Guild Wars 2

TPMN.1483:

Fractal skin master is bugged – skins are unlocked in wardrobe but are not appearing in the Fractal Master achievement.

I’d like to add on to this, as its happening to me as well.

One thing I’d like to note is that the only skins the collection is not recognizing I have are the skins I received AFTER Fractured! but before Heart of Thorns.

I’m just a tad bit worried about Druid not bringing enough to the table outside of heals. While the heals are strong, boons are equally important and Druid will have to compete with the benefits brought by other classes in the same slot, such as Revenant boonsharing, Guadian heavy support, Elementalist’s easy access to water attunement alongside fire attunement, and Necromancer/Reaper’s newfound versatility. This is one of the big reason’s I wish Ranger also gave out more beneficial boons with their Glyphs.

Most definitely in the current content, the lack of party support might hinder Druid from ever being used outside the very niche game mode of Raids, unless groups find a way to bring a different class that maintains the support the group needs without the sacrifices the Druid has to make to reach the same level.

I’m optimistic, but I’m also deathly scared that Rangers and Druids will just fall back into the last spot when it comes to providing for their team.

So I normally play a healer main in most other MMOs I play, since I really do like watching and helping other people stay alive (one of the earliest ranger builds i tried was a Cleric support build that turned out to be very weak), and so Druid has me cautiously optimistic.

I ended up playing a lot of my Druid in WvW and Fractals of the Mists, and it could still use some ability to provide boon support to the team, since the spec itself is very limited in Fractals, and generally relegated to only healing and dazing enemies in WvW. Healing by itself, while good, is only half the support a good healer could be throwing out, since preventative measure are just as important as reactionary ones.

I did get in a little bit of time with the Vale Guardian, and I have to say that healing it has been some of the most fun I’ve ever had in Guild Wars 2. I just wish I had a bit more to bring to my group than just that single faucet.

Staff Skills
Staff was fun to use. The width of Solar Beam is actually quite wide, making it pretty useful for AoE damage as long as you could click the right target. However Skill 2 felt particularly weak.

Solar Beam

• Add 1 second of burning to each pulse to facilitate condition builds. Otherwise it feels okay.

Astral Wisp

• Add a boon to the wisp when it passes through allies.
• For example, 3 stacks of might for 3 seconds when the wisp passes through an ally. ICD of 1 second (or other more defensive boons such as Protect and Resistance).

Ancestral Grace

• Fix movement issues.
• Give pets 2 seconds of super speed (and possibly another interaction/buff from the skill).
• Evade frames would be nice on the movement, because you are often caught be damage while traveling.

Vine Surge

• Increase Immobilize duration to 2 seconds, since 1 second feels unrewarding for how difficult it is to hit a moving target.
• Slight increase to damage done.

Sublime Conversion

• Increase duration to 8 seconds.

Celestial Avatar
Overall, I think Celestial Avatar is good as it is, with a few minor gripes that have been stated already in the forum. It could definitely use better scaling with healing power, and better buildup with weapons other than staff.

Cosmic Ray

• Increase radius to 150.
• Reduce projectile fall time to help with healing moving targets.

Seed of Life

• Increase radius to 200.

Lunar Impact

• I think the skill is in a good place, though if you really must reduce the daze, make it 2 seconds instead of 3.

Rejuvenating Tides

• Remove the channel from the skill while keeping the pulsing water field. This would allow it to combo with Lunar Impact for a blast finisher, or use other avatar skills.

Natural Convergence

• Apply 1 second of poison each pulse to hinder enemy healing.
• Slight increase in damage.

Glyphs
I think glyphs were the least impactful of the new skills you get with Druid. Most of them felt underpowered, or unrewarding to use. Since Druid still has very little access to boon support, I feel like Glyphs should provide a bit more to balance out the types of support that it can give, since Druid is suppose to be a support heavy specialization.

• Increase radius on all glyphs to 360 to match Glyph of the Tides (300 feels slightly too short).
• Glyphs become instant cast in Celestial Avatar form (as to not take away from actual avatar skills).

Glyph of Rejuvenation
The heal skill feels like it is in a decent spot, but it still has to compete with WHaO and TU for the same spot. In that case it comes up a bit short in many situations when healing yourself. Its mechanics in avatar feel satisfying though, since it can deliver a nice burst to allies, so perhaps that is it’s real purpose. The pet also needs to heal for the self-heal amount.

• Apply Self-Heal amount to pet on using skill.

Glyph of Alignment
This skill feels extremely weak. The conditions applied to enemies are very short and don’t feel particularly powerful. In avatar, the condition cleanse can also be accomplished by other means (such as seed), the healing can be supplemented (with cosmic or lunar), and so this glyph ultimately feels like a wasted utility slot.

• I have no clue how to improve this glyph.
• Perhaps some boon sharing with allies while in avatar? Stunbreak? I don’t know I’m at a loss here.
• Acts as personal Stunbreak in both forms.
• Increase condition duration to 4 seconds.
• Use in avatar form no longer removes conditions.
• Apply 4 seconds of Resistance and Retaliation in avatar form.

Glyph of Equality
This glyph is probably the most sound of all the glyphs, proving very useful for self defense in both forms. Dazing nearby enemies, while it doesn’t stop them from chasing, helps buy you a bit of breathing room. Paired with a Daze heavy build, it allows the class to output lots of interrupts and short lockdowns on many people. Paired in a healing build, it can save a group from an unfortunate misstep.

• Good as is.

Glyph of Empowerment
While useful, the strength of the skill as it stands right now feels underwhelming, and unnoticeable. Its application in avatar form is also somewhat limiting, since reactionary is a bit less interesting than preventative.

• Increase bonus to 20%. OR Increase duration to 10 seconds. OR Increase bonus to 15% for 8 seconds. or I mean something similar.
• Avatar form causes this skill to decrease damage taken by the bonus amount (which can be used defensively if the players know an attack is coming, which is more fun than just healing more).

Glyph of Tides
It doesn’t seem bad, but it also has limited uses, likely much more useful in PvP. It just feels somewhat barebones for a utility skill.

• Inflict Slow for 1 second to affected enemies.

Glyph of Unity
This glyph feels underpowered, and does not stack up at all against the other elite skill slots. Since rangers lack stability and boon sharing, I feel like this glyph could fulfill those two roles.

• Increase cooldown to 30 or 40 seconds.

Since it feels very limited to the 5 enemies you are tethered to, it feels weaker than retaliation and provides little benefit.

• While tethered to an enemy, the Druid gains 2 seconds of Stability and Retaliation every second.
• While tethered to an enemy, the enemy receives 2 second of Vulnerability and Weakness every second.

This way, it provides a bit more utility when tethered and the stability helps it stand beside Entangle and Rampage as a useful elite.

It could also be more impactful in avatar as well, since basic healing doesn’t exactly feel too great.

• While tethered to an ally, the Druid gains 2 seconds of Stability and Protection every second.
• While tethered to an ally, the ally receives 2 seconds of Protection every second.

This gives some nice defensive ability to allies in situations where lots of damage might be thrown at the group the Druid is supporting, and allowing the Druid to support a bit more through boons (which is still sorely lacks the ability to in the current state).

• If not too powerful, this could also be a prime location to give access to Resistance, which is a very rare boon we seldom see.

Traits
I feel like the traits are in a good place.

Overall I think druid might turn out great. If it were to get a little bit more of non-healing party support, I think druids would fare well in pre-HoT content as well, since Empowerment and the occasional spot heal would do great things to supporting groups alongside Frost Spirit and Spotter.

Gasoline.2570:

Just go to the gemstore and buy unlimited retries youll make it eventually lololol

I knew it! Its all a scam concocted by Mojo himself! He must be working with the Aetherblades…

I have now documented the plethora of random and unjustified deaths.

Watch me die to literally nothing multiple times. I’m not sure if its lag or something else, but this is just ridiculous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9-aUFHIt7c

So I made it to Cliffs, and now I seem to be dying randomly.

Like super randomly.

Its getting quite annoying to see yourself physically make a jump, but get knocked down anyway after it looks like you landed safely on land, are standing on a rock, or in the middle of a jump.

What is causing this issue? Its worse now than it was in the first release.

Broadicea.8294:

why do people post what essentially boils down to fanfic

here’s an example of a suggestion that Anet can actually take and implement:

“hey anet, make dungeon rewards better”

here’s an example of a suggestion that Anet can not and will not ever implement

this entire thread

A lot of what I tired to recommend are actually things that Anet have already done in the past, with the exception of Cliffside and Underground (which I went a bit overboard on).

Jellyfish is boring and unengaging, but we have three past instances of a better invulnerability system than what we have.

And a lot of monster and encounter don’t quite scale with the fractal level, so having one or two existing attacks added to their arsenal would add some much needed scaling to a few of the enemies that just gain health/damage.

The daily just rolled over again and I still haven’t gotten one of the character I made first.

BenGrech.3912:

I recieved it and I was one of the people that created their character during the first minutes of head start

I got 3, but I created 4 characters in the 30 minutes after the game went live.

The character that did not get a present was logged into the game as the daily physically reset at 5pm pacific.

I posted on the official bug thread, but I’d also like to ask if you all were logged into the character that did not get a gift?

I’d like to report a similar occurrence for me as well. Of the 4 characters I created during headstart, all of them received a present except for my main, who was the first character I created.

I’d like to note that as the daily reset happened I was currently logged into my main, yet did not receive a present for her, even after relogging.

She was also a ranger if that is somehow relevant.

Petrified Forest Fractal

At a higher level, instead of going to the Jade Maw, you instead head to a petrified forest. For the sake of examples, I’ll use level 30+ as the cut off point. The monsters you would find would be corrupted wildlife and possibly sylvari. At the end of a long winding path, you encounter the Legendary Warden of Urgoz.

Warden Mechanics

• At 75%, 50%, and 25% health, the Warden smashes the ground, dislodging nearby 5 nearby vents in the area. This causes the area to have a status effect that stacks Lesser Agony on the players every second.
• Lesser agony lasts 1 seconds before expiring.
• For each second the vents remain open, the number of stacks the players receive increases by one.
• Players can plug these hold with fallen debris that appear randomly in the arena.

For example, if the vents open, you take 1 stack of agony damage during the first second, then it expires and is replaced by 2 stacks of agony damage during the second second. Three during the third. All the way to 25 stacks of damage for every second after 25 seconds.

Using 30 as a base, each stack does 5% damage per stack at 30. This does a tick of 50% damage at 10 stacks of agony, and 125% at 25 seconds.

At 40, 7.5% damage per stack, with 75% damage done at 10 stacks, and 183% at 25 stacks.

At 50, 10% damage done, with 100% damage at 10 stacks, and 250% at 25 stacks. And so on.

This was done to keep the amount of agony damage done within that 10 minute period relatively in line with how much damage ticks normally. The amount of damage can be increased or decreased to balance if these are too low/high. Every 5 points into agony resist reduces the damage you receive each tick by 6% as normal.

Wiping replugs the vents and restarts the fight.

Warden Abilities

I had no specific abilities in mind, though perhaps being a ranged boss with longbow would be interesting, and I really don’t know what I would put here. Everything from area AoE’s similar to Liadri and telegraphed one hit KOs would be usable too.

Swampland Fractal (aka Mossman is a kitten Fractal)

Does anyone else remember when fractals came out and this was the fractal that was considered the PuG killer and hardest fractal of them all? Well its still a bit of a PuG killer, but player experience helps shorten this fractal a bunch. I’ll leave that in the Suggestions forum, since its a suggestion for completely new content, and not the existing one.

And you know what, I really don’t have any issues with this fractal or it’s boss fights too much.

Mossman Abilities

• At lower levels, he comes out of stealth before initiating an attack.
• He gains a set health amount where he stops attacking in Norn form, and switches over to his Spirit form, since this seems to be pretty unpredictable.
• At higher levels, he gains the ability to pull players to him in a manner similar to Ranger offhand axe 4.
• At higher levels, he combines his pull with a PBAoE attack similar to Ranger offhand axe 5.

Bloomhunger Abilites

• At higher levels, he gains the ability to launch a spike out of the ground that bypasses reflection and targets a player, similar to the Nightmare Tree from Twilight Arbor.
• At higher levels, his ground spike ability summons multiple spikes in a line instead of a single spike.

Underground Facility Fractal (aka Oh No The Dredge Fractal)

Gate Switch and Ground Button

• At each ground button, there is now a shield that a player can pick up with two skills attached to it. Skill 1 creates a temporary projectile reflection wall. Skill two is a gong that temporarily stuns nearby enemies.
• At the door switch, there is now a separate lever that creates a protective dome for 5 seconds for anyone on the switch as long as the player is alive. The lever recharges in 3 seconds to allow the reapplication of the protective dome.

Bomb/Blowtorch Gates

• Dredge no longer infinitely spawn. Dredge now drop loot.
• Number of Dredge that spawn due to damage done on gates dramatically reduced.

Champion and Clowncar Room

• Dredge coming out of Clowncar no longer drop loot.
• Dredge infinitely spawn from clowncar until the it is destroyed (break the car’s door mechanism maybe?).
• Bombs are placed around the room, and can be dropped as an environmental weapon to do AoE damage.
• If the Veteran Dredge that spawns on the Champion is hit with a bomb, his gong shield breaks and can no longer give buffs to his allies.
• Reduced health on Champion Dredge.

Ice Elemental and Dredge Powersuit

• Slightly Reduce number of mobs between the previous room and the boss fight room.
• The rest of the fight remains unchanged.

Hopefully this shortens the fractal a bit, since it has a lot of cool mechanics, but it ends up taking forever, and everyone despises because of the length. The one downside to my changes is the lack of loot, but you guys can go farm champions for that, so meh!

Urban Battleground Fractal (aka For Ascalon! ARAAARARARAFRAGFDHFG! Fractal)

I don’t have any issue with this fractal really. Getting used to the AI is a bit of a pain, but otherwise things seems to go pretty well. So I don’t see any changes I could really make here.

Moving On.

Volcanic Fractal (aka Fire Burns! Fractal)

Again this fractal does pretty well in relation to skill level, and I wouldn’t change much. I have heard of issues regarding a new cutscene that results in the deaths of people, but I’m sure that will get sorted out.

Moving On.

Uncategorized Fractal (aka Endless Falling Fractal)

Harpies

• Remain unchanged. Never keep knocking players down! Its hilarious and they should have brought some stability anyway!
• Fix the invulnerability bug that harpies sometimes gain, even when in melee range with a sword.

Four Champions

• Slightly reduce health.
• At higher levels, the Rabbit respawns to attempt to murder the party.
• At even higher levels, the Rabbit is invulnerable to player attacks, and instead a Holy Hand Grenade Bundle drops from the Bandit. This kills the rabbit in one hit, and has a cooldown instead of being used. The Rabbit still respawns, so know where you dropped the kit!
• Once the other three champions die, and the Rabbit has died at least once, he despawns.
• Rabbit only drops loot on first death.

Bonus Fractals

Couldn’t think of anything for Jade Maw, so how about a new agony mechanic and boss?

Petrified Forest Fractal with a different agony mechanic as another bonus fractal

tl;dr: CITIZENS, THE NEWEST AND MOST UNIQUE DUNGEONEERING CONTENT IN ALLL OF TYRIA. Hopefully brought to you with some interesting gameplay changes!

Let’s focus on some mechanics this time around, shall we?

Part 1: Fractals needs a revamp and it on Reddit. This is where the reward changes were talked about.

Since I haven’t done a 48 fractal since April, a bit (or a lot) of my knowledge and experience might be out of date, which is why I avoided mechanics in my first post. Go ahead and correct or add things in if something has changed.

The other reason is this turned out to be really long list.

Aquatic Ruins Fractal (aka Underwater Dolphin Fractal)

Jellyfish Boss Mechanic

The main mechanic here seems to revolve around dragging the Jellyfish to electric cages to do more damage, though it is poorly communicated. Instead:

• The Jellyfish would start with a large stack of armor similar to the Karka Queen meta event in Southsun, and as you drag the Jellyfish to an electrified cage, the stacks decrease, allowing players to do a significantly greater amount of damage as the fight goes on.

Its really fun to see larger and larger numbers as the enemy gets closer to death.

Jellyfish Boss Abilities

• Being eaten currently only extends the time it takes to kill in a frustrating way. Remove the Jellyfish’s invulnerability state when eating someone, and have him instead gain back armor stacks for each pulse you are in his belly.
• Being downed while being eaten instantly restores multiple stacks while spitting you out.
• At higher fractal levels, the Jellyfish gains the ability to pull players to him before initiating an electric twirl (the one that stuns) similar to Lt. Grast’s from Ascalonian Catacombs.

Cliffside Fractal (aka Giant Stone Man Fractal)

When fractals first came out, this was one of my favourite fractals. The entire thing feels like one gigantic boss fight with multiple stages, in which your strategies change for each seal you are suppose to break.

Nothing much really needs to change, but I have a dream where stacking is a legit strategy and not just a bug.

Initial Fight With Cultist Boss

• Reduce boss Health alot (since you fight him twice and he drops no loot).
• At higher levels of fractals, he gains access to a ground slam attack that causes a wave of damage similar to the Molten Facility ground hammers. It can be jumped over, or more reliably dodged through. It causes agony.
• His knockdown attack becomes a 360 degree knockdown spin at higher levels if it is not already.

Final Boss Mechanics

• Reduce boss health a little.
• During the fight, you are surrounded by a Dome of Light centered on the boss. When outside of that dome, you take agony damage. At higher levels, this dome is smaller. As his phases progress, this dome shrinks. When the boss is disoriented and drops the hammer, the bubble disappears. Remove Boss’ ability to cause an agony explosion when less than 50% health.
• When players are “stacked” on top of the boss (within 25-50 range), the boss has a chance to stumble on his normal attacks and only do glancing blow damage.
• If 4 players are “stacked” on the boss when the seal takes damage from the hammer, the boss takes 10% damage.

Final Boss Abilities

• Boss gains invulnerability for the period when he is recovering his hammer.
• No change to agony wells.
• At higher levels, boss gains access to a ground slam attack similar to the first one. This ground slam attack will be interrupted before the windup finishes if 5 players are stacked.
• At higher levels, his knockdown becomes a 360 spin, but does not cause knockdown or knockback if 5 players are stacked.
• The Boss no longer has an AoE agony explosion ability because of Dome of Light.
• The boss no longer jails players (too buggy, might put player outside of dome).
• The boss stops creating agony wells below 25%.

I like stacking on the boss so much that I would love it if it became the actual mechanic of the fight. Alternatively, just give him invulnerability when recovering his hammer and keep the fight as is, if that would fix it.

Snowblind Fractal (aka Your Weakness Makes Me Laugh Fractal)

Snow!

Boss Shaman’s Mechanics

• He no longer teleports to safety when dropping agony ice crystals, opting to instead lure player’s to their death!
• Agony Ice crystal drops now have more patterns to choose from.
• Four fire braziers now appear at the corner of the room.

Boss Shaman’s Abilities

• At higher levels, he puts up a Frost Aura that chills attacking players before initiating his frost breath.
• At higher levels, his frostbite stacks do not go away on their own, and require you to visit a brazier to warm up.
• He has taken some Speech classes and now has access to a few more lines besides “Your weakness” and “Jormag”. Alternatively, he doesn’t say them as much.

Draugl.8079:

LordByron.8369:

No to stat infusions <.< we already have enough grinding ty.

Stat infusions are already in the game, the problem is that getting them is an immense grind right now.

I also wanted to make sure that getting them remained a bit difficult, even if the stat increase is minimal. Its a nice little reward to get out of chests that can easily just go into one of your trinkets without breaking game balance.

Funny thing is that WvWers currently best access to these +5 stat infusions, and I wanted to keep their infusions as the easier way to get them for anyone outside of fractals.

Fractal Weapons
Since fractal weapons require two RNG rolls, they cause some of the most frustrating experiences for skilled fractal runners. Someone who is completely familiar with and skilled enough to do 48+ is not rewarded in this aspect much more than someone who only runs 20.

There should be a way for higher level players to have some sort of reward instead of having to deal with the nightmare that is RNG.

Good thing I wrote up a recipe 8 months ago on this very issue.

In short, it would require:

• 2k fractal relics
• 20 pristine fractal relics
• 5 Cores of Mist Essence
• Some sort of T6 or T7 crafting material

As another suggestion on that thread said, perhaps salvaging an existing fractal weapon would also give you one of the parts needed.

However, leave the current RNG system in addition to this new progression system, as it is a nice bit of excitement if you manage to appease the RNG Gods and get the weapon you were working towards.

Ascended Gear Drops
These need expansion. Fractals is the only content where there is an active gear check on whether or no you have ascended items.

• 10-24: Ascended Rings
• 26-40: Infused Rings
• 30-44: Ascended Amulets
• 46-60: Infused Amulets
• 50-64: Ascended Accessories
• 66-80: Infused Accessories

Ascended Gear Salvaging
Because this will cause a backup of useless Ascended gear for some people, make ascended items salvageable.

• Item counts as an exotic for ecto calculation
• Guaranteed drop of Vial of Mists Essence
• With the new 500 crafting coming, maybe the new materials as well?

Ascended Backpieces available outside of Fractals
All current backpiece recipes require one Vial of Mist Essence. With the addition of ascended salvaging, all one would have to do is salvage another ascended item to receive the needed Vial of Mist Essence to complete their back item, totally eliminating the need for any runs of fractals whatsoever.

Additional stat allocations wouldn’t hurt either.

Bug Fixing
And Bug Fixing. Yup. Also length management. Because dredge is loooong.

What would everyone else think about some of these changes? What would you guys do differently?

And the addition of the 3 upcoming fractals provides the perfect opportunity to fix many of the issues we have been dealing with for almost 9 months now. With dungeons also undergoing reward revamps, fractals shouldn’t be left out on its own again, since it can be some of the most challenging content in the game.

Here’s a few of the thing I think Anet should look at in order to make fractals a more appealing experience.

Coins
Dungeons are receiving an overhaul to how it rewards gold to the players. Fractals has always fallen behind in this respect, since none of the bosses ever dropped silver, and there is no monetary reward for doing fractals besides the Bag of Coin that gave 2s.

Instead, there should be a reward for completing fractals based on the difficulty of fractal you are tackling.

• 5s per level of fractal you are attempting should be rewarded after the 3rd fractal
• 20s per tier of fractal should be rewarded upon the death of the Maw

This would provide the badly needed scaling reward structure that fractals is currently missing. For example:

• At level 10, you receive 50s (for lvl10) + 40s (for Maw T2) for a total of 90s
• At level 26, you receive 1g30s + 60s for a total of 1g90s
• At level 48, you receive 2g40s + 1g for a total of 3g40s
• At level 80, you receive 4g + 1g80s for a total of 5g80s

The reward would be similar to dungeons, becoming more rewarding as the content becomes more difficult (and also longer). Bear in mind that runs often take 1hr-3hrs+ in PuGs, and normally around an hour in optimized groups, I feel this gold amount is fair without detracting from dungeons.

The Level Cap
The hard cap at 50 needs to go. Good thing that there are a lot of ascended slots that enable it to be raised. Currently, the Amulet and Accessories have no option to add built in agony resistance, and ascended armors and weapons are on the way with the 500 crafting system. It makes no sense for this cap to remain in place at this point.

New Tiers of Mist Essence
For use in future and revamped rewards.

• 1-9: Vial
• 10-19: Glob
• 20-39: Shard
• 40-59: Core
• 60-79: Pure Shard
• 80+: Pure Core

Poor Rewards from Chests
A similar problem to the problem faced in dungeons, the chests you get for killing bosses aren’t very rewarding (blues and greens and maybe a rare). Something that many people don’t pick up right now are non-agony infusions. How about giving them a chance to drop from chests.

• 1-26: +5 AR infusions drop
• 20-46: +4 random stat, +5 AR infusions drop
• 40+: +5 random stat, +5 AR infusions drop

And possibly, with a cap increase, higher rewards could be given:

• 60+: +4 two random stats, +10 AR infusions maybe drop?

This is a very simple way to give some greater rewards without much threat to any sort of balance, especially since the stats will be random without being so rare as to be frustrating, and can easily replace another infusion.

Pluuuuug.

Basically, its a recipe that requires:

• 20 Pristine Relics
• 2000 Relics
• 3-5 Cores of Mist Essence (Have it drop from 40+, or 50+ if added, and also by combining 5 Shards of Mist Essence)
• Ectos

This way, the token cost isn’t insane, but it still requires some work be put into each skin. Also, the requirement for Cores at higher levels is a way to make this an easier/faster goal for those who play fractals at high levels, rewarding the extra work put into the harder and longer runs.

In addition, it partially retroactively rewards those who have already been running fractals for an extended period and stockpiling their Shards, and makes it possible for players who want to stay on the lower levels to put in drastically more work and more time, and be rewarded for doing so.

Super old Recipe to reward high level FotM play with guaranteed progression towards desired weapon skins without making it easy for low levels to acquire without some significant effort or luck with RNG. Also provides some retroactive rewards to those who have already run the dungeon many many times.

I posted that back in Feb. I can’t believe its already June.

Fractal Weapon Recipe

At Fractal 48 (and their difficulty IMO)
Long Fractals >90 minutes

• Dredge (Medium)
• Harpy (Easy-Medium)

Average Fractals <60 minutes

• Volcano (Hard)
• Cliffside (Medium-Hard)
• Blizzard (Medium)
• Ascalon (Easy-Medium)

Short Fractals ~30 minutes

• Swamp (Easy-Medium)
• Underwater (Easy)

I’ve posted in the other two threads, so I just decided to post the lengths of the fractals from what I’ve experienced. As it stands, Fractals is the most unforgiving PvE content akittens higher levels, and it does not compensate players for doing it.

xpost from my reddit reply, will only drop it in the Suggestion thread.

A while back, I posted a proposed fix for the fractal weapon problem. While ANY change to that system would be welcome, I wanted to preserve the difficulty of getting the weapon without making it impossible, and reward those players that went the extra mile and made it to 48+ by allowing them to get their desired weapons faster than someone at 20.

Here’s the recipe. Of course the recipe can always be tweaked.

On the rest of the points, I really like them.

Well except for the ascended rings count as rares part. 20s = 1 rare armor is a pretty meh tradeoff.

On rewards, I would start giving the higher levels some increased gold/loot drops as a reward for tackling some of the most unforgiving PvE content in the game. You put a lot of time and repair costs on the line to run 48, so there should be appropriate monetary rewards for doing so.

I really like that change to the Volcanic Fractal end boss, since it stomps on some Guardian wall meta, and makes it a bit easier for lower levels, though I wonder about how their damage would scale. It probably won’t make too much of a difference at high levels, however.

Dredge Fractal

On the dredge fractal, the mid-boss “Clown Car” needs to reduce the number of clowns that pop out of it. At 48, so many come out of that car that clearing those mobs without the champion takes 20-30 minutes. The Champion also has a “large” healthpool with his nearly permanent protection and regen due to the annoying respawning veteran.

I have less issue with the end boss length than with the Clown Car.

Harpy Fractal (Cat-a Sum)

Every mob in this encounter has a ridiculous amount of health, especially the Ogre and Flame Legion Champions. Because of that, this fractal can easily take an hour. Since they also scale in damage fairly significantly, and since the fractal itself is still pretty interesting, I would recommend a decrease in the health pools to lessen the tediousness.

Hmm. Depending on the precursor you are aiming for and the current price of ectos, you could probably run any of the 70+ dungeons, spend the tokens on rares to salvage, and then buy exotics off the forge with the ectos you get. You might be able to get more exotics to throw in than the 4 you get from the dungeon vendor for the same price.

I think that ArenaNet will hold back on any fractal changes or additions until the next time they do a large fractal update.

Its a bit disheartening, but clumping the ascended gear and possible reward fixes and additions in with new maps and increased difficulty scaling would probably make the update look more substantial whenever it is released.

Also, it would give the team working on it some unified goals, creating and messing with existing stuff to match with the newly added stuff, instead of just messing with existing stuff.

This also means that we probably won’t see any changes for a while, because Living Story looks to be their jam right now.

Plague.3174:

Give us a choice. If someone is lucky to find a ring or a skin in that chest, add 2 more and let him choose which one from the 3 he wants to get. It’s simple and I found it strange in the first place that they implemented it in the story missions where nobody gives a kitten about the drop (not talking about keys or rare stuff but the armor/wep drop)

I think I’ve seen a few people have this idea, and choice would probably be much better than what we have now, but its still not a great system either, since it would still rely on some moderately heavy RNG. It would still be possible to not have the weapon you want drop, but I guess it would stop the constant duplicate drops.

I would probably still like something rewarding effort, instead of tickets. Tickets means you get to pick your reward with no extra effort, and doesn’t have any form of retroactivity. A recipe would take longer and require more work (good, play RNG for fast rewards, or progress slowly for some guarantees) but would at least give the exhausted fractal runners a head start as a reward for their previous effort.

I bolded that because I actually really like the way that sounded.

Still, any change to alleviate the pain would be welcome. Hell, maybe even combine this with a recipe.

Folk.2093:

A-Net will just ignore this thread like every other fractal thread.

Funny you say that… (March 25th OP date, Feb 14 Recipe Post date)
But in all seriousness, I’m pretty sure some like Robert constantly see or hear the fractals complaints, but I think the teams are just all working on the temporary and pretty casual monthly updates instead, because it reaches a larger player base and makes more money than fixing the reward structure and encounters of an existing instance.

As disheartening as it is, I’m not expecting any changes to fractals until the time they bring out a big fractal update (probably new maps and infusions for other ascended gear). That could mean anywhere between next month, but very likely farther down the road, because the Living Story has their attention.

edit: Also dat necro. You must be a talented necromancer, though I hear minion builds aren’t that strong these days.

Fundamentally, some people want to learn and defeat extremely challenging content. Normally, the reward is stronger gear (gear tiers), the prestige of completion (raid-style hard content), and unique skins (like the Obsidian Armor in GW1, and dungeon skins), and these rewards are given somewhat reliably if the skill of the player allows it.

Looking system that is in place for Guild Wars 2, there are a total of 9 challenging group-instanced content in the game.

-

The first 8 encompass the original dungeons in the game. They succeed in reliably giving unique skins, but fail in that the content is only moderately challenging and provide no statistical superiority for completion. This leads to a small amount of prestige to the title “Dungeon Master”, but the impact is light because of the ease of the dungeon.

Since all the dungeons provide relatively equal rewards for a full run and no differentiation in prestige, the next best thing is to find the shortest paths to run in the least amount of time, maximizing the reward. This leads to the CoF Path 1 phenomenon.

-

The other challenging instance available is Fractals of the Mists. Here, they succeed in reliably giving a negligible power increase to gear (which has since been overshadowed by laurels), while failing in reliably providing unique skins. The prestige gained in fractals ikitten and miss, because early difficulties are very easy, while much higher up require significant cooperation and familiarity with the instance.

While high-level fractals provides arguably the highest prestige for challenging content (which eventually turns into health sponges that hit like Jupiter), there is no interest to do those high levels because the rewards do not meet the difficulty. The skins as a reward are very unreliable, and the increase in power has since been offloaded to other areas as well, leaving no way to claim the prestige for completing the content.

-

And from my point of view, that is what leaves us in this awkward location where some can claim no end-game, and other don’t care about it, because no rewarding content is hard enough or worthy of being bragged about, and no content worthy of being bragged about is very rewarding.

And unfortunately, its been this way for 9 months (7 if fractals is considered a release), and each month’s content release has been easy content or fun activities, and none of them have included difficult group or team based play since fractals.

This doesn’t mean the game is un-fun, or boring. But it is definitely not very challenging where it is profitable, and the challenging stuff doesn’t reward you well for having the skill or talent to complete it.

And then there’s the Mad King Clock Tower. I wikitten gave a title, because it was a proper jumping puzzle, instead of the SAB where the mobs provide the challenge and the jumping doesn’t matter.

tl;dr: It’s not very challenging where it is profitable, and the challenging stuff doesn’t reward you well for having the skill or talent to complete it. So basically, no Prestige for high skill content.

With the release of the Secrets of Southsun update today, the new set of Eyeball Weapons are now attainable. However, Anet has, again, limited it to a very rare drop from a chest.

Now, for a long time, players have complained about, and continue to complain about, the use of RNG as the sole way of acquiring certain skins or items. To prevent this issue, AnenaNet developed a token system to better distribute rewards to those who want them, or allowed you to buy it for a much more expensive price, yet ignores their own design wisdom in many other cases. My question is, why can’t we have these skins be both something that is RNG and something that we can purchase with gems or tokens?

We’ve seen both Rox’s and Braham’s weapons go onto the store without an RNG tie, and we’ve seen RNG weapons during the Wintersday festival also appear as direct purchases through the gem store if you want to possibly spend more money in order to guarantee the skin. So why do we not see these same strategies put in place for the Fused Weapons or for the Sclerite Weapons? Especially since we’ve seen strategies that ArenaNet has taken before?

RNG is inherently unfair because it relies so heavily on chance. Why can we not balance this unfairness with alternate ways of acquiring skins?

Relying solely on RNG in a game that emphasizes personalizing your character’s look seems very anti-player. If a skin looks appealing, I shouldn’t have to rely on RNG roles in a game that sought to remove this issue because it is not fun.

The simple fact that the price should be high enough in the gem store, and the content temporary enough, should mean that the skins should remain sufficiently rare for those who only get the skins for “uniqueness” (which I don’t understand, why get a skin you don’t like just because no one else has it? Why not get a skin because you like the way it looks?).
—-
A similar issue has also persisted for 7 months in the form of Fractal Weapon skins. Even at higher levels, where skin drops are more common, you will get stuck with a weapon skin you do not like because it relies solely on RNG. In every other dungeon in GW2, a token system exists to prevent this very situation.

Taking into consideration the scaling difficulty of fractals, it is possible to reward players with tokens or progress without removing the RNG element or providing the same rewards to lower levels. Why can’t we have both rewards for skilled play and rewards for a lucky RNG roll?

It is especially frustrating when, just last month, ArenaNet demonstrated that they could implement a system to reward players for doing the content in the Super Adventure Box, while also having the skins be a possible RNG drop. Why couldn’t this be implemented into Fractals, albeit with a much greater difficulty to account for the difficulty of high level fractals?
—-
The last RNG situation I want to bring attention to is the situation with Legendary Precursors, which rely on massive amounts of luck through the Mystic Forge or world drops. Since the goal of a legendary requires so much time and money, the use of RNG frustrates players because it could mean that months of hard work could easily result in no reward, or result in massive punishment because the player wasn’t “lucky enough”.

ArenaNet has at least acknowledged this issue with the Precursor Scavenger hunt, though we have heard no news of it’s progress in many months.

But this itself is also frustrating, because ArenaNet acknowledges that RNG is something that players do not enjoy, yet continue to solely use this system whenever it releases new content.
—
I understand ArenaNet is a buisness, and needs to make money, but that doesn’t stop them from offering the skins directly at a higher cost in addition to using RNG systems. More people would have a chance at making their character look the way they want to if there were alternative ways, and ArenaNet would still make money off of gem purchases.

I, for one, would be much more inclined to buy gems ever month if the gem store items were items you could actually buy, and not just items that you have to gamble for.

Of course, doing that does not mean you can’t still get the item out of RNG by using the gamble method.

tl;dr: Use the Wintersday method of gem store skin acquisition, and offer both direct purchases of weapons, and gamble tickets through the boxes.
tl;dr2: The Fractal Weapon Chronicles: Reward Skilled players for their efforts.

Is it show-pictures-of-you-collection time? Because I can jump on that.

Too many rings, 20 skins, ~10k Relics, 97 Pristines, 6 or 7 of the 10 rings in the bank were bought. No sword skin, no greatsword skin. Okay then.

This is a result of doing it everyday from the middle of Dec to the end of April. I stopped doing it daily because I’ve been so burnt that I’ve started only doing my daily for laurels.

I had minor complaints in Jan, but it was Feb when I started trying to point out the problems in the system, resulting in this suggestion post to make the weapons attainable for highly skilled players, or players that want to do multiple times the work of said highly skilled players. That recipe can also be adapted for 50+ if weapon progression wants to be really hard.

Well, its coming up on 7 months of fractals being around. Lets hope they make some big fixes sometime in the near future, and not 7 more months down the road.

I agree that RNG drops should not be removed, and that the system in which you can track progression towards a fractal skin should not be easy.

There are ways to reward those that do 40+ without providing the same reward to those lower than 40. Since we only have vials, globs, and shards of mist essence, why not create cores that drop 40+ or 50+?

This would provide a use for shard collections many long time fractal runners have and give the possiblility of spending enormous amounts of time to reach your goal. Or you could up the difficulty to a point where cores actually drop, saving you time if you have the skill to compensate.

This way, maybe you get lucky and the chest gives you the skin. Or if not, you work towards your goal instead of being stuck in limbo.

I agree with you randomfightfan. The thing is, after 3 months of talking about this issue, and 4 months of infuriation trying to get the sword, I’m completely burnt and have little to no will to complain anymore.

Fractals isn’t fun, and the feeling you get when you get the weapon you want isn’t great either. Its more along the lines of “about time you stupid piece of kitten”.

I’m not happy over getting the my goal anymore, I’m just exhasted.

Alright, its come up on 4 months of doing FotM everyday, and my will to play the game is completely broken. So, I’ve done 2 months of 24 and 30 every day, and then another 2 months of doing 48 every day. This has resulted in around 50-60 rings, and around 20 weapon skins.

Most rings cam from sub 40, though a few frustrating ones still came from post. About 12 of the skins came from post 40, meaning that there IS a better chance to get a skin at the higher level, even with the increased length.

Unfortunately, in this time, the Fractal Sword and Greatsword never dropped, so I walk away from this endeavor empty handed. I may still occasionally run this only for the friends I had made, but other than that, I’m done with Guild Wars 2 in any capacity besides the 10 min daily and possibly the living story.

With the recent changes to bounty targets, many targets have been introduced or changed to be increasingly difficult, while others remain relatively simple. This creates a list of targets that vary in difficulty. For large guilds, it is possible to have the manpower to do a zerg sweep of a zone to find the targets found inside trees or barrels in a reasonable amount of time, while smaller guilds cannot as easily hit every tree in the zone and hope to get lucky.

Smaller guilds get punished for randomly rolling a target that requires a search of an entire zone looking for one target. Since these targets cannot be scouted ahead of time, this gives another advantage to having large numbers while hindering those with not so large numbers.

While the targets themselves might scale to the size of the mob attacking it, the mission itself and how it assigns targets do not. How can you scale missions for smaller guilds when the content is designed for large zergs? Here is what I think.

Since we already have tiered bounty missions, lets use them. Move different targets into different difficulty pools based on how hard it is to find them, and how hard it is to kill them. “Easy” targets get put into the “Tier 1” pool, and then do the same with “Medium” and “Hard” with Tiers 2 and 3. When a guild starts their bounty mission, have targets be pulled from a pool based on the Tier of the mission activated.

This makes it so that Tier 1 is possible to complete by finding and killing easy targets. Tier 2 targets become harder to catch, and there are more of them, all cumulating with all targets being up for grabs in Tier 3. This does not eliminate the appeal of large bounty events, because you still get more merits for doing more difficult content, but it does provide smaller guilds with the Tier 1 option, where the targets can be scouted (a daunting task for a small guild, even without a time limit) and taken down with proper coordination.

Considering that new bounty targets can be added all the time, these pools can continue to increase, providing more variety and more difficult targets.

In short:

• Tier 1 only assigns “easy” targets.
• Tier 2 assigns both “easy” and “medium” targets.
• Tier 3 assigns all targets, including “hard” targets.

At level ten, it is very well possible to do without agony resistance. No agony attacks should be a guarenteed death, so keep your health up between boss attacks and you should be just fine, even if you get hit.

If you really want agony resistance and have a lot of money, you can make a backpiece that can be slotted with agony reaistance. It requires 250 of one of the tier 6 crafting materials (like powerful bloods) and 50 ectos, along with some skill points and a vial of mist essence. All of this can be gathered between levels 1-9.

The recipe should be findable on the wiki, just search for ascended backpieces.

However, the burden of not having AR is not high enough at level ten to really be an issue.

Not intended to reach that high up really is Anet underestimating the players, something you shouldn’t do in MMOs. Players will break everything they can, and climb Everest while being attacked by aliens to get somewhere they shouldn’t.

These little tricks help them find a way to beat the content. Anet should fix the bad ones, and make the others harder to use, but they should not make it impossible. Fractal 50 isn’t a gear check, its just a straight up wall to keep you from going forward, even though the players can use the game as it exists to their advantage and get to higher levels.

The thing with Maw is, that after the agony attack, nothing else is more difficult. You just get crystals and stand in place, and throw them.
—
On the idea of other dungeon’s bosses, its an interesting idea that would fit in well with the lore of fractals. These events can be anywhere on Tyria at any time, so it would make sense that some monster from your previous adventures are back with a vengeance.

Lightrayne.7829:

I’m pretty sure fractal rewards and SAB rewards were designed by two different teams. I feel that whoever designed the fractal rewards has seriously strayed from the usual GW style of rewards: can be dropped, can be purchased, and can be made — not just only RNG. This is why I’m pretty impressed by the SAB team being so small and making content rather accessible.

I really like SAB. Reminds me of how each city was suppose to have little activities you could do, like keg brawl, but also Polymock, bar brawl, the shooting range, and moa races. But SAB is very polished, with a good reward system, and is pretty fun, even if it is far from complete.

It is very easy though. I expected to use a continue coin on a hard jumping course, but instead used it learning the final boss of World 1.

But yes, I’ve been trying to point out how different the fractal reward system is to every other system in place, including dungeons in both GW1 and 2, wintersday, and now in SAB.

Aegis.9724:

Prestige skins are very sought not because they LOOK cool, but because its hard to get them, and give your character an “unique” look in the crowd. I understand running fracts over and over again and not getting anything might be frustrating, but if those skins were as common as SAB ones there would be no point in running fracts AT ALL.

The one thing that could be implemented, lessen the pain and not devalue the skins is a MF recipe (and not a cheap one, 50+ecto tier) to turn one fract skin into another…

Honestly, I couldn’t care less if everyone had Twilight as long as I had Twilight. Why? Because I like the look and set my sights on it in beta. I also don’t care that everyone and their mother can get SAB skins. Why? Because they look cool. So I tend to not like that argument.

However, I understand that some people prefer rarity over looks, so the recipe I would like implemented would either require you to run high levels, or spend a large amount of time in lower levels. Don’t make it easy, but make it possible.

And do it in a way that helps those who have already spent a lot of time in fractals. Something like adding cores that can be created with shards, and then requiring them in a recipe encourages doing higher levels without completely ignoring the effort many have already put into fractals.

If there was a tangible goal you could reach, I think it would bring in more people than would leave.

ExaDal.2017:

sebz.1524:

ExaDal.2017:

Worst idea ever.

Yeah, because doing over 500 fractals and getting twice the same not-usable weapon for my proffesion is such a perfect reward system yaay!

What’s bad with ticket system? You get it as a drop as rarily as fractal weapon but you choose what you want. Sure I like OP idea better but still ticket > random weapon type drop. You could do countless fractals and still not get what you want. And next time constructive criticism please…

I never say that the actual systems is good. The actual system is horrible. But you solution isn´t good. You say “the same that actual fused weapons”. This ticket drops from BL Chest with a high low chance. You think that is a good system?

A ticket system would be better than the current, yes, since running 40+ generally has better skin drop rates.

But it still relies a bit on RNG, and does nothing to provide possible retroactive consideration to those who have already run for a long time. There are lots of shards and relics I have stockpiled. Same goes for many of the other runners of FotM.

Besides a higher drop chance at higher levels, it does not much else for rewarding the more skilled players better than those doing lower levels.

Still, it would not be a terrible system, and would probably be a welcome change.

ExaDal.2017:

I accept any solution except for one that included ectos, T6 mats, lodestones or more RNG.

Lodestones and RNG no, but I’m fine with T6 mats and ectos. I personally used ectos because it is a mainstay crafting componet, able to be obtained anywhere where a rare drops. Just playing the game should let you stockpile a few.

As long as the cost is not something obscene like 250. Ten ectos sound reasonable after you have already proved you can run a dungeon either many times or a few times at a very difficult level. Up to 50 is still not bad.

One issue with FotM is that you have to do it every day if you want the knowledge of having the chance to get the skin. Taking a break or skipping a day is a guarenteed lost chance that you can never get back, and future runs don’t guarentee progress, so it feels like you lost a lot more than you really have.

Really, if I could get the skins I want, I could run FotM casually every once and a while for progression instead of tearing my hair out over how broken things seem to be. Until then, every wasted day feels like a loss.

If you were able to stop for a few days, and start up again without losing progress you can make on the skin you are aiming for, there would be less stress on doing the dungeon every day, because hey you don’t lose progress on something, and you can come continue it later.

Please, its been so long since I could just WvW without a care in the, ah, world.

Edit: there are also a few threads on the dungeon forums about this, and a few more in suggestions proposing ways to fix this. Mine included.

Rising Dusk.2408:

This isn’t to say that the prestige cannot be maintained while improving the system, but I sure as hell do not want to see Fractal skins on the TP ever.

I agree with this.

But also, its less about how easy it is to get SAB skins, and more about having a system that works. The SAB system works, though is a bit easy. The Fractal system does not, and the difficulty of getting the skins is dependant on your luck and not your skill.

Just because one token system provides easy rewards does not mean that another one could not be developed that takes into account the difficulty level the player is facing. This includes everything from using daily tokens, or putting a little more thought into making a system that awards highly skilled players more than those who take it easy on lower levels.

…

Also, did we really need another thread on this. We have another active one sitting at the tops of the forums right now.

Escher.5342:

The token system was implemented because SAB is only available for the month of April, where FotM is a constant. I also hope they develop an alternative method for obtaining fractal weapons but I’m sure it takes a little more thought because they need to take the longevity of the dungeon into consideration.

Its not that SAB is temporary and has a good reward system, its that they have proved time and time again with dungeons and other tokens that they are able to have a better system that is friendlier to players who want to put in the effort to do specific content.

Yet they do have a good system in place for fractals that takes into account the difficulty level the player does the content at. I tried to come up with a recipe that tried to remedy that issue.
—
There are still options for the future longevity of FotM. As of right now, most players play FotM at 20 or 30. Only a very small group, myself included, do 48 every day because of the time it takes and the difficulty of content when everything hits like an astroid.

At 40, the primary drop becomes weapon skins, and you see drastically less rings both due to adjusted drop rates and the length of time this level takes. This still means that often the daily will reward you with neither.

As we know right now, monsters can scale all the way up to FotM 80. This provides ample room to begin offering ascended amulets, ascessories, or even weapons and armor at the very difficult levels. All Anet would have to do is a tweak here and there, and they could make very challenging content that adds other rewards to fractals, including the ascended pieces that we are waiting to be added to FotM.

I would also not be surprised if cores of mist essence or lodestones of mist essence are added to facilitate recipes that let us infuse the remaining ascended items that drop at higher levels. Of course, if they do this, it should be easier to add a recipe to fix the fractal weapon drop rates too.

This is on top of fractals being a very modular dungeon, where new fractals can be added at any time Anet feels like working on it. They’ve had their hands full with culling and world fixes though.

Since this thread seems to have been necro’d, I guess I’ll use this to bring up a few points since the new patch has come out.

With the introduction of the Super Adventure Box comes a new currency and new rewards, including some rather good looking skins. The reward system that SAB uses for it’s skins works like this:

• Skins have a low chance to drop from any boss chest. This dro kitten imply a skin, but can be traded on the TP or to other players if the certain skin is not wanted.

• Skins can be acquired with a significant amount of the required token, along with 1 gold. These cannot by sold but are account bound.

So why am I talking about SAB? Well, because SAB does skin rewards in a way that makes sense and rewards persistence. You could put in more work, and farm out the skins you want, or you can casually do the activity and eventually arrive at your destination.

They did the rewards right in SAB (if a little easy in my opinion).
—
But the FotM reward system still lies in a mess. It still does not make sense in the way it rewards you with skins. Of course it should be hard to acquire, but that can be tweaked in multiple ways. They are hard to acquire right now, but in all the wrong ways.

Currently in Fractals (as in for the past 6 months):

• Skins have a low chance to drop from the daily chest. This drop has no stats and cannot be traded on the TP or to other players if the certain skin is not wanted, and cannot be traded for a another skin.

• Skins cannot be acquired with a significant amount of tokens, or through any recipe.

• Increasing skill and difficulty are not rewarded well.

The first bullet point would be just fine, since the skin is suppose to represent a mastery of content, but is not however, because of the second bullet point. It represents a very lucky roll, whether you have done one easy fractal run at 20 or 200 hard runs at 48.

This leads to bullet number 3, where doing more difficult content does not exactly reward you better.

This does not mean make it as easy to get these skins as it is to get SAB skins, but there should be something done to bring the skin rewards in balance with the difficulty and time put into the endeavor.

I will once again refer back to this recipe, which would make acquiring the weapon possible for all levels, but significantly faster if done at 40+ or 50+. This rewards players who have already been doing FotM for a while with a use for stockpiled materials and tokens, entices new and existing players to FotM higher levels now that everything isn’t completely based on RNG, and sets a goal that can be reached with varying amounts of time and effort in relation to the skill of the player. The higher your skill, the faster you can acquire your weapon, or you can grind vials/globs/shards forever on an easier mode and eventually reach your goal as well through persistence.

A ticket system similar to the way you claim Fused or Winter weapons would also be welcome, but would add another non-depositable currency. Since weapons are rewarded more commonly at higher levels, skill would still be rewarded, so it would not be much of a deal besides still having a stockpile of tokens and materials.

Skill or perseverance would both be adequate reasons in my eyes, for someone to have a skin from FotM.

While I personally would prefer to have some sort of crafting recipe to make it feel like you are putting together fragments of a weapon into the actual fractal weapon (and give a use for the million shards I have),I would also be perfectly content with this solution as well. It would give a use for the collection I have in my bank.

Mckeone.9804:

^^ you mean you got your ecto drops.

I second the OP. I would love to hear from Robert if there are any plans for revisiting the system, even if he can’t confirm any details.

At least then I’ll know whether I want to work on gearing up my alts for more fractal runs or WvW.

I remember Robert saying he doesn’t have control over fractal rewards. He does more balancing of encounters, and most of the fractal encounters are pretty enrtaining before you hit them massive health pool wall.

If I could progress towards a fractal weapon, I would probably still run FotM casually. Instead of everyday for the best drop chance, I could just take a break and go doing jumping puzzles, or WvW for the day, or attempt to get Dusk so I can finish my Twilight and be that awkward Ranger with Twilight on her back.

As it stands right now, I can’t really do any of that because FotM demands my time because of the reward system.

soulcakeduck.7036:

With the new hard cap preventing groups from killing Maw 50+, I believe ArenaNet likely intends to revisit rewards for FotM at least at higher levels. I think it will be very likely that these higher levels (once they’re again accessible) will end up having a noticeably better chance to drop Fractal Weapon skins, possibly even a guaranteed chance at a skin (once all Ascended gear is in, on the “hardest” floor with non-fatal Agony?).

That could be a while. They want to phase Ascended gear in over time…

And that means Fractals remain an oddly unrewarding, random number generated casino-gamble for months (they already have). I really do appreciate that weapon skins can be rare instead of handed out to everyone who steps inside, but this is not a nice way to treat the customers willing to dedicate themselves to the long run, especially in the GW franchise.

So. Why should I play FotM before that next patch?—that’s been the question for FotM at every step.

I keep telling myself that they will come back to fix FotM and the reward system, especially after the backlash that RNG rings got initially, the backlash that RNG precursors continue to get, and the fact that the original Guild Wars 2 dungeons were designed to avoid this very problem.

One person in the other Fotm thread summed up how I pretty much have felt for a few months now.

Siv.4351:

My primary progression team disbanded several weeks ago just from sheer exhaustion of the grind for something that was never getting any closer. Not a single fractal is fun enough to warrant the 100+ odd runs to even have a statistical chance of getting something we want.

I’m just completely exhasted of that dungeon, and the little bit of energy I had left was just shattered by the recent Ranger nerf. So now my profession is pretty much in shambles and no progress is being made in FotM.

ddak.3150:

So, if someone who comes to game right now needs 2 ascended rings, an amulet, and two earrings – that’s total of 170 laurels, + 100 ectoplasms, if he doesn’t want to rely on rng drops.
1 laurel per day, that is almost half of the year for those items, without skipping ONE single day. So when someone reads this, put numbers on paper – wtf? Grinding dailys for half of the year without skipping one day- not for full set, but for accessories- its’ sick…
Not to mention, if you do daily every second day ( RL commitments, and stuff) that would be a year.

Daily quests doesn’t have anything to do with fractal dungeon. Whole game is a massive epic grind, and luck based – lodestones, cores, precursors,fractals skins, dyes, pets…

Almost forgot – someone wants infused ring? Cool, but it requires vials and mats that are also RNG drops ( nothing unusual for arena net) from fractals so you can infuse the ring…

While the laurel system has its own problems (cant put in more effort for faster results), at least it has a system where you can go and make slow steady progress. Oh it will take 30 days to get the accessory? Okay its tedious, but one day at a time and I’ll reach my goal!

But fractal skins. Wow I’m 3 months in and don’t have my skin, while my friend over there has all the skins they wanted after 1 week because they got lucky? Laurel system gives you a goal, and you can’t complain about not being able to make progress towards it if you a diligent. But fractals offers no such progress.

Aegis.9724:

TBH i like the fractal skin system, and hope there will be more content using that. Tokens are boring, tradable rare skins show nothing except you wasted a good amount of hours flipping goods on TP , farming cof or dumping a few hundred bucks in gems because you can.

Fract skins are the only thing left that show prestige, and their randomness make it more exciting. If they were token-based, everyone would run around with them, giving literally no reason to do FOTM (you’ll get all the rings you need far before you start worring about those skins).

Agree on the bugs, but most of them are just annoying, not game breaking…which can’t be said for many other areas of the game, in a far worse state.
Honestly, the only thing i would like is more stuff to get with relics (NOT the skins) , a rebalance so that fractals take roughly the same average time (because traveling back to the lab 20 times to get swamp is not fun) and more fractals, its getting quite boring already..

The problem with skins is that randomness is not fun. It is not fun to spend 3 hours a day for 3 or 4 months to never actually get your skin. While you are spending your many months trying to get your skin, your friend who only ran one level 20 is running around with the skin she wants, even though she has little to no experience in fractals.

Changing the way weapons work doesn’t mean make it easier. It just means make it possible. Make it require completion and persistance of difficulties 40+, or even 50+, because it is the most disheartening thing in the game to run 48 everyday and never make any progress towards your goal.

Again, don’t make it easy for those running 20s, but make it possible for those running 48+. Reward skill and persistence, not luck.

Edit: perhaps you could even do it with a recipe.

ZilentNight.5089:

Wasnt there a claim made before the start of Guild wars 2 that you would not have to grind a dungeon over and have a “Chance” at a weapon or armor.

They did. The difference with FotM is that it isn’t really considered a “dumgeon” in the same sense as Arah or AC by the devs.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Your first mistake was comparing GW2 to GW1. Without typing an essay, rares were not worth very much in GW1. Rares in this game have a reasonable worth, and although it is hard to compare the two games economy, I would say Rares in GW2 are worth more than rares were in GW1.

I agree with you on the lack of skins, or how poorly ANet have acted in terms of them. Each dungeon should have at least one unique skin which can drop or be from a chest.

i beg to differ. The rares that dropped often had an interesting componet or and often had the best stats, comparable to exotics in Guild Wars 2. You could either salvage for the component, or you had a possibility to use it on a different character. Rares in Guild Wars 2 are generally uninteresting to me, only for ectos and not really for any other purpose.

The interest in rares was compounded by the skins they could offer you, which was the primary focus for their mention. Zodiac weapons could drop out of chests in the dungeon if you were lucky, and then could be sold if the skin was undesirable, giving you progress towards getting the one you wanted.

I also remember getting pronged fans and other types of skins that did not immediately put me off. I saved many of these rare items, while I salvage or mystic forge most rare and exotics in Guild Wars 2.

Zeppelin.6832:

Agree %100 on all counts. This dungeon is improving, but it’s still broken.

Its a shame for me too. When the dungeon originally released, the content was interesting and different. But after 3 mindless months with little to show, and many broken mechanics at high levels, I’m frustrated to the point of wanting to be done with this dungeon forever.

Even Arah and the frustrations there have not put me off from Arah, nut Fractals has managed this with how its reward and encounters are designed at high levels.

The issue with fractal skins is less about farm created by the system, and more about the animosity it creates between players. Lets compare grinding CoF for whatever-you-want and Fractals for skins.

If someone grinds CoF, they gain about 5 gold an hour, and so do everyone else that does this farm. This way, the more effort and persistence you put into the farm, the closer you get to your goal. Consider trying to get Dusk for 800g.
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Spending 3 hours a day, you reach this goal in 54 days, and so can everyone else. Sometime during those two months, you have a chance of Dusk dropping out of a chest, and if it does for anyone, you congratulate them and then complain about the droprate.

Now someone grinds FotM level 48. At this level, an average of 1 person per party gets a weapon skin, with 1/19 chance of getting the skin you want. Because it is based completely on chance, it may take you anywhere between 1 day, and many months or years to get the skin you want.
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Spending 3 hours a day, you can run FotM once for one chance at the skin a day, first being lucky enough to get the 1/5 drop rate (at 48, lower at 20, 30), and then the 1/19 type drop rate. Because of this, if a weapon skin you want drops for another player that has not put as much effort into fractals, you curse them and then complain about the drop rate.

The difference in these two cases is that, on one, you can reach a goal along with others after a significant amount of effort, while the other may give skins to players that have put in minimal effort, while never giving the skin to players who have more experience and time put into fractals.

For me, after 3 months of 3 hours a day spent in fractals, still without the skin to show for it, I’m dead tired of that place. The 270+ hours spent can be better put to use in WvW, or in other dungeons, or playing in lower level areas with my alts (ALL activities that are more fun and less frustrating).