Guild Wars 2

Proposal Overview

Improving rewards for higher level fractals to make them on part with other areas in the game

Goal of Proposal

By increasing rewards for higher level fractals people will be encouraged to do FOTM at higher levels – one of the few places that you can go to in this game in order to do high-end PVE.

It will also reward those who’ve put in the time and effort to do high level fractal runs.

Proposal Functionality

It would work like this – bump up gold rewards for fractal tiers.

1-10 – 1 gold.
11-20 – 1.5 gold.
21-30 – 2 gold.
31-40 – 3 gold.
41-50 – 4 gold.

I think that would make it somewhat fair. A level 41+ fractal run takes a LOT longer than just rushing through AC 1+3 and I feel this sort of increase in gold reward would make things more balanced and improve FOTM’s outlook as one of the game’s more interesting activity.
One of the core questions I get from new players is : " what is gw2’s high-end PVE like" – my answer is " FOTM" – " is it hard " – " yeah it takes some time to get good at it and it’s rather fun. " is it rewarding?" – " not so much" – " then why do it?"
Pretty much sums up the issue.

These aren’t the actual changes.
Remember a while ago when balance was being discussed they said they would change the passive of HS ONLY after the active is reworked to something useful. I see no active change in these patch notes.
Also – bull’s charge change? What was wrong with it? It was literally one of the few things that nobody complained about.
Why would they nerf it?

Travlane.5948:

these are just HIS suggestions. the place where he is putting his changes…shoudl be where you focus your attention. warrior needs many many….small nerfs. no other class can be the best of everything at the same time…which makes warrior OP. that is the problem. try not to focus on his changes….. the point is underlying.

focusing on his changes is like a democrat changing the topic of conversation to avoid the obvious point…..warrior = OP

Warrior is NOT best at everything.
The fact that you’re claiming this just proves how uninformed you are.

And the focus of this topic is us combating HIS changes. This is not a " warrior OP or UP " thread – this is a " I want to balance the game the way i feel like it because I feel i’m good at it " thread.
That’s what we’re discussing here. His attitude.
The whole " A-net made the game wrong but luckily i’m here to fix it because i’m a godsend to everyone " attitude is the issue. That has to go.

Swagg.9236:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

You are not fleshing out GW2. Guild Wars 2 is already fleshed out since 1 year and a half. While not everything is perfect, it works (somehow).

“Somehow working” isn’t exactly stellar. That’s why I’m here.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

You on the other hand want to change the whole gameplay. You are fleshing out your own game

GW2 is the square peg that ANet is trying to fit into the circle slot. GW2 is a strange, unique game that doesn’t necessarily play like a traditional MMO. Despite this, ANet has chosen to introduce mechanics into GW2 that clearly belong in a more traditional MMO with things like dedicated healers; or just ignore some obvious boundary rules when it comes to designing combat without a dedicated healer/damage-mitigation class present.

I’m here to help shave the edges off of the square peg.

Except you’re not realizing that perhaps the peg is square because a full round approach wouldn’t work.

I get that you have a very good opinion of yourself. I get that you feel you’re some sort of " savior " sent to balance and make the game better.

The only problem is that you’re not. The balance changes you’re proposing here are somewhere between bad and terrible with an odd improvement here and there.

You’re not trying to “fix” the game – you’re trying to make it what you feel it should be.

Yes – GW2 does blend traditional MMO traits with new ones – but if it went full on in one direction or another it would lose out part of its appeal to a greater number of players.

Example : if it were to become a trinity based traditional MMO – players like me who hate that would up and leave.
If it were to go the complete other direction and cast aside all similarities to a traditional MMO – most players who are into that would live.

Get the picture?

Also if you feel you’re so good at balancing games by all means start making one and balance away to your heart’s content.
Just leave this one be.

I doubt it’d be poorly received by anyone. More cool skins are more cool skins.

So this crazy idea just popped to mind.

We have for a long time asked for capes and the general consensus seems to be we’re not getting them because it would be hard to implement them for all races ( see charr)

So my idea is this – give us culturally themed back pieces for each race.

Humans could have capes ( finally).

Asura could have some flashy tech device ( sort of like the fractal capacitor but more tech looking).

Charr could get something like the flame and frost backpack or something similar to the new spinal blades thing.

Norn could have something like a totem maybe?

Sylvari could get something plant-like. Not sure what.

So what do you guys think? Could it work? Why/why not?

If we have cultural armor, why not have backpieces too? After all they’re something that you wear – just like armor.

I agree with the above posters here – I’m not really feeling this is the way to go.
You’re basically taking a LOT of stuff out without compensating. It would most likely kill the class.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I would like to take this moment to talk about the death of City of Heroes. CoH was my favorite MMO ever, so much that I actually shed a tear upon learning that my favorite game was being killed. Now, you may wonder why it is this game was killed. Wait… you aren’t wondering? Pay attention anyway, since I’m making a point.

There was an infamous update that changed how the game worked forever. That update was called “Issue 6”, and among its updates was a radical change and re-balancing to PVP. In particular, every single skill in PVP was changed so that the entirety of the game’s mechanics were different from PVE. How damage was handled, how buffs/debuffs were handled, how control was handled, how heals were handled, how builds were handled, all of it was rewritten from the ground up.

This ostracized the PVP players because now everything they learned and love was ousted. This also prevented new players from getting into the PVP game, since now everything they worked for didn’t work, and they had to learn a new game from scratch.

Near its end, City of Heros had no PVP scene. Literally. You could wander into PVP maps, and be the only person there. Without the competitive playerbase, players for the game tended to play in waves: they would play the new PVE content, leave for an extended period of time until there was a lot of new content to play with. This was a subscription based game, btw, so these periods of absence would mean less profit.

---

This is a very big problem with the whole “separate PVP and PVE” issue. People like to seamlessly transition from one mode to another, understanding that their auto attack will do the same damage across game types. But if you rewrite everything from either game mode, you ostracize nearly the entirety of players in that game mode.

There is a different solution that I’d like to throw on the table: instead of separating PVE and PVP, just bring them together more. Make PVE more like PVP, and this problem starts to resolve itself.

Pretty much this.

GW1 had smart AI. Some AI groups could be on par with a party of people and you’d emerge from that fight thinking " wow, that was close, but we got it – just barely but we did".

What this game needs now are encounters and areas with SMARTER AI.
Sure – the rest of the game can stay as is – the overwhelmingly negative feedback when people wipe where they used to breeze on through would be through the roof – but add SOME areas into the game that are highly challenging and highly rewarding.

I can read skill descriptions you know. It has not changed that much ( or at all) since the beta.

Also – i don’t really care about other people’s opinions.

cranos.5913:

Oh come on, you run till you’re allmost at the first boss, pop some reflects and the bombers kill themselves. Almost every PUG knows this by now and do the path often.

I’m not arguing what the skip was or how it worked – my question to you and others is this : is it better now that the dungeon path is dead?
Try getting the SE tokens you need now? – P2 and P3 aren’t getting done. So you’re stuck doing P1 for forever.

Edit : yes – it was a pipe thing – both at the start and closer to the end. Both are gone.

Dual.8953:

Harper.4173:

Also – regarding the issue of “more challenge”.

Up until recently there was a skip you could do in Sorrow’s Embrace path 3 that allowed you to circumvent a good portion of mobs and generally cut down dungeon path time by quite a lot.

People did that path – and you would frequently see groups forming for Sorrow’s P1+P3.

A few patches ago that skip has been fixed – do you know what happened?
No more P3 runs in SE. I’ve done the dungeon multiple times since then and not only have I not been able to get P3 groups together( at first i didn’t even know why), one group disbanded when they saw the skip was gone.
Nor have I seen any other P3 groups forming that I could join.

Do you know what this means? People don’t want more challenging content.

So yes – I think Anet would like their content to be skipped through by experienced players instead of it not being played at all.

Here’s a thought. If they upped the difficulty of all the dungeons, would people still do them? I’m talking all the dungeon’s brought up to the point that the average player couldn’t hope to run Glass and expect to win, all in one patch. (Personally I think the fact that everything that isn’t melee goes or damage oriented is undervalued because the game’s too easy)(Not an exploit, just way easier then it should be. The rewards there but the risk isn’t)

And why would people bother doing them if they became harder but the reward stayed the same?

I can understand doing the content 1-2 times for the challenge and for bragging rights – but why replay it?

There’s no point in doing AC in 30 minutes – you’re better off doing a champion farm or placing buy orders on the TP.

Yes – SOME people would still do them – but rarely and eventually it might even die out.
There are dungeon paths out there that people do ONCE and never go back to again ( SE P2, COF P3, Arah P4) – exactly because of the length of difficulty. Unless you put an insane of money at the end of them they’re not getting done.

The content IS hard enough – try doing dungeons with 5 inexperienced player that are undergeared. See how that goes.

You can’t make dungeons “harder” because people got better. It’s just silly.

Also – regarding the issue of “more challenge”.

Up until recently there was a skip you could do in Sorrow’s Embrace path 3 that allowed you to circumvent a good portion of mobs and generally cut down dungeon path time by quite a lot.

People did that path – and you would frequently see groups forming for Sorrow’s P1+P3.

A few patches ago that skip has been fixed – do you know what happened?
No more P3 runs in SE. I’ve done the dungeon multiple times since then and not only have I not been able to get P3 groups together( at first i didn’t even know why), one group disbanded when they saw the skip was gone.
Nor have I seen any other P3 groups forming that I could join.

Do you know what this means? People don’t want more challenging content.

So yes – I think Anet would like their content to be skipped through by experienced players instead of it not being played at all.

yayuuu.9420:

Harper.4173:

Because I need the gold. I couldn’t care less about the dungeons that I do at the moment – i’ve done them so many times I can draw them from memory complete with encounters and dialogue.
I want to go in -get the gold – get out asap. And I’m not the only one.

Do you realise, that all the materials on trading post, legendary weapons and everything that you can buy is more expensive because you can earn gold faster?
If everyone was doing it slower (for example 1 run per 30 minutes instead of 1 run per 10 minutes), there would be 1/3 of the current gold in the game and prices would be 3 times lower.

You said, that you want to get gold asap and get out of the dungeon, but is it that you want to get gold just to have high numbers in your wallet? or you want to actually buy something? The amount of time to get something is more or less constant. You can do dungeons faster, but when other players can also do it faster, the gold looses its value.

One more thing, what is the other source of gold in the game? Selling stuff to NPC? I bet that is not the source of major part of the gold in the game. Dungeons daily reward! (No, selling stuff, like exotics or sigils, on trading post is not the source of the gold, because you don’t produce more gold into the game but just move the gold from one player to another).

Me doing it or not is not going to influence the overall trend of the player base.
If you think that if you stop speedclearing others will too you are naive.

Also TP inflation doesn’t happen because of speed clears – it happens because in this game you PRODUCE gold and don’t LOSE it – except for very specific gold sinks.

The amount of time it takes to get something is NOT constant. You can dungeon speed clear easy 30 gold per day. You couldn’t do that before.
look at this : http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/31068
constant price – i can buy it faster now if i speed clear.

Victor.8327:

Harper, I did AC hundreds of times and other dungeons aswell, though I still go without stacking/exploiting or without skipping. It’s because I just like the gameplay.
If you want quick gold please buy it via gemstore. Or learn how to gain it through other methods.
If the gameplay is not to your liking there are other games out there . Exploiting the game is no excuse.

Fror, it should attack everyone, as in no stacking/exploiting combat, everyone is affected by it. Defending an exploit is useless, same as telling lies to yourself.

Hate to break it to you buddy but i’m NOT exploiting the game.
I’m just playing it in a way that is less difficult. Anet have stated this is not an exploit and skipping mobs and speed clearing is an option ANYONE is free to take.

You don’t like it? Form your own parties and just play with your own people. Stop trying to push your ideas onto other people.

Here’s a thought – if this really was exploiting – don’t you think it would have been fixed by now?

Look at the Ember farming in Cursed Shore – that was taken down VERY fast.
Other similar situations have been resolved within a week of discovery.

But the fact that no such thing has happened here for almost a year and a half from release should give you a clue as to how Anet sees this.

I’m getting tired of all the " it’s an exploit because I say it is " people.
Seriously – play however you want and leave other people alone.

never tried it – never will. Just bad.

Also – your analogy is very wrong.
I don’t want to be inststa boosted to 80 – the equivalent would be crafting to 80.

Also Anet themselves agree the game can get boring – leveling has been made easier by :

Insta level 20 scrolls.
1 level scrolls.

Espionage.3685:

Harper.4173:

…ALSO
" If you really don’t want to go through long dungeons, why do them at all?"

Because I need the gold. I couldn’t care less about the dungeons that I do at the moment – i’ve done them so many times I can draw them from memory complete with encounters and dialogue.
I want to go in -get the gold – get out asap. And I’m not the only one.

As a side question : how many hours of gametime do you have and how many times have you run AC?

I have a feeling after you’ll have done the dungeons a couple hundred times your views on this will change.

Isn’t this what fractals are for though (forgive me if I’m far off with that assumption though; never actually did any yet)? From my “very” limited understanding of them, aren’t they like mini-version variants of dungeons you should be familiar with?

Also, I’m pretty sure either fully clearing dungeons, or skipping through them 400 times will end up pretty boring either way.

As for your reasoning why you want to quickly clear dungeons; that’s like stating you should be able to insta-boost to level 80 in full exotics because you’ve leveled plenty (plenty being different for every person) of other characters to 80 in the past.

I haven’t tried making a group requesting full-clears/no stacks, mostly because I just assumed most people rather “take the easy way”. I’ve never seen any group advertised that stated no stacking and/or no skipping, so with that in mind, I didn’t really assume anyone to be interested in such a thing.

Sins.4782:

Maybe the mods are as tired of seeing the daily “skipping/stacking exploiting” thread in the dungeon forum as we are?

I honestly didn’t figure this to be a popular issue at all, mainly because… everyone seemed to of done it, without question. But I guess it’s interesting to know it is at least discussed.

I would like then to ask you to stop commenting on the content and how it’s being done considering how unfamiliar you are with both what the player base wants but also with the game, the content and how GW2 works.

phaeris.7604:

Really, want to play that game?

Aoe stun frequency warrior > all

Best mobility in game warrior > all

Highest health + highest armour warrior > all

Highest single target damage at range warrior > all

Highest invulnerability uptime warrior > all

See…i can do this all day.

You may as well type : Class who is called an Elementalist : Elementalist > All.

Warriors don’t have invulnerability. Try again.
Warriors have good mobility – true.

High armor and health – you need those because no soft damage mitigation.

And if highest single target range damage means Killshot then allow me to laugh.

Dawdler.8521:

Is there any one handed weapon that doesnt outdps two handers?

Tbh I wouldnt mind 2h having the exact same damage stats as 1+1h. Having 2 sigils is a better trade.

Warrior Axe outdamages all 2 handed warrior weapons.

Espionage.3685:

I don’t buy that argument at all. That’s like stating that everyone who wants to should use an exploit (that’s not intended for use by ArenaNet) to easily gain level 80 in an hour and get full exotics for free, and that said exploit should remain in the game because “people want to do it”.

I may be letting personal bias show, but I really don’t understand why people would want to use cheesy tactics like this. If you really don’t want to go through long dungeons, why do them at all?

If ArenaNet intentionally implemented ways to run past enemies in dungeons and stated such (just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s intentional), then I guess I don’t really have any argument… But I’m assuming it’s not intended.

Some elements would need to be re-worked. Perhaps some monsters should just have their HP/damage slightly reduced just so it isn’t as-annoying to kill them?

As for stealth, one or some enemies in a pack should have some form of stealth detection. And for an interesting twist, upon seeing a stealthed player, that enemy should throw something that both exposes the player, and binds them to that spot for a short period of time, along with alerting nearby enemies of their group to attack said player and/or the player group if nearby.

The terrain point is a bit trickier. I’m not really too sure what to suggest for this (specific examples might help). Perhaps certain exploit areas should just be blocked off, or maybe for another interesting twist, humanoid-like enemies in dungeons should be aware of such spots, and have traps placed. Maybe even put a turret to watch certain areas too.

Anet has commented on this – and they’ve been very clear.
If you want to fight the mobs – you can do that. If you want to skip the mobs – that’s fine too.
Not every mob inside that dungeon is meant or designed to be fight. You can choose to do it or not.
This is NOT an exploit.

IF they wanted us to fight every mob rooms wouldn’t open until everything in the previous room was dead.
IF they wanted us to not stack they would have made mobs lose aggro and return after a small distance. Or have crazy AOE.

These are VALID tactics not exploits. They’ve been in the game ever since launch. There have been threads like this one before.
If the devs were to agree with you they would have changed the game by now.

it IS intended.
Why?
Because fighting your way through a dungeon is a fun experience. Maybe for the first time, second or third.
But what about the 400th time? Do you still think that player has the same attitude/feeling towards the dungeon?

ALSO
" If you really don’t want to go through long dungeons, why do them at all?"

Because I need the gold. I couldn’t care less about the dungeons that I do at the moment – i’ve done them so many times I can draw them from memory complete with encounters and dialogue.
I want to go in -get the gold – get out asap. And I’m not the only one.

As a side question : how many hours of gametime do you have and how many times have you run AC?

I have a feeling after you’ll have done the dungeons a couple hundred times your views on this will change.

Espionage.3685:

Almost every dungeon I’ve ran so far (after coming back from a few week break), everyone seems to just ignore certain enemies, and LoS others with stacking (the spider queen in AC is a popular one).

Quite frankly, I find it pretty annoying and cheesy. Not to mention, really time wasting too if mistakes are made (such as one person not making it, having to run back, or somebody not stacking properly, getting downed, and causing subsequent downs and death, etc). You didn’t make it to the stack zone through waves of enemies? Either try again by yourself, leave, or get an escort (all wasting the time of those who made it through already), and lose some coin for repair bills. I’ve seen repeated partial and even full-group wipes resulting from just trying to run past enemies.

I spoke up about it on a few occasions, and nobody really cared, which really surprises me. How on earth is that better than to just kill enemies and not have to worry about them later, and even get a bit of loot, gold, and experience in the process? Is killing non-essential enemies really that detrimental?

If I had to have a suggestion to fix this, it would be to have enemies chase you down to the death; like how they do in instances on WoW (if I recall right anyway). I can understand the open PvE space; enemies might not want to chase you to the ends of the earth. A dungeon on the other hand is a finite-space, and I’m sure the enemies there should know this.

I’m wondering whether I’m just unlucky, or if this is a normal thing? I can understand intentional speedrun groups doing this (to an extent; I still find it really cheesy), but this seems to be done in any dungeon that allows for it, story or exp, 80-only or any level.

Most people in groups just explain the concept of stacking and running past enemies as if it was a legitimate mechanic, but surely this couldn’t be the case right? I could also imagine this being somewhat off-putting to newer players too.

This is the case.
Just as you can opt to fight these mobs you can also opt to not fight them – it is a matter of choice and efficiency.

When I do AC I do it for the 1.5 gold at the end of the run – not for the experience, and certainly not to waste time beating the same mobs HUNDREDS of times over.

There is no reward that these " trash mobs " drop that could be worth the time it takes to kill them.

HOWEVER – speed clearing and skipping groups is an OPTION.
An option most players have chosen to take since everybody is pretty much bored with the dungeons anyway. The vast majority run them for profit not pleasure. So you want to get as much gold for as little time.

Almost every day i’ve seen groups form that sound like " dungeon x , full clear no skip" – there are people like you OP – seek them out and play with them but DON’T Force others to see things or worse PLAY THINGS YOUR WAY.

Play how you want is pretty much it.

Hopefully never.
You don’t need a level cap raise. You don’t need more trait points to make balancing hard as hell.

It’s the last thing the game needs really.

Turtle – for most classes 1 handed weapons deal MORE damage than 2 handed weapons.
So – there is compensation – look it up. It is because of skill coefficients.

Look those up.
Also versatility.

Jasher.6580:

Harper.4173:

You do realize warrior is already outperformed by other classes in EVERY area of the game.
I simply don’t get what you can’t understand.

This is a joke right?

You’re either a terrible player or unaware of how things work in this game.
I suggest you start looking things up – but i’ll give you a hand because why not.

Bunker : Guardian > Warrior
Support and healing allies : Ele/ Guardian > Warrior
Solo roaming in WvW : Mesmer > Warrior
Single target damage ( PVP) : Thief / Mesmer > Warrior
Single target damage ( PVE) : Ele/Thief/Guardian > Warrior
Might stacking: Ele/ Guardian > Warrior
Utility ( PVE – blocks, reflects, boons): Guardian> Warrior
Condition damage: Necro/Engineer> Warrior
AOE damage : Necros/Eles/Engis > Warrior

Bombsaway.7198:

“Most Warriors understand that. . . .” This is the concern. It seems that only warriors are having a hard time understanding that their class really does need to be toned down.

Of course, warriors bleed and burn. . . . but less easily than they should. Warrior defense should be their ability to kill not survive.

Yeaaaaaah. That makes so much sense except it doesn’t.

You can’t tie in a class’ survive capability to its ability to kill while other classes have mechanics that allow them to stay alive very easily.
So if warrior can only stay alive by killing then you can’t even touch classes like mesmer or thief that have innate mechanics that allow them to be elusive and prevent you from " killing".

See the problem?
You need to be able to stay alive whether you’re fighting or not.

Bombsaway.7198:

I think you missed my point. I was responding to a post that said that warriors should be popular and should be the casual class because that is what people want.

My point is simple, if that is the design, then typically the class which is “casual friendly” and easy to play is also quite mediocre with an ability to do most things but only meh.

Not sure that is what you want for the warrior. . . . but typically if you have it all you have it blah.

You do realize warrior is already outperformed by other classes in EVERY area of the game.
I simply don’t get what you can’t understand.

Hey mate – glad to see you and thank you for the feedback.
There’s going to be a fractal CDI thread up in a while from what I hear -we should link this topic or paste the main ideas there.

Thanks for keeping the input coming!

Bombsaway.7198:

Bombsaway.7198:

Ryan:

Casual players should have a very mediocre but adequate class. If that is the role of the warrior (not sure it is or should be), the warrior should be mediocre at everything it does BUT has the ability to use every weapon, wear heavy armor etc. They should be the non-quirky version of an engineer with lots of builds but very little which is best of all classes. And unlike the engineer, they should be easy to play.

They are the generalist of fighters versus specialists.

So basically make the class terribly bad just because it is simpler in mechanics than others.
Makes sense.
Why not just take it out of the game?

You people claim to want balance but it’s posts like these that give you away. You’re just mad and upset because you don’t get your way. This has nothing to do with balance.

@eleshazar if you have no idea why people would take a guardian over a warrior i suggest you might want to reconsider playing guardian. You’re obviously doing something very wrong.

Stacking is fine. Seriously.
If you don’t want to stack – don’t stack.
if you do want to stack – stack.

That easy.

It is NOT the new tanking.
You can’t do trinity content without a tank.
You can do ALL content in GW2 without stacking if you so choose.

Wolf.5816:

I’m just throwing out this concept.

My goal is that Anet will bring warriors into the same skill (learning curve) level as other professions. This may or may not be the correct direction to attain this goal but this is just a step in a direction and is simply my opinion.

-What if while under the effect of Endure Pain the Warrior took increased Condition damage?

-And what if while under the effect of Berserker Stance the Warrior took increased Power Damage?

These “penalty” effects could of course be reduced or removed via traits but would require a commitment down said trait line to get. Not only does this make sense logistically. (Berserkers should have a higher reward at the cost of higher risk ect) But This could potentially make these Utility Skills not as mandatory to Warrior players both old and new.

These skills are " mandatory " as you put it because without them you’re not very viable.
Zerker stance is a MUST have given the condition spamming meta today if you want to have any chance of doing good.
Endure Pain is also a strong skill but why increased damage from conditions?

You’re still vulnerable to conditions ( which is the meta) – you’re still prone to knockdowns and CC. You’re simply not taking damage for what? 4 seconds?

Is 4 seconds really THAT much?

@Terrahero – you seem to not understand that warriors lack the ability to specialize. They lack soft damage prevention – so they need those extra stats to survive.

Other classes use different mechanics such as stealth, clones , protection spam or high versatility ( case of the engineer) to stay alive. Warriors don’t have those. So yes – you need those stats to win the game.

Also Warrior’s difficulty curve is alright – it’s a starter class that doesn’t do as good as others in ANY field, especially high-end PVP.
Every game needs a class that’s not as button mashy as others.

Junkpile.7439:

Players don’t want hard content. They wanna get rewards fast and easy as possible. I wouldn’t say that dungeons are that easy if you go with group that doesn’t know all exploits.

That’s only half right.

Players don’t want to have to do hardcore content for their rewards.
Players want rewards as fast as possible when they’re playing FOR rewards.

But if you’ve pretty much got everything you want – you’re going to want to do something fun.

You can provide incentive for players to do hardcore content by giving UNIQUE rewards. Bragging rights.
Players will usually want to do hardcore content ( at least once) in order to get the shinies – the unique rewards, the titles, the achievements and then use these to boost their ego – " I did x content, which you haven’t, I’m somehow better than you". Yes that’s a thing and it’s a thing that happens.

Vanity is very important in a cosmetically, skin-driven economy – so give us hardcore content but with PROPER rewards.

That’s what bugs me the most too – i’d really like to at least know how things are. Just a straight answer.

#Team Gnashblade Forever!
Let’s get it done folks!

Fractal Torch dropped today. Yay.

Sadly I have no use for it.

I like how a lot of the players who complain that the game is easy and trivial weren’t here on day one.

When the game started pretty much everything in the game was tough.
Since then players have gotten better – and having done the content hundreds of times not only have they become adept at it but have figured out the most effective strategies – which are now being used by new players from day 1 thus creating the false impression that the game is easy.

The game is not the problem – players have just gotten good at it.

The solution is NEW content.

Thank you everyone for your feedback and for keeping this thread bumped and visible.

I hope that we will manage to get some answers soon.
In the mean time I’ve kept at doing fractals and so far nothing has dropped for me.

Also – it would be great if more unique to fractals recipes were introduced. That might create more incentive!

Definitely one of the most beautiful areas I’ve been in.
One of the few places that gives me that old " GW1 feel".

They’ve done a great job with it!

This is possibly the worst idea i’ve seen in a long time.

Let’s make zerker hit for more but make it unplayable because it’ll never get to deal that damage.
Let’s make non-zerker builds facetank even better than they do now.

How about no?

Also if you like having a healer class perhaps the game that was designed form the ground up to not have a dedicated healer or any sort of class oriented towards that isn’t the one for you.
Just saying.

I like how warriors are regarded kitten OP in PVE – but I’ve never seen a high-end PVE run fail because they didn’t bring warriors.
I’ve seen them fail for not bringing guardians.

If warriors are so OP in PVE why is it that any high-level fractal or harder PVE content almost requires that you have a guardian?

Bombsaway.7198:

Warriors are extremely OP because they simply have every feature of the game that counts on them. This allows them to maintain high offense and defense at the same time.

They were supposed to melt on account of conditions, which was their known weakness at the beginning of the game. But, ANet for very good reason gave them condition cleaners because the class was too underpowered without them.

The problem is that other areas were not toned down as that was the one key weakness. So, they need a major reduction in something likely healing. A Warrior should be kill or be killed.

But other classes shouldn’t. Because you say so.
Seriously – stop acting like you know anything about balance or the warrior class.

Thanks for the post Ephemeral.

I wish we had some feedback.

I’ve been away for a bit but I’d like to thank everyone who gave their opinion.

I know fractal players are a minority ( compared to the endless mobs that do LS content or other aspects of the game ) but I feel fractals shouldn’t be tossed aside.

Whenever a friend or some random person asks me what is gw2’s PVE endgame – I’m going to say fractals.
It’s the only thing that provides a challenge of sort – and while it might seem easy for us that have been doing it for very long I believe that new players will still find it challenging to go from level 1 to 50. And it’ll probably be fun too, at least for a while.

The problem here is that it is also terribly unrewarding and more often than not incredibly frustrating. Getting the same fractal weapon 3rd time over, not getting anything or getting another ring gets old fast.

I feel that they should take a look at this content since as far as I’m concerned it’s the only thing hardcore pve player can do for fun. Sure Arah is also kinda cool but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it particularly hard.
And it certainly doesn’t have the potential or staying power of fractals. It’ll just become less interesting faster.

So – let’s keep this constructive : what would you guys propose as reward improvements?

I feel – for starters – a gold increase for fractals should be implemented.

1 gold for level 1-10

1.5 gold for levels 11-20

2 gold for levels 21-30

3 gold for levels 31-40

4 gold for levels 41-50

There’s only ONE daily chest for each of these so at a maximum you would get 11.5 gold for a good amount of time spent doing fractals.
If you spent the same amount doing dungeons you would most likely make a lot more. So why would they not do this ? Not exactly unfair.

Plus – fractals require more investment – in dungeons you can go in and play – high level fractals require more coordination and more importantly a player investing in AR.
So in a sense it would be nice to get a return for our investment.

And probably sooner or later they’ll be forced to do it.

Seras.5702:

The only way to change the meta from zerker to anything/everything else is to make PvE monsters behave similar to players. Specifically, this means increasing attack rates and decreasing damage per hit.

As it is, we have to dodge an attack that can 1-2 shot us every couple seconds. This negates the damage 100%, meaning we have no use for toughness, vitality, or healing power.

But if the enemies attacked more frequently and did less damage per hit, we wouldn’t be able to dodge every attack, we’d have to soak up some damage, we’d have to heal up, we’d have to play more strategically. Sure, some of the giant 1-shot attacks need to remain. But that can’t be all there is.

I’m talking about dungeons and fractals

I don’t think that will fix anything.
The “meta” will never go away. Instead of zerkers it’ll be knight armor with zerker jewels or some other combination that gives optimal DPS and provites just enough survivability that the team can complete the run.

It’ll be figured out in a few weeks after the change and it’ll become the new ’ cancerous meta ’.

Protip : the build + gear you love to run – you know who you are – and you know what type of defensive, tanky gear i’m talking about – no matter how much you want to change and mutilate the game – your choice will never be optimal unless you switch to this or the next meta. And people will never take you on speedruns until you do. Because they don’t have to and because for each of us time is precious.

This isn’t about killing build variety or promoting it.
It is about accepting the simple fact that if you want to be on a good team you should play what is most effective. Even if it is 5% more effective, or less – that’s the way to go.

I’ve made a thread about this too – you can check it out.

And yes – all these issues have appeared – I’m almost inclined to say fractals are in a worse state post-fractured than before.

justkoh.4073:

Can agree with this.

They need to fix the broken dodging mechanic which removes the risk for zerkers and one hit kill mechanics which removes the benefit for going with defensive/survival stats.

Implying an intended game design feature is a " broken mechanic " – you still don’t get what GW2 is do you?

To all the people saying the encounters are too easy and zerker is OP – if you’d have been here at the start of the game you would have known doing 90% of content in full zerker gear ( except for zerging events in orr ) was pure suicide.

It’s not the encounters that have become trivial or easy – they players have just gotten better.
And that would have always happened – think about it – I’ve done possibly close to 300 runs so AC. How could I not know it by heart?

If they feel these areas are lacking as well they should possibly admit it and try to work together with the players in order to solve the issues.

I’d really love a thread dedicated to fractals where hardcore fractal players give suggestions and the devs actually give us feedback and listen to our solutions.

I know things are bleak – but let’s try to stay positive. I’m sure they’re doing a lot of things with the game right now but at least they could talk to us so we could know what’s what.

@bombsaway.

You do realize ranger and mesmers – due to their core concept when they were designed have no place in a zerg?

Why would you want a ranger in a zerg?
Why not an ele / guard / war / necro ? Any one of those classes is FAR better suited.

Why would you want a mesmer in a zerg ? except for veilbotting and portals?

You make no sense.

The sample size on the above test is rather small – but i can appreciate the effort.

Would be nice if the devs would comment on threads like these – just something – anything would be good right now.

They might as well hurry it up – they’ve been saying they’re " working on this " and " working on that " for a long time.
I understand there is a lot of work to put in but people are losing interest -and for good reason.

Pre-fractured patch I used to run fractals – I got fractal weapons and thought that if i stick at it long enough i’ll get the one i want eventually.
Post-fractured – the drop rate is so low i’m inclined to stop trying.