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

[Kwith.8321]

Sunqua Peak, Silent Surf, and now this one are ones that I will actively avoid at all costs. I don't feel like wasting my time hitting something that has a ridiculous amount of HP simply to artificially extend the play time of it.

Remember ANet, this is a FRACTAL not a RAID.

[Mic.1897]

6 hours ago, Kwith.8321 said:

Sunqua Peak, Silent Surf, and now this one are ones that I will actively avoid at all costs. I don't feel like wasting my time hitting something that has a ridiculous amount of HP simply to artificially extend the play time of it.

Remember ANet, this is a FRACTAL not a RAID.

Fractals were literally designed to be like Sunqua/Silent/Lonely/Shattered/etc. 

The older ones die so quickly because of power creep over time, and ANet hasn't taken the time to adjust them. If anything, Mai Trin and Molten Boss need a health increase.

This new normal of AFK your dailies in 40min is not how the game is meant to be played sorry lol

[Fueki.4753]

1 hour ago, Mic.1897 said:

Fractals were literally designed to be like Sunqua/Silent/Lonely/Shattered/etc. 

The older ones die so quickly because of power creep over time, and ANet hasn't taken the time to adjust them. If anything, Mai Trin and Molten Boss need a health increase.

This new normal of AFK your dailies in 40min is not how the game is meant to be played sorry lol

Originally, Fractals were designed to be three (or four on even scales) somewhat quick instances one after another. That's why the original system literally had us playing them one after another, without returning to the hub. Imagine having to do three or four slogs like Shattered Observatory or Sunqua Peak back to back.

Also, power creep has far less of an impact on the lower tiers, because many people in T1 and T2 tend to choose traits and weapons they think are fun to use, instead of optimizing their raw, theoretical numbers. Thus, the needlessly inflated HP pools are far more of an annoyance to these players than they are to T4 or CM groups.

The HP pools in T1 and T2 ought to be tuned with the players primarily playing those tiers in mind. Giving us what T4 and CM players think should be in T1 and T2 is the wrong thing to do and will just lead to people ignoring these overtuned fractals.

Edited May 27 by Fueki.4753

[Mic.1897]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Originally, Fractals were designed to be three (or four on even scales) somewhat quick instances one after another. That's why the original system literally had us playing them one after another, without returning to the hub. Imagine having to do three or four slogs like Shattered Observatory or Sunqua Peak back to back.

How is 15min a slog lol

[Fueki.4753]

16 minutes ago, Mic.1897 said:

How is 15min a slog lol

For an average T1 group without any T4 or CM player(s) mixed in, it's at least 15 minute for each of the newer fractals.

It's not hard to understand why many people primarily doing T1 detest the continuous trend of overtuned HP bars in T1.

And this applies to a degree in T2 as well.

Edited May 27 by Fueki.4753

[Mic.1897]

3 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

For an average T1 group without any T4 or CM player(s) mixed in, it's at least 15 minute for each of the newer fractals.

It's not hard to understand why many people primarily doing T1 detest the continuous trend of overtuned HP bars in T1.

And this applies to a degree in T2 as well.

Again how is 15min a slog lol

Also 15 forum complainers doesn't really qualify for "many people"

[Fueki.4753]

13 minutes ago, Mic.1897 said:

Again how is 15min a slog lol

Again, it's 15 minutes for each of those fractals. With four fractals that makes an entire hour. It's not hard to see how some people don't want to do that, when Arenanet could have tuned the T1 versions to more appropriately for the people frequenting T1.

And then you have to consider that it takes time to find players who are willing to do those fractals in the first place. Considering that not everyone, especially in T1, is interested in doing them, that takes a lot of time.

For the new fractal alone, it took me over half an hour to find a party. I don't want to know how long it'd take to find a party for four fractals of that kind.

17 minutes ago, Mic.1897 said:

Also 15 forum complainers doesn't really qualify for "many people"

It's may be only 15 players on the forums. But not every player gets vocal on the forums. The silent people just ignoring or sometimes even abandoning things always are a much larger number than the people that are vocal.

[Luthan.5236]

Did it on T1 - and I am more a low dps guy doing at max up to T3. This felt like a T3 Silent Surf boss. 😄 Had 2 high level guys in the party and ti took long. Either super hp sponge or we did wrong mechanics. (Mabye focusing on some attunements/orbs to boost damage - not getting all.) Earlier part was nice/easy though. The brothers sub bosses not too interesting - but also not too long. This won't get people interested in fractals though. 😄 If T1 is grindy and the mechanics boring. (Enjoyed the Sunqua and Silent Surf more. Mechanic-wise. The boss. Nightmare is fast to progress though with a fast to kill boss. And Observatory still the most boring overall. - in the pre-boss stuff.)

I'd say: Keep it up with the pre-boss stuff. That is good in the newer fractals. But for the bosses maybe way less HP - more/fun mechanics. This seems to have went into the opposited direction. At least in T1 it was basically from 100 to 0 percent always the same stuff. Just a ton of HP. The Silent Surf did more fun special stuff in between - to dodge and things. The Sunqua hat 3 phases.

Fractal Rush needed to get people to do this to fill up the older achievements (doing everythign from 1-25/25-50/, etc.) - then it might be skipped I guess. 😄 Except for the players that like strikes/raids and the T4 fractals and CM that might do it regularly including doing all the small sub-achivements in the own category.

Edit: And not - it is not about "rotations". T1 is about getting to know fractals in general. Experiencing the mechanics. And doing the boss while staying alive. In no way should maxing DPS be required to do it in a reasonable time. There are a lot of the "normal" fractals that are different - if they wanted people to max DPS they'd give those an overhaul - upscaling the hp of the bosses everywhere.  To avoid further weird  discussions I'm putting the troll the block list in case they might try to quote and bait lol. As always: ArenaNet has the data. They see how often the stuff is played or skipped. And they want to sell their game. Not making content for the handful of elitists. (Selling to more people = more money.)

Edited May 27 by Luthan.5236

[Randulf.7614]

Finally got round to doing it and.. my word that was long!!

I mean I actually enjoyed the fight and if it was a 10 man Strike I wouldn't mind so much, but as a short, 5 player bite sized piece of content... on tier 1 that is not a fractal I will want to repeat. The mechanics are all fine, it's just far, far too much hp. Double what he needs for tier 1

[Mic.1897]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Again, it's 15 minutes for each of those fractals. With four fractals that makes an entire hour. 

Which still isn't a long time at all for endgame MMO content lol

Any less time and they might as well not develop the content and give more log in rewards

[LichOverlord.6329]

On 5/27/2024 at 8:59 AM, Mic.1897 said:

Fractals were literally designed to be like Sunqua/Silent/Lonely/Shattered/etc. 

The older ones die so quickly because of power creep over time, and ANet hasn't taken the time to adjust them. If anything, Mai Trin and Molten Boss need a health increase.

This new normal of AFK your dailies in 40min is not how the game is meant to be played sorry lol

No, better yet, the damage ceiling needs to be brought down to bring a number of the meta builds back down to more reasonable numbers (40k is ridiculous) and then the few bosses that require that much dps need to be nerfed

Rather than buffing up 10 years worth of content to account for power creep, lessen the impact of the power creep - that just makes a lot more sense

[Mistwraithe.3106]

On 5/28/2024 at 3:54 AM, Fueki.4753 said:

For an average T1 group without any T4 or CM player(s) mixed in, it's at least 15 minute for each of the newer fractals.

It's not hard to understand why many people primarily doing T1 detest the continuous trend of overtuned HP bars in T1.

And this applies to a degree in T2 as well.

To be honest, the 15 minutes is a big underestimate. I suspect virtually everyone posting in this thread does at least T3 or T4 (or CM) fractals and have long forgotten how new fractal players fare. At most some of you might have baby sat one or two new guild members through some T1 fractals but maybe you didn't notice that the 3 or 4 experienced players would have been doing 99% of the damage and probably also keeping the inexperienced players alive by healing or resurrecting.

I play with a group of friends and family who are all new GW and enjoy the game but don't play it very seriously (other than me). We're at the point now were we can do T2 and some T3 as a group (I'm the only one who's done T4s) but I remember well the early days and wiping on various T1 fractals which everyone in this thread would expect to finish in 5 minutes or less.

Then there are the harder ones. Sunqua Peak T1 took us multiple attempts across several different nights before we beat it - we would have spent an hour playing it each night we tried. And we've never even tried T2+ Sunqua because of that (tho we did enjoy the challenge so I'm sure we will at some point). Similarly Shattered Observatory T1 we wiped a few times before completing it and would have been well over an hour playing it. We recently tried Shattered Observatory T2 (admittedly with just 4 players) and gave up after wiping 4 or 5 times, again after an hour playing. We haven't even tried Silent Surf T1 because the few times I've done it myself (with randoms) have been a drawn out slog and I don't want to put the rest of the group off (we're probably at the point now were it would be worth giving a go, it just hasn't come up).

So, yeah, I think most people in this thread really struggle to understand the perspective of a new player to instanced content and that 15 minutes would be an amazingly quick success for newer players on these more difficult fractals. We've improved a bit now but there was a long period where we would have been very happy with 30 minutes instead of the hour it often took for the most difficult T1 fractals.

You just aren't going to understand unless T1 fractals are all you play because that's the level your equipment, build and skills are at.

TLDR: Anet should definitely look at the HP of the tankier bosses at the T1 fractal level, particularly Silent Surf and Lonely Tower. No need to touch T3, T4 or CM.

Surely Anet must have metrics which allow them to see what fractals people who have played < 50 or < 100 fractals are completing and I guarantee that Shattered Observatory, Sunqua Peak and Silent Surf appear very few times in the list (and soon to be Lonely Tower from the sounds of it). To an extent that's fine, particularly Sunqua Peak as it's an introduction to more strike/raid like mechanics, but for Silent Surf and Lonely Tower a lot of it is just from overly tanky bosses.

 

 

Edited May 29 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Fueki.4753]

9 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

To be honest, the 15 minutes is a big underestimate. I suspect virtually everyone posting in this thread does at least T3 or T4 (or CM) fractals and have long forgotten how new fractal players fare. At most some of you might have baby sat one or two new guild members through some T1 fractals but maybe you didn't notice that the 3 or 4 experienced players would have been doing 99% of the damage and probably also keeping the inexperienced players alive by healing or resurrecting.

I play with a group of friends and family who are all new GW and enjoy the game but don't play it very seriously (other than me). We're at the point now were we can do T2 and some T3 as a group (I'm the only one who's done T4s) but I remember well the early days and wiping on various T1 fractals which everyone in this thread would expect to finish in 5 minutes or less.

Then there are the harder ones. Sunqua Peak T1 took us multiple attempts across several different nights before we beat it - we would have spent an hour playing it each night we tried. And we've never even tried T2+ Sunqua because of that (tho we did enjoy the challenge so I'm sure we will at some point). Similarly Shattered Observatory T1 we wiped a few times before completing it and would have been well over an hour playing it. We recently tried Shattered Observatory T2 (admittedly with just 4 players) and gave up after wiping 4 or 5 times, again after an hour playing. We haven't even tried Silent Surf T1 because the few times I've done it myself (with randoms) have been a drawn out slog and I don't want to put the rest of the group off (we're probably at the point now were it would be worth giving a go, it just hasn't come up).

So, yeah, I think most people in this thread really struggle to understand the perspective of a new player to instanced content and that 15 minutes would be an amazingly quick success for newer players on these more difficult fractals. We've improved a bit now but there was a long period where we would have been very happy with 30 minutes instead of the hour it often took for the most difficult T1 fractals.

You just aren't going to understand unless T1 fractals are all you play because that's the level your equipment, build and skills are at.

TLDR: Anet should definitely look at the HP of the tankier bosses at the T1 fractal level, particularly Silent Surf and Lonely Tower. No need to touch T3, T4 or CM.

Surely Anet must have metrics which allow them to see what fractals people who have played < 50 or < 100 fractals are completing and I guarantee that Shattered Observatory, Sunqua Peak and Silent Surf appear very few times in the list (and soon to be Lonely Tower from the sounds of it). To an extent that's fine, particularly Sunqua Peak as it's an introduction to more strike/raid like mechanics, but for Silent Surf and Lonely Tower a lot of it is just from overly tanky bosses.

That's why I put at least in bold.

Although I disagree with the notion that only new players have issues with the bloated HP bars..

There can very well be experienced and skilled T1 players, whose output simply isn't as high, because they prioritize using traits and weapons they consider fun to use.

Big numbers are merely a result of one's chosen build. Big numbers are not an indicator of experience or capability.

[Arkaiden.9726]

So, when I commented earlier on how it hopefully won't be another raid boss, I was referring to how Silent Surf feel like a jump from any other fractal in terms of boss hp.  Thankfully, they didn't copy Silent Surf, they copied Cerus CM!  (play laugh track)

In all seriousness, I started fractals about 9 months ago in order to acquire Ad Infinitum.  I worked my way up to Personal Fractal Level 100.  I am not an amazing player, but I have done every fractal CM several times, including Silent Surf.  When Lonely Tower came out, I ran it on T1 because I wanted to see what it was like and learn the mechanics.  At T1, it felt like Eparch had as much health as his Silent Surf counterpart.  In addition, the fight felt very repetitive.  With Silent Surf, there are distinct phases where mechanics are added that make the fight feel more dynamic, as if Kanaxai, the boss of that fractal, was getting more desperate the longer the fight goes on.  With Eparch, it feels less like a dynamic roller coaster and more like an annoying merry-go-round, as nothing really changes.  I don't really think it is a difficult fight all on its own, I more think it is a boring fight against a boss with way too much health.  

I also noted a lot of people defending the longer fight time (15+ minutes seems to be what is most noted).  I have a full time job and four children, so my time to play is pretty limited.  That is a big reason why fractals are so fun to me, because I can jump on and commit less than an hour to play some fun content and get some great rewards.  As for the longer fight with Eparch, I just don't have the time to commit to relearn the fight with a new group whenever it comes up on the dailies and recs, so for now I will likely be skipping this new fractal when it pops up on my rotation.

As an additional note, I did try running it the other day with a group when it was the daily on T4, and in six attempts we only managed to see his health drop below 50% once.  Again, I'm not an amazing player or anything, but considering I have never had that many failed attempts on even Silent Surf CM or Sunqua Peak CM, it anecdotally makes me feel like it is overtuned at the moment.

Since people might also bring up the idea, no I don't have a dedicated fractal group, I always PUG.

[Xainou.1502]

Painfully cleared it on T4 the other day, can't say I enjoyed any part of the final boss fight.

LFGs already avoiding it also says a lot.

It's a skip from this fractal god until changes are made. I'd rather go do anything else for gold.

[Mic.1897]

4 hours ago, Xainou.1502 said:

Painfully cleared it on T4 the other day, can't say I enjoyed any part of the final boss fight.

LFGs already avoiding it also says a lot.

It's a skip from this fractal god until changes are made. I'd rather go do anything else for gold.

That's fine. Fractals aren't designed to be afk gold farms lol