Guild Wars 2

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

After his response, the subject was still talked a lot. And you then told us you would think about how we felt and get back to us.

Source (response from Romo to Izzy): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/3#post3369056

Your response to Romo after this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/3#post3369091

ahh yes, even playing field. I really dont think this was achieved, the people who used to be 50, are 50 again, many who werent havent gotten that much farther.
people skipped many of the instabilities and relied on the easiest (heaviest agony based) instabilities to progress.

From the devs it would be good to get some feedback here.

in retrospect was the fractal reset a good thing for fractals?
in evolving the game, tradeoffs will happen, how do you plan to minimize the negative effects of these trade offs
is leveling the playing fields worth wiping player progress?
is there ways to evolve/level playing fields without hard wipes?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Romo.3709:

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.

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

Chris

hard to search this forum, but if memory serves, Izzy said in the development phase, they never thought players really looked at difficulty scale as a progression. He said they would consider that type of thing in the future, but not that they wouldnt do it.
As a whole, the issue and idea of creating/evolving content and how that effects various forms of progression, and what is and isnt off the table in terms of resets has never really been addressed.

In the context of evolving fractals, id like to say i personally think it was a mistake to do it for the purposes of leaderboards and/or trying to reset the playing field, and that going forward, new content should be released in a manner that doesnt completely focus on difficulty scales.

I think instabilities would have been better served as a seperate game mode, unlocked based on either reaching level 31 OR playing say 150 fractals(31 is 120 )
the rewards from instabilities should be somewhat better or unique.

Evoneva Drakon.1754:

As a ele main, thief second

In my opinion on its own it is not over the top, however when coupled with a few things it becomes way over the top.

Shadowsteps remove the need for positioning or timing

Steal will strip stability if the thief is wise enough to save steal vs some classes.
this means skills like either renewal can’t be safely used without a very high chance of being interrupted.

then coupled with the evasion frames you can see why PW can become a extremely versatile skill,

need to interrupt a heal/skill? PW
to dangerous to stomp a foe? PW
need to stop people rezzing? PW
need a few seconds for heal to come up? PW

problem is theives need a lot one skill, because main and offhand often dont synergize well.
if pistol whip didnt stun, no one would get hit by it, if it doesnt do dmg, no one would use it over AA (to which its already close) if it didnt evade it would essentially kill the user.
and if it sucks, sword pistol doesnt serve much purpose.

Ixl Super Ixl.7258:

face a pistol whip thief on any class that is not engi, no matter how bad the thief is all you have to do is smash few buttons and you have perma evades / blind . the main problem is any1 with 1 brain cell can play it. I see many terrible players just spam pistol whip and killing. I though hammer warrior was bad since it was op and easy to play. Pistol whip is OP AND EASIER* to play than hambow.

pistol whip is pretty slow and leaves you open to dmg if the player avoids the stun/stun breaks. even if you get caught, you can evade 1/2 the dmg. Its a melee only counter skill.

it also would probably make sword pistol completely useless if it isnt better than AA dmg, to which its already close

Magnus Heartseeker.7958:

I feel it does too much damage for the amount of utility it grants the thief. Spam 3, evade, and daze your opponent while doing good damage. It just seems like it does too much.

it doesnt do it at the same time, and it roots the player for its duration. the stun doesnt last forever, and has a visual tell.

its dmg isnt that great either.
Its essentially a make em pay counter, it maximizes its potential by catching you off guard/mid animation.

wasnt disagreeing with you nevets, was going to elaborate then thought it was better served in another, more thought out post. My fault for the confusion

timmyf.1490:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Romo.3709:

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.

With the caveat of no daily chest/boss completion chest and no level up.

Agreed.

Fractal Leaderboards could be based on fastest completion time for each Fractal at each scale. Being able to choose a single Fractal will allow speedrunners and leaderboard folks to easily choose which Fractal/scale they’d like to attempt.

For people like me concerned with training my guildmates, I can easily choose the Fractal I’d like to explain.

For people like Lost Witch who have never seen Thaumanova, well… you can just go start it.

If you like the randomness of Fractals, you just launch the regular 3+1 mode and do it that way.

Other concerns or objections?

i think each scale is too much data across too many players, leaderboards should probably be only at top scale. It should probably include each level with each instability, but thats a lot of data as well, hmmm… problem i think with leaderboards is too much data points

Conski Deshan.2057:

Romo.3709:

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.

With the caveat of no daily chest/boss completion chest and no level up.

ah yes, the chest, it should probably have its rewards rebalanced for this mode. (based on comparitively short boss fights)

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?

as long as it isnt as rewarding as a random whole set, i think thats fine.
I think the big thing i think we should evolve in fractals is the idea of different modes/seperating them from difficulty, and different rewards for fractals based on how easy/fast/meta they are.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

phys.7689:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I can’t get behind the instability system. It’s still the same lame dungeon which you want to complete as fast as possible to get the loot (Yes, that’s grind and GW2 turned into a grindy game) and the instabilities just slow you down. There is not even an explanation for those instabilities storywise.

How are instabilities making that worse? Even without them people ran only same levels for daily.
Why is getting slowed down a bad thing if you find fast clears lame?

Because slow clears are even more lame.
Look, I’ve played this game for over 3k hours now, most times in PvE, I’ve done all dungeons too often to find them entertaining. It bores me. I’m doing those things to get the reward.

Queensdale champion train sounds like a right place for you.

Anthony asks for opinions, I give him my opinion. You have a problem with that?
Instead of adding crude mechanics they should work on the grind so I don’t have to run 100 fractals just to get one ascended backpiece.

they got other options for ascended backpiece now. you can get the blades one, probably for less resources/time. No offense, but i dont think its a good idea to design fractals around people getting items super easily.

I don’t want them to be easier. But I don’t like the instabilities, partly because they don’t make the content any more satisfying, partly because they just got implemented without any reason or need. Furthermore I have to say that the grind is too huge to enjoy the fractals at a certain amount. Therefore I want them to work on new content istead of new instabilities.

instabilities are meant to give you new challenges/difficulties/ways to play fractals. They dont really improve your drops, i think they are worthwhile, but i think they should be seperated from mechanical difficulties.
as far as grind in fractals, the main grind is agony (pretty bad imo) the grind for backpieces, well you can get 345 a day if you do 5 runs on each difficulty tier. lets say you can get 300 relics for 4 runs if you dont want to do the lowest teir. If you only want to do 2 runs, you can do the top two teirs for 184 relics a day, and take 10 days

it really aint that bad, problem is this assumes you already have access to the top tiers, but getting fractal stuff faster is kind of the point of the progression.

urdriel.8496:

Aioros.4862:

Now we are skirmishers, not archers. I think it’s a “Go melee or get out” thingy.

Yes, common sense, we will give you Shortbow and Longbow but you must go melee…….

they also gave you daggers swords greatswords and axes.

this game isnt designed where one of a professions weaponsets is supposed to better than others, each set is supposed to serve different needs.
ranger is meant to be able to go in and out of range, and have good options from any range. They actually did that fairly decently, my main beef is LB/SB is boring. I wouldnt mind aimed shots and charged attacks, but i dont know if thats what yall want

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Next is the difficulty/progression question. Personally I’ve always felt that the difficulty scaling in Fractals is a bit redundant. After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder? I know this has been commented on, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on alternatives. If not difficulty scaling (or supposing difficulty scaling simply stopped at a certain level), what else would add meaning to progressing through higher level Fractals? How does that align with your goals, whatever they may be (rewards, defeating hard content, discovery, etc).

So I haven’t yet commented on this thread, but I figured I’d at least take the time to write once.

I was a player who reached scale 80 for fun before the reset because I found no other valuable PVE content in the game. Fractals, for me, was supposed to be the challenging endgame PVE content this game lacks compared to its predecessor. I loved challenging myself and my group specifically on high scale shaman.

You asked “After all, once the creatures have started to one-shot you, does it continue to matter that they keep hitting harder?”

The answer is, sort of. In some fights where taking SOME damage is almost unavoidable, it encourages different builds and gear to mitigate being one-shot.

I think you were perhaps asking that question rhetorically, but I would suggest that another question is more relevant. Is infinite agony building to avoid agony one-shots more valuable gameplay than skillful avoidance of regular mob one-shots during non-boss encounters?

Honestly what ruined fractals for me, besides the reset and obvious lack of care for players that worked to get to high levels, was the shift from skill-checks to gear-checks. I refuse to grind exponentially for more agony resistance gear. It’s stupid and not indicative of skill, but rather of wasted time.

I would love to see more skilled encounters. Shaman was my favorite fight before Liadri. Liadri was probably the best example of a fight that required skill that has been implemented in the game to date. I realize Westhospu put up a video where he zerked Liadri in 5 seconds, but the achievement “Light up the Darkness” should have made things a bit harder for him. Also, last time I checked he wasn’t able to solo shaman.

I want content that requires me to think. Obviously once groups get to know each other, they figure out a “best way” to do things, and the “thinking” element sort of gets pushed to the back burner, but there was just something about the shaman fight that felt unique every time I played with different people.

Game play should focus on good positioning, good timing of skills, and good synthesis between group members. It should not focus on exponential gear grinds (your new infusion system), gear checks (every 10 levels of the Mistlock Instabilities), or mindless game play (dredge clown car-I fell asleep doing this in the 70s late at night on more than one occasion.)

Good mechanics that add a sense of variability could also help. For example, what if a fractal used the movement system you guys added in the Zephyr Sanctum?

agony resistance ehhhh i think its the least well implemented part of fractals

Wethospu.6437:

Romo.3709:

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.

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.

the problem is not your desire to speed clear, the problem is your desire to make that the main mode of play.

What do you object to about my proposal for a competitive mode, where you select 1 fractal with no random elements (like no bloomhunger) and try to get the best time.
you get slightly less fractal relics upfront, and no daily. but get chests/relics for placing high?

Rising Dusk.2408:

phys.7689:

removal of random in fractals, is really not a good idea, lets be honest, 90% of people want to remove random in order to make their runs easier/predictable, that doesnt make for a non grindy/replayable dungeon, just a faster way to get rewards.

It really is, though, because it means your runs are predictable. If they normalize the time for each tier, like they should (and like Anthony Orden was assuming in his last couple posts), then there could be alternate means to encourage players to play different fractals. Maybe certain ones reward certain lodestone types, maybe there are specific items acquired in each fractal that you need some number of for Fractal Armor in the future, or something along those lines. They should encourage diversity in playing through rewards, but shouldn’t force it up front. Removing that randomness is key to fractals both being more accessible to hardcore players and casual players on a time crunch.

I would rather they just add a competive mode, where people can select one fractal, with no random elements, rather than gutting the main attraction of the game mode. Part of the challenge/difficulty/balance of fractals is not knowing what you are going to get, and being prepared to deal with it. Once people start optimizing for each fractal type, most of the challenge/team balance and variability will be out the window.
Dungeons already are structured how you are talking about, and it has loads of problems with replayability/grind and getting certain dungeons/paths done. Fractals shouldnt hope to be dungeons, they should be fulfilling a different goal.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Wethospu.6437:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yes, it would, because the instability-stacking would only apply across a tier. That said, it requires a higher level of AR immediately to go to 40, which would force players without enough AR to be doing 30-39 until they’re ready to move up. I think this way works even if 40 is technically ‘easier’ than 39 because you can create unique experiences within each tier, and I think 30 instabilities stacking would be pretty chaotic and silly. You then could have unique and interesting speed clear runs for L39, L49, and so forth because each would be a different experience. What do you think about that?

I don’t really like the idea of making gear gating even more prevalent. If you have enough gold to craft gear you can just keep doing easy levels over and over while someone has to do all the challenging stuff. Not really my definition of skill based content.

Sure, the levels would be interesting but would anyone really want to run them instead of L40 or L50?

You might if the leaderboard played into it. You might also if each tier rewarded something meaningful that you couldn’t get in the higher tier. I don’t think it is reasonable to stack instabilities up into the 30’s of instabilities around L50 or whatever. Rewards could also be, in general, staggered to reward playing L39 instead of L40 and L49 instead of L50 so that maybe L44 and L39 have the same reward chances, but L40 is lower than L39. There are options here for that, but I think it ultimately comes down to an improved reward scheme being developed in tandem with removal of randomness.

removal of random in fractals, is really not a good idea, lets be honest, 90% of people want to remove random in order to make their runs easier/predictable, that doesnt make for a non grindy/replayable dungeon, just a faster way to get rewards.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Wethospu.6437:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I can’t get behind the instability system. It’s still the same lame dungeon which you want to complete as fast as possible to get the loot (Yes, that’s grind and GW2 turned into a grindy game) and the instabilities just slow you down. There is not even an explanation for those instabilities storywise.

How are instabilities making that worse? Even without them people ran only same levels for daily.
Why is getting slowed down a bad thing if you find fast clears lame?

Because slow clears are even more lame.
Look, I’ve played this game for over 3k hours now, most times in PvE, I’ve done all dungeons too often to find them entertaining. It bores me. I’m doing those things to get the reward.

Queensdale champion train sounds like a right place for you.

Anthony asks for opinions, I give him my opinion. You have a problem with that?
Instead of adding crude mechanics they should work on the grind so I don’t have to run 100 fractals just to get one ascended backpiece.

they got other options for ascended backpiece now. you can get the blades one, probably for less resources/time. No offense, but i dont think its a good idea to design fractals around people getting items super easily.

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.

phys.7689:

—
as for some questions wethospu asked, no adding new content doesnt create variability and replayability, it creates more options, but options in reality boil down to what is optimal. First you take the goal of the player, then based on that you look at the optimal solution, the rest of the possible solutions dont figure in to variability and replayability any more, because they wont be selected.

If someones goal is to beat fractals as fast as possible once per day, the best solution would be to do the easiest/fastest fractals possible repeatedly, all other fractals wont matter. Anything in the level design that takes time, or is sub optimal, wont be done either. Many will become bored, because even if it has 1000 options, people only do 1 option. Even if all the options are the same difficulty, people will choose the one they know best, and others know best. (this is why there are only two champ trains even though many zones have champions)
—

Could also explain me how your explanation fits “having an incentive to do all content”?

not sure what your question is here, but as for the incentives, i agree they are completely off right now, Along with make changes in variability, they need to change the incentivized behavior from doing the easiest thing as fast as possible.

This is why i suggested earlier, that fractals give out bonus gold/relics/karma based on metrics which consider
*Average time to complete fractal among players in the last 2 weeks
*Average deaths in Fractal in last two weeks
*Average times completed compared to rolled in the last two weeks.

This would mean better rewards for fractals that take longer, are more dangerous, and not often completed.

This would auto correct itself based on current trends for players. If people figure how to make a run easy, its bonus rewards go down.

the addition of an item box for say 100 fractal relics that contains a chance at similar drops to what you get in fractal daily chests, and an option to turn in fractal rewards (like wrong skins,rings, ascended boxes etc) for fractal relics would make fractal relics desireable, and combined with bonus as i mentioned, would make doing hard fractals worthwhile.

spoj.9672:

Romo.3709:

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.

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. Or we could pick ones which were more rewarding if we felt like it. Or if we were short on time then we could pick the easier faster less rewarding fractals. 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. I think giving us choice is the real key here. Randomness just drives players away. And yes I do like variation but at the moment the randomness is reducing my variation. If I could choose myself I would certainly get a lot more variation.

You have a very specific form of enjoying the content, that is best served as an option, not as the norm.

like i said, for yall guys

fractal mode: timed competitive
requires: level 50 difficulty unlocked

player selects a version of a fractal(instability) with no random elements.
player competes for the best time in that fractal
top time/player is recorded
top player ranks are based on your rank in all fractals/instabilities
each week the top times achieved(during that week) are awarded various chests based on what % you place in(for that week).
no daily for this mode, as you never actually do a whole fractal run.
reduced fractal relics awarded slightly, but placement per week gives top players more(among other things).
still possible to place on leaderboards with regular fractal play(though unlikely versus premades tailored to each fractal)

I think altering fractals drastically for a leaderboard is a waste of time, keep in mind leaderboards are something that usually at best the top 10% care about. 10% of the amount who play fractals and have unlocked max teir, and play regularly isnt that large.

I do think they can have a competitive game mode, where they remove all randomness, and let people select a fractal to get the best times, they could track the best overall times, and best time each week.

Ill be honest i would probably never play this mode, i dont really care about leaderboards, none of the people i play with care either, but i accept some do, so i could see putting some development on it.

as for some questions wethospu asked, no adding new content doesnt create variability and replayability, it creates more options, but options in reality boil down to what is optimal. First you take the goal of the player, then based on that you look at the optimal solution, the rest of the possible solutions dont figure in to variability and replayability any more, because they wont be selected.

If someones goal is to beat fractals as fast as possible once per day, the best solution would be to do the easiest/fastest fractals possible repeatedly, all other fractals wont matter. Anything in the level design that takes time, or is sub optimal, wont be done either. Many will become bored, because even if it has 1000 options, people only do 1 option. Even if all the options are the same difficulty, people will choose the one they know best, and others know best. (this is why there are only two champ trains even though many zones have champions)

You see this again and again when you take random out.
first fractal will always be swamp for 90% of players
people generally only run the easiest, least deep instabilities

when you make a game, you have to direct and limit the players wants in order to make the game more fun for everyone. The type of behaviors most players would exhibit, given freedom, dont make a good game. Take orca for example, if he was developing, he would make fractals as short and easy possible, so he could get his shinies faster. That would be as boring as hell.

timmyf.1490:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Wethospu.6437:

Could you guys seriously stop this daydreaming? There won’t be perfectly challenging and fun content with unique surprises each time you run it.

This thread would be about 10 pages shorter if people thought, “is this proposal remotely possible considering development resources available?” before they hit Reply.

I too find this frustrating, but at the same time, I have an engineering background and am able to make rough estimates of the implementation effort.

I assume that a lot of people here are just fans of the game, not coders/artists/etc, and don’t understand that they’re asking for things that would take a 10-person team months and months to complete. Or more.

The most egregious requests, if anybody is wondering, center around user-generated content/sandbox features. That is way way out of scope. Full randomly-generated content is also likely out of scope, not necessarily due to coding, but due to QA/testing.

Now, all that said, that doesn’t mean that the devs won’t find some bit of inspiration in these ideas and use a scaled down, heavily modified version. So have fun, everybody.

I’m an engineering graduate, an artist, and working on upping my software development skills.
QA is going to be different for most companies, pretty hard to tell what its limits are. It also can change. Has a lot to do with the process they develop, and how they used to the engine they are.

you dont need fully randomly generated content, you just need random variation, being that there are already examples of this in fractals, and dynamic events in game, it shouldnt be outside of whats possible, or even be that difficult to implement. As far as scope, its tricky to say whats out of scope, nothing and everything is the answer. They can probably do almost anything, the question is what they want to do. But its an MMO, they should be doing something, and big somethings fairly periodically. The genre generally has within it, adding new classes, zones, bosses, game modes, dungeons etc within its design on a yearly basis. for example, GW1 added 18 dungeons in EOTN in about 10 months.

So point is, yeah its within the realms of possibility, it depends heavily on what they want to do.

Razor.9872:

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger isn’t expected to do burst damage. By sustained, we mean that the Ranger should excel at surviving (resilient) through burst while still doing enough damage over time to take the opponent down.

If the Ranger is not expected to do burst damage, then the usefulness of traits/skills such as:

-Opening strike
-Alpha Training
-Precise Strike
-Beastmaster’s Might (signets have long recharges and the might provided by them is little)
-Moment of Clarity
-Peak Strength (the timeframe this trait remains active is really only utilized properly through bursting)
-Signet of the Hunt (Active)
-Signet of the Wild (Active)
-Hilt Bash (effect on pet)

Are in serious question.

All of these prominent utilities scream bursting — not so much sustain. Perhaps if Rangers had access to more stealth, the Marksmanship traitline would grow more viable. I cannot say what that would do to the balance of the ranger, however.

Also, being a master of sustain isn’t always a good thing. Bursting is far more useful as enemies often die before they can attack back. In the sake of build diversity, there should be enemies or reasons Rangers (or any profession for that matter) would want to consider going sustain inplace of burst.

they didnt say they wanted ranger to have no interesting skills/abilities to boost dmg, just that overall they are not designed to do 1 big hit. rangers were generally designed, when bursting to do a lot of small hits, rangers burst is more like wave than a spike.
you get good access to quickness (or used to)
good access to vulnerability (which increases you and your pets dmg for a time frame)
(main purpose of opening strike)
skills which boost you or your pets dmg for X amount of time

it would be boring and simple if they didnt have the ability to alter their dps, its just not all focused in one big hit. Which is honestly a pretty big advantage against active dodging and block X hits type skills. If the pet didnt stall out so often, i think youd find ranger to be one of the most hated proffessions, due to not having big slow moves, and attacking so many more times in a timeframe, as well being able to move while the pets DPS

the pet, if implemented well totally makes ranger a worthwhile and different class.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I can’t find it now but there was a post talking about secondary objectives and rewards for completion of said objectives.

We do this with the Grawl Shaman and I would like to see more of this in the fractals.

Essentially stretch goal objectives that add more optional difficulty but reward the players for completing the more difficult content.

The larger the sense of discovery and accomplishment the greater the overall experience in my opinion.

Chris

I talked about this, and some other people as well.

Essentially, as you say, add optional events that sometimes occur sometimes dont, that reward players well. Some of these could be universal (like tricksy treksa spawns in an area off the beaten path) and some could be specific, like navigating a jump puzzle on the roofs of ascalon before a bomb blows up.

my idea on rewarding players leverages fractal relics, by making them more desired. 1 item i would add is something with the type of drops you find in the daily chest.

say it costs 110 relics, now, if extra events, and harder fractals award more relics, suddenly its less about the race to the end, and more about doing whatever comes your way.

Aside from events, you can add random optional goals(that appear sometimes), like beat in X amount of time, kill X amount of non respawning enemies, kill only 3 monsters, Beat level with no deaths etc, that reward extra fractal relics, while this shouldnt be that hard to add in, it changes the way, and style of play you would use on the level. Instabilities capture some of this, but they dont really reward you extra for it, and they dont add to the unpredictability/variability since you always select your instability.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

It’s no surprise that the “add more mechanics” idea comes up a lot for difficulty scaling. Not only does it sound really great, it was also the original plan. Unfortunately it’s just about the heaviest approach we could take because it implies that every boss in the fractal needs to be updated and rebalanced for every tier that we add. Assuming 2 bosses per Fractal (and we never added new Fractals), every time we add a tier of difficulty we have to do this 30 times. I’m not saying we can’t do it; I’m saying it would be slow. Much slower than say, adding one or two new Fractals per tier with entirely new content.

What I actually don’t like about that approach is that it has a lot of filler progression. Hypothetical levels 51-60 would effectively all be the same. We thought the advantage of assigning an MI to every level was that it literally made every level unique and also avoids the re-rolling problem that fractal selection has.

---

Back on randomness/replayability/rewards: I think the intent has always been to make the Fractals a very replayable experience by using random to create semi-unique iterations through the content. But the extrinsic reward motivators work to the contrary, making random unfavorable for optimal gain.

I’d like to see more speculation on middle ground solutions which both add meaningful variety to the Fractals without forcing players to feel like they’re trudging through non-optimal reward paths.

Also, this is all just speculation. I’m not advocating or declaring an official re-work of any system here. Just exploring possibilities for the evolution of this and future content.

when i had my proposal on fractal liscenses, i seperate the qualitative changes in fractals into different modes, i keep the difficulty scale as a seperate mechanical change.
like you said, part of the problem is access issues, also you have to remember, people kind of find their own right difficulty levels in fractals, Some people like the 40+ some people stay in the 20s etc.

so lets say you have
a mode called “simple” this would be the overall design of 1-10, no agony, less enemy skills, etc
a mode called “advanced” would be like 11-20 introduce agony, enemies have more skills

a mode called “skilled” where you get more challenging enemy distributions

a mode called “instability” where you select an instability

now, these modes can be experienced, even if you arent the type who likes, big hp/high dmg enemies, they can still be unlocked, but in a less vertical way, that prioritizes experience over difficulty.

this way you wont get the feeling that you have to grind 10 more difficulty levels to see the new content, or when you add more instabilities, grind up to 50.

difficulty progression will provide a handicap for players essentially, just mechanically upscaling

heres a link again for a slightly more visual representaion

http://ampbucketspace.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

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

---

three questions —-

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

ok i actually touched on a lot of these things with my various proposals and talk.

1) instabilities are meant to make fractals more interesting, but they are gated pretty far. you have to go all the way to 30 to experience them. As you add more, the gate goes higher and higher. Instabilities probably should have been a game mode, not tied to difficulty. As i said in a proposal, I think going foward you should seperate game mode changes from difficulty. (or have a softer method of gating it)

2) as for difficulty being redundant: the simplest and most scalable method, i think is capping the increase on dmg, and then increasing enemy attack speed/animation speed/movement speed. This will go far with active defense, it has limits, but its a good way to take it past the dmg only increase. I dont think difficulty will ever be easily infinitely scalable past that point, after that the only thing you can do is add enemy skills, and what not, but movement speed/animation/speed and attack speed would probably take the difficulty up to at least double the current level.

3)well done random is huge for fractals, though some disagree, i think random elements add greatly to replaybility. The problem is you cant just add random, you also have to add the proper rewards to it. As it is, the focus is on speed clear, anything that gets in the way of faster clear times will be hated, the rewarded behavior needs to be a little more skewed to doing things, then people wont hate random, as its not getting in the way.
Essentially make it so the random, when done well, actually rewards the player more than not doing it. Some of these rewards can be different, like cool power ups for the level,

lets say you do an optional event that only occurs sometimes, and you get a sword that slices through weak enemies, and has some cool animations/dmg etc. yeah the net result is it took the same time, but for a little while you were an awesome sword weilding deathball, which allowed you to progress through the area faster/easier after doing it.

you can also make some optional events give you a quicker way to the end, etc.
but these would be random, you dont plan on them, you get lucky and it happens, and makes the level feel different/fun again.

now, for those who like ultra competitive, static fractals, i think you can have a mode for them, where they select a completely non random version with no bells and whistles (for things like leaderboards).

Wethospu.6437:

I agree with Byron. Design shouldn’t rely on gimmick puzzles because they are usually quite shallow and rarely scale with difficulty. For example wisp running at Swamp should simply be removed and replaced with a boss fight (like Mossman).

its actually a good design that focuses on coordination, and knowledge of the area. But it doesnt scale with difficulty, true.

However these are levels, you have to design levels too, not just boss fights. Im just saying, not everything in a level needs to be a combat related challenge

Rallar.2986:

Romo.3709:

Making it harder and requiring more coordination will not only turn away the casual players trying to have fun and/or learn fractals, but it will also put a strain on groups that were running fractals for almost a year together. Finding 3 more people to do such long content with and that are also willing to listen and coordinate with you would end up as another one of those wow raids that you spend hour to two hour gathering people rather than hopping in and playing with little time you have your friends for.

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

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

Although I am not opposed to having challenging solo content.

when you start introducing raids, you cross into a different type of casual, casual with respect to organisation/grouping etc. Theres many who like difficulty, but dont like hassle of getting larger groups organized. after reading his posts, i agree it might be difficult to get more people gathered for these raid like events

Rallar.2986:

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

The key things I am talking about are:

1. Hard content that requires coordination from the group — Have situations that require specific actions (combo healing spam, specific build to mitigate temporary dmg, etc)

2. Is not linear – Being able to run around the entire zone and do your own content with a set number of ppl was great. ( I remember doing underworld runs and only focusing on a certain area back in the day.)

Why 8?
Because if it is 5 it’s just going to make people feel like its a regular dungeon.

Why not open zone?
Balancing and setting up game mechanics taking into consideration a zerg of ppl will take away from the sense that it requires too many people to do, that the content is balanced and challenging, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, the Zone Content is great with world bosses but having hard content that requires a larger group to do will unify guilds/groups and increase fun times!

If you think having 8 mans will make it too much like other MMO’s I ask the following:

How many other mmo’s had the feel that underworld, nightfall endgame had where the entire area was explorable and it was endgame content?

This fractal type would not be random and would have harder “zones/areas” tiered.

P.S. If all this was instead done in 5 mans i guess it would be ok :p

i honestly feel the larger scale raid like content, might be better in other modes. I think dungeons would better serve it. I too would enjoy the more open explorable dungeons like Underworld, but fractals are usually more compact and focused.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The Lost Witch.7601:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Doing something like you have suggested really comes down to man power and global GW2 development priority.

Chris

But wouldn’t it be absolutely awesome?

Terkov.4138:

Proposal Overview
Rebalance of vitality and toughness of bosses.

Goal of Proposal
- Increasing viablity of condition based builds.
- Increasing build/gear diversity.

Proposal Functionality
Lowering health pool and increasing armor of bosses would encourage players to use condition based builds up to stacking limit before going into full berserker team. Rebalance should be done in a way that’d keep kill times same as they are now for full power oriented team.

Associated Risks
- Going from one extreme into another – too high toughness to vitality ratio could make condition builds too good. It’d be mostly fixed by conditions stacking limit.

I think it would be nice to have a variety of boss fights in this regard. Some where conditions really shine, others where they’re not quite as good.

This particular idea could be done through instability variables and it no where near as much work as creating an explorable version of the fractals (-:

FYI.

Chris

this is partially why i made my sugesstion in my last proposal, while instabilities are offering a new gameplay to make fractals more varied and fun, they are locked behind the level 30 gate, any new instabilities would be locked behind the level 50 gate. As it progresses, it will become really difficult to get new people to want to climb up to 50 to get to the cool new stuff. And if you keep the difficulty curve low, people are losing their ability to select their own difficulty/hardcoreness

one of the reasons i think agony seems more like a grind now, is that whereas before many players kind of settled at a difficulty they liked/didnt hate, now there is a need to climb, at the same time agony is designed to not work well with climbing without repeating old levels. but now its required for new content

I was practicing my html/js so figured id make a site to make the proposal more visual.

http://ampbucketspace.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/

Proposal Overview
seperating fractal difficulty from fractal options/playtypes

Goal of Proposal
In the evolution of fractals, there are many possibilities for gametypes, and specific modes or options, however the current fractal system is linear and ties all changes to level. The problem occurs when new options and content types become further gated behind the ever increasing difficulty.

The goal of this proposal is to keep fractal as a variable difficulty team instance, and structure a scalable system that allows for easy addition of new modes without heavily gating it, or having to take away difficulty progress
Proposal Functionality

• Create a fractal liscence, categorized with various classes, different classes allow you to access different modes, with a shallower progression. New content/modes can be placed into existing liscense classes.

• Split difficulty into a separate category, you can put difficulty on any mode you have earned.
  • difficulty multiplies your reward modifiers for various item/gold drops
  • difficulty is a fairly mechanically generated metric, increased dmg/hp attack speed

• getting a license of a certain class unlocks Fractal Modes
  • modes are where general qualitative differences occur -essentially something new
  • Examples
    • 10+ would be its own mode (the addition of agony and new enemy skills)
    • 20+ would be its own mode (addition of new enemy distributions)
    • instabilities would be its own mode
  • different modes have different reward options, whereas difficulty multiplies your chances at the drops.
  • new mode examples
    • competitive: Fixed fractal with for uniformity in competition/leaderboards
    • survival: how long can you go with no deaths (or possibly full wipe)
    • story: low level mode for story:lore people with lore events
    • explorable: select a fractal, spawns scale to 3 players. primarily for achievements, practice: exploration
    • Chaotic: more random special events, bosses, more varied enemy spawn possibilities

Associated Risks
possibly fracturing the playerbase among many modes, but i would design the modes to hit different demographics, and purposes. However since fractals is primarily instanced, i dont know if this would be a big issue.

May take away incentives for climbing extremely high (no exclusive content) but i dont think the hardcore need/want exclusive content, as long as its hard, and rewarded. (hard modes in GW had better rates, but same drops)

Estriella Faerie.4029:

What’s among the most important about rewards is also replayability.

For example, Fractured introduced some new rewards with the exclusive recipes for rune and sigil. Once you get it, this loot has absolutely no value if you get it a second time. All you can do is just destroy it, as not even the merchant will buy it. It’s the same with rings, after a moment they have no value at all (4.95 silver at merchant, yeah !).
Unlike the dungeon token with which you can buy stuff to salvage or use in the mystic forge, you also can’t get with fractal relics things that keep their “value” (backpiece or bags won’t be bought that many times for one player).

the way i see, it one of the best things they can do with fractal rewards is improve fractal relics value.

I also reccomend many of these things of value be account bound, or things mostly fractal users would want. keep in mind anything that isnt account bound, or is used by many players needs to go into the general Economy rewards design, which means its going to have too match the rate of earning most of the game has, instead of what is healthy for fractals.

my principle idea amounts to being able to buy what amounts to second daily chest rolls with fractal relics. Id also make all fractal items be able to be traded in for decent fractal relic conversions. As well as adding more things you can buy with fractal relics

Wethospu.6437:

Optional stuff is completely fine as it can always be skipped.

Sure, random stuff would be designed. But you really can’t expect them to have same quality as non-random stuff, especially if random stuff means extra content.

I think Bloomhunger/Mossman etc. are actually bad. For example Bloomhunger and turret part are much easier than Mossman and bomb part. With some really hard scale and instability some teams may constantly fail at Mossman while they would breeze through Bloomhunger.

Assuming we ever get infinite scaling that would eventually happen to every team in the game. At some point your progression relies entirely on luck…

this is why i said, for people like you who want a PVE competitive measuring stick (or leaderboards and the like), they need fixed designs. But that doesnt mean its more challenging because its fixed, just that its a better measuring stick.

While i dont think bloomhunger is an entertaining fight as compared to mossman, lets say it was replaced by a very interesting, fun fight but it was easier/shorter. Does that make it a bad design? not really.

Also, just to be clear, i would design it so that you are missing out by ignoring optional events. There would be no reason to do them if they didnt give something of value. I wouldnt make it required, but id make it worthwhile. Using our current reward structure for reference, id make it have a chance at dropping the things people look for in the daily chest, albeit a lower chance, representitive of how much time/effort it takes.
Say it takes 5 minutes, and a run where you ignore everything takes 60 minutes, give it a 1/12th the rate of the daily chest. if its a specially difficult thing maybe 1/8th or so. It should be something thats exciting, semi rare, when it happens you should be excited for a special opportunity, not an added hassle.

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

i get what you are saying, but you are really underestimating reward value in game design. Content is important but without the right reward structure, you will not support your content properly. You have to structure your rewards so they encourage the type of play you design, and you also have to structure it to reinforce your game goals.

You’re right – I want to incentivize use by people who want to be there because they enjoy fractals gameplay, not open up a new path for optimizing Dragonite-per-second calculations.

Reward-as-motive is inherently limited, because ultimately you achieve your goal(s) and are DONE. Gameplay-as-motive is a vastly more durable model because playing more is the goal. Doing something 200 times because you must to get the reward is grind. Playing a 200th time because you liked the previous 199 outings is the result of rich gameplay. It has a binary impact on whether you’ll play it a 201st time. You can pay someone to play tic-tac-toe 200 times and they’ll do it if the pay is good, no matter how bored off their rump they are. But people will spend their lives mastering chess for no other reason that to master chess.

Every request for revised/improved rewards is a statement “you’re no longer paying me enough to do something repetitive.” I’d like to see the evolution of fractals be more akin to rising from tic-tac-toe towards chess rather than upping the hourly wage…

Im talking more about reward within the game framework, its not as important what the rewards are, so much as what you give rewards for. For example, if you take basketball (i always seem to use this analogy) if they award 5 points for shots under the basket, and 3 points for long ranged shots (3 point range) then people will not take 3 point shots.

A more exaggerated example would be, lets say you made up basketball rules, its exactly the same except you give 40 points for punching an opponent in the face. Now the game becomes about how many times you can punch someone in the face, regardless of how much fun shooting the ball might be.

Also, since fractals is a game within a game, it unfortunately has to compete with all other activities that award points, IE, few people are going to shoot the ball (play fractals) if you can get 40 points by punching someone in the face (champ train)

So not only does fractals need to choose what behavior to reward within itself, it also needs to balance what it rewards over all compared to other activities.

Now this doesnt mean it needs dragonite, or even gold, It can award other things that have value, but it needs to have competitive rewards.

And whatever rewards it gives, should encourage the type of play they want fractals to have. Right now the reward focus is speed run dailies, if thats not the focus of the mode, they need to alter the rewards to reflect that.

Wethospu.6437:

phys.7689:

Yes, its like you said, the best way to make a fair competitive test, is for it to be completely uniform. Everyone has the same challenges, the same questions, the same tools. However, thats also not a very repeatable test. Because once people know the answers/way to get the answers, it becomes a test of memorization/speed rather than a test of intelligence/adaptability.

It however is probably a way more competitive test, than one where the questions were random, some people would get easy questions, or things they happen to know well.

Essentially i think that something designed to be fair in a competitive way, cant be very variable. but competitive and challenging/interesting are two different things. For example.
A fair competitive test in basketball might be shooting from a specific location repeatedly.
A variable/challenging/replayable one might be scoring versus any player on the opposing team.

The second test is a lot less fair, not a great way to compare to other shooters, but its a lot more variable, every time you do its different, and you may have to shoot from different places, different timing, etc.

As far as one well thought out encounter being fun, im saying i think every fractal should be well thought out, every fractal should be fun. But we both know the fun fractal is not necessarily the fractal that is the one that leads to finishing the daily the fastest.

They don’t have to add repeatable tests as they can add multiple tests. Using your basketball example there can be multiple fair and competitive tests. In some tests the basket might be further way while in some tests the basket might be smaller.

I don’t think using other players in your example is really fair as we are dealing with PvE content. Perhaps my example but with randomized parameters is what you are looking for?

In both cases there are lots of different tests. Only difference is that in my case you are able to choose your test. Similarly they could create a system with lots of different content, focusing more on the quality than the quantity (randomization adds more content but less guarantee that every combination works together).

Well, i think that the random elements they add should be well planned, I think mostly they should be optional or different but roughly equivalent (like some of the different paths the dungeons already can take), and i think they should be designed, not completely or irrationally random. They should also be appropriately rewarded.

For example, a good random element, might be a rare special boss that sometimes pops after your regular boss fight. Or an event that sometimes spawns that creates a shortcut. A skritt burglar boss popping in a side/extra area. As well as things that already exist like the two paths in dredge, or the mossman or bloomhunger, etc.

I am also thinking one of the game modes could be a stripped down, 100% preplanned mode unlocked with high difficulty, Competitive mode, this mode could be used for things like leaderboards, and allow you to select a fractal. The rewards would be more effected by how you place.

Its not that i think preplanned is always more challenging, but i agree that in comparing competitors you need a more standardized ruler. Also people who want top scores will want to preplan a lot.

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

In a similar way to the exercise that Orpheal has under taken it would be wise now to ask you all to pick 1 area that you would prioritize above all others having has the chance to have seen everyone’s opinions around each others proposals.

My revised opinion is that we’re mired in trivia.

…Adding shinies to a vendor, fiddling with average clear times of this single fractal or that one, slamming shut a tiny loophole…

It’s trivia. These are all things that should be done, but they’re neither difficult nor important.

The main thing that’s going to keep fractals vibrant is adding more scenarios.

New Content will drive the continued use of fractals far more than polish.

i get what you are saying, but you are really underestimating reward value in game design. Content is important but without the right reward structure, you will not support your content properly. You have to structure your rewards so they encourage the type of play you design, and you also have to structure it to reinforce your game goals.

Right now, even if they make an awesome, variable fractal, if its 2 minutes longer than swamp, no one will play it more than once. If they add some very fun interesting variable events/elements to a fractal, people will sigh with annoyance after the first time, because it takes longer, and they just want to get their daily done. If they decide to award relics, people who have backpiece already will have no use.

reward is an integral part of the game design itself.

so i think evolving fractals, they need to come up with a better reward design (not exactly about what the rewards are, but more about what type of play is rewarded, and how to measure what reward is deserved)

in the evolution of fractals, i can see more diverse game modes, (which adds more, for less development) more diversity in fractals, AND new fractals.

Agony resistance is actually working against fractals now, i think. The implementation of aquiring it doesnt work that well, its kind of counter productive, and the way its used, is kind of off. It works as a gate, but its very poor as an interesting game mechanic. In terms of mechanics, the game gets less interesting the more agony you have, instead of more.

I think these are the 3 big problems with fractals, and i think getting them right, will be huge in making fractals much more appealing and loved.

SorrowsEmbrace.8120:

The issue isn’t rolling, its how disproportionately short swamp is, such that its worth spending 5 minutes rolling for it. If people were re-rolling the first fractal based on which one they had the most fun with, I guarantee this would not be an issue. People would play and let play. If you want to “fix” rolling, make swamp longer.

People throw around the word exploit in this forum like its nothing. An exploit is an offence that will get you banned. From the feedback here we know the devs know about the practice of re-rolling, and they are open to discussing the pros and cons. There’s no need to use loaded language to try and bolster your argument.

well if you take a step back and ask the question, what would you rather fix rerolling or dredge, its essentially saying whats more important, creating a more varied experience, or making it less time consuming/annoying.

the consensus is that speed/and ease is more important than variation to most people. I blame the reward system that prioritizes speed and ease. If the rewards were based on how long/difficult it was, people wouldnt care that much about rolling the shortest/easiest, and people would be trying to get better at dredge (i admit dredge is out of balance, and designed kind of annoying)

i think the rewards is probably one of the biggest issues with fractals, id say the other major issues would be agony progression being empty, grindy and sometimes backwards, and variation/replayability of fractals.

dredge i see as more of a balance issue, than an indicator of evolution of fractals

Brutal Arts.6307:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Dredge and rewards.

The people crying about rerolling are like the people crying about skipping trash mobs. It has absolutely 0 effect on them but they want others to play the way they want. If you don’t like rolling than just don’t do it.

its a systemic problem, so its actually a pretty big deal as fractals goes forward.
Essentially it makes the first fractal always the same fractal forever and ever, which means they shouldnt design any new fast fractals, which makes the game mode more repetitive.

Ill be honest i hate water boss, hes boring as hell. But its not good for the development of fractals in general.

As far as the dont do it thing, thats basically a fake story. If everyone could skip the first 3 fractals and go right to the boss, theyd do it, does that mean its good for the game mode?

Terravos.4059:

Arghore.8340:

Terravos.4059:

Honed Axes – Which is a god awful trait in the first place…Its a Crit Damage boost for a Weapon that’s primarily a Condition Weapon, not a Power Based Weapon…If you’re doing Axe Offhand, You’re not going Axe Main hand, you’re probably going to do Sword.

Ehrm, well maybe not? Obviously depending on whether you mean for sPvP because I don’t do that, but for my PvE I run:

axe + warhorn/axe – well, 2 traps (spike & frost/fire), reflex
traits: 10/30/20/10/0
crit-orriented.

The axe is NOT a condition weapon by far, at least in my views, the multiple hits make for more crit.chances, and the bit of frost on there, and sometimes traps is mainly to keep a distance. I do not want a sword because I want to keep my space between my foe and me, due to the crit oriented armor/weapons I am weaker thus I want to stay mobile while my foes are not. For me this build works just fine, and I wouldn’t know how to build for an Axe trapper any other way (aka. the shift would mean I have no way to trap and axe.) Also, I have honed instead of ‘traps are targetted’ on my master trait, do have the grandmaster trap trait. Also offhand training on master survival. No extra ‘stuff to do’ but cast, I will move to where my traps need to be, and the way foes work, that is usually at my feet, so I can move once the foes spring the traps.

There is zero reason for you to be using that trait..Zero…

I’m sorry, its a bad trait…. And Axe is not a Power Based Weapon, Its a Condition Based Weapon despite the fact it “bounces”

you arent correct here. Axe is kind of in the middle, yes you get good conditions with split blade, but you also get pretty good dmg with it. 170×5
the 3rd skill is more of a defense skill, and while condition duration helps it, many condition builds dont focus on condition duration much.
also since its +10, you have to look at your off hand options for direct dmg, which leaves you with axe and warhorn as opposed to dagger and torch, so it works well with half your offhand options

i think the key here is axe is a mainhand benefits from critical chance, you hit many times, and can thus get more criticals. no matter what your power, or condition dmg, crit dmg will be of some benefit to high critical charachters, where as condition dmg would only be useful to some critical % charachters.

I think it would be better just to be when wielding an axe in general though.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Dear ANet,

can you please (pretty please with Skritt sugar on top) make the Skritt Burglar into a champion?

She only spawns in low level areas, which nowadays are full of downleveled but fully geared level 80s and goes down within seconds. She doesn’t have much chance to aggro, let along transform anybody.

I think I’ve seen her maybe 6 times over the course of my GW2 life (and I’ve been playing since release). I have one of the four achievements, which I got very early on, must’ve gotten caught in the crossfire before I even knew what I was doing. Now I have no hope at all of getting the other three.

But wouldn’t it be so, so, so much more fun if she had the hit points of, say, any of the Queensdale champions? People would call her out in /map, others might even have time to portal/run there, and she would have a few seconds at least to aggro and transform one or the other player.

Not just ‘because achievements’, but also because I think that it’s a super fun concept that is completely lost on anybody new nowadays unless they go and read up on what was initially supposed to happen when she spawns.

Just some thoughts! Thanks for reading.

bad idea, she often doesnt spawn in populous areas, and the goal is to kill her before she escapes, which means, champion will fail EXTREMELY often. everytime I ve seen her ive been alone

synk.8762:

As i ve said before, i dont think homogenizing them to be all the same in length and difficulty is a great design. the idea is to create a lot of different experiences, with different goals, and skill sets required.

For example, swamp is one of the worst fractals for newbies to get, it requires much more knowledge, experience, and coordination than many other fractals. I remember for the first few months it was one of the most hated by far.

Swamp is actually a good fractal, now imagine they put some senseless killing in the water that uses up an additional 5 minutes, does that really make a better fractal?

Not to mention, when fractals are very varied, it creates various feelings when you get a roll. relief, a feeling of luckiness, even the feeling of OH BOY we gotta do this now, is something i dont think they should try to get rid of.

That said, they should definately reward you for overcoming greater challenges

Sorry, I probably should have explained better, but I was trying to keep it brief.

I totally agree that they shouldn’t be homogenized. I was more thinking of a triangle of the three functions, with difficulty, length, and reward on each vertices. A given fractal would be somewhere within the triangle. So homogenized would be all fractals dead center, of equal values for difficulty, length and reward. What I’d like to see, and I think what you’re suggesting, is that some be skewed towards length, possibly with lower difficulty. Others might be short and difficult, with higher reward. The point being that they’re balanced with regards to all three.

What we don’t need is the possibility of a short, easy, high reward fractal and a long, hard, low reward fractal in the same tier, which leads to people trying to optimize their runs by rerolling. I guess what I’d like to see is a holistic rebalancing of difficulty, length and reward within tiers, which would keep a given fractal fun and rewarding versus the other possibilities.

hmm hadnt really looked at the difficulty part, but yeahi can agree with that

timmyf.1490:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

100% yes. Did Fractals last night and Dredge came up. Took 51 minutes. (We were playing a bit above, maybe 5 scales or so, our normal level and had a few people low on AR, so that could explain part of the length. But still.)

It was much more stress than it was fun for nearly an hour. Ugh.

Out of curiosity, has anybody else timed their Dredge runs? How long does it take you? Without skips/exploits/etc?

depends a lot on the difficulty scale/team composition. Ive actually had fairly fast dredge runs at times. Only the mini boss is guaranteed to take a long time. The rest just usually ends up taking a long time.

synk.8762:

I think if all Fractals are equal (for time, rewards, difficulty), rerolling becomes a non-issue. Tune the various Fractals to be similarly scaled with regards to time and effort and I believe people wouldn’t be so prone to reroll. A polish pass to bring all of them in line (especially Dredge, since it’s overly long/difficult) might mitigate a need to work on rolling.

As i ve said before, i dont think homogenizing them to be all the same in length and difficulty is a great design. the idea is to create a lot of different experiences, with different goals, and skill sets required.

For example, swamp is one of the worst fractals for newbies to get, it requires much more knowledge, experience, and coordination than many other fractals. I remember for the first few months it was one of the most hated by far.

Swamp is actually a good fractal, now imagine they put some senseless killing in the water that uses up an additional 5 minutes, does that really make a better fractal?

Not to mention, when fractals are very varied, it creates various feelings when you get a roll. relief, a feeling of luckiness, even the feeling of OH BOY we gotta do this now, is something i dont think they should try to get rid of.

That said, they should definately reward you for overcoming greater challenges

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Just a quick note to let you know i am up to date.

I am assuming that you all feel that for example a Dredge rework is higher priority than say a rework to rolling?

Chris

Why do you personally think those two issues are way more important than getting a System in place that makes Fractals challenging ….. and more stuff

Though i think Patrikan maybe overly passionate, i have to agree, that in the big picture of what fractals needs, and the evolution of fractals in general, these issues are small in comparison.

These are balance fixes, they dont really evolve fractals and make them more interesting to that many more players, high level or low level. but yeah if you had to choose between those two it would probably be dredge for most i think.

but taking a look at dredge, I’d say the larger problem is that fractals as is, represents a race to complete the daily as easily as possible. Dredge is hated partially because it is a bikitteniment to that goal.
By changing the focus of fractals to be less of a lowest possible time to beat daily, you will probably fix both problems, and future problems with fractals that are short or masterable, and fractals that are long, and not easily mastered.

Point is, award people differently for doing different fractals, change the focus from being beat as soon/easy as possible to beating whatever challenges are thrown at you.

that said, dredge does have some design issues that are probably fundamentally off, even if the length doesnt change.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

phys.7689:

Blaeys.3102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

MokahTGS.7850:

I also would like Fractals (and to a lesser extent, Dungeons) to evolve to allow for 2-5 player scaling. I know they are currently designed for 5 people, but I’d like to see the balance code reworked in such a way that 2 people could run through a fractal and be rewarded for that level scale. Obviously 5-man fractals would reward more, but I personally just want to run through them with my wife…currently that isn’t possible.

Call it “Casual-mode” for Fractals.

Personally I would like to see Fractals be able to be 5+ as well with associated risk/reward mechanics.

Chris

This is something I didnt even consider as part of the discussion, but love seeing it and think it deserves more attention/discussion.

The idea of fractals with different sized groups would go over insanely well in my guild. Just last night, we had 7 people wanting to do fractals and had to arbitrarily leave two friends out of the run.

Been doing this for so many years in MMOs with 5 man content that it’s become the norm. This single change would really set GW2 apart and give us a way to better play with friends (and as a GM of a large guild, it would allow me to schedule a guild fractal night without having to worry about leaving people out).

as long as they dont balance fractals around 5+ people, i dont mind, but also you have to realize no matter what number they pick, people will get left out.

From a brain storming standpoint I think 5+ fractals would be their own entity within fractals and thus be balanced for 5+ only.

Chris

instanced raid(high number of player) content eh? never really liked that much, but it might be just me.

well dredge makes things slower/more annoying
rolling makes things easier/more predictable

I think people would pick dredge for changes.

Blaeys.3102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

MokahTGS.7850:

I also would like Fractals (and to a lesser extent, Dungeons) to evolve to allow for 2-5 player scaling. I know they are currently designed for 5 people, but I’d like to see the balance code reworked in such a way that 2 people could run through a fractal and be rewarded for that level scale. Obviously 5-man fractals would reward more, but I personally just want to run through them with my wife…currently that isn’t possible.

Call it “Casual-mode” for Fractals.

Personally I would like to see Fractals be able to be 5+ as well with associated risk/reward mechanics.

Chris

This is something I didnt even consider as part of the discussion, but love seeing it and think it deserves more attention/discussion.

The idea of fractals with different sized groups would go over insanely well in my guild. Just last night, we had 7 people wanting to do fractals and had to arbitrarily leave two friends out of the run.

Been doing this for so many years in MMOs with 5 man content that it’s become the norm. This single change would really set GW2 apart and give us a way to better play with friends (and as a GM of a large guild, it would allow me to schedule a guild fractal night without having to worry about leaving people out).

as long as they dont balance fractals around 5+ people, i dont mind, but also you have to realize no matter what number they pick, people will get left out.

Aquila.5142:

The best solution as I see it is this:

Keep the emote range as it is in WvW.
Outside of WvW, either reduce the emote range to be the same as /say, or implement an option so that people can choose whether they want it to remain as it is now (which is approximately double the distance of /say, I reckon), or reduce it to the /say range.

How is that for a compromise?

out of curiousty, as an RPer, shouldnt you have emotes notifcations off, and be actually looking? I mean, you only see emotes anyhow no? What if someone is emoting behind an RPers back, they really shouldnt be able to see it strictly speaking, no?

Introp.8465:

Evilek.5690:

Loco.4561:

Evilek.5690:

Introp.8465:

Black Teagan.9215:

6k Dmg is fine for a berserker, who attack another berserker.

As a single target melee skill, this skill have to be a little stronger, than the area attacks from the other classes. E.g. Ele can do 4k dmg/s with Lava Font on up to 5 targets or 5x over 16k with Churning Earth or warriors with 3x over 12k in 3s with HB.

how is it fine to be able to spam 6k damage skill which has gap closer in it? no warrior skill hits even close to that on fair grounds. Semi traited eviscerate will do 6-7k on low armor, but it has huge cast time and obvious leap animtaion + you need full adrenaline for that and 7s cd. with 100b you STAND STILL, means you need setup for that (or you are hitting 1/6 of damage max) to land – immobilize (can be cleansed) or stun ( stun breakers). with HS you just spam away. 2 ( enemy dodged that?) 2 ( again dodge?) – 2 2 2 2 dead now.

Spam 6k DMG Full glass cannon 30/30/0/0/10, 2x sigil of force=10% DMG,Assassin signet +15% DMG,Flaking strike +5% DMG,Improvisation +10% DMG, 20x MIGHT stack, etc. vs light golem 3x crit DMG.

Don’t use sPvP to counter argue damage done in WvW, they are different, scaling is completely different and you can’t achieved anywhere near the same stat combos, so it’s worthless.

As for your armor, for today’s meta I’d consider anything under2500 Armor as a glass build and I’m surprised you weren’t hit for me. Proper full glass thieves would down you in under 2 seconds with their normal steal>C&D>backstab chain with that low armor. On the flip side, you can (if you can catch them) sneeze on them and they would likely die :p

WoW i hit so hard with full ascendent + legendary in WvWvW, HS SPAM IS REALLY OP !!!

You like pictures? here, made some in spvp
http://i.imgur.com/k5nHwfl.jpg
on this one you can see 5 hs spam damage – 4 hits for 3k+ and anfter health threshold you start dishing out 6k+. Keep in mind this damage done in roughly 5s
after that follow real scenario – backstab into hs. 1 backstab and 2 hs target down, 2-3s.
(yes this build would not work in real life, but somehow without 20 might stacks and other stuff i managed to do bigger hits, means you tried to make the as low as possible trying to trick others)
After that follows example on medium ( my initial back stab somehow was lower than before, managed to 3 shot medium same as light but anyways, damage still there, down time – 3-4s.)

here is screenshot on indestructible golem
http://i.imgur.com/Di61tcQ.jpg ( damage done when he is lower than 50% ofc, to show potential of spam)

http://imgur.com/O1945EV
another one on moving heavy golem. ( starts with backstab).
all i did is land first back stab, folloing pressing 2 2 2 2 2 ( not moving abit, not even turning, he walked path around corners, i did follow him auto, just pressing 2 button on same interval

and unlike you, i didnt even use assassin signets active

heart seeker really isnt OP, the fact that a glass thief can build to kill a glass ele, who is already weakened is pretty normal.

note, that heart seeker is single target, and is only worth using when the player is sub 50%.
In the 3/4th of a second that it takes to do heart seeker you would already have done 2 parts of your AA chain and done more damage, and theif dagger AA chain is not even the strongest AA dmg among the classes over time.

you basically got caught with your defenses down, what can ya do.

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

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

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

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

Wethospu.6437:

I will try to sum up all current ideas to fix swamp rolling.

Balance maps
Keep tweaking length (priority) and difficulty (if needed) of the maps until there isn’t big incentive to roll. Basically make Swamp longer and make Underground shorter.

Pros:

• Easy to implement, doesn’t require any new mechanics
• Doesn’t really change how the game works (so no one should get kittened)

Cons:

• May need constant tweaking to reach the best result
• May not work with some instability combinations

Balance rewards
Instead of treating all maps equally with one big end reward, split it among the maps. Longer/harder maps would have more chests during the run meaning higher rewards.

Pros:

• Simple to implement, no extra mechanics needed

Cons:

• Removes/alters concept of daily chest (unless it remains)
• May not work with some instability combinations

Force first roll
Basically once you go in, your map selection would be saved and you wouldn’t get any other map until you have completed it.

Pros:

• Would prevent rolling

Cons:

• Doesn’t actually fix the problem, getting bad roll would become even more annoying
• Needs extra mechanics (probably bugs)
• Even less freedom for people to play how they want (for example can’t go practice starting fractals, etc).

Add daily quest with map selection
Allow players to take any map they want. Add daily quest to encourage completing specific maps.

Pros:

• Would give more freedom, people could play any map they want (useful when practicing or soloing)

Cons:

• Needs extra mechanics (probably bugs)
• People could do daily only with easy combinations (would need reward tweaking)

Rework
Instead of a run of 4 maps, have a run of 1 map. Allow selection of any map. Tie instabilities directly to the maps. Make progression separate for each map.

For more detail you can check my earlier post

Pros:

• Would remove randomness -> more competitive
• Would reduce time requirement -> more casual
• Would allow better instabilities
• Would eliminate rolling
• Would support very hard content
• Would support infinite scaling while keeping it expandable

Cons:

• Would require big amount of work
• Would require some kind of progression reset/transformation
• Would be a bold change

I think the best technique of your choices is to balance rewards, after all the main purpose of fractals now is beat 4 fractals as fast as possible once a day. (this is the rewarded behavior) one of the reasons people hate long fractals/difficult fractals is because it isnt to your advantage to do it.

I dont really like the idea of rebalancing every fractal to be similar speed. I feel it homgenizes the design of fractals and kills the creativity(development) and the ability of fractals to offer different challenges. For example, swamp is not a poorly designed fractal, its just a fractal whose main challenge is coordination, knowledge of the area/pitfalls and execution. Making it longer would not make it better, it would probably make it worse/miss the point.

as i suggested earlier, i think that fractals should get a bonus reward, which scales based on current data on that fractal

• how many times its been succeeded versus rolled
• how long it takes to complete in general
• how many player deaths

this is automated, and will adapt to whatever cheese people come up with, the best rewards will be for the least played least succeeded, longest to complete, most deadly fractals, which makes sense.
I would tie these rewards to fractal specific things essentially allowing you reroll on the type of things you might want from fractal chests.

Wethospu.6437:

phys.7689:

Your talking about competition, thats a bit different from replayability. In terms of having a fair competition against other players, random elements wouldnt help you. But in terms of having different/interesting challenges to deal with, and making each playthough different, random helps a lot.

now of course, if you are talking about competition, you have to have the same exact levels for every one, with the same enemies, then you can practice your mastery of learning specific and most effecient techniques, and accurately compare your performance to other people, but if we follow that path what do we have?

People doing the same 3 most effecient, most easy fractals, with the optimal party set ups, The replayability will be extremely low, except if the rewards are so good people feel they must do it.

I personally would give up a good competitive fair test type fractals for a fun/variable/semi unpredictable type fractal in a heart beat. The challenge i look for is more personal than about measuring myself against others. So for me, i dont mind if i have a harder fractal run than someone else, as long as we play well and overcome the challenges. Now, if the reward system rewards actually doing harder things, rather than mastery of the most efficient path, that, i think benefits everyone.

so yeah i think rolling isnt a great thing, i mean its only 1/4 fractals though, so it isnt the end of the world, but it doesnt add anything to fractals.

I mean the proof is there already, every one rolls swamp because it is the fastest fractal. Is it the funnest? not really, is it the most challenging? nope, is it the best designed? nope. Its the fractal that is the quickest stepping stone to getting the daily done as soon as possible.

It’s not about randomness not helping with competition. It’s about randomness completely killing any competitive play. You really can’t have any prestige if luck plays a big role in the outcome. For example, can you truly say you have beaten fractal scale 39 if you didn’t get Cliffside?

If people want only run same maps perhaps issue is with the maps? Increasing length of Swamp and decreasing length of Underground would be very easy to do and help a lot. No point having a bad system and forcing people to use it instead of fixing it.

Could you define fun / variable / semi unpredictable fractal? Why can’t normal fractals be fun? Do you think one well thought encounter would be less fun than a pool of simple encounters? Couldn’t variability come from multiple different instabilities with incentive to play all of them?

Yes, its like you said, the best way to make a fair competitive test, is for it to be completely uniform. Everyone has the same challenges, the same questions, the same tools. However, thats also not a very repeatable test. Because once people know the answers/way to get the answers, it becomes a test of memorization/speed rather than a test of intelligence/adaptability.

It however is probably a way more competitive test, than one where the questions were random, some people would get easy questions, or things they happen to know well.

Essentially i think that something designed to be fair in a competitive way, cant be very variable. but competitive and challenging/interesting are two different things. For example.
A fair competitive test in basketball might be shooting from a specific location repeatedly.
A variable/challenging/replayable one might be scoring versus any player on the opposing team.

The second test is a lot less fair, not a great way to compare to other shooters, but its a lot more variable, every time you do its different, and you may have to shoot from different places, different timing, etc.

As far as one well thought out encounter being fun, im saying i think every fractal should be well thought out, every fractal should be fun. But we both know the fun fractal is not necessarily the fractal that is the one that leads to finishing the daily the fastest.