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Mysticjedi.6053
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Is Agony Necessary?
Mysticjedi.6053
Member ✭✭
Agony flavor wise feels justifiable, but is it really necessary? It kind of feels like an unnecessary gate to content.
Is there another way to make the content difficult without agony?
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AR in my mind, it's like making sure people spend the time to equip fire resistance before facing a fire dragon, sure you don't need, but you are going to be crispy fried adventure if you don't have it.
Now, you can do T1 with not AR at all, so you are not gated from fractals if you don't have AR, it just makes it so you need to put in some investment if you want to move up the numbers. But again, there is no need to move up the numbers either if you don't want to. Since it's purely on the individual to pursue it, I like it in that regard. It weens out the people that really don't know what they are doing or trying to do something without thinking about it first.
There are two kinds of Gamers, Salty, and Extra Salty.
Ego is the Anesthesia that dullens the pain of Stupidity.
I would say it's an unnecessary gate, but agony is a 2 part system. A powerful condition unique to fractals and a item that can be placed in your armor to mitigate it. The reality is that you still get punished for making a mistake and getting afflicted with Agony. Even when your AR is significant enough to reduce the damage from agony to negligible levels you still suffer 70% penalty to healing while under the effect of Agony. (Not an insignificant amount if you time your heal poorly, tl;dr it can significantly wreck your day if you get hit at the wrong time)
The main issue is with the acquisition method and utilization of Agony Resistance. Agony as a condition is fine imo, but the AR creates a rather high gate to bringing multiple different characters into fractals since it is inextricably linked to armor.
This is why they are experimenting with the new Account based buffs for Fractals.
Its artificial, I dislike.
This whole game is artificial. That's not an argument.
Ar provides goals and motivation for people climbing the AR ladder while at the same time not blocking new players from enjoying the fractal dungeons.
"Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans do not thread their way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities." - The Spacing Guild Handbook.
Beware the meta!
Agony is a good thing, since it blocks total newbies from high level fractals and can hurt even people with full resistance (70% healing debuff ftw). The system of character-bound AR, however, is outdated, but changing it without breaking the fractal economy is no easy task.
Praise delta!
The linking of agony resistance with ascended gear forces people to put in a high minimum of effort to be allowed to participate at t4. I don't think that's a bad choice, actually, because fractals are meant to be fast 5-man content, easily tackled with a PUG, and part of that is enforcing some minimum standards at the highest levels, like decent gear. T4 LFG would be a no-man's land if everybody was allowed in with the soldier's exotics they got with their level 80 boost, or the level 60 leveling greens they haven't bothered to upgrade. Those sorts of people are present in T1, so they're not barred from the content, just the more challenging and rewarding versions of it.
They should do the exact same for raids.
"Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans do not thread their way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities." - The Spacing Guild Handbook.
Beware the meta!
I get the gate from newbs argument. I simply dislike the acquisition and what feels like a continously grind to improve AR until 100.
I was just curious as to people's opinion.
Also without agony i would demand asc equiptment too be removed too since its not having any point anymore
I am not against account bound AR, it would make it easier on me to put my other characters into Fractals, but, AR serves a gear purpose, to ensure by T4 you have neat complete Ascended. if it became Account bound, can you imagine the influx of people in exotics or less trying to do T4, because they bought enough AR for their account but never needed to get any gear to equip it.
Naah Gear Bound AR ensures that any Character in that content.. is geared and built for that content.. the way it should be.
There are two kinds of Gamers, Salty, and Extra Salty.
Ego is the Anesthesia that dullens the pain of Stupidity.
I like it. This game is far too easy in general. The fact that you need to equip a character with full ascended and 150 AR in order is a longterm goal and very achievable if you enjoy fractals. Fractal rewards are quite good in tier 4 so it shouldn't be easy to achieve.
The current system great, nothing needs to change.
I hate it.
I stopped doing Fractals as a result. It is cheap, artificial difficulty and a timegate for progression.
Thank Bear for Raids to get me that PvE fix.
Please Anet give us a hide Chest Armour-option. Tattoo-clad Norns everywhere beg of you.
Think it was mentioned before, fractal is a tool to teach players (to get used to mechanics etc) by gradually adding the difficulties of the encounters. (Eg. Bosses deals more dmg, more abilities, changes when HP reached certain threshold etc) Tho this process feels draggy for experienced players, its just a way Anet implement for players(new or intends) climbing the ladder. View fractal levels as a training program, meant for players to slowly progress and the 'timegate' is a byproduct. Famous "Working as intended" quote here.
It won't effect experienced players, but it is necessary. Can imagine the screams, when players are exposed to full brunt of 'Shattered Observatory Fractal' instead of the simplified versions while climbing. Plus there's always the +AR potion if needed.
The AR limit feels like a closed gate because it was always intended to be just that. They have already done multiple changes such as making items account bound or to rework infusions to no longer force you through the slow AR grind that was present before.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs. Henry Ford
Question: Is agony needed or necessary?
Answer: No, it's not.
No question is should agony stay?
Answer: no it should not stay
Agony should be account bound.
Nah wipe it away so all can come too play
It is a necessary gate to prevent total newbies flooding higher fractals they are not able to handle. I see it in my guild: from time to time we get new members and pull them into fractals to avoid filling our guild teams from lfg. We pull them too early in too high levels. We give them infusions so they can play the higher levels. They have enough AR, but they only die and are not able to contribute, because they are not used to the mechanics. It's no pleasant experience for all of us: we veterans carry them and they are only fighting for survival instead of fighting the enemy.
I saw it just yesterday: T4 Bloomhunger with 5 guildies. 3 people not really ready for this, 2 experienced persons. I and my friend constantly revived our teammates. Each 3 of them died 3 times or more, I still had the singularity buff at the end - on a full berserk Tempest. Every time Bloomhunger stomped, one of the 3 were downed and eventually died, because they died at places far far away you don't usually go. Same with Cliffside and the Archdiviner. Going with a team from LFG is much more pleasant and much faster. The 3 guildies should do T2 or T3 more before doing T4. Usually, Agony enforces this. Remove Agony and T4 lfg will start to require killproofs or whatever is necessary to prove that you are experienced in T4. Today this is implicit with AR.
Find the secret message: +++++++[>++++[>+>+++>++++>++++<<<<-]<-]>>>-.>-------.+++.+.------------.>++.<<<++++.>>++++++.>.<--..>++.-.<<<+.
Its forced difficulty, external to the gameplay. "Artificial" in the sense that its not integral with what you are playing. IMO its grind of the worst type, in a game that don't usually use that kind of forced stuff. I hope they make it truly integral with the gameplay in some fractals, and remove it completely from the rest.
I saw it Today again how unexpiered Players Join T4 Daylies and dont know how LvL 87 Twilight Oase work's. We was trying to explain but no Chance when PPL dont listen.
Otherwise if U Join a T4 Group without Knowledge and less or / Full AR u get Kicked. Most Newcomers won't Accept and try to Insult via whisper.
Agony does not exist in T1 fractals, feel free to come join us! we don't bite... much
There are two kinds of Gamers, Salty, and Extra Salty.
Ego is the Anesthesia that dullens the pain of Stupidity.
It is.. because it functions as a gate to get players to learn the Fractals on easy setting (T1) and then as they play, and learn the dungeons, and thus collect their +1's that they can make into better infusions to move up.. so.. it stops people from jumping into the deep end of the pool before they learned to swim.
There are two kinds of Gamers, Salty, and Extra Salty.
Ego is the Anesthesia that dullens the pain of Stupidity.
I for one was stunned that they didn't.
There are two kinds of Gamers, Salty, and Extra Salty.
Ego is the Anesthesia that dullens the pain of Stupidity.
Hugh...
Here's the deal, even if they remove AR, which they won't, because unlike some of the people here like to say, it IS necessary, and it IS a good thing.
The people here clamouring that it isn't, that it be removed so they can play... Will not be able to play anyway. Because they'll get kicked out of parties after 2-3 attempts.
Agony is there so that people ease into T4 instead of dropping head first into it. Especially people that don't already have a group to help them through the learning process.
I have a friend that has been playing for ~4 months. And he's full ascended with 150 AR atm.
He's actually done T4 with me with little over 100AR. (I picked a day that was mostly old Fractals, so he could avoid the AR hits)
It's not a gateway to entry, it's a series of stepping stones that ensure you've put in an effort to get there. If anything, the fact that agony infusions can be sold is undermining the whole process.
It used to be a gateway when at lvl 10 (out of 50 total back then) you already needed AR, and the only way to get AR would be from slotting infusions on rings, rings that only dropped at lvl 10 or above! Back then it was harder to get AR, and it did ask you to be almost flawless in your play so you could avoid Agony hits.
Nowadays you can pretty much do the whole Tier 1 without AR, which allows you to easily get Infusions, and you can get items to slot those infusions from myriads of sources.
If it's not needed or necessary, one can presume that it also should not stay. Also, the question is in the title. It's also repeated from the OP in the first and second sentence.
That's three times it's referenced as necessary or unnecessary. So, if you're going to correct someone, please come correct yourself.
The content gate should be difficulty and having an organized team, not an artificial "effect" that really serves no purpose. T1 fractals should be easy. T4 fractals should be hard. Agony really serves no purpose other than kitten.
Carnished Toast (Yum)
Lost in the Maguuma (TC)
At this point AR is more about giving you sth to progress for than an actual condition during a fight. It creates a kind of one-off gear progression ladder for fractals.
So it does play a role...But it is not there to make it more difficult. You can pretty much ignore it with the correct AR.
Its there give a sense of progression that would be lacking in fractals otherwise with only the levels.
Are we talking about players skills and AR ? Bcos not everyone with full AR can play well as a team. I hv seem many people without AR plays better in the team.
Death is Energy [DIE] in EU
Envoy's Herald, VitV, DD, SS, The Eternal, LNHB, Champion Magus, Champion Phantom, Wondrous Achiever etc.
Agony started as unnecessary gate, now transformed into gold sink.
its hardly a gold sink since its far far cheaper and trivial to get it now as apposed to originally, that is not the purpose of AR. The purpose is to give us a progressive goal that does not involve scaling our gear endlessly, avoids blocking players with low AR and has no impact outwith fractals. AR does all that nicely in a reasonably elegant manner..
"Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans do not thread their way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities." - The Spacing Guild Handbook.
Beware the meta!
I quit playing fractals a long time ago because I won't deal with this arbitrary and extremely limiting mechanic. Stripped all my AR off and put on WvW infusions.
I made a thread about this that got a dev response and it was basically that it was inherited, it's not ideal, and it's not going away. I'm never playing fractals as long as it exists.
It may not be an ideal system, but if you don't play fractals because of AR, I doubt you'd be a dedicated fractal player without it.
Praise delta!
I am not much of a PvEr, but I did really enjoy fractals near their release. I have done hundreds and hundreds of fractals.
AR is a lot less than ideal. It's convoluted, prevents build swapping or swapping to alts, costs money and so on. I'm just not dealing with it. I don't expect anyone to cater to my opinion, I'm just sharing that I will never play fractals ever again as long as AR exists, and I am sure there are other players who don't appreciate the unnecessary gate to content. In response to the thread question, no it's not necessary and shouldn't exist. Unfortunately it does.
I missed the response .. would you clarify a bit more? What does it mean by inherited?
Death is Energy [DIE] in EU
Envoy's Herald, VitV, DD, SS, The Eternal, LNHB, Champion Magus, Champion Phantom, Wondrous Achiever etc.
I don't want to speak too much for the devs, but the current fractal devs (which have apparently made fractals a lot better than they were) are not the guys that originally developed fractals. I suppose it's along the lines of instabilities being sort of redundant now that fractals are better designed as far as I understand it -- again just going off of what I read since I quit fractals.
Ah I see gotcha.. yeah I guess it can not be removed easily being a sticky parameter in fractal stepping and level setup.. w/o a complete rework .. but who knows the dev hv the magic one day xD
Death is Energy [DIE] in EU
Envoy's Herald, VitV, DD, SS, The Eternal, LNHB, Champion Magus, Champion Phantom, Wondrous Achiever etc.
Sorry, but this is not true. If you play regularly T4 with your main character, you amass stacks over stacks of +1 infusions and the occasional +9, and you amass armor and weapon chest over chest. With these, you can create secondary equipment for your main as well as equipment for all your other twinks including high AR at very low cost. Your first 150 AR character is a bit expensive, yes, but the additional ones aren't. Remember you can change attributes of gear from chests in the mystic forge, and you can extract infusions from your gear at low cost.
The infusion and AR handling was convoluted and difficult while the max fractal level was 50. Since the update to 100 that brought the unified +1, +2, +3, ... infusions, it got much easier and almost natural.
Find the secret message: +++++++[>++++[>+>+++>++++>++++<<<<-]<-]>>>-.>-------.+++.+.------------.>++.<<<++++.>>++++++.>.<--..>++.-.<<<+.
Initially, AR served the purpose most people are talking about - gating + experience. This was due to the way infusions worked - simple vs agony. You had to earn the relics to buy your AR, no way around that given the high cost of agony infusions at the time only compounded this.
With the change to normalize all infusions to simply agony, the gate is gone, and is, for all intents and purposes it's a gold sink more than a time gate.
So, in truth, AR's relevancy is nearly moot at this point.