Guild Wars 2

Stooperdale.3560:

Camera angles. The poor GW2 cameras angles are exposed in fractals, for example trying to get all of the lava shaman on screen while also watching the burning floor. Fix this throughout the game and specifically for fractals.

This could be easily fixed by adding the Camera system that was recently implemented in Snowblind Fractal during the fight with Elemental Source. Excellent implementation on their part for this particular fight. I do hope they put it in Shaman level. The code is already there, it just needs to be carried over to this level.

Aye.8392:

The problems with infusions:

1.) Must be an artificer to combine infusions. My mesmer, who I generally play Fractals with, is a tailor and a weaponsmith. So to create higher level infusions I must either run back and forth to the bank by way of the log-in screen to get my infusions to my artificer so that he can combine them and I can repeat the tiresome exercise in reverse, or I must switch crafting discipline to artificer and pay to switch back to my preferred craft after I combine my infusions. It is inconvenient and irritating.

2.) Combining infusions is expensive. The exponential increase needed to create a new level gets quickly out of control; a +1 infusion from the TP is currently 11 silver, a +10 infusion is 69 gold and a +12 is 275 gold. There are multiple infusion slots which helps, but the expense is still incredibly high. Many people aren’t willing to go past the point of the simple +5 infusions in each slot, so 30 AR. It’s cost prohibitive and consequently it prohibits who is able to participate in high level fractals.

3.) The component extractor. 250 gems. At current transfer rates this costs over 20 gold. This gold is spent to get back an infusion so that it can be destroyed in the creation of another. This is just wrong.

These problems need to be addressed.

1.) You only need to be level 100. So it’s not that bad. And crafting station is also a bank, so unsure what you mean by running back and forth.

2.) It is expensive, but you can also get +5 infusions from fractals for 75 relics. You shouldn’t need more than that.

3.) Completely agree. With a constant ability to upgrade infusions, this should be an item SOLD by Artificer Merchant for either karma or in-game money. And it should be reasonably priced, making it so players actually WANT to upgrade their infusions.

Ayrilana.1396:

-snip-

LordByron.8369:

- snip-

Guys, take it to Whispers.

Since people talk about Puzzles in fractals, figured I’d chime in myself.

What I would like to see more of in this game:

More Jumping. More Jumping. More Jumping. Oh and More Jumping.

The format completely stolen and modified for personal purpose from The Lost Witch.7601.
Figured I’d give credit.
;)

mrauls.6519:

What mmo lets you dye weapons

Guild Wars 1 xD

Rallar.2986:

I don’t believe fractals itself is designed for the casual in mind. I think the intent has been to make content that is challenging and increasing in difficulty. The agony to me acts as a kind of a buffer that literally segregates those unable to do a certain lvl fractal because they haven’t invested that much time and effort into fractals.

Although I am not opposed to having challenging solo content.

Correct. Being one of the hardest things left in this game, they’re not designed with casuals in mind. The higher levels that is. Lower levels can be done with ease, which we at one point thought they were hard as well.

I’m just completely against an idea of getting a huge group together and willing to work together. Those kind of things take hours to gather a right group. Hours that not many of us have because of full time jobs, families and schools. Five man thing is fine as it is because it practically takes three people that work together and other two even if they’re not willing to play as a team to pass fractals. Gathering eight people would end up being a hassle of waiting around and asking people you know while others that are in your group are loosing interest and quitting before you even go in. We already have raid like contents where you wait around for an hour at the time because u don’t want to loose your spot. Tequatl and Jungle Wurm.

Rallar.2986:

It would be great have a 8 group fractal that would essentially bring back the Underworld, Domain of anguish, Slaver’s Exile and other great endgame type content similar to GW1.

-snip-

The issue here is because fractals as of now are:
– time consuming
– not very rewarding

Therefore finding a 5 man group that is experienced and geared enough is hard as it is. I’m not talking about pugging, because sometimes coordination is not always there. I’m talking about 5 people that know each other that are willing to do fractals as it is for rewards that they are right now.
Making it harder and requiring more coordination will not only turn away the casual players trying to have fun and/or learn fractals, but it will also put a strain on groups that were running fractals for almost a year together. Finding 3 more people to do such long content with and that are also willing to listen and coordinate with you would end up as another one of those wow raids that you spend hour to two hour gathering people rather than hopping in and playing with little time you have your friends for.

I say let’s go the other way. That is allowing to do fractals with less people hence making it more rewarding for doing so. We already have contents that require more and more people to do. 5 is just fine as of right now with people not wanting to go to fractals as it is.

timmyf.1490:

Romo.3709:

I, myself, keep forgetting that you guys are in fact players as well. With things you like and dislike about the game. Things you’re passionate about and things you really couldn’t care for less. It’s nice to know that rather than just designing fractals, you guys actually play them as well. Which helps a ten-fold in understanding the frustrations, accomplishments and rewards we all encounter.

I hope this doesn’t come off as Mr. Creepy Stalker or anything, but whenever I see somebody with the Anet badge in-game, I’ll add them to my friends list. You might be surprised at how often they play the game.

There’s a handful of devs on my server (SoR) and most of them play without the Anet badge most of the time I see them running around.

I’ve only seen two devs on my server. Once a week/month in LA. But since LA is no more I haven’t seen either of them since last time I fought Tequatl. Gate of Madness here, so I don’t expect many devs around since we’re mostly PvE server

Regardless, each time I see Wide Charr, I’m sure to /wave his way. Not much expecting a wave back or anything, but more of a “thanks for making this game” kind of thing. And thus I’m on my way.

Nike.2631:

Going back to your “floppy” idea…

If the Mistlock Observatory were expanded or a new small, misty, mysterious bit of fantastical landmass were added (say, about the size of the sPvP training area) with slightly mobile “fractures” that you could identify and then use to enter the exact fractal of your choosing, you could acquire some sort of progress credits used to buy entry into a boss fractal for the big loot. When you have a complete floppy that has been run through ALL the fractals at least once, you can turn it in for a choice of the top tier rewards or maybe a huge infusion of fractal relics (like 800 plus a bonus based on the average difficulty level of your set)

You let people just intent on their daily pick their pieces – much smaller, discrete pieces that can be mix-and-matched over time making the single-sitting commitment smaller.

But to get the good stuff, you have to run them all at least once.

This way the Floppy could be used for a whole different thing. Scraping the whole anti-rolling thing. This could be used as you stated for rewards. In a way kind of like something that would record your progress as you go though fractals, but it wouldn’t do anything other than record it. Once the Floppy was filled, you turn it for rewards.

This is the idea I can stand behind. Given it would be RNG based because of nature of fractals coming up, but it would also give people initiative to roll for something other than Swamps. And it would be completely and utterly optional. Which gives people more options rather than taking them away. If something like this would be implemented, I’d be excited!

Also how many Floppys can we carry at once? Would they be account bound? Would they be soulbound to one character? Can we have more than one Floppy at the time? Would they take up inventory space or could they be somehow implemented into UI, where it would work like an in-game BINGO? Those are all questions that come to my mind.

Personally I’d be excited for a BINGO kind of thing where you get one ticket per account, and you can’t get another one till you fill the one you have. As long as the rewards are awesome, I’m all up for it
:D

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Please do note these are the things I would like to see as a player. This is not an announcement of additional content or a change in design direction.

I am simply joining in the conversation and passing on my thoughts. It becomes very difficult for me to be a group member of the CDI if everything i say is going to become some kind of ‘News’.

Anyway I am sure you understand my point,

Chris ‘Fun’ Whiteside

Thanks for the insight on your part as a player. It helps us better connect with you as a person, rather than talking at company that doesn’t really respond in very structuated responses that have to go through careful evaluations.

I, myself, keep forgetting that you guys are in fact players as well. With things you like and dislike about the game. Things you’re passionate about and things you really couldn’t care for less. It’s nice to know that rather than just designing fractals, you guys actually play them as well. Which helps a ten-fold in understanding the frustrations, accomplishments and rewards we all encounter.

If you don’t mind me asking, what are your views on Tier system that was put in place? Is it something that works for you, or the whole element of surprise is taken away because of it. Because as you probably seen in my earlier post I stand by the latter.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

To be fair, Conski, if any of those exotics were cavalier armor or weapons, those insignias and inscriptions are worth a fair amount. There’s a good income for you!

Please don’t change Maw, I love it, it’s a gift after dredge.

Maw is a gift. Keep it the way it is. The past 5 runs I did now I keep getting Molten Duo. It’s not hard, but it’s not that fun after 3rd time in a row…

timmyf.1490:

I’d say this: rolling isn’t a problem, it’s the symptom of a problem. That:

1) Despite a tiered system, there are still Fractals which are clearly “better” (read: quicker)
2) With the existing reward system, Faster = More Rewarding most/all of the time

I agree. It’s not a problem. It exists because of imbalances (time wise) between fractals. If those were leveled in a way, we would see rolling happen less and less over time.

At this moment, Swamp is the quickest way to start a fractal. Kind of like jump-starting a fractal. If all tier 1 levels were balanced to be based on average time length to complete, it would make rolling obsolete. Time is money, so the less time it takes, the more population it would attract.

Please do not read it as “make everything longer”, so they’re the same length, but shorter so they’re on par with Swamps. At least Tier 1 Levels.

Also I miss those times when we had a chance to get (now known as) Tier 1 level as our third fractal. Those moments felt like winning a lottery. Now it’s more of a “here it comes” kind of a feeling. Where we hope to get the lesser of 4 evils…

hendo.1940:

Nike.2631:

Don’t get me wrong – I think the polishing should be done. I just, in my heart of hearts, can’t believe that it would take more than a day to write the code to kill re-rolling. That it would take more than a day to rip the clown car out of the Underground facility Fractal. That the meetings to review and expand the array of choices for the Fractal vendors drawing on existing assets would take more than 3-4 days of focused analysis. Then yes, all of that has to be tested before being pushed to Live, but ultimately if there was the will, all of the these adjustment would take less time to execute than we’ve spent talking about them .

Except re rolling doesn’t need to be killed and I really hope ANet are ignoring the complaints about it because practically nobody besides a handful of people trying to draw attention to themselves on the forum even care about it.

Don’t want swamp? Set up LFG – lvl [number] fractal, rolled [not swamp]. Is it that hard? Stop concerning yourself with what other people are doing and focus on your own fun rather than punishing other people who want to roll a certain fractal.

I really hope Anet focuses on things that are actual issues. Rolling happens because it’s an option. If it would be removed in one way or another, you’re practically putting up another barrier for people that actually want to play fractals and have fun. You are taking an option away from them. Rather than having a feeling that you somehow have a small way of changing the roll they would be forced to play a certain level at the very beginning, so rather than going through the fractal, some people would actually go: “Meh, this one is gonna take too long, I’m gonna go do some dungeons instead”.

Forcing people to do things (that they used to do for over a year now) differently, will not make them happy. It will make them feel like another thing is forced down their throats. I like rolling because it’s an option I have. Having another thing taken away from me is something that is not enhancing my gameplay, but limiting it.

If you really want to stop rolling, give us a reason to stop. Make fractals balanced to the point where we don’t care what we get. And NO, I’m not saying make swamps longer, I’m saying put in a fractal or two that are on par with swamps. That way whichever one we get at the beginning, we’ll be happy regardless.

This CDI is based on Evolution. Forcing something rather than making it fun and innovative is not a step towards it, it’s a step backwards. We’re not trying to limit the gameplay in fractals and in turn loose even more people that are only now getting slightly interested. But instead make it fun and rewarding where people have options to how they want to play and start.

When I do a high level fractal with my friends, we roll for swamps every time. Why? Not because we like the level, not because the scenery, but because we know that there’s a chance of getting Dredge later on, and we don’t want to waste a whole night on one fractal run. If Tier 1 would have 3 or 4 fractals that would on average take the same amount of time, we wouldn’t waste time rolling at all. At the same time when we want to wind down and have fun run on a single digit or teen fractal, we take what it gives us.

Don’t take options away, but add more options to evolve the rolling system

Dietere.3476:

-snip-

Rolling for higher Tier fractal first would be much better idea. Especially considering that you get the hardest one last as of now, you’d know right away if your group can take the harder one up front, rather than finding out an hour later that you just wasted an evening.

phys.7689:

I think the biggest flaw with rolling, is it makes the short teir fractals come down to one fractal, if they create a new fractal tommorow thats faster/more efficient than swamp, no one will do swamp again.

If they make 2 new excellently designed short teir fractals, no one will ever see them because people are rolling swamp.

not sure the best solution, even if they lock the fractal to the instance, people will just remake the room, or try to get other people to open new rooms till they get.

It often surprises me how inefficient people will be chasing the easy/efficient answer. For example many of the times people tried to jump/scale walls/warp in dredge fractal to get to the switch room, which takes longer than just having people do it the real way, especially at lower levels, when the spawns are pretty light

That’s already the case with underwater fractal. Nobody does it anymore. The easiest fix would be bringing the selection to being completely random just like it used to be before Fractured. That way we would get verity of levels again without any problems.
For example yesterday I’ve gotten Swamps → Cliffside and…. Dredge. T1 and 2 T3s… How is that fair? Getting rid of Tier system would still have this kind of scenario happening, but the possibility of this happening would be much, much smaller than it is now.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

There is no ‘desperate’ need Romo. It is simply something I am interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on. The discussion so far has been very good.

Also please don’t assume that just because we are discussing or not discussing something that it either is or isn’t being given attention.

Chris

That’s completely understood Chris.

My intention is not assuming anything at all, I assure you. But with so little attention we’ve gotten over the past few months, I’m very nervous about what message you guys going to get from us.

I love fractals for what they are, even at the state they are right now, even though I still cringe every time I see that underground tunnel after a loading screen.

I hope you don’t misunderstand my stand on the topic at hand. I care for this part of the game more than any other area, even though I don’t spend as much time in it as I used to before the last patch.

I’m just glad that the conversation is being heard and hopefully thoroughly reviewed with attention it deserves. I apologize if I ever sound out of line.

Dietere.3476:

I just wish people would take the time to read what has already been posted before adding something “new.” So many of these posts are basically repeats of things that have already been said. If I wasn’t at work I would take them time to summarize what has already been thoroughly discussed so we could continue adding new ideas, not just repeating. Maybe tonight…

True. But at the same time it really shows what the players are most focused on. Giving the amount of posts we’ve had on Dredge and Rewards made those two topic stand out way more than anything else. If only one post was made on dredge, developers wouldn’t consider it such a big issue as it is. With that in mind they can actually see how people see it from different points of view.

I am quite excited about LS taking a break and teams being reinstated to different areas for the time being. Working on a big feature patch (which I’m quite sure they’re working on right at this moment) is something this game desperately needs. I just really hope fractals is up there on that list.

On the other hand I’m gonna miss that new content every two weeks. But if the payoff is gonna be this big, then any player would be willing to take that break.

Iason Evan.3806:

This is a pretty clean band aid until more long term solutions can be implemented. Better than nothing and an easy fix for now. /approved as triage until long term solution is in place. Would anyone be against this as a short term solution?

To be honest. Yes. I’m very much against any kind of short term solution when it comes to fractals. Not because I don’t want a solution to begin with, but because of a nature of fractals in eyes of developers. Fractals doesn’t have a team working on it around the clock. They don’t have people dedicated to the content. If we do get an update it is because some people from LS updates teams been moved to fractals development for short amount of time and brought right back to their usual spots the moment the content went live. Which we seen the examples of during Fractured.

Short term solutions would be made into Full term solutions even though they would be called otherwise. It’d be more of a well, it’s working for now, lets get back to more important things than fractals.

Because of that any kind of temporary fix should be put on hold and instead of using that limited time on creating short term goals, lets put it towards the bigger picture.

The Lost Witch.7601:

What if, instead of a leaderboard, we had ‘bonus’ rewards for beating a fractal quickly. Or ‘bonus’ rewards for undertaking an optional extra task within a fractal. (Which occurs along the usual fractal path)

Very much like we had bonus achievements in GW1. They would not function as a way to compare ourselves with others, but they would encourage putting in extra effort.

I believe this should appeal to more players.

Anything enhancing the actual game-play and creating optional challenge is good. Leaderboards don’t bring anything like that to the game itself, but more to a website outside of the game. Which was always the issue with Living Story, until recently where lore became much more in-game driven rather than website based.

Bonus rewards are always welcome. Encouraging speed clearing is a different story. It would create a whole new wave of complaints from people being kicked due to incompetence and inability to meet specific requirement in gear. Huge amount of mobs would be ran past or skipped. And finding exploits to make the run faster and faster would be on a new high.

I love the optional challenges in missions idea which would add some flavor to each and every level. Maybe beating both bosses instead of 1, or going off course to bring a specific item to the end boss that would open a new chest. Potential is there and at the same time it would be optional for people that don’t have so much time to fully commit to a full “optional” fractal run.

Regardless, I honestly believe most of us are on the same boat when it comes to Leaderboards. They’re just not worth the time nor they’re practical in any way.

Tree.3916:

An ascended box that doesn’t drop Berserkers stats is worthless. Worthless drops are a slap in the face.

Let’s not make it into another one of those Berserker vs rest. What’s something that’s worthless to you is something awesome to someone else. And vice versa with fractal skins. What I would see a worthless skin, you would find amazing. You gotta look at it with open mind. Given Berserker stats are great for many things. But if I’d get Sentinel’s or Rampager’s ascended box, I wouldn’t crap all over it either.

Removing possibility of getting certain loot in favor of another will yield to rise of attraction to one group, but fall in appearance to another. We’re trying to get everyone happy and willing to progress, not only those trying to get that one skin. Many of us already got every skin they ever wanted. With the new “skin system” I can’t even salvage them for ectos. Hence some of them become worthless.

Tree.3916:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Tree.3916:

Proposal Balanceing Rewards

Solution:

1. Remove all rings from the drop table at 40+. Take the 40-50% ring drop chance and add it to the chance to get an armor/skin/wep.

2. Take Armor and Weapons off the drop table at 50+ (since most people doing 50+ will be full ascended) and add that chance to the skin drop table. The end result would be a 60% (or so) chance to get a fractal skin at level 50+ which will still require significant replayability in order to deck out your toons.

I would be for removing the Rings, but not the weapons and armor, I can always use more BIS weapons and armor to stick other skins on , and thats not likely to stop any time soon. Plus a 60% chance at the rarest skins in the game seems quite high.

If you get a Magis armor skin, you would use it? I mean, I’m sure someone out there likes Magi’s stats, but for 99% of players that is a dead drop.

And 60% chance at a skin isn’t that great when you consider that there is a 1/14th chance of getting the one you want. To gear all your alts in fractal skins would still requires hundreds of level 50 dailies.

That’s all and good, but what if you already have every skin you could possibly want? I’d much rather have ascended box drop than a skin these days. Those are actually worth more. And after you get every possible skin you want (since 60% chance is VERY high) after 10 runs, there would be no reason at all to bother in 50+.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would appreciate it if you could put some ideas forward for Leader-board mechanics.

Why do we still desperately trying to put in something that Fractals doesn’t need? It was a bad idea then, it’s still a bad idea now. There were many people voicing their concerns about their fractal habits being seen by the public. The discussions went on so far as people asking if they could opt out of the Leaderboards all together. That was never addressed just like many other topics around Fractured update.

I think the idea should be just scrapped and forgotten. The time should be instead invested in redesigning one particular fractal level that doesn’t even have to be mentioned to be understood which one is being called out. Along with new rewards system and perhaps new items.

In other words, please don’t waste man-hours (which you will most likely have a finite number of, that can be put towards fractals) on something that majority of fractal players never asked for nor wanted to begin with.

Instead let’s focus on the major things: balancing and rewards, because that’s where the main issues are laying right now. Not the lack of Leaderboards.

Please, if you can discuss it with us. What would you like to see changed? How you feel about time investment in fractals?

Wow. I knew I liked Taimi for a reason. But she’s already touching so many people’s hearts, and we barely even know her that well. Go Taimi!
-tear-

Topic Title: Balancing Fractal Levels

Proposal Overview
Removal of Tier based system

Goal of Proposal
To diversify the fractal rotation to make Tier 1 levels be included in complete rotation loop. Furthermore allowing groups to experience every fractal in rotation regardless of what level they “roll” for in the beginning. Pretty much bringing the fractal selection system to what it used to be.

Proposal Functionality
It would give ability to players that tend to roll for Swamp, chance of getting a Underwater level which has been now the least played level since Fractured. Instead of having us face the hardest fractal at the 3rd tier, give the chances of it coming up in rotation smaller percentage than it is right now (and yes I’m referring to Dredge). The system was put in place instead of fixing/balancing Dredge fractal that was (still is) making runs much longer than it should be. With the possible balance of Dredge fractal, this system would serve no purpose other than always giving us the hardest fractal at the end.

Associated Risks
Possibility of getting 2 Tier 3 fractals in a row (which still has possibility of happening at the moment), but it would also give us a chance to have an easy run with possible 2 Tier 1 fractals in a row and maybe 1 Tier 2. It was fine the way it used to be.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

How about Story Mode fractals, where you could pick a fractal you want to experience. Then upon arriving to said fractal we could experience the story behind thus level hence learning more about the history and idea behind the design of each and every fractal. To make it actually rewarding we could have a achievement system in place for each level, so everyone would play it at least once. And maybe a reward at the end (30s should be sufficient as it would be much shorter than a regular dungeon story mode) and some experience. It would also help new players get a hang of fractals a bit more understanding the layout and mechanics behind every level.

We could do something like this, but when ends up happening is the work involved ends up being a lot of additional work to basically build something people play one or two times and then are done with it. In that time, we could have probably half built another real fractal, which I think probably would be better for the game over-all. Maybe the real question would be -> How do we try and get across better lore and stories with the current fractal system?

To be honest the system is already in place. There’s no need to redesign the levels or fights/mechanics. We would have an ability to play any level of fractals. In doing so instead of working in cutscenes, dialogs, npcs, have a background voiceover “reading” the story. Make it feel almost like we’re watching a movie with a narrator telling us where we are what is happening, etc.

Example:
“And so the heroes went down to Mossman’s residence where he was stationed for "" time" because of “x reason”."

“Upon defeating him, our heroes has finally freed the lonely man that spent “x time” in sole confinement"

-camera moves back-

-video darkens-

-scene-

It would be something that would be omitted in regular fractals which would not include any cutscenes or dialogs. This way the only two areas you would need to spend time in is your writing department to come out with lore that would be read by narrator which would work in audio department. Implementation wouldn’t require any level or mechanics redesigns. But at the same time it would not only let players play out the levels while learning the mechanics, but it would also bring heavy amounts of lore into the lore-hungry fanatics like myself

ColinJohanson.2394:

Moon.7310:

Using fractals to tell story:

Proposal Overview
Fractals should be used to tell as more about the lore/history of Tyria.

Goal of Proposal
Increase the amount of lore used for the fractals and creating new fractals which story and background informations. This is such a good oppertunity to tell us about things that happende before GW2, things that could happen in the future, things of an alternate version of Tyria.

So an interesting challenge we always face when trying to make any type of dungeon content more lore heavy, is they are by their very nature highly repeatable content. Historically our design philosophy around group content that falls into that category is to try and provide enough context for the experience to make sense, but not heavily attempt to tell deep story in these instances.

While the core concept of using fractals to continue to show great moments in the history of Tyria is indeed totally in line with our own thinking as well, the struggle we always face is how much of that story we can really put there. Once you play it once or twice, you really just want to actually play the content and not wait around for all the story moments, scenes, cinematics, etc. This can lead to a problem we used to run into in Gw1 where some people in the party really wanted to see the story, and others had played it before and wanted them to hurry the heck up.

Our work around for this for Thaumanova for example was to provide a story version of it that was around during the living world release with far deeper exposition, and the current fractal version today that tries to focus on the game play. Similarly, story dungeons are really intended to be played a handful of times to get the story, and explorable mode dungeons are very story light since they are intended to be re-playable based on the core content.

What kind of fun ideas can you come up with to help allow us to get more story into the fractal experiences, without the cost of slowing down the core re-playability of the game play that is at the heart of the fractal content?

How about Story Mode fractals, where you could pick a fractal you want to experience. Then upon arriving to said fractal we could experience the story behind thus level hence learning more about the history and idea behind the design of each and every fractal. To make it actually rewarding we could have a achievement system in place for each level, so everyone would play it at least once. And maybe a reward at the end (30s should be sufficient as it would be much shorter than a regular dungeon story mode) and some experience. It would also help new players get a hang of fractals a bit more understanding the layout and mechanics behind every level.

Nike.2631:

Romo.3709:

This is not an exploit in any way.

Bullcrap. People aren’t re-rolling because they like the scenery in the swamp. They aren’t there to drop off the Mossman’s mail. Its done because the time spent re-rolling is considered less than the time/difficulty it saves by doing it.

Yes, we roll because this one level is shorter than others. That was always the reason. That also never guarantees the length of the run. It never did. So what if I want to make the first tier shorter?
I’m having a hard time understanding why you’re making it to be such a big issue. If you don’t like rolling, then don’t roll. There. Issue fixed. Don’t try to force it on everyone.

What I’m trying to say is lets not make fractals less forgiving, but more fun to try to bring people back to it. At this point it’s very unforgiving and having Dredge in the mix makes it very unfun for any returning or new player trying out fractals.
Rolling was never an issue, why do we make it an issue all the sudden when there is still so many things wrong with fractals, starting with rewards and ending on balancing and bugs.

Nike.2631:

Romo.3709:

I don’t understand what is so wrong with rolling. It doesn’t hurt the game in any way.

I think “manipulating the system to reduce the amount of time to reach rewards” is just about the fundamental definition of exploit. No exploit ‘hurts the game’ if you’re willing to ignore that . It’s not a desirable to permit it anywhere else in the game. Its not desirable that it be left in place here.

This is not an exploit in any way. Rolling swamps does not guarantee an easy and fast run. It doesn’t guarantee you’re not gonna get Dredge or Fire Shaman. And what rewards are we even talking about at this point? 1.x Gold? Fractals take time to complete. A lot more time than most dungeons with much better rewards. The longer they take, the less people are interested in it.

Nike.2631:

Aye.8392:

Is doing away with the re-roll something that is really wanted or needed? If so, why? It seems like a forced control step where none is really needed. Most of my teams don’t reroll, but some few do; in thinking about it it’s mostly high-level groups that choose to re-roll, low levels just play what is presented. Is it truly an issue?

When the point of the entire environment is facing random challenges, having the first 1/3 not be random is weaksauce.

Its a loophole, and closing it is relatively trivial.

I seriously think that rolling should not even be an issue at this point. We have much more important things to discuss than people wanting “a real experience”. If you don’t want the “weaksauce”, then don’t roll. But don’t take that option from everyone just because you think it’s an issue. You have an ability to overpass it completely by never rolling. It’s not like it’s not an option for you. So rather than forcing that on everyone, let’s focus on more important things. Like balancing levels, making them more enjoyable and more profitable, rather than forcing more rules upon a section of the game that is loosing more and more people with each day.

Nike.2631:

I honestly don’t see ‘re-rolling’ for first fractal as all that hard to kill.

Arrange things so each account holds in memory what tier one fractal you last generated by starting a run. When you finish a Tier 1 fractal you launched it becomes blank/null, ready to receive a randomly generated new scenario the next time you start a run. But, as long as there is an old scenario waiting there, that is the only Fractal you will ever see when you are the person who opens the initial gate from Mistlock Observatory. New/first-time characters are assigned a random scenario from a list of tier one fractals that does not include the Swamp as a possible result (other troublesomely fast tier 1 scenarios introduced later can also be excluded). This prevents recruiting newbies solely for the purpose of trying to game their initial roll.

Done. Re-rolling is dead. Long live facing the challenges presented.

I don’t understand what is so wrong with rolling. It doesn’t hurt the game in any way. The only thing that hurts it is the fact that we cannot get any other “tier 1” fractal later on. Because of tiers, we’re now missing out on many levels we used to enjoy.
I say let’s bring the old RNG based levels back, scrap the tier idea completely. This was the chances of getting Dredge is lower than 25%, but more around 10% chance because it would be more randomized like back in the day.

Why? They’re are all dirt cheap at the moment.
Source

Proposal Overview
Adding “Restart Current Level” option to fractals.

Goal of Proposal
To allow players that get stuck to restart the current level without restarting the whole set of fractals.

Proposal Functionality
It happened numerous amount of times when a certain bug was present that somehow made the level impossible to complete and the entire fractal set had to be restarted. Examples: Hammer disappearing, Rox and Brahm following the group instead of starting the chamber room, Uncategorized fractal boss running off the map. Instead of restarting the whole set, which normally ends with party disbanding, we could restart the current level and have all the mechanics reset as well to allow further progress.

Associated Risks
The only risk I can think of is players farming the loot drops on a specific level over and over. That could be easily prevented by adding “no loot drop instability” on the restarted level as a penalty for resetting it, which would be removed upon entering the boss battle of that particular level.

Chris, what is your take on it all. You did say once that you’ll think about the whole thing, but have yet to say anything in that matter. I want to see the point of view you, the developers have towards fractals themselves. Are you happy with the way they work? Do you want to improve certain areas that you think need improvement? Do you think it’s perfect the way it is? I mean it’s given that it is not perfect, hence the CDI, but what’s your take on it. Because since Fractured the only things we’ve been getting is that there is no issues, everything working as intended vibe from every answer we got from the devs. And to be honest, there weren’t many and they were definitely not in timely manner.

Because from what I’ve been seeing this CDI is more of a throwing ideas at the wall and hope they stick. But at the same time we have no idea if it sticks because we’re never being told what will be taken seriously and what will be taken with grain of salt.

Let’s bounce ideas back and forth, rather than just us brainstorming and hoping you guys like it. What real CDI should be is communication between players and developers. Give us some idea you have, we chip in on it with our own ideas to make it even better and the final product will make everyone happy. Rather than grabbing a handful of posts and saying “This is what everyone wants”.

I don’t mean to be critical on any level. It’s just that I would love to see some actual communication between devs and the players. At least in a way you guys so it with balancing when you listen to players, but at the same time respond with your own ideas and concerns.

Afte reading most of the posts, it seem that three things stand out the most:

- Rewards – Not enough

- Weapon skins – People want them

- Dredge – No explanation needed

Asia Skyly.7198:

• 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.

I’ve had a post all written out with everything I would like to say on Monday. Do I have to use the said proposal? I mean it’s not much of a proposal, but everything I think should get looked into. I’ve put quite some work into writing it =/

Did you try making it IN pvp mystic forge?

Ray of light

Don’t you mean “LEAD ASTRAY”? Missed an A

Delmain.5167:

This wasn’t with so much a pug but rather a group of really, really bored friends. A friend and I decide to get a bunch of friends and guild mates for a lvl 1 fractal run. Not just ANY lvl 1 fractal run, but a lvl 1 fractal run with every character lvl 20 or lower. Three hours it took us, but we did it! Well, my friend, one of his friends he invited later, and I did. SO not only did we do it with characters lvl 20 or lower, we 3 manned half of it, and swore to never do it again. Uncatagorized fractal (with original 5), Snowblind fractal (with original 5, lost everyone, and we were half way done with the dragon shaman when his friend joined), Volcano fractal (and we saved everyone!), then Molten Duo boss fractal. Did you know that Flame Effigy always spawns a wave of reinforcements once it hits reach half way, no matter how many times it happens? That champion alone was the greatest challenge for us.
Also, my friend, my friend’s friend, and I all lost our pants first when out armor started breaking.

We used to do “Naked Fractal Runs” in the past. Where we would start a teen fractal wearing nothing but our weapons, and slowly equip anything we find along the way. Those were some fun days

Should I just give up on the whole thing about fractals and move on with the rest of the players that gave up any hope months ago?

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Romo.3709:

videoboy.4162:

If you don’t need your Pristine Fractal Relics anymore, just turn them into regular ones.

Turning useless Relics into even more useless relics is not really an answer. The amount of things available from the Bot Store for relics of both kind is very small. And having ascended rings overflow that all u can do with is sell them for 4s and 95c is just laughable.

The obsidian shards are nice. But yeah, I’m sick of the lack of things to do with relics.

The only reason we use the relics to buy obi shards is because Karma got nerfed so bad that the new players can barely afford 2 maybe 3 piece of Karma armor from temples. We practically got nerfed 90% of our regular karma acquisition rather than giving us the ability to spend it on something useful at the time. They gave us the ability to spend it now, but Karma is scarce… Except for few that did not spend it all on Orian Boxes in hope to make a quick buck. That would actually be another topic I’d love to bring up: Karma.
But in all seriousness (not that I’m not serious about what I just wrote), not only did everything got worse after Fractured, but also the entire drop rate of practically anything got nerfed. To the point where some people not only cannot get the fractal skin they wanted for a long time, but cannot get a fractal skin period. And I don’t even want to bring up Essences into the equation because their drop rate just plummeted. Any improvement to fractals that made many hardcore fractal players remotely excited disregarding the reset, has been completely forgotten and not delivered at all. To make matters worse, nothing of importance (and I mean nothing) had been properly addressed.
Reason for reset was the idea of leaderboards that nobody I’ve ever played with even thought of mentioning. Once that was practically scrapped, the reasons of “confusion in terminology” was given. That is not proper addressing. Not to mention, it was mentioned many weeks after the fact. No communication what so ever on devs part. Fractured was rolled out, WP in story instance was fixed, everything else forgotten and left in the dust.
In middle of December I asked about their stand and was trying my best to communicate my feelings about the whole thing the clearest I possibly could. Got the response that Chris will think about it and respond if he and/or the team got something to say about the subject. That gave me and few remaining fractal enthusiasts some hope. Now, two months later, sadly but surely that hope is gone.
From my point of view Fractals was a one time thing, and since it actually gained some popularity, it was used for Living Story Meta for just two weeks. Many features were promises, some implemented, many are still broken (Instability lvl43). It is not something they feel is important to devote time to other than fixing “exploits” and “shortcuts” players had found because of pure hate in the community towards the dredge fractal (which also was promised to be balanced with Fractured). It wasn’t “exploited” and “short cut” because of wanting to exploit, it’s simply because the majority of fractal population hate that particular level. Hate being a strong word, but strongly deserved by the mechanics and length of that one single fractal. Many players have tried fractals over time, many have stopped, just because of this one particular level.
So once Fractals were used, broken and nerfed (more in some parts than others) it was left in the dust by on going Living Story which has now become Living World. I don’t feel any love from developers towards this particular GW2 feature, I don’t see the same passion and elegance that was once put into the trailer that was made more than a year ago. It now feels something that devs are trying to forget that ever happened. Omitting every plead, every post, every little question or suggestion that was directed towards that area that many of us learned to call home. But our home was invaded and mess was left behind, just like it’s soon to happen in Lion’s Arch. I’m sure with time we can rebuild LA with the ever-going Living Story. But Fractals… We cannot rebuild it by ourselves when our trusted contractors are not even answering our calls.

So please, show us some love. The same love you showed us when fractals first came out. Thank You.

No on mounts. Just No. Go back to WoW.

videoboy.4162:

If you don’t need your Pristine Fractal Relics anymore, just turn them into regular ones.

Turning useless Relics into even more useless relics is not really an answer. The amount of things available from the Bot Store for relics of both kind is very small. And having ascended rings overflow that all u can do with is sell them for 4s and 95c is just laughable.

Gulesave.5073:

Romo.3709:

Hopefully fractals will be included

This reminds me to make a quick note: Discussing the merits of previous changes to the game is not the stated purpose of the CDI, unless new ideas are needed beyond “reverse the change.” For example, the introduction of ascended equipment was seen by some as problematic, but the discussion was on new ways to make it work better, not simply removing it.

Almost all of the fractal-related posts I have seen in the CDI have been about the reward level reset, and generally wanting it reversed. This is a valid topic, but one outside the scope of the CDI project, and will get better traction if discussed in the appropriate place.

Fractal system is broken at the moment, instabilities have not been tested on ALL levels, dredge fractal still needs something, anything. Prestine relics are worthless after you get rings you want. So the whole system was just put in place and forgotten at this point. There is many questions and issues that been introduced with the new path along with many promises that were not delivered. It’s too late for reversing anything, but fixing broken things should be something that would need any kind of attention at this point. “Fixing” exploits is not fixing the levels that are in most cases broken because of some of the instabilities that were introduced without any proper testing prior.

Hopefully fractals will be included

If I had 1 gold for every mount post on this forum…
But seriously, NO.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think the discussion is still good and valuable so I will keep the thread open.

I am still thinking about topic resolution based on the ongoing conversation.

Chris

Can we have anything addressed with fractals? Specifically about reset and dredge fractals. The longer it takes the less importance it has and many have given up completely. Yet the team still makes nerfs to different parts of fractals making it harder day by day. The promise that dredge fractal will be balanced was completely left in dust as well. I don’t feel comfortable doing CDI on the topic because I know it’ll turn into something that will be quickly closed and forgotten because of people that want something to happen fighting with people that are denying them the right to ask about it. Rather, I’d love to hear you guys’ opinion on dredge fractal and the reset that happened and nothing was made right to compensate for that. Just addressing the issue would be something, because frankly I’m slowly joining the group that is giving up and forgetting about it completely…

Hope I’m not asking for too much.

I understand that the topics should have been directly about Character Progress. But even if we named sub topic inside of the discussion before, thing such as Fractal Reset deserved to be mentioned since it was a huge part of character progression for many people. And even so that issues has yet to be properly addressed or resolved. At this point it’s unfortunately in “forget about it, it’s too late” dumpster. Simply because it was dragged out for too long, so many just gave up on it or simply do not care anymore, except for that handful of people (including myself) that still hang on to the hope that it would be made right at the end. With that hope diminishing with every day passing.

Back to topic, not everyone has time to read every post and stay up to date so many of us look up the last response from Chris and go from there or just plainly throw some ideas that have been sitting on back of our minds even though they might have been discussed.
Deleting those posts because they’re either a little late or off “current” topic will diminish the participation of many people because they’ll simply think that they’re not being taken seriously at all. Instead of having one broad topic like “Character Progression” which covers pretty much everything in the game, creating CDI Subforum with current topics as Threads would be much more beneficial. Of course locking the ability of making threads would be very helpful with staying on topic.
This way we not only have many topics at once concerning the same broad topic, but also giving everyone ability to include their ideas in parts that they care about.
Everey CDI should have at least 4 subtopics to start with. As we progress, those subtopics should be locked down with proposal and new subtopics should be opened, never passing 3-4 at once to make it easier for everyone, especially devs to keep up with the conversation. Rather than (example) WvW Dev skimming through 4 pages of PvE talk to respond to those 2-3 topics about his own area.