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[Preview] Guild Wars 2: Exploring the Fractals
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Yesterday, ArenaNet announced the coming addition of a new high-end dungeon for Guild Wars 2 called Fractals of the Mist. We take a look at Fractals in a brand new preview. Read on and then tell us what you think in the comments.
The Fractals of the Mists is a bit like ArenaNet’s “lesson learned” from the dungeons GW2 launched with. There is no “explorable mode” or “story mode”: there is only “The Fractals”. Essentially, the Asura have figured out a way to teleport people into different parts of the Mists (the fabric of time and space that holds Tyria together). For the glory of research (and loot of course), players of any level can enter the Fractals and take part in a series of nine mini dungeons that are cycled at random and become more difficult as you progress. Though you can enter at any level, the intended design is for level 80 players. Loot scales for your level appropriately, as it does in WvW, so level 2 players shouldn’t expect to find any Ascended loot while doing the Fractals until they’re level 80.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Guild Wars 2: Exploring the Fractals.
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Comments
It does look like improvement in arenanet dungeon design.
Whole Fractals concept sounds like a big experiment to see whenever certain new mechanics will work (random environments, increasing difficulty and reward scaling, less tank'n'spank and more variety). I do hope that they made something different to current dungeon pool, which is 80% same boring stuff, and would take succesful components forth into new content.
"The second run-through would have been a different story, and since the dungeon won’t reset for a week, if you beat the Maw once, the difficulty will remain boosted for the week."
Man, Anet is really trying hard to seperate the community with this new content. Add fusions as a new gate mechanism and than also freeze the difficulty you acheived for 1 week. So no going back to lower dificulties to help others or even join them if they missed the first run.
So the spam in LA will look like this the next weeks:
"LFG fractals level 1"
"lf2m fractals level 3"
"Anyone fractals level 2?"
"lf1m fractals, level 5, full ascend only, got guardian."
and now for the truth. you can set the difficulty scale when your group enters based on the highest common attained level of your group members.
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-fractals-mists
Anthur is correct. Because the difficulty level is based on the lowest difficulty achieved in the group you will absolutely see people LFG with certain difficulty cut-offs. People looking to progress will not be keen on continually running through the early difficulties with new PUG members.
As with most dungeons, this mechanic favours setting up a group that's willing to run a few evolutions in a row together, either on a static basis or at least a one-time commitment. Hot-join PUGs will be tougher to form.
Yea it might be a problem but at least it resets each week so on mondays everyone will be starting from lvl 1 anyways.
Which is exactly why people will be shouting for players currently on the same difficulty level or above. Unlike the other guy, however, I don't have a problem with this.
This looks amazing, but there is one thing I am unsure of...
Does any other game have something that compares to this?
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
Wonder how many will make it trough the final stage
Some dungeons where already harder then anything ive ever been in, dont like PvE, but i always check it out for some reason :P
Anthur is correct, but you might also see the opposite happen. Once a group has reached upper tiers of difficulty and cant progress anymore (without expensive repair bills) they may want someone who can get them back into tier 1 so they can earn more of the special tokens etc..
I agree i like this system alot because saying noone will go back a level to help people is like saying people wont do story mode cause i doesnt help them but huge numbers of players will do story mode with people for a change of pace or to help them.
Don't let the door slam your ass on the way out. While I continue to collect for my Legendary. Finished up my world Completion. And spearheading Fractal level 26! Lot's for me to do and look forward too. I have 500 hours invested into this game and have plenty to look forward too from Arena Net.