Fractal Tier design has always bothered me.

So I missed the first wave of fractal progression. I only bothered completing tier 1, just for 1 fractal weapon skin. Now, if I ever need clovers, people advice me to just do daily T4 fractals... but I can't even look for them in LFG, because my reward level is in tier 2, which is basically dead, and I hear Tier 3 is just as bad if not worse for people stuck there. I could invest the money to get enough AR if I wanted, if I felt like I'd actually get to a point of not having to have someone carry me to get me into T4 groups. But I'm either stuck in basically a dead zone trying to get through T2 and T3 when barely anyone runs them, or stuck asking people to let me into their P4 groups for 40+ fractals until I can just look for a t4 group on my own. What I fear is that people will offer to help, say yeah I'll help you progress into T4 reward levels, I'll invest the money to get my AR up to snuff, then they'll lose interest and we'll stop doing them, then I'm stuck again but poorer.This design mirrors that of level based landscape zones across most MMO's in general. At the start of the game everyone levels through the content somewhat together, it's easy to find groups for mid level group quests and dungeons but then when people are at level cap, you get this dynamic of very populated end game zones, somewhat populated new zones as new players join the game or people make alts, and nearly dead mid level zones as the people who start new don't all level at the same pace and so the population thins out, it becomes impossible to find groups for mid level group content, so most people just skip it and do solo quests until they're capped. That happens with fractal tiers too except that there is no solo content to bypass the mid level group content. You have to call your level capped friend to come escort you through the group quests. until you yourself are capped. That's a lot to ask of someone to do consistently.IMO, it should just be 2 tiers, 1-50, and 50-100. There's still progression and the players doing 100CM would still be able to be elitist and weed out noobs, but noobs wouldn't get stuck in mid level quagmires, I think without breaking it into tiers they'll be more likely to find groups and progress up. They'll be noobs up to 50, then hit 51 and be able to go into high level fractals if they have the AR, without begging for carries from guildmates for 50 fractals.I'm sure people will claim it's perfectly reasonable to expect someone to carry them for 50 fractals or claim they can find T2 and 3 groups on their own regularly, but that's not my experience if and when I look.

dont bother with t4, u can farm Tier 2 fine,...., and get 20g, 30g per day in few hours.. craft some agony infusions too. if u TMZ of play seens dead, try at least the dailies.

PS: fractals initially was 2 or 3 tiers if i guess.

@ugrakarma.9416 said:dont bother with t4, u can farm Tier 2 fine,...., and get 20g, 30g per day in few hours.. craft some agony infusions too. if u TMZ of play seens dead, try at least the dailies.

PS: fractals initially was 2 or 3 tiers if i guess.

I rarely see T2 groups even advertised. That's the crux of the problem. T2 and 3 just seem dead.

@Devildoc.6721 said:I rarely see T2 groups even advertised.

Then advertize them yourself! You'll see how quickly you will find teammates for this.

I've tried, after an hour, I and only 2 people joined, I gave up.

@"Devildoc.6721" said:I've tried, after an hour, I and only 2 people joined, I gave up.

Did you specify for "T2 dailies + recs" ? As unless you are playing at some unusual time, you should get a group. It will take longer to get a group for any other fractal level outside of dailies. Also if you are in a guild, as long as you have the AR you can jump straight to T4 matches (not that I recommend this), as your level only determines what you can actually open individually.

@Thorstienn.1642 said:

@"Devildoc.6721" said:I've tried, after an hour, I and only 2 people joined, I gave up.

That's what I meant by "being carried for 50 levels" is that you have to have guildmates open groups for you for 50 fractals until you can LFG for Tier 4's. I've looked for Tier 2 dailies and reccomended. and it was a little later in the evening but not that late, about 9-11pm eastern roughly, and no groups listed, and when I listed, I'd get 1 guy joining, we'd wait 15 min, another guy joined, waited longer, the first guy gave up and left group, waited longer, the second guy left.. and that was kind of all the patience I had for that. It doesn't help that my personal reward level is like 30. So I can't even open all the dailies and recommended for tier 2, so it's bad for me to start the group to begin with.

(f100, f80, f20, has omnipot, cannot do cms, seldom going to fracs anymore, typical play time from globaltime+0 12pm to 4pm. Some parts of the American side seem to start waking at 4pm. Tried to level up with my alt accs while getting mps, then stopped )

If things are still the same as per 1-2 yrs ago, t2 was still fillable during my play period but depended heavily on luck - otherwise it is a dead town. T3 was almost impossible to fill. It worsened the further from daily reset.

I think the original intention was for players to form groups and climb the flvls 1by1 to unlock them - this is very time consuming. I seldom saw players doing this, and the lfg might stick there for a long time. The problem with this design is, it works at t1 as many new players are still here, and there is enough ppl who might be ahead of the lfger by 1-3 levels and thus willing to join. But the avg newbie player (excluding Exp players who are new only to fracs) does not complete fracs quickly, so this takes a long time, and it gets worse in t2 and T3 where the chance of meeting 2-4 other pubs who need the same flvl as you drops very badly. The only real chance is to find at least 2 other players who are able (play-time wise) and willing and committed to climb together with you.

The reality is most players only do dailies (once, and mebbe not even recc) before bugging off, and the main sustainable hope for lvling on t2-t3 is that your lfg finds a higher level player who can open the needed fracs - which also means that he won't be leveling unless his level matches the daily). It becomes really terrible the closer u get to that magical threshold that allows u to lfg in the next tier. It is also very fortunate that most ppl do not know how to check a player's flvl.

When my main acc was still lvling, we (3 newbies) had a low-T3 player who patiently taught us, and we 4 reached f100 together. Trying to get from f60 to t4 involved her asking her contacts if anyone could help us open higher levels much of the time.

When I was lvling my 2nd out of boredom, there were a few times that I needed to ask my buddy to help on his main acc, because the lfg party also didn't have the lvl required.

On the other hand, t1-t4 has a marked increase in difficulty between tiers - both due to more mechanics/instab and to higher dmg/hp. Merging everything into 2 bands may harm players instead - only a skilled newbie would benefit from it - because it causes future parties to become diluted in strength. It also leads to players being potentially carried to the point that they are in way over their head - and end up being kicked repeatedly due to causing failure.

Adding new harder fracs, and making previously easy fracs harder, with no increase in reward, also makes the avg frac experience crappier for preskilled players. The rewards really only start coming in T3 (asc chests, pristine relics).

Suggestions:1) allow players to load fracs x above their personal level - I'm thinking 32) create a new repeatable achv, that let's players get 2 tokens for every frac they do that does not give a daily chest - mebbe 6 tokens nets u an extra matching tier daily chest, with a daily purchase price increase like with . This imptly includes the 2nd+ time u do a daily frac, since u would not get the daily chest from that anymore.3) players rewarded with extra tokens when playing lower tiers with players from that tier (requires at least 2 newbies)4) create some kind of notification system that pings interested players that an lfg in their tier is available.5) stop increasing avg difficulties in lower tiers

P. S. I still believe creating a special mentor squad would be a boon. 4/5 newbies plus a spectator mentor who can ghost and type safely and mark locations, and toggle to join battle with reduced dps to assist

Its why i gave up doing Fractals low versions are dead and no one bothers to join them.. The whole design is atrocious.

I play EU and I never have problem finding T2 groups and when I check T3 there is even more groups being advertised.

What? Why not just do T4s? You don't need to have a high fractal level to do T4s. All you need is AR, and you don't need to do fractals to buy AR.

@Rakan Buuyon.8576 said:What? Why not just do T4s? You don't need to have a high fractal level to do T4s. All you need is AR, and you don't need to do fractals to buy AR.

You can't see lfg unless you have T4 unlocked. And really its not a good idea to just jump in t4.

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Rakan Buuyon.8576 said:What? Why not just do T4s? You don't need to have a high fractal level to do T4s. All you need is AR, and you don't need to do fractals to buy AR.

Oh really? When I got started with fractals, it was always with a couple friends. We did T1s until I was all ascended up, then went right into the T4s. Never used LFG until much after that. Either way, I'm sure OP has one friend that's lvl 100.

@Rakan Buuyon.8576 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Rakan Buuyon.8576 said:What? Why not just do T4s? You don't need to have a high fractal level to do T4s. All you need is AR, and you don't need to do fractals to buy AR.

but its annoying... they have to open the fractal with you..go into one of the fractals and the leave if they don't want to do fractals.

and again...one shouldn't just jump into T4... the Instabilities can really catch new players off guard.

I don't agree with the OPs complaints tho. I never have any trouble forming parties for any of the tiers... but I'm on EU, So long as its before 8pm ST, parties fill quite fast.

What time are you playing? I find it to be fairly busy around reset. Both 1-2h before and after on NA.

Didn't have any issues with t1 or t2 while leveling my second account. I stopped at t2 since I just need some pages for buying an ascended weapon(made the marks because I forget about the time gated stuff. =_=). I was also checking out t3 and t4s for legendary collections recently and those had listings too. Wrong ones for my purposes but there were people doing them.

@Rakan Buuyon.8576 said:

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Rakan Buuyon.8576 said:What? Why not just do T4s? You don't need to have a high fractal level to do T4s. All you need is AR, and you don't need to do fractals to buy AR.

... and they'd have to open the fractal for me whenever I wanted to do them, I'd have to bug them over and over to help me and that's really irritating and straining to be that dependent on people. I've been there. had friends ho were new to an MMO and wanted my help leveling up and with group quests, help with gankers, etc. It was boring for me, and I got tired of them asking for help relatively quickly. I can't imagine that people will just be more patient and be willing to do this regularly enough that I get to a point where I no longer need their help, which is like 50 fractal levels. That's 50 fractals of them having to start the group for me.That's a lot to ask for from people. If it was just once or twice this wouldn't be an issue. Asking a friend to run with you through a dungeon story mode so that you can open the explorable modes later is no real problem, 20 minutes and it's done. Asking them to do 50 story modes so that you could open 50 different dungeons is a completely different matter and that's what the fractal system basically has you do.