Enough with instabilities

Instabilities add variety, really? Well, in my opinion they add variety of annoyances, making some regular fractals to become hateable or, in some cases, near impossible to finish with average groups, like 77 swampland this week.

Most people I know run fractals (and specifically T4 ones) for money/gear, the faster and smoother, the better. Instabilities do not add fun to that, add annoyance and, in some cases excessive difficulty to regular T4 fractals. All the people that ran fractals in that day that (due to a bug that was quickly and sadly fixed) there were no instabilities, said the same: best fractal experience ever.

A couple of examples:

99 and 99CMLast Laugh+Hamstrung+Flux BombPrevious week: Toxic Trail+Hamstrung+I don't remember what other annoyance

Swampland89 Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+Vindicators77 Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+Toxic Trail

Please, remove them or completely change the system.

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:

All the people that ran fractals in that day that (due to a bug that was quickly and sadly fixed) there were no instabilities, said the same: best fractal experience ever.

Let me rephrase that in was was actually meant:"Easiest free loot ever, that was great and fun because we got the same amount of rewards for a fraction of the effort."

How about we just add a button which people press and they get gold and rewards?

On a more serious note, the increased difficulty is meant for just that: a justification for the high rewards in fractals.

Yes, some instabilities are more annoying and/or challenging than others and that should or could get addressed, I doubt removing them would be a good idea.

The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Let me rephrase that in was was actually meant:"Easiest free loot ever, that was great and fun because we got the same amount of rewards for a fraction of the effort."

How about we just add a button which people press and they get gold and rewards?

On a more serious note, the increased difficulty is meant for just that: a justification for the high rewards in fractals.

Yes, some instabilities are more annoying and/or challenging than others and that should or could get addressed, I doubt removing them would be a good idea.

1) Don't rephrase anything. I said what I said.2) Loot didn't change in fractals when random instabilities were introduced, so don't say that there must be a correlation between the new system with way more difficulty and annoyance and the old rewards.

@Glider.5792 said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

I mostly agree, but You cannot easily avoid toxic trail in swampland during the swarm phases, specially if combined with Hamstrung .

@Glider.5792 said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

I don't see the problem with Social Awkwardness. Sure, it's somewhat annoying since you can't brainlessly stack, but that's the gist of it, isn't it? To force people to do some basic positioning. Flux Bomb and Last Laugh are dependant on the fractal you're doing. In some, they're perfectly fine, in others, well... They're especially annoying if they get drowned in visual noise. ANet should really rework fractals like Twilight Oasis.

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Let me rephrase that in was was actually meant:"Easiest free loot ever, that was great and fun because we got the same amount of rewards for a fraction of the effort."

How about we just add a button which people press and they get gold and rewards?

On a more serious note, the increased difficulty is meant for just that: a justification for the high rewards in fractals.

Yes, some instabilities are more annoying and/or challenging than others and that should or could get addressed, I doubt removing them would be a good idea.

1.) Okay, so you had a blast getting loot with less effort, good for you.

2.) Besides reworking the system as to be more dynamic and not have people intentionally go for the easiest version of a fractal. Or are we talking about a shift in difficulty on some fractals which have become easier with the intense power creep which this game mode has been suffering? Or maybe we should consider reverting to way back when fractals were easier or harder than currently with generally less rewards depending on which cycle of their life span we look at.

I'll give you this: some instabilities are worse than others and make certain fractals more challenging and could use some retuning.

The rest is you complaining about not getting free loot.

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Glider.5792 said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

Nah, TA is great. I like having a real boss in fractals. Just blacklist LL there.

@Raizel.8175 said:

@"Glider.5792" said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

The problem is that on some bosses, you are forced to stack on top of each other. Biggest example is Siax, while hes doing that channeling skill everyone stacks under him to avoid those bullets.Social awkwardness is a problem everywhere where your freedom of movement/positioning is limited in some way, either due to some mechanic (like protection bubbles in 99cm) or just screen being filled with crapton of aoes (Viirasta for example) . Some mechanics even force you to basicaly "hug" (Arkk greens).

But yes, ofcouse you can avoid all of this by keeping distance, however cause of that there is a big chance you wont be receaving proper boons/healing which may yet again result in a death/failure.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Glider.5792 said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

Boss is amazing, all the pointless trash is a bit annoying though. It makes sense lore-wise that there are alot of enemies, since we're invading a big city, but its not the most fun with all the cc flying around.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

The rest is you complaining about not getting free loot.

Let me rephrase this: The rest is you trying to keep the rabble away from your gear and money.

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Glider.5792 said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

Twilight Oasis could be a great fractal if it weren't for the disgusting visual noise. Everything gets drowned in fancy bright light and that's just ridiculous. It's so hard to see anything at certain points which just makes it really unfun for me. In that regard, I'd be really happy if ANet would tone down the visual noise considerably so that you can see stuff better.

@Glider.5792 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Glider.5792 said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

You mostly can position yourself in a way you won't get hit and won't receive agony though SA. The distance you have to keep isn't that high. Plus, you mostly can outheal some agony anyway; not like you have to snuggle with your teammates all the time.

Worst part is the randomn weekly system.Go today to do swampland daily with a PUG and then tell me what happened. Oh, you have 2 "random" options for both swamplands:

Swampland 89 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+VindicatorsOR swampland 77 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+Toxic Trail

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:Worst part is the randomn weekly system.Go today to do swampland daily with a PUG and then tell me what happened. Oh, you have 2 "random" options for both swamplands:

Swampland 89 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+VindicatorsOR swampland 77 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+Toxic Trail

This is why blacklist is needed, some fractals just shouldn't be allowed to have some instabilities (like last laugh in swampland), or just dissable it on some enemies, just like they got dissabled on avengers and mini viirastas.

Let's be real. Nothing has changed since the introduction of the new system. Good players won't struggle and don't even need to care about the instabilities no matter which 3 are active over the week.In my opinion the most important questions are: Do instabilities put a challenge for players and do they add variability to fractals? And here we all can agree: No, they don't.That's why I'm for a deletion of the whole nonsense. If you want to have a more challenging T4 or maybe only CM, tune and alter the puzzles/bosses.

@Vinceman.4572 said:Let's be real. Nothing has changed since the introduction of the new system. Good players won't struggle and don't even need to care about the instabilities no matter which 3 are active over the week.In my opinion the most important questions are: Do instabilities put a challenge for players and do they add variability to fractals? And here we all can agree: No, they don't.That's why I'm for a deletion of the whole nonsense. If you want to have a more challenging T4 or maybe only CM, tune and alter the puzzles/bosses.

Almost 100% agree... almost. Many good players will struggle to finish today's swampland 77, at least spending 2x or 3x the time they usually spend on it. But you are right, for top players instabilities add annoyance add no extra difficulty. For not so good players, they add annoyance and ragequits galore.

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Almost 100% agree... almost. Many good players will struggle to finish today's swampland 77, at least spending 2x or 3x the time they usually spend on it. But you are right, for top players instabilities add annoyance add no extra difficulty. For not so good players, they add annoyance and ragequits galore.

Nah, 77 is a non-issue. You just have to move & dodge constantly which is easily possible inside the wisp circle and AoE-burst the trash mobs before too many can reach the middle/stack of the players. Good players won't struggle and a lot of them & other groups will have a druid with them cleansing the toxic trail poison and overhealing the rest.

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

The rest is you complaining about not getting free loot.

Lol.

I couldn't care less about other people's gear or in game accomplishments. I can care about specific game modes having to high of a reward per play time or effort. It makes for bad game design and balance.

Fractals and raids already are having a bad rap for being some of the most profitable per game time. No reason to add to this.

Here is my advice, and it's the same advice given to people who complain about T4 being to hard: if you can't cut the daily T4, do T3.

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Almost 100% agree... almost. Many good players will struggle to finish today's swampland 77, at least spending 2x or 3x the time they usually spend on it. But you are right, for top players instabilities add annoyance add no extra difficulty. For not so good players, they add annoyance and ragequits galore.

You don't run T4 with pugs, I see.

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Almost 100% agree... almost. Many good players will struggle to finish today's swampland 77, at least spending 2x or 3x the time they usually spend on it. But you are right, for top players instabilities add annoyance add no extra difficulty. For not so good players, they add annoyance and ragequits galore.

Not all content needs be be balanced around PUGs having an easy time.

If your bar of reference is pick up groups, yes some fractals will be difficult unless all players are good enough.

Working as intended.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Almost 100% agree... almost. Many good players will struggle to finish today's swampland 77, at least spending 2x or 3x the time they usually spend on it. But you are right, for top players instabilities add annoyance add no extra difficulty. For not so good players, they add annoyance and ragequits galore.

You set very clear that the standards for everything in this game must be the ones that you like and that fit your skills and play style.

And, once again, stop adressing more comments to me.

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Please, remove them or completely change the system.

They have plans to change the system.(But those plans do not include making them easy for PUGs, only making them more interesting and fun.)

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Please, remove them or completely change the system.

Tell me if I am wrong, but as far as I know, I never asked for fractals to be easier. Just to remove (or change) the random instability annoyances.

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Almost 100% agree... almost. Many good players will struggle to finish today's swampland 77, at least spending 2x or 3x the time they usually spend on it. But you are right, for top players instabilities add annoyance add no extra difficulty. For not so good players, they add annoyance and ragequits galore.

If you are unsatisfied with people disagreeing, don't come to the official forums.

I never said things had to accommodate my personal taste. I did mention they need to stay balanced reward wise in game. All you have done so far is complain but not offered any constructive solution which does not upset the game-reward balance.

The day when cheap gimmick also known as instabilities got disabled due to a bug was the best fractal experience I've ever had. They may try all the way, they will never manage to balance instabilities. They will be either annoying or unnoticable. But that's to be expected from cheap solutions.