1. Rewards: Past 3 times I have done fotm 50 I have gotten nothing as a drop, not even a ring. Need better rewards than the small amount of gold at the end or a way to make rewards less RnG.
2. Dredge Fractal: Needs to be changed. It’s tedious, boring, and badly designed except for the final boss.
3. Better form of progress: Some Mistlocks are broken (33, 43), while others are boring (40/50, 34, 49). Currently people are progressing by picking the easiest ones to level (why is 49 ten times easier than 43).
There was some stuff datamined that you could probably find if you searched. I don’t know too much myself but it is bad practice to post real spoilers on the forums.
Content-wise?
It will very likely end in a dungeon. The team which is doing the upcoming content is the Dragon Bash/Sky Pirates and Twilight Assault/Halloween 2013 team. As long as there isn’t a dungeon included in the rehash of LA tomorrow that really only leaves the part of the content the dungeon part of the team would do for the last patch.
It isn’t very helpful when all US servers are labeled very high population (except one labeled full) when there is a huge difference in population between a server like Tarnished Coast and one like Kaineng.
If you are US, Blackgate is the most populated (though it is full currently). I’d recommend Jade Quarry or Tarnished Coast (go TC we have toast).
Sorry, I am on EU and here there are just a few “high population” servers. my bad >.<
Yeah, wasn’t aimed at you. I actually wrote that before I read your post. They really should update the population list though so people aren’t paying the same price to transfer to two unequally populated servers.
It isn’t very helpful when all US servers are labeled very high population (except one labeled full) when there is a huge difference in population between a server like Tarnished Coast and one like Kaineng.
If you are US, Blackgate is the most populated (though it is full currently). I’d recommend Jade Quarry or Tarnished Coast (go TC we have toast).
I also agree. I’m pretty underwhelmed at this point of the lack of monster variety. Just off the top of my head let me see how many I can name:
Moa
Boar
Oakhearts
Troll
Bat
Deer
Marmox
Skale
Skelk
Drake
Barracuda
Shrimp
Shark
Jellyfish
Karka
Bad humans
Bad Asura
Bad Charr
Bad Norn
Bad Sylvari
Risen (which has a risen version of everything pretty much)
Griffon
Skritt
Hylek
Giant
Wurm
Dragon
Ghosts
Robot/Golems
Harpy
Destroyers
Dredge
Crabs
Wolves
Panthers/big cats
Gorillas
Minotaurs
Mechanized Creatures
Watchwork Creatures
Krait
Toxic krait/sylvari
Windriders
I’m tired of trying to picture each zone now, but this hits a good chunk of them. It actually seems like a long list but really it isn’t when you consider how large the world actually is.
It’s a pretty long list considering it’s just using monsters from the top of your head. I skimmed the list and immediately thought of several you were missing: spiders, imps, mosquitoes, grubs, ogres, oozes, the different types of elementals, unique dragon minions like eye of zhaitan or icebroods. There’s probably a lot more too.
I think the OPs problem is that there are a lot of mobs that are the same throughout a bunch of zones, however, overall I feel like there is a good amount of monster models.
Should be a good chance to actually get some dev responses about FotM after their prolonged silence during the Fractured patch (and hopefully help us shape future fractal improvements).
Evon’s obviously made a deal with Scarlet. That’s how he manages to smuggle in a near infinite supply of her weapons (Fused, Aetherized, Dreamthistle, Watchwork pick).
I thought it was bad enough when we learned that he was giving us illusionary armor (Pheonix Armor) which gave adventurers a false sense of protection, when in reality he was just stripping us of our dignity. Now he is not only giving us overpriced cheap armor, but he is also setting it on fire. All Scarlet has to do now is throw a little gas our way and all of LA will be up in flames.
Still a permanent map… and one of the best aesthetically designed one too.
Nope. But then I didn’t ask you, I am waiting for a Dev to respond… if it doesn’t happen or this post disappears… It probably will pop up again and again until there is an answer.
Ok, but if a dev ever does respond his answer will be pretty obvious
EotM is a new permanent map, because, you know, it really is.
As you have already said you can join a guild dedicated to killing Tequatl or just guest on to a server that has him on farm during the daily reset (I know TC kills him/has a good attempt at killing him during the daily reset encounter).
Unfortunately this isn’t even enough to defeat Teq some of the time. I’ve seen Sparkfly Fen full to capacity with an organized guild directing the action, and they failed. That simply shouldn’t be.
Although I wrote that post 3 months ago so TC doesn’t do him anymore at reset (though a few servers still do). I’ll still respond.
There are times when Teq bugs causing a champ grub or abomination to instantly down the mega-laser. This bug shouldn’t happen and it is sad that it still sometimes occurs. However, if their lose wasn’t due to a bug then either they weren’t as organized as you thought, or the people on the turrets didn’t do their job.
The content, aka the thing that is actually important, is still there. The only thing you are missing is 5 achievement points and a meaningless box that no one other than you can see. You can already say “You’ve done everything” even without a simple achievement to prove it.
If there was a five point achievement that said donate 1000 gold to ho-ho-tron would you still do it?
I thought that this mini-arc was probably the best implementation of a living world yet. There was a nice teaser giving us hints of what was to come, an opening which showed us the a vast change in landscape (though there was a lack of events), a climax made it feel like we were really invading a stronghold, and finally a conclusion which went out with a bang and changed the landscape yet again. The open world dialogue was also very well done and was a step up from previous releases.
Although my favorite part of the content is gone (the tower itself) I very much enjoyed how these patches were implemented and I hope they follow this model for future releases. Though I still have no idea why throwing a bunch of scarlet’s minion data can create something that can break a magic seal.
If they made it so it saved progress people would just spam swamp all day to level up. What would be the point of even having difficulty levels if it just results in ignoring the 13 other fractals. Especially, considering it is one of the few pieces of pve content which is somewhat difficult.
Anyway… either blow up or complexly revamp dredge, move cliffside so it can only be a long fractal, move Aetherblade so it is a medium fractal (and fix the final boss so the lasers actually hurt). That way their is less variance in the potential time it takes to run a full set of 4.
- Exotic jewels can be outfitted with upgrade jewels while ascended cannot. 1 embellished brilliant ruby is +21 power, +2% crit damage, +13 precision (in fact the only reason why the stat points are so hugely different for trinkets is because of this, however, few calculations take this into account)
- How crit/crit damage scales with power (I know you aren’t taking these into account since you want to look at just power, but this is important)
- Not the Power of the weapon, but the Weapon Strength (1045 – 1155 vs 905 – 1000) and the relation of this to the Power stat.
- Hard to read the short hand of your calculations but I think you didn’t take into account ascended armor can only have defensive infusions.
There’s probably more that I didn’t catch.
So many of these math posts are done wrong that all they do is spread the wrong info (though I couldn’t do any better) >.>
Isn’t this assuming that all your characters are wearing different types of gear (light, medium, heavy) all with different stat combinations (berserker, knights, soldier, etc.)
Terrible fractal. The only thing good about it is the final boss.
Panels: Can’t die on the panels anymore, can’t dodge the attacks or we fall off the panel, can’t even blind them. It’s doable but extremely annoying.
Cannon Room: Fine
Bomb Room: To much respawn at high levels, should just make it cannon every time.
Clowncar: Boss is boring and the clown car takes forever at high levels
Final Boss: Both are pretty interesting.
Suggestion: Start the fractal in the cannon room, have Rabsovich with a few adds around him (no clown car) even though mechanically he is a terrible fight, keep final boss, make dredge a medium length fractal.
The content as a whole is really good. I especially enjoyed the Thaumanova final boss as well as Mistlocks (although they become trivialized when you can just skip a difficult one)
However, the way some of it was implemented was bad. Specifically, the patch was released with lots of bugs, dredge fractal became even worse, Anet hyped up the Thaumanova only for it to be “lol Scarlet” and didn’t answer any of the real questions most cared about. Then there was the whole gem store armor fiasco….
Also, Sky should be just T2 (people are just going to reroll anyway), Grawl should be T2 + T3, Cliffside should be just T3, and Aetherblade should be T2.
Overall though, I do enjoy the changes to FotM and I hope it doesn’t take them another year to update it again (well, maybe I will if they keep “fixing” dredge fractal)
I had something similar happen to me as well. Finished level 30 fractal then ventured back in to complete the daily 28. Only received the level 30 chest, nothing from 28.
I chalk it up to a flub up in the game again. I assume they will patch it whenever a big enough group starts to yell.
So how exactly does one get the achievement? It’s not precisely clear. I’m assuming that one needs to get Subject 6 to 19 stacks of Overload, without hitting 20, and then killing him while he’s at 19 stacks? Can you “reset” him by letting him get to 20 and then getting him up to 19 again? Or do you only have one chance at the achievement each time you enter the Thaumanova fractal?
[s]I haven’t done it, but I read that you want him to reach exactly 20 stacks and then there can be no more attacks until block phase is over. He doesn’t explode on 20 stacks, but rather every hit after 20 stacks.
Your contradiction here alone is another example:
She didn’t master it and only knows introductory material… but knows enough to hijack a fractal?
…come on. Anyone who regularly runs FOTM knows Dessa hangs on the skin of her teeth to operate them WITH AN ENTIRE KREWE and she’s been there literally forever. If Scarlet’s hijacking fractals that makes her EVEN MORE of a Mary Sue character, just due to the unlikeliness of it. Do the Inquest have their own FOTM machines ANET just forgot to tell us about too?
Scarlet didn’t hijack the fractal, she was acting as a consultant for the inquest who were stationed at Thaumanova.
That said she is a very meh villian and I hate how Anet hyped up the fractal’s lore when they knew the cause of it was so bland (it didn’t even answer a ton of the questions).
There are Checkpoints that are unlocked based on the group’s progress, but given the short distance covered by this map, I don’t even see that being necessary.
You can only revive at a checkpoint when the entire party is dead and/or out of combat.
So, back during the cutthroat politics update, a lot of people claimed that the Abaddon fractal would be an amazing, lore enriched fractal showing the epic clash between gods.
Well surprise surprise, just as people who actually had critical thinking skills already told you there was no way a 20 minute fractal could contain even an ounce of those expectations.
Guess what the Abaddon fractal is according to the livestream?
You play as Humans (not gods) fighting more humans (I could tell this from the 1 minute preview they showed us)
Just like you play the Charr in the searing fractal.
Wait wait wait. I didn’t see the stream. Are you confirming that the entire lore of the Reactor Fractal… is based on someone “we” did, or will do? As in our interference with the Fractal research caused a rift in time, and lead to the Reactor breaking. Or is it just that we’ll play the part of the Inquest who caused the meltdown?
In either scenario, this makes the case for a Recall Election even greater. I feel so bad for Evon and his supporters right now. The Abaddon Fractal is just screaming to be built…
People are just confusing the fractals of the mist with a time travel device. From the short segment we saw we will probably just play the part of the Inquest who caused the meltdown.
/sigh
Evon would have given us some good lore with his Fractal. This livestream is additional proof to that fact.
As a fervent Gnashblade supporter you were going to say that regardless of what I told you
Unfortunately I couldn’t watch. Did they tell or show if the instability is random, or if it’s set per level.
As in, do enemies always explode on 31? or is there a revolving set of instabilities, so sometimes they may explode on 31, or sometimes it may be a different instability?
For that instability (level 39) all mobs will explode on death after a couple of seconds.
That was the only instability on that specific level (and was common throughout all level 39 fractals).
Wait wait wait. I didn’t see the stream. Are you confirming that the entire lore of the Reactor Fractal… is based on someone “we” did, or will do? As in our interference with the Fractal research caused a rift in time, and lead to the Reactor breaking. Or is it just that we’ll play the part of the Inquest who caused the meltdown?
In either scenario, this makes the case for a Recall Election even greater. I feel so bad for Evon and his supporters right now. The Abaddon Fractal is just screaming to be built…
People are just confusing the fractals of the mist with a time travel device. From the short segment we saw we will probably just play the part of the Inquest who caused the meltdown.
This amazed me. Why would they not either play a character that can take a few hits, arbitrarily buff up toughness so they can actually show us the fights, or have someone more familiar with the class play?
Who enjoys watching a black and white downed screen for 30 minutes?
I literally cringed when he killed himself with confusion spamming his heal….
They die a ton and people will say that they can’t play well (though to be honest, they are usually pretty bad).
They win without dying much and people will say the content is way to easy (especially because they are running such sub-optimal builds).
Or better yet, each one is categorized into short/medium/long and you have to get one of each. Then it’ll average it out versus having those short ones where you get swamp, snow and volcanic, and then the long one with cliffside, asura, and dredge.
That’s what they are doing this patch.
“Fractals are now weighted according to their length and difficulty. Easier fractals will always show up earlier in the run, with more difficult ones coming later.”
The issue with this is that the “long” ones are all inflated in length with artificial time gates that do nothing besides waste players’ time. They need to be rebalanced to make it 15 minutes of very engaging and dynamic content, not 15 minutes of fun content plus 30 minutes of mindless boss DPS’ing and trash slapping.
Of course don’t put a time limit like you did to Tequatl. That’d only be artificial difficulty and shouldn’t be implemented at least until they fix condi build DPS and make support much more potent.
Having a pool of short/medium/long gives them more freedom in the fractals they develop. It isn’t like the current shorter fractals are more any more engaging than the long ones. Rather than saying they should all be about 15 minutes of engaging content, they should simply be engaging content (which can then fit into whatever length slot). Not advocating that all fractals should be 30+ minutes, just that it is probably better design-wise for them to have engaging content with varying length.
Plus it becomes even more difficult to say a run should be ~15 minutes when you factor in FotM levels. Should level 50 take only 5 minutes longer than level 10.
All that said, Dredge fractal still needs a big revamp…
I have no idea whether mistlocks will actually make the content more difficult or not compared to our current fractal difficulties. I do know that about 2 months ago they datamined gambits in dungeons and found something like “if someone gets defeated they cannot rez and no one can replace them.” Something like this as a level 50 mistlock would probably prove on-par if not harder than current 80 runs since, although number-wise it would be easier, there would be zero room for mistakes.
I just think it is a bit to early to jump the gun and say that they are making the content easier. Though you are correct with the assessment that Anet so far hasn’t done a good job at making actual difficult small group content.
At scale 80, if you do not have any guardians, if someone goes down at bosses like mossman or archidiviner, there is a chance, close to 100%, that this person is going to be defeated because said bosses hits for 20k+ per autoattack which happens fairly often and hits 3 targets. So getting straight to defeated state at scale 50 would still be easier than old scale 80.
I should have clarified better. That’s “You can’t rez or replace the person for the entirety of the dungeon run.” They would still go into downed before defeated hypothetically.
This means the difference would be that after your group fails to a boss at 80 you can just fight him again, whereas, in my super evil rage inducing scenario the group would essentially need to restart the entire fractal. Not saying this will be a mistlock either, just a possibility.
They were talking about the health/damage scaling being decreased. We don’t know if the mistlocks will make up for the difficulty.
To be honest, anet still haven’t delivered anything challenging for 5 men groups. And even Liadri was quite easy, arguably.
Instabilities will probably be same artificial challenge as scaling and now you won’t be one shotted by every boss with his autoattack.
I have no idea whether mistlocks will actually make the content more difficult or not compared to our current fractal difficulties. I do know that about 2 months ago they datamined gambits in dungeons and found something like “if someone gets defeated they cannot rez and no one can replace them.” Something like this as a level 50 mistlock would probably prove on-par if not harder than current 80 runs since, although number-wise it would be easier, there would be zero room for mistakes.
I just think it is a bit to early to jump the gun and say that they are making the content easier. Though you are correct with the assessment that Anet so far hasn’t done a good job at making actual difficult small group content.
The leaderboards seem to be meant for the “hardcore gamers”
But by deleting the progress you are punishing those hardcore gamers.
The reset will favor casual players.
Where is the love for hardcore gamers?
The only thing somewhat challenging i had so far in the game was Liadri, adventure box TM… and sPvP.
I can live with not getting that much hard content.
But punishing players that invested alot of time into this game goes to far.
Giving us content that sounds great for hardcore gamers and punishing those at the same time is just crazy.
If you will continue this direction you’ll soon lose alot of those hardcore gamers.
But maybe thats what you want… So you can lower the skill laggs without getting new hardware.
I fear that new content will be too easy for hardcore players. I cannot imagine new scale 50 being more challenging than old scale 80. But we will see.
Especially because they said the difficulty curve from 1-50 is going to be lowered.
They were talking about the health/damage scaling being decreased. We don’t know if the mistlocks will make up for the difficulty.
Or better yet, each one is categorized into short/medium/long and you have to get one of each. Then it’ll average it out versus having those short ones where you get swamp, snow and volcanic, and then the long one with cliffside, asura, and dredge.
That’s what they are doing this patch.
“Fractals are now weighted according to their length and difficulty. Easier fractals will always show up earlier in the run, with more difficult ones coming later.”
We feel like our fractals dungeon is the perfect fit for this kind of “historical” experience, similar to the way the BMP worked in Gw1. Even better, it already exists and has explanations behind why these slices of time are available to discover and experience within.
In the future, you’ll see certain types of content that was part of larger story experiences be updated to work within the fractals dungeon and return there where it makes sense to do so. Of course, the specific rewards and achievements will not return since those are intended to be completed as the story unfolds, but the content itself will be used to expand out our fractals experience and serve as a place to continue to experience great (and strange) moments in history.
A significant number of casual players can’t manage to get through level 1 of the fractals.
I assume he is talking exclusively about the dungeons.
A level 1 fractal should be easier than the dungeon ever was.
She had an attack which increased in damage the further away from her you were, it was undodgeable (bad design since it had a really big tell), but not unblockable or unreflectable.
Her ranged attacks were in fact unreflectable. I checked, ans she always could attack me right through the middle of Wall of Reflection with absolutely no problem. In fact, i can’t think of a single ranged attack in this fight that was reflectable (they were either reflection-piercing, or – like cannon shots – avoided this completely by being aoe’s and not missiles).
I guess we can be thankful at least that at the time they didn’t think about aegis-ignoring abilities yet.
I specifically remember that attack being reflectable. The problem with reflecting it was that you would be teleported to her (since her attack was a teleportation bullet).
She had an attack which increased in damage the further away from her you were, it was undodgeable (bad design since it had a really big tell), but not unblockable or unreflectable.
Actually, if you dodged as she raised her pistol (not when she actually shoots), you would dodge the attack. Essentially, you avoid her aiming at you and she misses.
Ah…. I’m going to need to try this when the patch hits. Thanks for the tip.
Mai had an invisible leash, and if anybody went outside this leash she would do an invisible OHKO attack.
The thing is, she also aggroed onto a specific player and ran at that guy to attack him, So it was possible that Mai, running to player A put player B outside the leash. BOOM dead.
As a necromancer, I have no defense against OHKO except dodge (and no vigor either) and trying to dodge an attack coming from invisibility was outside my skill.
The player solution was Melee only pack n Stack guardian warrior spam. Obviously if you weren’t a warrior or Guardian, you hated Mai.
Then there was the cannon barrage between phases, which was brutal when you didn’t have defense against OHKO (only death shroud, and this was nerfed/doesnt exist anymore), no regeneration, no vigor, long cooldown access to short protection, and you were slow as hell. Seriously anet fix Necromancer in PvE dungeons.
Uh, to the best of my knowledge that isn’t true. She had an attack which increased in damage the further away from her you were, it was undodgeable (bad design since it had a really big tell), but not unblockable or unreflectable. She always did the attack to the furthest away person (so you can predict who will be shot), however, it wasn’t OHKO if you weren’t very far away (you could probably be at about 1600 range without getting extremely damaged), and even then there were some ways to stop it.
I’m not arguing she was well designed, I think mechanically she is decent, but the fight is so long and repetitive it gets extremely boring. But it isn’t like she was magically cheating somehow.
I hate Mai Trin fight, it is not a boss fight, it’s a cheating NPC mixed in with jumping puzzle and ludicruos mechanics I can not withstand. I did that dungeon once and never again bothered, that was my call and I was prevented from playing 1 dungeon because of it. Yeah it’s an irrational fobia, but it’s just as real, nothing in this game annoys me nearly as much, I will not say exactly how much because I’d get banned because of foul language, and quite rightly.
The point is: before I din’t get much enjoyment from one living story it was my call and the price I paid, now Mai Trin threatens to kick me out of fractals, a place I otherwise love.
How is it a cheating npc and what jumping puzzle mechanics are mixed into it O_o?
Still, I really hope they cut down on the cannon barrage phase, lower the number of times she enters the cannon phase, or both. Mechanics of the fight as it was during the dungeon were repetitive, and the fight took far to much time overall.
Personally, I don’t really care about being pushed down that much simply because the overall rewards, difficulty, and design (should) be better, and I really only did FotM for fun rather than progress. However, I’m only level 38 so it isn’t like I’m getting pushed down much.
Still, it is pretty easy to see why so many people are angry. They put in a lot of effort to (legitimately) get to level 50, yet get placed in the same spot as me. Because of this I do think that they should get some form of reparations, just not in terms of fractal level since that defeats the purpose of adding mistlocks at 30.
Need to complete all of them to advance a level. Otherwise, a person would just run the easiest fractal over and over and reach max level without any trouble.
