Tyr Sylvison – Warrior
Illyiah – Revenant
In recent interviews it Anet has made it sound like they don’t intend to add additional races because it is a lot of effort for little gain (although this may change since there will be a lot of time between now and expansion #2). In addition I also believe that they probably will not add a new class (3/3/3 works out well), and will instead add 2 specializations per class along with one or two completely new weapons that only these specializations can wield.
I am however somewhat worried that Anet will lay the foundations for these great ideas and never actually expand on them (looking at your guild missions, fotm, and wallet).
Although it somewhat clashes with what they originally said, the way I see it is that from the time Season 2 ended up until the expansion comes out is the total amount of time it takes to defeat(?) Mordremoth. If they completely followed the idea that in-game time equaled real time then Mordremoth could hypothetically be defeated in a single day.
Regardless, trying to sync it up to real time is messy anyway and story continuity works much better when their is only a broad sync (such as Wintersday matching Christmas).
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: GoldenTruth.2853
I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but I was somewhat expecting this since they never clarified on multiple specializations. Regardless, I’m still okay with the system overall as long as they expand on the system in future expansions. However, I’m worried they might just give up on the system part way without it realizing it’s full potential like so many other systems (Dungeons, Guild Missions, Wallet, etc)
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: GoldenTruth.2853
From what they said it sounds like the progression system will be very alt friendly. Unlocking Masteries is accountbound so once do something like unlock gliding for one character, all of your alts will have the same ability. Although we don’t know the specifics, currently the system sounds like a mix of the trait system (doing specific things unlocks points) and WvW abilities (can spend the points where you want and they are accountbound).
Need more information before I can say for sure, but based on what was shown it is extremely likely that I will be purchasing it.
It’s broken and, according to Anet, will not be fixed this Wintersday. Please try again in 2015.
Where did you find Anet saying they won’t fix it? They aren’t going to add something that’s broken and walk away not fixing it.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Toypocalypse-and-Parties/first#post4629767
Sorry, get over it. That’s all I can tell you because that’s all they tell us.
But, I do have an alternative: If you want to do Wintersday-esque activities with your friends, do the Infinirarium over and over, or play a different game.
You and the OP are talking about two different problems. He is talking about the non-intentional bug of joining a map which has already finished the mini-game.
Time to do the dailies now: 0-10 minutes.
Time to do the dailies after update: 10-30-… minutes.You’ve been able to do your current dailies in less than 60 seconds, AND have traveled to the future and know how long the new dailies will take…
Color me impressed.
Well, you see, as a time wizard, one can not only travel forward and backwards through time, but also compress time so that one can complete minutes worth of dailies in seconds.
Chronomancer confirmed?
In all seriousness though, these changes seem fine to me and overall, seem like an improvement over the current system. However, I’ll wait until the patch is actually out to form a real opinion on it since plenty of times when Anet plans to do something it sound good on paper, but the execution is lacking.
Time to do the dailies now: 0-10 minutes.
Time to do the dailies after update: 10-30-… minutes.
You’ve been able to do your current dailies in less than 60 seconds, AND have traveled to the future and know how long the new dailies will take…
Color me impressed.
Sounds like a very good change overall. Hopefully it will actually be executed well since the last time they reworked dailies it sounded good but they became a lot worse.
Main points of concern are:
- How many laurels will we get each month? If this number gets decreased too much it will greatly effect ascended accessory acquisition methods.
- Is the daily cap raised to account for the daily/monthly combination?
- How many different dailies are in each category? Based on the picture there are 4 per category which could be fairly annoying to do if you only want to play one type of content (especially since the tasks are so specific now).
- How good are the daily rewards (should probably be fine even if they are minor since we didn’t get much for them anyway)?
If these issues are addressed then this sounds like a very welcome change and a very good improvement to the current daily system.
I really hope Anet is working on a an expansion because this years update schedule has been extremely lackluster compared to last years.
Anyway, enjoy Winter Break.
Excellent jumping puzzle.
The JP itself was very easy, but I loved how it utilized the entire map and had plenty of cool vistas (the only thing I didn’t like was the trial and error ending). What I liked most was that even though the puzzle itself is easy, some of those gold medallions are placed in very tricky areas creating optional moderate- very hard mini JPs.
The major problem is getting used to using them, which is usually always the big issue with transforms being used on the player. Personally, if Caithe was this powerful years ago, I’m curious as to why she needed our help at all though the earlier parts of the game…It just annoys me more that she sucks so much as an NPC.
Because it wouldn’t be much of a game if the NPCs were as OP as lore paints them to be O_o
It’s pretty annoying but here are my tips:
1. Do the achievement for doing the mission in challenge mode 1st. This will get you used to the wind walls.
2. When earth elementals die they leave a sand pool. In the beginning when you are only fighting 1 elemental at a time drag him to a corner of the map and melee him until about ~30%. Then use skill 8 to give him conditions and run away right when he is about to die. Make sure to face away from sand pools so you can use your heal effectively. The boss sometimes creates sand pools when you are in melee range, so use your elite when his shield is down and use skill 5. Repeat until he spawns 2 elementals at a time.
3. When 2 elementals spawn drag them to a corner and use skill 5. Stop using the skill just prior to their death, use skill 8, and run out of there. When the bosses armor is down use your elite to stealth and just use skill #1 on him (backstab in stealth).
Even doing it this way is pretty tough, but this was the most effective way I found.
IMO both Season 1 and Season 2 have good and bad points.
Season 2’s story is far superior and the overall quality is better (and they were actually permanent). However, all the patches feel the same (new area + story instances) and there are extremely common breaks.
Season 1 had a much worse story and had a bunch of bugs. However, because there were 4 different teams (which lead to the disjointed story) the patches all felt very different, making it feel like there was always something different to do. In addition they could actually keep up the 2 week cadence.
Overall, I liked Season 1 more because, even if it wasn’t permanent they were able to pump out enough patches that there was always something new to do, and the patches actually had some variety to them (dungeons, megabosses, mini-zones, holidays, etc).
I’ve wondered this for a long time as well. I figured it would be out of beta when they finally added WvW to it.
Simple solution is to have it so there are 2 different commander tags; one for WvW other for PvE.
The WvW commander tag could be purchased for 100 World Ability Points. This would make it so WvW commanders would need to have at least a general knowledge of WvW (unlike badges of honor, or even worse, gold). This also provides disincentive if you don’t plan on leading in WvW since you would be wasting 100 World Ability Points better spent elsewhere. This tag would be characterbound since it is tied to each character’s unique WvW ability track.
The PvE commander tag could either be purchasable a variety of ways such as 300 gold, 200 guild commendations, 1 million karma, 10k achievement points, etc, as long as there is more than one way to get it via PvE. The PvE tag would also need to be accountbound.
Anet would then issue a refund to all players, while removing commander tags from everyone. This is because exclusively WvW commanders won’t care about the PvE commander tag.
All tags would have the ability to change colors on the fly, simply because the purpose of changing colors isn’t a status symbol for having gold, but as a means of organizing the population.
Only problem I see with this is that rather than being a nonsensical gold sink, commander tags would return gold to the populace because of the refund. This would hypothetically be alleviated since the gold price of buying a PvE commander tag would still have gone up. Other than that, both WvW and PvE players should be happy.
(edited by GoldenTruth.2853)
Feels like Anet skimmed over the CDI they had about WvW eight months ago, but didn’t understand what the majority of people were actually asking for.
1. People were discussing changing the acquisition of commander tags since gold doesn’t really mean anything to in terms of commanding ability.
If I remember correctly Devon even suggested having a “Commander Line” to spend WvW ability points on. A system like that would have been perfectly acceptable for most, and you could just make it so the ones that cost gold only work in PvE, while the ones that use ability points can only be used in WvW. Then simply issue a mass refund so everyone is happy.
Yet, instead of something that actually shows that a person is willing to invest time in WvW (though I guess technically you can cheat the system with laurels), they go with nonsensically raising the amount of gold you need to spend.
2. People were discussing the ability to change the tag color to more easily coordinate groups.
No one in their right mind is going to buy multiple colors for the insane price of 300g each. The whole purpose of the tag color change was to make it so people could easily assign roles. For example, blue is the zerg, while red is havoc. Instead, we are going to just have a mass of people with ONLY blue which completely defeats the purpose of the change.
Don’t know why Anet thought that it would be a better idea to emphasize commander tags as a gold sink, rather than as a viable way to organize groups.
(edited by GoldenTruth.2853)
Same problem
Cultivated Seed was in my bank prior to LSE4 and it became a Pet Seed after the patch.
Tequatl is fine where he is. Especially since megaservers now bump up each zones population enough to actually be able to deal with him.
If anything more world bosses (or at least the dragons), need to have their difficulty increased to be on par with something like Tequatl and Marrionette.
No it won’t be.
However, it will probably return again at some point in the future
I play with warrior. If you killed her that doesn’t mean all players will be. We are very casual, not hardcore. And she needs nerf.
Why should all players be able to kill her?
She is targeted at the more hardcore audience.
Even on release day the lines weren’t very long. I think after checking all the gauntlet areas the longest I had to wait was behind 2 people. This was on a full server.
The real problems with the gauntlet were:
1. The zerg below sometimes caused skill lag for players if you were unlucky (would be solved with instancing).
2. Camera was terrible especially for large charr/norn
3. Hard to see red circles on the floor, especially for colorblind players. This was mainly a problem for Liadri. Hopefully this will be solved with the simple solution of switching over to the Marrionete/Great Wurm red circles.
4. No waypoint up top. When you died you either needed to wait for a rez (which is hard because when you die the next person in line immediately starts his fight) or run all the way back from the bottom floor.
To be honest, I actually enjoyed it not being instanced more, so I could watch other’s fight and learn their strategy. I didn’t learn Liadri’s AoE pattern until I stood outside the ring and saw someone else fight her (this was before there were any guides).
(edited by GoldenTruth.2853)
Labyrinthine Cliffs is a zone which essentially a giant jumping puzzle. A lot of people consider this their favorite living story update since their is a huge focus on exploration.
Crown Pavilion is an area that’s fairly good for farming. Personally I didn’t like it, but you can make a decent amount of gold from farming it.
Queen’s Gauntlet is a solo challenge room where you spend tickets (from Crown Pavilion) to fight against certain bosses. This is pretty much the only somewhat hardcore solo content currently in the game and I enjoyed it a lot.
The forum IP address is in Texas.
When you log into the forums it will display a login from Texas occasionally due to the connection that needs to be made to tie the forums and the login servers. This is not a bug, and not an account hijack attempt.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Constant-attempts-to-hack/first#post2834654
There’s an empty space between dungeon and world events, that needs to be filled up.. Guilds with great numbers of ppl can’t play all togeter, needs always to split for making some activities all togeter
Guild Missions?
BWAHAHAHAHAH nice one.
He said there’s no content for guilds with a large number of people. Stating that guilds can’t play together since they always need to split up. However, guild missions allow everyone in the guild to work together without splitting. They aren’t super difficult, but they still require far more coordination than the majority of dynamic events/world events and even some dungeons (and the OP never said they needed to be extremely difficult).
His, and I assume your suggestion, would still split large guilds up.
There’s an empty space between dungeon and world events, that needs to be filled up.. Guilds with great numbers of ppl can’t play all togeter, needs always to split for making some activities all togeter
Guild Missions?
Has anyone else from high population realms noticed how very dead the maps are now by comparison?
It took about half an hour for enough people to gather to be interested in doing Dwayna in the Megaserver Malchor’s I was in earlier today.
Similarly, no one on map responded to Arah Defense in a CS I was in just now. Nobody cared to help me kill the Champ at Anchorage to restart the event either – only two people responded to map chat, and too late to matter at that.
It seems like Megaserver has had a very interesting effect on those of us from higher population realms: Spreading the population too thinly across the megaserver fractals.
After exploring some low level zones and world bosses (though I admit I didn’t go to far out of my way to see the population differences) I believe this problem is exclusive to those world events not on a timer. Before, people knew when Temple bosses like Dwayna were up using API programs. Now, however, no one knows when a temple chain is about to start (and very few people are going to wait around for 3 hours to do it).
Overall, from my experiences it seems map population has increased even on the servers with a very large population.
That said, I do believe there are problems with the current Megaserver system, just that a decrease in (most) map populations isn’t one of them.
It’s from the Arah explorable dungeon, costing 390 Shards of Zhaitan.
Anet, combining PvP and PvE achievements into a single daily is fine, but, please return the total number of achievements to what it once was.
The problem with the old system was that a very small minority forced themselves to complete every single daily each day because they cared about the leaderboards. However, this issue has been resolved by placing a cap on the daily achievements.
Currently, you are harming a much larger playerbase by having people do content they don’t want to, in order to get the daily completed. Previously, I could go off and do whatever I wanted and either complete my daily or get pretty darn close. Now, if I want to finish my daily I need to go far out of my way to complete the daily.
In February you even wrote;
“Choose Your Own Daily Achievements
With our new selectable achievement system, you’ll have a chance to set new daily challenges for yourself and to choose what kind of content you want to be rewarded for playing."
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/february-2013/
I know companies can change their mind on things, and even agree with it, if it is for the betterment of the game. However, I see no benefits in limiting daily achievements so much.
In my opinion it’s fine. Sure, we lost a cheaper way to transmute level 1-79 gear, however, in the process we gained something far superior.
Transmutation charges let you more readily transfer skins (or have multiple same skins) among characters. Before if you wanted to transfer a rare skin such as the Greatsaw you would need to use a charge to turn it into an account bound weapon and then another charge to turn it into a weapon for your new character (wastes 2 charges and destroys what was most likely an exotic/ascended weapon).
Now, not only can you transfer the skin to another character in a single charge without destroying any items. You can also have an infinite amount of 1.5k gold Greatsaws (or whatever other item skin you want) spread across your alts for the price of a few gold per charge.
Transmutation charges also free up bank space and make it so you can use your living story skins without fear that you can’t re-use them.
Pretty sure people already posted it, but…
How the heck will a TTS or PSDH or any other world boss guild member be able to get to an empty enough map to accomodate the other 100+ people for the event at any time, even when triggered as a mission? If maps are always being kept relatively filled, it means that, unlike previously when you could mass-guest to a low-pop server, there’ll always be an unremovable dead weight in the map doing anything but what the raid members want.
“Bravo” for calling people you don’t know “unremovable dead weight.” News: not every random player is an idiot who must by necessity ruin your meta world events just by being there. Some despicable attitude right there.
Most probably you’ll be able to accommodate your 100+ “leet” friends on the map there anyway. That’s what has been announced at least, as far as I understand it. The few remaining players won’t affect your run, and may indeed even be helpful if you just opened your mind about other people other than your friends being perfectly capable to play, adapt, and do well (of course, in your mind only your friends and guildies are good enough for you-everyone else must suck and won’t be “carrying their weight.”)
Pretty sure he means people not doing the event. Wurm pretty much requires a completely maxed out server and everyone to be on the boss. If 20 people are off leveling or doing other stuff chances are you won’t win. Not to mention a single person not in teamspeak can easily mess up phase 2 for everyone.
Haven’t read most of this thread. Here’s the main problems and potential solutions I see…
1. Boss Schedule
Personally I think having them appear/having the event chain start at specific times is fine, most were already pretty much like that. However, there should be boss overlaps. Having a megaserver means you can fill up these events even if they are split up between multiple bosses. As is, the schedule is just limiting people to kill very specific bosses over and over when they can only log on at a certain time.
Potential Problems: Less of a chance to be paired with your friends/server.
2. Hard-Core Bosses
Karka Queen shouldn’t be on the list for hard-core bosses and the two real hard-core bosses should be far more frequent than once every 3 hours. A lot of the hard-core boss killing guilds are comprised of many people from different servers making the guild merit way obsolete. Since they spawn so infrequently a ton of people are going to be trying to get into the same server at the same time, and it’s already hard enough to get into the overflows for these guilds now. Therefore, they should spawn once at least every 4 hours.
Potential Problems: It’s better for unorganized masses to keep the spawn as once every 8 hours since they will all come at once during the very limited spawns.
3. Waypoints
People shouldn’t have to pay twice to go somewhere they want. Make it so waypointing to other places in the same zone is free (like in the main cities).
Potential Problems: Still 2x loading screens. Loss of minor gold sink.
4. Dungeons
You can’t tell when they are open or closed and can’t easily join one that’s open even if there is one. Should just make it so you can enter the dungeon regardless of the event chains (but the waypoint stays contested so you need to run through).
Potential Problems: No consequences for certain event chains.
5. Orr Temples
Temples will lose their connectivity between zones, you wont be able to reliably kill/use the temples you want. In my opinion you should just keep Orr server based.
Potential problems: Low numbers on certain servers, confusing for people since there is a sudden switch from mega-server to home server.
You play April 2nd.
Main purpose of daily achievements is to have people logging in every day. Not sure why they would put a cap on something that would take away a major part of that incentive.
Then again, the majority of people won’t hit the cap for a very long time and Anet could increase the incentive for running dailies during that time.
Regardless, I don’t think this is a horrible change, but it isn’t a very smart one either.
As chrono said the purpose of the marionette was to test and improve the aether cannon (fairly certain a NPC said this, but I forget who). The green version of the aether cannon (seen in Battle for LA patch) had a noticeably faster firing rate than the normal red version. Though I’m not sure why they were even using the red version at all during the Escape from LA patch, especially considering the cutscene used the improved version.
Except… no, it wasn’t confirmed.
If I remember correctly the best way to do it is to not even jump, but to simply run off the correct side.
Still, it’s a terrible dive since you need to work your way to the top of a incredibly unforgiving jumping puzzle every time you fail.
I find that over time Anet has tended to increased the difficulty of their content;
Specifically the OP mentioned a move towards zergs and group events rather than individual challenge which is the context of his argument. Individually you don’t matter in world boss events, the challenge is organising a mindless zerg which again, isn’t what he’s talking about but what you seem to be. WvW which he also mentions can come down to individual performance but really depends on what your doing there.
Dungeons are challenging but not Hrouda’s? Atherblades is maybe what your referring to but even then.
EDIT: And my information points specifically to Hrouda’s involvement in the Gauntlet, but w/e feel free to link your source.
As I said he was part of the team that worked on Queen’s Jubilee. However, it isn’t like every single person on the team works on every single part of the patch (people building the environment working on the boss mechanics). On his facebook comment he mentioned he was sad the last thing he made was a instance rather than an epic dungeon. If I had to guess then yes, he probably did work on some of the bosses, but that doesn’t mean he was the only one or was the driving force behind something like Liadri.
The AC revamp was good, but it definitely wasn’t hard. Past dungeons are all pretty bare bones mechanic-wise (especially HotW and CM). There is a reason why a many previous players criticize GW2 for having bad dungeons. The best on release dungeon in my opinion is CoE while the best boss is Lupicus (but we don’t know how much of a role Hrouda played in these bosses).
Molten facility was fairly easy, but that’s mainly because the damage wasn’t tuned right. The Molten Champs easily rival Lupicus in terms of mechanics when tuned at high level fractals.
Aetherblade Retreat is kind of the opposite. Was fairly hard when it was released. Now Frizz is pretty easy since the laser only really does agony damage. If they increased the damage on the laser it would another very well designed fight. Mai Trin is pretty meh, but still better designed than a ton of on release bosses.
TA Aether is simply well made (except for all the dialogue you can’t skip). It requires fairly high coordination and all bosses are pretty good.
Thaumanova is easy. The final boss is well made, but the scaling makes it seem just as easy at level 10 as level 50 (the one hiccup in difficulty).
A lot of the on release dungeons were only deemed “hard” because of high hp, high damage attacks. Over time this difficulty has seemingly changed to more mechanics-driven dungeons.
Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.
I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?
Chris
Rewards>>Dredge>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Rolling
Queen’s Jubilee was done great, there was content for zerging, and challenge arenas for those who wanted it.
Dear Nick,
I understand your feelings and feel exactly the same. WvW is about the only current content I care for and things like the Queens Gauntlet is about the only update where I actually felt excited and challenged HOWEVER.
There is a difference and that is what Ive come to realise and accept. GW2 has defined itself as a mainstream game and as such dont expect more challenging content like the Queens Gauntlet.
The epitome of this was when ANet let Robert Hrouda go, who was the architect behind the Queens Gauntlet.
Feel free to visit the Dungeon section to see his last comments. You cant find them directly because they were deleted but many of those entertaining people in the dungeon thread saved it.
In any event it pretty much stated that ANet were focused on more mainstream content that could be accessed by the majority.
Even people with a lack of ability pay for gems too.
This isn’t entirely true. Hrouda was part of a whole team that worked on Queen’s Jubilee content. Based on his comments before leaving it seems like he spent a lot of time working on the story instance where you fought Scarlet, however, none of his comments seem to show how much of a role he played in the Gauntlet.
I liked him a lot mainly because he was pretty much the only Dev to talk (including to this day) on the dungeon forums, but the content he worked on was hardly challenging content; AC revamp, Swamp and Aquatic fractal, Karka Queen, Scarlet story instance.
I find that over time Anet has tended to increased the difficulty of their content; dungeons and world bosses in particular. However, in terms of content designed for solo play there really has only been Queen’s Gauntlet.
Anyway, next patch should be a dungeon so maybe that will be fun.
(edited by GoldenTruth.2853)
Associated Risks
This would probably promote some sort of “reverse-rolling” where players would roll for their T3 first to make sure they don’t get dredge, but at least then it wouldn’t be so frustrating to realize you have a fail party after already completing 2 fractals.
This is exactly what would happen. People would just roll for Aetherblade putting Grawl, Thaumanova, Dredge (and possibly Cliffside if they move that exclusively to where it belongs) in the exact same spot as Water right now.
Plus it would be even worse since Anet would have no real incentive to make future Tier 3 fractals since no one is going to run it anyway or it will just replace another fractal (like how they have no incentive to make T1 fractals now).
I think the best solution to this would be to just make tier list a rolling thing. All T1 fractals are also in T2, all T1 and T2 fractals are in T3. That way you get more variety across the board, things like Underwater become common again, and it also has the added bonus of making the not fun cliffside + dredge run a LOT less likely to happen.
Problem with this is it drastically reduces the chance you will roll any specific T3 fractals (which also decreases the incentive for Anet to make a T3 fractal) and it makes the overall difficulty of FotM much easier.
I do think the first part of your idea (including all T1 fractals to T2) would be a good idea though, since people are going to roll for swamp anyway (so only 1 fractal gets updated to the T2 roll as opposed to 2-4 to T3) and keeps Water as a possibility (though they still need to fix AR issues there).
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.
I’m just saying I think reversing the fractal tiers would cause more problems than solutions since it effectively removes a chunk of the fractals.
Currently I think the T1→T2→T3 is fine. Anet could probably find a solution to stop rolling, but Water is only one fractal and is clearly not the pinnacle of dungeon design compared to other fractals.
I feel like all they really need to do is switch some things around tier wise and make the dredge fractal more in line with the length of the other tier 3 fractals (which many people have posted solutions on).
- Cliffside: Make exclusively T3
- Aetherblade: Make it so you can get it as T2 or T3 and raise the base damage of the laser beam, it currently does almost no damage besides agony, whereas the much harder to dodge (if people ever did it the non stacking way) AoE’s in the room before do a ton more damage plus agony (should remove the agony damage).
- Dredge: Take suggestions from this CDI on how to improve it
I would be very interested in seeing Anet add two brand new T2 fractals rather than just one T3 fractal like Thaumanova though.
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).
Chris, I was wondering if you would comment on my suggestion for using Twilight Arbor Forward Up as a Fractal Shard earlier in the CDI discussion.
The dredge fractal is already a problem for most PUG groups. Is it really a good idea to add a fractal that would be even worse for them?
If you read the proposal it advised fixing the spider despawn. If you fix that, the path is perfectly fine and infinitely more fun and interesting than any of the other 3rd tier fractals and would make a great addition.
Vivenna is a challenging boss fight, but having a few skill intensive boss fights in the game wouldn’t be terrible.
I feel like people remember this path with rose colored glasses.
This path was very boring. The only decent part in my opinion was where you stealth past the bees. Vivena creates a condition AoE and goes invisible, bring condition removal or just don’t attack when you have confusion, that’s about it. Nightmare tree was even worse, just dodge when he does his shake attack and long wind up AoE attack…that’s about it. He is essentially a watered down Bloomhunger with broken spider spawns.
Most boss mechanics, particularly all those at the end tier of 3 fractals are leagues ahead of the TA bosses in terms of design, (which is understandable since they started using a different boss design tool after release).
In my opinion they should just slowly change almost all release dungeon bosses ala AC (which has decent bosses, not great, but a step above what they were). Or just nuke them and replace them with something well designed (like TA Aether but speedrunable). I’m hoping TA F/U doesn’t return as a fractal. Besides, what’s the point in making it a fractal, might as well just bring it back as a dungeon path and revamp it if they want to return that content.
If Anet makes it so you can’t reroll they need to make sure that there is a way to have the appropriate AR while underwater. Currently you lose the head slot’s AR and very few people waste time making ascended/legendary underwater weapons (10 more AR).
This could be solved, as several people have proposed, through account AR.
Seems like some other people had the same idea that I thought of at work to add an environmental weapon to the dredge fractal. Anyway to go into more specifics:
Proposal Overview
Adding an environmental weapon to the dredge fractal
Goal of Proposal
To keep dredge fractal as a fractal requiring a high amount of coordination, while adding a unique mechanic and lowering the frustration and time requirements.
Allowing groups without stealth or reflects to survive.
Proposal Functionality
At the start of the fractal there will be a dead npc with environmental weapons beside him. The environmental weapon shoots out (1200) ranged sanctuary bubble AoEs (absorbs projectiles and provides a knockback when entering AoE). The sanctuary bubble lasts 3 seconds and the spell itself has a 5 second cooldown.
This would make it so you can mitigate the damage during the pressure plate phase, potentially keeping almost everyone surrounded by a bubble if coordinated enough. During the bomb/door phase 2 people could play bubble hopscotch while the other 3 grab the bombs or burn the door. Make sure there are extra weapons placed at the checkpoints.
Associated Risks
Some people don’t like to use environmental weapons so to them the run would essentially be what it is now.
Fractal is still very long, but this sets it up so rather than feeling forced to kill everything and deal with infinite respawns you can strategically bypass constant fighting.
(edited by GoldenTruth.2853)
I wanted to voice my opinion that I am against letting you choose which fractals you roll unless it is in the form of a “Practice Mode” which lets you select a single fractal with lower rewards.
If they let you pick which fractals you would roll at the start and then give you rewards based on those choices you would essentially have two types groups forming; those that want to finish the run as fast as possible choosing only the fastest/easiest fractals, and those that want the greatest rewards choosing only the longest/hardest fractals. All the fractals in the middle would become obsolete.
Even if non-randomized fractals didn’t increase your personal level once a person hits max fotm level they would end up falling into one of these two groups.
This would in essence eliminate the point of adding new fractals, people would just pick the 8 fractals (3 regular + 1 boss) which closest match one of those two groups. Keeping the randomness in fractals helps keep it from becoming stale and makes it seem much larger.
Proposal Overview
Add a chance at previous living story items tied to specific fractals.
Goal of Proposal
Adding another reward tier for future of fractals and making less desirable/harder fractals more desirable. Allows a way for people to customize their characters with items that are no longer attainable and were tied behind limited-time RnG drops.
Proposal Functionality
At very high level fractals there is a rare chance of getting previous living story items (depending on the fractal rolled). The item would be in the bosses chest at the end of that fractal. Boss fractals would contain the more sought after rewards.
Example of standard fractal rewards:
- Molten Fractal: Chance at Azurite Orbs and Molten Berserker Tonic Recipe
- Aetherblade Fractal: Chance of the Aetherized Tonic Recipe and Oil/Crystal/Stone Recipes.
Example of boss fractal rewards:
- Molten Champs: Chance at Jetpack (if you kill Firestorm first), Chance at Mini Firestorm (if you kill Berserker first).
- Mai Trin: Chance at Monocle
Could also add items that currently don’t exist such as a chance at a Mini Colossus after completing the Colossus fractal.
Associated Risks
Lowers desirability/price of past living story items.
Puts an RnG drop inside an RnG fractal. Can solve this by making the items purchasable for a large amount of fractal relics. The purchased version should be account bound. You should only be able to buy certain items after you pass a certain personal fractal level threshold.
Topic Title: Randomize Instabilities per tiered stage at 70+
Goal: Make higher level fractals truly daunting.
Proposal Overview:
At 70+ FOTM, the instability, per fractal tier, is completely randomized.Proposal Details:
Instabilities were a great and fun addition to fractals. Unfortunately, their implementation in game has been poor. Since they were originally implemented, only a handful of players experienced the joy of doing FOTM 43 and savor its instability: Bloodlust. Currently no player I know of does FOTM 43 for fun, or even need. They simply find someone who has a higher instability unlocked and do that instead. Currently 38 and 49 are common levels to do in their tier, due to their instability minimal impact on the team.To add some flavor into fractals, the instabilities should be completely randomized at levels higher than 50. In the past, ANET listed that they already had about 20 other instabilities ready for players in levels 50+. At some point, perhaps 70+ which instability you get should be completely randomized, not per run, but per tiered fractal stage.
In this scenario a Fractal level 78 might have a different instability in swamp, a new one in Cliffside, and a completely new one in dredge.
The pool of instabilities that are applicable can also be tiered, saving some of the most difficult instabilities for FOTM 80+.
Associated Risks
Random instabilities would create havoc in the competitive arena, as two similar teams, even if they get the exact same tiered stages, could face completely different instabilities.
Wont people just do what they do now with swamp and just reroll until they get an easy Mistlock?
Edit: If you took the proposed random each fractal level this problem would be fixed. It would be a decent solution, though they really should remove some of the mistlocks if this became the case (regardless of how much you want people to die at 43 that honestly shouldn’t be a mistlock).
Other potential problems would be how the mistlocks unlock (is it 40-49 always have the same potential mistlocks? If this is the case won’t lvl 40 and lvl 49 essentially be the same difficulty(since the damage scaling difference doesn’t increase much until you reach a multiples of ten)?
You can’t easily prepare for Mistlocks beforehand. Should I bring crit gear since I’m going to have 50% less crit or should I bring Soldiers since crit is going to hurt me?
(edited by GoldenTruth.2853)
- The Marionette.
How would you possibly make a world boss encounter that required an entire map to complete into a 5 men battle? I see other ones you listed as potentially fun levels, but Marionette? Not so much.
That would be the easiest one to do since there are actual boss mechanics in the fight.
Could just make it so group fights X number of waves in a single lane then everyone gets teleported to one platform (without the time limit) to fight the champ. The other platforms could have Braham/Rox/etc solo fighting on the other platforms (but set up so they are invincible and win after your champ is killed). This would then either repeat or could go right to the next champ.
Would be harder to make Tower of Nightmares a fractal because what you would assume would be the final boss (Toxic Hybrid) does not have any real boss mechanics so they would need to make a whole new boss fight.
That said I’m hoping Marionette and Tower of Nightmares make a return as fractals.
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