make skins purchasable with pristine relics you schmucks.

The update has been pretty bad if you are a dedicated fractal runner. This is the cherry on top of the poop sundae for a lot of people.