Anyone who makes the game about loot is probably not going to have a good time. The shame is so many people think loot is the game.
The game is freaking horizontal progression. If you want something cosmetic, you have two choices. Pay real cash, or grind your brains out for.. you guessed it, loot to sell or somehow process into gold.
Gold is the end game in Guild Wars 2. The rest of the content you burn through so fast that it gets old extremely quick.
I bet a lot of people would disagree with this. The end game for me in any game is to have fun. That specifically means NOT farming. I’ll get what I get when I get it. I don’t have to have everything and I certainly don’t have to have everything now.
I’m quite content to have fun with the guild, do what I’m doing, and eventually have enough gold for something I need.
It’s a mentality that makes gold the end game of this game, for certain types of players. Not everyone feels this way.
If I could give everyone one of A-net a hug, I could
Scarlet has activated additional defenses on the Breachmaker during the Prime Hologram encounter. Thirty seconds into the battle, lasers will target the areas near the entrance portal and the elevator leading to the Breachmaker’s interior. Being hit by these attacks will count against the “No More Tricks, Scarlet” achievement.
This made my day. You are forgiven for any bugs or past deeds. I love you all :’)
Legendary Jr – Engineer
Member of Cube on Piken
If “scaling” means that an event’s difficulty (or boss health) is increased by the number of players present, if a player is present but idle and does not contribute anything other than his/her presence, wouldn’t that player be scaling up the event difficulty? While I’m not exactly sure how Anet works scaling, I’m pretty confident that those 3 afk/idle players REALLY ARE negatively impacting the chance of success, as their presence increases boss health/event difficulty without the benefit of their DPS contribution that the game expects the afk/idler to contribute.
I won’t mention any names, but if some posters on this thread have so much contempt for this game and its players, why do you even play?
I wish they never used that line and I am pretty sure that is the way they feel themselves (apart from being quoted out of context around here usually). So, know what, I love military simulation games, I WANT TO jump into an Apache Longbow and rain ASMs on Scarlet. What, I cannot do that? But you promised me I can play the way I want to! Unfair!
Being AFK is not an offense… Period. Standing on a safe/glitched spot in order to get an achievement is exploiting and can lead to ban unless stated otherwise by the dev team.
If I see anyone standing in that safe spot and not contributing to the fight I’ll report their cheating behind n a jiffy.
(edited by Moderator)
The other alternative is to actually earn the achievement by playing the content properly.
Sorry, I missed the guide that ANet issued detailing how to play the content properly.
Oh yeah, right, they didn’t put one out.
Play how you want, I’ll play how I want.
Except you’re not playing. You’re hiding in a corner.
Actually, you have no way of knowing what I am doing.
It has been said many times by the devs that playing the TP is a legit way of playing the game. You have no idea of what I am doing during this time, and I could very legitly be playing the TP for a bit. Among other things.
On the rule book, sure. Nothing says you can’t TP or chat or doing any other ingame business other than fighting. This is the exact excuse that AFK players are using in the last LS. Well, LA is a big place, some places are indeed safe for trivial matters.
But the breachmaker is different. You’re in a small arena now, and everyone on the platform in technically a giant “party”. Let’s say if this event is a 5-man instanced dungeon and needs all the manpower to succeed, would you still place yourself in a corner buying and selling items while your teammates fight?
Actually, this is Anet’s problem and it is about time they take their heads out of the sand and start to deal with it properly. They are the ones making content that only allow specific numbers of people to participate in each instance and unfortunately they are set up to be somewhat challenging and this translates to the need for participation by the majority of players.
As far as I am concerned AFK’ing is grieving the other players because in many cases their non-participation could lead to failure of the event. I did it twice yesterday and failed due to people standing in the bloody corner doing nothing so we didn’t have enough dps or support to complete in the time frame allotted, and that by its very definition is interfering with a player’s progress, hence grieving.
I understand there are legitimate reasons people go afk, been there done that but I think there should be a tab to report people specifically for this and it is up to Anet to look for patterns of abuse much the same as botting and punish the abusers accordingly.
Looks like political intentions. Is this done to annoy conservative people?
Yes! We discussed it with ArenaNet in the Gay Agenda January meeting.
This topic.
WOW.
See this is why I wish I had a time machine so I could zip forward to a place where this nonsense doesn’t happen anymore. Ah well, it’ll come so long as we keep working for it.
Stopped taking it seriously the second the word “agenda” came up. Honestly, was this topic just a troll attempt? Keep this topic respectful, eh mods? Sorry, but this topic didn’t start from a place of respect for all human beings and it ain’t gonna get there.
Now, I’m not against left-handed people, in fact I have left-handed friends. One of my aunts is even left-handed. And I love how far people have come in accepting lefthandedness – I’m all for it! But Anet seems to have a disproportionate obsession with left-handed characters, and I’m starting to think they might be pushing some sort of agenda.
Other people have posted my thoughts for me by proxy before (TAkittenbeing added back as a fractal and rewards rebalancing) so I’ll sum up the most important issues for the devs to focus on…
1. Rewards (refer to my other post by Tree with how to do it properly)
2. Dredge
3. Opening higher levels
Fix these three and fractals don’t need a lot of the other rather insane over the top suggestions people are making.
Things that are NOT priorities
1. “Rolling”
2. “Obligatory Guardians”
3. Leaderboards
What kind of fun ideas can you come up with to help allow us to get more story into the fractal experiences, without the cost of slowing down the core re-playability of the game play that is at the heart of the fractal content?
What about something like Scarlet’s Journal, but for fractals?
Proposal Overview
A big journal containing fractal lore.
Proposal functionality:
You get a book when you complete a fractal, with a little extra snippet about what was going on; when you have all of them, you can combine them into one big journal.
This snippet might be a description, or perhaps a line quoted from a point-of-view NPC/character in the fractal. Perhaps voice acted, if that isn’t asking for too much!
It could be further expanded upon by showing Dessa the journal, and asking her for some more information. This would all be text based and available to players whenever, so I think it would minimize interference with the designs of fractals.
Associated Risks:
There are many fractals, and if even more are added, this could prove to be too complicated for the current item/conversation systems.
A technical problem would be determining eligibility to acquire a book after a completed fractal, so we don’t end up acquiring dozens of them.
(edit 2: some more formatting)
(edited by Satakal.6971)
Proposal Overview:
Functionality of agony infusions and their benefits.
Goal of Proposal:
Make it easier to upgrade agony infusions after they have been added to ascended items and change their functionality so that they benefit you even at lower levels.
Proposal Functionality:
Right now the only option to get an agony infiusion back after using it on an item is to use the upgrade extractor (250 Gems/ea) from the gem shop.
This makes it only viable for infusions that are already realy high in level, otherwise buying a new infusion is often the cheaper option.
Especially for those people that are not fequently playing fractals this will have the consequence of reaching a poit in fractal levels at which they are forced to invest a high amount of money in order to upgrade their equipment only to play the next highest tier even though they had enough enough agony infusions if only they had not used them that early.
I would like to see a mechanic similar to luck where you reach the next level of agony resistance once you collected enough infusions. That way the players have a steady progress in reaching the next highest fractal level.
In addition to this I see a need to make agony resistance work for each point a player has and not only be usefull at each 5 point increment. There is no reason for an agony resistance of 69 points to have the same protection as one of 65 points.
Agony damage is already calculated in percent of your max HP, why not let each point of resistance influence that falue?
Associated Risks:
The upgrade extractor might no longer be worth his value of 250 gems.
(edited by Lex.5214)
Proposal Overview
Underworld fractal (Rise of Grenth)
Goal of Proposal
To introduce a fractal taking place during the deposing of Dhuum by Grenth, players could take the role of the seven reapers.
Proposal Functionality
Essentially just a new fractal , taking place during the far past when the half-god Grenth and his seven reapers overthrow Dhuum.
The players could either take the role of the Reapers, or act as agents of the reapers.
First part: Destroy the statue of Dhuum to weaken his power
A statue of Dhuum in the underworld, that generates a de-buff which corrupts buffs must be destroyed , protected by some of Dhuums army.
Second part: Breach the sanctum/Hall of judgement (not sure where the final battle takes place), could be a Magg style defend/distract the enemies for a while event as a ritual is completed.
Third Part: Seal Dhuum, could be fought alongside Grenth, he could generate a buff that counters a debuff Dhuums attacks inflict, also a really good chance to introduce the first physical fight between two gods.
Other considerations: opens the oppertunity for some really nice theme weapons if fractal specific rewards are added.
Expands upon the lore of a pretty major event in history.
Associated Risks
-Requires development resources.
-Not really innovative.
-I’m fairly sure some gw2 players don’t even know who Grenth is so may not care.
11x level 80’s 80+ Titles 2600+ skins , still a long way to go.
Note: this idea is originally from someone else. I’ve read it somewhere in a Fractals-complaints thread in the dungeon forum. If you can show me the post where it originally stems from, I will be glad to cite the author.
Proposal Overview
Turn the Dredge Fractal’s Rabsovich encounter into a third possible path (together with bombs and turrets).
Goal of Proposal
This proposal comes from the opinion that the Dredge Fractal takes too long to complete, meaured by a personal baseline of about 15 to 20 minutes for a single Fractal.
It reduces the 4-parts Fractal (pressure-plates, hallways, Rabsovich, boss) to a 3-parts Fractal.
Proposal Functionality
After the pressure-plates cage, people will find one of three possible ways chosen for them:
- Bombs path, as usual, but with the Rabsovich room being empty
- Turrets path, as usual, but with the Rabsovich room being empty
- Bombs path empty and Rabsovich room containing Rabsovich, his Dredge and his car
In order to make the Rabsovich fight more similar to the other parts, I’d also propose to change the fight a bit like suggested by Ken DeBoer here:
Instead of the dredge carrier, Rabsovich would spawn a certain number of dredge every 1/4 life.
Thus, the encounter would have the same form of damaging the primary objective (the doors or Rabsovich) to result in enemy spawns, that have to be dealt with in order to continue. I actually like this a lot. It allows the players to push their limit by making the decision: should we damage the boss more to take more Dredge at once (making the encounter faster) or should we play it safe? Therefore, maybe Dredge should spawn more often (like all 1/16 life) but in smaller groups.
Associated Problems
- Some players might have the opinion that the Rabsovich fight makes the Fractal worth their while, since it awards with a lot of loot. Though this might be an arguable position from a game perspective (it is like “at least I’m paid for this struggle!”), I think it is a valid one. The change will reduce the amount of loot in the Fractal significantly.
- Since you can not run away from Rabsovich in order to fight the Dredge in a more save environment (unlike the doors, Rabsovich would reset his health), the amount of spawning Dredges has to be adjusted. Might be less of a problem when the Dredge spawn in small groups. But…
- If the Dredge spawn often, players will have to kill Dredge while avoiding to hit Rabsovich (or else the Dredge will overrun them). It might be a nice addition as it can give crowd-control skills a moment to shine (by separating Rabsovich from the other Dredge). However, it might be too much for a non-boss-fight.
Using fractals to tell story:
Proposal Overview
Fractals should be used to tell as more about the lore/history of Tyria.
Goal of Proposal
Increase the amount of lore used for the fractals and creating new fractals which story and background informations. This is such a good oppertunity to tell us about things that happende before GW2, things that could happen in the future, things of an alternate version of Tyria.
Proposal Functionality
Existing fractals:
I think the fractals should have some more story, like what is this underwater fractal thing, what happened in this strange rata-sum version, is it ascalon we are over-running? It would be great if we got some more informations about them while doing them, either by getting more informations from Dessa or by some writings found in them or NPCs you could talk to.
New fractals:
- There could be fractals which tell us about events that happened between GW1 and GW2
- Fractals that tell us about things that happened even before GW1
- Fractals telling alternate versions of history: I would especially love to see a fractal where we help Shiro to kill the Emporer (still a great fan of Shiro
)
- Fractals about a possible future: Everything is overrun by Scarlet (sorry, I just had to write that here, since I like here even if so many hate her^^)
I’ll complete the list here with this examples, since I could go on about this for a long time.
Associated Risks
Of course people might not care about lore/story, making it a bit of wasted time for you devs, but I still think many would think it a nice addition and if it leads to new fractals everyone should be happy.
My top three fractal concerns:
1. Enduring Value for Local Currencies
Too many of the rewards at the fractals vendors are “Got it, I’m done now” items – several BiS options and even 20-slot bags do not have enough replay value for an environment built around a “bottomless dungeon”. Skill point tomes and Obsidian Shards help, but Fine Crafting Material boxes as seen at the Laurel vendors would create huge outlets for fractal relics. Offer +1 agony infusions & possibly Thermocatalytic Reagents directly from the vendor with Fractal Relics. Consumables is another long lasting approach, such as Fractal Slaying potions with rapidly escalating prices as the bonuses increase and something that occupies the food buff slot, giving +5 AR for a hour. These would give players more ways to expend their currency while pressing on to the highest difficulty levels. Finally, recognize that there are FIVE fractal specific currencies including the Vials, Globs, and Crystallized Mist Essences. With those last three being highly dependent on difficulty level, its possible to gate the most prestigious rewards/purchases like Fractal Weapon Skins behind a mix of fractal relics and Mist Essence, allowing low difficulty players to advance very slowly, while high difficulty players can amass sufficient “funds” in a fractal-er, fraction of the time .
2. Bragging Rights and Broader Promotion
High level fractal delvers need more choices for visual distinction. Rewards based on specific accomplishments, not RNG. Titles, armor, unique mini-pets and a second round of weapons exclusive to the greatest depths. Like Liadri, Fractal players need challenges that they can prove they’ve beaten to other player via in-game evidence rather than just making claims in chat. These players should be walking bill-boards advertising that the Fractals both exist and are something cool that all players should at least try out.
3. Reliable Release Cadence
Fractals Deserve to have a similar commitment to steady development as seen in the Living Story. Be it 4 times a year, 3 times a year, or even twice a year, set calendar dates for Fractal-oriented releases and stick to them. Build both confidence and excitement as players begin to murmur “Oooo, new wave of fractals coming up, I wonder what it’ll be this time?” Use the release to both polish existing fractals and tune the support mechanisms along with the center-stage offering of additional scenarios and/or new difficulty bands opening up.
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Proposal Overview
Offer more lore specific fractals that have a more defined narrative such as events out of the original Guild Wars series or events in-between GW1 and GW2.
Goal of Proposal
While I find many of the fractals mysterious and entertaining, I always wish I knew more about them, where they fit in history (if they even happened at all). I believe that players would be more willing to run fractals if they got to experience a vignette in Tyria’s (the world) history. Things like the Ascalonian Fractal, Thaumanova Reactor, Aetherblade Retreat, and Molten Facility do just that. They sell nostalgia or just a very interesting story.
Proposal Functionality
I imagine it as something akin to the Bonus Mission Pack from the original games. Small but important chapters of lore with a narrator (probably Dessa). Of course, these stories would have to be built around a five-person team rather than a solo experience.
Associated Risks
New fractals would mean that new art, voice/sound, and design assets and resources would have to be created and diverted to the project.
Associated Risks
I see no risk in making the changes above.
Somewhere, a Game-Design Faerie shrieks and falls down dead every time someone says ‘these changes are risk-free’ .
The pressure plates_ – we know how the puzzle is intended to be done, but due to the endlessly respawning dredge and not being able to dodge while standing on a pressure plate the final room is unnecessarily sensitive to errors (more than would be reasonable). Suggestion: make the pressure plates in the last room significantly larger so that you could dodge on them without making the console reset.
While I agree with your sentiment on the Bomb and Clown-Car fights, I’ll point out that the Pressure Plate battle is one of the few places in the entire game where glass-cannons are not rewarded out of all proportion with any other build. It’s not that the fight is hard per se, but that the encounter actually calls for 2 characters to be able to withstand a bit of a beating without relying on dodge-spam. That also makes it one of the few places where Support can make a difference. Knockbacks, interrupts, mass-Aegis, strong healing… If the enemies weren’t Drege this would also be a amazing fight for anyone with AoE blinds.
In this case I think that the fight needs to be better explained to the players (Readable sign outside the gates?) and possibly some environmental weapons added that can be picked up by the heroes who will stand on the pads that give them better tools to perform their role. Like a Big-Honkin’ Drege Riot Shield that gives you good hold-your ground-skills on buttons 1-4 (dropped by pushing button 5).
In other words don’t make it more easy, make it more fun .
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I think that fractals are an awesome way of telling additional stories:
1. I would like to see a lot more fractals
I love fractals. I was overjoyed when the new fractals were added. I have a hundred ideas of GW2 things that would make good fractals, just based on GW2 alone (not even GW1 which I didn’t play enough).
2. I think players need some degree of influence on which fractal(s) will come up
Even though I love the concept so much, I haven’t played a single fractal since the fractal patch. Why? Because while trying to finally get the Molten fractal, which happened just before server reset on the last day, I completely burnt myself out. I’m still recovering.
I get that the fractals are randomized as to not allow players to just pick the one fractal that they’re good at / that is easy / that is short and to that over and over. But for somebody who plays fractals (and repeatedly) for the story, this is frustrating, and unfortunately it will only get worse with the introduction of new fractals.
I was super super happy to get the Molten fractal – finally I’d be able to get back into my favourite dungeon. Now I feel somewhat cheated, because apparently I have to play fractals for hours each day for a chance that it will come up after 2 weeks. I don’t have the time and I’d rather not set myself up for disappointment.
A possible solution would be to do something vaguely akin to story dungeons vs. explorable dungeons: Let players choose which fractal they want to play, but in return they will get fewer rewards, or not be able to level up their fractal level, or something like that.
3. Background information about the fractals
I’m still deeply in love with the original fractals, but it irks me that 18 months later I still have no idea who/when/where/why/etc. anything to do with the Colossus/Grawl Shaman/etc. I play GW2 for the story, and that includes the fractals. I would be willing to accept that there is no lore attached to them and that they were created to look pretty and offer various mechanics and that’s that. But devs have hinted at existing lore that they’re just not ready to share with the player base, and at this point, I’m not sure whether I believe it, and I’m a bit frustrated.
_______________
You can see that my concerns are with the story / experiencing the story, and less with mechanics and rewards. No doubt, many hardcore fractal players will focus on the technical aspects in their feedback. So I think these should be noted. Thank you for reading
~ Whips ~ City Minigames ~ City Jumping Puzzles ~
Proposal Overview
Improving rewards for higher level fractals to make them on part with other areas in the game
Goal of Proposal
By increasing rewards for higher level fractals people will be encouraged to do FOTM at higher levels – one of the few places that you can go to in this game in order to do high-end PVE.
It will also reward those who’ve put in the time and effort to do high level fractal runs.
Proposal Functionality
It would work like this – bump up gold rewards for fractal tiers.
1-10 – 1 gold.
11-20 – 1.5 gold.
21-30 – 2 gold.
31-40 – 3 gold.
41-50 – 4 gold.
I think that would make it somewhat fair. A level 41+ fractal run takes a LOT longer than just rushing through AC 1+3 and I feel this sort of increase in gold reward would make things more balanced and improve FOTM’s outlook as one of the game’s more interesting activity.
One of the core questions I get from new players is : " what is gw2’s high-end PVE like" – my answer is " FOTM" – " is it hard " – " yeah it takes some time to get good at it and it’s rather fun. " is it rewarding?" – " not so much" – " then why do it?"
Pretty much sums up the issue.
I’m from Europe. I can currently afford to play bit later but I will wait till tomorrow for this update. It’s a little thing called patience. I don’t feel cheated or dissapointed. They took their time to polish the update so you all wouldn’t be kittening about bugs/lag etc.
Honestly I was thinking I ran out of things to say on this topic. Discussing it with someone else who went through similar processes with me over more realistic things (school board/system reorganization) led me to a couple things.
First. It’s important to have these going on. It’s also important to know just because something is given an “interesting idea, we’ll talk about it”, there’s no promise of action on it. I think most regular contributors on the boards and in suggestion topics are aware of this, but most irregular contributors and ‘outliers’ might not be. It needs to not be seen as a warning not to contribute and more of a disclaimer of “we’re discussing options and possibilities, not promising actions to be taken”.
Secondly. We all really need to work on getting some concise posting going on these threads so we get less “walls of text”. (Scribbles that down for a future Mesmer skill) Part of this is backing away from the “micro” side of ideas and staying with the “macro”; don’t get caught up in the details when you post unless you’re asked by the mods for elaboration. Give an outline, not a full thirty-page proposal.
Lastly. We as a community, and as concerned players, need to understand and respect boundaries. Not just of the mods, but of each other. If the topic is “CDI: Discussion of Charr Personal Story” then posting about how the latest Living Story update sucks or how Queensdale needs a nerfing isn’t on topic. A mod not answering that in the CDI thread isn’t shirking their duties, you’re just being an idiot by waving your hands in front of a camera. It also doesn’t help if you dredge up off-topic things the mod has said in the past, or act out about how they’re not trustworthy. That’s the boundaries we have to respect of the moderators. For each other’s boundaries? I’ll put this simply – it’s unnecessary to level personal attacks at people, or to deride their ideas as being stupid without actually explaining why you think that.
Arghore and videoboy-
Please just stop.
Thanks.
Gives Timmy an Adorable Puppy
I’m sorry, Timmy. =/
Aww. <3
Just remember – and I’m guilty of this myself on these very boards – the internet can be a toxic place. It’s easy to be angry and vindictive and snarky. (Oh man, do I love being snarky!)
We all have something invested in the CDI, and for it to be successful, we need to be better.
Most of the ArenaNet developers, even if they lurk on these threads, don’t even bother to post. It seems pretty obvious as to why. I don’t spend much time in the WvW forums, but I hear it’s especially bad over there.
If we can create a safer space here, one where everybody can speak freely without fear of personal attacks, we may start to see more devs come and chime in. The way it is now, though? With all the demands and accusations? They’d be crazy to post.
Yeah I wouldn’t enter the thread during a huge blowout if I was a dev.
I feel like this is sort of why CDI should have its own forum. For instance, at my grocery store, there is one aisle that has a “smiles for everyone” aisle. So folks can go to that aisle, with their own bags and pockets full of coupons, and get treated with a smile, while people who are in a rush can go to their own lane. I think that a CDI sub forum could have the same purpose.
And all who stood by and did nothing, who are they to criticize the sacrifices of others?
Our blood has bought their lives.
Timmyf, I feel your pain. I don’t get narky about it though, not on map chat anyway. People don’t want to see the smartarse comments my computer screen has to hear. Troll, oak, boar, and wasp are constantly being called so people only have to wait a minute or two for something to come up.
Would you like some hard cheeze with your sad whine?
Sorry but this isn’t the level of elitism is the Guild Wars 2 community. This is one group of elitists in the Guild Wars 2 community. I’ve never played an MMO that didn’t have elitists. Even Guild War 1, not a true MMO, had elitists. It’s unavoidable.
You’re right to be kitten off. But please don’t paint the entire community with one brush. I think by percentage there’s less elitism in this game than most MMOs. You just got dealt a bad hand.
I hope so. I suppose you don’t really notice it until you’re the one being kicked. I have seen elitists in many FOTM parties that I let slide because it didn’t happen to me. I have seen members kick other members over gear issue and I didn’t do anything because I wanted to stay in the party.
You’re usually best of joining a guild of like minded people and running with them. It’s much better than pugging anyway, at least for me.
There are horror stories of elitism in every game I’ve ever played, but far less here than in most. That’s because the game is designed to be less competitive. There’s no DPS meters, so no one can look at your DPS and say you haven’t done your job. There’s no gear score to exclude you up front. Some people say the achievement point leaderboard is a step in that direction, but if so it’s a baby step. I’m pretty sure Anet isn’t trying to design a game that fosters elitism.
I’ve seen LFG’s demanding 3500+ Achievement points before the leaderboards… I guess it escaped their little brains that someone could have easily got all their points from salvaging junk.
I have 4000 achievo points and haven’t even touched a dungeon :-)
Having said that, given the OP comments I wouldn’t even consider anything he requires as something to consider in a group. Time taken to finish a dungeon? Equipped gear? Character Class? Who gives a toss.. my only requirement is to perhaps be somewhere around the right level for the content, and to enjoy playing the game.
I don’t even care if we couldn’t finish a dungeon/mission. Maybe that’s why I love this game so…