Guild Wars 2

Lilith Ajit.6173:

He stopped listening once he made the comment that started this thread.

Hahaha. Even though he reads through them, I think maybe criticism is getting under their skin too much, perhaps? I would’ve just address the issues first, before starting any “evolution” CDI on the subject. That way, they would’ve gotten much better response.

They have completely stopped giving any meaningful responses to the CDI over a week ago. Only ones I’ve been seeing is Chris saying that’s he’s reading it. Not sure how that qualifies as communication. It’s more of a one way radio, which once in a while gives us a beep that it still listens on the other end.

On a more serious note:
http://argos-soft.net/GW2/ArmorGallery/index.php?lang=en&color=10&sex=1&w=2&race=3
This should satisfy your cravings.

I don’t think we’re getting any answers you guys. We haven’t gotten one then, it doesn’t look like we’re getting one now. Unless it’s another “confusion in terminology” reason they threw out there hoping it sticks… sighs…

bhagwad.4281:

medohgeuh.4650:

There’s plenty of what you’re looking for when it comes to medium armor. I don’t see your point.

My main beef is with high tier cultural armor. I want to buy it, but I can’t get any options as to the looks. And even with medium armor, it’s not as if there are too many “non sexy” choices.

To me it sounds like you have too much gold and want to spend it on something expensive, but your “choices” are limited. The amount of “non-sexy” medium armors is overhauling the amount of “sexy” ones in the game at the moment. Your options are vast and wide. I’m sorry you have to bear that much gold, but if you want non-sexy looking armors they are only sold for few silvers here and there. Unless you want them served on golden plate? That would make them more expensive I guess?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I am pretty sure Izzy responded to this question a few months ago. I will check with him.

Chris

It’s been almost a week now. Nothing?
:(

Lord Kuru.3685:

Moshari.8570:

Oh, and dont forget how shortly after fractured, they announced that PVP was losing Glory rewards and WvW was losing rankings and those people went completely nuts about losing “hard earned rewards or rankings” and several of us posted on their forums pointing out that “this is the slippery slope we were talking about with Fractal levels being taken”…only to have our posts deleted by moderators for being “off topic”.

sPvP is losing glory and ranks, not WvW.

In any case, I’ve seen a couple posts about how Anet treats PvP/WvW much better than the fractal/dungeon community. Not true. Anet treats dungeon/fractal runners, sPvPers, WvWers all equally badly (just look at their sub-forums). And communication is a serious issue with all three communities.

Anet has moved on but, in order to string us along, won’t explicitly tell us we’re broken up. They’re dating the LS community now and there’s no getting back together. Dungeon runners, sPvPers, and WvWers really should just move on as well. (Saying this as a dungeon and WvW player.)

Look at the updates you guys been getting to the systems over all. PvP getting a revamp, and they are not loosing their ranks because of the communication being there prior. Tournaments, rewards, constantly adding new finishers. WvW having seasons, tournaments, hell new (not recycled) map, a whole new queue system, rewards, laurel vendor, wvw specific items, oh did I mention account wide pool of experience that’s a patch away from being implemented. Yeah, they sure are suffering there…

phys.7689:

Romo.3709:

After recent posts from Chris in the CDI I think I understand what Anet’s goal is. Get rid of any hardcore pve’ers. They like pvp though and wvw hardcores. ……

ok some things i agree with some things i don’t

fixing the mild exploits imo is good. It may be cool while it….

Agreed that fixing the exploits is always a good thing, but that time would be better spent on fixing the mechanics, so using said exploits wouldn’t be approved by such a vast majority. At the same time teleporting bodies off the button in dredge is just a big middle finger from anet to all non-tankers. That’s practically a fact. But again, I agree exploits should be fixed regardless.

Rolling is not game breaking. Rolling will not affect my game, because it’s all RNG based anyways, even with their so-called Tier system. Some of the people raised he issue that rolling is bad because you don’t get to play certain levels anymore. It’s not because of rolling, it’s because of the system they’ve put in place. Forcing people to stop rolling will not fix the problem. Balancing each and every level so rolling is pointless would. But then again, that’s my personal opinion. At the same time with so many major issues with fractals as they are, I was amazed that we spent so much time on rolling. Again, I don’t think you’re wrong, but I think the system they’ve put in place is making it into an issue.

Also I’m not bitter. No… I am bitter. Hell, I’m bitter as ****. But you won’t see that in my posts on CDI. I try to be as constructive as I possibly can. I just don’t want to see another fractals update, where the Dredge stays untouched/become harder and rewards have gone up by 10 silvers, but rolling was fixed to ensure you will never be able to pick the first level again. And Anet stating “That’s what you guys asked for. Since we only had so much time, we fixed stuff that you were the most passionate about”. I’m not trying to devalue other people’s opinions, but you have to agree that this CDI went for too long and without a clear goal in mind from devs as to what they want from us. So the topics started going places that shouldn’t really have a “public-enemy-number-one” status. It’s true that CDI isn’t against hardcore players, but at the same time with Fractured update it was pretty clear it was all about casual players rather than people that were the most devoted to this area of the game.

deSade.9437:

Nah, I’m usually a bit more obvious when sarcastic. At least I think. Also, it’s hardly when directly talking to one of the [reasonable human beings] forum elitists.
I was wondering if yours was just a way to vent frustration and share it with us, but it seems like you still hope they’ll have some kind of reaction to it. Which is… good, I guess. It’s good to have things you believe in. Because if you don’t have any…

Haha. That hope is very small to say the least. And I guess it is a way to vent my frustration. But I try to make it as constructive as I possibly can, so even if they want to brush it off as a rant, there are points to give it some ground to stand on. When I’m frustrated, I write. And when I write while being frustrated, I tend to keep on going and going, since the ideas are just overlapping on top of another.

The thing is I am very frustrated with Anet for doing what the did. Even more so, since I had 3 characters fully leveled to PRL 50. Even so I still think Fractals are the most fun areas in the game. I just don’t want them to break it even more…

deSade.9437:

Romo.3709:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

After recent posts from Chris in the CDI I think I understand what Anet’s goal is. Get rid of any hardcore pve’ers. They like pvp though and wvw hardcores.

I will never ever post in another CDI. The recent comments have illustrated that the evolution of the game in Anet’s eyes does not include people who challenge themselves.

I would like to think they might miss the money I spend in the gem store (now that I will not anymore). My weekly 100$ (yep, I do spend that much because I love this game) will go toward something else. I am not happy that they have so blatantly tossed us aside.

It’s an interesting concept. A lot of WvW players along with almost all PvP players consider themselves hardcore. Recent updates over tha past few months were not only hinting, but Anet was plain out open about trying to drive players from PvE to WvW. Along with the whole PvP rewamp where they’re trying to merge PvE with PvP.
[…]

I’m sincerely interested in hearing your thoughts and your feelings about writing so much, putting effort into the whole reasoning – very well done, with the knowledge that no dev will ever read, answer or even remotely care about what you said. I’m also referring to the effort you put into that pathetic cesspool of a CDI thread.
I totally feel like you, but to me it’s much more rewarding to make fun of them, even if it’s not “constructive” (duh) and use it as a distraction. Maybe it’s just because nothing matters to me nowadays…

I like fractals. Not for what they are, but for what they offer. Which is a quality time with a tight group of friends facing challenges against all odds. The problem for me isn’t that fractals are broken or that they’re not responding to issues and complains. The problem for me is that the group of friends that I’ve been playing fractals with every day is getting smaller and smaller. Not because of the fact that they’re getting bored of the game, but because of the fact that they’re not being heard by the devs.

Constantly putting in ninja “fixes” to different areas, nerfing the drop rate significantly, or even making dredge more annoying then ever. Those points are not helping at all. On top of the actual level reset, many of my friends along with me (because of lack of people to play with) have given up on fractals completely. Just recently me and some reamaining friends of mine got to level 50 again. It was fun, even though the grief and sour taste we felt with each advancement. Regardless I’m somewhat having fun again playing fractals almost every day now.

When the CDI for fractals came out, I’ve had a glimpse of hope that the annoying things from fractals like dredge will finally be fixed. The problem is (like it was stated earlier), people let out their frustration early on about dredge and need for rewards. Which led to inventing new issues. Every tiny little thing that certain people had problems with, was blown to massive proportions and became pages long discussions on how to solve a non-issue. Because, let’s face it. Rolling is a problem now? Since when?

Because of that itself I tend to speak my mind, because deep down I still somehow believe that Anet sincerly wants to make ammends for what happened, but are simply refusing to admit that what they did was wrong. Maybe it’s because their advisors are stating otherwise, maybe because they don’t want to hear a backlash from the community that spent hours upon hours mocking us in the threads we started. The reason behind it is stil unknown and we might never find out why. Only time will tell what’s their real reasoning behind it all is.

So untill then, I still have a tiny hope, that they will do what’s right. And I sincerely hope small things like rolling will not consume their development time.

Also I’m not sure if you actually wanted this answer, or being sarcastic, but here it is =P

Lilith Ajit.6173:

After recent posts from Chris in the CDI I think I understand what Anet’s goal is. Get rid of any hardcore pve’ers. They like pvp though and wvw hardcores.

I will never ever post in another CDI. The recent comments have illustrated that the evolution of the game in Anet’s eyes does not include people who challenge themselves.

I would like to think they might miss the money I spend in the gem store (now that I will not anymore). My weekly 100$ (yep, I do spend that much because I love this game) will go toward something else. I am not happy that they have so blatantly tossed us aside.

It’s an interesting concept. A lot of WvW players along with almost all PvP players consider themselves hardcore. Recent updates over tha past few months were not only hinting, but Anet was plain out open about trying to drive players from PvE to WvW. Along with the whole PvP rewamp where they’re trying to merge PvE with PvP.

It all sound like not only they take those two areas very seriously, having teams specifically dedicated to them, but they’re also trying to get those hardcore PvE players bored with PvE itself. In turn having them migrate to PvP/WvW environments because of it.

Not only that but the recent talk about lowering the server numbers, and how pretty much all the content is designed solely around Zerging, which requires big amount of people to complete. Hence making guesting a “must”, since the lower servers cannot handle the coordination nor sheer power to complete said events. And the whole casual friendly revamp of fractals not only succeed in having a huge chunk of hardcore fractal players bored with PvE, but instead driving them to WvW and PvP areas, it backfired, making some of them quit gaming completely.

So in the end according to the theory, Anet is making fractals casual friendly to drive hardcore PvE playerbase traffic into more favored areas of the game to bring up the skill because of the drive towards eSpots.

I really hope that is not true, but as I see WvW and PvP getting a favorable side of Anet over and over again, it’s hard to stay positive. Now from a PvP and WvW player standpoint it might not look this way, since those forums are always fighting against one another. But the communication given to the issues and balances says otherwise. Giving open discussion about changes before they happen, rather that keeping players in the dark. Answering to problems and solutions with balances with either meeting players in the middle or going favorable towards them in some cases. That is communication! Bouncing ideas back and forth while trying to come up with a favorable solution to both parties.

The only attempt at communicating we’ve had as PvE players are the CDIs. But the issue is that the CDIs haven’t told us anything at all. Developers haven’t told us hardly anything at all as well. You can’t really say they’re open with us with the broad and basic answers like: we want to put lore in, we understand there’s a problem with dredge, move on. Those are generic statements. While Chris is trying to communicate with us, his inability to share practically anything of value with us is hardly communication. It’s more like gathering feedback, which we were told was happening with 2000+ replies thread in Fractured sub-forum.

Proposal doesn’t mean anything. It’s not a statement of what they’re going to do, nor it’s a statement that anything will be done at all. A proper communication would be something along the lines of: “Hey! We’re are thinking of revamping the reward system in the following way trying to meet you guys in the middle. What do you think?”. Having an answer: “We’re aware of the fact that you guys want more rewards” is nothing compared to earlier example.

It would be beneficial for Anet to start PvP-style threads with PvE community where we can chime in on the upcoming changes and give our feedback and ideas before the said content comes out. And it would also be nice for them to listen to that feedback, unlike what happened for a week before Fractured came out.

Since it haven’t been pointed out due to my knowledge and the thread is getting closed sometime today I figured I’d add this:

Proposal Overview
Urban Battlegrounds mechanics before Dulfy.

Goal of Proposal
Make the tedious “hug-the-wall-so-we-don’t-loose-vets” technique more interesting.

Proposal Functionality
When starting the level it is a very well known technique to run to the left side of the wall to get the vets follow you without engaging in any battles with Ascalonians. The reason why we don’t want them to engage is because they’re never ending spawns. Just like Dredge fractal, the never ending spawn mechanic is tedious and boring, while leaving the player thinking that there’s absolutely nothing they can do. Either make the area clear-able, oh have the vets respawn at the gate once Dulfy goes down. On the bright side the bugs from the past have been finally polished in this level.

Associated Risks
There’s no risk. Would require some coding, or simply turning off the respawn mechanic would fix it. This way the player is in charge and has the ability to actually fight through the mobs, rather than trying to tip toe around the arena.

sorudo.9054:

by this time, GW1 has 3 chapters released and Anet is hyped up about EotN, till now GW2 doesn’t even come close to one chapter worth of content……
ill wait and see but it doesn’t look good, the only thing that really lures me back is ether a big expansion or new places unlocked, hopefully without making achievements the main attraction but instead making the story (and no DPS or zerg fest) more important.

You mean we can have a story without Zerging??? :O

Azreell.1568:

I can’t help but remember the meta reward for season 1.

It was probably the most grindy meta they had every released with the most terrible reward as well.

I don’t think they will attract nearly as many players with season 2 after that fiasco which is a shame.

And to top that off the only unique thing was a Dolyak Mini, which can now be purchased for tickets… So much for unique…

Lilith Ajit.6173:

My heart breaks a little more every time I see y’all say another thing I’ve repressed. It’s just so sad.

Heh. Cheer up Lilith
Fractals are still there. Broken, but doable. Let me know if you want to hop on a run with me and my crew. I’ll add you to my friendslist when I get home.

Moshari.8570:

-snip-

Yeah I forgot about that.

I remember how after reading this response , the entire thread went to constructive mode. People coming out with some great ideas and proposals. Nobody from Anet ever read anything. Nobody ever intended to do anything in the first place. This was also a thread where all those trolls started coming out. Telling us how we don’t deserve this, we don’t deserve that. And how they deserve their account bound level and how they deserve to get the skins on lower levels. And you know what? As much as it pains me to say, they’ve won. Anet was never on our side…

I’m just highly disappointed in the way it was all handled. Or more like it wasn’t handled at all. They want constructive ideas for the new CDI. We’ve been giving them ideas for months upon months. Why not read those instead? Nothing really changed. If you go through fractured forum alone, there is hundreds of ideas and way to fix everything that was broken and sadly still is.

If you break your car, you shouldn’t be thinking about where you gonna drive on your vacation. You should be thinking about how to get this car fixed first…

Tman.6349:

Serious question: What kind of ‘compensation’ is it that you’re after? Never mind if it’s justified. I’ve mostly just read arguing and tantrums on this subject, so what would you like them to do?

Arguing and tantrums happened because of Anet’s responses:
Q. Are we getting compensated?
A. ….
Q. Hey, umm.. Are we getting compensated in any way?
A. ….
Q. We’re loosing levels for what?
A. Leaderboards.
(Leaderboards didn’t work)
Q. So about that compensation?
A. ….
Q. Guys are you even listening to us?
A. ….
Q. (In Character CDI) We want you to address this!
A. Confusion in terminology.
Q. Are you freaking serious??
A. ….
Q. You must be joking. Screw this…
A. I’ll think about it.
(wait)
Q. So about that reset.
A. Oh, it was already addressed, thanks for asking.
Q. No it wasn’t.
A. This is not on topic.
Q.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

@Romo what post or proposal of me did offend you ? if it was the case wasn’t meant to do so.

Haha. Nah, not offended at all. I saw the proposal with loosing 20 levels every time u get a certain rare level and I was like “This guy cannot be serious. I’m loosing my hope in humanity”.
I wasn’t looking at names or anything. I was just in disbelief xD
I didn’t mean to sound offended or anything. Now that I know it was a joke I can actually light up a bit. Thanks for that.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Patrikan was joking, he lost 50 levels with the reset and has been fighting a much less eloquent fight than you, but has been fighting quite a lot. But yeah, you’re right. I just… I don’t know. I was hopeful (silly me). I just hope they don’t listen to those guys about rolling being a priority and blah. It’s just so stupid to me.

And yeah, “I haven’t done fractals (because they’re too hard for casuals) but let me tell you how I think it should be harder to fit in with my idea of how the game should be.”

Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. I know how that feels since cumulative I’ve lost 70+ levels across my characters.

I was literally in disbelief when I read that proposal that’s why I just threw my hands in the air. For that I apologize.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I feel the same. I see almost zero progress being made, and before the thing happened that spurred this thread, I saw it as a “butterflies and rainbows fantasy land!” because it was all “this would be amazing!” “This is so complicated it could never be implemented, but isnt it cool?” and ever since the response from Chris…. it’s a waste land. people are clutching onto things. The thread is even often on the second page now. No one is listening anymore. No one cares.

The whole problem is that it went on for too long. People stated their problems and issues that needed a fix. Which was Dredge and Rewards. And that’s all fractals really needed. Then since those been “heard” people started being innovative. Rolling was never a problem as it doesn’t hurt the game in any way, yet it became a big thing for no reason. They started talking about Leaderboards which obviously was a complete failure. But instead addressing it as such, they desperately want it to work. That itself made speedclearers and I-Want-to-solo-everything guys come in play as they saw it as potential challenge.

I mean we’re at the point in that CDI where people that barely got past level 10 are saying that instabilities need to be harder without ever even experiencing them to begin with.

Making rolling impossible? Why? So when a group rolls something other than Swamp will never be joined in LFG? At this point they’re looking for issues that are not even there anymore. Main things been stated. I just read a proposal to have a random fractal level that rarely pops up and brings your personal level down 20 levels… How am I supposed to take that CDI seriously at this point?

Anet will always go with what casual players want. And that always is easy rewards and quick access without any hard work. So far they got most of it. Yet they still barely play…

Lilith Ajit.6173:

@ Romo. When you said how disheartening it was to see what the CDI devolved into, it reminded me of what I said long before the CDI started:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

The issue I see with the CDI is that we are going to be talking there, but then we are also going to have all of these other folks who accuse us daily of exploits and being bad players and even going so far as to say we are bad people, and I know at least I am afraid that the CDI is going to be about how stacking shouldn’t be possible because spider queen blah blah and that dungeon sellers should be banned, and the real issues are going to go to the wayside because the actual dungeon runners won’t be able to out yell the others who just… Don’t even run the dungeons. That’s my fear.

This has happened. Spooky.

I guess it was just a matter of time. I mean they’re obviously bored and fractals would be a perfect place for speedclearing. Which is (for) now impossible due to it’s random nature. I gave up on the CDI for now. I said all I had to say. Anet will do whatever they want to do. Sadly, most of those great players we’ve had in fractals are done with them for good. So that CDI is practically a year late. All we have now is a very few that stayed and are still trying to voice their opinions, along with a lot of challenge hungry folks that are looking for new toys. If it wasn’t for my friends I wouldn’t step a foot inside of fractals again…

Moshari.8570:

Fractals have always suffered with transparency. It seemed like every two weeks during the living story something would have changed in fractals without anything ever being in the patch notes.

Suddenly there is an invisible wall in a common skip-point, suddenly the cliffside fractal acts completely different on the third level, Suddenly there are dredge at the beginning of the dredge fractal, suddenly Guardian Shields no longer block certain attacks….it was ongoing. To say that Fractals never got any love in a year is probably incorrect.

Someone was working on fractals all year long…it is just that many of the “fixes” they enabled would introduce new bugs, and then these bugs would take weeks to fix, and then new bugs would appear. Cliffside was always a crap-shoot since that fractal changed constantly based on the whim of whoever was in charge of these patches. Same with Dredge. All of these though were “stealth” patches, very rarely being in any of the patch notes. It really did seem like every time I ran fractals after any patch the question was always “what works, what doesn’t after the last patch”.

Maybe the team in charge of fractals are all locked away in a little room in ANET’s basement without any outside internet access. This would explain the lack of any communication as they simply cannot talk to us. It also explains Chris’ responses since he probably doesn’t have access to go down into the “fractal dungeon” and speak to the fractal engineers. They are hidden away from the world.

Then why do CDI on it? Fractals fixes were always “based on the whim of whoever was in charge of these patches.” They never listened to what players have to say. It was always about communication. Those patches were barely anything players have asked. Big issue was always the dredge, instead of actually fixing the level, they made it harder. Not by fixing exploits, but by making the bodies teleport off buttons upon deaths. Who asked for this? Nobody.

Then when they finally had a dedicated team of designers to actually do some work on fractals because of the whole LS thing, instead of actually listening to players about issues and proposed fixes, they went free gunning with whatever they felt like. Judging from the streams they’ve presented up to Fractured path, many of them didn’t even play this part of the game. Given they listened to three things:

- Reward at the end
Which 10s increase is a joke when it comes down to high level fractals. Along with nerfing the drop rate significantly

- New levels
Which was promised thing as part of the election

- Account bound level
Which was probably one of the worst things ever done for some players that put their time and hard work into leveling their alts in fractals. And people that were asking for it, can’t use their alts anyway because of the AR restriction

Then when asked they went into communication lockdown. Like really? That’s incredibly unprofessional. Almost like punching somebody in the stomach, running away to the other room, locking the door and not answer to knocking and yelling. Maybe it’ll go away.

Then on top of that, with reset many players been voicing their concern constantly since it’s been announced. Not only most Posts were deleted, but nothing was ever properly addressed. And people that are trolling those forums screaming “exploit” never went past level 30 to begin with. So they’re glad that they’ve been put on pedestal with the rest of us because they didn’t have to lift a finger in order to be on the same level as us. Which to this day, 95% of them aren’t still.

The whole thing was a disaster. The execution. The broken promises (patch notes) that never been delivered upon. The complete lack of communication. It was a complete mess.

The one thing you can be sure of is that their PvP and WvW community won’t have to face this kind of execution. Because they’re always discuss everything with them and have a whole team dedicated to each area, hence those two places are getting better and better with every update. You won’t see that from that one guy locked in “Anet dungeon” that does stuff on the whim.

Here’s the direct quote from Izzy for referencing purposes:

Fractals: Why did you feel that resetting everybody to fractal level 30 was the best course of action?
“We were changing the relative difficulties of those levels and really wanted to level the playing field and give everyone a fresh start. We know this devalued some of the work people did but we wanted everyone to have a common language as far as the progression in fractals and didn’t want confusion in terminology for example ’I’m a pre change level 50 fractal’. Now if someone says they are level 50 in fractals everyone understand what they did and what that progress means, this becomes very important as we increase the levels in fractals.” ~Isaiah Cartwright

Source

I find it funny how very uneducated people are when bringing up the exploiting arguments. They never got to level 50 themselves, yet they base all their knowledge on “she-said-he-said” rumors about exploiting the content. “You’re higher than me? You must’ve exploited!”

I personally have never gotten past level 50. I’ve known some that did, but I felt that the time was better spent leveling my alts to level 50 as well. With three toons completely leveled to 50 and 1 more on her way in her teen level I couldn’t contain my excitement when I saw that “Coming soon” picture on their release page that clearly meant “fractals update”. Then we all know how that ended.

I was hoping for something, anything with this current CDI. The conversation had started quite on point and on subject stating clearly what should be done with fractals. When the main points were clearly stated, people took it to creative level. At this point it’s not even about fractals anymore. It’s about “fixing” rolling, speedclearing, and choosing your fractals. I mean we have people that never done a fractal past level 30 and are discussing how we should make instabilities harder. All Anet has to do now is do whatever they want, and they can safely say: You guys asked for this.

I’ll continue to play fractals because of my friends, not because of my passion for this particular area of the game (which is diminishing with every post I read in CDI segment). But frankly… I have no hope for the future of fractals at this point. From what we know is that it takes about 4 months for CDI to show in-game progress. Needless to say, we can expect another reset in 4 months time…

Regardless I can relate completely how you feel Lilith. Chris’ response left me baffled…

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

Might as well throw in my 2 cents:

1. Stop dropping uninfused rings above level 20-30. It’s just ridiculous to finish a lvl 49 fractal and get an uninfused Melaggan’s Whorl.

2. Kill the stupid clown car!

3. Make the cash rewards better. Something along the lines of: PR 1-10, 1g; PR 11-20, 2g; PR 21-30, 3g; PR 31-40, 4g; PR 41-50, 5g.

4. Get those pesky fractal weapon chests up already! Fractal harpoon is nice, but it gets old after your 3rd. And no matter how kitten I think my warrior is, he simply will not dual-wield shields! Even if they’re fractal shields.

5. Kill the stupid clown car!

6. Get more rewards for the Pristine Relics, rings just don’t cut it no more. And 15 relics for a pristine one is a joke.

7. Kill the stupid clown car!

8. Make the Fall of Abbaddon fractal. Even if it has to have its own clown car.

Edited to add a few things.

Adding to my original post:

9. Fix the AR changes! As it has been quite well said before in this thread, fractals used to be about player skill and not as much about player gear. Now there’s just a gear check and then you’re off to the usual combat while ignoring agony. It’s a big “BRO, DO YOU EVEN RICH?” slap to the face, especially since there is quite a big inbalance between personal reward being accountwide, while AR is characterwide! Yay, I can now swap for a different class mid-fractal to help my party… but wait… not enough AR on that character… And it does not matter how skillful you are, so suck on that and go be more rich before coming back, punk! Not cool, ANet, not cool.

10. You really need to deal with the fact that you took something from the players and not given anything back. You cannot simply wipe away 20 PR levels worth of player progression, reroll everyone to PR30 and expect people to forgive and forget. That was a very low blow from you, ANet. While the (let’s call it) logic behind it is somewhat understandable, it’s not the players’ fault that you didn’t plan this in advance from the beginning. And you took from us 20-30+ hours of concentrated gameplay just like that. While I doubt that this deed will be unmade, some compensation would be kitten nice for all those lost levels and time, and for the odiousness of what you have done. Or is it your plan to keep rerolling players down every time you decide FOTM (or anything else, for that matter) needs to change?

11. Kill the stupid clown car!

I love this! I agree with every single point. But I’d like to add one more to it just so everything is sure to be mentioned:

12. Kill the stupid clown car!

+1 for all that xD

KyleMcLaw.8974:

How about giving everyone that lost levels, due to reset, a 50copper bonus chest per level lost? That way I’d have 20ish silver (including alts that I had earn FoM 3-5 on) and no one could say they weren’t compensated? Personally, I liked the reset since the fractals were made different and previous high FoMers already got the bonus fractal rolls from easier content. Please implement chest idea….tired of people saying they were not compensated POST reset since PRE reset rewards were apparently not enough.

That is definitely not a constructive feedback in any way. It’s an insult directed at players. If you don’t have anything constructive to say, don’t say anything at all.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I am pretty sure Izzy responded to this question a few months ago. I will check with him.

Chris

Izzy had a very formulated response. But the thing was that at the very begining we’ve been given Leaderboards as a reason for reset. Then Izzy stated that the entire reason for it was “misunderstanding in terminology”, which is pretty silly of a reason for something so drastic. And nothing was ever stated about any kind of reimbursement for levels lost, which up till then you guys been pretty on point with all other areas of the game.
But no rush, I figured I’d give it one last shot. I’ve lost many fractal buddies because of this since they either stopped playing the game completely or don’t want anything to do with fractals anymore, figured this might bring them back somehow.

Also, Chris.
I’ve been trying to avoid the question for a while now, trying my hardest to contribute to this CDI as much as the time lets me, while trying to push this question to the back of my mind. It never seem to be a good time to ask it, but then again I don’t think it’ll ever be a good time to. But you once said that you will give your opinion on fractal reset after you gave it some thoughts. I was wondering if you got anything for us. Will we ever be compensated for levels we lost and those over multiple toons? Just stating if it’s not even a viable thing for discussion anymore would suffice.

Purple Miku.7032:

First and foremost, the only solution that I can think of the counter the incentive for the average player to roll for specific fractals is to release rewards that are unique to a particular fractal.

That would make rolling even more viable than ever before. You’d roll for a certain level because you want those unique rewards. I think allowing us to choose the first fractal while completely randomizing the next two would be efficient enough. That way we can experience all the fractals, including the so-called Tier 1 ones.

Other than this point, I agree with rest.

adubb.2453:

Compromise to giving players a choice between random and choosing the next fractal: Why not make the choice of the next fractal one of three randomly selected fractals. This way you still have at least a somewhat randomized group of fractals while still giving players a choice.

You could always alter the rewards so that choosing “random” while have an increased reward (more gold, karma, etc) as opposed to manually choosing the next fractal.

Nobody would bother a chance of getting fractals they dislike for extra 20-30 silvers.

timmyf.1490:

I might be biased because I proposed it early on in this thread, but I’m wondering if we could all agree on this statement:

For a variety of purposes (including training, practice, leaderboard ranking, limited time to play, and potentially more), Fractals should include a mode where a party can select a single Fractal to complete.

Is that fair?

Single, Yes. A whole set, No.

haviz.1340:

Casual players like you and me will play fun and new randomized fotm and after few runs or maybe a bit more, we’ll get bored and only those speedrunners stay. You said it yourself, players after some time play strictly for reward so why forcing randomization on that?

Because it’s what fractals was always about. Why I love this mode. Giving me an option to skip it all and do “mini dungeon runs” will kill it. I might still want to play randomized, but guess what? It’s a 5 player thing. And I like playing with my friends. I’ve been playing fractals for over a year now, and according to your reasoning I would be bored by now, yet I’m still playing it. And I’m here to make it better, so randomness would not always screw you over because you get dredge.

I’m no casual fractal player. I’ve done more runs that I can count, yet I still play it every chance I get. But because of some bugs and low rewards it’s harder and harder to get groups together. Because it’s always the same thing about Dredge making it ungodly long or not getting rewarded enough.

It’s not about wanting the randomness, it’s about not wanting fractals to turn into dungeons.

Wethospu.6437:

Nature or dictionary? Please try to choose.

Anyways, on more serious tune, in my opinion fractals are based on mini dungeons with high difficulty due to scaling. That’s their main mechanic, not random map selection. Lore wise, fractals can also refer to random nature of the maps. They have pretty much nothing in common and there’s no reasoning why we are living exactly those events.

Why do you care so much if others are able to reliably speedclear content? We can already speedclear it, just have to grind until we get lucky with rolls.

Because you’re forcing speedclearing on everyone. What I’m trying to do is give an ability to speed clearers to do their level by possibly giving us an option to choose 1st fractal, while rest remain the same with Tier system being scrapped away. That way you can have your challenge vs time, without completely destroying randomness.

What you’re suggesting is we choose every fractal or have an option to do it randomly. Who would want to do it randomly? If given an option, I’d never do certain levels again. Because why? For fun? Fractals were random for way over a year now. Why destroy it? For sake of that 10% of players that want to do speed clearing? I’m trying to have an option for you along with fractals remaining the same.

If given an option, you’ll always go for easier path. Unless you want to challenge yourself. Random nature of fractals is how we learned to play them. It was the big thing about fractals. Because frankly I can make more gold doing dungeons over and over again. But I want to have that excitement and unknown in the mix.

Taking down the tier system and allowing us to choose first fractal would keep fractals fresh by never knowing what’s next and at the same time give an ability to speed clearers to do their thing on any level they please. It would also benefit younger fractalers to learn each and every level with a guide.

Try not to force a certain way to do things, but create a way for both parties to be happy with the outcome.

The more I read the less excited I get about the future of fractals…

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

Fractals are already as boring and tedious as dungeons. As I said above, you can roll a dice when selecting a dungeon path for the same effect. Saying that fractals are based on randomness sounds quite absurd and I would like to see a source if you have any.

If they want to encourage variation they can quite easily add new daily quest with randomly selected dungeon paths / fractal maps to complete. Instead of forcing us to do things they should give us a reason to do those things.

Source: Dictionary

frac·tal
?frakt?l/Submit
MATHEMATICS
noun
plural noun: fractals

a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

What’s next? A bible? Anyways, I’m up for renaming fractals if we can then have sensible discussion.

You asked for source, I gave you the source. Renaming fractals? What’s next? Fractals are fractals because of their nature. What you’re trying to do is create a whole new content.

I’m not gonna stand by and watch something that I’ve been playing, turn into another speed clearing track. Create an extra mode if you have to, but don’t overhaul the entire system.

From the scene it shows that Marjory ran directly at the blast, hence absorbing most of it. Braham on the other hand seem to broke his leg as the result of the unfortunate fall. Which would explain Kasmeer and Rox being lucky enough to land safely, getting away with only few bruises.
Regardless when I thought Marjory died I went berserk. At that point I just wanted to see Scarlet dead.
As I made that final blow, my mind cleared. It’s almost like I became my character for a second there. Started thinking rationally again. I wished Scarlet was still alive, so she could be questioned. That I might have overreacted.
Then I saw Marjory wake up. Tear went down my cheek. They created something that I though could not be recreated since our mentors died. I actually cared for those characters again. Something I told myself I’d never do again after watching Sieran die.

spoj.9672:

Romo.3709:

spoj.9672:

snip

That’s why I’ve been saying the new Tier system does not work. Have an ability to pick 1st fractal, whatever it is you want it to be to cut down the tedious rolling and leave other 3 completely random, hence keeping the meaning of fractals true.That way you can have your speed clearing, and we can have our fractals the way they used to be.

I quite like this idea. It opens up the possibility for competition by using the first pick and doesnt completely remove your forced variation. Its sort of a middle ground between no randomness and completely random. But we would still need to make rewards scale better for specific fractals. Because as it stands noone is going to pick dredge or cliffside first.

So basically im in full support of going back to the old system but with the improvement of vote to pick the first fractal rather than needless rolling.

Yeah. Whatever they do with fractals in the coming months and however they take our responses it always comes down to one thing: Rewards. Either balance them out so they’re on par with each other or have different rewards tiers. And by different rewards tiers I don’t mean an extra green, because frankly they’re salvage trash, nothing more.
Even if balancing doesn’t happen and rewards tiers get implemented, there’s still need to do something with Dredge. That’s a point number 2 on the list before anything else, but after rewards.

spoj.9672:

Proper speed clearing isnt profitable in the slightest. You spend hours restarting the same dungeon path until you get a smooth run with no mistakes just to beat the current record. We do this because its fun and competative, not because its profitable.

I dislike randomness as it limits possibilies and since the tier addition to fractals ive felt like fractals are the same each day (we almost never get volcanic anymore and we choose to start on swamp so we never get underwater, old system we could get both which felt really good). If I could choose what fractals then I could pick one that we havent done in a long time. If you remove rolling and random picking of fractals you would have to fix rewards to make the much more challenging and longer fractals much more rewarding. But I think thats the right way to go personally. You could always add a random button where the game chooses for you.

That’s why I’ve been saying the new Tier system does not work. Have an ability to pick 1st fractal, whatever it is you want it to be to cut down the tedious rolling and leave other 3 completely random, hence keeping the meaning of fractals true. That way you can have your speed clearing, and we can have our fractals the way they used to be.

Wethospu.6437:

Fractals are already as boring and tedious as dungeons. As I said above, you can roll a dice when selecting a dungeon path for the same effect. Saying that fractals are based on randomness sounds quite absurd and I would like to see a source if you have any.

If they want to encourage variation they can quite easily add new daily quest with randomly selected dungeon paths / fractal maps to complete. Instead of forcing us to do things they should give us a reason to do those things.

Source: Dictionary

frac·tal
?frakt?l/Submit
MATHEMATICS
noun
plural noun: fractals

a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

This is turning very fast into “turn fractals into speed clearing dungeons” discussion. I don’t see that being an evolution at all. That being said I don’t have anything against speed clearing dungeons, because it’s profitable.

Fractals is a whole different area. Making fractals into speed clearing dungeons would make them boring and tedious just like the dungeons you’ve been clearing. Because once you can pick what you want to run, you’d then run it over and over again for best time. How is that engaging and evolving? It is challenging, but at the same time it’s not evolving fractals in any way. Rather it’s stripping fractals of what they are based on: Randomness.

I understand speed clearing community needs new and more challenging content. But making fractals into another Arah would turn down many new players that are slowly getting interested in fractals or want to try it out.

Best scenario I can think of is making those Leaderboards you so crave go along with another mode. Let’s call it Time-Mode or something. Where you can pick your level and see how fast you can beat it. All while leaving fractals what they are. At the same time “Time-Mode” would be a great place for players to learn each level one at the time. And it would allow people like me to take my guildies that are having problems with a particular level in that mode and guide them through without doing a full set of fractals hoping to get the said level.

Romo.3709:

Scorch der Juengere.7328:

Let’s say we have 20 “random-ready” instabilities.
11 Fractals * 20 instabilities would be 220 combinations. That is already quite nice. How often do you play with the same team composition? I found that some encounters feel quite differently depending on who you have with you. That sound like a lot of combinations to explore.

There is, however, the problem that instabilities are something that, from what I’ve read, even those who are excited for them, have not reached them yet.

Perhaps instabilities can scale, as well? Instabilities that require you to spread out, can require a greater radius. When they trigger periodically, they can trigger more often. Of course, when an instability his, it might just hit harder. This would allow to also include the option of a random instability in lower levels.

Some of the instabilities have to be planned for in advance.

There is one instability that will give you increased damage with every hit. It’s bad, like really bad. To have that increased? It would seriously suck. There is another instability that gives you damage based on critical hits you do. You technically have to switch your gear and maybe retrait before going into it, cuz when you’re a zerker, the fights take forever. Another one makes it so some of the boons are converted to conditions which is a pain for some guardians if they’re not traited right.

There are many instabilities that putting them into the random rotation would make some runs a living hell. That in turn would attract the hardcore speed runners, but it would also repeal everyone else. I like doing fractals. I like challenge now and then. But I’m no masochist.

On the other hand after your clerification about “random-ready” instabilities, that might actually work. If it would include set of 20 random instabilities that would not affect your build in any way, that might be fun. Build breaking instabilities are bad by design as they are. They’re not fun because you have to completely strip yourself off from your familiarity and try to be as efficient as possible under given circumstances, which in some cases require you to completely retrait your build.

20 “random ready” instabilities would have to include things such as random chill, Mossman following you or random lightning strikes. Things like that. Maybe since it would include complete randomness of the Instabilities, we could also add some fun one rather than always challenging ones. Like Big Heads or Minimized characters. Let’s have fun with that. Fractals are challenging, but who said they can’t be entertaining? I would love to see my character run around Ascalon Fractal with big head. Or even do dredge level with my entire party being miniaturized.

Things that take away your options when it comes to fight are boring and tedious. And I would not want to go through them more than once. But Instabilities that ADD mechanics are more fun. Why not have one that make each boss appear randomly and follow us like Mossman? Code is already there. You’d just have to swap the boss. To maybe Mai Trin or even Bloomhunger for more “Fun” effect

Regardless, idea is somewhat interesting as long as the build-breaking instabilities would remain out of the loop.

Scorch der Juengere.7328:

Let’s say we have 20 “random-ready” instabilities.
11 Fractals * 20 instabilities would be 220 combinations. That is already quite nice. How often do you play with the same team composition? I found that some encounters feel quite differently depending on who you have with you. That sound like a lot of combinations to explore.

There is, however, the problem that instabilities are something that, from what I’ve read, even those who are excited for them, have not reached them yet.

Perhaps instabilities can scale, as well? Instabilities that require you to spread out, can require a greater radius. When they trigger periodically, they can trigger more often. Of course, when an instability his, it might just hit harder. This would allow to also include the option of a random instability in lower levels.

Some of the instabilities have to be planned for in advance.

There is one instability that will give you increased damage with every hit. It’s bad, like really bad. To have that increased? It would seriously suck. There is another instability that gives you damage based on critical hits you do. You technically have to switch your gear and maybe retrait before going into it, cuz when you’re a zerker, the fights take forever. Another one makes it so some of the boons are converted to conditions which is a pain for some guardians if they’re not traited right.

There are many instabilities that putting them into the random rotation would make some runs a living hell. That in turn would attract the hardcore speed runners, but it would also repeal everyone else. I like doing fractals. I like challenge now and then. But I’m no masochist.

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

We all do in one way or another. I understand it doesn’t feel AS good as winning the lottery, but it still feels good. A small win is still a win. Randomness in levels made it so you never knew what kind of a run you’ll get. Could have be an easy one or a very long one. It gave the element of surprise each time u hit that loading screen. Now it’s a harder one every time you pass that 2nd fractal. Nothing to look forward to at all.

Why it is a good thing that you don’t know what maps you will get? Is random map selection the only way to get those results?

I think the content has partially failed if some maps are there just to make you feel good when you avoid them. What about getting enjoyment for beating levels, etc?

The randomness of not knowing what’s next is not particularly what makes me feel good when I hit that loading screen. The possibility of getting a level that I like is what makes you feel good. At this point with the Tier system we have in place, I know I’m getting a level I do not like as my third level. Doesn’t matter what I roll. Doesn’t matter what difficulty I play. Luck doesn’t play any role in this either. I will get a level I dislike, because frankly Tier 3 levels are on the bottom of my list. Randomness makes it so there’s a possibility of that not happening. And if there is a small chance, I’d rather take that that knowing it’s gonna suck every time I get that third level.

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

Wethospu.6437:

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

We all do in one way or another. I understand it doesn’t feel AS good as winning the lottery, but it still feels good. A small win is still a win. Randomness in levels made it so you never knew what kind of a run you’ll get. Could have be an easy one or a very long one. It gave the element of surprise each time u hit that loading screen. Now it’s a harder one every time you pass that 2nd fractal. Nothing to look forward to at all.

Why should there be something to look forward to? Why couldn’t you just have a solid run?

Solid run only happens with groups of friends that work together well. That’s not always the case. As to looking forward to third fractal. I was always looking forward to getting an easy Swamp or Underwater at the end. It made it that much closer to completing the run. Now I know I’m getting one of four possibilities, and none of them are the above 2. It takes out the random from fractals completely. I can only have one long one or one ungodly long one. That’s the choice now.

Wethospu.6437:

This will probably come as bit offending but I have to ask. Do you gamble in real life?

We all do in one way or another. I understand it doesn’t feel AS good as winning the lottery, but it still feels good. A small win is still a win. Randomness in levels made it so you never knew what kind of a run you’ll get. Could have be an easy one or a very long one. It gave the element of surprise each time u hit that loading screen. Now it’s a harder one every time you pass that 2nd fractal. Nothing to look forward to at all.

Wethospu.6437:

Nebilim.5127:

Instabilities are an amazing idea to add variety. And i think it would work better if you added more randomization instead of a fixed one per level. As in the current situation, people avoid all the annoying ones and stick with easy, making the others kinda pointless.

As for raising the difficulty of the content as you progress. Instabilities is also good way to do it. How about mixing up? For instance. Level 30 to 40, we have fixed instabilities. As for level 40 to 50, they start coming randomized for each level, then 60 to 70, it is randomized AND there are more instabilities to pick from, harder, and from there on, you can start adding 2 instabilities at same time per fractal.

—

Do you realize this wouldn’t be a challenge? It would be a RNG-fest.

Lots of you guys seem to ignore that random gets very easily out of control. Randomized systems will always have good and bad rolls. And more you rely on random, more prevalent those rolls become.

Completely agree with this statement. The less RNG based Instabilities, the better. At least at this point in game we can gear up properly for any fractal. Think of getting a zerker party and hitting up Bloodlust Instability on your final boss. No Thank You.

DiogoSilva.7089:

• Deeper challenging content that relies less on one-hit kills, and places more emphasis on conditions, boons, positioning, passive defensive stats (toughness), party support, cleansing, stun breaking, etc. The current focus on reflection, dodging and blocking is already fine where it is, but not enough. This is a problem with GW2’s monster design as a whole, and not just fractals.

Everything you mentioned is already in place. You just gotta get there. And you’ll find that higher levels have everything that you mentioned.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Finally I have sort of a meta-question which is: what place, if any, does random have in the Fractals? While it’s easy to dismiss it because of the drawbacks, I think it’s important to talk about the drawbacks of not having it (or having another system) would be. Assume we solve re-rolling and make Dredge more reasonable, does random fractal selection add or detract from your satisfaction of playing in the Fractals? Was it more interesting at one time than it is now? Can we compare that with Instabilities, which are very predictable? Imagine if we completely strip random out everything possible and conjure a system where you complete specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items. Does that entice you or sound like a big grind?

Thanks in advance for reading and I look forward to continuing the discussion.

Regardless the outcome, can we keep our current level this time around? I like your ideas and how you want to go about it, but in the back of my mind I can only see the bad outcome of resetting everyone again to be on par. Because this idea is more troubling than anything you would do to fractals. Thanks in advance.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have a few questions for the thread. Sorry I’m a bit late (though I have been reading)!
-Snip-

Instabilities

It’s a fun system, but some of them you can only play through once, and then you swear to yourself that you never will again (like Bloodlust as an example). I would like to see more cosmetic Instabilities as well that aren’t affecting the actual stats for pure fun. Kind of like making your characters minimized at all times, or twice the size throughout fractals. Big heads, enemies exploding into fireworks? Let’s have fun with it
But when it comes to Instabilities vs new fractal, new fractal would win every time. More verity means less chance of getting Dredge But in all seriousness, new fractal level is always welcome.

Difficulty

I’m obviously never a fan of getting one-shot. Instead how about we make it so you have to go alternate way? Like different paths in each fractal, they would open as we get higher and higher. I really have no ideas regarding this issue, since I never really thought about it.

Meta

I remember those moments when we got to the third fractal and we either got Underwater or Swamps. It literally felt like we won a lottery. Everyone’s mood automatically shot up, and the evening was complete. That doesn’t happen anymore. Because whatever we do we always end up with a kitten at the end. Hoping we get one of the lesser evils. Complete randomness with level selection was something that made fractals unique. Given we sometimes got a really bad roll with 2 really long fractals back to back, but it was outweighed by the times we had those fun easy runs. I miss those. Like seriously miss those. I would love to see it go back to that.

You don’t practically need to solve rolling, but instead you could give us a reason not to roll. And not by something in lines of “You get swamps first, you’ll always end with Dredge” or anything along those lines. More like innovative ways. BINGO idea was a fun one. Or maybe making 2 small levels just like Swamps, so we’d be happy with whichever one we get regardless of the roll. Regardless making dredge more reasonable would fix rolling by itself, since people wouldn’t mind playing other levels knowing that there isn’t one later on that will take them 1-2 hours to complete.

As to idea of completing specific sets of combinations of fractal/instability/difficulty to build specific items is not much of a grind, but based too heavily on the RNG factor of fractals. Which would make people flip out when they went through 3 levels of a specific combination just to get the wrong one at the very end. It would have to be Instability/Difficulty combination at most, which would be much more reasonable.

insanemaniac.2456:

Romo.3709:

Making AR past +5 doesn’t make much sense. And at the current prices, you’re better off buying another +5 AR infusion than spending gold for extractor.

i roll with 10s in my rings/back so i dont have to gear swap to run low levels with friends (<30)

im not a rich kitten by any means, and my focus is wvw + friends. id rather have wvw infusions. overclocking those infusion slots is pretty nice. i dont exactly want to make another pink armor/gear set for something i only dabble in due to it being passé to me.

I understand completely. I only made my ascended armor for one of my toons and it was purely with fractals in mind. It kind of got to the point where Agony doesn’t affect me at all. So I tend to switch to my thief a lot which has 55 AR, so I have more initiative to dodge
Not much of a WvW fan, but I would love to use those infusion slots for things other than agony. Like Magic Find Infusion, Gold Infusion, Karma, Exp (Even though those can only be put into Utility slot). In a way I’m kind of jealous of people that do not care for fractals because of the options they have (extra damage to npcs in wvw for example) =/

timmyf.1490:

I guess that brings me to a question for those of you who do a lot of higher-level Fractals: how frequently do you feel the need to remove an infusion, upgrade it, and re-slot it? Are we talking weekly? Monthly? Every 2-3 months? Or is it every AR you can add? Or every 2-3 AR you can add? And how often is that?

I’ve never needed or used an upgrade extractor, but $3 doesn’t seem overly expensive for something that saves tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Considering you can only use this type of agony in Infused items only (Rings and Backpack atm), you really don’t need more than 5 in each slot if you’re properly equipped.
At the current state, having every ascended item equipped (Trinkets, Armor and Weapons) with +5 AR (both Craftable one and Relics one) you can get your AR to 85 AR total:

45 AR from Trinkets
- 2 Rings
– +5 Relics AR each (Let’s call it RAR)
– +5 Craft AR each (Let’s call it CAR)
- 2 Earrings
– +5 RAR each
- 1 Amulet
– +5 RAR
- 1 Backpiece
– +5 RAR
– +5 CAR
10 AR from Weapons
- 1 handed
– 2x +5 RAR
- 2 handed
– +5 RAR each
30 AR from armor
- 6 pieces
– +5 RAR each

The highest fractal level at the moment being 50 requires you to have 70 AR total to receive 1% damage.
Source:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony

Making AR past +5 doesn’t make much sense. And at the current prices, you’re better off buying another +5 AR infusion than spending gold for extractor.