Fractals

[Karnasis.6892]

So I understand that fractals need updates, I get it, but can we stop making every game mode a raid now? The living world season 3 and 4 started going down this rabbit hole, and shattered observatory feeld like a 5 man raid, and now the revamped mai trin (which was hardish before unless you had a decent group) feels like "Dodging: The Game".... I get challenge is a thing, but if I wanted raids, I would run raids....

[MoarChaos.8320]

They stated the plans for fractals was to prepare people for raids. Easy content is the killer of games as hard content becomes easy over time as players learn every nuance and every strategy. Fractals are great and they should go crazy and add a ton more.

[Karnasis.6892]

Except I run fractals because I DON'T want to run raids, I tried, found they weren't for me, and moved on to content I liked.... but like I said, they turned it into "Dodging: The Game" because there is like 2 safe spots to stand, and god forbid you miss one.

[Veprovina.4876]

I haven't tried the new one or the revamped ones yet. Are they really that hard? Or are you just not yet used to it?

I mean Mai Trin was hard because no one knew you had to lure her to the lightning AOE to get rid of her shield, somehow every group i'm in can't get it right. What's different now?

 

Besides that, i like Shattered observatory, the fights there are fun. Don't know what's extremely different about Shattered observatory vs normal fractals except that the bosses just stand there, but yeah, you get visual cues and you dodge. Then you do a thing to CC the boss and progress the fight. I never raided so can someone explain how this is raiding?

[Karnasis.6892]

Mai Trin has mainly the same mechanics, except now there is random cannons all the time, in addition to adds in all post cannon phases. Fixation, and two different bomb icons are nice, and frankly really all the fractal needed.

[Karnasis.6892]

> @Veprovina.4876 said:

> Besides that, i like Shattered observatory, the fights there are fun. Don't know what's extremely different about Shattered observatory vs normal fractals except that the bosses just stand there, but yeah, you get visual cues and you dodge. Then you do a thing to CC the boss and progress the fight. I never raided so can someone explain how this is raiding?

 

Fractals are supposed to be shorter content (and shattered is not short if your in a pug group), and they shouldn't have 100 aoes you HAVE to avoid while juggling 4 things at once, on top of the boss doing damage. Give a few mechanics, but don't make it AoE spam. That's where I could see putting challenge motes.

 

[Veprovina.4876]

> @Karnasis.6892 said:

> Mai Trin has mainly the same mechanics, except now there is random cannons all the time, in addition to adds in all post cannon phases. Fixation, and two different bomb icons are nice, and frankly really all the fractal needed.

 

I honestly hate that fractal because you can't do it with PUG's mostly, but i'm gonna have to try it again just to see what's different. I think it's actually daily now, maybe i'll do it today.

[Karnasis.6892]

> @Veprovina.4876 said:

> > @Karnasis.6892 said:

> > Mai Trin has mainly the same mechanics, except now there is random cannons all the time, in addition to adds in all post cannon phases. Fixation, and two different bomb icons are nice, and frankly really all the fractal needed.

>

> I honestly hate that fractal because you can't do it with PUG's mostly, but i'm gonna have to try it again just to see what's different. I think it's actually daily now, maybe i'll do it today.

 

I tried with my wife and I, we used to love Mai Trin becuase it had clear definitions of what to do, and now it's just a mess because you have the cannons going off while your trying to lure Mai Trin around.... oh yeah btw Mai Trin doesn't just stack bleed anymore, it's also Confusion and Torment and I think I saw poison. And the Cannons drop your hp by like 10k if you get hit by one.

[Cyninja.2954]

Fractals were never ment as "go in, grab loot with possibly ascended drops" with 0 challenge.

 

Initially fractals were ment to ramp up in difficulty with the top end being a real challenge.

 

This was mostly the case after release when agony resistance was not available to reduce agony damage to 1% and all boss attacks that did agony damage had to be dodged.

 

In the meantime fractal T4 turned so easy that people have ascended gear coming out their ears. There is nothing wrong in making T4 challenging, if you can't pack it drop down to T3.

[MoarChaos.8320]

I don't take any damage from Mai Trin. Her only attack that does massive damage looks like she's swishing her sword in the air. I call it the swishy swish. It's the attack that gives the massive conditions. Avoid that and there's nothing to worry about. So to me it just sounds like you're hungry op, and you desire a spoon.

 

There's tiers to fractals so there's no problem.

[Karnasis.6892]

Except that I've been able to run almost any (shattered observatory, it's just long and too raidy to me) t4 fractal with really no issues, but I'm not interested in this new direction for fractals. And good luck "avoiding the swishy attack" when you are trying to get her into the aoe becuase you need to stay reasonably close to Mai trin. It's great that you had no issues with the fractal, but honestly I preferred it the old way.

 

I also don't care about the ascended drops, their nice, but by the time you are running t4's you have at least 1 set if not many sets of ascended armor. That's not the argument to reduce challenge in my eyes. I just don't want to feel like I am going into a raid (when I am not) because a.net foolishly and intentionally decided to add raids in for a low percentage of the population, so they needed something to bridge the gap to bring in a few more people who want to run the content.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @Karnasis.6892 said:

> > @Veprovina.4876 said:

> > > @Karnasis.6892 said:

> > > Mai Trin has mainly the same mechanics, except now there is random cannons all the time, in addition to adds in all post cannon phases. Fixation, and two different bomb icons are nice, and frankly really all the fractal needed.

> >

> > I honestly hate that fractal because you can't do it with PUG's mostly, but i'm gonna have to try it again just to see what's different. I think it's actually daily now, maybe i'll do it today.

>

> I tried with my wife and I, we used to love Mai Trin becuase it had clear definitions of what to do, and now it's just a mess because you have the cannons going off while your trying to lure Mai Trin around.... oh yeah btw Mai Trin doesn't just stack bleed anymore, it's also Confusion and Torment and I think I saw poison. And the Cannons drop your hp by like 10k if you get hit by one.

 

Wow that's kinda messed up. I don't think mai trin needed to be any tougher honestly. Most pugs can't do her. I'll see for myself when i do her later.> @Cyninja.2954 said:

> Fractals were never ment as "go in, grab loot with possibly ascended drops" with 0 challenge.

>

> Initially fractals were ment to ramp up in difficulty with the top end being a real challenge.

>

> This was mostly the case after release when agony resistance was not available to reduce agony damage to 1% and all boss attacks that did agony damage had to be dodged.

>

> In the meantime fractal T4 turned so easy that people have ascended gear coming out their ears. There is nothing wrong in making T4 challenging, if you can't pack it drop down to T3.

 

I don't think OP complained about the challange as much as fractals becoming mini raids. Most people that run fractals avoid raids, and really, raids are such a huge content development for like, 5% of the playerbase or something (yes i pulled the statistic out of my ass, but the playerbase who actually play raids are low, that's the point).

 

I mean, way more people play WvW, me included and anet doesn't really do much there. It's like an unwanted stepchild or something lol. I'm not going to complain about WvW now though cause they did improve fractals, the things you can buy with relics, new fractal and new LW, keychain.

 

Anyway... Since i never tried raids... What's exactly "raid like" in fractals? Shattered observatory is a mini raid or something? Cause that fractals is fun for me, along with nightmare, one of my favourites. What's so "raid like" about those? Cause i hear those are mini raids or something all the time, and all i'm seeing in those fractals is giant telegraphed attacks broken up by a "do the thing to continue the fight" mechanics. If that's a raid, i'm not exactly understanding the elitism surrounding raiding either? What's so hard about that? You avoid the big AOE circle, that's pretty much it, the bosses don't even move. Is that raiding?

[Karnasis.6892]

So I do admit I have limited raid experience, but raids have a plethora of mechanics in each encounter. Vale Guardian for example, the first raid boss, the first boss anyone got to go after has on it's own has 5 phases. Of those 5 phases you have 3 that have the same mechanic. You need 4 people to run to green circles to avoid a huge aoe blast, you need to watch for blue circles that teleport you away, and you have to watch for red orbs that float and move and deal damage to anyone within range.

 

On top of that, in Phase 3 and 5 you need to move the VG around while those other mechanics are in play because the floor also becomes "lava" (if you stand on a section that's "lava" it deals massive damage to you). In Phase 2 and 4 you have the VG split into red/green/and blue guardians that you have to split up to kill. Also, you have 10 minutes to kill him, because enrage timers.

 

The reason fractals are referred to "mini raids" is because they are slowly injecting fractals with multiple mechanics. Chaos started the trend with the final boss, where you have to watch for the occasional weapon test, a "floor is lava" mechanic that is also needed to lower the shield, on top of which has occasional adds, and a big aoe attack that can either be cc'd or avoided, IN ADDITION TO the mistlock instabilities. Is it impossible... no, but if you have a bad pug group it goes from okayish fractal to absolute awful. Nightmare and Shattered Observatory follow this same trend (with the latter being the best example for fractals being a mini raid). I understand challenging content, but they have challenge motes for that.

 

Also I just completed the new Mai Trin, I'm still not fond of it, but there are good and bad points to the changes....

[Linken.6345]

No its still horric shoting you with his gun the first 75% guys.

You get a red marker over 1 of the peoples head when he is going to shoot the blast shoot so you can move away from group.

And another marker above the head of the when he is about to shoot the lightning one.

Then there is another marker when mai trin is about to teleport on the furthest away player so they know to move into lightning field.

 

The cannon phase got tripple size aoe circles but way less of them and you now have to fight adds and beat down horric to get mai trin to get back down to floor.

 

The last 25% the cannons keep shooting and you have to fight adds and mai trin as normal.

 

Edit

Oh yea you sometimes have the purple star over head showing you mai trin is focusing on you aswell.

[zealex.9410]

> @Karnasis.6892 said:

> So I understand that fractals need updates, I get it, but can we stop making every game mode a raid now? The living world season 3 and 4 started going down this rabbit hole, and shattered observatory feeld like a 5 man raid, and now the revamped mai trin (which was hardish before unless you had a decent group) feels like "Dodging: The Game".... I get challenge is a thing, but if I wanted raids, I would run raids....

 

The updeate to mai trin wasnt suppose to make her easier it ws suppose to keep w/e challenge but change it from clunky ai/ mechanics, to something tyou can out play with skillful play.

[zealex.9410]

> @Karnasis.6892 said:

> > @Veprovina.4876 said:

> > Besides that, i like Shattered observatory, the fights there are fun. Don't know what's extremely different about Shattered observatory vs normal fractals except that the bosses just stand there, but yeah, you get visual cues and you dodge. Then you do a thing to CC the boss and progress the fight. I never raided so can someone explain how this is raiding?

>

> Fractals are supposed to be shorter content (and shattered is not short if your in a pug group), and they shouldn't have 100 aoes you HAVE to avoid while juggling 4 things at once, on top of the boss doing damage. Give a few mechanics, but don't make it AoE spam. That's where I could see putting challenge motes.

>

 

And they are short content.You can complete a fractal in under 10 mins usually including 100cm which you can pug and clear in those times.

[Demented Yak.6105]

I think Mai Trin's easier now. It is a bit of a mess but it's nothing you can't just facetank in berserker gear.

 

As for the rest of your post, I agree.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @Linken.6345 said:

> No its still horric shoting you with his gun the first 75% guys.

> You get a red marker over 1 of the peoples head when he is going to shoot the blast shoot so you can move away from group.

> And another marker above the head of the when he is about to shoot the lightning one.

> Then there is another marker when mai trin is about to teleport on the furthest away player so they know to move into lightning field.

>

> The cannon phase got tripple size aoe circles but way less of them and you now have to fight adds and beat down horric to get mai trin to get back down to floor.

>

> The last 25% the cannons keep shooting and you have to fight adds and mai trin as normal.

>

> Edit

> Oh yea you sometimes have the purple star over head showing you mai trin is focusing on you aswell.

 

Well if they implemented tells then Mai Trin should be pug-able now, at least you know when the lightning aoe will hit, and who she's targeting.

I'm going by what you wrote here, still haven't done fractals, having fun in WvW now. :relaxed:

[Rennie.6750]

> @Veprovina.4876 said:

> Anyway... Since i never tried raids... What's exactly "raid like" in fractals? Shattered observatory is a mini raid or something? Cause that fractals is fun for me, along with nightmare, one of my favourites. What's so "raid like" about those? Cause i hear those are mini raids or something all the time, and all i'm seeing in those fractals is giant telegraphed attacks broken up by a "do the thing to continue the fight" mechanics. If that's a raid, i'm not exactly understanding the elitism surrounding raiding either? What's so hard about that? You avoid the big AOE circle, that's pretty much it, the bosses don't even move. Is that raiding?

 

If this is an honest question and not an attempt to troll I'll try to give an honest answer.

 

It boils down to two simple things: first the number of gameplay elements requiring you to take specific actions in order to succeed. It can be picking up an item on the ground and do something with it, not stepping in an AoE, noticing a boss telegraphed attack, going somewhere... Really, a lot of things. Then, pacing, ie how fast you're told to do the required actions to succeed and how many there are per minute.

 

Usually, "dungeon" content has slower pacing and less mechanics, and put more emphasis on letting you use your knowledge on game mechanics (like do x to counter y). Dungeon content is also more of a marathon while raids are designed to be some sort of progression thing. Dungeons are also supposed to be more mainstream content with a lower barrier of entry.

 

Let's take two examples from GW2. I'll try to pick something really average to illustrate the difference and remain relatively intellectually honest, so let's compare Thaumanova's boss fight with Arkk from shattered.

 

**Thaumanova:**

 

4 mechanics. One is a laser beam targetting the player who was the furthest away to the boss, dealing moderate damage. This mechanics triggeres a second mechanics that is falling platforms. When you have the laser and walk over a tile, it will shine for ~7-8s and then be destroyed. The destroyed tiles reappear after maybe 30s. There is another mechanic: the bomb. A player will be targeted by a large aoe and blow up an important number of tiles when you bring the aoe on top of them. The trick is not to destroy too many and run around like a mad man to preserve some room for your team to move around. Finally, the boss has a small cone attack with flying sparks.

 

Pacing: You have plenty of time to move from a collapsing tile. You can sit there for several seconds, you'll be fine. And while one player can be targeted with multiple mechanics at once, there will always be 2 players mostly left alone to dps the boss. The sparks from the cone travel slowly. When you see them on the edge of your screen you have maybe 1.5-2s to react. If you don't dodge that well you get some extra conditions. It hurts but you'll live. Overall the core is falling tiles, which means that the expected pacing revolves around these 7-8s.

 

**Arkk:** the raid boss

 

9 mechanics + 2 mini bosses. The first mechanic is the eye. Look away or get the fear condition. You have a 2-3s notice. Then you have laser beams and they instantly one shot you. 1-2s notice. Then you have the red small soccer balls. One shot hits for most characters. When they disappear, you have to dodge about a second after or you're probably dead. You also have a bomb dealing massive damage. Around 4s notice. You also have a CC phase on the boss and a few seconds to do it, or you take massive damage, but this time it won't kill your team. You also have 3 or more different aoes. All of them fall into the mechanics definition as you have to perform specific movement patterns not to be killed in one hit. I honestly don't remember how many there are, but let's assume 3. You also have falling tiles on a 4-5s notice. about half of the platform is removed. I'm probably forgetting something because honestly there's a lot and i'm not good at making lists.

 

The mini bosses all have 2-3 mechanics with a very short notice. Lots of deadly aoes and nothing above 1s to deal with it. Often less.

 

Pacing: Notice how low your reaction time has to be. Not only you get a short notice but when you do, you have to execute specific actions at a very specific moment, and it's not "when you want" for half of these mechanics, otherwise, it's a death or even a wipe. Dodge too soon and you're out. Dodge too late, and you're out too. Then most of these mechanics are not tied to one mechanics like in Thaumanova but they all interact with one another, and the difficulty is multiplicative. Imagine getting feared with a bomb on you and getting outside of the safe area, or feared when platforms are removed. Imagine having to dodge large AoEs with a bomb on you or with a second AoE blast attack from the boss at the same time. In practice, you have to deal with 12+ different challenges constantly and always have one or more active at one point in time. You never have any downtime as an individual player and think "OK I have 15s to sit there and dps the boss while others are walking the beam".

 

Now about the new fractal, the number of mechanics is on the high side, but not exactly reaching Arkk numbers. It's still high. However, in terms of pacing, it's equally demanding, if not more, as it's a lot of AoEs with a much shorter notice than in Arkk. They also all stun you when in arkk CC is restricted to the eye and the charr miniboss so just like in Arkk you're not allowed to mess up once or it triggers some domino effect due to the massive CC, while in Thaumanova you're at least allowed to fail 1 mechanic, the sparks.

 

That's why it's compared to raid mechanics and not to traditional MMO dungeon ones. It's factually correct. The new fractal is much closer to 100, and in some aspects even harder, than it is close to Thaumanova's final encounter.

[Rennie.6750]

I'll add in a separate post that if the goal is making something closer to the other non raid-like fractals, there should be some breathing time between AoEs/mechanics, and there should be a clear separation between CC or short notice. The fractal devs have had some morbid fascination for both lately, but combining them is not OK in content that is not supposed to be a 5 man raid. Health could also use a cut or two; the average 80s fractal final boss survives 3-4 minutes at most not 7- 8.

[Alone.1784]

I've come to the acceptance that Ben's vision of fractals is vastly different then my own.

 

I've pugged fractals basically since they were introduced, I probably have enough saved currency to buy those augmentations outright. (Not that I could ever justify that big of a gold sink for "prestige" though)

 

I don't play fractals for a stressful can't even tell what's happening because aoe and effects everywhere wipe fest experience, that's the opposite of fun for me. Unfortunately that's exactly what you get when attempting to pug these new and remade fractals. I have zero interest in raids for the same reason and all of the sitting around waiting for everyone to be ready.

 

That's what they want though, to use fractals as a pushing block to get people into raids. I think this is a mistake for a variety of reasons including higher gearing requirements through AR for the steeping stone makes zero sense. Also I think they made a huge mistake in taking content the majority of players were happy with which was T4 fractals and pushing people out of them by increasing difficulty. They would have been much better served having T4 difficulty remain the same as it had for years and adding a T5 level or challenge motes to things they deemed too easy.

 

I think they've made a lot of mistakes and I know they've personally pushed me out of playing fractals and honestly even GW2 very often as I now only log in for the daily rewards and story updates and we'll see how long that lasts but that's their vision. They are catering to the hardcore difficulty crowd that runs in a set group and is using voice coms so just realize that's their direction and if you don't like it do what I did and find other more enjoyable games to play.

[Ojimaru.8970]

> @Karnasis.6892 said:

> The reason fractals are referred to "mini raids" is because they are slowly injecting fractals with multiple mechanics. Chaos started the trend with the final boss, where you have to watch for the occasional weapon test, a "floor is lava" mechanic that is also needed to lower the shield, on top of which has occasional adds, and a big aoe attack that can either be cc'd or avoided, IN ADDITION TO the mistlock instabilities. Is it impossible... no, but if you have a bad pug group it goes from okayish fractal to absolute awful. Nightmare and Shattered Observatory follow this same trend (with the latter being the best example for fractals being a mini raid). I understand challenging content, but they have challenge motes for that.

>

> Also I just completed the new Mai Trin, I'm still not fond of it, but there are good and bad points to the changes....

 

I respectfully disagree. If you can't handle the "raid-like" mechanics in Tier 4, there are always the lower tiers, where failure to adapt to the Fractals' mechanics are more forgiving. Just like how you need to step up your game knowledge in order to get the shiny loot in raids or CMs, you should also have to do the same for Tier 4 Fractals. The best part about it is that you still get access to the same loot in Tier 3 and lower, just lesser in quantity.

 

That said, I really don't understand why they needed to put T4 Mai Trin with Afflicted. It just seems like the same bone-headed decision to have Flux Bomb and Last Laugh in Underground Facility.

 

> @"Alone.1784" said:

> They would have been much better served having T4 difficulty remain the same as it had for years and adding a T5 level or challenge motes to things they deemed too easy.

 

But they didn't increase the mechanical difficulty of existing Fractals. Most of the changes added clarity to the fights, when before you would frequently be puzzling over the cause of your character's death.

[Zenith.7301]

Run a lower tier fractal. Problem solved.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

They stopped developing dungeons and said fractals will be our substitute. They lied :)

 

CMs are "raid ready" content and that's okay. Making normal fractals a chore is not the way to go but will find enough apologists for anet to feel okay with their decisions :)

[Raguel.9402]

If you're failing at the post HoT fractals, you would have loved the old scale 50 ones, one shots for everyone :-) No fractal, nor raid is hard if you give it a few tries and learn it.

 

Any content with Pugs is a pain to run. Which is why open world events are sometimes easier to complete with under 5 players (who are decent) rather than 50 pveers 1-1-1-1ing the boss whilist failing basic dodging and cc mechanics.