Guild Wars 2

Kaineng has been in a really interesting position for the past several months. We don’t have a lot of players, but the ones that we do have are quite skillful (imho). When we get dropped to the bottom of the ladder (T8) we usually do very well. So well, sometimes, that we get bumped up to T7 or occasionally clear up to T6. Then we meet the issues with population imbalance.

It comes down to this: We need more players!

The players who are in Kaineng are extremely dedicated and highly skilled at WvW. We have quite a few “pugs” who don’t run with a big guild group, but will drop everything to jump in and help. On Kaineng, everyone does everything. Nobody is above escorting yaks, or upgrading camps, or dropping 10g+ to siege up our last remaining keep.

We are fighters. We are survivors.

We are Kaineng.

My name is Dietere and I love Guild Wars 2. I think you have done some amazing things, one of which includes creating an MMO that my spouse doesn’t hate me for playing! Thank you for what you have done with this game!

I want to speak with you about the current state of World vs. World. Now I know you have been receiving a lot of complaints lately, and many of them are probably justified. Players have been frustrated for quite some time now with the way this game mode has been handled. I’m not going to repeat the complaints, as I am hopeful that someone on your end is reading them. We players tend to get pretty fired up over some of the things that we are experiencing, but it’s only because we see so much potential in this game mode and we really want it to succeed.

For the most part, I believe that your World vs. World players are very dedicated. Week after week, matchup after matchup, we keep heading to the Mists to fight for our worlds, stomp some players, and slap a few yaks. We understand that the rewards aren’t on-par with other game modes; we accept it. We have discussed ad nauseum the issues with balance, and we understand that there are no simple answers. We love that there was a response to our questions about reporting suspected hackers, though we are still yearning for a solution. Despite the various issues that some of us may have with World vs. World, we keep coming back for more. I would go as far as to say that we are among the most dedicated players that you have.

We love you, ArenaNet. Sometimes, though, we don’t like the way you treat us. We understand your “vow of silence” in regards to what you are working on. The ground-breaking things you are trying to accomplish with this game should not be subject to strict deadlines and unfair player expectations. If we never hear anything from you, though, we get frustrated. We have so many unanswered questions.

All that I ask, ArenaNet, is that you let us know that you are there. Show us a sign that you are hearing our voices. Give us a little /wave now and again in the forums. Allow us to see you running around in our Borderlands. Let us know that there is a team actively working on addressing our concerns (or that there isn’t, if that’s the case). Help us see the light at the end of the tunnel before it’s too late.

We need to know that our favorite game mode, World vs. World, has not been forgotten. Many players believe that it has.

We love you ArenaNet.

Talk to us.

Do you feel like your WvW guild has what it takes to be among the best, but you don’t have a chance to shine because of the massive blobs in the upper tiers? Well do I have a solution for you! Come to Kaineng where your guild will have all the time and space you could ever dream of to hone your skills and become the WvW allstars that you know you can be! Train your guild, rally the pugs, and Pv that D, all the while knowing that you are helping our small but dedicated forces. Be all that you know you can by coming to Kaineng today!

Just wanted to say that I think it’s really impressive what you’ve done to build your world!

With love and respect,
Kaineng

Just dropped in to remind everyone that Kaineng is in a perfect position for your WvW guild! Want to be respected and revered by all the other Bronze league worlds? Bring your guild to Kaineng and show em how it’s done! No queues, amazing pugs, Ajax Blue, and more could all be yours if you came over to Kaineng! We’ll be waiting for you! Mouth breathers unite!

Seems nobody wants to report their numbers. Oh well, it was worth a try.

PLEASE DELETE THIS THREAD!

There has been a lot of talk about population imbalances lately, and a lot of solutions have been proposed. This isn’t about that.

Give an estimate of how many active WvW players/commanders/guilds you think your world has. I guess I would define “active” as someone who spends time in WvW (not EotM) at least every other day, commanders who tag up more than once a week, or guilds who do runs more than once per week. I suggest the following format:

World: Kaineng
Active Players: ~30-40
Active Commanders: 5-8
Active WvW Guilds: 2-3

If you disagree with the numbers for your server, just post what you think.

I’m really just interested to see what other worlds are working with. I see people complaining about their BL being dead, but I wonder what their definition of “dead” really is.

*Edit: I know this might seem a bit “revealing” or like you are giving up too much info about your server, but with the current imbalances it really couldn’t make much of a difference. I just thought it would be cool to get some idea of numbers.

Kaineng is in need of your help! We have had several large WvW guilds transfer out recently and our remaining troops are in need of reinforcements! We need existing Kaineng players to rally together and bring us back to glory!

Sacred Nectar [SN] is one of the largest guilds in Kaineng WvW right now and we are committed to our server. If you are interested in improving the current state of WvW on Kaineng, or you are looking for a group of friendly, dedicated players, we would love to have you! All classes and skill levels are welcome!

We also have a solid PvE presence, including daily dungeons, fractals, and world boss runs with experienced players who are willing to teach! We do weekly guild missions on Sumday nights , too!

Oh yeah, and if we ever want a chance at returning to Cantha, we better make sure Kaineng is thriving first! Join the fight! Join SN!

Check out this up-and-coming server post! May be a good home for you and your buddies:

“https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/recruitment/SN-Sacred-Nectar-needs-YOU-in-Kaineng/first#post4519729”

Kaineng is in need of your help! We have had several large WvW guilds transfer out recently and our remaining troops are in need of reinforcements! We need new and existing Kaineng players to rally together and bring us back to glory!

Sacred Nectar [SN] is one of the largest guilds in Kaineng WvW right now and we are committed to our server. If you are interested in improving the current state of WvW on Kaineng, or you are looking for a group of friendly, dedicated players, we would love to have you! All classes and skill levels are welcome!

We also have a few other guilds on Kaineng who are still fighting hard out there. Any of them would be happy to have you sign up for the fight!

Oh yeah, and if we ever want a chance at returning to Cantha, we better make sure Kaineng is thriving first! Join the fight!

A few days ago I was attempting to defend the green keep in EB. They were attacking the south gate with a golem and about 20 people. We didn’t have many people defending, but we had plenty of supply. I threw down an AC about halfway down the ramp on the northern side of the gate. It was well behind range of where Meteor Shower could have hit. By the time I had run to the supply depot and back to my AC site, the golem out on the steps had already started attacking my AC with rockets. I foolishly ran up to try to build it faster than he could get it, but then he targeted me instead! Needless to say, he got my AC site down pretty fast.

I then went to the other side of the gate (south side inner) and set up another AC site just south of the mortar. The golem instantly killed that, then me, then the mortar.

Am I just completely unaware of how much range the golems have, or was I the victim of a hacker? The server we are facing is often accused of hacking, but I dont want to call anyone out until I’m sure that it wasn’t just a highly effective golem.

It has been hinted by the devs that there are still Mystic Forge recipes that have not yet been discovered and that there are clues out in the world to lead us in the right direction. This leads me to a few questions:

1. Have you (or someone you know) ever discovered a new recipe because of clues around the world? If so, please share!

2. What clues do you think you have discovered, but aren’t quite sure what to do about?

3. Could the karma vendor items with the silly little descriptions be part of the “clues” Anet has hinted about? They are Mystic Forge-able, after all. We have been tossing them in to convert them into sellable, salvageable items. Maybe there is a different reason they can be thrown in?

Digitless.6142:

I know the server matchmaking isn’t perfect and there’s ways to screw with it, like what Kaineng and Darkhaven would do, purposefully losing enough to be sent down a tier so that they would be able to have this dominate feeling while terrorizing the lower tiers with pure persistent outnumbering advantage.

I can’t speak for Darkhaven, but I can tell you that Kaineng does not tank on purpose. We occasionally get bumped up a tier and then get completely obliterated by the likes of Darkhaven and Northern Shiverpeaks. Then, because we got killed so badly, we drop back down for a few weeks. We do well enough, and then we get bumped up again and crushed. It’s just the weird place our server is in, but I can assure you that we are not fixing the matchups in any way. I’m sorry that you feel that way,; I know server rivalry can get intense sometimes.

That being said, I have also heard that Silver is the place to go. Good luck!

Stora Ge.9207:

2) Make the worst reward in a higher tier better than the best reward in a lower tier. I don’t know that people play for rewards, but those who do would be motivated to do their best rather than fall to a lower tier intentionally.

As a member of a lower tier server, I resent the fact that you think that being from a higher tiered server should give a player better rewards. I understand that you are trying to combat a problem that sounds incredibly frustrating, but if you tried playing on a low tier server for a while and you understood how much work it takes to actually complete the meta events just to qualify for any reward at all, I think you would see the issues with your proposition.

The fact that a server is even coordinated enough to tank on purpose is something that low tier servers can’t even imagine. We have limited coverage and even less coordination, never mind long-term goals like match fixing. While I agree that tanking before the tournament is shady, punishing the already struggling servers is NOT the way to fix it.

A Living World Haiku

Mysterious Vine,
And a cultivated seed.
Now it’s a pet. Darn.

Same issue. I created the exotic backpiece this morning about 1 hour before the patch. I put the backpiece and the cultivated seed into bank.

Just finished making the chaos pot, the food, and the lamp. Now stuck. Sad face.

OP also stated that they wanted at least 500 participants, and I don’t think that many have signed up yet. Maybe there is still hope!?!?

IDK if FGJ will work for AXME; their guild leader’s name is Allergic to Grapes.

Kaineng will be sad to see AXME leave, they run some great raids!

I am strongly considering getting a commander tag for WvW, but I am a bit nervous. I am on Kaineng server and we usually only have 1-2 commanders on at any given time to split between all BLs, so I feel like I would like to help out.

My main is class is thief, it’s the class I feel most competent and comfortable with. I don’t see many thief WvW commanders, though. I know that being able to survive in the midst of a heated battle is really important, which is why you tend to see war/guard commanders. I have a war and a guard, both fully leveled and equipped, but I strongly prefer thief!

I am looking for advice about commanding in general, but also more particular advice about commanding as a thief. Any and all constructive comments are greatly appreciated!

…people/quaggans trapped in the vines aren’t dead, but are in the process of becoming corrupted by Mordrometh? They will revive at some point and wreak havoc with Samurai swords and money bags!

But really, has anyone been pulled down from a vine and been confirmed as dead? Could it be part of the dragon’s corruption?

I have always used Tab. This is easy for me to reach using WASD for movement. It also works well for my other classes (war, mes, guard) since the F1 skill is the one I use most anyway.

This might be a bit of a stretch, but…

Could it have something to do with boon sharing?

Boons/conditions/AoE can only hit up to 5 targets at a time, right? And if you are in a party, and your party is standing in a huge zerg, doesn’t the game prioritize party members for boon sharing? So if you are in a party, you should theoretically get more boons than if you are solo in the zerg, so then theoretically you are doing more dps. And hasn’t it been shown that you have to contribute a certain % of damage to get the “tag” for a boss?

Again, I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but maybe being in a party → more boons → more dps → more likely to get a “tag”

My main, still a work in progress.

Just curious, is it possible that donating slightly adds to the favor bar? I haven’t donated in large quantities, so I guess it would be hard to tell.

Prob just a drunk…

Thanks for doing this! Please throw my name in the mix!

Ode to Fractals

Time for daily run.
Speed Run EXP no noob
Need more guard and war

Someone gonna roll?
Swamp for the win. Bloomhunger.
Nice DPS guys!

Cliffside is too long
To be on the second tier.
Hope we don’t get dredge.

Yes! Thaumanova!
I can solo fire room.
Why is Scarlet here?

BRB bio.
AFK before boss fight.
Can I go repair?

Let’s finish this thing!
The Molten Facility.
Scarlet potion works?

GG and GL
It was a really good run!
Time to pray for drops.

“Dear RNG god,
Please bless me with thy bounty.”
No. It’s uninfused.

Oh, the rings, the rings!
They fill my bags and bank slots.
Please let us salvage!

Lots of work without
Much reward. It’s so unfair!
Be back tomorrow.

TL;DR
Fractals may not be
The most rewarding to do,
But they are worth it.

So all those whites, blues, and greens that I salvage immediately will all get unlocked? My wardrobe is gonna fill up quickly!

Ok I got it. Thanks!

At what point does a skin become unlocked in the wardrobe? Do you need to equip it (soulbind/account bind), or is simply having it in your inventory enough?

I would guess equipping it would be necessary, but I don’t remember how it was going to become unlocked.

I was just noticing this last night. A couple of times I could have sworn that I heard “For Great Justice!” when I used “Hold the Line,” but maybe I was just perfectly synced with the warrior in my party? Still, I never heard the voice for “Hold the Line.”

Question: will the Megaserver system fix the issues with instance holders in dungeons/fractals?

My apologies if this has already been discussed or answered.

Question: will the Megaserver system fix the issues with instance holders in dungeons/fractals?

Last night I joined an already-in-progress Fractals 49. They advertised that they were “2nd fractal at boss.” I joined up, entered the instance, helped kill the boss (cliffside final boss) and we moved to the third fractal (grawl). As soon as we entered he third fractal, the instance host (from JQ) logged out to repair armor (we assumed). We cleared the first set of mobs, all the while everyone kept talking in chat about how we needed to wait for the 5th guy to come back and not to kick him because he was the host. He must have D/Ced cause he wouldn’t respond to anything we said. We ran down and did the middle boss and ran to the final boss and decided to try to 4-man. We failed a couple of times, and as we were trying a third time, the afk guy dropped party. The instance, however, stayed open! There were several WTFs in chat, and after we wiped for the third time we realized that the instance was now held in Kaineng (only I was from that server) instead of JQ as it was at first! We invited a 5th, completed the run, and went on our way.

So the question remains: did they fix the instance holder issue, or was this just a freak occurance?

The other day I was running a fractals 49 and I learned something new. We got Molten Boss Fractal for our final one and one of the players in my party (all PUGs) said to clear “enraged” from the Firestorm. I had never heard of this, but since the run had been extremely smooth so far I figured I’d play along.

As we fought the final bosses, this player would call out every time the Firestorm had the “enraged” buff. We would then focus all attacks on him for a short time until the buff was removed (50 stacks = 50 hits) and then we went back to killing the Berserker. I wasn’t entirely sure what the buff actually did, but I was noticing how all of our HP stayed rather high during the whole fight, and it seemed to be going very smoothly.

Before I knew it, we had finished off the Berserker and we were working on the Firestorm! No wipes, not even any downs during the first phase! I got an uninfused ring for my efforts, but that’s a whole different topic…

Anyway, I was curious about this buff and its removal as part of the fight mechanics. I’ve done somewhere around 550 full runs (PRL 50), and I had never heard of it! It turns out that it is nothing new, it’s on the wiki and is apparently common knowledge. In case you are like me (an unknowing noob), this is what I learned:

“Every time one of the bosses loses 25% health, the other one will become Enraged, significantly increasing the rate at which he uses his skills and consequently his damage output.” – from http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Molten_Boss_Fractal

I felt pretty dumb upon realizing this, as I consider myself to be a fairly experienced fractal runner. I thought I knew all of the currently used strategies, but clearly I’m mistaken. So this new experience got me thinking:

What other tips and/or strategies are there for fractals that I’m unaware of?

Please share, if you’re willing, your FTW tips that make fractals just little bit smoother. I’m not talking about exploits, safe spots, or stacking (nothing against those, I just don’t wanna start a flame war about the morality/legality of using those things). I just want to learn more about my favorite game mode! If you have something to share, please do!

p.s. Look me up in game if you ever want to run some fractals!

AsteriskCGY.5931:

Why don’t these things have an indicator where they land?

They do. It’s a dead body.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Dietere.3476:

Asia Skyly.7198:

Any chance that they are retroactive to unopened boxes?

You have the self control to leave boxes unopened!?! Very impressive!

Probably not retroactive though, unfortunately.

When the boxes have crap stats, yes. Honestly there is only one type of box I care for: Zojjas’s. Every other box is crap. I believe my guard has a Valkyrie scepter, which is close enough.

What are you supposed to do with Magi, Settler, Dire, etc. Boxes?

Good point. Funny to think, though, about having too many ascended chests! #firstworldfractalsproblems

I’ve never tried, but I assume that you can’t salvage ascended armor? What if they allowed this so you could pull the inscriptions off and then sell them, kind of like how you can salvage the account bound exotic armor that drops now? For example: yesterday I got medium Armageddon legs dropped that I can’t use. I salvaged them with a BL Kit and got the inscription (dire I think?) and sold it on TP for like 4g. Very good return for an otherwise worthless reward.

TL;DR

Make ascended armor salvageable so we can make worthless rewards useful/profitable.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Any chance that they are retroactive to unopened boxes?

You have the self control to leave boxes unopened!?! Very impressive!

Probably not retroactive though, unfortunately.

Is there a database somewhere for players to input their reward chest drops? It would be nice to get some numbers about drop rates. Just wishful thinking I guess, I’m not tech-savvy enough to set something like this up.

Also, do these improved drop rates only apply to the final reward chest (the bouncy one)? Can ascended weapons and armor drop for the other chests, or from mobs?

Flissy.4093:

That is why I don’t PUG, look at all the un-nourished players. Not to mention Signet of Air at level 49, ooft! What an ele.

He was a gem.

To be fair, the food had run out because we sat around waiting to decide what to do about the glitched-out boss.

But yes, such ele, much drama.

Spoj The Second.7680:

No there is no way sigils or food could of done it because you cant hit jademaw with regular attacks. It requires the use of projectile finishers and dark fields when standing in a certain place.

Well I’m stumped then! Here’s a screen shot so you can see the boss, party setup, etc.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Well I have no idea then. You couldnt of done it without a thief or necro. And I honestly have no idea how you had enough crystals without killing all the colossi and getting jade maw to 2nd phase.

Would weapon sigils do it? Maybe someone in my party had on one of those, or some food or something?

I was really surprised when I noticed how low its health was after just a short time. I also didn’t think that enough crystals could drop during the 1st phase.

I don’t want people misunderstanding me: I’m not looking for some sort of compensation, as it is sounding like this was a glitch and possibly even an exploit by someone on my team. I just wanted to know if this was something that others had experienced, or if anyone knew why this would have happened. I’m still upset that I got screwed out of my first 49 run, but now at least I kinda know why.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Theres no way you could do it unintentionally. Either you are lying or your teammates were sat behind maw abusing it and you were unaware of what they were doing. What classes did you have in the run?

As I said before, I was not aware that this bug existed before this run. My team was 1 war, 2 guards, 1 ele, and 1 Mesmer (me). If my team knew about the glitch, they didn’t say anything about it in party chat. They all seemed equally confused when the glitch happened. One guy said that he had heard of the glitch before, but nobody said anything about lifesteal.

Teammates were not behaving strangely during the fight, or at least nobody was doing anything that drew my attention.

Flissy.4093:

I don’t believe for a moment you didn’t exploit to kill him before colossus phase was over. Why? Because not enough Crystals will have spawned to do that.

You (or more accurately your team) likely abused the lifesteal glitch, hiding it, and deserve no reward for doing so.

I was not aware that there was a lifesteal glitch, but that would explain it. As I said before, I’ve done an awful lot of fractal runs and I’ve never experienced this before. If there is a glitch with life stealing, it is possible that one (or more) of my team members had some life stealing sigils on, and that would account for the glitch.

Even so, if this is a known issue then I hope they take a look at it for the next patch, cause I’ve never been so frustrated with this game as last night. I just recently spent the money getting enough AR to finally run in the 40s, and on my first time doing a 49 I have this happen!?!

Either way, thanks for the replies, even if Flissy was a bit over-aggressive

Spirit of full disclosure: I have already posted this in the bugs forum, and also already submitted a ticket. I want to see if the dungeon community has experienced this before.

Tonight I ran Fractals of the Mists Level 49. We had Swamp -> Cliffside -> Thaumanova -> Jade Maw. We got to the maw and starting fighting as normal. We realized that we were on our way to killing the boss before the colossus stage was over (not sure if that is normal or not, never experienced it before [486 fractal runs completed]). We did kill the boss before colossus phase was over. We got the skull target things for the final death ray, but he never used the death ray. We waited for about a minute until it became clear that the chests weren’t going to drop. The boss was at 0% health, but his head was still visible.

We thought maybe it was bugged, so we tried a mass-suicide off the ledge to hopefully reset it. We all died, respawned, and ran back down to the battlefield. We got the agony check, but nothing else happened. There were 2 tentacles left alive, so we tried getting killed by them and resetting again, but that didn’t work either. We then went and killed both of the remaining tentacles, but still nothing.

After about 20 minutes we finally called it quits. I submitted a ticket immediately after leaving the fractal, but of course I haven’t heard back yet.

Screenshot was taken as soon as we realized it was bugged.

Should I include the part about how I’m not happy about this?

-First run of the day, hadn’t received any reward chests at any level if fractals in over 48 hours.
-No exploits, cheats, or skips were used for the whole run

Tonight I ran Fractals of the Mists Level 49. We had Swamp -> Cliffside -> Thaumanova -> Jade Maw. We got to the maw and starting fighting as normal. We realized that we were on our way to killing the boss before the colossus stage was over (not sure if that is normal or not, never experienced it before [486 fractal runs completed]). We did kill the boss before colossus phase was over. We got the skull target things for the final death ray, but he never used the death ray. We waited for about a minute until it became clear that the chests weren’t going to drop. The boss was at 0% health, but his head was still visible.

We thought maybe it was bugged, so we tried a mass-suicide off the ledge to hopefully reset it. We all died, respawned, and ran back down to the battlefield. We got the agony check, but nothing else happened. There were 2 tentacles left alive, so we tried getting killed by them and resetting again, but that didn’t work either. We then went and killed both of the remaining tentacles, but still nothing.

After about 20 minutes we finally called it quits. I submitted a ticket immediately after leaving the fractal, but of course I haven’t heard back yet.

Screenshot was taken as soon as we realized it was bugged.

Should I include the part about how I’m not happy about this?

EDIT: Thought I’d add:

-First run of the day, hadn’t received any reward chests in over 48 hours.
-No exploits, cheats, or skips were used for the whole run

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

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

First, I want to stir the pot on Instabilities. It’s been brought up a few times but never really discussed. In the conceptual phase they seemed like a great way to add replayability to the Fractals. Simple math seems to concur. Even though we built roughly 90 Instabilities, we were only able to ship about 20 because QA had to test approximately 300 configurations of content. That seems like a lot of variety, but obviously there’s some problems. Admittedly, some aren’t very good and they’re sorted in a less-than-stellar manner. They might have been more appealing and/or made more sense had we been able to implement to full plan. But then again, maybe not. I’d like to know what you think. Is this a good system? Does it add to the Fractal experience? Would you rather have 30 new Instabilities or 1 new Fractal? Which ones do you like/dislike? From reading the feedback, I’ve already been gathering some assumptions:

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

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

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

Thanks in advance for reading and I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Why not have the best of both worlds: random and predictable?!

Make fractals accessible in 3 ways:

1- Time Trial this mode would have teams run only 1 fractal. The objective would be to complete as quickly and efficiently as possible. Full team wipes would end a run. Include options to add instabilities a la gambit style. This would compliment any proposed leaderboards very nicely. This would also be great for those min/max hardcore SC types.

2- Fractal Exploration this mode would be the same as it has been. 4 random fractals (well, 3+boss), same reward system, instabilities, etc. Basically, this mode is how fractals works right now.

3- Instable Fractal this mode would be a procedurally generated, very random, endless (theoretically) mode in which teams would proceed as long as they are able. It would scale up as it went along until players were no longer able to continue. Instabilities could be added every so often. As well as more mobs, or different objectives. Rewards would be based on how well the team does (mobs killed, time lasted, number of deaths, etc.). This would also compliment any leaderboards very nicely. You could even track stats like number of mobs killed, number of rezzes, etc. A bit like Black Ops zombie mode, if you will.

These modes would appeal to a wide range of players in a wide range of situations.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I can’t find it now but there was a post talking about secondary objectives and rewards for completion of said objectives.

We do this with the Grawl Shaman and I would like to see more of this in the fractals.

Essentially stretch goal objectives that add more optional difficulty but reward the players for completing the more difficult content.

The larger the sense of discovery and accomplishment the greater the overall experience in my opinion.

Chris

This reminds me of the bonus objectives from the missions on GW1, which were awesome!

In regards to the secondary objective that you cited (Grawl shaman) the rewards from the bonus chest are, in my experience, really bad. Bad enough that nobody really cares if you save all the villagers or not.

What if, instead of a quick chest, completing bonus (secondary) objectives had some effect on the loot table of the final boss chest? Maybe each completed bonus objective could add one more drop slot, or an increased % for the daily reward chest to include a skin or ascended item?

Or completing secondary objectives could even add some sort of buff (like the bloodlust buffs in WvW) that could help you through the rest if the fractal run. It could be something like positive mistlock instability, or a MF buff, or a regen, etc. This would add a boost to groups who chose to complete the objectives, but nobody would be punished for not completing them.

So to be clear, what exactly is required? The exotic version of the back piece?

JohnnySupernova.9182:

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

This sounds pretty reasonable. It satisfies the swamp rollers who can keep their guaranteed easy 1st roll, and gives better chances for everyone to not get stuck with tough a tough T3 roll. Still possible to get a bad combo (like cliffside>dredge) but less likely.

Problems would arise, however, depending on how they decide to implement the leaderboards. If we are timing a full run speed clear, it shouldn’t be left up to the RNG of which fractals you get. It would have to be fair or it wouldn’t be, you know, fair. Not that I care AT ALL about leaderboards, but I’ll fight for those who are interested.

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
-Voltaire

GoldenTruth.2853:

Dietere.3476:

Associated Risks

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

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

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

Would that really be such a bad thing? Rolling isn’t going to stop anytime soon unless some of the previously suggested changes are made, so this “reverse-rolling” wouldn’t technically be any different. It would, however, alleviate some of the fear of the T3 roll.

This way it wouldn’t be “Let’s roll swamp so we are guaranteed at least 1 easy one,” but rather “Let’s roll Aether (or whatever T3) so we are guaranteed only 1 relatively difficult one.” Sure, you might still get something like cliffside for the T2, but if you have the guarantee that you won’t have to do cliffside > dredge then it would be more tolerable.

I agree with the incentive point though. Why spend time making new T1s if people are always going to skip them? I guess that’s where the “just make swamp automatically first” argument comes from.

People are calling for more short-length fractals though. I say leave the T3s how they are, reverse the roll order (T3 comes first) and make more T2 and T1s.

Or just remove all tiers, balance all fractals to similar length/difficulty, and have an open pool of rolls for all 3 fractals like before.