Is Agony Necessary?

[Despond.2174]

I like it. It's not really a hard gate. It's so easy to farm full trinkets via Living World now, and with just 60-100g for some ascended weapons, very cheap cost to attune rings you can get 81+15(potion) AR and do everything up to T4 LFG. By then you should have figured out what you like and you can invest in armor for T4.

I think it's a reasonable step alongside LFG level requirements to get people trained into harder fractals. I worked my way up only using pugs up until T4, it's quite a smooth experience.

Also +5stat AR infusions gives people a nice end-game goal, something to work on for those who really want to min/max.

[Grok Krog.9581]

I think a solution to this would be to allow agony resistance on Exotic equipment, but not the +stat agony infusions

[Bugabuga.9721]

Also Agony gave us the "gift" of unique rings, where you couldn't have two identical rings to force people to only have one offensive and one defensive infusions :anguished: wish that part would be fixed...

[Astralporing.1957]

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

Is there another way to make the content difficult without agony?Agony is not there to make content difficult - the encounters are balanced around assumption that you have enough AR to reduce the damage to minimum. It's there to be a gold/mats sink, and to slow your progression through the content.

Is it necessary? Well, that depends on the qualifiers: for whom, and to what end. Just remember, that from the very beginning it wasn't meant to offer anything valuable to players.

[STIHL.2489]

@"Bugabuga.9721" said:Also Agony gave us the "gift" of unique rings, where you couldn't have two identical rings to force people to only have one offensive and one defensive infusions :anguished: wish that part would be fixed...

That's been fixed.. while you still can't wear the same rings, they removed the Offence/Defense thing, so you can +5 our way to +90 in a single stat now, as opposed to needing to split it up

[Faaris.8013]

@Talindra.4958 said: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 )

If they are playing this game for a while, they don't need ascended armor to do T4 fractals. In fact, I got enough AR on another account to do all T4s with exotic armor. You just need to invest some gold, that you get back later on. You can get max AR with ascended trinkets and weapon set and tear of alba. You need +11 and +12 infusions, sure, but you can split those up later for no cost, when you get the ascended armor through T4s. Since you can take them into T4s, they are not locked out by restricted LFG access. My guild mates took me into T4s with that account and it was no different than with my main account. Now I have ac cess to T4 LFG and can get into groups. Takes some convincing though with only 63 mastery points ^^

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right? Not to repeat what other guy said about amassing tons of infusions if you play regularly...

@Talindra.4958 said: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 )

If they pvp and WvW that much they shouldn't have many problems having the ascended gear (which is easy to obtain in both modes, and kind of standard for wvw), and should have enough money to buy infusions from the Tp, and if you want them to play with you so much, spot them a couple.That's what i do with my guildmates, i usually give them 2-4 +9's to start with and do Recomended fractals with them, or Recomended + the highest tier they can go safely in. Then i finish T4.

@STIHL.2489 said:

@"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.

You, i like you!

[Samnang.1879]

@"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.

This.

Sometimes I do lower fractals for recs daily, and omg it takes wayyyy longer than doing t4... takes like hours. Imagine if these people have access to T4 without doing some sort of primer to help them learn to make it in t4....

[Fluffball.8307]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost five figures of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Huh... Ok, i'll explain without big words for you:Person gears one character with shiny stuff and infusions.Person then does T4 Fractals all days.Person gets thousands and thousands of infusions (this person has 2000+ +1 infusions on bank and 40 +9 and 3 alts already geared with 150+ AR)Not only does Person get thousands of infusions person gets ~15-20 gold all days, which should cover switching your infusions for your next day, unless person likes doing not daily fractals, which then, should also cover for their own costs, because Encryption boxes.

Five figures of gold would be 10 000 gold or above, no? Maybe math eludes you, but, using +9 infusions per character (at ~9 gold on Trading Post), it costs 153 gold per character to get 150 AR. Which 9 (one character per class, more than that is useless, and it's strictly on you) it costs 1377 gold. Hardly five figures. And honestly, if you buy +9 from TP, and you're building 9 characters at once you deserve to be destitute.You need one character with 150 AR to do Daily fractals. Maybe if you're using a support build, you might want to get a second, dps character, in case you get someone else in the party with the same support type.After that, all you need is time... In the last 4 months i've geared 2 characters with full ascended weapons and armor only using Chests i got from fractals. None of those have the full Ar complement, because i don't really play Fractals with them. But rest assured, i could get 150 AR without even having to think about it, just pop in on my bank, and i can gear 3 characters with full +9 (but i'm saving up to get stat infusions).

Fractals are actually incredibly fun, especially with the right group of people. With the wrong group of people it can be extremely frustrating.

[STIHL.2489]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@"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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Nothing stopping you from staying at T1 which can be done in Exotics or T2 which, can be done with nothing more then trinkets/rings (which lets be honest is pretty cheap to get)

As such, You chose to want to do T4 or nothing, and without being willing to put in the work to prep for T4, , you get nothing. Which is how things should be.

A part of what makes Fractals a challenge is that you need to think ahead about your build, what you want to do, and how to be good at it, because, no.. it's not going to be simple, easy, cheap 10 min fix to allow you to swap around all over the place and test builds and then run into T4.

And quite honestly, I don't want people "testing builds" in T4 Fractals , you want to test and play with builds, do that in T1, where it's belongs. which you can do without any AR at all, feel free to test and play with whatever you want, play in exotics, greens, yellows, I don't care.. have all the fun you can handle. No requirement.

But when you are ready to move up.. get serious, get your gear sorted and get your AR locked in, and be ready to move up. Otherwise.. truth be told, you're not ready to be in T4 anyway, as you're still just playing with your build.

That is another thing like about AR, it removes the people that are indecisive about what they want to play from the harder higher tier content. My Guard has not changed in 3 years. Now.. I might change them sometime in the future, (maybe), but they are an old school shout guard, and while not Meta, it's still very stable dependable build, and holds it's own in up to T3 fractals, I stay at T2, because that is where I personally have the most fun. I don' need to be one of those T4 or nothing kind of people, and I am glad to give those people.. nothing

To me, That is the great part of Fractals, they have tiers (another thing I wish Raids did) they have T1 for everyone that just wants to play some fractals, and have fun, run test builds, or maybe learn about their new build, or whatever, get your friends stated and do some T1 with them. They have other Tiers that people can work up through, which stops that whole entitled " I should be allowed in your T4 group, even if I am not prepared for it"... which again.. I wish Raids did, where they had a hard gear gate.

Seeing Raids suffer tough that issue of entitlement of unprepared people feel justified to be allowed into raid groups, and all the social problems that arose from it, makes me glad that Fractals dodged that bullet, by putting in such a simple mechanic as AR.

Such a simple yet elegant solution to such a convoluted social issue.

[Fluffball.8307]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Huh... Ok, i'll explain without big words for you:Person gears one character with shiny stuff and

infusions

.Person then does T4

Fractals

all days.Person gets thousands and thousands of

infusions

(this person has 2000+ +1 infusions on bank and 40 +9 and 3 alts already geared with 150+ AR)Not only does Person get thousands of

infusions

person gets ~15-20 gold all days, which should cover switching your

infusions

for your next day, unless person likes doing not daily fractals, which then, should also cover for their own costs, because

Encryption

boxes.

Five figures of gold would be 10 000 gold or above, no? Maybe math eludes you, but, using +9 infusions per character (at ~9 gold on Trading Post), it costs 153 gold per character to get 150 AR. Which 9 (one character per class, more than that is useless, and it's strictly on you) it costs 1377 gold.

Hardly

five figures. And honestly, if you buy +9 from TP, and you're building 9 characters at once you deserve to be destitute.You need one character with 150 AR to do Daily fractals. Maybe if you're using a support build, you might want to get a second, dps character, in case you get someone else in the party with the same support type.After that, all you need is time... In the last 4 months i've geared 2 characters with full ascended weapons and armor only using Chests i got from fractals. None of those have the full Ar complement, because i don't really play Fractals with them. But rest assured, i could get 150 AR without even having to think about it, just pop in on my bank, and i can gear 3 characters with full +9 (but i'm saving up to get stat infusions).

Fractals are actually incredibly fun, especially with the right group of people. With the wrong group of people it can be extremely frustrating.

Good lord, learn how to understand other people's points. Infusions don't go on exotic armor do they? No? Right. I'm not reading that giant wall of text because you don't understand ascended armor.

[Fluffball.8307]

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Nothing stopping you from staying at T1 which can be done in Exotics or T2 which, can be done with nothing more then trinkets/rings (which lets be honest is pretty cheap to get)

As such, You chose to want to do T4 or nothing, and without being willing to put in the work to prep for T4, , you get nothing.

Which is how things should be

.

Exactly. I don't care about fractals enough to deal with the agony system and I don't expect the rewards. Which is how it should be. You mistook me for whining, when what I was saying is it's a stupid system and I'm just not going to participate. I don't care if others want to do it, I'm just not dealing with it. I'll go play something fun that doesn't require such absurd setup.

I think anyone defending the agony system already has all their characters that the enjoy playing fully geared up. Eventually the population of people willing to jump through hoops to play with you will die off though, and that's a bad system. Better to open it up to all where a healthy population can exist.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@"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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Huh... Ok, i'll explain without big words for you:Person gears one character with shiny stuff and

infusions

.Person then does T4

Fractals

all days.Person gets thousands and thousands of

infusions

(this person has 2000+ +1 infusions on bank and 40 +9 and 3 alts already geared with 150+ AR)Not only does Person get thousands of

infusions

person gets ~15-20 gold all days, which should cover switching your

infusions

for your next day, unless person likes doing not daily fractals, which then, should also cover for their own costs, because

Encryption

boxes.

Five figures of gold would be 10 000 gold or above, no? Maybe math eludes you, but, using +9 infusions per character (at ~9 gold on Trading Post), it costs 153 gold per character to get 150 AR. Which 9 (one character per class, more than that is useless, and it's strictly on you) it costs 1377 gold.

Hardly

five figures. And honestly, if you buy +9 from TP, and you're building 9 characters at once you deserve to be destitute.You need one character with 150 AR to do Daily fractals. Maybe if you're using a support build, you might want to get a second, dps character, in case you get someone else in the party with the same support type.After that, all you need is time... In the last 4 months i've geared 2 characters with full ascended weapons and armor only using Chests i got from fractals. None of those have the full Ar complement, because i don't really play Fractals with them. But rest assured, i could get 150 AR without even having to think about it, just pop in on my bank, and i can gear 3 characters with full +9 (but i'm saving up to get stat infusions).

Fractals are actually incredibly fun, especially with the right group of people. With the wrong group of people it can be extremely frustrating.

Good lord, learn how to understand other people's points. Infusions don't go on exotic armor do they? No? Right. I'm not reading that giant wall of text because you don't understand ascended armor.

Well, i'm assuming you understand that Ascended armor drops from several sources, and that you don't miss the point that you're supposed to do T1 and T2 first, get Fractal Relics, get rings and earrings, increase AR, and then get the items.Also you can share the same armor between characters without issues.And heck, I'll do the math for you again, because i just love to shut up people that talk without knowing wtf they're talking about:So a full set of Ascended Medium Armor (the most expensive one) with Viper's stats (most used, and more expensive than zerker's) plus a GS and a Longbow (just to make it more expensive, since weapons are kind of easy to get thanks to collections), not including Runes, since those vary costs: 424 gold 28 silver 5 copper at the moment i'm typing, costs will fluctuate with market (https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/a~0!b~1!c~0!d~1-73854;1-70641;1-75626;1-76710;1-72259;1-74357;1-70504;1-71007)

So lets make this an even 430 gold for a full set of Ascended Armor and weapons.9 Sets at this price costs 3 870 + 1 377 = 5 247 gold, that's 9 characters full armor and 2 weapon sets, full AR.Now Trinkets, you can buy them AT MOST for 10 gold a pop (plus magnetite shards) but i'll give you that, so 50 Gold per character =450 gold for all, so 5 697 gold, for full AR on everything. For the back you can use a crafter bag, which is inexpensive at ~2 gold to make, or again, i'll give you the most expensive vendor option at 20 gold each, so that's 180 gold extra.

So for your goddamn information 9 fully equipped full AR characters will cost you 5 877 gold TOTAL. Five figures, heh? Little over half of the bare minimum to be 5 figures. And you'd have to be mental to even attempt this, given that you don't need 9 characters with this level of gear let alone 9 sets of gear, since they're interchangeable.I understand both Ascended Armor, math, and the freaking truth.

[Fluffball.8307]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@"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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Huh... Ok, i'll explain without big words for you:Person gears one character with shiny stuff and

infusions

.Person then does T4

Fractals

all days.Person gets thousands and thousands of

infusions

(this person has 2000+ +1 infusions on bank and 40 +9 and 3 alts already geared with 150+ AR)Not only does Person get thousands of

infusions

person gets ~15-20 gold all days, which should cover switching your

infusions

for your next day, unless person likes doing not daily fractals, which then, should also cover for their own costs, because

Encryption

boxes.

Five figures of gold would be 10 000 gold or above, no? Maybe math eludes you, but, using +9 infusions per character (at ~9 gold on Trading Post), it costs 153 gold per character to get 150 AR. Which 9 (one character per class, more than that is useless, and it's strictly on you) it costs 1377 gold.

Hardly

five figures. And honestly, if you buy +9 from TP, and you're building 9 characters at once you deserve to be destitute.You need one character with 150 AR to do Daily fractals. Maybe if you're using a support build, you might want to get a second, dps character, in case you get someone else in the party with the same support type.After that, all you need is time... In the last 4 months i've geared 2 characters with full ascended weapons and armor only using Chests i got from fractals. None of those have the full Ar complement, because i don't really play Fractals with them. But rest assured, i could get 150 AR without even having to think about it, just pop in on my bank, and i can gear 3 characters with full +9 (but i'm saving up to get stat infusions).

Fractals are actually incredibly fun, especially with the right group of people. With the wrong group of people it can be extremely frustrating.

Good lord, learn how to understand other people's points. Infusions don't go on exotic armor do they? No? Right. I'm not reading that giant wall of text because you don't understand ascended armor.

Well, i'm assuming you understand that Ascended armor drops from several sources, and that you don't miss the point that you're supposed to do T1 and T2 first, get Fractal Relics, get rings and earrings, increase AR, and then get the items.Also you can share the same armor between characters without issues.And heck, I'll do the math for you again, because i just love to shut up people that talk without knowing kitten they're talking about:So a full set of Ascended Medium Armor (the most expensive one) with Viper's stats (most used, and more expensive than zerker's) plus a GS and a Longbow (just to make it more expensive, since weapons are kind of easy to get thanks to collections), not including Runes, since those vary costs: 424 gold 28 silver 5 copper at the moment i'm typing, costs will fluctuate with market (

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/a~0!b~1!c~0!d~1-73854;1-70641;1-75626;1-76710;1-72259;1-74357;1-70504;1-71007

)

So lets make this an even 430 gold for a full set of Ascended Armor and weapons.9 Sets at this price costs 3 870 + 1 377 = 5 247 gold, that's 9 characters full armor and 2 weapon sets, full AR.Now Trinkets, you can buy them AT MOST for 10 gold a pop (plus magnetite shards) but i'll give you that, so 50 Gold per character =450 gold for all, so 5 697 gold, for full AR on everything. For the back you can use a crafter bag, which is inexpensive at ~2 gold to make, or again, i'll give you the most expensive vendor option at 20 gold each, so that's 180 gold extra.

So for your kitten information

9 fully equipped full AR characters will cost you

5 877 gold TOTAL. Five figures, heh? Little over half of the bare minimum to be 5 figures. And you'd have to be mental to even attempt this, given that you

don't need

9 characters with this level of gear let alone 9 sets of gear, since they're interchangeable.I understand both Ascended Armor, math, and the freaking truth.

I was counting a support, power, and condi build. But YOU'VE WILDLY MISSED THE POINT. Ok great, it's only 6000 gold instead of 10,000 gold. I still need to make a full set of ascended armor every time I want to play a different build. That's a terrible system. Even the famously exclusive raids are no where near as exclusive as fractals.

Now I have more than enough money to do whatever, I want, I could play fractals. But I'd rather play things that aren't just arbitrarily jumping through hoops and spend the money on creative WvW builds or anything fun, rather than chores. And again, I don't really care if fractals ever change, but it IS a bad system that gates out the overwhelming majority of players. You have to put some serious, serious effort into just getting into a high level fractal where as every other game play mode you can just join with knowledge.

[Faaris.8013]

@"Fluffball.8307" said:I think anyone defending the agony system already has all their characters that the enjoy playing fully geared up. Eventually the population of people willing to jump through hoops to play with you will die off though, and that's a bad system. Better to open it up to all where a healthy population can exist.

The population in T4s is actually very healthy. You are talking about something you have no experience with, diplomatically phrased "you express knowledge a priori". T3 in comparison is the worst population you can get in this game. Those who make it through T3 and strive in T4 deserve a medal (or at least a title), that's the truth about it. The majority of players who do T4s is skilled and experienced, and challenge motes are more challenging than many raids. The day T4s open up for everybody is the day pick up groups die. I would never play fractals with the bunch that does T3s that let others suffer from their Dunning Kruger effect.

Everybody who does T4s has more than enough infusions to gear any character they have. You get almost enough +1 infusions per day to get a +9 infusion if you do the dailies and recommended dailies. 17 or 18 days of just playing gives a character enough AR. But you could also just buy the infusions because every run of dailies gives you 20 to 30 gold. While you guys are happy grinding Silverwastes or Palawadan for 23 to 30 gold per hour, we get this by having fun for 45 minutes max. I think I'm talking for many people who do T4s when I say: Thank you Anet for protecting us from noobs!

[Fluffball.8307]

@Faaris.8013 said:

@"Fluffball.8307" said:I think anyone defending the agony system already has all their characters that the enjoy playing fully geared up. Eventually the population of people willing to jump through hoops to play with you will die off though, and that's a bad system. Better to open it up to all where a healthy population can exist.

The population in T4s is actually very healthy. You are talking about something you have no experience with, diplomatically phrased "you express knowledge a priori".

I never made any comments about the population of fractals, but you confirmed my statement that the day will come when people no longer want to jump through hoops to play them. I could not possibly care less if T4 fractals die or if 100% of players play them, my entire point is that it's a bad system and I won't play it. People get so defensive about their beloved terrible system that they've had to suffer through they think any criticism is an attack on their effort, I think.

[STIHL.2489]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Nothing stopping you from staying at T1 which can be done in Exotics or T2 which, can be done with nothing more then trinkets/rings (which lets be honest is pretty cheap to get)

As such, You chose to want to do T4 or nothing, and without being willing to put in the work to prep for T4, , you get nothing.

Which is how things should be

.

Exactly. I don't care about fractals enough to deal with the agony system and I don't expect the rewards.

Which is how it should be.

You mistook me for whining, when what I was saying is it's a stupid system and I'm just not going to participate. I don't care if others want to do it, I'm just not dealing with it. I'll go play something fun that doesn't require such absurd setup.

I think anyone defending the agony system already has all their characters that the enjoy playing fully geared up. Eventually the population of people willing to jump through hoops to play with you will die off though, and that's a bad system. Better to open it up to all where a healthy population can exist.

No one has to jump through hoops at all to do Fractals, they can start with T1 with no prep at all, and enjoy that as much as they want. Since it takes a minimum of effort to get to T2, for anyone who even remotely enjoys fractal, I have no shortage of people to run with.

Its' a great system really, I meet new people all the time, and I enjoy talking with them and teaching them about how the AR system works, it builds a great causal PUG community among the lower Tiers of people wanting to help because they were helped, and the people willing to learn. Those not willing to learn, or demand too much too fast, yah, our community is better off without them.

Enjoy what you enjoy doing. don't worry about what you don't.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@"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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Huh... Ok, i'll explain without big words for you:Person gears one character with shiny stuff and

infusions

.Person then does T4

Fractals

all days.Person gets thousands and thousands of

infusions

(this person has 2000+ +1 infusions on bank and 40 +9 and 3 alts already geared with 150+ AR)Not only does Person get thousands of

infusions

person gets ~15-20 gold all days, which should cover switching your

infusions

for your next day, unless person likes doing not daily fractals, which then, should also cover for their own costs, because

Encryption

boxes.

Five figures of gold would be 10 000 gold or above, no? Maybe math eludes you, but, using +9 infusions per character (at ~9 gold on Trading Post), it costs 153 gold per character to get 150 AR. Which 9 (one character per class, more than that is useless, and it's strictly on you) it costs 1377 gold.

Hardly

five figures. And honestly, if you buy +9 from TP, and you're building 9 characters at once you deserve to be destitute.You need one character with 150 AR to do Daily fractals. Maybe if you're using a support build, you might want to get a second, dps character, in case you get someone else in the party with the same support type.After that, all you need is time... In the last 4 months i've geared 2 characters with full ascended weapons and armor only using Chests i got from fractals. None of those have the full Ar complement, because i don't really play Fractals with them. But rest assured, i could get 150 AR without even having to think about it, just pop in on my bank, and i can gear 3 characters with full +9 (but i'm saving up to get stat infusions).

Fractals are actually incredibly fun, especially with the right group of people. With the wrong group of people it can be extremely frustrating.

Good lord, learn how to understand other people's points. Infusions don't go on exotic armor do they? No? Right. I'm not reading that giant wall of text because you don't understand ascended armor.

Well, i'm assuming you understand that Ascended armor drops from several sources, and that you don't miss the point that you're supposed to do T1 and T2 first, get Fractal Relics, get rings and earrings, increase AR, and then get the items.Also you can share the same armor between characters without issues.And heck, I'll do the math for you again, because i just love to shut up people that talk without knowing kitten they're talking about:So a full set of Ascended Medium Armor (the most expensive one) with Viper's stats (most used, and more expensive than zerker's) plus a GS and a Longbow (just to make it more expensive, since weapons are kind of easy to get thanks to collections), not including Runes, since those vary costs: 424 gold 28 silver 5 copper at the moment i'm typing, costs will fluctuate with market (

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/a~0!b~1!c~0!d~1-73854;1-70641;1-75626;1-76710;1-72259;1-74357;1-70504;1-71007

)

So lets make this an even 430 gold for a full set of Ascended Armor and weapons.9 Sets at this price costs 3 870 + 1 377 = 5 247 gold, that's 9 characters full armor and 2 weapon sets, full AR.Now Trinkets, you can buy them AT MOST for 10 gold a pop (plus magnetite shards) but i'll give you that, so 50 Gold per character =450 gold for all, so 5 697 gold, for full AR on everything. For the back you can use a crafter bag, which is inexpensive at ~2 gold to make, or again, i'll give you the most expensive vendor option at 20 gold each, so that's 180 gold extra.

So for your kitten information

9 fully equipped full AR characters will cost you

5 877 gold TOTAL. Five figures, heh? Little over half of the bare minimum to be 5 figures. And you'd have to be mental to even attempt this, given that you

don't need

9 characters with this level of gear let alone 9 sets of gear, since they're interchangeable.I understand both Ascended Armor, math, and the freaking truth.

I was counting a support, power, and condi build. But YOU'VE WILDLY MISSED THE POINT. Ok great, it's only 6000 gold instead of 10,000 gold. I still need to make a full set of ascended armor every time I want to play a different build. That's a

terrible

system. Even the famously exclusive raids are no where near as exclusive as fractals.

Now I have more than enough money to do whatever, I want, I could play fractals. But I'd rather play things that aren't just arbitrarily jumping through hoops and spend the money on creative WvW builds or anything fun, rather than chores. And again, I don't really care if fractals ever change, but it IS a bad system that gates out the overwhelming majority of players. You have to put some serious, serious effort into just getting into a high level fractal where as every other game play mode you can just join with knowledge.

No you don't need to make a full set of anything, you can change the stats easily, it will cost you like 5 gold max a piece, depending on which stat you pick.I'ts 6000 gold for 9 effing characters, you need ONE, MAYBE 2 characters, thats counting that you have one geared to support, or you can actually have JUST ONE and a second set of gear for support (like mins/commander chrono/ viper mirage, or condi/mage druid and condi soulbeast). And you can share stuff between your characters!You don't know wtf you're talking about. So maybe don't.Don't wanna play Fractals don't. You're the only one missing out. No one else cares.The system works perfectly, and the fact that you don't play fractals just confirms that!

[Laila Lightness.8742]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Nothing stopping you from staying at T1 which can be done in Exotics or T2 which, can be done with nothing more then trinkets/rings (which lets be honest is pretty cheap to get)

As such, You chose to want to do T4 or nothing, and without being willing to put in the work to prep for T4, , you get nothing.

Which is how things should be

.

Exactly. I don't care about fractals enough to deal with the agony system and I don't expect the rewards.

Which is how it should be.

You mistook me for whining, when what I was saying is it's a stupid system and I'm just not going to participate. I don't care if others want to do it, I'm just not dealing with it. I'll go play something fun that doesn't require such absurd setup.

I think anyone defending the agony system already has all their characters that the enjoy playing fully geared up. Eventually the population of people willing to jump through hoops to play with you will die off though, and that's a bad system. Better to open it up to all where a healthy population can exist.

I say remove agony,ascended, stat infusion and mechanics give more rewards easy play thats what community wants high reward for little effort and is how it should be t4 should not be harder than t1(irony) reason agony exists is too first prevent idiotic mechs anet added to make sure prepare

[Lunateric.3708]

I'm fine with agony, I'm also fine with newer currency you can ask as req for CMs like unstable cosmic essences. It's a way to filter out people I don't want to run with if I happen to miss a person in my fractal static and it's also a quick way to confirm experience other than mist buff icons/omnipot pings or titles.

[Linken.6345]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@"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.

You know it costs less than 2 gold to swap out all your infusions from your gear, right?

You know you didn't read the full quote, right? I said it removes the ability to swap builds or change to an alt. If you geared up all your alts and alt builds, it would cost

five figures

of gold, not less than 2 gold. Even just kitting out my main and the 3 standard PvE builds with fractal gear would cost me something like 2000 gold, without checking current prices.

Or better yet, I just won't deal with the stupid system and go play something else. Fractals are fun, but not THAT fun.

Huh... Ok, i'll explain without big words for you:Person gears one character with shiny stuff and

infusions

.Person then does T4

Fractals

all days.Person gets thousands and thousands of

infusions

(this person has 2000+ +1 infusions on bank and 40 +9 and 3 alts already geared with 150+ AR)Not only does Person get thousands of

infusions

person gets ~15-20 gold all days, which should cover switching your

infusions

for your next day, unless person likes doing not daily fractals, which then, should also cover for their own costs, because

Encryption

boxes.

Five figures of gold would be 10 000 gold or above, no? Maybe math eludes you, but, using +9 infusions per character (at ~9 gold on Trading Post), it costs 153 gold per character to get 150 AR. Which 9 (one character per class, more than that is useless, and it's strictly on you) it costs 1377 gold.

Hardly

five figures. And honestly, if you buy +9 from TP, and you're building 9 characters at once you deserve to be destitute.You need one character with 150 AR to do Daily fractals. Maybe if you're using a support build, you might want to get a second, dps character, in case you get someone else in the party with the same support type.After that, all you need is time... In the last 4 months i've geared 2 characters with full ascended weapons and armor only using Chests i got from fractals. None of those have the full Ar complement, because i don't really play Fractals with them. But rest assured, i could get 150 AR without even having to think about it, just pop in on my bank, and i can gear 3 characters with full +9 (but i'm saving up to get stat infusions).

Fractals are actually incredibly fun, especially with the right group of people. With the wrong group of people it can be extremely frustrating.

Good lord, learn how to understand other people's points. Infusions don't go on exotic armor do they? No? Right. I'm not reading that giant wall of text because you don't understand ascended armor.

Well, i'm assuming you understand that Ascended armor drops from several sources, and that you don't miss the point that you're supposed to do T1 and T2 first, get Fractal Relics, get rings and earrings, increase AR, and then get the items.Also you can share the same armor between characters without issues.And heck, I'll do the math for you again, because i just love to shut up people that talk without knowing kitten they're talking about:So a full set of Ascended Medium Armor (the most expensive one) with Viper's stats (most used, and more expensive than zerker's) plus a GS and a Longbow (just to make it more expensive, since weapons are kind of easy to get thanks to collections), not including Runes, since those vary costs: 424 gold 28 silver 5 copper at the moment i'm typing, costs will fluctuate with market (

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/a~0!b~1!c~0!d~1-73854;1-70641;1-75626;1-76710;1-72259;1-74357;1-70504;1-71007

)

So lets make this an even 430 gold for a full set of Ascended Armor and weapons.9 Sets at this price costs 3 870 + 1 377 = 5 247 gold, that's 9 characters full armor and 2 weapon sets, full AR.Now Trinkets, you can buy them AT MOST for 10 gold a pop (plus magnetite shards) but i'll give you that, so 50 Gold per character =450 gold for all, so 5 697 gold, for full AR on everything. For the back you can use a crafter bag, which is inexpensive at ~2 gold to make, or again, i'll give you the most expensive vendor option at 20 gold each, so that's 180 gold extra.

So for your kitten information

9 fully equipped full AR characters will cost you

5 877 gold TOTAL. Five figures, heh? Little over half of the bare minimum to be 5 figures. And you'd have to be mental to even attempt this, given that you

don't need

9 characters with this level of gear let alone 9 sets of gear, since they're interchangeable.I understand both Ascended Armor, math, and the freaking truth.

I was counting a support, power, and condi build. But YOU'VE WILDLY MISSED THE POINT. Ok great, it's only 6000 gold instead of 10,000 gold. I still need to make a full set of ascended armor every time I want to play a different build. That's a

terrible

system. Even the famously exclusive raids are no where near as exclusive as fractals.

Now I have more than enough money to do whatever, I want, I could play fractals. But I'd rather play things that aren't just arbitrarily jumping through hoops and spend the money on creative WvW builds or anything fun, rather than chores. And again, I don't really care if fractals ever change, but it IS a bad system that gates out the overwhelming majority of players. You have to put some serious, serious effort into just getting into a high level fractal where as every other game play mode you can just join with knowledge.

You do know that you can play both support and dps with the same armor right?I do with my druid and only switch weapons and trinkets/back.Since armor dont give that much boost to stats anyway.

Havent tried 100cm but have done 99cm with no problem.

Why do you need both power and condi build on your toon anyway pick one and stick with it both do damage.

[Fluffball.8307]

For all of you making excuses about why spending 600 gold for a new fractal ready character is acceptable, explain to me why this is better than just an account bound system? I get that you want a "noob filter" but explain to me how a gold sink that means absolutely nothing to anyone contributes to your fun? If you can't, it's a bad system. If you can, I'll listen, but I am VERY skeptical anyone can provide a convincing argument other than "I already spent the money so it's a good system."

The level of defensiveness in this thread is off the charts. It's ok to change a terrible system, people.

[Fluffball.8307]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:You don't know kitten you're talking about. So maybe don't.Don't wanna play Fractals don't. You're the only one missing out. No one else cares.The system works perfectly, and the fact that you don't play fractals just confirms that!

I feel the same way about you. See how helpful that is? You're just being rude and obnoxious. And ironically I can almost guarantee I have played more fractals than you, and know more about what I'm talking about than you do.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Fluffball.8307 said:

@"ReaverKane.7598" said:You don't know kitten you're talking about. So maybe don't.Don't wanna play Fractals don't. You're the only one missing out. No one else cares.

The system works perfectly, and the fact that you don't play fractals just confirms that!

I feel the same way about you. See how helpful that is? You're just being rude and obnoxious. And ironically I can almost guarantee I have played more fractals than you, and know more about what I'm talking about than you do.

Lol, i'm the obnoxious? You've been wrong and defensive from your first post and still act like you're the one who's right and everyone else who's "defensive".

It doesn't cost 600 gold to get a new fractal ready character. It costs ~600 gold if you've never played fractals and never saved up any materials, or anything. Basically it costs 600 gold if you bought the game, used the booster and wanted to get a T4 fractal ready character.But that's exactly why there's Agony and the need for AR, so that guys like that don't just go on to the max level of difficulty, get curb-stomped, get kicked out of the party, and become embittered forum trolls.

Pretty sure you haven't played as many fractals in your life than i've played last month.