Silent Surf CM is too messy - so messy that even good players avoid it

[Nephalem.8921]

1 hour ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

Yes most fractal hp pools are low. And yes this does make it boring since you can burn through ignoring mechanics and phases.

Too low? No.

The rewards are barely worth spending the time it takes to down the smaller hp pools and less trash. The increase in rewards for cm is not really that large of a increase to IMO justify the extra time and effort if I was to be going for -- most / highest -- value rewards for time / effort. 
You can get much higher volume and value of rewards with less effort and time doing other content. Sadly the "fun" aspect only goes so far because being disapointed by the reward tends to ruin many players feeling of "fun".

If the damage scaling had not gone so crazy over the years and there was a proper "carrot on a stick" then you would get your challenge and your reward and everyone would love the challenging content with great rewards and call it fun. 

This is a side effect of the core problem. 

CMs + T4 with a half decent group are 40-50g/h. 60g/h for statics.

The best open world farms are at 30 g/h.

[AliamRationem.5172]

6 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

CMs + T4 with a half decent group are 40-50g/h. 60g/h for statics.

The best open world farms are at 30 g/h.

Seems more than a little exaggerated to me.  Assuming a good selection of short T4s, no issues, no disconnects, nobody having to AFK, nobody swapping to the wrong template and having to /gg, and nobody from Asia taking 2 minutes to log back in every time they swap classes, I'd say an hour for CM + T4 is on the quick side of "half decent" and I have a hard time buying 40-50g from that unless you aren't counting the cost of keys?

[Nimris.3781]

3 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Seems more than a little exaggerated to me.  Assuming a good selection of short T4s, no issues, no disconnects, nobody having to AFK, nobody swapping to the wrong template and having to /gg, and nobody from Asia taking 2 minutes to log back in every time they swap classes, I'd say an hour for CM + T4 is on the quick side of "half decent" and I have a hard time buying 40-50g from that unless you aren't counting the cost of keys?

i dont remember last time someone went afk for more than 1min and it wasnt during trash/jp etc,   /gg because of wrong build is like ~30s at most,  character swapping happens during changing fractals so it shouldnt delay party much if at all  and disconnect can happen everywhere, so all that is a little exaggerated to me.

Nephalem.8921 is probably quite correct on his numbers, if you look at fast.farming, they list Cm+T4 as ~40g worth, but this is with Sunqua as daily (which is stupid, because not every daily set includes cm) and this is without silentsurf cm. also when i go to their site and check details they value ascended rings as ~2.5s which is way below what you get if you properly salvage them (and for daily chests ascended rings are not valued at all...)

so add loot from 1 more t4, silent surf cm and matrices from ascended rings and 7 fractals in total should easily get you 55g+ (hard to tell exact amount)

how long does 7 fractals take to do? for static group it can be under 1h, even if t4 are longer ones. standard decent pug group probably 1:10-1:20 (because playing with healer and not doing all skips available) so 60g/h for static and 40-50g/h for standard decent group seems to me very very probable

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 hours ago, Nimris.3781 said:

i dont remember last time someone went afk for more than 1min and it wasnt during trash/jp etc,   /gg because of wrong build is like ~30s at most,  character swapping happens during changing fractals so it shouldnt delay party much if at all  and disconnect can happen everywhere, so all that is a little exaggerated to me.

Nephalem.8921 is probably quite correct on his numbers, if you look at fast.farming, they list Cm+T4 as ~40g worth, but this is with Sunqua as daily (which is stupid, because not every daily set includes cm) and this is without silentsurf cm. also when i go to their site and check details they value ascended rings as ~2.5s which is way below what you get if you properly salvage them (and for daily chests ascended rings are not valued at all...)

so add loot from 1 more t4, silent surf cm and matrices from ascended rings and 7 fractals in total should easily get you 55g+ (hard to tell exact amount)

how long does 7 fractals take to do? for static group it can be under 1h, even if t4 are longer ones. standard decent pug group probably 1:10-1:20 (because playing with healer and not doing all skips available) so 60g/h for static and 40-50g/h for standard decent group seems to me very very probable

I don't know where fast farming gets their numbers.  They're pros at it I guess because I never see anywhere close to their numbers on anything.  Add 20g worth of keys to open all those encryptions and I just don't see how it's possible to make that much gold even if you do all 4 CMs plus 3 T4s.

[Nephalem.8921]

10 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Seems more than a little exaggerated to me.  Assuming a good selection of short T4s, no issues, no disconnects, nobody having to AFK, nobody swapping to the wrong template and having to /gg, and nobody from Asia taking 2 minutes to log back in every time they swap classes, I'd say an hour for CM + T4 is on the quick side of "half decent" and I have a hard time buying 40-50g from that unless you aren't counting the cost of keys?

An hour is on the slow side for CMs + t4. Static fast are 30min. Fast are ~45min. But if you want to achieve that you have to stop letting rifle mechs and other leechers into your groups.

2 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I don't know where fast farming gets their numbers.  They're pros at it I guess because I never see anywhere close to their numbers on anything.  Add 20g worth of keys to open all those encryptions and I just don't see how it's possible to make that much gold even if you do all 4 CMs plus 3 T4s.

Actually fast farming are casual fractal runners. Their times are quite a bit slower than static runs or even high ufe runs.

That is the issue in this game. Most people have no idea how a good run is even supposed to look like. Kick mechs on sight, block players who refuse to swap to power after 100 and 99 and sub hour runs are the norm.

[AliamRationem.5172]

19 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

An hour is on the slow side for CMs + t4. Static fast are 30min. Fast are ~45min. But if you want to achieve that you have to stop letting rifle mechs and other leechers into your groups.

Actually fast farming are casual fractal runners. Their times are quite a bit slower than static runs or even high ufe runs.

That is the issue in this game. Most people have no idea how a good run is even supposed to look like. Kick mechs on sight, block players who refuse to swap to power after 100 and 99 and sub hour runs are the norm.

I guess so.  I mean, for me, just walking through 7 fractals would probably take more than 4 minutes each.  Let alone dialogue, zoning in/out, etc.

[Nimris.3781]

2 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I don't know where fast farming gets their numbers.  They're pros at it I guess because I never see anywhere close to their numbers on anything.  Add 20g worth of keys to open all those encryptions and I just don't see how it's possible to make that much gold even if you do all 4 CMs plus 3 T4s.

them being pro and fast doesnt change the raw value of loot there is in cm's. their time completion is not even up to date, because with powercreep over years you can complete fractals at least as fast as they did if not faster. just take value of loot, divide by time you need for completion and there you have yours g/h

and what 20g for keys? o.O

7 fractals with god title will give us 70 encryption, you get 4x integrated matrice and 12 daily chests for a total of 52 free keys, you dont need 70 more keys to open that... just 18 more priced at 0.2g per 1, 3.6g in total...

also fast.farming takes value of integrated matrice (10xstabilized) + tp price of encryption, they dont include buying keys.

 

2 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

An hour is on the slow side for CMs + t4. Static fast are 30min. Fast are ~45min. But if you want to achieve that you have to stop letting rifle mechs and other leechers into your groups.

thats a bit of a stretch, completing 7 fractals in 30 min is just impossible. for CM+t4 static groups are at about ~0:50-0:55h depending on day, and very fast statics are just under ~0:50. 30min is way off the reality

[AliamRationem.5172]

12 hours ago, Nimris.3781 said:

them being pro and fast doesnt change the raw value of loot there is in cm's. their time completion is not even up to date, because with powercreep over years you can complete fractals at least as fast as they did if not faster. just take value of loot, divide by time you need for completion and there you have yours g/h

and what 20g for keys? o.O

7 fractals with god title will give us 70 encryption, you get 4x integrated matrice and 12 daily chests for a total of 52 free keys, you dont need 70 more keys to open that... just 18 more priced at 0.2g per 1, 3.6g in total...

also fast.farming takes value of integrated matrice (10xstabilized) + tp price of encryption, they dont include buying keys.

 

thats a bit of a stretch, completing 7 fractals in 30 min is just impossible. for CM+t4 static groups are at about ~0:50-0:55h depending on day, and very fast statics are just under ~0:50. 30min is way off the reality

That sounds about right.  I'm not fractal god yet, so I wasn't factoring in buying keys with integrated matrices.  My group did all CMs, T4s, and recs in 1h10m today, although T4 nightmare was 2 for 1, so call it 1h15m, which is pretty good for me.  That's with realistic no req normal guy "play however you want" comp, i.e. only one person switched specs, nobody pulled any crazy skips and we had two non-meta condi eles.  So I could see how a meta comp with some motivated individuals could get it done a lot quicker.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 1/10/2024 at 6:19 AM, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

i think alot of these problems come back to the normal mode, which uses mechanics that should never be used in fractals to begin with (like bundles). i still don't understand why they didn't just put zip lines between the platforms instead of a bundle and mushrooms.

Because the grappling hook is faster than a zip line. It is also more fun to use.

[Nimris.3781]

On 2/11/2024 at 1:56 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

That sounds about right.  I'm not fractal god yet, so I wasn't factoring in buying keys with integrated matrices.  My group did all CMs, T4s, and recs in 1h10m today, although T4 nightmare was 2 for 1, so call it 1h15m, which is pretty good for me.  That's with realistic no req normal guy "play however you want" comp, i.e. only one person switched specs, nobody pulled any crazy skips and we had two non-meta condi eles.  So I could see how a meta comp with some motivated individuals could get it done a lot quicker.

yes, the math is done for fractal god as its hard to do for other titles. your bottleneck is fractal relics, and you get daily more integrated matrices than you need for upgrades, so depending on what you did with them will impact how much net gold per day you get realisticly. the difference can be anywhere between 1-15g in value depending if you are already champion that have all matrices or no title new player that just started playing.

besides fractals are so long around that plenty of players already either have or are close to fractal god

my group skipped yesterday due to connection issues so cant tell my completion time, but yesterday was fast day indeed, cm in daily + aetherblade

[ArcanistSeven.8720]

On 1/10/2024 at 10:32 AM, SidewayS.3789 said:

 so expect round forms to fit square forms.

But the semi circle goes in the square hole.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Just wanna drop another response and refresh this topic.

After ANOTHER 4+ hour session of trying to complete this stupid title achievement with no success, it needs to be done.

Always 1 person fails. Even when you have a group of good players, 1 person always dies due to sloppy designed mechanics. This fractal is too reliant around ultra precise actions which is impractical with small ping spikes which everyone gets "resulting in getting hit by eye when it looks like on your screen you're standing away" stuff like that, as well as just generally buggy stupid mechanics that fail randomly.

The worst part is that people in CM groups want to check for NA title even though NA groups always have 1 guy that fails almost every single run. I can't tell you how many times I've completed this fractal by lying and getting into CM groups that let you stay, but I cannot get this title because it is impractical to do. It honestly makes me wonder if most people are running hacks just to get this title so they can get into groups. During two completion runs today, I seen two people running speed hack to make sure they could position correctly. 

I wish people wouldn't ask for this title during CM runs because there are many people out there who can complete this fractal smoothly, but cannot get this title because there is always 1 thing that goes wrong every run and it isn't even their fault.

This fractal is sloppy dumb stupid bad design and encourages biased gating of who can join CM groups based off an impractical judgement from a title. It looks to me that no one goes in and gets this title out of personal skill/knowledge of mechanics, but rather that you just grind enough completion runs until you "get lucky" and that 1 person doesn't fail due to some jank ping spike or buggy mechanic.

Arenanet, if you don't want to smooth out this disgustingly poorly designed fractal, just remove the NA title so people aren't gating fractal groups base on something that requires grinding dumb luck to achieve. I mean it's similar to posting an LFG that says: "must have rolled a perm hair-kit out of BL Chest to join this group". This NA title is just RNG based, even for excellent players. If you aren't rolling in some elite fractal guild and are using LFG to do this, it's just impractical and unrealistic to achieve this title.

I'd like to point out I have 32,000 APs, I've played for 12 years, made my account on day 1 release, I've achieved every other pve title to be able to show for groups, and I've never once complained about the "practicality" behind any of them. In the past, using fractals as an example, the old titles for the older CMs made sense to check a person's title as they showed a clear display of a person's personal understanding of mechanics. But this NA title is all RNG and it's bad for community cohesion.

[Krzysztof.5973]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Just wanna drop another response and refresh this topic.

After ANOTHER 4+ hour session of trying to complete this stupid title achievement with no success, it needs to be done.

Always 1 person fails. Even when you have a group of good players, 1 person always dies due to sloppy designed mechanics. This fractal is too reliant around ultra precise actions which is impractical with small ping spikes which everyone gets "resulting in getting hit by eye when it looks like on your screen you're standing away" stuff like that, as well as just generally buggy stupid mechanics that fail randomly.

The worst part is that people in CM groups want to check for NA title even though NA groups always have 1 guy that fails almost every single run. I can't tell you how many times I've completed this fractal by lying and getting into CM groups that let you stay, but I cannot get this title because it is impractical to do. It honestly makes me wonder if most people are running hacks just to get this title so they can get into groups. During two completion runs today, I seen two people running speed hack to make sure they could position correctly. 

I wish people wouldn't ask for this title during CM runs because there are many people out there who can complete this fractal smoothly, but cannot get this title because there is always 1 thing that goes wrong every run and it isn't even their fault.

This fractal is sloppy dumb stupid bad design and encourages biased gating of who can join CM groups based off an impractical judgement from a title. It looks to me that no one goes in and gets this title out of personal skill/knowledge of mechanics, but rather that you just grind enough completion runs until you "get lucky" and that 1 person doesn't fail due to some jank ping spike or buggy mechanic.

Arenanet, if you don't want to smooth out this disgustingly poorly designed fractal, just remove the NA title so people aren't gating fractal groups base on something that requires grinding dumb luck to achieve. I mean it's similar to posting an LFG that says: "must have rolled a perm hair-kit out of BL Chest to join this group". This NA title is just RNG based, even for excellent players. If you aren't rolling in some elite fractal guild and are using LFG to do this, it's just impractical and unrealistic to achieve this title.

I'd like to point out I have 32,000 APs, I've played for 12 years, made my account on day 1 release, I've achieved every other pve title to be able to show for groups, and I've never once complained about the "practicality" behind any of them. In the past, using fractals as an example, the old titles for the older CMs made sense to check a person's title as they showed a clear display of a person's personal understanding of mechanics. But this NA title is all RNG and it's bad for community cohesion.

You haven't played with good players if someone always dies. 
This fractal is not too reliant on ultra precise actions that are impractical due to small ping spikes.
If someone got hit by the eye it was because he was looking at the add on some island. There is a safespot on the main platform, use it. 
This title is not RNG based. 

Predominantly bugged mechanic is the tether which can potentially cause a wipe, which they said was fixed. Still, there is a workaround to all the bugs. You do not have to be crème de la crème of the elite to get this title. 

[Nimris.3781]

4 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This fractal is too reliant around ultra precise actions which is impractical with small ping spikes which everyone gets "resulting in getting hit by eye when it looks like on your screen you're standing away"

you lost me in the very first paragraph.

eye is solid 5-6s long cast, thats enough time to make it to the edge with cripple... if that requires "ultra precise actions" that can be ruined by ping spikes (lol) than i dont know what to tell you... maybe its time to retire from gaming?

[AliamRationem.5172]

7 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Just wanna drop another response and refresh this topic.

After ANOTHER 4+ hour session of trying to complete this stupid title achievement with no success, it needs to be done.

Always 1 person fails. Even when you have a group of good players, 1 person always dies due to sloppy designed mechanics. This fractal is too reliant around ultra precise actions which is impractical with small ping spikes which everyone gets "resulting in getting hit by eye when it looks like on your screen you're standing away" stuff like that, as well as just generally buggy stupid mechanics that fail randomly.

The worst part is that people in CM groups want to check for NA title even though NA groups always have 1 guy that fails almost every single run. I can't tell you how many times I've completed this fractal by lying and getting into CM groups that let you stay, but I cannot get this title because it is impractical to do. It honestly makes me wonder if most people are running hacks just to get this title so they can get into groups. During two completion runs today, I seen two people running speed hack to make sure they could position correctly. 

I wish people wouldn't ask for this title during CM runs because there are many people out there who can complete this fractal smoothly, but cannot get this title because there is always 1 thing that goes wrong every run and it isn't even their fault.

This fractal is sloppy dumb stupid bad design and encourages biased gating of who can join CM groups based off an impractical judgement from a title. It looks to me that no one goes in and gets this title out of personal skill/knowledge of mechanics, but rather that you just grind enough completion runs until you "get lucky" and that 1 person doesn't fail due to some jank ping spike or buggy mechanic.

Arenanet, if you don't want to smooth out this disgustingly poorly designed fractal, just remove the NA title so people aren't gating fractal groups base on something that requires grinding dumb luck to achieve. I mean it's similar to posting an LFG that says: "must have rolled a perm hair-kit out of BL Chest to join this group". This NA title is just RNG based, even for excellent players. If you aren't rolling in some elite fractal guild and are using LFG to do this, it's just impractical and unrealistic to achieve this title.

I'd like to point out I have 32,000 APs, I've played for 12 years, made my account on day 1 release, I've achieved every other pve title to be able to show for groups, and I've never once complained about the "practicality" behind any of them. In the past, using fractals as an example, the old titles for the older CMs made sense to check a person's title as they showed a clear display of a person's personal understanding of mechanics. But this NA title is all RNG and it's bad for community cohesion.

It's not RNG.  The behavior of the eye mechanic is consistent, but it's not as obvious as most kill zones (e.g. a big orange circle or cone).  It would be nice if it provided a better indication of pass/fail state before the attack triggers.    

[Cyninja.2954]

20 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

It honestly makes me wonder if most people are running hacks just to get this title so they can get into groups. During two completion runs today, I seen two people running speed hack to make sure they could position correctly.

Ah the good old: if a player isn't good enough to beat the content, let's try hacking.With the usual result.

Speed hacks aren't needed, or any other hacks. What they will do is prevent a player from actually learning or improving by relying on this type of crutch. Thus having players using hacks essentially lowers your chance of getting players skilled enough to do the mechanics.

Here have some replays where players do not hack, do not die and complete the encounter as intended:

- https://dps.report/Xy0m-20240315-150133_kana

- https://dps.report/f7an-20240310-190530_kana

- https://dps.report/PpkJ-20240307-190941_kana

more can be found on Wingman if so desired.

TL;DR:

Speed hacking is no benefit on this encounter, since it circumvents and prevents players from actually understanding the mechanics and memorizing them since the hack essentially covers for their lack of experience as a sort of last moment bail out. This will go wrong often on a fight where knowing how to react to mechanics is important.

As mentioned by others, the actual mechanics have significant amount of time to react to, for any player which has learned the encounter.

Edited March 16 by Cyninja.2954

[Vinceman.4572]

On 3/15/2024 at 2:46 PM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I've achieved every other pve title to be able to show for groups, and I've never once complained about the "practicality" behind any of them.

Yeah, of course. Maybe now you have them. Titles like "Leaves no hero behind." (Shattered Observatory) was way harder to achieve in the beginning due to fighting 3 encounters with way less dps and therefore many more different mechanics. Or Samarog CM where you needed proper play of almost all 10 people.
Yes, now they are all very easy to achieve but back then...nope.
I did 100 CM 3 times with title success. All three times were unintended and 2 of them with randoms. The first one when I got my title also was achieved when the CM was buggy. You don't need players in perfection but you need people who can focus and concentrate. It's not rocket science.