Fractals: Decent dungeon design

xpiher · November 2012

I must say that I really do enjoy the fractals design. The boss fights so far have all had a unique mechanic (2 have been range spank but still had a diffent mechanic). However, they haven't been very hard (granted I've only done 5 out of possible 89). I hope the Agony system isn't just a crappy "you take constant damage" mechanic though (haven't triggered it yet). And the drops are decent.

So far, I'm on level 3 and each chest has only dropped 5 fractals. The grind, in terms of sheer tokens, to get ascended pieces is really really steep so far. However, it feels less like a grind because its not the same dungeon every time you go in. But, if you dont like dungeon crawling, which is what this system boils down to, then you won't like it period and it will be a worse grind for you. After about 2hrs I've made just over a gold and replaced some gear.

I also still dislike the power creep, but I need to see the different stats attached to the ascended upgrades to know for sure if it really is more powerful than exotics.

Thupli · November 2012

How's that uninstall going for ya?

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5407719#5407719

xpiher · November 2012

Originally posted by Thupli
How's that uninstall going for ya?

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5407719#5407719

Oh I still plan on quitting if it proves to be as bad as it appeared. But I wanted to try out the dungeon to see if it was done well.

TheIronLegion · November 2012

Singing a different tune today, are we?

Either you rather enjoy making threads, or you just love to hear yourself talk.

Serelisk · November 2012

For the brief time I spent in there, I got to complete 3 of the dungeons and I actually enjoyed doign so. lol

This is the right direction in terms of boss design. There's a lot of movement required and in the right places, observing the environment more than just "red circles" and great use of spell effects and general scenery. I thought the jellyfish fight could've been better, but before that, I was an effing dolphin! That was FUN!

None of these things exclude certain professions or inherent encourage elitism and were really enjoyable. All the extra stuff is still on "we'll see" but I'm agreeing with the OP a lot here. If there's a good part of this update, it's that those dungeons are very enjoyable the first times through.

FlawSGI · November 2012

Originally posted by TheIronLegion
Singing a different tune today, are we?

Either you rather enjoy making threads, or you just love to hear yourself talk.

For someone who had their underoos in such a bunch over the game, I noticed that he sure seems to be pretty active on the GW2 sections lately. Some people will never be satisfied. /shrug

As to the new dungeon, I can't say yet since I haven't ran it yet. near 400 hours in and I dont have an 80 yet, just a couple over 70. Guess the game caters to my playstyle . I was looking for some good reading on the new stuff though. Was a little surprised that the topic was approached by someone that uninstalled and has been vocally bashing. Glad to hear you enjoyed it OP and anxiousely await your flip flop in a day or so.

xpiher · November 2012

Originally posted by FlawSGI
Originally posted by TheIronLegion
Singing a different tune today, are we?

Either you rather enjoy making threads, or you just love to hear yourself talk.

For someone who had their underoos in such a bunch over the game, I noticed that he sure seems to be pretty active on the GW2 sections lately. Some people will never be satisfied. /shrug

As to the new dungeon, I can't say yet since I haven't ran it yet. near 400 hours in and I dont have an 80 yet, just a couple over 70. Guess the game caters to my playstyle . I was looking for some good reading on the new stuff though. Was a little surprised that the topic was approached by someone that uninstalled and has been vocally bashing. Glad to hear you enjoyed it OP and anxiousely await your flip flop in a day or so.

I haven't flip flopped. I wanted to try the new dungeon out since I liked how it sounded. It doesn't mean I like anything else that goes along with it. The fact that it'll take more than 60hrs to get 1 piece of ascended gear is a little rediculas IMO. And, not all the Ascended upgrades recipies have been found yet so we dont' know how much better they may actually be. I started to change my tune yesterday after I did the math on exotic sigil stacking. Its possible that certain sigil combination will be better, stat wise, than ascended armor unless the ascended armor also has HIGHER ARMOR Rating, which it probably will. However, I also said they are doing treadmill the right way (its still a treadmill) because they are releasing 2-3 pieces every 3-6 months instead of whole sets. Thats the way foward. I'd rather have character progression without gear grind treadmills though, espeically in game were you can play more than one build (it just adds to the grind).

Back on topic. After I posted the OP I did another complete run. Some of these dungones are just going to be insanely hard to do with pugs. Apparently the official forum is already asking for a nerf to the swamp one. The swamp one requires you to run 3 items from one area to another in a given amount of time. Since its a time limit, you have to retun all three of them at the same time. On top of this, a tree will fall blocking a stright path to your turn in point (and sometime trap you). Uncorrdinated pugs will have a hell of a time doing it, I had a hard time doing it my first run.

Another dungone, the Dredge one, requires you to pull an ice mob under nearth molten buckets of lava and dumb it on him in order to damage him. But, if you don't keep leading him around, from bucket to bucket, he'll sit and fully heal. It was easy to figure out what to do, but because of the process it takes a REALLY LONG time. It was easy, just long. Hopefully there aren't too many like this.

I'll also agree with one of the other posters in this thread. This is how bosses should be done. Nifty little mini-puzzles. Hopefully, they get more complicated. The only thing I'm disappointed by FOTM is that, if your entire party dies, you don't fail the dungeon. With removal of waypoints I was hoping it would mean that you could actually fail the dungeon. Sadly, it just means you can fully wipe and can death zerg any of the content.

Edit: I'm also wary of LFG Ascended tier 3 only groups poping up. The loot does seem to get better and better with each itteration. I went from getting nothing but blues, to getting nothing but greens, to gettin a mixture of blues and yellows and 1 exotic. I'm only level 3 fractal. But, since the tokens don't scale with diffculty, it doesn't gate content currently (assuming Ascended upgrades won't be required to start future content), just rewards in the current.

Size-Twelve · November 2012

I'm not a dungeon guy, with most of my playtime devoted to WvW, but I had a blast.

Challenging, but not impossible, and I could see where we could have done better. Really creative design. I just hope this new dynamic satiates the power users, and the hard core raider types aren't clamoring for more content within the month.

xpiher · November 2012

Originally posted by Size-Twelve
I'm not a dungeon guy, with most of my playtime devoted to WvW, but I had a blast.

Challenging, but not impossible, and I could see where we could have done better. Really creative design. I just hope this new dynamic satiates the power users, and the hard core raider types aren't clamoring for more content within the month.

Simply due how the mechanics work on some of these dungeons, it will take at least 60hrs to get 1 ring component to make the ascended ring. I doubt even the hard core will get all 3 in the first month.

TheIronLegion · November 2012

I seriously doubt anyone will get legendary gear in the first month...*watches a guy run by in full legendaries*...oh. Guess I was wrong.

It won't take all that long mate. if youre complaining about 60 hours then I don't think MMO's are your thing. There are other MMO's out there that demand far more than 60 hours.

DanitaKusor · November 2012

I got to complete 4 of the fractals today and they were a lot of fun with some neat tricks to keep you enterained while working them out. The only problem I had was people dropping part way through were difficult to replace (Storm in Brisbane lost us a couple of teammates when their power went out).

The four I did were,

The swamp one. Very tricky to work out how to get all the wisps back at once. Eventually we got it with the help from my mesmer portal and lots of practice. The boss at the end was easy enough after that.

The underwater one. We died once in the dark water part but worked it out after that. A pretty easy dungeon in the end although we were hampered by not having level 80 underwater weapons so the final fight took a bit longer that it could have. Interestingly I think everyone in the group got a level 80 rare underwater weapon from the chest at the end.

The Ascalon one. This was actually the toughest one because we died a bit at the start due to the oil and at the end when we rushed the centre near the statue and got overwhelmed.

The giant statue one. We didn't complete this one because we lost two teammates at the top of the statue. It was an interesting mechanic with the hammer and the seals. The other enemies were pretty weak but enough of them to keep things interesting. I'd like to see what happens at the end of this one.

Maephisto · November 2012

the wise man changes his mind.

the fool never does.

xpiher · November 2012

Originally posted by TheIronLegion I seriously doubt anyone will get legendary gear in the first month...*watches a guy run by in full legendaries*...oh. Guess I was wrong. It won't take all that long mate. if youre complaining about 60 hours then I don't think MMO's are your thing. There are other MMO's out there that demand far more than 60 hours.

I typically don't like themepark games because of the gear treadmill games like DAoC, SB, DFO, EvE (with a better combat system) are more my thing.

But that's not the point. To just get enough tokens to buy the RING componet appears to take at least 60hrs, and that's if you get lucky with being given bonus tokens. Then you need to get the other components to make the ring, and then the components to get useful Ascended upgrades. Its going to take awhile to get 3 pieces. People will have it in the first month. I just hope ANET doesn't add the next couple of pieces for at least 4 months.

MurlockDance · November 2012

The idea of Ascended gear sucks. Why couldn't they have released this content without the need to have special stuff? It forces you to play the game a certain way if you want to see this content. What is so wrong about releasing content like this that does not require people to have to spend time getting special items? They could have kept the dungeons challenging through puzzles that require coordinated groups to solve without forcing what is in my opinion an out-dated game mechanic on everyone. So in that sense, they could be the best designed dungeons in the entire MMO industry, but their overall design to work with specific gear is highly flawed in my opinion.

Really, what makes this any different from endgame WoW with a gearscore? Sure, there might not be any ingame mechanism to bar a player from going into the dungeons, but I doubt highly that other players will group up with someone who is not geared properly for this.

I guess I am just a bitter vet who was hoping for a game that did not have this sort of design philosophy in it, and I believed the promises of ANet since they pretty much kept this out of GW1. I am very disappointed.

I am quite surprised that the OP cried about this quite vocally but is quite happily running the dungeons. I think this is pretty hypocritical. In my case, I will be watching what ANet does, because between the addition of a gear treadmill that I think does not belong in GW2, I am upset that they are changing classes so much. It is the dreaded spectre of what they did in GW1 and one of the reasons why I stopped playing that game.

MosesZD · November 2012

Originally posted by xpiher
Originally posted by Thupli
How's that uninstall going for ya?

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5407719#5407719

Oh I still plan on quitting if it proves to be as bad as it appeared. But I wanted to try out the dungeon to see if it was done well.

lol. So much for the thread...

blooddrawing · November 2012

Who's done the Dredge fractal?

Impossible eh?

This link shows you every Fractal: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists

Zeus.CM · November 2012

Fractals dungeons restored my faith in Arenanet making dungeons. I am pleased.

TwoThreeFour · November 2012

Originally posted by Zeus.CM
Fractals dungeons restored my faith in Arenanet making dungeons. I am pleased.

I told you so, Arenanet knows what they are doing . Enjoy .

xpiher · November 2012

Originally posted by blooddrawing
Who's done the Dredge fractal?

Impossible eh?

This link shows you every Fractal: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists

Compleled the drege fractal without dying. It was easy.

@ MurlockDance

The only reason I did the dungon is to find out if it was well designed, to see how much grind it would take to get the items, and to hopefully see what kind of stats ascended upgrades would add. It is possible, but very slim mind you, that a full set of sigil buffed gear may be better for a character stat wise than a full set of ascended. I also wanted to see how quickly Agony kicked in. I made it to fractal level 3, thats 9-12 mini dungeon, agony hasn't kicked in yet. I want to trigger it to see if its a stupid constant damage debuff or something that actually takes thought. Like I said in the first reply to this thread, I still plan on quitting if it proves to be as bad as I initally though; however, I think ANET has done a good job with the dungeon. I also think, as I stated yesterday in a post that wsa quickly locked, that ANET did treadmill correctly if they plan on releasing 2 pieces every 3-4 months. This makes it a very slow treadmill, which makes it less grindy and less "keeping up with the Jones's"

Djildjamesh · November 2012

Originally posted by blooddrawing
Who's done the Dredge fractal?

Impossible eh?

This link shows you every Fractal: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists

isn't that the one with the oil ? I know i did it last night, was good fun.

Completed 3 round of 3 bosses (so 45 of those fractal thingy's). I must say i think it's an amazing dungeon!

By the end of level 3 we got allot of rare's and im curious to see when the excotics start dropping

Zeus.CM · November 2012

Originally posted by DMKano
Originally posted by Zeus.CM
Fractals dungeons restored my faith in Arenanet making dungeons. I am pleased.

Umm to have ones faith restored it implies that one would have lost faith previously - did this ever happen?

Actually at some point yes. I don't like other dungeons, really. I farm them for gold and gear but they are not as interesting as this one.

Gaia_Hunter · November 2012

Originally posted by cybertrucker
LOL at OP who has continuously bashed the game this last week and practicallly attacked people who have said good stuff about the game.

No, the OP didn't like the fact Anet decided to had a gear tier (against Anet own previous design filosophy) that replaced exotics as the max stats gear.

In fact, most people defending Aned decision didn't say "it was a great move, I have been wishing for this" but instead they tried to say the impact of the items would be minimal, or it would only be this time, or that it didn't constitute a complete departure from their previous design choice but only an adjustment, or that ascended would only impact the dungeon, or that is only rings and back slots, or (wrongly say) that Legendaries already have higher stats than exotics.

Curiously, the majority of people saying adding gear tiers for progression is a good are detractors from the game, that of course still won't like the game for a or b or tat, even if before hey bashed the game for lack of progression.

Blogs also mirror that - some like the game not caring about the design filosophies Anet have been implementing since Guild Wars 1, so they don't really care if the filosophy changes or not; some like the game and also like the original filosophy, so their response vary from "wait and see", "mildly concerned", "very concerned", raging; people that hate the game, especially disliking the manifesto where Anet identified several things as wrong and outdated, so they are gloating about Anet adding a gear treadmil and of course they hope GW2 can't sustain this rate of releasing content and also desire GW2 to crash and burn to prove P2P is necessary for a quality successful product.

People that enjoy games and hope they succeed don't have to agree with all the decisions Anet takes and showing that disagreement, especially if in a well structured manner, isn't bashing.

xpiher · November 2012

Originally posted by Zeus.CM
Originally posted by DMKano
Originally posted by Zeus.CM
Fractals dungeons restored my faith in Arenanet making dungeons. I am pleased.

Umm to have ones faith restored it implies that one would have lost faith previously - did this ever happen?

Actually at some point yes. I don't like other dungeons, really. I farm them for gold and gear but they are not as interesting as this one.

I agree. The previous dungeons really left a lot to be desired.

Torgrim · November 2012

Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter
Originally posted by cybertrucker
LOL at OP who has continuously bashed the game this last week and practicallly attacked people who have said good stuff about the game.

No, the OP didn't like the fact Anet decided to had a gear tier (against Anet own previous design filosophy) that replaced exotics as the max stats gear.

In fact, most people defending Aned decision didn't say "it was a great move, I have been wishing for this" but instead they tried to say the impact of the items would be minimal, or it would only be this time, or that it didn't constitute a complete departure from their previous design choice but only an adjustment, or that ascended would only impact the dungeon, or that is only rings and back slots, or (wrongly say) that Legendaries already have higher stats than exotics.

Curiously, the majority of people saying adding gear tiers for progression is a good are detractors from the game, that of course still won't like the game for a or b or tat, even if before hey bashed the game for lack of progression.

Blogs also mirror that - some like the game not caring about the design filosophies Anet have been implementing since Guild Wars 1, so they don't really care if the filosophy changes or not; some like the game and also like the original filosophy, so their response vary from "wait and see", "mildly concerned", "very concerned", raging; people that hate the game, especially disliking the manifesto where Anet identified several things as wrong and outdated, so they are gloating about Anet adding a gear treadmil and of course they hope GW2 can't sustain this rate of releasing content and also desire GW2 to crash and burn to prove P2P is necessary for a quality successful product.

People that enjoy games and hope they succeed don't have to agree with all the decisions Anet takes and showing that disagreement, especially if in a well structured manner, isn't bashing.

It's easy to get exotics but a pain in the ass to grind for legendary which turned a lot of people off so Anet put in something in the between which I think was a smart move.

I don't see anything wrong with that.

austriacus · November 2012

Originally posted by Djildjamesh
Originally posted by blooddrawing
Who's done the Dredge fractal?

Impossible eh?

This link shows you every Fractal: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists

isn't that the one with the oil ? I know i did it last night, was good fun.

Completed 3 round of 3 bosses (so 45 of those fractal thingy's). I must say i think it's an amazing dungeon!

By the end of level 3 we got allot of rare's and im curious to see when the excotics start dropping

Actually a friend got exotics at fractal level 1, pretty cool actually.

Airwren · November 2012

Originally posted by austriacus
Originally posted by Djildjamesh
Originally posted by blooddrawing
Who's done the Dredge fractal?

Impossible eh?

This link shows you every Fractal: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists

isn't that the one with the oil ? I know i did it last night, was good fun.

Completed 3 round of 3 bosses (so 45 of those fractal thingy's). I must say i think it's an amazing dungeon!

By the end of level 3 we got allot of rare's and im curious to see when the excotics start dropping

Actually a friend got exotics at fractal level 1, pretty cool actually.

I got an exotic cloth leg piece in a lvl 1. Too bad it was account bound and uses the same skins from the karma gear in Orr. =( Ah well, here's hoping for a few ectos from the trash.

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Fractals: Decent dungeon design

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Fractals: Decent dungeon design

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