Enough with instabilities

[CptAurellian.9537]

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:Worst part is the randomn weekly system.Go today to do swampland daily with a PUG and then tell me what happened. Oh, you have 2 "random" options for both swamplands:

Swampland 89 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+VindicatorsOR swampland 77 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+Toxic Trail

Looks like a non-issue to me. Take 89, get your movement right, profit. Flux bomb and vindicators are irrelevant instabilities. Pugs who are too stupid to deal with swamp+LL should not be the group stuff is balanced for.

On a general level: instabilities may not be an optimal system, but all the hate for them is undeserved. They aren't that bad. When the alternative is a crapton of work that would have to go into each fractal in order to adjust instab-free difficulty, I prefer that workload to go into new fractals. They already take long enough to release new ones, no need to delay that even further.

[Pirindolo.9427]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:Worst part is the randomn weekly system.Go today to do swampland daily with a PUG and then tell me what happened. Oh, you have 2 "random" options for both swamplands:

Swampland 89 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+VindicatorsOR swampland 77 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+Toxic Trail

Looks like a non-issue to me. Take 89, get your movement right, profit. Flux bomb and vindicators are irrelevant instabilities. Pugs who are too stupid to deal with swamp+LL should not be the group stuff is balanced for.

On a general level: instabilities may not be an optimal system, but all the hate for them is undeserved. They aren't that bad. When the alternative is a crapton of work that would have to go into each fractal in order to adjust instab-free difficulty, I prefer that workload to go into new fractals. They already take long enough to release new ones, no need to delay that even further.

The easy thing for a person is the impossibe thing for another one. Elite players find everything easy. And they are elite because they are only a small % of the total playerbase. Oh, and calling "stupid" the pugs that cannot deal with "this" or "that" also makes you a top elite also.

[CptAurellian.9537]

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Worst part is the randomn weekly system.Go today to do swampland daily with a PUG and then tell me what happened. Oh, you have 2 "random" options for both swamplands:

Swampland 89 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+VindicatorsOR swampland 77 daily: Last Laugh+Flux Bomb+Toxic Trail

Looks like a non-issue to me. Take 89, get your movement right, profit. Flux bomb and vindicators are irrelevant instabilities. Pugs who are too stupid to deal with swamp+LL should not be the group stuff is balanced for.

On a general level: instabilities may not be an optimal system, but all the hate for them is undeserved. They aren't that bad. When the alternative is a crapton of work that would have to go into each fractal in order to adjust instab-free difficulty, I prefer that workload to go into new fractals. They already take long enough to release new ones, no need to delay that even further.

The easy thing for a person is the impossibe thing for another one. Elite players find everything easy. And they are elite because they are only a small % of the total playerbase. Oh, and calling "stupid" the pugs that cannot deal with "this" or "that" also makes you a top elite also.

If finding WASD and one's dodge button makes someone elite, then yes, please balance stuff for the elite.

[Feanor.2358]

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Almost 100% agree... almost. Many good players will struggle to finish today's swampland 77, at least spending 2x or 3x the time they usually spend on it. But you are right, for top players instabilities add annoyance add no extra difficulty. For not so good players, they add annoyance and ragequits galore.

Nah, 77 is a non-issue. You just have to move & dodge constantly which is easily possible inside the wisp circle and AoE-burst the trash mobs before too many can reach the middle/stack of the players. Good players won't struggle and a lot of them & other groups will have a druid with them cleansing the toxic trail poison and overhealing the rest.

You don't run T4 with pugs, I see.

I pug t4+cm daily. Nothing is really an issue. Some combos are annoying, but that's all. If you're unhappy with the skill of the players you're getting, set higher requirements for your groups. And, of course, meet those same requirements.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Please, remove them or completely change the system.

They have plans to change the system.(But those plans

do not

include making them easy for PUGs, only making them more interesting and fun.)

Just to remove (or change) the random instability annoyances.

You missed the relevant part not in parentheses: they already have plans to change things.

[Pirindolo.9427]

I thought that regular T4 were something that any average PUG could run, but after running thousands of them I realize that I was so wrong. T4 (including the random instabilities) are only for non-stupid players.Helpful comments: go to T3, WASD+dodge, get better people...

Enjoy it, folks.

[Belorn.2659]

It used to be that daily fractals had instant death hits. You missed a mechanic and you died. You did not dodge and you died. Then they changed it so bossed had more health, lower damage spikes and they introduced instabilities.

Is the "new" way better than the old way? I don't know. Maybe they could create a new super instability that returned bosses to the old state and inactivated the other instabilities, and have that super instability be part of the instability rotation.

[thrag.9740]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:

All the people that ran fractals in that day that (due to a bug that was quickly and sadly fixed) there were no instabilities, said the same: best fractal experience ever.

Let me rephrase that in was was actually meant:"Easiest free loot ever, that was great and fun because we got the same amount of rewards for a fraction of the effort."

How about we just add a button which people press and they get gold and rewards?

On a more serious note, the increased difficulty is meant for just that: a justification for the high rewards in fractals.

Yes, some instabilities are more annoying and/or challenging than others and that should or could get addressed, I doubt removing them would be a good idea.

I disagree with your assessment. Raids have difficulty that many of us love, but they are not nearly as annoying. Social awkwardness makes you hate your teammates. Sure it can be annoying if a teammate fails a mechanic in a raid, but idk, for me, social awkwardness just feels different. Social awkwardness feels annoying not fun. The same is true of other instabilities. Running a flux bomb out isn't fun, its just tedious. There is difficulty that is fun and difficulty that is annoying (or tedious).

When someone complains about annoying difficulty, I believe your assertion that they hate all difficulty is disingenuous and you purposefully misstate their position simply because you want a sense of superiority. If people just want fractals to be easy, they could complain about something specific, like platforms disappearing at arkk, they could complain about the bullet hell at ensolyss. But they never do, the complaints are always the instabilities because for many of us, the instabilities may add difficulty but they just are not fun.

[Vinceman.4572]

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Almost 100% agree... almost. Many good players will struggle to finish today's swampland 77, at least spending 2x or 3x the time they usually spend on it. But you are right, for top players instabilities add annoyance add no extra difficulty. For not so good players, they add annoyance and ragequits galore.

Nah, 77 is a non-issue. You just have to move & dodge constantly which is easily possible inside the wisp circle and AoE-burst the trash mobs before too many can reach the middle/stack of the players. Good players won't struggle and a lot of them & other groups will have a druid with them cleansing the toxic trail poison and overhealing the rest.

You don't run T4 with pugs, I see.

Since Mist Attunements have gotten into the game I've been running both CMs + T4s + Recs with pugs every fricking day until I got my Fractal God with rare exceptions due to heavy workload, meeting friends/family or some other rl stuff. I rarely ran with friends. I did that because I wanted to empathize the grind feeling for the first time in my gaming history. Yes, I must say it was a little bit disgusting (and I will never do that again because it's time consuming as hell) but the dislike didn't came from pugs, it was the grind. On the contrary CM pugs most often have 0 issues in T4 and barely wipe there. Instabilities only are a side effect, you don't even notice them in your routine until someone is dropping a flux bomb into the middle of the group accidentally (happens rarely from time to time). So, these pugs have no probs with above mentioned instabilities.

I admit that there are some casual T4 pugs that are unskilled/slow/not practiced enough etc. etc. so you'll have a hard time with them even if you are a top elite player. But even if you "only" are a decent to good player yourself and your mates are dying on the left and right side you should take into consideration to leave the party. Last week I tried Thaumanova with 2 different T4 only groups and both couldn't manage to kill the ooze - instabilities were no issue there. I left both groups because it was obvious that too few people understood the mechanic and the common strategies to beat the encounter although some of us tried to explain it in chat. That's the burden of cooperative online gaming - if your mates are not willing to follow or cannot execute a certain route/strategy it's possible that you won't succeed with them. It doesn't mean that the challenge is the problem it definitely can be the players.

[Raizel.8175]

@thrag.9740 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:

All the people that ran fractals in that day that (due to a bug that was quickly and sadly fixed) there were no instabilities, said the same: best fractal experience ever.

Let me rephrase that in was was actually meant:"Easiest free loot ever, that was great and fun because we got the same amount of rewards for a fraction of the effort."

How about we just add a button which people press and they get gold and rewards?

On a more serious note, the increased difficulty is meant for just that: a justification for the high rewards in fractals.

Yes, some instabilities are more annoying and/or challenging than others and that should or could get addressed, I doubt removing them would be a good idea.

I disagree with your assessment. Raids have difficulty that many of us love, but they are not nearly as annoying. Social awkwardness makes you hate your teammates. Sure it can be annoying if a teammate fails a mechanic in a raid, but idk, for me, social awkwardness just feels different. Social awkwardness feels annoying not fun. The same is true of other instabilities. Running a flux bomb out isn't fun, its just tedious. There is difficulty that is fun and difficulty that is annoying (or tedious).

When someone complains about annoying difficulty, I believe your assertion that they hate all difficulty is disingenuous and you purposefully misstate their position simply because you want a sense of superiority. If people just want fractals to be easy, they could complain about something specific, like platforms disappearing at arkk, they could complain about the bullet hell at ensolyss. But they never do, the complaints are always the instabilities because for many of us, the instabilities may add difficulty but they just are not fun.

Instabilities force you to adjust your gameplay to them and - in my opinion - that's good. It often prevents people - especially dps-classes - to brainlessly execute their rotation and forces them to develop at least some rudimentary situational awareness which a lot of people actually lack. Even if they sometimes are annoying, they serve a good purpose and thus, I don't want them gone.

Of course it would be nice if there were more funny instabilities like Mist Convergence, but you can't have everything I guess.

[Jahroots.6791]

Social Awkwardness be all like...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DfmDuOxcN8

and Flux Bomb be like...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFGeb-Qj-8w

[Glider.5792]

Due to social awkwardness, i alot of times automaticly avoid/distance myself from other players in raids/pve. This was especialy noticable when social awkwarness was on every high fractal lvl (not sure how long ago was that). I just find it interesting how this instability affected my overall positioning in multiple pve areas.

[Feanor.2358]

@Raizel.8175 said:

@thrag.9740 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:

All the people that ran fractals in that day that (due to a bug that was quickly and sadly fixed) there were no instabilities, said the same: best fractal experience ever.

Let me rephrase that in was was actually meant:"Easiest free loot ever, that was great and fun because we got the same amount of rewards for a fraction of the effort."

How about we just add a button which people press and they get gold and rewards?

On a more serious note, the increased difficulty is meant for just that: a justification for the high rewards in fractals.

Yes, some instabilities are more annoying and/or challenging than others and that should or could get addressed, I doubt removing them would be a good idea.

I disagree with your assessment. Raids have difficulty that many of us love, but they are not nearly as annoying. Social awkwardness makes you hate your teammates. Sure it can be annoying if a teammate fails a mechanic in a raid, but idk, for me, social awkwardness just feels different. Social awkwardness feels annoying not fun. The same is true of other instabilities. Running a flux bomb out isn't fun, its just tedious. There is difficulty that is fun and difficulty that is annoying (or tedious).

When someone complains about annoying difficulty, I believe your assertion that they hate all difficulty is disingenuous and you purposefully misstate their position simply because you want a sense of superiority. If people just want fractals to be easy, they could complain about something specific, like platforms disappearing at arkk, they could complain about the bullet hell at ensolyss. But they never do, the complaints are always the instabilities because for many of us, the instabilities may add difficulty but they just are not fun.

Instabilities force you to adjust your gameplay to them and - in my opinion - that's good. It often prevents people - especially dps-classes - to brainlessly execute their rotation and forces them to develop at least some rudimentary situational awareness which a lot of people actually lack. Even if they sometimes are annoying, they serve a good purpose and thus, I don't want them gone.

Of course it would be nice if there were more funny instabilities like Mist Convergence, but you can't have everything I guess.

Meh, that whole "force you to adjust" meme is credited for a lot more than it actually does. Stepping to the side to avoid SA/LL/flux doesn't change the gameplay. Knowing the boss will go invuln changes gameplay. Instabilities are just an annoyance, an extra random boss mechanic that is totally disconnected from the fight.

[thrag.9740]

@Raizel.8175 said:

@thrag.9740 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:

All the people that ran fractals in that day that (due to a bug that was quickly and sadly fixed) there were no instabilities, said the same: best fractal experience ever.

Let me rephrase that in was was actually meant:"Easiest free loot ever, that was great and fun because we got the same amount of rewards for a fraction of the effort."

How about we just add a button which people press and they get gold and rewards?

On a more serious note, the increased difficulty is meant for just that: a justification for the high rewards in fractals.

Yes, some instabilities are more annoying and/or challenging than others and that should or could get addressed, I doubt removing them would be a good idea.

I disagree with your assessment. Raids have difficulty that many of us love, but they are not nearly as annoying. Social awkwardness makes you hate your teammates. Sure it can be annoying if a teammate fails a mechanic in a raid, but idk, for me, social awkwardness just feels different. Social awkwardness feels annoying not fun. The same is true of other instabilities. Running a flux bomb out isn't fun, its just tedious. There is difficulty that is fun and difficulty that is annoying (or tedious).

When someone complains about annoying difficulty, I believe your assertion that they hate all difficulty is disingenuous and you purposefully misstate their position simply because you want a sense of superiority. If people just want fractals to be easy, they could complain about something specific, like platforms disappearing at arkk, they could complain about the bullet hell at ensolyss. But they never do, the complaints are always the instabilities because for many of us, the instabilities may add difficulty but they just are not fun.

Instabilities force you to adjust your gameplay to them and - in my opinion - that's good. It often prevents people - especially dps-classes - to brainlessly execute their rotation and forces them to develop at least some rudimentary situational awareness which a lot of people actually lack. Even if they sometimes are annoying, they serve a good purpose and thus, I don't want them gone.

Of course it would be nice if there were more funny instabilities like Mist Convergence, but you can't have everything I guess.

Any how is that specific to instabilities? Why can't you achieve this through the mechanics of the actual encounter? If the only thing stopping a dps from brainlessly executing a golem rotation are small random things, it means your boss is a golem. Slapping instabilities on a golem isn't a fix. Look at raids, plenty of varied playstyle, and I never see these types of complaints. There are complaints raids are not accessible enough, but rarely are there complaints that they are too tedious (the biggest offenders are dhuum cm and deimos cm pre event).

Lets compare 2 similar mechanics. Flux bomb and sloth's poison. Both require the play to move off the group and drop it in a smart position. For sloth, this fits with the encounter, as the entire arena is a hazard, and traveling out into the dangerous parts of it can be challenging, but countered through the use of movement skills, blocks, and evades. But compare that to flux bombs, which because of their random nature, often occur in a setting where moving off the group has no hazard, for example the anomaly fight in chaos fractal. That fight takes place on a giant playing field with no area hazards. Running the flux bomb out is a stupidly easy thing to do, the only thing it does is force you to waste time waiting for it to time out.

There was a time before HOT, when Anet came into these forums (or the old forums rather), and told us their grand plans for fractals. This included specializing instabilities to be for specific fractals. So that instabilities were relevant to the fractal they were applied to. Years later we can clearly see they lied, or if your feeling diplomatic, they over hyped. But raids are doing great because they actually took that mentality to heart, rather than trying to craft generic junk to slap on each raid boss, each boss has its own unique mechanics to set the difficulty.

[Bugabuga.9721]

Just admit that instabilities are simply pita to reduce number of disorganized groups that are trying to do t4 fractals and not something that "improves" (somehow, magically) life of regular players. Players do fractals despite instabilities, not thanks to them ("Gee, it's not a hamstrung + afflicted + enraged day, I'll skip these fractals today!" said nobody ever :expressionless: )

If instabilities were fun and loved we'd get an "instability mote" to get them added with bonus rewards (kind of like CM -- people run CMs) and we'd have natural split in fractal LFG for "vanilla daily" / "instab daily [want chrono + druid]" and "CMs + Instab daily [achieve, druid, meta build only]".

And in some fractals, like Twilight Oasis, we still have all these awkward combos where instability makes every hit being an explosion of condies, combined with hamstrung so you can't move fast enough, and unblockable pulls from tornadoes to move you around to add risk of accidentally stepping into intricate telegraphs. Tadaaaa, more misery for pug runs (the whole pull system is very annoying anyway with no counterplay as it ignores stability -- total lack of logic, the worst possible "invention" from PoF :()

[Turkeyspit.3965]

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Glider.5792 said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

I don't see the problem with Social Awkwardness. Sure, it's somewhat annoying since you can't brainlessly stack, but that's the gist of it, isn't it? To force people to do some basic positioning. Flux Bomb and Last Laugh are dependant on the fractal you're doing. In some, they're perfectly fine, in others, well... They're especially annoying if they get drowned in visual noise. ANet should really rework fractals like Twilight Oasis.

Nah, TA is great. I like having a real boss in fractals. Just blacklist LL there.

Twilight Oasis could be a great fractal if it weren't for the disgusting visual noise. Everything gets drowned in fancy bright light and that's just ridiculous. It's so hard to see anything at certain points which just makes it really unfun for me. In that regard, I'd be really happy if ANet would tone down the visual noise considerably so that you can see stuff better.

@Glider.5792 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Glider.5792 said:The only instabilities that need changing are: Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, Last Laugh.All others are resonable, and can be avoided/easily dealt with.

I don't see the problem with Social Awkwardness. Sure, it's somewhat annoying since you can't brainlessly stack, but that's the gist of it, isn't it? To force people to do some basic positioning. Flux Bomb and Last Laugh are dependant on the fractal you're doing. In some, they're perfectly fine, in others, well... They're especially annoying if they get drowned in visual noise. ANet should really rework fractals like Twilight Oasis.

The problem is that on some bosses, you are forced to stack on top of each other. Biggest example is Siax, while hes doing that channeling skill everyone stacks under him to avoid those bullets.Social awkwardness is a problem everywhere where your freedom of movement/positioning is limited in some way, either due to some mechanic (like protection bubbles in 99cm) or just screen being filled with crapton of aoes (Viirasta for example) . Some mechanics even force you to basicaly "hug" (Arkk greens).

But yes, ofcouse you can avoid all of this by keeping distance, however cause of that there is a big chance you wont be receaving proper boons/healing which may yet again result in a death/failure.

You mostly can position yourself in a way you won't get hit and won't receive agony though SA. The distance you have to keep isn't that high. Plus, you mostly can outheal some agony anyway; not like you have to snuggle with your teammates all the time.

That may be true, but my issue with that instability is that it punishes you for playing the game the way it was designed, which is to group up / stack for boons and healing. All the other instabilities introduce some added mechanic, but none of them really change how you play the game. Flux bomb forces you to be aware of positioning, but after you distance yourself from the group and drop the bomb, you're right back with the group.

But SA actually punishes you for playing the game properly. It would be as if ANET introduced a an instability that hit you with agony every time you performed a weapon swap, or used a utility skill. Actually, either of those would be less painful than SA because you could change your rotation to only use a single weapon, and you could re-trait to a full signet build.

All the other instabilities offer a challenge that punishes you for doing something wrong. SA is the only one that punishes you for doing something right.

[polvere.2805]

Run swampland with those annoying instabilities on first try with no deaths with a random pug group. It was a normal t4 daily + recs with no specifical requirements aside the need of a BS + chron + druid (me).Were the instabilities annoying and absolutely a pain to deal with ? YesGame breaking or preventing from clearing ? Hell, no.We all said in party chat "gosh these instabilities are so annoying" but with a little care in handling the adds we cleared with 0 problems. The only difference that i notice when such combos of instab are on is that you have to light a little bit your brain and adapt a little bit your playstyle.Will i miss them if they get removed ? Hell, no.Should they be removed? Well i don't really care but i prefear devs spending more time totally reworking some fights or adding new pve/pvp content that actually needs more work. To me this issue should be really low priority.It's clear that totally removing them is not the solution. Be mindful that instab were created with the idea to be felt like an annoyance to the players, forcing them to change playstyle. Well after this thread we can see that they obtained what they wanted-If it's healty or not for the game i am not so sure, but i do think that without them the majority of fractals would become like the old dungeons where you had those 3-4 places to stack in the whole dung and you ALWAYS did it the same turning off the brain with 4 warriors/eles and a mesmer. I had fun in those dung anyway but probably devs don't want fractals to be like dungeons.

[Soggy Biscuit.9372]

I can live with them but I do agree the only thing they add to frac runs is annoyance, not fun or interesting gameplay. Especially as a minstrel druid/FB, the frequency at which flux bombs and mossman seem to single me out and fuck me up is pretty infuriating.

[edit] Some typical red herring going on in here, per usual. If people are pointing out how tedious and boring instabs feel, you pointing out "hurr durr LTP pugs 2stupid" into "I'm okay with this and so should you" Anet toe-sucking does not help. No-one is saying instabs are too hard.

[RaidsAreEasyAF.8652]

@Feanor.2358 said:Nah, TA is great. I like having a real boss in fractals. Just blacklist LL there.

The boss is good. Running to her is just boring.

[Feanor.2358]

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Nah, TA is great. I like having a real boss in fractals. Just blacklist LL there.

The boss is good. Running to her is just boring.

It's an issue with all the fractals that involve running to the boss. But hey, at least it's better than Solid Ocean where the boss is also a snoozefest.

[phokus.8934]

Get rid of all instabilities and actually change the encounters.

Instabilities was just a poor way out to make fractals “challenging” but was not the right direction.

[aceofbass.2163]

@Pirindolo.9427 said:You don't run T4 with pugs, I see.

I run with pugs if I'm playing a diff time from my guildies. And I am telling you the person who leaves is also the one who is constantly dropping flux bombs into the group and raging at the druid for not keeping him topped off.

I agree one instab should be reworked like SA but sometimes it's not the instability's fault. It's the player's inability to adjust to the random nature.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

I don't mind instabilities at all really except in this one very specific case:

Hamstrung is VERY annoying in fractals that have little "jump puzzles" like Uncatagorized and Chaos. I personally feel that it should be coded in that Hamstrung cannot be applied in any fractal that requires jumping around obstacles to complete. Enemies slowing you down by engaging you in combat, using various mobility impairing conditions, and knocking you off platforms with CCs enough.