47 replies to this topic

[MrCats]

Anyone else kinda annoyed they put fractals in the monthly requirement again? The WvW stuff i'm ok with, it's 50 kills. You can get that in about 4 hours if you tried hard enough but with the fractals it seems as if i need to spend half that amount just to find a group to get in the dungeon to begin with. I like the dungeon sure, it's different than the rest but could we just have general monthly requirements so thoose who also want the reward but dislike dungeons or WvW don't have to play the parts of the game they didn't want too? Like total events, total enemy kills, distance travelled etc. I understand why they put fractals in for November, it just came out, it was something different.

My experience with the fractals was patchy at best, failed groups, permanent DC, people couldn't get back in, turned into a fail group, try again, lfg with the 50 other people in that little part of Lions Arch etc.

What do you think about it? (The requirement, not fractals themselves)

Edited by MrCats, 01 December 2012 - 12:37 PM.

[lysecret]

The use of the monthly(and daily) is to force players out of their comfort zone. So Wvwler go pve and pveler go wvw...

[Senatic]

It's fine, I'll do them anyway since they're very enjoyable so I don't see the problem.

Stop playing pugs and you won't mind it either.

[Robsy128]

Yeah, the whole point of achievement hunting is to do all kinds of things in the game. It's the same with any achievement, really. Do I want to play Halo 4 all over again, especially on solo legendary difficulty and then again with a friend on legendary difficulty? No. Do I want the achievement? Yes, so I have to do it.

[MrCats]

lysecret, on 01 December 2012 - 12:41 PM, said:

The use of the monthly(and daily) is to force players out of their comfort zone. So Wvwler go pve and pveler go wvw...

There is no comfort zone issue here, i just don't want to deal with the random factors that go into fractals. Not the dungeon, but the lfg nonsense in Lions Arch. The DC issues etc.

Senatic, on 01 December 2012 - 12:42 PM, said:

It's fine, I'll do them anyway since they're very enjoyable so I don't see the problem.

Stop playing pugs and you won't mind it either.

The group can be anyone, it doesn't bother me. What bothers me is having to find the people to begin with who want to do the level i'm on. (Which is like level 2 because i didn't want to do fractals at all but did it for the monthly)

Robsy128, on 01 December 2012 - 12:48 PM, said:

Yeah, the whole point of achievement hunting is to do all kinds of things in the game. It's the same with any achievement, really. Do I want to play Halo 4 all over again, especially on solo legendary difficulty and then again with a friend on legendary difficulty? No. Do I want the achievement? Yes, so I have to do it.

Does the achievment give you somethong of worth in the game?
If i do the monthly, then i get 30 Mystic Coins and a lot of Karma which is ofcourse of use in the game i am playing. That's the only reason why i'm doing it, not the points. The points mean nothing to me.

Edited by MrCats, 01 December 2012 - 12:57 PM.

[cesmode]

I dont WvW a lot...but I can see how this would annoy people.

Another grey area where i thought we were under the assumption that Anet touted "play the way you want to..."  And then when people respond to that by saying "Well you still can, just dont do fractals... " I guess no monthly achievement for those people then ?

Even before the patch I caught arenanet in ALOT of grey areas concerning what they said, and how I misconstrued what they said.  True, this is all on me for possibly not understanding what they say, but I've played a half dozen MMOs in the last decade and this is the absolute FIRST time that I have misconstrued what a dev said..where they say one thing, but are "grey" enough about it where they can walk a fine line and waver either way without much backlash, and sit back to say "Well we never said that, but we said this".  A lot of PR spinning from this company.

I will say that Arenanet is a very innovative, clever developer...something the MMO genre has lost except Trion.  But in the same breathe I will label them as PR spinners that walk the fine line between what the consumer believes to be true, and what they actually mean <-- this has the potential to become extremely volatile and backfire, and already has been demonstrated with the vertical progression installation,

[Senatic]

MrCats, on 01 December 2012 - 12:56 PM, said:

The group can be anyone, it doesn't bother me. What bothers me is having to find the people to begin with who want to do the level i'm on. (Which is like level 2 because i didn't want to do fractals at all but did it for the monthly)

In my guild we just do whatever the lowest possible fractal is, we don't care. some are higher and some are lower. The way to fix that is just play the dungeon and do whatever level is possible at the time.

[Tellia]

i never even did the fractals the 1st time around, last month. well, at least not enough of them to get the achiev.

i guess i kinda wish the monthly this time around didnt have fractals in it but i could care less. the rewards are just more shit to rot in my bank anyway. the exp and money are worthless, the coins i have no use for anymore, and even if i level some alts up, i cant see myself being starved of karma in the game, ever. and if i were, i have more than enough of those jugs already.

[Darkobra]

Maybe this Fractals monthly is one of their solutions to get more people trying it for the lower difficulties. Or maybe they couldn't be arsed thinking of something else so it was more "We'll just do Fractals again!"

I actually think they should have done dungeons instead to get more people back to more of the game.

Edited by Darkobra, 01 December 2012 - 01:07 PM.

[MrCats]

Senatic, on 01 December 2012 - 01:00 PM, said:

In my guild we just do whatever the lowest possible fractal is, we don't care. some are higher and some are lower. The way to fix that is just play the dungeon and do whatever level is possible at the time.

That's good that your guild does that. It helps other people out.

[liinniejj]

i would have liked it to be dungeon this month tbh instead of fractals. the dungeons are dieing and there are plenty people for fractals. it would have been a good way to bring people back to the old dungeons

[Nox_Aeterna]

I just dont care anymore , passed up on last month monthly , might not get this either.

[Humfly]

lysecret, on 01 December 2012 - 12:41 PM, said:

The use of the monthly(and daily) is to force players out of their comfort zone. So Wvwler go pve and pveler go wvw...

So what happened to the "play the game the way you want to play" idea.

Maybe some players respond well to carrots on sticks or cattle prods in the behind but not me. I first went into WvW for map completion, (the gifts of exploration were not a carrot I will probably get sick of seeing them in my stash and vendor them) I hated trying to explore WvW. Then I went into WvW clueless with the sole aim of getting 50 invader kills with the minumum of repair costs. I hated it, left the second I got 50 kills, and haven't been back, I don't need more karma and would rather buy the coins. Anet's insistance that we should play the bits of the game they want us to has completely soured my attitude towards WvW. They introduced me to WvW with the worst possible experience.

I don't like dungeons or so far fractals. They are harsh until you and the rest of the group you are with know what you are doing then when you do they are tedious. I watched a youtube vid of a fractal chain the other day, an hour long and all the boss fights were played at x20 speed. If the content is too boring to watch on youtube it is too boring to play. That's the problem with dungeon content, difficult with million hit point bosses so the competent and experienced can't speed run them makes them harsh and unenjoyable for noobs. I just doubt  learning and becoming competent at the dungeon paths and fractal levels is worth the effort so I haven't bothered.

I won't end up with a high achievement score (if I cared) because apart from agent of entropy the monthly and dailies are the only achievements that accrue. Currently I won't end up with any legendaries or even acsended items because they require me to grind dungeons and/or WvW.

So much of GW2 is a confused mess, trying to control the generation of materials and gold in the game world (no speed running) while trying to suck materials out with soulbinding and items requiring vast amounts of gold/materials confounded by requiring you to grind this content or that content to be able to make them and fun playing the game gets sacrificed along the way.

Waypont costs are a perfect example of fun being sucked out of the game by efforts to control game world gold inflation. It seems a bunch of virtual world bean counters have a final say on any design decisions at Anet.

[Redhawk2007]

i agree totally. Monthly achievements should not force you to do any particular kind of activity but should be the result of doing general activities, perhaps with multiple paths to fulfill the requirements rather than just a handful of set paths. Maybe have things like rez 200 players or do x number of events as options in place of "do fractals."

I am just not into dungeons and the whole process of sitting around spamming in LA for hours just to get a group that immediately falls apart because someone suddenly has to go eat dinner or some other crap. I am a solo player who doesn't want to join a guild just so I can meet reliable, mature people to engage in an activity I would rather not do.

I failed to get last month's monthly and will likely fail this month as well. Kinda sucks because the karma jugs are a nice way of getting a spare set of gear.

This doesn't qualify as "play the game the way you want to."

[rick1027]

is there different reward for monthly pvp and the monthly and the daily and the daily pvp. so far ive only completed the daily and was curious. i dont like pvp so never got the monthly one before. thanks for any replies

[Tripolityx]

I do hope that this helps some of you even a little

[Scorpion]

I wouldn't mind if some of the fractal levels were a bit better. I really do enjoy most of them. But swimming around like a dolphin was definitely not something I expected or enjoyed. They really need to fix the DC problem as well, happened to me last night :/.

[Biz]

I don't like WvW so I don't finish my monthly,  I did it once and that was enough... If you take 4 hours to find a group you are doing it wrong... if you complain about PvE being a requirement there are tons of PvErs who would say that making WvW part of the monthly is just as bad so suck it up and do it, if not live with consequences.

[Vilaptca]

You only need 7 fractals.  Don't even have to be hard, just do levels 1 and 2 and you'll get your 7 fractals there.  Takes a couple hours, just like it takes a couple hours to get the 50 WvW kills that belong in the PvP monthly.

[Craywulf]

Humfly, on 01 December 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

So what happened to the "play the game the way you want to play" idea.

You're confusing this with "gaining rewards because I demand/expect them".

There's NOTHING stopping you from playing how you wish, ArenaNet isn't obligated to reward you for how you choose to play, as oppose to their idea of involvement.

[Eon Lilu]

Do one fractal a week.....thats all you need to do....not hard at all.

I got 50 kills in WvW in one hour, got two core drops from bags from player kills so that 1-2 gold, the 7 fractals will take about 2 hours to 4 hours depending on the groups and the fractals you get from random maps. Thats another 3+ gold easily plus fractal tokens.

So in one day you have 50% of your monthly, ready for wintersday and made 5+ gold.

Edited by Eon Lilu, 02 December 2012 - 02:41 AM.

[Dark]

I honestly believe they should have a seperate WvW monthly and PvE monthly. Like PvP is seperate from PvE.

[SevereEpicz]

Humfly, on 01 December 2012 - 03:36 PM, said:

If the content is too boring to watch on youtube it is too boring to play.

Well, thats kinda wrong. Like cricket, damn is it boring to watch but its not bad if you're playing.

[Ardeni]

Once you manage to get to fractal level 5 (and above) the pugs might get more enjoyable as most of the people have already done each of the fractals at least once. Other than that, you could join a guild which does them. I never do them in pugs, but I've heard that a friend of mine has had smooth runs in pugs as well. As for the monthly requirement, I think that it is fine. I already did those 7 fractals yesterday - it wasn't that much of a problem. I am more bothered by the unknown monthly achievements since I'd like to know what I need to do beforehand.

[matsif]

my problem with it is I still can't get out of level 1 because of the DC issue that forces you to restart the whole thing.  WvW I don't mind, its easy to do in the zerg.  fractals just are annoying right now, especially at this level because there are hardly any groups for it anymore.

[MrCats]

Biz, on 02 December 2012 - 01:20 AM, said:

I don't like WvW so I don't finish my monthly,  I did it once and that was enough... If you take 4 hours to find a group you are doing it wrong... if you complain about PvE being a requirement there are tons of PvErs who would say that making WvW part of the monthly is just as bad so suck it up and do it, if not live with consequences.

4 hours is a rough total time, i go to Lions Arch, lfg. Wait around about half hour, repeat lfg and the number and get nothing. I'm like ok, this sucks, why am i wasting my time for this crap and then go and do something else and actually play the game. Come back later, the same thing happens, people don't want to do lower levels in a general public setting so after i wait around and come back for around 30 mins each time it adds up close to 4 hours overall for one group which may or mayt not have someone who DC's which we can do nothing about so we need to do it again.

How about we just have the monthlies be general? Why do pvers need to do wvw, why do wvwers need to do pve? They shouldn't have too. There are now seperate pvp and regular monthly and daily requirements so this isn't asking for much. Why shouldn't that be the same for pve and wvw? Why shouldn't fractals be changed to "Dungeons" instead for people who dislike that entire concept (Dungeons good but it's not very pug friendly for instance, dc's etc).

There is no sucking up and doing it, i don't really like to do wvw but i do it because it's not that difficult to get the required kills as i said, it takes little time to get into wvw and to follow and zerg to kill random people. With the fractals, i'm dependent on other people to run the level with me, if they don't wish to run the level or simply are not there then i can't do anything about that. Regulalr dungeons? The people wouldn't be outside there if they didn't want to run the bloody thing and besides, there are no levels in regular dungeons, making it much easier to group and it's less time. Plus if someone dc's no problem, they can rejoin. It's very annoying to wait a reasonable amount of time, find a group, get about 3/4 through, someone dc's, can't finish. Total waste of time.

Edited by MrCats, 02 December 2012 - 09:54 AM.

[Thaark Ys]

Vilaptca, on 02 December 2012 - 01:24 AM, said:

You only need 7 fractals.  Don't even have to be hard, just do levels 1 and 2 and you'll get your 7 fractals there.  Takes a couple hours, just like it takes a couple hours to get the 50 WvW kills that belong in the PvP monthly.

The problem is not the difficulty of the task, it is that it forces you to find a group at your level.
I tried the fractals the 1st saturday : I liked it a lot in fact it was very fun little dungeons I did the 2 1rst steps no problem in the 3rd One I was disconnected in a jump (it was an asura like jumping puzzle), I couldn't join my group back so they all went out and we started all over again and did a new fractal but we realised we lost the credit from wat we had done so far and some of us didn't had enough time left to do it all over again so we stopped there that day.
The next day (sunday) : I found a group (and I noticed there wasn't that much anouncement for level 1 or even 2 groups most were level 5 or 6 and there already was level 8+. We didn't manage to do the swamp one so we reseted and did 2 other fractals no problem. After that we got to the same asuran like jumping puzzle and I was disconected again during a jump, I told my group to go on without me so they got their 2nd level and I didn't.
I already did 5 fractals by the count of the november achievement but I was still level 1, during the week I couldn't play and the next WE it became really hard to find level 1 groups.


That's the problem with this achievement : One of their selling points when they created the game was that you would not have to wait for a group or a certain class to help you out. You just had to log on and had instant fun that's not the case with fractals.
They should allow players to join higher level fractals to find groups but get a reward depending on their effective level.

[Asudementio]

Redhawk2007, on 01 December 2012 - 09:35 PM, said:

i agree totally. Monthly achievements should not force you to do any particular kind of activity but should be the result of doing general activities, perhaps with multiple paths to fulfill the requirements rather than just a handful of set paths. Maybe have things like rez 200 players or do x number of events as options in place of "do fractals."

I am just not into dungeons and the whole process of sitting around spamming in LA for hours just to get a group that immediately falls apart because someone suddenly has to go eat dinner or some other crap. I am a solo player who doesn't want to join a guild just so I can meet reliable, mature people to engage in an activity I would rather not do.

I failed to get last month's monthly and will likely fail this month as well. Kinda sucks because the karma jugs are a nice way of getting a spare set of gear.

This doesn't qualify as "play the game the way you want to."

This does qualify as play the game the way you want to. If you were a very karma focuses player you would do the monthly. Not all things have to be or should be obtainable on all paths.

[sanctuaire]

i'm ok with the monthly requirement it if its not buggy,
unfortunately its not.

- but had lots of problems with people DC'ing halfway with no way for them to get back in.
- just this past week had several guildmates who were getting kicked off the game
when they play fractals for some time (only time they had errors before),
then they can't log back in a 'security error messages' for half an hour.
- had experienced lots of progress blocking bugs in the fractals as well, like hammer not respawning
  even when all of you went back to a checkpoint, end ice fractal boss not returning to the fight area
  after going up, ect.

*even after getting some ascended items in fractals, it can still be a pain
because of technical issues.
.

Edited by sanctuaire, 02 December 2012 - 03:37 PM.

[Gruunz]

As others have probably mentioned, it's just another way for them to direct players into that area.

Many people stopped doing fractals? throw in the monthly, there we go, another large surge of players go back to doing fractals.

It's just stuff like that.

They could simply do it with other areas too. More people to orr (random example) kill 100 risen.