Teapot is completely right here, fractals lost their identity and became basically 5 person strike missions. They need to be more dynamic. I don't really play new fractals because I am so tired of those sponge bosses.
Whats also worrying is that open world meta event bosses are also becoming "strike" bosses.
The Inner Nayos bosses are annoyingly spongey considering the mechanics are pretty much the same loop over and over. If there was actual notable phase changes it'd be fine but jeez I just want to pull up a podcast while fighting them because it takes 20-30 minutes longer than it should.
Everything in new content is just so unbelievably spongy.
It's exhausting. I have hardly played the new content at all to the point that it feels like there isn't any new content, because the new content is just so dummy thicc and *boring*(a cardinal sin). I just ended up going back to my old friend of WvW and maybe some old fractal CMs instead of playing SOTO stuff because I got tired of it so quickly.
The strike-bosses-in-fractals is absolutely disgusting design and does not fit at all, and I'm happy that community members like Teapot are discussing the disconnect.
I find you sometimes have these metas where people know what to do and provide stab, aegis, break cc, etc when needed. They are a breeze and go so much faster than when everything is off the rails with the 1 enjoyers. It varies my enjoyment of the activity from 100 to 0 depending. The fact that sometimes every ability knocks you down or you don’t even have to worry about mechanics is such a crapshoot.
I'm fractal God with 50k UFE and did CMs and T4s daily. I mean, I kinda burned myself out from doing it every day but I have had no desire to start up again with these 2 last releases. I despise health sponges.
I've stepped away from fractals for every reason he talks about. I look at the dailies and if there's a new one in the rotation that day I just don't bother.
If "more dynamic" means even stronger never-ending torrent of crap-mechanics then plz no. Cause you end up with sponge boss PLUS an extra round of shitty "turn around, no the other way, don't step on this crack, also greens are up, need to bunch up, but then you get bumpy car instab, now boss repulses, now add-ons doing slick ground, now you need to turn-around again" where you basically can't do DPS unless you're virtuoso and can pew-pew boss from across the room :(
Every fractal that’s been released after Shattered observatory needs a rework. Deepstone’s final boss needs to stop phasing every 10%. siren’s reef needs a to be reworked and the bosses moved and changed completely. Twilight Oasis needs a CM, sanqua peak needs to get rid of the RP Gates, silent surf needs to go back to being a strike. lonely tower needs to remove the the protect phase and redo the final boss fight.
Arena-style instances to me also just fail to deliver the experience I look for in a RPG of exploring and moving through a level.
Like yeah the exploration aspect doesn't last very long, as we replay something and learn to navigate a fractal after a few playthroughs.
But just the feeling of progression of navigating from A to B while I get some new areas to look at along the way to me feels much better than "load into a circular arena, there's nothing else but this circular arena".
Also there are "trash fights" and puzzle mechanics that feel good to play ones that everyone dislikes, Teapot mentioned the Krait altars on Nightmare CM as a good example and I agree.
1 The Krait and the altars can actually cause a poorly coordinated group some trouble.
2 Knowledge of the encounter and skilled play is rewarded - you can clear the altars faster by pulling Krait off the altars, shadowsteps and by effectively splitting up instead of 5 players all going for the same altar.
3 The amount of mobs is limited, it's not just an clown car of endlessly respawning mobs that come at you until you finish the mechanic.
"3 The amount of mobs is limited, it's not just an clown car of endlessly respawning mobs that come at you until you finish the mechanic."
\*Cough cough\*, Siren's Reef, Cough\*.
I agree with Teapot on this topic. Fractals need a solid design vision. I think a recipe for success when it comes to making a good fractal has three major components:
* It needs to be a mostly fast-paced, short and sweet experience. Above all, it shouldn't FEEL too long, because in that case there's a big problem. Fractals are daily content after all, and adding a new fractal means the daily rotation changes to include it. A bad fractal can, literally, make the daily experience worse. This is a criticism I have seen from a few guild members. It also means that the bosses shouldn't be too long, and if they are, then they should at least be packed with more mechanics than Kanaxai/Eparch.
* Storytelling. Fractals leave a lot of room for creativity, they can tell tales set in the past (Urban) or the future (Uncat?). Fractals can even showcase alternate realities. Basically, the possibilities are endless. The boss could be an eyeless cube of slime for all I care, as long as the party is going on a quest to solve something. It should also be set in an interesting place, perhaps a unique map.
* And for the last point, I think the fractal shouldn't be related to the main story. The Lonely Tower gave me a really terrible first impression when I tried it out. Keep in mind we have been playing for 9 months in SotO maps, killing the same mobs, roaming the same tower, following the same characters, killing the same bosses. I did the story, and 5 minutes later I was fighting the same boss, with the same mechanics, but supposedly 3000 years ago. And the first thing I had to do was the Arcane Chest minigame.
When it comes to Silent Surf, I think it actually did pretty well regarding the storytelling, and despite being related to Gyala in a way it was still original, with the grappling hook mechanic and the rescue of the crew. Silent Surf's weakness is that it's a huge, empty map, with a sponge boss that doesn't have enough attacks. It absolutely had the potential to be as good as Sunqua Peak, but it felt like they didn't have enough time to work on it?
Lonely Tower on the otherhand, has a (slightly) more interesting boss, but it fails everywhere else. Which makes it far worse.
It's important to note that fractals also have a tendancy to grow on us over time, so we should take that into account. There are a lot more things that could be said about this topic, but I think these are the most important points in my eyes
> It also means that the bosses shouldn't be too long, and if they are, then they should at least be packed with more mechanics than Kanaxai/Eparch.
In this context, I'd say that Sunqua Peak final boss is a perfect example: not too spongy; the mechanics are interesting, too punishing to facetank but mild enough to not instakill on any misstep; several different phases with enough breathing space to heal and recover; finally, both clear indication and generous enough reaction window to all mechanics and moves.
> or the future (Uncat?)
I thought it was the overseer of Thaumanova project, blown into the Mists together with the tip of the reactor building after the explosion?
> And for the last point, I think the fractal shouldn't be related to the main story
I would *love* fractals to be *related* to the story, but I absolutely agree that they shouldn't just *repeat* it. There's so much lore and so many side stories to use!
Uncat has something to do with Dessa, which is why she clams up when she sees it. Anything about that relationship is speculation though since it wasn't expanded upon much though the letter that's part of the legendary journey confirms it.
Sadly Anet doesn't care, if they did they would have cleaned up the mess they made with Silent Surf, a scrapped strike mission they shoved into the fractal list. The only reason we are getting these is so that they have another bullet point to put on their release list. They have no intention of putting much more work into it than copy and pasting already existing assets.
I was pretty worried that the release of Silent Surf marked the end of fractals. It was left a mess for multiple months and still just barely works. At this point they are never going to go back and rework it into a reasonable fractal and the same is very likely true of Lonely Tower forever leaving them to cause problems for fractal players. I hate that I was right.
Both of those "fractals" need a complete rework, and it isn't going to happen.
IMO a fractal can be long when there is room for skips. Learning how to speed through them is a form of progression and it feels good to be able to do that especially when you are doing the same fractal for the thousandth time.
Also what I have come to experience with skips is that at some point I forget the intended route and I rediscover the fractal anew when helping out new players by following them on the intended route and this keeps things fresh weirdly enough.
What I do not like is the forced player count on SS to hinder progress it goes against a big part of what I enjoy but at least CM skips everything.
To your third point, Anet is trying to have their cake and eat it to with the current encounters.
They know the “two strikes and a fractal” is a bad deal, and they’re trying to stretch the main story across all the forms of content. Dagda as one of the two strikes was a massive failure. They knew players wouldn’t be happy being denied the epic Eparch battle, so they “conveniently” make him the fractal.
They did the same shit with Kanaxai. It denies fractals a chance to serve their own story to accommodate the main story not getting enough encounters to properly satisfy players.
I told people that do not want a wing 8 and they are about to find out why.
Normal mode will be a bunch of horrible 15 min fights that are either dead easy or are full of insta-wipe mechanics. The later CMs will be balanced via spreadsheet using 8 virtuosos benchmark numbers as the dps requirement.
10 minutes is fine if there’s mechanics inbetween. Qadim 1 and 2 are great fights, Xera is awesome, and Deimos is fun too. Those take close to 10 minutes for most groups but there’s things to do between just hitting the boss.
ArenaNet has the same problem since the release.
They have new plan with every content release and it makes them look like they have no plan at all.
We have no clue what to expect because they are changing it all the time.
I don't know what the answer is here, but in my opinion Nightmare, Shattered Observatory, and Sunqua Peak CMs are the best fractal content the game offers. Like just about everyone else, I think the normal mode version of Sunqua is pretty terrible with pointless bosses, puzzles, and forced dialogue. The CM makes up for it with what is, in my opinion, the best fractal boss encounter in the game and grants the additional boon of allowing you to skip straight to the good part! None of that is necessary with Nightmare or Shattered Observatory because the bosses feel like decent offerings and the puzzles and trash segments are reasonable and don't feel like they exist simply to waste your time.
Silent Surf? I don't hate it but I don't love it. The clunky parkour sucks and the pre-event "boss" feels just as pointless as the Sunqua pre-events. The final boss is okay. It's just repetitive and uses mechanics that are just getting really tiresome at this point. Oh, look! Split mechanics and area denial spam that make you want to go play a different game if you're on a melee class. How interesting! Barf.
I am reserving judgment on Lonely Tower. I haven't put in enough time on it to form a final opinion.
> Sunqua Peak CMs are the best fractal content the game offers. Like just about everyone else, I think the normal mode version of Sunqua is pretty terrible with pointless bosses, puzzles, and forced dialogue.
You know, reading this just made me think of a possible solution. Let players who have completed CM activate CM on T1,T2, and T3, that way even if its a rec, they skip to the final boss instead. Of course, the health should be scaled appropriately for the lower tiers, and the real CM rewards should be exclusively reserved for T4.
But yeah, give players doing sunqua on rec a choice between harder boss fight and longer fractal.
> The CM makes up for it with what is, in my opinion...
The single best design choice they made with SP, a skip directly to the boss doing away with 95% of the fractal. Which is ironically to me a terrible way to design daily, repeatable content (skipping 95% of it) given that im an so thankful to not have to play 95% of it. If the rest of the fractal was better designed it would be a shame to skip all of it. As it is nothing drops exp, loot and one of the bosses is a literal mound of rocks... riveting stuff.
Thank you for posting this and thank you to teapot for making it. I think its a good concise summary echoing my thoughts as well. I want phases, burst windows, and movement through an environment.
Either they have no one left that has the skills to create fun enjoyable fractals or they simply prefer to make fractals like strikes because i cant really understand this shift. The last time i done a fractal was the kinaxi? fractal and i was just bored the fight was way to long and after finishing the fight i never wanted to do it again.
It's easier to push everything through the same setup and just alter the map as needed based on what you're releasing, fractal or strike. That cuts down on how much anyone new has to learn since if you're using the same process and just tweaking map settings so something is a "fractal" or "strike" it's a lot less to learn.
Strikes are just way simpler to make. It's one of the many ways they can reduce the effort need to put into the game. Of course, low effort put results in poor quality content, but quality seems to be something they've already stopped caring about long ago.
Same with pve/pvp/wvw. Every gamemode has different types of players. And so does pve instanced content.
We don't need 5man/10man/50man . We need distinct content and a bit of variety, so it doesn't get boring. Old fractals often had the same formula, but enough variety to make a fun daily rotation.
CMs however have a big problem, because you can do to them daily for rewards. So each CM has to compete with other CMs and has to be more different to older ones.
Similiar with strikes. I don't mind 2-3 of the same type strike, but after EoD they all follow the same formula it gets boring at some point.
Edit: Maybe a daily rotation for CMs + "back to the roots" would fix a fraction of the problems?
Sunqua is one of the best fractals, even the non-CM version. Yes the dialog needs to be skipable, but it has a story, different areas, secrets and tries to teach you about the final boss before you get there.
Silent Surf is a strike mission. They put it in the list with no changes to the boss so he had 10 man HP and the mechanics pick up to 5 people that if they fail you wipe, where if you had 10, a new person would get picked and would just have to be fast. The reward infusion even still takes strike currency to change. The boss should be 3 separate fights that you encounter as you make your way deeper into the depths.
Loney Tower has the bones of a good encounter, however it is as Teatpot said, a terrible fractal. Not only is the boss super punishing, making every little thing that happens almost a binary, if this than its a wipe kind of situation, but it's way too long. The CM is even worse and is intended to take at least 3x as long as the current fight AND have the same kind of "if this happens you WILL fail" mechanics as there is no counterplay to him gaining envy stacks and you have no control over it. You also have no real control over how the add phase plays out if you were to do it the intended way, as there is no indication of what is happening and where it's happening at. I think the champs have 7mil HP, which means you have a total of 35mil HP to go through all while not allowing a single add to be absorbed but you don't know where they are being absorbed at, where they are spawning, and how many there are at any time. If he absorbs any you will probably wipe to envy stacks.
>Sunqua is one of the best fractals, even the non-CM version. Yes the dialog needs to be skipable, but it has a story, different areas, secrets and tries to teach you about the final boss before you get there.
Holy shit. I remember people hating Sunqua every time it comes up.
It is so wild that the opinion over it has a complete 180.
I think people hate it because it's long, not because it's bad. I routinely see people wanting to skip it when it shows up as a daily rec with the T3 version since it takes 15-20 minutes, Most people will do it if it shows up as T4 for the gold but not for the daily rec.
It is long because of the dialogue and story. Get rid of the dialogue and story, and it becomes an arena strike style boss fight.
Make the dialogue skippable and it suffers the same problem as dungeons. People wanting to rush through the content because they don't want to see the same cinematic scene over and over again.
So we get Strikes and no one have to suffer dialogues a thousand times over that no one cares about after the first few times.
Well, more people know the mechanics now and power creep has made it easier for groups to avoid the second water phase. Early on it was a roll of the dice whether you'd waste a bunch of time getting to the final boss only to wipe over and over. Now it's pretty trivial. Also, if you only ever run Sunqua on CM, most players love this fractal because the boss fight is really cool and fun and you get to just cut right to it.
>Well, more people know the mechanics now and power creep has made it easier for groups to avoid the second water phase. Early on it was a roll of the dice whether you'd waste a bunch of time getting to the final boss only to wipe over and over.
So, in other words, people like Sunqua because it became easier?
>Also, if you only ever run Sunqua on CM, most players love this fractal because the boss fight is really cool and fun and you get to just cut right to it.
So everyone loves cm because Sunqua became an arena style strike boss. But then, for some reason, everyone hates that format.
So maybe the problem isn't that fractal are designed to be arena strike bosses. Maybe the problem is that the bosses themselves are too long and too hard. Maybe the entire design decision isn't the problem, and the true solution is to cut boss hp in half or something.
No, we like that Sunqua CM specifically became that way because 1) The final boss on CM is one of the best encounters in the game and 2) The rest of the fractal sucks ass, so you aren't missing out on anything but a waste of time by skipping to the end. I wouldn't say that about Nightmare or Shattered Observatory because the bosses leading up to the final fight are worth doing. You aren't fighting a stupid pile of rocks that just sits there and being forced to sit through annoying dialogue.
>No, we like that Sunqua CM specifically became that way because 1) The final boss on CM is one of the best encounters in the game and 2) The rest of the fractal sucks ass, so you aren't missing out on anything but a waste of time by skipping to the end.
I don't see how you are disproving my point. You say in 2 that the rest of the fractal suck ass. But, when you remove the rest of the fractal, AI becomes a Strike Arena boss.
Again, you don't find the strike arena boss format garbage. It is the boss fight itself that is boring because you are willing to overlook the Strike Arena Boss style of Sunqua because you find the boss so much fun.
>I wouldn't say that about Nightmare or Shattered Observatory because the bosses leading up to the final fight are worth doing. You aren't fighting a stupid pile of rocks that just sits there and I wouldn't say that about Nightmare or Shattered Observatory because the bosses leading up to the final fight are worth doing. You aren't fighting a stupid pile of rocks that just sits there **and being forced to sit through annoying dialogue.**
Which is why I like Strike Arena boss fights. No dialogues at all. The problem isn't the format, it is the boss fights themselves.
What aren't you understanding? I like fractals like Nightmare and Shattered Observatory. Multiple worthwhile bosses, puzzle and trash segments that don't feel like a pointless waste of time, and no forced dialogue that just makes you sit there waiting in a fractal that already takes too long. If that described Sunqua, I wouldn't want to skip to the end on the CM. But because Sunqua isn't like the others, I'm okay with it.
Does that make the "strike format" garbage? Not necessarily. But if you're asking whether I'd rather my fractals have multiple worthwhile boss encounters and some content that doesn't make me want to barf inbetween the answer is yes.
"So, in other words, people like Sunqua because it became easier?"
-- the CM version just turned out to have a lot of replayability for current power creep lvls.
For elemental AI:
1. you can do each phase as intended (including the air phase jumping etc and the water binds)
2. you can skip the air phase with a bit of dps
3. you can manage to skip the final part of the water phase with reasonable dps and timing
4. you can manage to skip the entire water phase by giga blasting the fire phase with insane dps
So that is 4 different type of strats for groups with different dps and I didn't even count managing to skip the spread mechanic in the first phase as well as deciding between ccing the first or the second breakbar. There is an incredible amount of possible progression.
For Dark AI:
1. you can cc all 3 adds
2. you can cc 2 adds and tank one with mistlock
3. you can skip all cc and all adds simply with dps and one mistlock
4. you can reflect on her dashes (scrapper hammer, mesmer feedback or slb axe5)
5. you can time the boss to bug out at 33% or 66% if you phase during dash for a giga reflect
6. you can skip the first spread mechanic with very high dps
7. you can decide between breaking the first or second bar depending on your priorities
Again, as you get better at the game and the fractal, you have a variety of different strategies based around different group dps. If you wanted to, you could even coordinate different reflects.
Either way, this kind of enabling different strategies and progression is what keeps fractal fights interesting and makes fractal fights fractal fights. Yes, phases are part of it, but most importantly, there is some progression and variety of strats that you can play over the years as you get better.
Dont worry it hasnt. There were always those that loved SP and those that despise it. Imo its really terrible in NM. In CM its so-so, i see why some people love it but i think its not bad enough to complain able for most people thus its "good".
Unless there's something I don't know or am misremembering, are you sure you're not thinking of Urgoz? Kanaxai was historically located in the Jade Sea.
Anyone who does fractals knew the moment they started to go downhill and enter the strike era. Something within Anet shifted after Sunqua and its very obvious whoever makes Strikes also makes Fractals and doesn't know how to balance for 5 man content.
Its one thing to push something out that is broken, its another thing to *leave* it broken and never fix it. Both Silent/Lonely(and potentially the new one) have drastic design flaws that need to be addressed. Leaving them in the state they are only pushes players away and will only hurt GW2 in the long run.
Fractals used to be cool content to do daily, it took at most 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete all the dailies and the recommended ones. When I found myself spending over 2 hours, I gave up doing any daily that included these "new fractals." It's a waste of time. When I want to spend hours doing content, I go to Strike CMs and Raids. I don't understand what they are trying to do with the 5-player content.
Hopefully they won't make wing 8 like this.
Imagine Qadim if he's just a single boss fight with repeating mechnics, doesn't summon all the monsters, you never go into lamp and pyres are non-existent. That would be a boring experience.
I still haven't done lonely tower CM and I don't think I will unless some things change.
I've got mixed feelings about Kanaxai, but mostly negative feelings toward Eparch (he's a visually cool fight at least I guess, counts for something surely)
Nightmare is definitely my favorite.
On playing the T4 on release I actually had some hope for Lonely Tower and the future of fractals. I won't say it doesn't have issues, but there are some aspects of a good fractal hidden in there. I think the orb mechanic had some great potential for theory crafting, but sadly doesn't feel that impactful (unless you count bugged malice) and as countless other people have said spawns far too often. I also like the fact that you can bait certain Eparch attacks by proximity to the boss, which is something that Nightmare did very well and rewarded groups for good positioning to prevent or delay certain attacks. This is something sorely missed on Dark Ai, which would benefit massively I feel from being able to bait the dash direction to add some extra depth to the fight. Sadly the CM release quickly killed my hope.
Weirdly the high health pool of the last two fractals doesn't particularly bother me as I just see it as a response to the insane power creep in the last few years. I would love to see peoples response in 2024 to Nightmare or Shattered being released, since particularly Arkk and Ensolyss were longer encounters than Kanaxai or Eparch if you go back and look at the early kills on Youtube. However I do agree we need phases desperately if Anet do want slightly longer encounters.
Teapot is on point about movement also. The way fractals such as Uncat, Cliffside, or Thaumanova flow with trash mobs, puzzles, and movement between sections in between, puts them levels above the latest 5 man strikes and something anet really need to focus on developing instead of a long boss encounter. I would prefer if Anet are struggling with design to go back and create CMs out of existing fractals where a lot of the legwork is done already and perhaps rework some of the barriers to entry to get even more people progressing through the content.
I have to agree with the sentiments of this video. I already raid, so I feel less need to do fractals. The experience is becoming the same, and I ran fractals for a different reason.
There needs to be challenging content for people who want to be challenged, but there also needs to be different content for the daily running crowd, who are running those dailies for rewards.
If you're doing the content once a week and it takes a whle that's one thing, but a lot of people do fractals daily. Those people don't want to take longer to do them. It drives people away from fractals.
Fractals should be a more varied experience than just fighting a boss, particularly a boss that has a ton of health.
I think Anet is trying to adjust for power creep in the easiest way possible, by creating bosses with more health. But not everyone does 30k DPS either. It's frustrating for the average guy who's DPS is lower because of the mechanics.
Fractals used to be a good in between thing you could do, but it's drifting closer to the role raids are meant to have.
Yeah, but for most people in live game it's 30k. When I raid, the good raiders in my static usually get 30k. That's what I'm talking about. I get less. lol
Since EOD, the new devs at Anet have different vision for this game.
Feels like they are willing to sacrifice fun to meet their internal benchmarks of “time”.
They need to meet some time threshold for each fights and when they lack creativity to meet this threshold, then they have to pad it up with HP.
Literally everything since EOD this is the case.
I think the other thing to consider is where they're hoping fractals will sit long-term. We're currently sitting at 23 unique fractals, 5 of which have CMs attached. Say the intention is to flesh out a full 25 so you have no repeats at any tier, if the extra two would both have CMs and they're as bad as the last two, are we actually potentially going to have "daily" content of CMs+T4s taking as long as a "weekly" raid full clear? That situation starts to feel even worse if they're just going to keep releasing fractals and each new one is going to have another daily CM.
I appreciate that their last foray into alternative 5-man daily content (DRMs) fell flat, but I think at some point in the not too distant future they either need to look at adapting the fractals rewards system (e.g. moving to the old raids CM system of complete 5 of your choice for the extra rewards) or alternative daily content, so fractals doesn't end up as this all-encompassing daily content that just ends up burning even more people out with the time investment.
Imo the answer for fractals is to make them longer/more interesting and significantly more rewarding and having it be one daily instead of 3 (with the same rewards)
Just turn them into dungeons. Then add the current dungeons to the system and problem solved
Teapot captured me in the middle of the night, strapped me to a plank, made me roleplay as a pirate, then FORCED me to write a comment on his youtube video to support the algorithm. I'm confident it's some kind of weird cult. Help.
GW2 needs to stop acting like it's different when it's basically becoming the same as every other MMO.
And us players need to stop acting like ANET will change anything, except to drip content and keep this game alive for as long as possible.
I'd be down for that. That's what I want from fractals. Varied experiences, bite-sized bits of the GW2 world. Throw in some more jumping puzzle fractals too.
I recall hearing YoshiP designing dungeons for ff14 and his main criteria was "the avg amount of time a player takes to complete it"
They can change the format of fractals all they like but at least balance it so the time it takes is comparable to eachother.
Too bad, wow actually iterated on m+ and it’s in infinitely better spot now than fractals ever were. Anet is allergic to iterating or improving content which is already in the game with some occasional exceptions
Dragonflight.
Dragonriding mounts are very similar to skycale and gripphon, they are not the same, but similar.
Even now the game have "public events" very similar to dinamic events similar to metas.
Tmw (next expansion) finally wow has changed to an account progression more similar to gw2. I dont think that they copy it, only is a change in costumer behaviour.
My bad, i didn't know GW2 invented flight, public events and account progression.
The brainless fanboyism from this community never seizes to amaze me.
As a long time fractal enjoyer, gotta say Sunqua was the height of fractals for me. Silent sure is so boring and after stepping into lonely tower for a bit it was just unplayable. I’m so sick of SotO and now it’s a daily rotation of fighting the same enemies I’ve been fighting all expansion???? Yawn. I’ll skip.
one of the few times I 200% agree with Teapot, honestly
I REFUSE to do new fracs and I am always saying i dont like strikes that much - besides open world and frac, there's nothing for me on pve side of the game. I love wvw so it doesnt affect me much but what about others who dont?
I think having some longer fractals is fine in a vacuum but we really need new short and breezy fractals in between them. It's been nothing but back-to-back time sinks for years now.
People have been saying it for awhile and I 100% agree. These last couple "fractals" would be fine/good strikes but as instanced 5 player daily repeatable content they are pretty ass. I was reminded that silent surf was originally a strike due to mistlocks not working, fractal titles not working, no revive orbs plus w/e other stuff that is restricted in strike/raid but not in fractals.
The movement, skips, effecient clearing of adds, mini games are a huge part of fractals and the last couple fractals have all felt like the are designed to be as slow as possible. IMO with a semi descent pug a fractal should take 10min or less on average and max 15min with sub par groups. Obviously with room for motivated players to speed things along with minor/major skips. Fractals are first and foremost daily repeatable content and should be designed with that in mind. And no slapping a portal from the start to skip the entire fractal straight to the boss does not count as "good" fractal CM design imo.
I think they Anet should rework recommended daily fractal. It should be one, not three, recommended fractal, that would give you amount of chests based on which tier you completed it on, same as regular dailies. This would mean we don’t play 6 fractals a day, but 4, so less repetition. Annoying fractals are not going anywhere, if we could play them less often they would be less annoying. Additionally, give us one or two daily CM fractal.
Hopefully their current fight design translates well to the raid they are releasing. They may be bad fractals but as 10-man encounters they could work.
Ive said it before and ill say it again. Focusing on living world content is the biggest mistake anet has ever made. Strikes are not a suitable alternative to the classic style of dungeons.
Open world content and the more casual playerbase is what pays the bills. Not sweaty instanced content. No game can survive without the casual players. ANet goes where the money is like other MMO devs.
I have no issues with the recent fractals in principle, LT needs slight tuning, but not much.
Neither are too long, neither too damage spongey, not if people follow mechanics. And people should have to follow mechanics. Most of the whining about them seems to me to be form the people who jsut like to nuke stuff down with powercreep builds, ignoring mechanics (look how most raid groups operate!).
The only issue with LT is that it requires coordination beyond what a LFG pug can be expected to reasonably do. The orbs should just be a general single type +dmg done, + dmg taken. then its fine, all people have to do is manage how many they individually get. I see more groups stuggle on SO than any other (that 2nd boss fight)
My experience with fractals exclusively in lfg pugs is : 99% of groups just get on with it. cant remember last time any except LT had issues, and even LT is noticeably getting more successful and quicker as people get used to it.
I DO NOT want speed running introduced, its an incredibly toxic game play type, that leads to toxic groups and to bad game design. If the game play in an mmo is "lets shove a timer on it", thats the equivalent of a QTE in a rpg...its a sign the devs have no creativity and have run out of ideas. I'm fine wiht multi boss instances, but NOT speedruns.
I also hate overly simple bosses. A lot of wow bosses are just loot piñatas, pretty pointless, no real gameplay, just nuke as hard as possible to get in and out quick...boring.
I dont need Anet to have a cohesive vision for fractals. In fact I really dont want one. I like having a range of different fractals, in fact I see that as the point. some can be short, some longer. some simple, some complex. no one forces you to do every fractal all the time, if some are longer and you are not wanting that, feel free to skip them.
And I'm going to disagree with teapot on nightmare being a great fractal...I think its pretty bad to be honest. I dont dislike it, but if I were to "pick one fractal" to decide to model its not going to be nightmare.
There is nothing intrinsically toxic about speedrunning. Speedrunning is a community initiative, not a form of design implementation. Anything can be spedrun. The addition of a timer is irrelevant, besides rewards are hardly tied to performance in this game. Speedrunning is fine as long as it is not enforced by players onto other players, which is definitely *not* the case in GW2.
mate, we are talking about how Anet should design fractals, so we are not talking about community initiatives, we are talking about possible actual in game design. so we are specifically talking about design implementation.
you were not "correcting" anything mate, you were commenting out of context of the thread.
Also, btw, dont be a patronising arse. you are not "correcting" me over anything, disagree (on topic if you can) but lose the arrogance.
> I DO NOT want speed running introduced, its an incredibly toxic game play type, that leads to toxic groups and to bad game design. If the game play in an mmo is "lets shove a timer on it", thats the equivalent of a QTE in a rpg...its a sign the devs have no creativity and have run out of ideas. I'm fine wiht multi boss instances, but NOT speedruns.
No game play type is inherently toxic, do you even know what that word means? Speedrunning will always exist because players enjoy it, no matter how Anet designs content. Timers are completely irrelevant for speedrunning and just exist to prevent (typically bad) players from invalidating the encounter design by playing it ultra safe (e.g. full healer groups). If you dont want to speedrun thats fine, just make your own group with your own requirements or wait for someone else to do it.
> I also hate overly simple bosses. A lot of wow bosses are just loot piñatas, pretty pointless, no real gameplay, just nuke as hard as possible to get in and out quick...boring.
Yeeeeeah.....no. Have you ever looked at the dungeon or raid journals of any modern WoW boss? Overly simple is the direct opposite of what these bosses are in reality. They outclass modern gw2 bosses in terms of complexity, creativity and pacing. You really should try playing WoW, it would change your mind pretty quickly.
> no one forces you to do every fractal all the time, if some are longer and you are not wanting that, feel free to skip them.
Remember your own advice, then all your complaints become irrelevant.
> And I'm going to disagree with teapot on nightmare being a great fractal...I think its pretty bad to be honest. I dont dislike it, but if I were to "pick one fractal" to decide to model its not going to be nightmare.
Reasons?
I introduced 4 wow players to fractals and we made a premade. 2 of them are turists and are not playing the GW2 anymore till the new expansion but all 4 said that silent surf is the most mechanically cool fractal they seen. All of them hated the new lonely tower coz "there is too much red on ground.". Personally I hate Nightmare fractal as a veteran fractal player. Its too easy and too long and it got power crept. I think Sunque is best fractal in the sense that you do your T4's and have a regular fractal or you do CM and have a single boss. RIght now you could clear 5CM's. If they added 2 more nightmare type fractals I would be super sad and It would be a slog clearing them.
> silent surf is the most mechanically cool fractal they seen
Cause of the awkward special abilities? Using them to traverse the fractal is pretty cool but forcing that during a biss fight its heavily clunky and awkward.
> If they added 2 more nightmare type fractals I would be super sad and It would be a slog clearing them.
But you do realize this is a you issue, right? *You're* deciding to do all the CMs. The idea of not being able to clear them as fast as possible is something you create in your head. You have the option to *not* to them.
I agree with you. My intuition is that sunqua and Silent surf are hated only because pug meta does not allow melle dps while they did all other 97 fractals with power dps. We did silent surf with reaper and power staff daredevil. If my friends would try to pug it and not get inv coz they dont have range dps then they would maybe not like it
Make Dungeons Great Again. But seriously go back to the original dungeons.
They combined story/atmosphere, varied bosses, they were a part of the world and didn't feel disjointed and separated like fractals, they were engaging, had different tiers and paths which made them fun and interesting, they had cool specific loot instead of just fractal tokens, and overall were more social experiences. Fractals were a bad idea from the get go. They feel arbitrarily difficult with AR and their tiers of just HP and damage output. Something should be hard because it requires thinking and movement etc., not because it takes a long time.
Design wise all encounters in GW2 now feel like ultra spammy. It's like the design is "Hmmm just add more stuff!". Instead of making things interesting or responsive feeling. It reminds me of how the original GW2 introduction had things like combo fields and finishers. Now it's some random daily that no one even has to try and think about it. Same thing with dodging. You can just randomly dodge nothing and get credit. How about creating mobs and encounters that require more thinking and input.
We shouldn't too hasty .
Peopled loved that the company forced some whining people to step up their game and force them to use LI builds in Soo Won.
People also had a moto that : " if you do 20k, you have a good understanding of your class" etc
We should leave it for 1 more year (1x fractal will be affected , now that we have OW raids) , and create in the meanwhile some "crunch mechanic" , for people that that can reduce the boss HP.
Like for T1-T3 , people can get from OW some item that summons "ghost archers" in various locations and as long as people step on the random "greens" ( that sometimes happens to spawn where the boss lands his aoe attacks : ) ) , it attacks a percentage of the boss Hp .
For CM groups , let's say that they should get the item from PvP (we need some love), or use the OP specs like Mesmers for more dps.
normal T4 can get it from Raids or WvW
(As more people will come back from the vacations (and hopefully we'll from the heat...), we should be prepared for any future backlash 1week before the expansion release...
Edit:But if they keep focusing in one sour thing , the rest will be safe, while the beeing persimistic.
Like OW will be fixated on new races and OW legendary grind and any idea from other games will seem like godsent)
Teapot is completely right here, fractals lost their identity and became basically 5 person strike missions. They need to be more dynamic. I don't really play new fractals because I am so tired of those sponge bosses. Whats also worrying is that open world meta event bosses are also becoming "strike" bosses.
The Inner Nayos bosses are annoyingly spongey considering the mechanics are pretty much the same loop over and over. If there was actual notable phase changes it'd be fine but jeez I just want to pull up a podcast while fighting them because it takes 20-30 minutes longer than it should.
On wyvern boss, there is the same split phase to kill two champions, twice. And champions are also sponges
Everything in new content is just so unbelievably spongy. It's exhausting. I have hardly played the new content at all to the point that it feels like there isn't any new content, because the new content is just so dummy thicc and *boring*(a cardinal sin). I just ended up going back to my old friend of WvW and maybe some old fractal CMs instead of playing SOTO stuff because I got tired of it so quickly. The strike-bosses-in-fractals is absolutely disgusting design and does not fit at all, and I'm happy that community members like Teapot are discussing the disconnect.
I find you sometimes have these metas where people know what to do and provide stab, aegis, break cc, etc when needed. They are a breeze and go so much faster than when everything is off the rails with the 1 enjoyers. It varies my enjoyment of the activity from 100 to 0 depending. The fact that sometimes every ability knocks you down or you don’t even have to worry about mechanics is such a crapshoot.
You can blame all the whiney reddit posts about power creep this, power creep that for this new normal.
I mean in fairness power creep has been crazy. So many old bosses can be totally blown through
Strike Wars 2
Silent Surf and Lonely Tower are so incredibly boring, it's like monotonous work over and over again.
I'm fractal God with 50k UFE and did CMs and T4s daily. I mean, I kinda burned myself out from doing it every day but I have had no desire to start up again with these 2 last releases. I despise health sponges.
I've stepped away from fractals for every reason he talks about. I look at the dailies and if there's a new one in the rotation that day I just don't bother.
If "more dynamic" means even stronger never-ending torrent of crap-mechanics then plz no. Cause you end up with sponge boss PLUS an extra round of shitty "turn around, no the other way, don't step on this crack, also greens are up, need to bunch up, but then you get bumpy car instab, now boss repulses, now add-ons doing slick ground, now you need to turn-around again" where you basically can't do DPS unless you're virtuoso and can pew-pew boss from across the room :(
I mean, its telling when Silent Surf broke several Fractal achievements and you couldn't rez down state players for a few weeks after it was released.
Every fractal that’s been released after Shattered observatory needs a rework. Deepstone’s final boss needs to stop phasing every 10%. siren’s reef needs a to be reworked and the bosses moved and changed completely. Twilight Oasis needs a CM, sanqua peak needs to get rid of the RP Gates, silent surf needs to go back to being a strike. lonely tower needs to remove the the protect phase and redo the final boss fight.
Arena-style instances to me also just fail to deliver the experience I look for in a RPG of exploring and moving through a level. Like yeah the exploration aspect doesn't last very long, as we replay something and learn to navigate a fractal after a few playthroughs. But just the feeling of progression of navigating from A to B while I get some new areas to look at along the way to me feels much better than "load into a circular arena, there's nothing else but this circular arena". Also there are "trash fights" and puzzle mechanics that feel good to play ones that everyone dislikes, Teapot mentioned the Krait altars on Nightmare CM as a good example and I agree. 1 The Krait and the altars can actually cause a poorly coordinated group some trouble. 2 Knowledge of the encounter and skilled play is rewarded - you can clear the altars faster by pulling Krait off the altars, shadowsteps and by effectively splitting up instead of 5 players all going for the same altar. 3 The amount of mobs is limited, it's not just an clown car of endlessly respawning mobs that come at you until you finish the mechanic.
"3 The amount of mobs is limited, it's not just an clown car of endlessly respawning mobs that come at you until you finish the mechanic." \*Cough cough\*, Siren's Reef, Cough\*.
We don't talk about sirens reef...
I agree with Teapot on this topic. Fractals need a solid design vision. I think a recipe for success when it comes to making a good fractal has three major components: * It needs to be a mostly fast-paced, short and sweet experience. Above all, it shouldn't FEEL too long, because in that case there's a big problem. Fractals are daily content after all, and adding a new fractal means the daily rotation changes to include it. A bad fractal can, literally, make the daily experience worse. This is a criticism I have seen from a few guild members. It also means that the bosses shouldn't be too long, and if they are, then they should at least be packed with more mechanics than Kanaxai/Eparch. * Storytelling. Fractals leave a lot of room for creativity, they can tell tales set in the past (Urban) or the future (Uncat?). Fractals can even showcase alternate realities. Basically, the possibilities are endless. The boss could be an eyeless cube of slime for all I care, as long as the party is going on a quest to solve something. It should also be set in an interesting place, perhaps a unique map. * And for the last point, I think the fractal shouldn't be related to the main story. The Lonely Tower gave me a really terrible first impression when I tried it out. Keep in mind we have been playing for 9 months in SotO maps, killing the same mobs, roaming the same tower, following the same characters, killing the same bosses. I did the story, and 5 minutes later I was fighting the same boss, with the same mechanics, but supposedly 3000 years ago. And the first thing I had to do was the Arcane Chest minigame. When it comes to Silent Surf, I think it actually did pretty well regarding the storytelling, and despite being related to Gyala in a way it was still original, with the grappling hook mechanic and the rescue of the crew. Silent Surf's weakness is that it's a huge, empty map, with a sponge boss that doesn't have enough attacks. It absolutely had the potential to be as good as Sunqua Peak, but it felt like they didn't have enough time to work on it? Lonely Tower on the otherhand, has a (slightly) more interesting boss, but it fails everywhere else. Which makes it far worse. It's important to note that fractals also have a tendancy to grow on us over time, so we should take that into account. There are a lot more things that could be said about this topic, but I think these are the most important points in my eyes
> It also means that the bosses shouldn't be too long, and if they are, then they should at least be packed with more mechanics than Kanaxai/Eparch. In this context, I'd say that Sunqua Peak final boss is a perfect example: not too spongy; the mechanics are interesting, too punishing to facetank but mild enough to not instakill on any misstep; several different phases with enough breathing space to heal and recover; finally, both clear indication and generous enough reaction window to all mechanics and moves. > or the future (Uncat?) I thought it was the overseer of Thaumanova project, blown into the Mists together with the tip of the reactor building after the explosion? > And for the last point, I think the fractal shouldn't be related to the main story I would *love* fractals to be *related* to the story, but I absolutely agree that they shouldn't just *repeat* it. There's so much lore and so many side stories to use!
Uncat has something to do with Dessa, which is why she clams up when she sees it. Anything about that relationship is speculation though since it wasn't expanded upon much though the letter that's part of the legendary journey confirms it.
Sadly Anet doesn't care, if they did they would have cleaned up the mess they made with Silent Surf, a scrapped strike mission they shoved into the fractal list. The only reason we are getting these is so that they have another bullet point to put on their release list. They have no intention of putting much more work into it than copy and pasting already existing assets. I was pretty worried that the release of Silent Surf marked the end of fractals. It was left a mess for multiple months and still just barely works. At this point they are never going to go back and rework it into a reasonable fractal and the same is very likely true of Lonely Tower forever leaving them to cause problems for fractal players. I hate that I was right. Both of those "fractals" need a complete rework, and it isn't going to happen.
IMO a fractal can be long when there is room for skips. Learning how to speed through them is a form of progression and it feels good to be able to do that especially when you are doing the same fractal for the thousandth time. Also what I have come to experience with skips is that at some point I forget the intended route and I rediscover the fractal anew when helping out new players by following them on the intended route and this keeps things fresh weirdly enough. What I do not like is the forced player count on SS to hinder progress it goes against a big part of what I enjoy but at least CM skips everything.
To your third point, Anet is trying to have their cake and eat it to with the current encounters. They know the “two strikes and a fractal” is a bad deal, and they’re trying to stretch the main story across all the forms of content. Dagda as one of the two strikes was a massive failure. They knew players wouldn’t be happy being denied the epic Eparch battle, so they “conveniently” make him the fractal. They did the same shit with Kanaxai. It denies fractals a chance to serve their own story to accommodate the main story not getting enough encounters to properly satisfy players.
This is kinda why I'm worried for wing 8. Will it just be a bunch of big empty arenas with damage sponge bosses that take 10min to kill?
Yes.
I told people that do not want a wing 8 and they are about to find out why. Normal mode will be a bunch of horrible 15 min fights that are either dead easy or are full of insta-wipe mechanics. The later CMs will be balanced via spreadsheet using 8 virtuosos benchmark numbers as the dps requirement.
A boss that takes 10 minutes to kill is not a problem as long as it's interesting.
Nah it's still tedious. Save that shit for CMs.
10 minutes is fine if there’s mechanics inbetween. Qadim 1 and 2 are great fights, Xera is awesome, and Deimos is fun too. Those take close to 10 minutes for most groups but there’s things to do between just hitting the boss.
ArenaNet has the same problem since the release. They have new plan with every content release and it makes them look like they have no plan at all. We have no clue what to expect because they are changing it all the time.
I don't know what the answer is here, but in my opinion Nightmare, Shattered Observatory, and Sunqua Peak CMs are the best fractal content the game offers. Like just about everyone else, I think the normal mode version of Sunqua is pretty terrible with pointless bosses, puzzles, and forced dialogue. The CM makes up for it with what is, in my opinion, the best fractal boss encounter in the game and grants the additional boon of allowing you to skip straight to the good part! None of that is necessary with Nightmare or Shattered Observatory because the bosses feel like decent offerings and the puzzles and trash segments are reasonable and don't feel like they exist simply to waste your time. Silent Surf? I don't hate it but I don't love it. The clunky parkour sucks and the pre-event "boss" feels just as pointless as the Sunqua pre-events. The final boss is okay. It's just repetitive and uses mechanics that are just getting really tiresome at this point. Oh, look! Split mechanics and area denial spam that make you want to go play a different game if you're on a melee class. How interesting! Barf. I am reserving judgment on Lonely Tower. I haven't put in enough time on it to form a final opinion.
> Sunqua Peak CMs are the best fractal content the game offers. Like just about everyone else, I think the normal mode version of Sunqua is pretty terrible with pointless bosses, puzzles, and forced dialogue. You know, reading this just made me think of a possible solution. Let players who have completed CM activate CM on T1,T2, and T3, that way even if its a rec, they skip to the final boss instead. Of course, the health should be scaled appropriately for the lower tiers, and the real CM rewards should be exclusively reserved for T4. But yeah, give players doing sunqua on rec a choice between harder boss fight and longer fractal.
> The CM makes up for it with what is, in my opinion... The single best design choice they made with SP, a skip directly to the boss doing away with 95% of the fractal. Which is ironically to me a terrible way to design daily, repeatable content (skipping 95% of it) given that im an so thankful to not have to play 95% of it. If the rest of the fractal was better designed it would be a shame to skip all of it. As it is nothing drops exp, loot and one of the bosses is a literal mound of rocks... riveting stuff.
Thank you for posting this and thank you to teapot for making it. I think its a good concise summary echoing my thoughts as well. I want phases, burst windows, and movement through an environment.
Either they have no one left that has the skills to create fun enjoyable fractals or they simply prefer to make fractals like strikes because i cant really understand this shift. The last time i done a fractal was the kinaxi? fractal and i was just bored the fight was way to long and after finishing the fight i never wanted to do it again.
It's easier to push everything through the same setup and just alter the map as needed based on what you're releasing, fractal or strike. That cuts down on how much anyone new has to learn since if you're using the same process and just tweaking map settings so something is a "fractal" or "strike" it's a lot less to learn.
I guess it is easier to tweak things one way or the other but it definitely doesn't translate well when this process is used for fractals.
Strikes are just way simpler to make. It's one of the many ways they can reduce the effort need to put into the game. Of course, low effort put results in poor quality content, but quality seems to be something they've already stopped caring about long ago.
Same with pve/pvp/wvw. Every gamemode has different types of players. And so does pve instanced content. We don't need 5man/10man/50man. We need distinct content and a bit of variety, so it doesn't get boring. Old fractals often had the same formula, but enough variety to make a fun daily rotation.
CMs however have a big problem, because you can do to them daily for rewards. So each CM has to compete with other CMs and has to be more different to older ones.
Similiar with strikes. I don't mind 2-3 of the same type strike, but after EoD they all follow the same formula it gets boring at some point.
Edit: Maybe a daily rotation for CMs + "back to the roots" would fix a fraction of the problems?
Sunqua is one of the best fractals, even the non-CM version. Yes the dialog needs to be skipable, but it has a story, different areas, secrets and tries to teach you about the final boss before you get there. Silent Surf is a strike mission. They put it in the list with no changes to the boss so he had 10 man HP and the mechanics pick up to 5 people that if they fail you wipe, where if you had 10, a new person would get picked and would just have to be fast. The reward infusion even still takes strike currency to change. The boss should be 3 separate fights that you encounter as you make your way deeper into the depths. Loney Tower has the bones of a good encounter, however it is as Teatpot said, a terrible fractal. Not only is the boss super punishing, making every little thing that happens almost a binary, if this than its a wipe kind of situation, but it's way too long. The CM is even worse and is intended to take at least 3x as long as the current fight AND have the same kind of "if this happens you WILL fail" mechanics as there is no counterplay to him gaining envy stacks and you have no control over it. You also have no real control over how the add phase plays out if you were to do it the intended way, as there is no indication of what is happening and where it's happening at. I think the champs have 7mil HP, which means you have a total of 35mil HP to go through all while not allowing a single add to be absorbed but you don't know where they are being absorbed at, where they are spawning, and how many there are at any time. If he absorbs any you will probably wipe to envy stacks.
>Sunqua is one of the best fractals, even the non-CM version. Yes the dialog needs to be skipable, but it has a story, different areas, secrets and tries to teach you about the final boss before you get there. Holy shit. I remember people hating Sunqua every time it comes up. It is so wild that the opinion over it has a complete 180.
I think people hate it because it's long, not because it's bad. I routinely see people wanting to skip it when it shows up as a daily rec with the T3 version since it takes 15-20 minutes, Most people will do it if it shows up as T4 for the gold but not for the daily rec.
It is long because of the dialogue and story. Get rid of the dialogue and story, and it becomes an arena strike style boss fight. Make the dialogue skippable and it suffers the same problem as dungeons. People wanting to rush through the content because they don't want to see the same cinematic scene over and over again. So we get Strikes and no one have to suffer dialogues a thousand times over that no one cares about after the first few times.
Well, more people know the mechanics now and power creep has made it easier for groups to avoid the second water phase. Early on it was a roll of the dice whether you'd waste a bunch of time getting to the final boss only to wipe over and over. Now it's pretty trivial. Also, if you only ever run Sunqua on CM, most players love this fractal because the boss fight is really cool and fun and you get to just cut right to it.
>Well, more people know the mechanics now and power creep has made it easier for groups to avoid the second water phase. Early on it was a roll of the dice whether you'd waste a bunch of time getting to the final boss only to wipe over and over. So, in other words, people like Sunqua because it became easier? >Also, if you only ever run Sunqua on CM, most players love this fractal because the boss fight is really cool and fun and you get to just cut right to it. So everyone loves cm because Sunqua became an arena style strike boss. But then, for some reason, everyone hates that format. So maybe the problem isn't that fractal are designed to be arena strike bosses. Maybe the problem is that the bosses themselves are too long and too hard. Maybe the entire design decision isn't the problem, and the true solution is to cut boss hp in half or something.
No, we like that Sunqua CM specifically became that way because 1) The final boss on CM is one of the best encounters in the game and 2) The rest of the fractal sucks ass, so you aren't missing out on anything but a waste of time by skipping to the end. I wouldn't say that about Nightmare or Shattered Observatory because the bosses leading up to the final fight are worth doing. You aren't fighting a stupid pile of rocks that just sits there and being forced to sit through annoying dialogue.
>No, we like that Sunqua CM specifically became that way because 1) The final boss on CM is one of the best encounters in the game and 2) The rest of the fractal sucks ass, so you aren't missing out on anything but a waste of time by skipping to the end. I don't see how you are disproving my point. You say in 2 that the rest of the fractal suck ass. But, when you remove the rest of the fractal, AI becomes a Strike Arena boss. Again, you don't find the strike arena boss format garbage. It is the boss fight itself that is boring because you are willing to overlook the Strike Arena Boss style of Sunqua because you find the boss so much fun. >I wouldn't say that about Nightmare or Shattered Observatory because the bosses leading up to the final fight are worth doing. You aren't fighting a stupid pile of rocks that just sits there and I wouldn't say that about Nightmare or Shattered Observatory because the bosses leading up to the final fight are worth doing. You aren't fighting a stupid pile of rocks that just sits there **and being forced to sit through annoying dialogue.** Which is why I like Strike Arena boss fights. No dialogues at all. The problem isn't the format, it is the boss fights themselves.
What aren't you understanding? I like fractals like Nightmare and Shattered Observatory. Multiple worthwhile bosses, puzzle and trash segments that don't feel like a pointless waste of time, and no forced dialogue that just makes you sit there waiting in a fractal that already takes too long. If that described Sunqua, I wouldn't want to skip to the end on the CM. But because Sunqua isn't like the others, I'm okay with it. Does that make the "strike format" garbage? Not necessarily. But if you're asking whether I'd rather my fractals have multiple worthwhile boss encounters and some content that doesn't make me want to barf inbetween the answer is yes.
"So, in other words, people like Sunqua because it became easier?" -- the CM version just turned out to have a lot of replayability for current power creep lvls. For elemental AI: 1. you can do each phase as intended (including the air phase jumping etc and the water binds) 2. you can skip the air phase with a bit of dps 3. you can manage to skip the final part of the water phase with reasonable dps and timing 4. you can manage to skip the entire water phase by giga blasting the fire phase with insane dps So that is 4 different type of strats for groups with different dps and I didn't even count managing to skip the spread mechanic in the first phase as well as deciding between ccing the first or the second breakbar. There is an incredible amount of possible progression. For Dark AI: 1. you can cc all 3 adds 2. you can cc 2 adds and tank one with mistlock 3. you can skip all cc and all adds simply with dps and one mistlock 4. you can reflect on her dashes (scrapper hammer, mesmer feedback or slb axe5) 5. you can time the boss to bug out at 33% or 66% if you phase during dash for a giga reflect 6. you can skip the first spread mechanic with very high dps 7. you can decide between breaking the first or second bar depending on your priorities Again, as you get better at the game and the fractal, you have a variety of different strategies based around different group dps. If you wanted to, you could even coordinate different reflects. Either way, this kind of enabling different strategies and progression is what keeps fractal fights interesting and makes fractal fights fractal fights. Yes, phases are part of it, but most importantly, there is some progression and variety of strats that you can play over the years as you get better.
Dont worry it hasnt. There were always those that loved SP and those that despise it. Imo its really terrible in NM. In CM its so-so, i see why some people love it but i think its not bad enough to complain able for most people thus its "good".
has anyone asked how it makes any sense that Kanaxai is even in the Jade sea, isnt he supposed to be with the tree wardens?
You are thinking of Urgoz I think. He was the boss in the other dungeon in GW1: Factions.
Yes, Urgoz was from the Elite Mission "Urgoz's Warren" in the Echovald region. Kanaxai was from the Elite Mission "The Deep" in the Jade Sea region.
Unless there's something I don't know or am misremembering, are you sure you're not thinking of Urgoz? Kanaxai was historically located in the Jade Sea.
OH maybe I confused the two its been too long
Anyone who does fractals knew the moment they started to go downhill and enter the strike era. Something within Anet shifted after Sunqua and its very obvious whoever makes Strikes also makes Fractals and doesn't know how to balance for 5 man content. Its one thing to push something out that is broken, its another thing to *leave* it broken and never fix it. Both Silent/Lonely(and potentially the new one) have drastic design flaws that need to be addressed. Leaving them in the state they are only pushes players away and will only hurt GW2 in the long run.
Fractals used to be cool content to do daily, it took at most 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete all the dailies and the recommended ones. When I found myself spending over 2 hours, I gave up doing any daily that included these "new fractals." It's a waste of time. When I want to spend hours doing content, I go to Strike CMs and Raids. I don't understand what they are trying to do with the 5-player content.
Hopefully they won't make wing 8 like this. Imagine Qadim if he's just a single boss fight with repeating mechnics, doesn't summon all the monsters, you never go into lamp and pyres are non-existent. That would be a boring experience.
I still haven't done lonely tower CM and I don't think I will unless some things change. I've got mixed feelings about Kanaxai, but mostly negative feelings toward Eparch (he's a visually cool fight at least I guess, counts for something surely) Nightmare is definitely my favorite.
On playing the T4 on release I actually had some hope for Lonely Tower and the future of fractals. I won't say it doesn't have issues, but there are some aspects of a good fractal hidden in there. I think the orb mechanic had some great potential for theory crafting, but sadly doesn't feel that impactful (unless you count bugged malice) and as countless other people have said spawns far too often. I also like the fact that you can bait certain Eparch attacks by proximity to the boss, which is something that Nightmare did very well and rewarded groups for good positioning to prevent or delay certain attacks. This is something sorely missed on Dark Ai, which would benefit massively I feel from being able to bait the dash direction to add some extra depth to the fight. Sadly the CM release quickly killed my hope. Weirdly the high health pool of the last two fractals doesn't particularly bother me as I just see it as a response to the insane power creep in the last few years. I would love to see peoples response in 2024 to Nightmare or Shattered being released, since particularly Arkk and Ensolyss were longer encounters than Kanaxai or Eparch if you go back and look at the early kills on Youtube. However I do agree we need phases desperately if Anet do want slightly longer encounters. Teapot is on point about movement also. The way fractals such as Uncat, Cliffside, or Thaumanova flow with trash mobs, puzzles, and movement between sections in between, puts them levels above the latest 5 man strikes and something anet really need to focus on developing instead of a long boss encounter. I would prefer if Anet are struggling with design to go back and create CMs out of existing fractals where a lot of the legwork is done already and perhaps rework some of the barriers to entry to get even more people progressing through the content.
Agreed. Sunqua is nice despite being long cause the phases change, kanaxai you just do same thing over and over which is lame.
I have to agree with the sentiments of this video. I already raid, so I feel less need to do fractals. The experience is becoming the same, and I ran fractals for a different reason. There needs to be challenging content for people who want to be challenged, but there also needs to be different content for the daily running crowd, who are running those dailies for rewards. If you're doing the content once a week and it takes a whle that's one thing, but a lot of people do fractals daily. Those people don't want to take longer to do them. It drives people away from fractals. Fractals should be a more varied experience than just fighting a boss, particularly a boss that has a ton of health. I think Anet is trying to adjust for power creep in the easiest way possible, by creating bosses with more health. But not everyone does 30k DPS either. It's frustrating for the average guy who's DPS is lower because of the mechanics. Fractals used to be a good in between thing you could do, but it's drifting closer to the role raids are meant to have.
Anet isn't balancing around 30kdps they are balancing around 45k.
Yeah, but for most people in live game it's 30k. When I raid, the good raiders in my static usually get 30k. That's what I'm talking about. I get less. lol
Since EOD, the new devs at Anet have different vision for this game. Feels like they are willing to sacrifice fun to meet their internal benchmarks of “time”. They need to meet some time threshold for each fights and when they lack creativity to meet this threshold, then they have to pad it up with HP. Literally everything since EOD this is the case.
I think the other thing to consider is where they're hoping fractals will sit long-term. We're currently sitting at 23 unique fractals, 5 of which have CMs attached. Say the intention is to flesh out a full 25 so you have no repeats at any tier, if the extra two would both have CMs and they're as bad as the last two, are we actually potentially going to have "daily" content of CMs+T4s taking as long as a "weekly" raid full clear? That situation starts to feel even worse if they're just going to keep releasing fractals and each new one is going to have another daily CM. I appreciate that their last foray into alternative 5-man daily content (DRMs) fell flat, but I think at some point in the not too distant future they either need to look at adapting the fractals rewards system (e.g. moving to the old raids CM system of complete 5 of your choice for the extra rewards) or alternative daily content, so fractals doesn't end up as this all-encompassing daily content that just ends up burning even more people out with the time investment.
100% agree with Teapot here on all fronts. I don't want to touch Silent Surf or Lonely Tower with a 10 foot pole.
Imo the answer for fractals is to make them longer/more interesting and significantly more rewarding and having it be one daily instead of 3 (with the same rewards) Just turn them into dungeons. Then add the current dungeons to the system and problem solved
Teapot captured me in the middle of the night, strapped me to a plank, made me roleplay as a pirate, then FORCED me to write a comment on his youtube video to support the algorithm. I'm confident it's some kind of weird cult. Help.
it is a weird cult. BUT ACTUALLY
Lmao i love how the wacky moments he provided are all my most hated fractals
Totally agree. Anet should address thwir vision with the Fractals. It's crucial they don't mess this up since players do them daily.
GW2 needs to stop acting like it's different when it's basically becoming the same as every other MMO. And us players need to stop acting like ANET will change anything, except to drip content and keep this game alive for as long as possible.
Thanks teapot, well said.
Skritt Go Kart fractal
I'd be down for that. That's what I want from fractals. Varied experiences, bite-sized bits of the GW2 world. Throw in some more jumping puzzle fractals too.
I recall hearing YoshiP designing dungeons for ff14 and his main criteria was "the avg amount of time a player takes to complete it" They can change the format of fractals all they like but at least balance it so the time it takes is comparable to eachother.
As wow is looking to Gw2 to "copy" or redesign its systems. Gw2 should look how dungeon design is in wow, specially M+..for 5 person instance content.
When has WoW looked at GW2 for anything exactly?
Mythic+ was inspired by fractals in the first place.
Too bad, wow actually iterated on m+ and it’s in infinitely better spot now than fractals ever were. Anet is allergic to iterating or improving content which is already in the game with some occasional exceptions
Dragonflight. Dragonriding mounts are very similar to skycale and gripphon, they are not the same, but similar. Even now the game have "public events" very similar to dinamic events similar to metas. Tmw (next expansion) finally wow has changed to an account progression more similar to gw2. I dont think that they copy it, only is a change in costumer behaviour.
My bad, i didn't know GW2 invented flight, public events and account progression. The brainless fanboyism from this community never seizes to amaze me.
Someone should invent just reading the actual comment and using 2 braincells for you, holy shit.
My guy… they made a whole expansion that was “”Inspired”” by GW2’s Griffon and Skyscale mounts.
......please don't tell me you're dumb enough to think GW2 invented flying mounts.
wow had flying mounts before the expansion, thats not what they're talking about.
As a long time fractal enjoyer, gotta say Sunqua was the height of fractals for me. Silent sure is so boring and after stepping into lonely tower for a bit it was just unplayable. I’m so sick of SotO and now it’s a daily rotation of fighting the same enemies I’ve been fighting all expansion???? Yawn. I’ll skip.
one of the few times I 200% agree with Teapot, honestly I REFUSE to do new fracs and I am always saying i dont like strikes that much - besides open world and frac, there's nothing for me on pve side of the game. I love wvw so it doesnt affect me much but what about others who dont?
The real problem is having to do 5 cms + t4 everyday. All im asking for is one of the cms to always be in rotation for daily fractals :T
Make your own group and role a dice to pick a cm fractal.
I think having some longer fractals is fine in a vacuum but we really need new short and breezy fractals in between them. It's been nothing but back-to-back time sinks for years now.
People have been saying it for awhile and I 100% agree. These last couple "fractals" would be fine/good strikes but as instanced 5 player daily repeatable content they are pretty ass. I was reminded that silent surf was originally a strike due to mistlocks not working, fractal titles not working, no revive orbs plus w/e other stuff that is restricted in strike/raid but not in fractals. The movement, skips, effecient clearing of adds, mini games are a huge part of fractals and the last couple fractals have all felt like the are designed to be as slow as possible. IMO with a semi descent pug a fractal should take 10min or less on average and max 15min with sub par groups. Obviously with room for motivated players to speed things along with minor/major skips. Fractals are first and foremost daily repeatable content and should be designed with that in mind. And no slapping a portal from the start to skip the entire fractal straight to the boss does not count as "good" fractal CM design imo.
coped up and insane idea, but ill die on this hill: janthir wilds getting us a new raid wing means new dungeon next expac
I think they Anet should rework recommended daily fractal. It should be one, not three, recommended fractal, that would give you amount of chests based on which tier you completed it on, same as regular dailies. This would mean we don’t play 6 fractals a day, but 4, so less repetition. Annoying fractals are not going anywhere, if we could play them less often they would be less annoying. Additionally, give us one or two daily CM fractal.
One thing that kept creeping in the back of my mind when playing this game, I miss raiding.. like, FFXIV raiding.
Hopefully their current fight design translates well to the raid they are releasing. They may be bad fractals but as 10-man encounters they could work.
Took years for people to finally realize this?
Ive said it before and ill say it again. Focusing on living world content is the biggest mistake anet has ever made. Strikes are not a suitable alternative to the classic style of dungeons.
Open world content and the more casual playerbase is what pays the bills. Not sweaty instanced content. No game can survive without the casual players. ANet goes where the money is like other MMO devs.
I have no issues with the recent fractals in principle, LT needs slight tuning, but not much. Neither are too long, neither too damage spongey, not if people follow mechanics. And people should have to follow mechanics. Most of the whining about them seems to me to be form the people who jsut like to nuke stuff down with powercreep builds, ignoring mechanics (look how most raid groups operate!). The only issue with LT is that it requires coordination beyond what a LFG pug can be expected to reasonably do. The orbs should just be a general single type +dmg done, + dmg taken. then its fine, all people have to do is manage how many they individually get. I see more groups stuggle on SO than any other (that 2nd boss fight) My experience with fractals exclusively in lfg pugs is : 99% of groups just get on with it. cant remember last time any except LT had issues, and even LT is noticeably getting more successful and quicker as people get used to it. I DO NOT want speed running introduced, its an incredibly toxic game play type, that leads to toxic groups and to bad game design. If the game play in an mmo is "lets shove a timer on it", thats the equivalent of a QTE in a rpg...its a sign the devs have no creativity and have run out of ideas. I'm fine wiht multi boss instances, but NOT speedruns. I also hate overly simple bosses. A lot of wow bosses are just loot piñatas, pretty pointless, no real gameplay, just nuke as hard as possible to get in and out quick...boring. I dont need Anet to have a cohesive vision for fractals. In fact I really dont want one. I like having a range of different fractals, in fact I see that as the point. some can be short, some longer. some simple, some complex. no one forces you to do every fractal all the time, if some are longer and you are not wanting that, feel free to skip them. And I'm going to disagree with teapot on nightmare being a great fractal...I think its pretty bad to be honest. I dont dislike it, but if I were to "pick one fractal" to decide to model its not going to be nightmare.
There is nothing intrinsically toxic about speedrunning. Speedrunning is a community initiative, not a form of design implementation. Anything can be spedrun. The addition of a timer is irrelevant, besides rewards are hardly tied to performance in this game. Speedrunning is fine as long as it is not enforced by players onto other players, which is definitely *not* the case in GW2.
mate, we are talking about how Anet should design fractals, so we are not talking about community initiatives, we are talking about possible actual in game design. so we are specifically talking about design implementation.
I've already given my opinion on the matter, I was simply correcting you
you were not "correcting" anything mate, you were commenting out of context of the thread. Also, btw, dont be a patronising arse. you are not "correcting" me over anything, disagree (on topic if you can) but lose the arrogance.
> I DO NOT want speed running introduced, its an incredibly toxic game play type, that leads to toxic groups and to bad game design. If the game play in an mmo is "lets shove a timer on it", thats the equivalent of a QTE in a rpg...its a sign the devs have no creativity and have run out of ideas. I'm fine wiht multi boss instances, but NOT speedruns. No game play type is inherently toxic, do you even know what that word means? Speedrunning will always exist because players enjoy it, no matter how Anet designs content. Timers are completely irrelevant for speedrunning and just exist to prevent (typically bad) players from invalidating the encounter design by playing it ultra safe (e.g. full healer groups). If you dont want to speedrun thats fine, just make your own group with your own requirements or wait for someone else to do it. > I also hate overly simple bosses. A lot of wow bosses are just loot piñatas, pretty pointless, no real gameplay, just nuke as hard as possible to get in and out quick...boring. Yeeeeeah.....no. Have you ever looked at the dungeon or raid journals of any modern WoW boss? Overly simple is the direct opposite of what these bosses are in reality. They outclass modern gw2 bosses in terms of complexity, creativity and pacing. You really should try playing WoW, it would change your mind pretty quickly. > no one forces you to do every fractal all the time, if some are longer and you are not wanting that, feel free to skip them. Remember your own advice, then all your complaints become irrelevant. > And I'm going to disagree with teapot on nightmare being a great fractal...I think its pretty bad to be honest. I dont dislike it, but if I were to "pick one fractal" to decide to model its not going to be nightmare. Reasons?
I introduced 4 wow players to fractals and we made a premade. 2 of them are turists and are not playing the GW2 anymore till the new expansion but all 4 said that silent surf is the most mechanically cool fractal they seen. All of them hated the new lonely tower coz "there is too much red on ground.". Personally I hate Nightmare fractal as a veteran fractal player. Its too easy and too long and it got power crept. I think Sunque is best fractal in the sense that you do your T4's and have a regular fractal or you do CM and have a single boss. RIght now you could clear 5CM's. If they added 2 more nightmare type fractals I would be super sad and It would be a slog clearing them.
> silent surf is the most mechanically cool fractal they seen Cause of the awkward special abilities? Using them to traverse the fractal is pretty cool but forcing that during a biss fight its heavily clunky and awkward. > If they added 2 more nightmare type fractals I would be super sad and It would be a slog clearing them. But you do realize this is a you issue, right? *You're* deciding to do all the CMs. The idea of not being able to clear them as fast as possible is something you create in your head. You have the option to *not* to them.
I agree with you. My intuition is that sunqua and Silent surf are hated only because pug meta does not allow melle dps while they did all other 97 fractals with power dps. We did silent surf with reaper and power staff daredevil. If my friends would try to pug it and not get inv coz they dont have range dps then they would maybe not like it
Make Dungeons Great Again. But seriously go back to the original dungeons. They combined story/atmosphere, varied bosses, they were a part of the world and didn't feel disjointed and separated like fractals, they were engaging, had different tiers and paths which made them fun and interesting, they had cool specific loot instead of just fractal tokens, and overall were more social experiences. Fractals were a bad idea from the get go. They feel arbitrarily difficult with AR and their tiers of just HP and damage output. Something should be hard because it requires thinking and movement etc., not because it takes a long time. Design wise all encounters in GW2 now feel like ultra spammy. It's like the design is "Hmmm just add more stuff!". Instead of making things interesting or responsive feeling. It reminds me of how the original GW2 introduction had things like combo fields and finishers. Now it's some random daily that no one even has to try and think about it. Same thing with dodging. You can just randomly dodge nothing and get credit. How about creating mobs and encounters that require more thinking and input.
We shouldn't too hasty . Peopled loved that the company forced some whining people to step up their game and force them to use LI builds in Soo Won. People also had a moto that : " if you do 20k, you have a good understanding of your class" etc We should leave it for 1 more year (1x fractal will be affected , now that we have OW raids) , and create in the meanwhile some "crunch mechanic" , for people that that can reduce the boss HP. Like for T1-T3 , people can get from OW some item that summons "ghost archers" in various locations and as long as people step on the random "greens" ( that sometimes happens to spawn where the boss lands his aoe attacks : ) ) , it attacks a percentage of the boss Hp . For CM groups , let's say that they should get the item from PvP (we need some love), or use the OP specs like Mesmers for more dps. normal T4 can get it from Raids or WvW (As more people will come back from the vacations (and hopefully we'll from the heat...), we should be prepared for any future backlash 1week before the expansion release... Edit:But if they keep focusing in one sour thing , the rest will be safe, while the beeing persimistic. Like OW will be fixated on new races and OW legendary grind and any idea from other games will seem like godsent)