Guild Wars 2

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

I think it be just nice to get an answer what they gonna Change in the way leaderboards tracking down Progress.. I think it is smart after having offended all dedicted fractal Players with a reset that coulnd’t be predicted and wasn’t talked about as well, to actually talk from a devs side what your ideas are on making the leaderboard mean somthing…before you implemenet some Thing you spend again loads of time on that is actually wasted and isn’t fair or smart in any way just talk.. it seems to be so hard to tell the reasoning behind those leaderboards and the reset. I Keep wondering why if you just told it was a mistake to do so 6 weeks ago I would have my peace of mind..

The bottom point is that most of the dedicated players lost their dedication. Lost their hope and feeling of accomplishment. I think it’s fair to say that majority of the dedicated player base lost any kind of hope in fractals as a whole. I personally do them maybe once every two weeks and it’s only because someone is dragging me to them. When before I used to run them daily if not few times a day. I was the advocate for fractals, getting people in my guild interested in them, helping them level their characters and learn different techniques and strategies to pass each and every level.
All that is lost now. Leaderboard that will eventually come out has no meaning to me and it never has. Why create a content update that has no team or anyone in general to fix any potential bugs that will arise. Because let’s face it, There was not a single update to LS that didn’t have a single bug in it. You can’t just release something and call it done because the team had moved on. In that case why release it at all?

The ticket cost is based on the popularity of said skins. Considering Molten Alliance skins are way more desired than any other, they are 7 tickets, when Scarlite skins are not as popular leaving them at 3 tickets.

skins, gold, challenge

Thorp.7982:

Great design.

Isn’kitten That’s sadly the same case for Molten Alliance Gloves…

Light armor only skin. You picked the class the first time you double clicked on it.

It’s not a complaint. It’s a personal statement. I’m done “complaining”. I want nothing from fractals anymore.

That depended on personal perspective. People complained about fractal level not being account bound because they didn’t want to waste time leveling their alts. I’ve had 3 toons at level 49, where I leveled each and every one of them by putting time and hard work into them. Now that was also taken away in favor of being on equal footing.
People that put work into multiple characters were not complaining about level not being account bound, people that had one toon at high level and didn’t feel like doing fractals all over again on different toons complained.

I’m done. After a month of posting in various forums about how Fractured had impacted a great community of challenge seeking players, I’ve lost all hope in achieving anything in these forums at all. The furthest we’ve gotten is “collecting feedback” and “we’re thinking about it” which the followed with locking the thread.
I went to fractals the other day for the sake of filling a spot in my friend’s party. It’s been a while, since I’ve had any desire to go back in after completing the meta. First two levels went smoothly, but then dredge happened. We passed it without wiping, but it hit me why I (at this point) do not enjoy fractals anymore. Aside from dredge level being there, the sense of advancing in levels is completely gone.
The drive behind the original fractals where each character had their own progression level and how each and every one of them advanced accordingly of their play-style is now lost. If I was to play for rewards, they’re pitiful when it comes to the time spent. So the content is practically dead to me now. I don’t enjoy doing them at all anymore. There is no drive, reason nor feeling of accomplishment. It was all wiped off without a trace, just like our personal levels.
I was fighting till the very end, but that fight seem to be just bashing the head against the wall at this point.
In the past if you asked in Guild Chat if anyone wanted to do fractals, you’d get tons of responses, even if it was asking what level. These days it’s hard to get 1-2 people even remotely interested. It’s almost like Living Story killed fractals. Many people got into mentality that it’s a temporary content just like the personal level and it can go away at any time.
I would love to see how many people play fractals on daily basis now vs. what they were playing before the update. From what I’m seeing it’s barely any. But then again it’s a personal point of view.
Well… Anet… You’ve won in a way. I moved on. I won’t complain or ask for things, since the time I’ve put into many of my toons in fractals was a simple waste of time and clearly do not deserve any recognition at all, as it was stated by many players throughout the forum. I’ll still play the game, but I’ll be steering far away from fractals.

R.I.P. Fractals
November 16th, 2012 – November 26, 2013

Manuhell.2759:

The rewards you are asking for are for something that isn’t available anymore.
Exactly like the living story.
And you are asking for a retroactive reward for said unavailable content just because you will be able to get it.
Again, exactly like the examples i did above. Your request makes as much sense – that is, none.

When those levels were there, you got more karma when doing lower ones and had an higher chance of getting skins.
That was all you were warranted to get. If you aren’t satisfied with that, you shouldn’t have done it to begin with.

You are not understanding the whole concept of what we’re referring to. You’re seeing it as if we were crying about a LS story achievement that we didn’t get because the time ran out. I guess I’m gonna have to put it in known facts that you obviously are not aware of:

Living Story – Temporary content that will go away. That is well known throughout the entire game that the content provided is only temporary and will vanish soon with possibility of coming back at later date for once again temporary amount of time.

Fractals – Said to be a permanent content that will not go away. Hence the urge to get your personal level up. It was never once said that it will be reset nor was it ever implied. Nobody would even bother going past level 30 if it was a known thing that you’ll eventually be reverted back to level 30. Nobody would even bothered getting more than one character into fractals if it was known in advance that the level will be account bound.

So yeah… Your argument is flawed. I don’t even understand why you’re even wasting time writing in here since it completely does not affects you in any way. Is that just a thing you do?

Manuhell.2759:

Even doing tribulation mode multiple times required time and hard work. Does that means i’m entitled for additional rewards – apart from the ones i already got for doing said content (tribulation weapons, as opposed to higher chances of fractal weapons by doing higher fractal levels)?
After all, i could say the same – i am entitled because i’ve done it, the others don’t deserve anything because they haven’t done it.
Does it makes sense? No.
And it was something that will still be available at some time and that at least gave an achievement for the first time you did it.

I could make the same example with multiple completitions of the mad king’s clock tower. Still the same, apart from the achievement.

You, on the other side, are asking for a reward for something that wasn’t even related to achievements, didn’t give a reward per se and that won’t even be available anymore (as they have changed all the levels above 30).

You have got to those high levels of your own initiative, well knowing that there was no reward involved or ever implied for the future. Good work, indeed, but don’t expect a reward, especially after that they’ve removed said content.

Wow. Congrats! You surprised me with even less sense than I thought you would provide. Comparing a “permanent” content to the living story content makes absolutely no sense at all. If Fractals were temporary than I would agree with you, but that’s obviously not the case here. Fractals been around for a year. We leveled high because we wanted to raise our level not rewards. Fractals was never rewarding to begin with. All we had is our level. It’s like telling a PvP player that he was pvping for rewards. Good luck with that.
Just wow… Astonishing…

Manuhell.2759:

Romo.3709:

I love how you make my point stronger with each thing u post.
:D

I could say the same, regarding the entitlement part.
Something that any objective reader (and anyone who played the game, since anything giving rewards is clearly pointed out ingame) could tell from the posts.

Do I feel entitled to having level 80 charcter? Yes I do. Do I feel entitled to having the gear I have on? Yes I do. Do I feel entitled to my WvW and PvP rank? You betcha. You know what all these have in common with fractal level? All of the above took time and hard work to acquire. If you can’t understand that simple concept, than I’m sorry.
I said that you fit the reference, because you clearly don’t want us to be rewarded for the time that we put into getting to where we were before the patch. And that makes you perfect example. “Rather, you’re feeling entitled to get something that any others can’t get anymore…” How can others (I’m assuming you’re one of them) be rewarded for something they didn’t work for?
But rather than giving accurate explanation, you’re going to turn into “entitlement” arguments and how we don’t deserve anything because of X and Y. Where X being instabilities and Y being “old fractal system vs new fractal system”.
So get typing, because I’m actually curious as to what you have to say about something that doesn’t a) affect you at all b) exist.

Manuhell.2759:

Romo.3709:

And this is a perfect example for what I was referring to.

Example of what? I’m not the one feeling entitled for a reward that doesn’t exist, and neither was ever supposed to exist.
This isn’t a matter of “If you get something that I won’t get then I’d rather have us both get nothing”. Because you weren’t supposed to get anything to begin with. Rather, you’re feeling entitled to get something that any others can’t get anymore, where no one should have ever got nothing.
Also, we’re OT, so i’ll just stop the conversation here. It isn’t like there is much to say, anyway.

I love how you make my point stronger with each thing u post.
:D

Manuhell.2759:

Actually, people did get all they were supposed to get for getting high levels in fractals.

That is, absolutely nothing. Because there was no reward and it was never supposed that there would be a reward for fractal level (be it achievement, titles, items or even just a recognization – fractal level isn’t even displayable ingame outside of being in a party with another player and going to the entrance).

Asking to introduce retroactive rewards for content that was going to be removed was simply absurd. There weren’t even achievement related to high fractal level – the whole fractal of the mist subsection could be completed at personal fractal level 3.

It would have made as much sense as putting retroactively a reward for doing the mad king’s clock tower 400 times during the last halloween or completing tribulation mode without using dodges, on the assumption that it was difficult for everyone who did it, even if there was nothing that pointed the players toward doing it apart from the intrinsic rewards of those activities.

And while i agree that the leaderboard they were planning to introduce are terrible, complaining about the release won’t help. Constructive ideas (like, how to make a good leaderboard), instead, would be useful.
And i’ve already given some ideas about that in my other post in the thread.

And this is a perfect example for what I was referring to.

Bright.9160:

I thought of an analogy today for all the people that keep defending Anet (although this thread is rather void of them) over all of this. The people who say things like “Well, they said they were adding Fractal weapon boxes in higher levels, but they didn’t say which levels, so they didn’t deceive you at all.”

Image a political party promises to do X, Y and Z when they get elected. Once elected, they don’t even give the impression that they’re working on any of their promises. Then when the people confront them they say “well, we didn’t say we’d do all those things this time we got elected, maybe we’ll do it on our next term”. Guess how well that would fly.

It’s a waste of time to try to generalize the thought. We tried over and over to explain to people why we feel the way we do. What I learned is that quite big amount of players on this forum uses “If it doesn’t benefit me, why would it benefit you” quote as base of their arguments, along with “If you get something that I won’t get then I’d rather have us both get nothing”.

MastaNeenja.1537:

it’s so nice to see red in this Forum again

Hahahaha. Even though they were brought from beyond the grave. +1

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

Colin, You have to realize by now that Fractured put a quite bad image on you guys over the past few weeks. Many hardcore fractal players practically quit doing them completely. I, myself have been going in there maybe once every week or so, when previously you could see me in fractals every day and sometimes (especially on weekends) multiple times a day. You guys single handily destroyed a whole community of very dedicated players that were focus on that one particular content. And in that manner you haven’t given us any kind of compensation for the time we’ve put into it at all.

At this point people that had multiple toons at level 49-50 have as much to show for as a person with one toon that was at level 32. How is that fair in any way? And to see all these PvP players having a reset that practically didn’t actually happen since you guys “communicated” it beforehand with the community. As the matter of fact, quite a few of them got rich because of adding the Wintersday merchant that takes glory as a currency. We never had that leverage, nor we had any valuable response in “Fractured” forum about any of our concerns and suggestions. We were practically forgotten and left in dust. The only reason that was given to us was the Leaderboards that (from what it looks like) weren’t even coded in the first place. And that’s not something I was looking forward to in the first place anyways, because the whole feeling of accomplishment and leveling up my personal reward level is now basically lost.
So what was the real reason behind it all? I know you won’t respond to this just like nobody responded to any of our topics when details about Fractured were first unveiled. The best thing we’ve gotten so far is Chris telling us he’ll think about the issue. But I don’t even know what to think of that anymore since the Topic was now closed without any actual statement.

It is not the fact that we hate fractals, it’s the fact that compared to everyone else (PvP, WvW, PvE) we were not treated equal. We were stripped of our “achievements” (in actual meaning of the word rather than point system) and tossed in the basket with everyone else. You have to at least see why we feel the way we feel? Or is that a lost cause?

Gnat.9405:

I do about 0 PvP, but I frequent their forums to get an idea of where the balance is headed. There are a lot of threads about compensation for rank lost (or something of the sort, with this new addition of gold – like I said I’m not too keen on what’s going on over there) and it sounds a lot like what happened to us that were over 30.

Only thing is, I would bet that they are going to receive the compensation they are asking for, because you know, PvP and all. Can’t wait for the kittenstorm.

With the placement of wintersday merchant with gift boxes in PvP, many hardcore PvPers got practically rich overnight. And I’m talking hundreds to thousands of golds from all that glory they had.
I wonder what can we use our relics for… Yeah… I’ve got nothing in mind that I can possibly still need…

I have 8 80s. Only gearing up my main, because of the Dragonite Ore requirement… Maybe as the time goes on, I’ll gear up another one. But not anytime soon.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Then, 10 months later, Anet puts a reset on fractal levels, bringing everyone back to 30. This was very badly received by the fractal players, as nothing was offered to compensate for our loss. For months, we were mostly ignored (no answer on many bugs, like harpies going invulnerable, or balance issue, like the dredge spawning tank), and a patch which should have been designed for fractal players was instead hitting us quite badly. Our feedback on this update, and the reset, was also ignored for almost 4 weeks, until Izzy finally said something about it in this thread.

The biggest issue with fractals to this day is the communication with the developers responsible for designing fractals. Like you mentioned earlier when something was asked about level 80, instead of answering the question, the cap was put in place. Whenever any bug is reported, instead of fixing said bug, it’s ninja patched to be even more annoying than before. One of the most hated fractal (hated is a strong word, but it fits this particular example perfectly) would be the dredge fractal. That fractal level, single handily made hundreds (if not thousands) of people loose interest in fractals completely. Many of us that got the fractal into rotation automatically thought “well this run just got much longer”.
Back before Fractured patch was released the dev team were talking about fixing said fractal and how they were looking into making those extremely long fractals a little more balanced and shorter. Instead, after hundreds of pleads to do something about the dredge fractals, implementations that were done, made it even longer and more annoying than ever. Having a light class group in that fractal is now almost impossible since you cannot die on the button in the first area since you’re getting teleported. Thief of a group of guardians is a must on that level. The pipes that used to help corner the rifle dredge got flatten out completely with the ground. The infamous “Dredge Clown Car” did not change at all, despite constant pleads from the community to make it shorter or at least more interesting.
It comes down to communication. Since the beginning, fractals community was taken lightly when it comes to suggestions or complains. The list of things that make the extremely fun an challenging dungeon not fun at all is getting longer and Dredge still remains on top. On the other hand “remain” would be a wrong word to use in this perspective. More of a strengthening their position on number one thing complained about fractals.
I never complained about agony in the first place since I had three characters in 49 personal reward level that I worked really hard to get them properly equipped to 55 AR each and get each of them up to the top one by one. That obviously was completely destroyed by account bound level implementation, aside from level reset. Now it all seemed to be a complete waste of time. Even though I had fun this whole time playing fractals getting my personal levels higher and higher as I started my 4th character in fractals. By fun I mean all those times we played outside of Dredge fractals.
So once again, instead of actually communicating with the community that at one point in time was so passionate about that little thing you made a year ago, the developers team that works on fractals seem to assume things rather than look at what the players are saying.
The hardest part wasn’t a level reset as it shows in many topics created in now archived “Fractured” sub-forum, it was the lack of communication and acknowledgement from the group that was (at one point in time) so very beloved by my fellow fractal teammates, regardless of bugs and annoyments they brought now and then. Instead having the complete lack of communication lest us feeling forgotten and shoved aside for the “good of the many”, that frankly are not even playing fractals anymore since the meta had ended. Along with us hardcore fractal goers that lost faith and hope.

Guild Chat: Shatterer pre up!!!
Response 1: kitten it! Omw!!
Response 1: Don’t bother, never gonna make it on time.
Response 1: Even if he will, there’s nobody there right now. Not enough Fire Power!!!
Response 1: Woooo! One of my alts is parked there!!
Response 1: kitten … I’m in Orr right now…
Response 1: People are actually doing Shatterer still?

The crafting won’t happen till sometime next year, since they said it’s one of the things that will not make the cut this year. That being said, if you need gold, sell it, so someone can put it in good use. Otherwise horde it or actually make something.

Putting the fractals aside, I just wanted to thank you, Chris for taking your time in discussing ideas and views in these topics. Given some ideas are quite interesting, some very detailed, optimistic and creative, while some are quite scary and self-motivated. Regardless the focus and issue you seem to give people hope that they’re being heard. That their passion for the game is being seen by people that made what we, the players, practically love.
It is understood that most of the ideas will never see the daylight, but one way of another you give people the feeling of importance that they are being heard. Even if those things are not implemented in one way maybe they’ll be implemented in another aspect giving the collective mind some meaning in this whole thing.
I have to admit that when this topic began I had very little faith left in me as to where this game is headed, but as I read though most of the replies, the positiveness and the passion behind some of the ideas and suggestions are very uplifting. And having you and the team to acknowledge these ideas even by something small as “That’s an interesting idea” gives me and I’m sure many of us some hope for the future of this game (:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Yes, but do not make them sell-able. This would make certain people able to control the market keeping the prices of materials high at all times. At the same time, make ascended materials trad-able or sell-able. Example: Tons of Bloodstone Dust, not enough Dragonite Ore. Helping out guildies if they need an extra few materials by sending it to them, etc.

1. You are more free to run to those places rather than taking WP. It’s more of a convenience fee.
2. If listing would be free, it would make the in-game economy collapse.
3. Exploits will always be fixed. Most of the money making ways were just recently added by Anet themselves (ex. Champs drop boxes)
4. You don’t have to do this one to complete the meta at all. Daily achievement addition to meta requirement made it easier than ever to get your meta done.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

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

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Yeah, that actually got my hopes off the floor. Anet is a great company, let’s hope they’ll make it right. As to moving on to a different game. I love this game too kitten much. With or without fractals.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Really good start to this topic folks. Excellent discussion, and really good ideas.

I am blown away, thanks everyone you have made my day. I love the CDI and so far this is a really good example of how I imagine it should be.

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

Chris

Thanks. That’s more than I was hoping for. (:

Wow… That was heart-breaking… Nothing less…
Almost on the same level as finding out your childhood hero athlete was using steroids…

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Fractal Progression Reset

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

I’m still having a hard time facing the fact that you guys think it’s ok to reset progress and don’t offer anything for it. New fractals are not a compensation since everyone is getting it regardless of what level they were. I just wanted to say I’m disappointed. Weeks of discussion in “Fractured” sub-forum ended up being a total waste of time just like leveling my alts to level 50 in fractals. Just wanted you to know that I believed in you guys till the very end to at least attempt to make it right.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Fractal Progression Reset

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

So it seem Anet doesn’t really recognize the level wipe as a mistake, but more of a justification. It basically states that the feedback was never read to begin with and they did not plan on doing anything in ways of compensation nor any way to acknowledge the loss. In their eyes it’s a trade off where we loose stuff and don’t gain anything. I’m highly disappointed… We lost…

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Fractal Progression Reset

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

That’s all understandable. But it did devalue peoples time and effort that they previously put into fractals themselves. There was no compensation what-so-ever. You took it all away like our “progression” never happened in the first place. We have nothing to show for it. Neither do we have anything to show for all those alt characters that we “grinded” all the way up to level 50. What was done is simply taking the progress and deleting it like it never happened in favor of new mechanics. There was no trade off. We were never offered any kind of trade off. You might mention leaderboards when it’s not really a leaderboard at all, but a list of people that made it to 50 first.
You say that it wasn’t your intention to devalue effort or time put into fractals by people, but yet this is exactly what was done. How else would you see it as?
You said “This is a common practice we do with all releases”, but yet anytime something remotely close to this happens, you somewhat compensate people affected. We were the only ones that were never compensated nor we had any kind of response shown in “fractured” sub-forums for weeks. You left us there feeling worthless and giving you feedback and suggestions that were probably never read to begin with.
So again, compensation. The given explanation doesn’t justify to me all this time I’ve put into fractals over months of playing this game. That is why people are slowly turning away from fractals, since by your explanation something like this can be done again and again.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Keep crafting for general PvE, but:
1. lower the requirements with the Exotic part (400 – 425)
2. make infusions craftable (425 – 450)
3. the actual Ascended gear part (450 – 500)
4. unique skins / ability to use Ascended Inscriptions and Insignias to ‘integrate’ other stats into a single piece (somewhat like Legendaries) at 500.

That. The amount of “worthless” exotics needed to level the crafting part to 500 is crazy. Making all those exotics just to dump them for 10%-20% of crafting cost at Trading Post just to hope to get at least part of money “lost”.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

Fractals gives you a lot more chest (4) than regular dungeons though. So i think the 1g+ is fine

True, but I can easily do 3-4 dungeon paths within the time it takes to complete one fractal run, giving me way more than 4 chests, that frankly have really close loot table to what fractals have. Resulting in more chests and more gold in the end. And if you end up getting dredge level, which after last update is way more likely to get, the reward per time put in is basically cut in half.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi,

To clarify I am looking forward to hearing the communities thoughts on speed of acquisition such as how long crafting time takes? or drop rates in fractals and other areas of the game etc.

I hope this adds some clarity.

Chris

Chris, at the moment fractals with the given reward/time ratio is rather quite low. Getting 1-1.4g per 4 levels of fractals, which frankly some equal the amount of time needed for medium-longer dungeons is incredibly low given the time needed to complete these. At the same time Fractals such as dredge level tend to sometimes take an hour to two hours to complete, depending on a group. Regardless of promises to get that particular level shortened. Drop rate for ascended materials is just not worth the time.
The only time consuming ascended material that so many people constantly complain is Dragonite ore, since it’s incredibly difficult to obtain if you do not spend all day WvW-ing or standing around and waiting for Metas to come up, which give you anything from 1-5 for smaller and up to 25 for bigger ones that take on average 15 minutes.
If fractals were to give all the ascended materials, maybe it would increase the interest. But I hardly doubt anyone will bother going through an hour worth of dredge to get 10 dragonite ore.

Might as well bring it up straight off the bat. Character progression in general. In the update “Fractured” most of the players involved in fractals have had they progression taken away. Now before we get into Instabilities and how it changes the gameplay, let me get to the point I’m trying to make.
Bringing the new ways to play and new mechanics behind it is all good if not mostly requested feature by most players. It is not about how we all got our level reset down to 30 regardless how high we got in the past. The two main reasons people complained about that update is that there was no early enough announcement nor any kind of discussion or feedback gathering from the players before the update was implemented.
Understandable that you wanted to bring players to “equal footing”, but you completely erased any kind of progression past level 30 like it never happened without any kind of reward, like most of the gameplays in the game have. Resetting is one thing, but some of us went even further and had multiple characters level their way up to the top, which in the end made it pointless with the account bound level progression. All that with no explanation nor any kind of involvement in Fractured sub-forum at all.
To have a decent quality discussion about character progression is kind of hard when the idea had been planted in back of our minds that the said progress can be taken away from us at any given time as long as any explanation is thrown out there. Regardless if we agree or disagree with such explanation.
Would you care to elaborate on it at all? I’m not trying to put devs in any uncomfortable position here. All I’m trying to say that the character progress has been erased and nothing had been done to compensate for that. Therefore why bother with further progression? I hope you can see where I’m coming form.

They don’t. It was stated by devs that the fractal weapon boxes do not drop in levels 1-50 as previously was thought. Can’t seem to find the actual quote atm, but it was stated in past few days.

Don’t get me wrong. Anet did a lot of great things that made this game what it is today. I’m dissapointed sometimes, it’s true, but it’s only because I love this game so much. Thus being passionate about it. Fractals used to be my favorite thing in the game for a long time, and it’s just saddening to see what was done with it and how it’s slowly dying off. Anet did a lot of things right, and I still believe in the company itself. I just wish they didn’t drop the ball on fractals as it was a main core for my gameplay for a long time. I haven’t seen any other part of the game handles so poorly without any interaction with the players while going through such heavy impacting choices. No feedback been answered, no suggestion been heard. Regardless, I’ll still play the game every day, even though one part of what I loved to do is now practically almost dead…
Having dredge in the past was bad. But it was 1/8 chance of getting it. Now since the fractals been categorized, there is about 1/4 chance of getting it on the 3rd try. I wish they switched the difficulty that you start with hardest and work your way down. It would be much more enjoyable.

Paradox.5498:

Well, we had a fractal upgrade with fractured subforum and voiced our disappointment a thousand times and never got even one dev response during those two weeks. Apparently, noone at ANet even cares that Dredge has become even more imbalanced, frustrating tedious and -let’s face it- HATED than ever before and it was really bad to begin with. I’ve lost all hope that it’ll ever be fixed to be honest. If ANet was actually working on a real fix, they’d have no reason whatsoever to keep it silent, as an actual fix would make fractal fans squee and rejoice. But the silence about fractals since the fractal patch has been deafening…

Sadly the new update created more issues than it fixed, driving most of my guildmates away from fractals completely. We used to do fractals every day, sometimes few times in a day. Now… I’ll be lucky if I get a group going once per week…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We’re currently looking at a few things regarding individual fractal difficulty and length. A couple of options are reducing the length of unnecessarily long fractals (dredge) and modifying the possible sequence of randomly selected fractals so you don’t get the longest and most difficult ones all on the same run.

Good job on that… Not only it’s longer, but also more annoying now. Can we enjoy fractals for once without having to worry about the dredge all the time? It makes the whole experience incredibly frustrating. At this point, each time we get a level that’s NOT dredge we’re celebrating.

Recipe: Endless Plush Griffon Tonic still teaches your character Endless Toy Golem Tonic Recipe. Please have it fixed…

Yeah… It can only be sold or bought on TP only if you have one in your inventory.

Yea, I checked it and it still doesn’t show on the crafting list, nor I can consume another one because it states I already know this recipe.

Any new update on the Endless tonic recipes that do not show in crafting window?

Right above the Trading Post in LA or by Trading post in every main city. You have to have the tokens on you in order to activate a dialog line with the NPC.

If we are going with character progression, then let’s hop on the topic of the progression being taken away. If we get to a certain point in the game while working really hard to get there, why is it ok to take that progression away when you want to be all about character progression? Example: in fractals, you took all that progression away without any compensation what-so-ever and called it even. How should I even take you seriously in conversation that involves character progression, when you can at any moment in time take that progress away and make it like it never happened in the first place? Would you even care to elaborate on that for once? Or all we really deserve is another “gathering feedback” response?

Let’s take a look at the amount of responses we got overall on anything about Fractured. Compared to any other update, the amount of communication provided was (and still is) close to none. Other than the issue with a Way Point in the reactor story instance, nothing has been done. Nothing. No bugs have been fixed, no issues have been resolved.
The said “Leaderboards” are nothing more than a list of people that reached level 49 or 50, nothing more. Which we all know is relatively pointless to have.

It says you already know this recipe… Why hasn’t it been hotfixed yet??

That all reasonable assumptions. Except for one part. Achievement ended, but "Fractured "didn’t. It was a content that was here since last year and it was completely redesigned. It was not a temporary in and out kind of thing. They changed the way fractals work and changed a lot of stuff about the agony resistance and agony acquisition. Said “temprary content” that living story is now known as is here to stay and it affected the way people has and will play fractals from now on.
I would understand if it came and went like SAB. Given the amount of time the content is normally out for, not a lot can be done, and most of it would be a waste of time to fix. But in this case that’s a permanent and solid content that’s here to stay and it’s not going away. Some involvement should’ve been shown.

Has that sub-forum been automatically forgotten the moment the patch went live? We have more than five pages of comments, suggestions and bug reports or even questions if said “bugs” are actually in fact intended or not. Many good suggestions came and went because there was no answer or acknowledgement from anyone at Anet. Many viewed this update as successful while some practically disliked it to the core. It is hard to understand why nothing has been said at all.

It is understandable that everything the developers said might be used against them and at this point stir more arguments and outrage. But at the same time staying quiet gives the illusion that development team clearly does not care for any kind of input or feedback from player base affected by this update.

It is all well understood that the update was to bring people back to fractals, and make it more appealing to the casual player-base that, util now was oblivious to this content. The tweaks and balances were meant to be put in place to make the whole experience more appealing and enjoyable. At least that what we were told in release notes.

This topic is not about complaining about level loss or dredge fractals being harder. It is a small disappointment in the communication break with the developers. There is a topic in said sub-forum that has over 1000 replies and almost 27000 views. It was even merged by the moderators. Surprisingly it was the only two topics of interest that actually got the response from dev team that was not about assurance and repetition of things that were already stated in the release notes (The only other one was about a WP in TR story instance). Unfortunately the response that was given was from the Community Coordinator.:

Hello all,

The Developers are reading these posts and we are gathering feedback. This is a reminder, as I’ve already had to edit one post. Please do not discuss exploits, discuss how players may have used exploits, and keep these topics clean. We do not want to have to shut down more threads because they dissolve into name-calling, rude comments, and other violations of the Forum Code of Conduct.

That put the topic into a constructive feedback discussion with questions and suggestions. Unfortunately after 20 or so pages of no response at all people slowly started to loose faith. That being said some people seen it as a chance to start trolling the players that were already feeling forgotten in developers’ eyes.

That brings me to the point that there still was no response in over three weeks from the team that so many of us used to adore and love. ABout the patch that so many of us were waiting for months. Nothing other than the WP in TR was addressed. I’m slightly disappointed in what fractals had become along with a few other people. That is my own personal opinion of course. But at the same time I would love to hear that we were not completely forgotten and left in the dust.

Regardless, Happy Wintersday everyone.

The puzzle is fun and challenging. Each path is different in it’s focus and difficulty. The only thing that’s annoying about the puzzle is those disappearing gift boxes that have no rhyme nor rhythm. They just randomly blow up making the checkpoint a must…
Aside from that annoyance, it’s really fun

They just wanted the whole update to be done with. The amount of bugs and imbalances that the patch came with, made them want to shove it on the back shelf as soon as possible. The amount of complains and pleads on Fractured forum is probably simply overwhelming. The faster this LS story disappears, the faster people will forget about fractals, letting Anet move on with new things rather than addressing problems and bugs with the existing update, which should’ve been done on day one.