So, the new fractal: Sunqua Peak [Feedback]

[hugo.4705]

Will be brief and sharp. With mentions when needed. Feel free to fusion with another thread if it already exist.

The pros:-The setting, the floating mountains with the storms and chinese gates along beautiful cherry trees. It's nice, very nice.-The bosses appearances. Sure there is a basic air elemental. But also a nice lookind fire hound and double sword elementalist.-The path: In itself, pretty straight forward, it isn't a maze like twilight oasis or deldrimor at least.-The ambiances: Musics and sounds are cool, as always, the map and sound artists did a good job.-The fights and mechanics are fun. The air orbs to jump higher, the new boss attacks; apart the last boss which is quite hard.

The cons:-My group experienced extreme skill lags during the fractal: We kept killing ourself in the start trying to jump from a stone stair to another. During boss fight we surely missed aoes.-The last fight is too much, at a point I will say that nothing have been learnt from siren's reef final boss! It's the same hell: The players are fed with ton of mechanics which for some of them kill you in one shot! A squad member having the bad omen of staying near the elementalist boss? Nuked by the swords spin! Other trying to understand what to do with the rocks during fire explosion? Nuked by fire explosion. All wind orbs not disabled? Killed by wind discharge shortwave! Rezzing your friend? Boom killed by the winds line waves... in T1!-That lack of checkpoint in the last fight. Seriously, it's a pain, the health in our case took just an eternity to decrease: Like 5% every 10 mins! It's not possible, we aren't staying in it for one hour or more with a boss health not decreasing fast, and which in addition insta kill us by using any of its skill. So I call it, bad damage tuning. T1 is to learn, not to punish newcomers or curious ones about the new fractal, we shouldn't have to already use our t4 formation of healer, support and dps.....

Curious about your opinions. But for me it's too much for the T1 version. And it doesn't even push me to try it in t4.. Yes, I did all the others in T4.It's easy to be fed up at the last boss in T1, and after losing 5 times (reaching 75%) and seeing the boss reset to 100%, we disbanded and everyone left.T1 to me should be available to everyone even if they have the worst build on earth! It's like a demo, showcasing your work and giving the envy to try the harder versions.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

I can't really judge this one until I can play it non-slideshow style. Something in there nukes my FPS completely and utterly. I'm down to 14-20, lower end of that range most of the time, 20 when I'm just standing there doing nothing. That's down to a quarter of what I'm used to. Plenty of skill lag too, but that's probably a different issue.

[Dark Red Killian.3946]

Being used to T4’s, I started with a pug group that all seemed like they were T3-T4 capable, and we had a good time going through T1. Was actually really fun. Next group I did with T4. We got all the way to the last boss, died out a few times, and then the first mechanic with the energy balls you have to collect to jump high bugged out. We took out all of the nodes we were supposed to hit, and then everyone just kept getting hit with lightning. So our group parted ways then. Next group we fought the boss took us a few tries but we finally overcame. A few of us dead at the last minute. Pretty challenging, but got the hang of it after a while. Anet, please look into the first mechanic bug out on the final boss.

[Galmac.4680]

I went into with other randoms (on T1 level), and we finished all without any real problems. Had to do some jumps twice at the beginning, searched for a few papers here and there and didn't rush through. In the last fights we had some people in downstate, but were able to rezz all of us. Perhaps we hept some distance by accident and survived so.The fractal is nice design, I have to agree, although the new mechanics of the last boss and the fire dog is quite complex. Not just make stupid damage but react and do things here and there inbetween.Wouldn't recommend for absolute fractal beginners, but indeed interesting and nice for the experienced fractal runner.

[Jilora.9524]

It's an ok fractal. I only did T1 just to see. Then you look at achieves and new rewards and it's all finish on master tier. Achieve on master tier. All rewards are for those that do t4 + cm and not for anyone below that so I lost interest. It's cool that there's a new fractal but basically not even a 10 pt achieve to do unless you already end game in fractals so just if it's a daily thing.

[Randulf.7614]

It was an OK fractal. It lacked anything noteworthy and graphically wasn't very strong

Cons

• Very bland and boring art assets/visuals for the environment. I sincerely hope this is not what Cantha is going to look like. I know we only got little snippets, but they are very glowy and greatly inferior to GW1
• The last boss needs a HP nerf. Even on T1 that last 25% was a nightmare and took the group 3 attempts to kill it. It's a fractal - fractals are meant to be short and sweet, at least at low levels. It felt like it took too long to kill the boss, esp as those who got downed were insta killed when they got sucked into the vortex and weren't given a chance to be rezzed with the excessive amount of things going on and VISUAL NOISE (caps because I know you ignore the issue, but it's not going away no matter how hard you try to ignore it)
• Little replay value for lower tiers
• The air jumping bits in the first section were annoying, but I get they existed for learning one of the final fights mechanics

Pro

• The mechanics of each fight were mostly really good (the weird share the tidal chain thing seemed out of place and not relevant at least on T1)
• The lead in to the final boss was mercifully short given how dull the scenery was and more in line with fractal length which should be 10-15mins mins at low level
• Story struck the right balance between vague and exposition

Overall it was OK. The final boss seemed a bit overscaled for T1 at least in health pool, but it was nice to see a the fractal closer in design to the original sets (which are are almost all superior to the majority which came later). Generally speaking the mechanics for the bosses were good

Can't say I'd be enthused about ever returning to it unless T1 was brought in line with... well T1, but it's still so much better than Shattered Observatory, that dwarven ruin mess and that Elona one which had a great final boss and a far too long lead in.

[BlackBullWings.2734]

aside from the beautiful environment and cool final boss, it felt kindof lacking. the water spirit battle doesnt do anything, and every boss, for that matter, are lackluster in attacks.overal okay, but not very impressed. I guess the good stuff is in the CM

[Reynarth.4819]

First I tried to solo it on T1, first and second boss was pretty easy, but the last one was too much for me. I found a group for T3 and although some of us were dying on the last boss, it was easier than I thought. Fun fractal, I have to see CM version yet.

[evlover.6270]

Fractal itself is fine (apart from the bugs that need to be fixed). Just did it on t4 though so can't judge about lower levels but won't be harder than nightmare/observatory once people got the hang of it.The more annoying thing is the change to the Unstable Cosmic Essences from cm's.Conversion rate sucks (1 to 5) while you get 40 for each cm now and on average you only got 2-3/day before from Observatory. Converted to the wallet currency that's only 10-15/day while now you can get an easy 80/day from nightmare/obversatory and 120 if you add sunqua. That's a complete slap in the face from the people who have been doing daily cm's up until this point in time.Celestial infusion box used to be 90 old kp so was 30-45 days to get depending on rng while now you can get one for 450, just from doing nightmare/observatory daily that's within 6 days as that will already get you 480 essences.Has it never been considered to just add 1-3 old kp drop rate to the nightmare and sunqua fract bosses and price the new weapons at 90-100 old kps instead of 480 new ones? That way the old Essences wouldn't have been completely devaluated as they are now.. It's nowhere near worth it to convert them at this point.

[Pyriin.3291]

i allready forgot about it, the only hard part was finding those books

[Dark Red Killian.3946]

@evlover.6270 said:Fractal itself is fine (apart from the bugs that need to be fixed). Just did it on t4 though so can't judge about lower levels but won't be harder than nightmare/observatory once people got the hang of it.The more annoying thing is the change to the Unstable Cosmic Essences from cm's.Conversion rate sucks (1 to 5) while you get 40 for each cm now and on average you only got 2-3/day before from Observatory. Converted to the wallet currency that's only 10-15/day while now you can get an easy 80/day from nightmare/obversatory and 120 if you add sunqua. That's a complete slap in the face from the people who have been doing daily cm's up until this point in time.Celestial infusion box used to be 90 old kp so was 30-45 days to get depending on rng while now you can get one for 450, just from doing nightmare/observatory daily that's within 6 days as that will already get you 480 essences.Has it never been considered to just add 1-3 old kp drop rate to the nightmare and sunqua fract bosses and price the new weapons at 90-100 old kps instead of 480 new ones? That way the old Essences wouldn't have been completely devaluated as they are now.. It's nowhere near worth it to convert them at this point.I am pretty sure old essences give you 5 new essence per old, which is essentially more. They did away with old essences per the release notes. So if you have 250 old essence, you’ll get 1250 new essence on trade-in.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Dark Red Killian.3946 said:

@evlover.6270 said:Fractal itself is fine (apart from the bugs that need to be fixed). Just did it on t4 though so can't judge about lower levels but won't be harder than nightmare/observatory once people got the hang of it.The more annoying thing is the change to the Unstable Cosmic Essences from cm's.Conversion rate sucks (1 to 5) while you get 40 for each cm now and on average you only got 2-3/day before from Observatory. Converted to the wallet currency that's only 10-15/day while now you can get an easy 80/day from nightmare/obversatory and 120 if you add sunqua. That's a complete slap in the face from the people who have been doing daily cm's up until this point in time.Celestial infusion box used to be 90 old kp so was 30-45 days to get depending on rng while now you can get one for 450, just from doing nightmare/observatory daily that's within 6 days as that will already get you 480 essences.Has it never been considered to just add 1-3 old kp drop rate to the nightmare and sunqua fract bosses and price the new weapons at 90-100 old kps instead of 480 new ones? That way the old Essences wouldn't have been completely devaluated as they are now.. It's nowhere near worth it to convert them at this point.I am pretty sure old essences give you 5 new essence per old, which is essentially more. They did away with old essences per the release notes. So if you have 250 old essence, you’ll get 1250 new essence on trade-in.

It used to be less per day, which is what @evlover.6270 is referring to. The "old" daily 100 CM gave between 1-4 KP per day. Which converts into up 5 - 20 new essence.

Given the 40 new essence per CM mode now, you can now acquire up to 120 new essence per day. That's around 6 - 24 times as much per day as before, thus essentially devaluing the old KP and everything purchased with them.

Which becomes very evident when comparing infusions. The old Celestial Infusion now costs 450 essence, basically 90 old KP. This can now be farmed in 4 days (or 6 days if we assume only the 2 old CMs daily) compared to over a month in the old system. Very evident when compared to the new infusion price of 1680, which is adjusted to the new drop rate somewhat.

[Juan.6124]

The final boss and the CM are really well made. Especially the high mobility of the boss makes it this way more interesting than just ccing and bursting down other bosses like Arkk. Sadly the Elementalist boss does not use earth magic, propably because it would result in an even longer version of the normal mode fractal.The effects in CM are eye candy.

@hugo.4705 said:

Seriously, it's a pain, the health in our case took just an eternity to decrease: Like 5% every 10 mins.

That's not the fault of the boss. Your group dps is just very very low.

[Jojo.6140]

@evlover.6270 said:Has it never been considered to just add 1-3 old kp drop rate to the nightmare and sunqua fract bosses and price the new weapons at 90-100 old kps instead of 480 new ones? That way the old Essences wouldn't have been completely devaluated as they are now.. It's nowhere near worth it to convert them at this point.

The old stuff still costs the same if you convert your old kps to new ones (like the red infusion is 450 new ones, so 5x the old price wich was 90).Ofc they dont want to give players too much of a headstart on buying the new stuff. Tbh you can be glad that they made it possible to use your old kps to purchase some of the new stuff. The alternative wouldve been an entirely new kp/currency for the new rewards.

[Ashantara.8731]

Not my cup of tea - but most Fractals aren't. I find the whole concept of places taken out of space and time and examined by an Asuran scientist, whose distorted voice and often unneeded comments are annoying like an amusement park tour guide, pretty ridiculous.

The design is pretty, though.

[Khisanth.2948]

The visual noise level in the last fight in t4 is through roof on this one ... need to turn off post processing just to see properly but that also makes the whole thing darker

@Randulf.7614 said:Pro

• The mechanics of each fight were mostly really good (the weird share the tidal chain thing seemed out of place and not relevant at least on T1)

The chain is also very awkward if you are actually meant to to be aware of how many stacks is on your allies. Good luck finding the right icon among all the different icons that can take up half a screen width

[Asum.4960]

Solo'ed T1 on my first blind playthrough without a death (correction, died once at the fire elemental, not understanding the cover mechanic immidiately), so it shouldn't be too hard for a reasonable 5 man group for the new capstone Fractal. Felt fairly in line with soloing Shattered Observatory, bit tougher than Nightmare, definitely quite the step up from much older Fractals though.

I'm not too much of a fan of the normal T4 version as it's quite long, but maybe skips are still to be discovered.The CM is quite fun so far and feels like what the fight was meant to be (besides some, what I so far assume, rng mechanics like the rocks can be a pain), but I haven't beaten it yet with pugs, so don't have a full picture of it yet, especially the last phase I haven't seen at all.

Not sure if the Fallen Boulder boss is a joke or what.

/E: Alright, having done the CM now I have to say it's a really enjoyable and tense fight. The light show gets a bit too much at certain parts and the break bar sizes are maybe a little bit overtuned, kind of forcing consumable spam to get through them all which imo isn't ideal.Other than that I'm really glad Anet decided to give us proper exciting difficult content again to overcome, although I'm sure it's going to feel a lot easier again after more people are proficient with the mechanics and formed muscle memory.

[Lottie.5370]

Had an experienced CM group doing this on T4 (normal) and found the Fractal to be quite underwhelming.

I loved the visuals - it's beautiful and I could sure spend a lot of time there. I even especially enjoyed the letter achievement, it was fun to hunt for them and they were very cute to read.

The fights however... they were just way too easy in my opinion, up until the final boss. There's nothing interesting about them, they're just gentle HP sponges. I understand that it's supposed to teach you the mechanics of the last boss, but they just feel really undertuned, especially the water part? I didn't really understand it, you just stack and kill a giant rock. The final boss was much better, easy to follow and understand what to do and there's a good level of difficulty there.

Overall it's a great length for an extra daily fractal, I enjoy it enough, but I think some parts are too easy - the foes have a tiny HP pool and the breakbars are ridiculously small. I enjoy the style of leading up to this big end boss encounter.

[Ashantara.8731]

I need to add that I thoroughly enjoyed reading the letters from Bo to his wife Ai and the graves' inscriptions. That was a beautiful little story, and so sad (especially knowing the plague from GW1).

Now someone explain the fractal's story to me, please. ;) What was going on, why were the element(al)s so angry? And who was the final boss?

[Deepcuts.9740]

Did a chill T1 run for the 1st time.Nice view.A bit too long.We have jumping puzzles for ....jumping. No need for a fractal with this.Final boss is a mess with too much HP and weird strategy (if any). I got the gather 3 balls and then jump to disperse something part. Rest, not so much.Managed to stay alive just because I was a healing/boon druid. Finished the boss in 2 people.Forgettable experience and might cause some shell shock on T4 if not adjusted heavily.

I wonder: when they tested this on T4 prior to release...did they use god mode and never bothered to disable it? Just a guess. Haven't seen T4.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

disable cc consumables in fractal, and lower the cc bar for the boss in cm.

[edrake.6150]

Jumping puzzles do not belong in raids, fractals or strike missions. I know this fractal isn't a jumping puzzle per-se but the hopping up and down using the jump action skill gave me motion sickness. I will not play this fractal again.

The rewards are lazy reskins (obligatory legendaries and gemstore skins look better comment.) gated behind Master tier fractals. I have no issue with the gating but I have to wonder why any difficulty scales under T4 exist if all the new rewards are always going to be gated behind T4 achieves. I doubt everyone wants to play T4 fractals. The new weapons should have also had a substantial money cost attached to them. This game is in dire need of money sinks. Please add some.

The new abyssal infusion is garbage. Please stop adding visual cancer to to the game.

The fractal felt far too long. It felt like we were moving through a lot of space with nothing in it.

I don't know what the trash mobs were supposed to teach because they died too fast.

I had a hard time seeing the orange circles on red platforms. (Can't believe this is still a thing in 2020!)

Far too much visual clutter during the final boss.

[Makion.3457]

I did it with a T4 group, the first bosses were way too easy, we passed those like nothing, someone said, well for t4 this is too easy, then we reached the last boss, boy was she bugged! she jumped stages ignored completed mechanics and so on so we parted ways until patch, then the patch came fixed a few issues and I tried again with another group, it took us SIX tries to kill the boss, not only the visual noise is annoying as hell but all her mechanics are kinda annoying as well, specially the water effects at the end so In my opinion, the clouds, the Agony ball the meteors the bombs and the water field are waaay too much for a Fractal.

[ponYthink.9872]

Just did a T1 version of it today to check it out but overall I really enjoyed it. It had an interesting setting, a neat story (the gravesite especially the long message at the gravesite made me emotional), and most importantly had a GREAT final boss fight. Seriously, I would love to have more fights that have this many mechanics. It's definitely among the top best three fractals along with Nightmare and Shattered (Shattered still claiming the undisputed number 1 spot though). I can't wait to check it out at higher levels. One issue my party did have is when we wiped on the boss once the boss just kept attacking us for like 3-4 minutes without us having the option to retry at a checkpoint. We weren't sure if it was because one of our party members had disconnected so we kicked the DC'ed person but the boss still kept attacking us for a couple minutes lol. Happily, it fixed itself after a couple more minutes and we beat the boss. Anyways, thank you to the team for making this Fractal! I hope to see more great boss fights in the future :)

[Ogwom.7940]

I went in a bunch of times, with random, no preformed group and failed a bunch of times.After I decided to form a group consisting of alac, HB and rest condi (2 cFBs and 1 condi mirage).

We sent 1 person to do the JP at he start to unlock the boss, so the rest could just /gg and spawn at the mistlock. This made everything go by super fast.We were able to clear the final boss super fast without any problems compared to how slow it went with my other groups, though we retried for the achievs a couple of times and got all of them in 1 shot.

Condi really is great here.