Guild Wars 2

About the rolling issue that people were talking about, instead of preventing people to roll for swamp, what needs to be done is making sure that people have no interested to rolling a specific map.

So, intead of finding ways to make rolling impossible, you need to have a better balance between the fractal maps, to ensure that there won’t be a specific map way faster than the others. There’s no use trying to solve the symptom, it’s much better to solve the cause of the problem.

Solypsys.1876:

I’ve been playing fractals fairly regularly since they were initially introduced so I have a few big suggestions for that area:

High level fractals/Endgame:

• The max fractal cap (50) needs to be eliminated or changed to the highest level of fractals that you EVER want players to complete (potentially 80)
• The difficulty of higher level fractals should not come from excessive health and damage scaling but should utilize the mistlock instabilities to create the bulk of the difficulty
• The instabilities for higher level fractals should add significant difficulty for players that isn’t in the form of lengthening encounters, an example of a good one would be the instability at 35 that causes stunning lightning strikes to constantly appear around the players. The instabilities at high levels (60+) in particular need to focus around substantially crippling certain common behaviors of players.
• High level fractals should also incorporate multiple instabilities
• Most importantly high level fractals, particularly in the 60-80 range, should not have any “safe” levels E.G. fractals 36, 38, 49 with ignore-able instabilities. Groups attempting high level fractals should have to make a seasoned decision what level to run based on their group composition.
• All of these would ultimately allow for fractal leaderboards again especially if the 70-80 fractals prove to be extremely difficult

Rewards:

• The bonus gold reward needs to be increased even taking into account the increased t6/rares droprate. Currently 10-15 minute dungeons award at least 1.26 gold while a 45 minute fractal 49 (which is near perfect with no mistakes or dredge) awards about 1.4 gold I believe
• More things should be available for purchase with (pristine) relics. The only good suggestion I could think of at the moment is to allow for fractal weapon chests to be purchased for a large amount of fractal currency (I’m thinking at least 1000 relics and 20 pristine)
• Potentially consider additional currencies exclusive to high level fractals
• Fractal weapon drop rates need to be increased SLIGHTLY, fractal weapons currently carry prestige in that they are one of the few weapon sets that cant be bought with gold. As such the drop rates are a little low now, weapon skins at the 4x level should be increased from the ~5% it is now to 10-15% and skin chests added at this level at 5%. These drop rates should increase gradually until 70+ fractals nearly guarantee a skin or chest.
• Ascended rings need to be adressed, the first idea I have is to simply make them salvagable and they would potentially give orichalcum, ecto, dark matter, and mist essence (if theyre infused)
• The second ring idea is to implement significant mystic forge recipes involving rings such as: 3 infused rings of the same type plus a certain amount of mist essence will yield an ascended amulet with the same stat combo and the infusion slot determined by the type of mist essence used. This gives a use for rings and a legitimate use for mist essence. Also, you could incorporate new items bought with fractal relics into these recipes to yield different items or stats.

Other suggestions:

• The dredge fractal needs to be shortened considerably
• There are still a number of bugs that need addressed
• Please for the love of god remove “rolling,” not only is swamp my least favorite fractal but it is now impossible to get any of the other “initial” fractals such as underwater. A couple of the tier 2 fractals can be dropped to tier 1 (aetherblade hideout) and rolling needs to be eliminated

Apart from the leaderboard idea, which I am not so fond of, I agree with you on everything you suggest here

Esya.3427:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Esya.3427:

Proposal overview
Make agony resistance (AR) account wide.

While I agree there’s a problem with AR and alts, I’m not sure giving account-bound AR is the solution, as I think the problem is wider than that.

Like others have also said in this CDI (Relativity & Mr Niice on page 1, Auesis & The lost witch on page 2, Patrikan Habaton & One note chord on page 3, etc.), the problem with AR, even on one character, is the complete gear-gating it has become. Skill should be what has to be improved to progress in fractals, not AR.

Because of this reliance on AR, we now see even at the highest levels people who don’t care to dodge anymore, as they don’t take any damage from agony. What’s the point of agony then ?

I see those as two different proposals. The time gating and need of AR could still be addressed while making AR account bound. One does not exclude the other.

I agree that they’re not mutually exclusive. I just wanted to say that just making AR account-bound would not solve the whole problem. To completely solve this, you also need to change either the way agony is applied / works, or modify the AR.

[Proposal]
One way to do that would be to change some instabilities, especially level 40 and 50. Those are especially bad, as they force players to have so much AR that they don’t care anymore about agony on the following levels. With this pattern, we could also expect to get the same thing (with the same problem) on 60, 70, … when they’re released, so we should change the 40 & 50 instabilities before we come to that.
A second point that needs to be done is change a few maps about how agony is applied, to make sure that Agony never is a gear-gating system, but stay a skill-gating. So you need to make sure Agony can be evaded by skilled players. Some of the agony right now isn’t. For example, on the molten boss map, you sometimes get agony just by walking on a certain place, near the entrance of the ring.

Esya.3427:

Proposal overview
Make agony resistance (AR) account wide.

While I agree there’s a problem with AR and alts, I’m not sure giving account-bound AR is the solution, as I think the problem is wider than that.

Like others have also said in this CDI (Relativity & Mr Niice on page 1, Auesis & The lost witch on page 2, Patrikan Habaton & One note chord on page 3, etc.), the problem with AR, even on one character, is the complete gear-gating it has become. Skill should be what has to be improved to progress in fractals, not AR.

Because of this reliance on AR, we now see even at the highest levels people who don’t care to dodge anymore, as they don’t take any damage from agony. What’s the point of agony then ?

RedShipRaider.9560:

Proposal Overview
I propose that the vote-kick function be locked once the group has advanced most of the way through the instance.

While I agree with you that there’s a problem with people kicking to invite their friends at the end, I don’t think your solution is the right one. It just has too many problems which aren’t solved.
For example, if some people in your groups get disconnected or rage-quit and don’t come back, you’re just stuck with no way to replace them. Trolls or AFK would also be able to abuse this in complete impunity. To avoid that, we need some ability to kick, but we also need incentives not to do so, so that the system isn’t abused.

I’d suggest rather a long time after a kick where you can’t invite anyone else. That way, people would think twice before kicking other players, and use it only when they’re forced to do so.

Nike.2631:

timmyf.1490:

Create “Practice Mode Fractals” which allow newer players to learn the encounters one Fractal at a time, making it easier for players to get started.

timmyf.1490:

…this is the scenario I’m thinking about:
I want to train my guildmates so if they PUG and get Dredge, they know what to do.

Ahh. Ok. Still going with a second platform for a moment just so regular/veteran users can ignore it. Put a second “well” over on the second platform and when you click it you see a menu of fractals & instabilities and A GIANT WARNING THAT YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET LOOT FOR THIS RUN. Huge warning. Boldface even. Red letters if possible. Unfarmable.

That could be an easy addition, won’t be used often, but it could be nice for learning/teaching a specific map to friends, or testing fun builds/solo attempts.

Relativity.3264:

No more AR hardcaps
I’m skilled enough not to get hit. I can do a 49 with 0 AR. And yet, if I try to do a 40 with any less than 50 I’m toast. These AR hardcaps are just plain stupid. Who thought these up? If you need 55AR to finish a 40 you might as well remove all the agony from 41 to 49 since the agony will bearly tickle.

Completely agree here. What’s even worse is that now, with those hardcaps, people don’t even care to dodge anymore.
Before, even at max AR, you had to dodge on the higher levels, or you would die. If you had not enough AR, you could survive if you were skilled enough to dodge.

Now, you’re forced to have a minimum level of AR (because of insta 40 & 50), so much that you don’t take any damage from agony on the following 9 levels. So people don’t dodge, they just facetank the damage. And as you said, skill isn’t rewarded. It’s either you have the stuff, or you don’t…

Third proposal overview: More balance between fractals, as well as better rewards.
Goal of proposal
The balance issue mainly concerns the Dredge fractal. Since the beginning of fractals, more than a year ago, it was said that this map was way longer than any other. Nothing was done to change that. Players tried to find ways to make it shorter, by using many tricks, which were for most patched one after another. I’m not advocating for using exploits here, but Anet need to understand the reason those were used by most groups. First of all, the length of the map is way too long compared to other fractals. Second, some professions are almost mandatory for this one (thief for first room and bomb path). After all the changes that were made, this map is now even more of a chore than it was before. Dead people not counting on the platforms, more dredge patrols added, … And of course, the hundreds of dredge hiding in the tank of Rabsovitch…
Other maps may need a look at, but Dredge is so unbalanced that it need to be put in first priority. A few bugs are also still there (camera on grawl shaman or elemental source in svanir map for example).

For the rewards, the gold reward on a daily is a joke. Completing a level 49 gets you 1.4g. You get almost the same for completing CoF p1. In the same amount of time you do a fractal, you can do all paths on AC (5.5g) or COE (3g). High-level Fractals are supposed to be the highest difficulty dungeon. The rewards should therefore be at least on par, if not a little bit higher, than other dungeons. The gold reward for a daily fractal need to be upped quite a bit to make it interesting to do. As it is now, it’s a waste of time.

The relics are also an issue. For other dungeons, tokens can get you exotics armor or weapon. Once you no longer need those for your character, you can use your tokens to recycle those items. Therefore your tokens always have some value. For fractals, once you have your backpiece, relics have no more value for you. Same thing with the pristine relics.

Proposal Functionality
- Shorten the length of dredge map. Dividing this map in 2 different fractals could be a good option
- At higher levels, the number of dredge with Rabsovitch is way too high
- Instead of upping the gold reward by 0.1g for every 10 levels, you should up it by 1g per 10 level. (1g level 1-10, 2g level 11-20, 3g level 21-30, 4g level 31-40, 5g level 41-50). It’s a very big up, but when you compare to how much you can gain with other dungeons, like AC, that much is needed.
- Give us something to buy with relics, something that would still have some value even in the long term

Second proposal overview: Make AR less mandatory, like it was before.
Goal of proposal
The way Fractals were when it was released, it was a dungeon where players could test their skills, to progress in levels. Agony Resistance was designed to help players progress through those levels, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary. If you had enough skill and knowledge of the fights, you could complete the fractals without any AR at all. This was good ! Players should be able to progress by improving their skill, their profession mastery, …

The way Fractals are now, after Fractured, is completely different. Some fights, as well as some instabilities (40, 50 for the moment, but with this pattern we can expect to get it every 10 levels), now absolutely requires a high level of AR. So, whatever the skill of the player, if he didn’t farm enough AR or an ascended armor, he won’t be able to make it. Progressing through fractals, which before was a matter of skill of the player (as the max possible AR, 30 at the beginning, wasn’t enough if you didn’t play well enough), has now become a matter of grinding for stuff. From something that was skill-gated, it was changed with Fractured patch to a gear-gating. This is a really bad change.

This especially is a problem concerning alts. With Fractured, fractals were changed to have a account-wide level. What’s the point of this, if the required AR is now so much than you can’t use an alt on fractals anymore ? As AR wasn’t absolutely mandatory before, you could switch to another character if your main wasn’t suited to the group (too much of one profession, …). Now, it’s not possible anymore, as you can’t get that much AR on multiple characters…

Proposal Functionality
We need to get back to what fractals were, a challenge to the player skill, not to his stuff. It wouldn’t be that hard to implement. Changing 2 instabilities (40 & 50) to other ones, a few maps to tweak to make AR less mandatory (or less AR mandatory), and it would be back to being great. Players want their skill to be challenged, not their stuff.

Concerning Fractals, I think 3 big points need to be addressed. I’ll talk of the 3 points in separate posts, to avoid the “wall of text” as each of those points is different.

First proposal overview: Compensate players for the fractal level reset.
Goal of proposal
With the Fractured patch, many players saw their progression (fractal level) resetted to 30, without any kind of compensation for that loss.

This was already talked about in the Character Progression CDI, quite in detail, but without answer. I’ll therefore link the previous posts about it.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/first#post3368282

Back then, Chris told us that he would “spend some time thinking about how you feel and get back to you”. However, unless I missed it, I don’t think we got any more comment on it since.

Recap of what happened:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/38#post3391562

Proposal Functionality
Here’s a proposition of a solution by Nike:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/38#post3392129

Castaliea.3156:

I sure hope this isn’t directed towards the Ranger CDI. I don’t even know how I or anyone else is supposed to even hit the tip of the iceberg with 150 words. All this does is support the “band-aids only” design philosophy so many Rangers are worried you guys have seemingly adopted so vehemently. Do we really believe we’re going fix any real issues with a bunch of single, unfocused, suggestions(or actual fixes)? We need to sit down and discuss what we all want the Ranger to be (or at the very least what ANet wants it to be) and then how we’re going to get there and that’s going to take more than 150 words. Sorry.

Before proposing and explaining a solution, we should also talk about what we feel is the problem. Making clear to everyone what we think is the problem and why, with arguments, then propose and explain with detail a solution, need some words.
Proposing solutions without first explaining what is the problem and why, is just completely useless.

150 words is way too low to express all you’re talking about. Your first post, which contains almost nothing, is already at 129 words.
It’s impossible to express and give arguments about a problem, and then propose a solution, with such a short post.

cesmode.4257:

This means if I have the AR on a particular toon, I can play him/her without being restricted via level.

But you weren’t restricted by level, even before.
You could let other open the fractal and come with any alt you wanted, whatever the level of the alt. Even if only you had the level to open, people could come to the same map as yours to open with your level, then you could switch and take whatever character you wanted.

This change didn’t give us anything we already had. You could argue that by opening like this and playing with another character, you wouldn’t get the rewards of your high level toon. But it was easy to switch character back at the end of last map, just for the rewards. Now, we can only get the rewards for one run anyway, so no point doing it again with an alt.

Nobody gained anything with the account-bound level. People with only one leveled character lost nothing. People with multiple leveled characters lost the possibility to do multiple dailies.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Wait…. wasn’t one of the biggest complaints about fractals, previously, that it wasn’t account bound when it came to fractal level? (As such, making it not “alt friendly”)

It’s even less alt-friendly than it was before.
With the changes they made, with the required AR being much higher (as it can’t always be dodged with skill like before, and some instabilities just spam agony every 10s), you can’t come in fractals with an alt if he doesn’t have a full stuff with AR (ascended weapon or a few ascended armor pieces), which cost so much that most alts can’t have. So you can’t use alts in higher fractals anymore.

Nike.2631:

DESSA’S CHAMPIONS: FOR SERVICES RENDERED!
I posted this in the CDI, but I hope people with extraordinary Fractal Rewards Levels pre-Fractured will look at it and give feedback on if or how well it meets their needs .

Posting back my answer to it here too, then:

That would be a nice way to resolve the issues many fractal players have with the reset. Talking about your three parts now:

“Do you know who I am” is I think the easiest of all to implement, and would be really nice.

“Shinies” would need more time for the developers. It would be pretty good, and would let high level players get something to show their dedication to this area of the game. Fractal weapons were a bit doing that before, but given how RNG based they were, and the fact they can now drop at level 10, the “prestige” of fractal weapons is mostly gone, so a higher grade of the weapon could be nice.

“Level by level”: I’m pretty much against that. We don’t need more AR, we need AR to be given less of an impact in the game than what Fractured made, to get back to a system where the skill of the player is what matters, and not only his stuff.

Since Fractured, Agony on the new maps can’t always be dodged, and some instabilities, like the one every 10 levels, gives you unavoidable agony every 10s. Therefore, player skill has no impact anymore. You either have enough AR to survive, or you don’t. And those instabilities are badly placed too. You need 45 AR to survive at level 40 (50 to not take agony damage). If you have that much AR, there is no more challenge from agony for level 41 to 49… You don’t need to dodge it anymore, you just need to farm for stuff… To me, as well as many fractals players I talked to, this was a major bad change. We want our skill to be challenged as we progress in levels, not our stuff to be challenged. Which is why more AR given to us is not the answer.

Manuhell.2759:

Constructive ideas (like, how to make a good leaderboard), instead, would be useful.

I did that in my post. There’s only one way to make a good leaderboard, all the others that were discussed in the fractured subforum were no good. If this way isn’t used, it’s better to not have leaderboard, than to have a leaderboard recording wrong things (like who paid the most to get AR the fastest).

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re holding the leaderboard for now to see if we can’t decide on a better way to help differentiate people on it who are all at the same tier, other than just the first who got there specifically. Once we have decided that, we’ll need to code, test, and vet it and then update the leaderboards to reflect the new tracking.

That’s just a joke… We told you many times in the Fractured forum, before the patch went live, that the leaderboard idea was a bad one, that you’d only have a ton of people all at first place. But no one listened, no one answered us. And now you say that you can’t differentiate people on leaderboard… If you had listened to us in the first place, perhaps we could have avoided such a thing… If a leaderboard was active at the moment, it would only tell us who the richest fractal player were, those who spent hundreds of gold on infusions.

Leaderboard for fractal is a bad idea. There’s almost no way you could get it to display the best players. After the long talk on the fractured subforum, I’m convinced the only way to get a functionning leaderboard is to track the max level reached, but only if there is no cap on the level you can open. All other possibilities are wrong. Best time to complete, for example, would be dependant on which map you get. You get dredge = you lose. It would also force some team composition, don’t expect necro, engi, ranger to ever see a spot for the top groups.

timmyf.1490:

The Ellen vs Evon model would work for any number of things, by the way… the Arcane Council, for example, could plan to research ways to either 1) make crafting Ascended armor more efficiently, using less materials, or 2) develop a process to take an existing piece of Ascended armor and make a copy suitable for use by other heroes (read: alts) at a substantially lower cost than the original.

It’d be fun to see what the playerbase decides on so many of these issues.

It would be a real poll only if you don’t give rewards for the votes. We know how many people voted for Kiel just for the reduced cost on waypoints, and how many voted for Gnashblade only for his fractal…

Nike.2631:

DESSA’S CHAMPIONS: FOR SERVICES RENDERED!
This is a proposal for recognition of the creativity and skill displayed in assisting Dessa’ investigations into the Fractals of the Mist above and beyond what had at first appeared possible.

That would be a nice way to resolve the issues many fractal players have with the reset.
Talking about your three parts now:

“Do you know who I am” is I think the easiest of all to implement, and would be really nice.

“Shinies” would need more time for the developers. It would be pretty good, and would let high level players get something to show their dedication to this area of the game. Fractal weapons were a bit doing that before, but given how RNG based they were, and the fact they can now drop at level 10, the “prestige” of fractal weapons is mostly gone, so a higher grade of the weapon could be nice.

“Level by level”: I’m pretty much against that. We don’t need more AR, we need AR to be given less of an impact in the game than what Fractured made, to get back to a system where the skill of the player is what matters, and not only his stuff. See my previous post about that.

Nike.2631:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

But the required AR that was put on lvl 40 and 50, as well as some on the new maps, completely change the balance between Skill and Stuff. Those should really be thought again to get back to what fractals were, a challenge to the player skill, not to his stuff. It wouldn’t be that hard to implement. Changing 2 instabilities to other ones, a few maps to tweak to make AR less mandatory (or less AR mandatory), and it would be back to being great.

I think that may be getting a bit far afield for this thread, but I’m glad the devs will essentially be forced to read it – I agree its a thought that needs to be in their heads .

(Not knocking the importance at all, I just doubt the right Devs to act on it are following this topic line)

I don’t think it is that far from the topic. It is completely a discussion on vertical progression on stuff (AR), and how it is at the moment mandatory for progression (in fractals) while it wasn’t that much before, and how we want it to change.

Nike.2631:

I don’t think the Guildwars Devs are being huffy – signs are they just wanted to add something more rich and engaging rather than being cranky people trampled their expectations, but completely ignoring the prowess that was on display is wrong.

As I said, this is one part of the problem for fractals right now: the way the reset was handled.

There’s another one with the way AR is now handled. Instabilities can be nice to play with (there’s some balancing issue though, as some higher level instabilities are way easier than some on lower levels (49 being one of the easiest…)). But the required AR that was put on lvl 40 and 50, as well as some on the new maps, completely change the balance between Skill and Stuff. Those should really be thought again to get back to what fractals were, a challenge to the player skill, not to his stuff. It wouldn’t be that hard to implement. Changing 2 instabilities to other ones, a few maps to tweak to make AR less mandatory (or less AR mandatory), and it would be back to being great.

As I said before in this thread, before Fractures, we could dodge agonies, and had ways to go around Maw agony, AR was therefore just a way to help players when they made mistakes. You could go all the way to level 80 with less than 30 AR if you were competent enough. Player skill was the key component of progression, AR being there to help the less skilled progress too (the less skilled you were, the more AR you needed as you made mistakes more often).
It is now different, as Agony on the new maps can’t always be dodged, and some instabilities, like the one every 10 levels, gives you unavoidable agony every 10s. Therefore, player skill has no impact anymore. You either have enough AR to survive, or you don’t. And those instabilities are badly placed too. You need 45 AR to survive at level 40 (50 to not take agony damage). If you have that much AR, there is no more challenge from agony for level 41 to 49… You don’t need to dodge it anymore, you just need to farm for stuff…

To me, as well as many fractals players I talked to, this was a major bad change. We want our skill to be challenged as we progress in levels, not our stuff to be challenged. The people who finished level 50 first were not necessarily the best fractals players, they just were the richest, who spent hundreds of gold to buy AR from the TP. And when we see the time needed to craft infusions, and that you can’t upgrade them once they’re in the gear (therefore requiring the very expensive upgrade extractor from gems)…

Hope this answer your question.

Sorry about the long post, maybe a bit offtopic, but answering Nike question:

I don’t know the details, but my general scuttlebutt understanding is that it shouldn’t have been possible to get above Rank X (see, I’m so ignorant I don’t even know what the ‘intended’ cut-off even was). So some part of my usually justice-minded self thinks “Screw those exploiters. Screw them into the ground.”

I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if that’s right. But I do know that unless I really stop to consider it, that what I unthinkingly feel.

Help me understand better. You may have more allies than you think.

Back when Fractals were introduced, the dungeon was presented as an endless dungeon, where the challenge would increase as you gain access to higher levels. So, people faced this challenge, trying to go as high as possible. Back then, the maximum AR was 30, so you couldn’t survive agony at level 40+. But on every map (except Maw), you could still dodge the agony if you concentrate enough. So people looked for ways to survive Maw agony. On level 40-48, it was easy. 2 guardians who chained tome of courage with the right timing could make the team survive. After that, it became harder, and different teams used different strategies. Some continued with the “not dying” way, with multiple skills (necro death shroud to survive long enough to revive a downed guy with the rez signet, etc.), while some went to the “die and rez” way, with either rez orbs or rez by a ranger pet. This is what was called exploiting by some players. However, how do you define the exploit ? How do you know that using a chain of Tome of courage is a smart way of doing it, and using death shroud to survive long enough to do a rez signet is not a smart thing, but an exploit ?

People continued that way all the way to 80. Then, after finishing level 80, they saw that they couldn’t open a level 81 fractal. So it was asked directly in the forum (dungeon section) if it was a bug, or if a cap was intended. This was never answered, until, more than a month later, a patch was made to put a hard cap at fractal level 50. Fractals over 50 could still be opened, but the agony on Maw was upped (around 200k per tick) so that nobody could survive it, and agony was reapplied when you rally, so the “die and rez” way was impossible too. When this change was made, Anet said they never intended for people to get this high, as they wanted people to go higher only when they would release more AR.

As it was still possible to open levels 50+, some people saw it as Anet acknowledging the possibility that players would continue to level to 80, and as no clear statement was made against that, some continued to level by only doing odd levels, therefore escaping the Maw instant-death.
Then, 10 months later, Anet puts a reset on fractal levels, bringing everyone back to 30. This was very badly received by the fractal players, as nothing was offered to compensate for our loss. For months, we were mostly ignored (no answer on many bugs, like harpies going invulnerable, or balance issue, like the dredge spawning tank), and a patch which should have been designed for fractal players was instead hitting us quite badly. Our feedback on this update, and the reset, was also ignored for almost 4 weeks, until Izzy finally said something about it in this thread.

As was said before in the Fractured subforum, as well as here, many of us can understand the developpers seeing a need to do a reset, to put the instabilities in the fractals. But seeing the level we worked for many hours over months vanishing without any form of compensation was a very big blow. And seeing how the Fractured patch changed fractals was another one.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Some other interesting ways we could midigate the pressure on alts is just make all ascended gear account bound it would remove some demand but it’s something we’ve discussed before.

For the love of the Six! Make this happen!!!!

This would totally motivate me to get one of each set (zerker, soldier, cleric, etc.)!!!

What would be the point ? You want to put all your gear in the bank before switching character, switch character, then go to bank get the gear back, equip it, then after finish playing put the gear back in bank ? And this, everytime you switch to an alt ? And then, while you log-in in a hurry, you discover your character naked, because you forgot the stuff on another character…

Account bound stuff would not help at all for alts. It’s so tedious to switch the gear from one character to another that’s it’s a practical impossibility, for anyone who really plays his alts (and therefore can switch between them often).
If it was just for changing your main character to another, it could be useful. For stuffing alt, absolutely not.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Some of the debate your leading into is time gating vs skill gating which is pretty tricky skill gating is important for a game but it drives a lot of people away. I actually think we need to add more skill gating but skill gating progression I think leaves some really strong imbalances and leads to really nitch hard core user base. This is why skill gating into horizontal progression rewards is good because this can allow people to do hard things but doesn’t require people to do it. This is why ascended armor is designed to be achievable by anyone just takes time to so.

About skill gating, you had it perfectly with fractals before. You needed skill to progress through the levels, especially at the higher levels. For the people who had a bit more trouble, the AR stat was helping them progress anyway.

So you had the skilled players, progressing fast through the levels, because they didn’t really need the AR, by dodging the dangerous attacks, but other players could still progress. You could view AR as a stat complementing the player skill, to compensate for the mistakes the player was making. So if a player did few mistakes, he didn’t need to much AR (just enough to not die if he was shot once), while someone else would have needed more (because if you make mistake after mistake, you can’t let your life go down too much or you won’t be able to bring it back up). But everyone was still able to discover and play all the maps, so if some couldn’t go high in fractal level, it wasn’t really that bad for them.
The skill of the player was the major component of the ability to progress, with the stuff (AR) being there as a safety net to help in case of errors.

With the new instabilities, especially the level 40 and 50, it is completely different now. AR is not helping players compensate for their mistakes anymore, it is completely mandatory. If you don’t have enough AR, you die, whatever the skill you have.
Therefore, the key component for progression is now the stuff, and not the skill anymore.

This was a bad change for the progression. Players don’t have to try to improve their gameplay anymore, they just need to farm and farm to get their AR to the required level. Character progression should be about trying to improve your abilities as a player, not just grinding for stuff.

FeveredDreamer.2693:

Aren’t fractals pretty much content created just for those who like vertical progression though? Time and other forms of gating are somewhat standard in vertical progression based games (raid timers etc), so isn’t this really the sort of thing you should be totally into if you’re into fractals?

Please read the rest of my post

Gulesave.5073:

I, for one, refuse to pretend that working toward ascended weapons and armor is mandatory to enjoy the game. In fact, I dare say that I find them to be quite optional! Thus, I find this time-gating and other hullabaloo to be quite fine and fair, thank you very much.

I can see your point, but this gear is mandatory for fractal players, as some of the new agony can’t be dodged anymore, therefore you need more, which you can only get by:
- spending a lot of time and gold for infusions crafting
- spending a lot of time and gold for ascended armor crafting…

Before someone comes and say: “Fractals is for hardcore players, they need vertical progression there”, hardcore fractal players want a challenge. Fractal players want their skill to be challenged, not their stuff !

Yamiga.7863:

In the particular case of ascended crafting, I think this side-effect of the time gate is too penalizing for casual players. Allowing players to craft more than one ascended material a day if they missed it the previous days would, I think, help closing the gap in gear acquisition between casual and hardcore players. The number of materials you can carry over should of course be limited, like having a ‘memory’ only of the 7 previous days.

The achievement system suffers from the exact same problem with dailies being time-limited content, although I’m not sure the solution I proposed for ascended crafting would work for them. I’m eager to discuss this topic when the thread will move on to horizontal progression.

That’s a great idea. Don’t know if it can be implemented into the game, but if it can, it would be a nice thing for people who can’t log on everyday.

Carighan.6758:

Honestly I see that as quite balanced, though. You have multiple toons fully decked out at the end, which gives you a very very high amount of flexibility in regards to gameplay. You can always relog to a character with specialized gear and trait setup and just the fitting utility skills.

That flexibility has a cost, in that you needed to spend the time for each character.

Seems fine to me?

Depends on how alt-friendly you want the game to be.

Most games have a pretty high vertical progression, so it’s extremly hard to equip many character, therefore you have only one main character, and your other toons are alts.

Gw1, like gw2 before, wasn’t like that. Equiping a toon to BiS was quite easy (the first one required a bit of time, after that it was easy to farm the stuff for the alts). So you could switch toons to play with friends, to have a team composition that was correct.

With the introduction of ascended, gw2 is taking the path most other games are taking, and it’s kinda sad, as the versatility we had before was really nice, we could switch to a guardian if the team needed it, or stay on our dps, etc. Now, with a new tier, we’ll feel compelled to stay on our only equiped character.

This is especially true with fractals. With the fractured patch, fractal level became account based. But now, the required AR is much more than before, so I can’t use my alts there, even if I want to. Kinda bad to make, in the same patch, a change to help alts (account based level), and one making it impossible to use alts (more AR required).

Belenwyn.8674:

I have the feeling it would irritate many players to face infusions like + 30 AR/+ 30 power or WvW infusions like + 30 power/+ 20 precision/+ 2% damage against guards. I hope Arenanet can remove this sword of Damocles in the minds of the players..

Given the time needed to craft a single +30 AR infusion (see here), unless they alter it considerably, you won’t ever see a +30 infusion in your lifetime. Well, unless you live in the Highlander world, of course…

But I agree with you that it would be bad.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

’Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

The ability to change gear stats.

The ability to potentially use tokens from encounters (allowing users to work toward acquisition of Ascended Gear) that would otherwise only offer RNG chances on Ascended Gear, allowing users to work toward the items (courtesy of Nike and others)’

More ways to earn it => yes. Just yes.

Higher drop rate => drop rate at the moment is abysmal. Even if it was augmented, it would still be a “bonus” way to obtain the stuff, as you can’t be certain of getting it, nor can you be certain of getting the stats you need.

Change gear stats => This would be really usefull. But if you put it, you need the price to be correct for it. For the current prices, I’d say it would be ok to have stat changing gear. So, either reduce the price to get it (less ressource, other ways to get it, etc.), or give it stat changing.

Using tokens => to me, this is the same as the first point: other ways to obtain it. This would be for me one of the best way to make the gear purchasable.

Harbard.5738:

CONFINED VERTICAL PROGRESSION -> AWESOME

I’m with Cesmode here. The beauty of fracts is that it doesn’t gate you out of CONTENT like traditional MMOs raids do. So, if ascended only increase in stats inside fracts, people in exotics can still play the content from levels 1-10 but people that gear up like crazy still get better money, etc.

But out there in Tyria, especially WvW we’re all at exotics level, everybody is happy, the grind doesn’t have to be dealt with, the game won’t be alt unfriendly because of ascended, people won’t have issues with the tier, the game is still gonna rock and people can totally progress their stats vertically in fracts if they want, if they don’t, they can still play the content for fun, with little reward other than fun itself, at exotics level.

I think this is absolutely beautiful and simple solution for ascended as far as progression goes.

I’m really against vertical progression, even for fractals. We don’t need it, we’re not looking for gear-grinding, we’re looking for more challenging content. Gear progression has nothing to do with it.

Faowri.4159:

I think mechanics like the Black Moa Chick quest would be awesome for acquiring BiS or rarer equipment, or even components of that equipment. The BMC quest in GW1 was basically the following:

• A journal dropped from an NPC you fought if you beat her. The journal contained information about her journey to obtain the elusive black moa.
• By following the clues in the journal, you too could obtain a black moa egg and hatch it into a rare minipet.
• The activities you had to perform weren’t simply go here and collect X or hand in Y to NPC Z, but typically more involved than that. For example:
  • You had to actually find a standard moa egg first and then do special things to it in order to hatch a black moa chick from it – like visit a particular waterfall out in the world to harden it.
  • You had to build an incubator kit with materials from the open world, from collector NPCs and other various means.
  • Some of the materials were ‘fragile’, which meant you couldn’t trade or bank them or they would be ruined.
  • Some parts of the quest had you visiting isolated parts of the world, and others meant you had to go into particular combat zones and fight specific bosses (e.g. you had to get hit by a specific boss in the elite area Sorrow’s Furnace to actually hatch the moa chick).

It was a really diverse quest that would be the perfect kind of content for obtaining rare components/gear.

This is a pretty nice idea.

Xar.1387:

Do you think, that fractals cause such emotions in people like in this video below?
http://youtu.be/bMRAox_qCUU?t=11m43s
Nope.

Many people just simply want to see these emotions in GW2, and while we’ve got many good (and bad >;p) emotions in PvP, or WvWvW, then we’ve got no solid PvE at all.

The reason there’s not as much emotion is the difference of challenge.
On your video, there was only a few players alive at the end of the fight. This fight was probably really hard, and they wiped numerous times before finally being able to down it.

On Gw2, we don’t have that kind of challenging content. The hardest fights we had was fractals lvl 80, but even that was not hard enough for good groups, who could do it without problem at all.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is a crazy brainstorm idea, not in anyway indicative of our direction.

What if there was vertical progression in the Fractals with gear that increased in stats but when outside of the fractals defaulted back to BiS numbers?

I am asking this because it is going to generate some left field conversation not because I think it is or isn’t a good idea.

Chris

For what purpose or benefit would said proposition bring? Currently Fractals works very well as it is because of how it is currently set up. How would the idea improve fractals? (ie can you expand a little more on the idea?)

Well let me be devil’s advocate then and give one example. Make it easier to play through earlier fractals when playing with lower level friends.

Chris

There’s not really a need to make it easier. When you go to lower levels fractals, the difficulty is already way below what you are used to. There were times when I was called to help guildies which were stucked at a low level, and I could have pretty much solo the boss, because the fight is easier (boss has less life, less adds spawning, etc.).

Better stats as you increase your personal level would therefore make it even easier… When I go in low level, I’m already not playing to the best of my ability (there’s no need for me to concentrate that much, as almost any mistake I make will not have dramatic repercussions). Let’s say it frankly: I don’t play those levels often (only when asked to help friends), because it’s so easy it’s quite boring. Like on low-level grawl shaman, you see the adds spawning and it’s like: “what? only that ? where’s the rest of the adds ?”

That was about lower levels. Now, better stats to help you challenge higher levels. If you augment the player’s stats, you’ll need to augment the mobs stats too to get a content as challenging as before. Therefore, the player relative power is not increased, only the numbers he see. Quite pointless.

The goal I have with progressing through fractals is to go to the highest I can, to find the point where I won’t be able to go further, the limit of my abilities. I know quite a few of my friends who have the same goal. But, because of the level cap, we can’t challenge ourselves like that. That’s part of the reason for all those people trying to challenge themselves, like doing shaman naked, with only 2 people, doing archidiviner solo, etc.
If you increase the power of the players (let’s say you increase it more than the increase to mobs), you’ll need to progress through even more levels to find a challenging difficulty.

Verticallity as it was in fractals before (AR) was really good. It was something that was not absolutely needed: a very skilled player, who knew the fights, could manage by dodging, positionning. The skill-cap component to the fights was kinda high.
The main utility of AR was to be a “safety net” for those players, to enable them to recover if they made a mistake. For less skilled players, AR was a way to compensate for numerous mistakes, and to progress through fractals anyway. Their progression was at a lower pace than skilled players, because they needed more AR (making mistakes more often call for more AR to compensate).

As I said in a previous post, the change from Fractured patch changed that, and to progress now, the “skill component” required is now less than what it was, but the “stuff component” is way higher. Before, a skilled player could compensate low AR by playing really well. That is not the case anymore. If you don’t have enough AR, you can’t do it, even if you played perfectly. That’s especially true with the levels x0 instabilities. I really hate that change, which goes from the skill-gating it was before to a gear-gating.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

The problem would be the price of such items, due to the numbers of ressources required to craft it. Even if the price may lower a bit over time, it would still stay pretty high, mostly unaffordable for most players (you can look at that with John Smith data, I think he knows how many players have over XXX gold).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

If the drop rate was higher though and it wasn’t just crafted then supply could be more deterministic in terms of demand.

This is a prerequisite. If we don’t have that, putting it in TP would just favor the rich players.

As was said before, and to clarify, putting ascended items as loot (like tequatl, …) is not a solution to make them more accessible. The drop rate is so low that you can’t expect to get your weapon that way (not even counting that you’re not choosing the stats you want, like with fractals chests).

So the only way to get ascended stuff at the moment is with crafting, which needs a ton of materials, not all available everywhere. That’s the accessibility of those materials which you should make easier, as it’s the only sure way to get your weapons. All the other chests possibilities are bonuses if you’re real lucky, not something you can count on.

Part 2/2

Ascended Gear
…turns out global trading post has a lot more effect on this then we had original thought which made us need a non-tradable gear step

What is the point of putting a non-tradable, time-gated gear in the game, if the components used to craft that gear are tradable ? The day of the release of ascended, some people already had a full set, cause they bought the required component to craft it. We’re looking at around a thousand gold here, so it’s a solution only the rich players can use.

If you want progression to be meaningful for the players, you can’t let people buy their way around it. However, you also need to let everyone progress toward it. At the moment, crafting ascended gear is a chore for me. Not because of the time needed, but the components needed. I play mostly fractals, a bit of dungeons. If I want the required dragonite, I have to play a content I don’t especially like, and I have to do it, as this gear is absolutely necessary for me to continue progressing in fractals (and we’re back to the gear-gating…). So you need the required components to craft this gear to be available, regardless of the type of content we play. That is at the moment not the case. For example, you could put dragonite ore to be bought with dungeon tokens. The amount per token would have to be balanced, of course. I’m not saying that every part of the game should reward the same amount of ressources. For example, dungeons gives quite a bit of empyreal fragments. So it’s ok if it gives a bit less dragonite. But you should still be able to get dragonite from it. If not, you’re forcing players to go to an area of the game they don’t especially like.

As Chris asked also about this, rewards are a key component of progression.
Rewards should be awarded depending on the difficulty of the content. It is not the case at the moment. You can get more loot and more money for farming easy dungeons than you get for a high level fractal (in the time needed for one fractal run (which gives 1.4 gold), you can do 3 easy dungeon runs and get much more chests / gold. Let’s not even talk about killing champions or doing temple runs on the open world, with a non-existent difficulty (as there are zergs farming those champions/events)…

IceVyper described it pretty nicely here about dungeons.

Part 1/2

4. Skill Gating, not Gear Gating. FotM has the right idea – same dungeon with multiple levels of increasing difficulty and challenge, however not the right implementation. Agony is a form a gear gating, but what we really want is skill gating. For example, the Uncategorized harpies start off simple and gain knockback at level 10. That is proto-brilliant dungeon design, and would have been straight brilliant had all of FotM had been implemented like that – no increasing Agony levels, but instead increasingly difficult dungeon mechanics. That’s more work for the dev team than adding mere Agony damage, but the result is a much more interesting experience based on skill gating rather than gear gating.

I completely agree with you that the gating of content should be based on the player’s skill, not his gear.

As I said on a previous post page 3, the gear-gating on fractals was before way lower than it is now. That is because a skilled player could avoid almost every agony, even without AR. I have friends who reached the level 80 back then with only 25 AR. With the new fractals, they couldn’t even do the level 40, as the agony has become completely unavoidable. This change is going in the wrong direction, away from skill-gating and toward a full gear-gating.

The progression of AR is also completely ridiculous. The new infusions that were released can be upgraded from +1 to a maximum of +30 (datamined). What was the point of choosing such a number ? Has anyone in Anet even looked at how much time and money it would take with their system to craft such a level of AR ? If a player did 16 fractal runs per day, 7days a week, it would take him about 18 373 years to farm the required +1 infusions, for only one +30 infusion. That’s not counting the 8 millions gold to buy the reagent from the npcs… For a +20 AR infusion, it would take 18 years to farm enough +1 infusions to make 1. For a +15, it would take almost 7 months of farm (and 245 gold) to make 1 (and we need 3 of them). And we’re talking about someone who lives only for fractals for all those months/years…

So what was the point of that much gear-gating ? All it did was bringing a “pay-to-win” component. Who managed to beat the new fractal level 50, to get first on leaderboard ? The ones who paid an outragous amount of money to buy their AR, and now it’s the same with the people who paid to buy their ascended armor. Which bring me to :

The last answer on this topic, from Chris Whiteside, gives a little more hope (but let’s not get too much hope…)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Romo regarding your last post I am going to spend some time thinking about how you feel and get back to you if that’s ok?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Romo regarding your last post I am going to spend some time thinking about how you feel and get back to you if that’s ok?
Chris

Chris, it would be greatly appreciated if someone finally looked into the issue. Better late than never

I posted the threads relevant on that topic on my first post on page 1, if that can help you a bit.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Fractal Progression Reset

As we were looking at the fractal reworks we wanted to change the relative values of how hard it was to work through the fractals, because of this we wanted to bring everyone to a common starting point. We knew this was going to be controversial but we really wanted everyone to be on an even play field and once we got the feedback about it we started looking into ways we could mitigate this risk. This is a common practice we do with all releases and risks and sometimes like with this one we were not able to do anything due to time constraints and tech. It’s wasn’t our goal to devalue peoples time and effort and when reworking stuff sometimes these types of tradeoffs happen. We wanted to create a new scaling paradigm that would give us more room in the future for adding fractals and we felt the current systems was harder to scale. Our original design was for players to go past 50 but this wasn’t able to happen in time.

Let’s not argue about the reset (it’s done anyway), I can understand your point of view and why you decided it was needed.

However, the way it was handled is worse than poor. You did devalue people time and effort, by not giving any kind of compensation in exchange for the reset. And you didn’t even answered our feedback for weeks, like that feedback we were giving wasn’t even taken into account.

While we’re talking about Fractals, let’s talk about character progression there.

The way Fractals were when it was released, it was a dungeon where players could test their skills, to progress in levels. Agony Resistance was a kind of vertical progression designed to help players progress through those levels, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary. If you had enough skill and knowledge of the fights, you could complete the fractals without any AR at all. This was good ! Players should be able to progress by improving their skill, their profession mastery, …

The way Fractals are now, after Fractured, it’s completely different. Some fights, as well as some instabilities (40, 50 for the moment, but with this pattern we can expect to get it every 10 levels), now absolutely requires a high level of AR. So, whatever the skill of the player, if he didn’t farm (or buy) enough AR, he won’t be able to make it. Progressing through fractals, which before was a matter of skill of the player(as the max possible AR, 30 at the beginning, wasn’t enough if you didn’t play well enough), has now become a matter of farming / grinding for stuff.

The “leaderboards” that were to be implemented are therefore a complete joke. What they would record is not who’s the best player, but who’s the ones who spend hundreds of golds to buy their AR first (the first players who beat level 50 said they spend around 500 gold to buy their AR from the TP). And we now have the same with those buying their mats for crafting the ascended armor. Am I the only one finding this kind of recording on a leaderboard stupid ?

Before talking about character progression, horizontal or vertical, I think it would be necessary to have a word on Anet view about progression reset.

With the Fractured patch, many players saw their progression (fractal level) resetted to 30, without any kind of compensation for that loss.

Many threads were opened on the forums to talk about it. The first few got deleted, even some pretty big threads, like this one:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractal-personal-level-reset/

Another was locked here (over 850 posts):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Fractal-levels-above-30-to-be-reset/first

And finally the last one active is this one (over 1000 posts):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fractured/Merged-Fractal-level-reset-is-equity-wiped-Discuss/first

Over 2000-2500 posts were made, without any concrete answer from Anet. The only answer we got, 3 weeks ago, from a community coordinator, is that “the Developers are reading these posts and we are gathering feedback.” But not a word from those developers since.

Of course, in those 2000 posts, some were quite vindicative, especially after seeing we were completely ignored, but quite a few were also constructive, like this one from Abramelin:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Fractal-levels-above-30-to-be-reset/page/15#post3236535

So, before talking about progression, let’s talk about progression reset. Because if Anet consider it’s okay to reset a player progression without any form of compensation, why talk about progression anyway, it can be reseted at any time…

Aye.8392:

I’m okay with vertical progression in some, very limited, parts of the game — for example Fractals of the Mist and the gear required there — but in other parts of the game it is seeping in and it really needs to be stopped.

Even in Fractals, the requirement on AR they put since the fractured patch is way too high compared to what it was before (where a skilled player could compensate a lower stuff with his skill), and most of the hardcore fractals players are against that much vertical progression.

We want the player skill to be the most important component of a player progression. We don’t want the player ability (and time available) to grind and farm stuff to be the key component of progression.

The next Collaborative Development Initiative will be talking about character progression, and should begin tomorrow.
I guess our last chance to get an answer will be there, as it seems no-one from Anet will ever respond to this thread…

Speed runs would be useless with fractals, as it’s completely dependant on which maps you’ll get, and it would force people to use a very specific team composition.

The only leaderbord I could imagine working for fractals would be : highest level attained. But it ONLY works if there’s no cap on the levels which we can open…

cranked.3812:

Maybe they wanted to get an idea of how long it took people to get to and beat 50 …

How long it took to beat level 50 ? You mean how many people cared enough about the agony hardcap to throw hundreds of gold away to beat it…
The only thing stopping most people at 49 from doing 50 is the level of required AR, and most people were just waiting for ascended armor to be released to do 50 (which will be a piece of cake once you get 2 or 3 ascended pieces).

Less than 2 days before this subforum disappear, and we’re still waiting for an answer…

Guess we’ll have to open another thread again in the dungeon subforum to continue to hope to get an answer…

Well, we’re in the Living Story subforum, so in a few days this part of the forum will disappear anyway, maybe they think they can wait for this to happen and that all will be forgotten ?

I really hope that’s not the way they’ll handle it, but I’m kinda pessimistic…

For those who continue to say going over 49 was an exploit…

When they introduced the lfg tool, quite recently, they put fractals into differents scales.
- 1-9
- 10-19
- 20-39
- 40+

If going over 49 was an exploit, why did they implement “40+” and not “40-49” ?
By the way, they really should change the scales now, as saying that between 20 and 39, the difficulty “don’t scale up drastically” (like they said when they first put LFG in-game) isn’t so true anymore.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

No, it’s not. Old Fractal weapons are still weapons and as such, they need a transmutation crystal to be fused with another weapon’s stat. There are thousands of old Fractal weapons in use these days. If you were to change the item type from Weapon to Skin, it is extremely likely that it will mess up every pre-patch Fractal weapon.
Remember that they don’t just become a new item while transmuted, otherwise things like the Transmutation Splitter would not be possible in their current state..

Then don’t force the transform from weapon to skin.

Do it exactly like they did with unlimited gathering tools. You put an npc trading the old weapons for the new skins. Players will trade what they want (untransmuted ones) and there will be no problems with the already transmuted weapons.

IceVyper.6810:

I don’t think that repeated posts by the same person about “how unfair this is” is going to help the cause. Arena net said they are gathering feedback, we have given our opinions and made suggestions. They want to hear different opinions, not the same voice repeating the same thing.

Gathering feedback. They’ve been doing that for 2 weeks and a half now. When you release new patches every two weeks, you can’t expect people to wait 2 months without even a word and think it’s ok. A single post from a developper stating that they’re aware of the issue but are still discussing about it in their meetings (for example) would go a long way to make us feel less like a rejected part of the community. This has already been said quite a few times in the different threads, but we’re still waiting for a post…

By not answering at all to those threads, what they’re conveying to the community is that whatever you say, they don’t care and won’t listen. So why take the time to write your opinion (which may require some effort to people from other languages) about this, if you’re not even sure they will listen to it ?