Is there a reason for the increasing escalation of mechanics and difficulty of fractals?

Being in a guild of more mature folks im finding it increasingly difficult to entice anyone to even do them anymore.I remember it started with Swampland and even then people found it way too hard, some pugs still do. Then Chaos, which is great but some find way too hard.But these latest additions are impossible for a lot of people, T4 Observatory and this new Oasis Fractal. Too fast, too much AOE, too much everything.Fractals used to be a fun distraction when people were bored, I could always rally a group. Nobody wants to do these though, it's just too much work.And pls dont even suggest doing them at lower tiers, if you can't handle T4 then you shouldn't even be in there... and pugs, I dont even wanna try that again.Im curious though, if my guild isnt doing them regularly anymore because of this, how many others feel the same?

The mentality of "If you cant handle a T4 you shouldn't be in there" is bullshit It was always the intent of fractals to scale for precisely this reason. Older fractals were the ones that were designed poorly

Besides, the new T4s aren't even that hard. Aoes are predictable, you have to predict them. And taking a healer is a big help

First, the new fractal has only been out 5 days. We shouldn't expect having learned expert techniques yet, so of course things will seem more difficult.

Second, of course it's reasonable to do the fractal at lower tiers first. It's a great way to learn the story, see the basic design, and get a handle of what you're in for. People spent months (or years) building up to FotM/50 and later FotM/100; why isn't it worth spending a few hours trying the lite-version of the fractal first?

Thirdly, sure, people get used to old challenges. People can remain in their comfort zone, without having to learn new mechanics or change builds; they can coast. Getting anyone to try new stuff is always difficult. But that isn't a good reason for a game to stop making things interesting — a game will stagnate if it doesn't evolve, and people will leave just as surely as they would if it really gets too difficult.

Fourthly, you can't possibly say that "the latest additions are impossible." At best, you can say that people are failing it a lot more than they failed other new fractals.

My recommendation: skip the new fractal for a month. Wait for the speed-clearing experts to publish guides on how to handle the mechanics at T4. If you need to, PUG a few times until you feel comfortable helping your guildies manage things. Then take your group through T2 first and, based on the results, move to T3 or T4 after that. This is mostly how my primary static team handles it and it works a treat.

Or put another way, rushing to complete new challenging content is great fun for the most skilled players among us. For the rest of us, it's worth waiting a bit and being challenged by the mechanics themselves, rather than dealing with the unknown.

There is some kind of escalation because otherwise people would fall asleep. T4 normal modes are still easy, especially if you take a healer.

The new fractal is not overly hard, it's just long. We did it without much trouble on our first attempt, at T4. But after today, as it was daily again, I decided to skip it from now on. Even if you kill the stuff fast, you still have to reach places, wait for spawns and scenes, jump on roofs etc. The last boss fight also takes its time-toll because you have to work through all priests one by one. A normal T4 run takes 30 minutes on average, I really don't see how a normal group can do this new fractal in less than 20 minutes. It's just too much hassle in my book.

I have to add that I love the theme and the setting. Praise King Joko!

Thier reasoning, if you wanna call it that, was to make fractals a stepping stone to raids. A dev commented on it on the old forums or reddit (I forget which).

Even though no one asked for this.

But, you know,…… ANet! ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I mean fractals has 4 tiers, with tier 4 bring the hardest of the content. You can always go down in tier if it's too challenging, and there's nothing wrong with that =)

@MashMash.1645 said:Thier reasoning, if you wanna call it that, was to make fractals a stepping stone to raids. A dev commented on it on the old forums or reddit (I forget which).

Even though no one asked for this.

But, you know,…… ANet! ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Actually, people did ask for it. Folks said that the gap between fractals and raids was too great. But that affects which mechanics they choose, not why they make fractals (seemingly) more difficult.

@CptAurellian.9537 explained it best (although perhaps not diplomatically): because otherwise people would fall asleep. Fractal T4 is meant to be challenging content, which means new fractals have to provide new challenges.

It's always good to question whether the fractal team is making things too challenging (or not challenging enough). But just because some people on the forums/reddit claim it's too easy (or too hard) doesn't make it so.

@meeflak.9714 said:I mean fractals has 4 tiers, with tier 4 bring the hardest of the content. You can always go down in tier if it's too challenging, and there's nothing wrong with that =)

That's how I see it too. Really, there IS a lot of easy content and even every fractal will always have an easy version. So people who wan't it easy can have it easy.But on the other hand, not every fractal has a hard version of it, and there are people who enjoy hard content. So I'd say make the ones that are too hard for you in T3. It's really as easy as that.

Look at WoW: They brought Heroic 5man to burning crusade, at the time it was really hard. Then everyone wanted to be able to make heroics so they nerfed them to casual level and introduced mythic. Then they nerfed mythic to a casual level and introduced mythic scaling, so they still had hard content... Is that really the solution? Dumb down things to reintroduce harder stuff? And then nerfing that again?Anet makes it right with their latest releases and everyone can make every fractal, just not at any level. But that's how it should be. If it's too hard just play T2/T3, this solution is pretty perfect.

A long time ago : have fun in party in donjons then donjon is forgotten and we moved to have fun in fractals when is was a 40 minutes runs , now it is becoming more and more difficult to have people for fractales : have only one 1 or 2 hours to play on evening no way they spend them on these 45 minutes per piece fractales.Dailies are filtered, old fractales are still quite ok when refactoring was not too much (hello swamp or new Mai trin), new one are mostly skipped or done on T2/T3 instead of T4...Now it is let's go farm that's new place, retry a story instance for success, collect mat for that nice shinny... and forget about those time consumming fractales and go to pvp and wvw for ascended...

They made raids weekly which means they need to bait raiders to play more after they cleared content so they are now making fractals into 5-man raids :)

This type of mechanic spam (which is pretty much a proof of lack of imagination or ideas how to design encounters, everything is aoe spam) is okay for CMs but should be toned down for T4s as they promised fractals are going to be our substitute for dungeons they refuse to develop anymore :)

I thought so too, why does new content have to be harder and harder? Sure it is T4, but still I think it should be manageable for a mostly decent party. It is somehow but it's really not fun to usually wipe with all those 10k hits. It's just annoying and I don't like to change my build be cause exactly two fractals are that way.

And it was soooo clear to me that it will be that way. It's kinda childish to make the new fractals harder and harder. Oh, let's just make them hit for at least 8-9 k damage.

Do the people with problems in that fractal even play with boonstrip?Turns out 25 Stacks of Might on her Balthasar Avatar hurt.

The new fractal in t4 : low health => slower => more aoe taken => lower health => slower =>.... => down, nice add spawn, get rez to have an aoe on you and fall again....People are saying "Take a healer, an egide slave guard, extra dodge build, pet to allow damage whem spaming that extra new jump to avoid that aoe fest, no aoe build you have to place on that teleport boss but easy target damage skills..."
Dungeon were only longer with rainbow builds fractales are becoming mostly impossible and most people won't invest thousand of gold to have ar on all their toons and all builds (remember swap stat armor is raid locked, fractale was supposed to be before raid)

@Zenli.3684 said:The new fractal in t4 : low health => slower => more aoe taken => lower health => slower =>.... => down, nice add spawn, get rez to have an aoe on you and fall again....People are saying "Take a healer, an egide slave guard, extra dodge build, pet to allow damage whem spaming that extra new jump to avoid that aoe fest, no aoe build you have to place on that teleport boss but easy target damage skills..."

Dungeon were only longer with rainbow builds fractales are becoming mostly impossible and most people won't invest thousand of gold to have ar on all their toons and all builds (remember swap stat armor is raid locked, fractale was supposed to be before raid)

You know, legendary armour costs gold too. Way more den asc. ones, but raidbashing is trendy nowadays, keep going.

I've no problem with investing thousand on gold for a stat swapable armor sets, but I've a problem when I've to invest on not swapable armor just to play fractales because my already geared toons are not ok anymore.Most people invest in zerk/viperin/sinister/assassin sets because fractales were mostly dps check and have only one or 2 toons with enough ar for T4.With raid they add the needed for support/heal classes like druid, druid is now needed in fractale too, rip dps builds for ranger and let's craft a new healer set for fractales to support that 12k zerk ele who is now 1-2 shot instead of 3-4...That guard slave might now want a boon duration bonus...Oh and they nerf ps power war, let's move to condi war in fractal too...Oh and marauder is nice for thief or Engineer to have a bit more vitality...Damn I really need that nice swap stat armor now, let's go farm pvp and forget fractales...

@Zenli.3684 said:I've no problem with investing thousand on gold for a stat swapable armor sets, but I've a problem when I've to invest on not swapable armor just to play fractales because my already geared toons are not ok anymore.Most people invest in zerk/viperin/sinister/assassin sets because fractales were mostly dps check and have only one or 2 toons with enough ar for T4.With raid they add the needed for support/heal classes like druid, druid is now needed in fractale too, rip dps builds for ranger and let's craft a new healer set for fractales to support that 12k zerk ele who is now 1-2 shot instead of 3-4...That guard slave might now want a boon duration bonus...Oh and they nerf ps power war, let's move to condi war in fractal too...Oh and marauder is nice for thief or Engineer to have a bit more vitality...kitten I really need that nice swap stat armor now, let's go farm pvp and forget fractales...

Do you throw your old sets away? You can stat swap them quite cheep? You are also getting spammed with asc gear when you are already running fracs and raids. i made the armour(s) because i set them as my goal, i would be out way cheaper staying on asc.

But honestly i have no idea what you are trying to say.

If you can’t handle T4, run T3, if you can’t handle T3, run T2 and so on.

It’s like complaining about a hard mode being too uhm „hard”?

I'm not complaining that content is too hard, just that content is changing rules too frequently for most casual players.Fractal used to be a relaxed casual player thing requiring only ascended jewelry.Then they moved to 100 scales, people invested in backpieces, weapons, a few ascended armor piece to be able to do the same thing as before (T3 is quite the dame difficulties as old 30 levels fractales).Now with new fractals meta their expensive gear is not ok anymore and they have to invest again to support the new required builds or be a super hero that never fell an aoe in a room full of aoe that 1-2 shot/bump....Dedicated players or raiders won't have a problem as they have load of ascended boxes, token to use when most casual player will give up as they don't have the resssource to craft, won't be able to finish T4 and therefore won't have a chance to nice T4 ascended boxes.They will go back to open world pve to farm mat that maybe they will be wasting for their next ascended armor piece....

@Zenli.3684 said:I'm not complaining that content is too hard, just that content is changing rules too frequently for most casual players.Fractal used to be a relaxed casual player thing requiring only ascended jewelry.Then they moved to 100 scales, people invested in backpieces, weapons, a few ascended armor piece to be able to do the same thing as before (T3 is quite the dame difficulties as old 30 levels fractales).Now with new fractals meta their expensive gear is not ok anymore and they have to invest again to support the new required builds or be a super hero that never fell an aoe in a room full of aoe that 1-2 shot/bump....Dedicated players or raiders won't have a problem as they have load of ascended boxes, token to use when most casual player will give up as they don't have the resssource to craft, won't be able to finish T4 and therefore won't have a chance to nice T4 ascended boxes.They will go back to open world pve to farm mat that maybe they will be wasting for their next ascended armor piece....

fractals still are relaxed T1,2 even 3.hell, you can still grind t4 with blood magic necros if you have the time to do it.your group, your rules.

other then that the are monstly 4 month beetween meta changes. time enough to equip and farm those shiny t4 boxes.

@Raguel.9402 said:If you can’t handle T4, run T3, if you can’t handle T3, run T2 and so on.

It’s like complaining about a hard mode being too uhm „hard”?

T4s are not hardmode, CMs are. Fractals were promised to be our substitue of dungeon level difficulty :)

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

@Raguel.9402 said:If you can’t handle T4, run T3, if you can’t handle T3, run T2 and so on.

It’s like complaining about a hard mode being too uhm „hard”?

you have that on T1-2. but you could also ignore that i guess.

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

@Raguel.9402 said:If you can’t handle T4, run T3, if you can’t handle T3, run T2 and so on.

It’s like complaining about a hard mode being too uhm „hard”?

Could you point me to where they said this or made this promise?

T1 and T2 are newb levels a lot easier than "old" fractales to make people learn and build basic AR (rings, jewelry).T3 more AR and learn a few difficult mechanisms.T4 is the "base" that should be dongeon difficulties, and it was.CM was raid mode like.New T4 is raid more like and people will ask for a special groups with healer.

Yes I'm doing T3 or T2 depending on the group I can find when T4 dailies are not fun but we are back at no T4 = no ascended boxes = no new toon choice for T4 before I can farm enough pvp to get more pieces or finally gave up and waste resources on leveling 500 armor crafting (who will buy crafted exo gear when we are flooded by "free" armor pieces/boxes with selectable stats?).

Twilight Oasis isnt hard or impossible to do, people just ignore the mechanics and the telegraphs. Plus you can use the 5 second cooldown jump to skip a lot of attacks - especially the meaningful ones. Its not as hard as Shattered Observatory for sure. Yeah its going to be more difficult if people cant spare enough brain cells to move the Moa target AOE away and dodge it, or pull off the earth elemental from the rest of the group. Dwayna phase you just leap up, Grenth is the easiest of them all. Balthazar is the only actually challenging one. This feels nothing like T4 CMs.