New Fractal Dungeon "The Lonely Tower" Coming May 21.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Here's an early look at the Lonely Tower fractal, live on May 21! 

Immediately following the foundation of the Astral Ward, Eparch finally returned to Tyria to strike back against Isgarren's "betrayal"–this time, with a full entourage. Help Isgarren, Mabon, and Dagda navigate the crumbling halls of the Wizard's Tower and push the Kryptis back where they came from.

 

 

[Izzy.2951]

NOO! it has happened again, the new fractal is recycled content as open world. Really dissapointed, i would like Anet to deliver us new unique experiences and what i mean by that is: new mobs with new animations and mechanics, new unique maps, new assets etc...

 

 

Edited May 16 by Izzy.2951

[Arkaiden.9726]

As long as it doesn't end with a raid boss... cough "silent surf" cough

[HotDelirium.7984]

See now this is telling...the end of SOTO wouldn't be similar to this...us just killing Eparch with Isgarren. That'd be redundant I think? I dunno. I wonder if Peitha is going to consume him and Isgarren isn't going to have much involvement? He a bad CEO lol

[LichOverlord.6329]

While I hope that having the fractals directly correlate to an expansion's story isn't going to be a trend going forward (I liked having fractals explore places we wouldn't otherwise see that were their own self-contained stories, like Sunqua Peak in Seitung or Deepstone in the Depths of Tyria), I'm glad we're finally getting the details on what actually happened between Isgarren and Eparch in the past that made them hate each other so much, since this falling out was never really talked about despite being constantly referred to throughout the expansion

[LichOverlord.6329]

2 hours ago, Izzy.2951 said:

NOO! it has happened again, the new fractal is recycled content as open world. Really dissapointed, i would like Anet to deliver us new unique experiences and what i mean by that is: new mobs with new animations and mechanics, new unique maps, new assets etc...

 

 

We literally just got Silent Surf, a fractal with an entirely new boss (Kanaxai) who despite having waaaay too much health at least had a number of new animations and mechanics, an entirely new area beneath the jade sea with a ton of interesting visual assets, and a unique method of traversal via the grappling hook

I think it's alright if they want to reuse the Wizard's Tower as the stage for the newest fractal, as long as there's interesting mechanics and story to go with it - but yes, I would like to see the next fractal coming in the Summer or whenever the next expansion drops be more unique setting-wise

[LichOverlord.6329]

1 hour ago, Arkaiden.9726 said:

As long as it doesn't end with a raid boss... cough "silent surf" cough

That's unfortunately a symptom of the INSANE power creep that currently plagues the game - when you have some builds that do 5x the damage of others, it creates a huge disparity that becomes really difficult to balance around

The problem is when you balance a boss exclusively around the high end like Anet does, so that the top 5% of players who have 40k dps and higher can have a boss that gives them a reasonable challenge, then 95% of your playerbase finds themselves fighting against a health sponge that takes 15 minutes to kill on its own, because they can only chip away 1% of its health every 5-10 seconds or so, and so the fight takes forever

The vast majority of people can't practically don't do that much damage when not fighting a golem with perfect boons, and when it comes to an MMO, you need to balance around the middle-tier players, since that's the majority of your audience

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

3 hours ago, Izzy.2951 said:

NOO! it has happened again, the new fractal is recycled content as open world. Really dissapointed, i would like Anet to deliver us new unique experiences and what i mean by that is: new mobs with new animations and mechanics, new unique maps, new assets etc...

 

 

Fractals are all new fights, save for those that were LWS1 content adjusted for replayability. You're thinking strikes, which are all recycled content.

[Hotride.2187]

10 hours ago, Arkaiden.9726 said:

As long as it doesn't end with a raid boss... cough "silent surf" cough

After silent surf and sunqua I'm not even excited, it will probably be yet another slog.

[Astralporing.1957]

11 hours ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

I'm glad we're finally getting the details on what actually happened between Isgarren and Eparch in the past that made them hate each other so much, since this falling out was never really talked about despite being constantly referred to throughout the expansion

I'm not sure we're going to learn that. From the description the events depicted are going to happen after they've already had that falling out.

And it may not even be a real version of what happened then, but a very alternate retelling. After all, the informations we've received do not seem to match the history: The group fighting Eparch for example consists of Isgarren, Mabon and Dagda. Except from what we've heard so far, of the wizards we've met only Isgarren and Mabon actually are old enough to remember the whole beginning of the conflict with Eparch. Dagda likely should not be a wizard at that time yet. The one that should be here is not her, but Waiting Sorrow (and possibly Vass).

Edited May 17 by Astralporing.1957

[Fueki.4753]

11 hours ago, LichOverlord.6329 said:

That's unfortunately a symptom of the INSANE power creep that currently plagues the game

And that is a symptom that's not as extreme among the players in T1 and T2 fractals as it is in higher "difficulty" content and thus doesn't justify the needlessly huge HP pool Kanaxai got in said tiers.

If they do this again, they don't need to be surprised of even more people abandon those tiers (and fractals altogether).

Edited May 17 by Fueki.4753

[Smol.7985]

Make sure it's not an undercover strike again 😄

[LichOverlord.6329]

40 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And that is a symptom that's not as extreme among the players in T1 and T2 fractals as it is in higher "difficulty" content and thus doesn't justify the needlessly huge HP pool Kanaxai got in said tiers.

If they do this again, they don't need to be surprised of even more people abandon those tiers (and fractals altogether).

yeah, exactly - if you want to expect T4 players or T4 challenge mode players to pump a lot of dps and therefore make Kanaxai have millions of health on T4/CM then fine, I can live with that

but there's no excuse for him to have as much health as he does on T1 (and T2 to a slightly lesser extent), and I think them majority of players would agree with me on that since it's a common sentiment I've seen talked about time and time again since Silent Surf was released

Let's hope that Anet learned their lesson on that, and that whatever boss we get this time around wont take a half hour to kill or on T1 for casual players or something crazy like that

Edited May 17 by LichOverlord.6329

[Ashantara.8731]

22 hours ago, Arkaiden.9726 said:

As long as it doesn't end with a raid boss... cough "silent surf" cough

I loved Silent Surf from the start, in spite of the bugs it had, and was quite sad when it got nerfed.

I hope this one will be at least as much fun. I don't mind Fractals that take longer. 😉 

[Randulf.7614]

I miss the mystery and ambient storytelling of the original fractals and their core design. As long as the lessons from Silent Surf have been learnt though, hopefully this will be ok

[Luthan.5236]

A no-grind fractal would be nice. Some mechanics. Normal boss. And maybe 1 achievement tied to it. Like the classic ones. I fear though ... that they might give a separate category (with multiple achievements) again. (And then the CM that people can do x times to unlock skin purchase options.)

[Vayne.8563]

5 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

A no-grind fractal would be nice. Some mechanics. Normal boss. And maybe 1 achievement tied to it. Like the classic ones. I fear though ... that they might give a separate category (with multiple achievements) again. (And then the CM that people can do x times to unlock skin purchase options.)

If they're only doing one a year, a no-grind fractal isn't the best idea, I think. People that are fractal runners need something to step up to, and people who aren't fractal runners probably shouldn't have a say because they have a whole world to no grind through.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

I will add my vote of agreement to those who have already posted that silent surf hit points is too high in tier 1 and tier 2.

[Surelia.2651]

On 5/16/2024 at 12:40 PM, HotDelirium.7984 said:

See now this is telling...the end of SOTO wouldn't be similar to this...us just killing Eparch with Isgarren. That'd be redundant I think? I dunno. I wonder if Peitha is going to consume him and Isgarren isn't going to have much involvement? He a bad CEO lol

At this rate, I just want Peitha to pull a Deanerys and go cray cray on Eparch, and then on everyone else to turn the world upside down. 
Who's with me? 😂🍿

[Biziut.3594]

Yhh I am so tired of the Wizard Tower at this point. Might be becouse this repetitive white/gold architecture that is literally everywhere that is putting me off. Still just as some others said I would love to see more fractals not tied to the ongoing story. With original mysterious storytelling like Cliffside for example.

And if they really have to recycle something than I would love to see some battles from original gw. Like Abaddon, Shiro, Lich fights.

Maybe some fractals tied to the past lore, like norn exodus from north. Being a part of Asgeir party and making a charge for Jormags tooth.

Or tying some loose ends with showing conclusion to Malyck story. Or to tease us with it. Fighting throu first stages of mordrem only to find something vague and big and mysterious that would make community tongues wag.

Finding out what Livia was up for with the scepter of orr. She lived hundrets of years I bet she have some exciting stories to tell.

Maybe some insane battle alongside Pyre Frieceshot against humans, or since charr on humans fractal is already there than maybe let us sow some fear into charr while exploring some little part of Gwens life.

Or maybe some insane otherworld scenario that would vagouly show us what the Six is up to. Setting foot in their current domain or the totally another planet. Nothing clear. Only something that would make us talk and speculate on something other than current expansion for a change, to put a little fresh air, becouse imho for now, with how long streatched SotO is, I cannot help but feel that this x-pac is stale. To the point that I don't feel an ounce of hype I used to feel when mystery of a new fractal was slowly being revailed to me.

Thats my opinion in short. It feels stale and repetitive.

 

[Rumpus.1234]

On 5/17/2024 at 6:55 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

People that are fractal runners need something to step up to

Literally the reason T2-T4 + CM exist.

[Vayne.8563]

34 minutes ago, Rumpus.1234 said:

Literally the reason T2-T4 + CM exist.

Yep, that's true.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

I don't PvE (much)...but

You missed an opportunity to call this The Lonely Island.

[kiroho.4738]

On 5/16/2024 at 7:08 PM, Izzy.2951 said:

NOO! it has happened again, the new fractal is recycled content as open world.

Again? What are you talking about?

Just check the latest fractals:
Silent Surf - An all new fractal with a unique boss
Sunqua - All new fractals with unique bosses
Shattered Observatory - All new fractal with unique bosses
Nightmare - Setting designed after original LS1 nightmare tower, with unique bosses.
Deepstone - All new fractal with unique bosses.
Twilight Oasis - All new fractal. Endboss uses the same model as an open world boss, but has a completely different skill set.

 

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, kiroho.4738 said:

Again? What are you talking about?

Just check the latest fractals:
Silent Surf - An all new fractal with a unique boss
Sunqua - All new fractals with unique bosses
Shattered Observatory - All new fractal with unique bosses
Nightmare - Setting designed after original LS1 nightmare tower, with unique bosses.
Deepstone - All new fractal with unique bosses.
Twilight Oasis - All new fractal. Endboss uses the same model as an open world boss, but has a completely different skill set.

It's clear from the design that Silent Surf boss fight was originally made as a Strike, and just at the last moment got repurposed as a fractal in a hurry. That's likely what @Izzy.2951 had in mind. Whether something like this applies to this new fractal however, i cannot say without seeing it first.