Is Agony Necessary?

[STIHL.2489]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:They should do the exact same for raids.

I for one was stunned that they didn't.

[ReaverKane.7598]

Hugh...Here's the deal, even if they remove AR, which they won't, because unlike some of the people here like to say, it IS necessary, and it IS a good thing.The people here clamouring that it isn't, that it be removed so they can play... Will not be able to play anyway. Because they'll get kicked out of parties after 2-3 attempts.Agony is there so that people ease into T4 instead of dropping head first into it. Especially people that don't already have a group to help them through the learning process.

I have a friend that has been playing for ~4 months. And he's full ascended with 150 AR atm.He's actually done T4 with me with little over 100AR. (I picked a day that was mostly old Fractals, so he could avoid the AR hits)

It's not a gateway to entry, it's a series of stepping stones that ensure you've put in an effort to get there. If anything, the fact that agony infusions can be sold is undermining the whole process.It used to be a gateway when at lvl 10 (out of 50 total back then) you already needed AR, and the only way to get AR would be from slotting infusions on rings, rings that only dropped at lvl 10 or above! Back then it was harder to get AR, and it did ask you to be almost flawless in your play so you could avoid Agony hits.Nowadays you can pretty much do the whole Tier 1 without AR, which allows you to easily get Infusions, and you can get items to slot those infusions from myriads of sources.

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:Question: Is agony needed or necessary?

Answer: No, it's not.

No question is should agony stay?Answer: no it should not stay

If it's not needed or necessary, one can presume that it also should not stay. Also, the question is in the title. It's also repeated from the OP in the first and second sentence.

@Mysticjedi.6053 said:Agony flavor wise feels justifiable, but is it really necessary? It kind of feels like an unnecessary gate to content.

That's three times it's referenced as necessary or unnecessary. So, if you're going to correct someone, please come correct yourself.

[MedievalThings.5417]

The content gate should be difficulty and having an organized team, not an artificial "effect" that really serves no purpose. T1 fractals should be easy. T4 fractals should be hard. Agony really serves no purpose other than epeen.

[Turin.6921]

At this point AR is more about giving you sth to progress for than an actual condition during a fight. It creates a kind of one-off gear progression ladder for fractals.

So it does play a role...But it is not there to make it more difficult. You can pretty much ignore it with the correct AR.

Its there give a sense of progression that would be lacking in fractals otherwise with only the levels.

[Talindra.4958]

@Silmar Alech.4305 said:It is a necessary gate to prevent total newbies flooding higher fractals they are not able to handle. I see it in my guild: from time to time we get new members and pull them into fractals to avoid filling our guild teams from lfg. We pull them too early in too high levels. We give them infusions so they can play the higher levels. They have enough AR, but they only die and are not able to contribute, because they are not used to the mechanics. It's no pleasant experience for all of us: we veterans carry them and they are only fighting for survival instead of fighting the enemy.

I saw it just yesterday: T4 Bloomhunger with 5 guildies. 3 people not really ready for this, 2 experienced persons. I and my friend constantly revived our teammates. Each 3 of them died 3 times or more, I still had the singularity buff at the end - on a full berserk Tempest. Every time Bloomhunger stomped, one of the 3 were downed and eventually died, because they died at places far far away you don't usually go. Same with Cliffside and the Archdiviner. Going with a team from LFG is much more pleasant and much faster. The 3 guildies should do T2 or T3 more before doing T4. Usually, Agony enforces this. Remove Agony and T4 lfg will start to require killproofs or whatever is necessary to prove that you are experienced in T4. Today this is implicit with AR.

Are we talking about players skills and AR ? Bcos not everyone with full AR can play well as a team. I hv seem many people without AR plays better in the team.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

Agony started as unnecessary gate, now transformed into gold sink.

[Bladestrom.6425]

its hardly a gold sink since its far far cheaper and trivial to get it now as apposed to originally, that is not the purpose of AR. The purpose is to give us a progressive goal that does not involve scaling our gear endlessly, avoids blocking players with low AR and has no impact outwith fractals. AR does all that nicely in a reasonably elegant manner..

[Fluffball.8307]

I quit playing fractals a long time ago because I won't deal with this arbitrary and extremely limiting mechanic. Stripped all my AR off and put on WvW infusions.

I made a thread about this that got a dev response and it was basically that it was inherited, it's not ideal, and it's not going away. I'm never playing fractals as long as it exists.

[CptAurellian.9537]

It may not be an ideal system, but if you don't play fractals because of AR, I doubt you'd be a dedicated fractal player without it.

[Fluffball.8307]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:It may not be an ideal system, but if you don't play fractals because of AR, I doubt you'd be a dedicated fractal player without it.

I am not much of a PvEr, but I did really enjoy fractals near their release. I have done hundreds and hundreds of fractals.

AR is a lot less than ideal. It's convoluted, prevents build swapping or swapping to alts, costs money and so on. I'm just not dealing with it. I don't expect anyone to cater to my opinion, I'm just sharing that I will never play fractals ever again as long as AR exists, and I am sure there are other players who don't appreciate the unnecessary gate to content. In response to the thread question, no it's not necessary and shouldn't exist. Unfortunately it does.

[Talindra.4958]

@Fluffball.8307 said:I quit playing fractals a long time ago because I won't deal with this arbitrary and extremely limiting mechanic. Stripped all my AR off and put on WvW infusions.

I made a thread about this that got a dev response and it was basically that it was inherited, it's not ideal, and it's not going away. I'm never playing fractals as long as it exists.

I missed the response .. would you clarify a bit more? What does it mean by inherited?

[Fluffball.8307]

@Talindra.4958 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:I quit playing fractals a long time ago because I won't deal with this arbitrary and extremely limiting mechanic. Stripped all my AR off and put on WvW infusions.

I made a thread about this that got a dev response and it was basically that it was inherited, it's not ideal, and it's not going away. I'm never playing fractals as long as it exists.

I missed the response .. would you clarify a bit more? What does it mean by inherited?

I don't want to speak too much for the devs, but the current fractal devs (which have apparently made fractals a lot better than they were) are not the guys that originally developed fractals. I suppose it's along the lines of instabilities being sort of redundant now that fractals are better designed as far as I understand it -- again just going off of what I read since I quit fractals.

[Talindra.4958]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@Talindra.4958 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:I quit playing fractals a long time ago because I won't deal with this arbitrary and extremely limiting mechanic. Stripped all my AR off and put on WvW infusions.

I made a thread about this that got a dev response and it was basically that it was inherited, it's not ideal, and it's not going away. I'm never playing fractals as long as it exists.

I missed the response .. would you clarify a bit more? What does it mean by inherited?

I don't want to speak too much for the devs, but the current fractal devs (which have apparently made fractals a lot better than they were) are not the guys that originally developed fractals. I suppose it's along the lines of instabilities being sort of redundant now that fractals are better designed as far as I understand it -- again just going off of what I read since I quit fractals.

Ah I see gotcha.. yeah I guess it can not be removed easily being a sticky parameter in fractal stepping and level setup.. w/o a complete rework .. but who knows the dev hv the magic one day xD

[Silmar Alech.4305]

@Fluffball.8307 said:AR is a lot less than ideal. It's convoluted, prevents build swapping or swapping to alts, costs money and so on.Sorry, but this is not true. If you play regularly T4 with your main character, you amass stacks over stacks of +1 infusions and the occasional +9, and you amass armor and weapon chest over chest. With these, you can create secondary equipment for your main as well as equipment for all your other twinks including high AR at very low cost. Your first 150 AR character is a bit expensive, yes, but the additional ones aren't. Remember you can change attributes of gear from chests in the mystic forge, and you can extract infusions from your gear at low cost.

The infusion and AR handling was convoluted and difficult while the max fractal level was 50. Since the update to 100 that brought the unified +1, +2, +3, ... infusions, it got much easier and almost natural.

[Mourningcry.9428]

Initially, AR served the purpose most people are talking about - gating + experience. This was due to the way infusions worked - simple vs agony. You had to earn the relics to buy your AR, no way around that given the high cost of agony infusions at the time only compounded this.

With the change to normalize all infusions to simply agony, the gate is gone, and is, for all intents and purposes it's a gold sink more than a time gate.

So, in truth, AR's relevancy is nearly moot at this point.

[Talindra.4958]

There are many of my friends or guildies (pvp players or dedicated wvwer).. who I believe they can do fractals with no issues... But bcos of the AR I can't take them in and who wants to go in and only to die? I believe once they tasted how speedy easy the run is.. they will turn to t4 daily too but I just couldn't make them fix thier AR

(Argh had to re-edit the words so many times due to autocorrect :p )

[Mysticjedi.6053]

Didn't raids weed people without agony though? The number of raid lfg posts today compared to a few months ago is down dramatically. Couldn't fractals be tuned to five man raid level at all times and we could skip agony? Then keep challenge motes and have trigger random instabilities?

It feels unnecessary based on how "hard" content is being developed now. Now if it simply can't be removed then it can't removed. There must be a better way to create difficulty and train then agony.

For those saying it is easy all examples come clearly from experienced fractal runners or from people who got help from experienced fractal runners. I tend to feel the system is cu.bersome, confusing, and annoying.

[Linken.6345]

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:

@xDudisx.5914 said:Agony should be account bound.

Nah wipe it away so all can come too play

All can already come to play its called tier 1 1-25 fractal level.

[Vinceman.4572]

@Mysticjedi.6053 said:The number of raid lfg posts today compared to a few months ago is down dramatically.

May be correct for OCE, NA or so because I don't play there. For EU this statement is completely wrong.

[Eramonster.2718]

What Mourningcry.9428 said.Agony is meant to gate players at start to progress together, not to add in difficulty. The players ahead will be slowed down to stack up AR giving chance for casuals to catch up. To prevent large skipping of levels to adapt to the difficulty as you climb.

That's the designed function, but right now agony is a moot, since majority has already reached the summit(creating a gap in between maxed out and lower AR players). Agony is still functioning as it is, but for those who were left behind, new comers or alts for fractal felt the surpression is no longer neccessary(ps : T4 dailies is still possible if the 4 others are willing to carry while you're dead) But right now, Agony and Asc is too deeply integrated into fractal to be removed (only acting as a gold sink for players to buy AR to speed it up).

@Vinceman.4572 said. Yes. There's a gap in how players take PvE challenges and even WvW/spvp between the 2 servers.

[Talindra.4958]

sorry post deleted due to follow up irrelevant to op :p

[STIHL.2489]

@"Mysticjedi.6053" said:Didn't raids weed people without agony though? The number of raid lfg posts today compared to a few months ago is down dramatically. Couldn't fractals be tuned to five man raid level at all times and we could skip agony? Then keep challenge motes and have trigger random instabilities?

It feels unnecessary based on how "hard" content is being developed now. Now if it simply can't be removed then it can't removed. There must be a better way to create difficulty and train then agony.

For those saying it is easy all examples come clearly from experienced fractal runners or from people who got help from experienced fractal runners. I tend to feel the system is cu.bersome, confusing, and annoying.

Yes.. But agony stops people from trying to do their first Fractal Run at T4.. and forces them to start from the beginning at T1, and also be fully geared in ascended before they hit T4.

And no.. at the start the system was not easy.. that was part of the point.. if a player could not be bothered to learn about AR, then, there is good chance they were not going to bother to 'get gud' at learning the fractal mechanic to be effective at T4.

AR solved a lot of social issues. Which is why I like it. I do T2, even if I have 150 AR.. because T2 is where I am comfortable, by being forced to work up the ranks, I learned where to stop, which I think is a great game mechanic.

I really wish Raids had done the same thing to be honest, like had a starting 160 AR requirement, It would have solved all the social issues with people thinking they should just be allowed into a raid group, when they were woefully unprepared for them.

So now as opposed to a nice effective in-game mechanic, like AR, that weened out the the less then serious, we have DPS meters, Gear checks, KP's.. Li's links.. title checks.. and all this other stupid stuff.. blah.. blah.. blah.. AR would have solved most of that.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

It's not necessary to be the way it is, but it's necessary to slow down player progression while they learn fractals.

But since it can be bought directly and skip right to fractal 100 without learning, it could use some changing. Like removing it from upgrades and instead making it a progressive account-wide effect like the account luck.

[CptAurellian.9537]

That would take very careful consideration, though. If you remove character AR and require too much AR to reach account-wide 150, you'll screw over people who bring their first character into fractals. If you require too little (which will be almost certainly be the case to avoid the first problem) and don't have a good secondary system for all the then superfluous AR, you'll make a lot of people very angry.